Apr 3
The Batman film series started by Tim Burton swings in a different direction with Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever. According to reports, Warner Bros. was annoyed that Batman Returns was “too scary” and thusly alienated a potential goldmine of a target audience by sending kids screaming from the theatres in droves. The idea was to bring the demographic back in theatres – and what better way to carry out the feat than homoeroticism and nauseating colour schemes.
Christopher Nolan’s vision of Batman is one couched in realism and exacting suspense, but Tim Burton’s vision is one of high art. Nowhere is that more apparent than with the sublime Batman Returns. Here is a film of complex characters, divine ridiculousness, uncommon darkness, and rich satire. Burton explores egoism, feminism and even political gamesmanship in a darkly theatrical fashion, providing more than a thriller and more than a superhero movie for the audience.
I had been looking forward to seeing Nicolas Winding Refn Drive ever since I saw the trailers. Stick Ryan Gosling in a slow-burning thriller with roaring engines and Christina Hendricks and you’ve got yourself a deal, I say. Upon actually seeing Refn’s Drive, it turns out that the picture is a fascinating if slightly underwhelming on an emotional level.
It’s not technically his first kick at the can, but The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is often cited as being the first true Hitchcock film because it introduces the mood and mystery that would so readily arm his best pictures. This 1927 silent film comes based on a story and a play by Marie Belloc Lowndes. The tale, like so many in Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre, concerns itself with notions of danger, innocence and murder.
Dirty Harry is the quintessential vigilante movie. A big gun solves almost every problem and things like due process are just exasperations to scoot around to get the bad guys. It’s a skewed dream world for most of us, of course, but for some the ideology of the classic Clint Eastwood character is the stuff justice really ought to be made of.
