Author: Mikeylito

I'm a New York-bred transplanted Californian back on Long Island.
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The Batman (2022)

It’s been a while since I highly anticipated a DC movie from Warner Bros. Yes, I’m one of those people. I’m one of the people who enjoyed Zack Snyder’s vision of the DC Extended Universe. Man of Steel is my favorite version of the Superman story. Henry Cavill and Amy Adams are my favorite Lois and Clark. Wonder Woman’s introduction into the DCEU was executed by Snyder, and we all saw what could happen to Wonder Woman when Patty Jenkins is left to her own devices. Likewise, Aquaman’s initial outing was engaging under Snyder’s leadership and, while I don’t think it’s worthy of an Oscar, Zack Snyder’s Justice League was superior over the Joss Whedon version. Let’s not forget what Todd Philips did with Joker when he was left alone by the studio.

Oscar award-winning director Ben Affleck initially was going to write and direct The Batman but, for whatever reason, dropped the assignment and the role. Enter a director (and a composer) from the J.J. Abrams Bad Robot tree, and, ordinarily, I wouldn’t be excited about who took over the assignment. Matt Reeves (and Michael Giacchino) are no ordinary descendants from the Abrams tree. Reeves directed Cloverfield, America’s own kaiju (and Giacchino wrote the score, which only consisted of the end credits sequence). Reeves also directed the reboot trilogy of Planet of the Apes Giacchino scored the final two films.

So, Reeves and Giacchino have outstanding credits to stand on independent of Abrams, and they can add a solid outing in The Batman to add to their accomplishments. If you’re wondering why I have mentioned Giacchino almost every time I say, Reeves, the score added powerful impact to the words directed and co-written by Reeves, with Peter Craig credited as the other screenwriter.

When people talk about the DCEU, they emphasize the Extended Universe portion of that initialism. It’s important to remember that DC stands for Detective Comics, the publication which introduced Batman in issue #27, dated May 1939. Reeves hasn’t forgotten. He has given us a neo-noir detective story from beginning to end. Whereas many previous directors have given us dark and moody stylings of Gotham City, Reeves and his design team have given us a Gotham that’s an amalgam of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, and several other cities. At times the film reflects the daytime essence of those cities yet still maintains the dark and moody atmosphere in which Batman and Jim Gordon are destined to operate.

Some trepidation was raised about Robert Pattison playing Batman. I don’t write spoilers, but I will say this. Pattison is Batman… just Batman. There’s a reason why the word Batman is so outsized in the credits and marketing materials. The former Twilight star plays the role well. Andy Serkis is Bruce Wayne’s faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth. Zoe Kravitz gives a wonderful performance as Selina Kyle, a/k/a Catwoman. However, throughout this movie, Batman’s loyal partner is Lt. Jim Gordon, played marvelously by Jeffrey Wright. 

Gotham City is plagued by a series of high-profile killings beginning with its mayor. Over the objections of some policemen and the police commissioner, Gordon brings Batman into the investigation from the very beginning. Several elements of the Batman ethos are just presented as fact. So, no unnecessary explanations of the BatSignal or why Batman and Gordon are so close. It’s a fait accompli. It is what it is, and I was fine with that.

The story presented by Reeves and Craig is populated with a couple of familiar characters from the Batman mythos. The Riddler and the Penguin are in evidence, played by Paul Dano and Colin Farrell, respectively. There are several other baddies to populate the story. Peter Sarsgaard plays DA Gil Colson and who doesn’t love a performance from John Turturro, who plays Carmine Falcone, a gangster I learned about from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.

Reeves’ The Batman does not suffer from comparisons to Nolan’s trilogy. I am eagerly looking forward to Reeves’ next installment. So, why does this movie get an 8 instead of a 10?

Too much plot. There’s a lot of plot in this movie. A lot is going on and a lot that you’ll have to keep track of during its near-three-hour running time. Don’t worry. I don’t think you’ll be looking at your watch too much because a lot is happening, and you’ll have to pay attention because Reeves doesn’t necessarily explain things upfront in a fashion where you’ll understand what is going on. However, eventually, it will all come together for you.

There’s an interesting twist on the Batman origin story, such as it is. I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

The Batman is rated PG-13 for strong violent and disturbing content, drug content, strong language, and some suggestive material. It is a solid, very powerful movie that you will want to watch multiple times. It is playing in IMAX 2D is available only in theatres right now.

Trailer

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The Matrix Resurrections

The last time I saw a movie that made me feel like this was Space Jam: A New Legacy, also from Warner Brothers. In that one, it was like a whole bunch of Warner Brothers executives got in a room with LeBron James’ people and decided to make a movie filled with WB IP, James, and little else. This time around, Lana Wachowski, one of the co-creators of the franchise, decided to forgo the partnership with her sister and “resurrect” it with this movie without a clear idea of what should be done.

As the movie opens, we are treated to almost an exact re-creation of the opening scene from The Matrix (1999), but rather than use footage from that film, Wachowski re-creates the scene with look-a-like actors. We’re introduced to “hold onto your butts,” “Bugs,” as in “Bunny” to quote the character. Bugs is a human captain who, with her operator Seq (short for Sequoia), observes the re-creation. Eventually, Bugs and Seq realize that what they are watching is not what happened to Trinity in the original, and we’re off to the races.

Though Wachowski didn’t use archival footage in that scene, there is liberal use of scenes and intercuts from all three Matrix films as she and co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon try to lay a foundation for this film. However, it never really quite works. Much of it is a retread of the previous films. The writers have gotten rid of many of the devices from the earlier films.  As one character noted, “you don’t have to get to a phone anymore.” So, we’re left with setups for fight scenes, followed by the fights, and let’s keep it moving.

Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss return.  Reeves appears as Thomas Anderson, a programmer who wrote “The Matrix” as a series of three video games and, yes, the movies of the trilogy were actually video games. Moss is Tiffany, a somewhat modern-day Mom, with a husband, Chad, and two kids. Tom and Tiffany meet at a coffee house named —wait for it— Simulatte and discuss how much Tom based the character Neo on himself and how much Tiffany looks like Trinity.

I don’t know if they were asked, but Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving had the common sense not to re-up for this film. Instead, we get Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus and Jonathan Groff as Anderson’s business partner named Smith. Their performances are serviceable, but kudos to Neil Patrick Harris, who appears as The Analyst, who we learned has rebooted The Matrix after inheriting the duty from The Architect.

Frankly, it’s all very meta and derivative, unimaginative, and vacuous. With all the advances in filmmaking since 1999, I don’t understand how the original film’s effects are better than the effects in this film.

I can’t recommend spending $21 a ticket to view this film in IMAX; however, if you have two and a half hours and HBO Max, it’s probably worth your time. The three original films are currently streaming on Hulu; so, you can get the whole Matrix experience in your own home and reduce your exposure to Omicron if you happened to have dodged it from going to see Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Trailer

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Spider-Man: No Way Home

Forgive me if I take this out on Peter Parker, but Spider-Man: No Way Home suffers from many of the problems of modern intellectual property; that is that it’s not really modern at all. If I were scoring the film just based on my enjoyment, it would receive a 6 out of 10. If you saw the graphic above, you’ll know that I rated it 8 out of 10. I’ll explain why before you read to the end.

Much of modern intellectual property survives on two fundamental and related things. One has been going on for quite a while now. That’s the repurposing of script elements that we’ve seen in either prior films in a series or story devices that we’ve seen in other movies. So, for example, (using a scene we saw in the trailers,) when MJ falls off the scaffolding, that’s similar to things we saw in the 80’s Spider-Man films and the 90’s Amazing Spider-Man films.

The second thing is fan service.  Sometimes, fan service is desirable when used, for example, in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which essentially were clip films without using clips. They used script elements that essentially recapped the previous 20 films without showing clips but building scenes based on what we saw in those films.

My problem with Spider-Man: No Way Home is that it is essentially a film that combined major story elements revealed in trailers with others recycled from previous Spider-films. It is a movie that Spider-fans figured out on social media. There wasn’t a single story element that took me by surprise. This is from a person who avoided social media about the film from the premiere until I saw it this morning. So, did I find it satisfying? No.

Increasingly, modern storytelling is dependent on familiar content and fan service. This has given fandom a sense of entitlement where if what they want to see in a film is omitted, then the film has no value, and there’s no impetus to see it.

Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers wrote the script for all three MCU Spider-Man films (as well as Ant-Man and the Wasp). Jon Watts directed all three as well and will be directing the upcoming Fantastic Four MCU introduction. Watts and photographer Mauro Fiore did an outstanding job with the material given. The writers attempted to generate pathos and, judging by the reaction of the audience I viewed the film with, they were apparently successful. However, I feel McKenna and Sommers have kind of written themselves into a box and I can’t wait to see how Feige and company get themselves out of it.

Tom Holland returns as Peter Parker and Spider-Man, as does the cast of the previous Spider-Man MCU movies. Every villain from the earlier Spider-films appears in this movie, played, with one exception, by all the same actors. So, it’s an all-star cast that’s we see on the screen throughout the film.

There’s not a lot I can say about the plot without spoiling it.
However, I can say that you’ve seen it all before in one form or another.

There is a mid-credits scene and a post-credits scene affecting both Sony’s Spider-Verse and the Marvel Cinematic University.  Next up is another film from Sony. Morbius premieres in January.

Trailer

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West Side Story (2021)

I have a running joke about Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story with a cyber friend of mine. It seems he, my friend, was looking forward to it. I wasn’t necessarily. I kept reminding my friend that Steven Spielberg produced CATS.  That musical, released around this same time of year, was awful, just awful.

Fortunately, Mr. Spielberg didn’t just produce this modern West Side Story. He also directed it. I can give you my overall opinion before you read any further.  It’s better than CATS.

It has always been thought that Mr. Spielberg had a knack for directing musicals.  Our first inkling was the ballroom dance sequence in 1979’s 1941. The director staged a kinetic dance number and a fictional re-creation of the Zoot Suit riots.  The second clue was the opening sequence of 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a scene-setter for that movie.

However, for his first full-fledged musical, Mr. Spielberg decided to mount a brand new production of Jerome Robbins’ original Broadway play dealing with a modern version of the Romeo and Juliet story. Unlike the 1961 version directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, Spielberg gives his story some context, providing this writer with the grounding the story needed.

Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner, who previously collaborated with the director on Munich and Lincoln, set the film in the mid to late 1950s.  The area where the future Lincoln Center would be built was being razed, and inhabitants were being moved out. The neighborhood was once heavily Irish and Polish. Still, as the film opens, the area has become primarily Hispanic and, specifically, Puerto Rican. We come to learn that there’s a battle for turf between the Jets, who are white, and the Sharks, who are Puerto Rican.

Using the music of Leonard Bernstein, the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, and the choreography of Justin Peck, Spielberg introduces the Jets and the Sharks to his audience in a much more believable fashion than did Wise and Robbins. You understand right away why these two gangs are fighting a futile battle both are destined to lose.

Ansel Elgort plays Tony, a former co-founder of the Jets who now works in a drug store after a year in prison for a previous gang fight.  Tony professes that he wants no more of the gang life and is content with working for Valentina (Rita Moreno), the Hispanic owner of the drug store. The other founder of the Jets is Riff (Mike Faist), the current leader. The Jets are feuding with the Sharks, whose leader is boxer Bernardo Vasquez (David Alvarez). Unlike the 1961 film, the Sharks don’t appear to be outnumbered by the Jets, and when the Jets violate the Sharks’ turf, a rumble ensues only to be broken up by Lt. Schrank (Corey Stoll) and Officer Krupke (Brian D’Arcy James).  Later that night, there’s a community dance. Bernardo warns his sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), that he’ll be vigilant about any gringos who want to dance with her.

Still, I guess you can’t have everything. The musical and dance set pieces all work for me. However, the characterization of the dance organizer in this film doesn’t stand up to the characterization of John Astin in the 1961 film. Maria’s date for the dance, Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), is played a little differently in this film. It was better but still left something to be desired.

I get it. These stories, both in 1961 and 2021, are dance musicals; so, there’s a suspension of belief necessary to follow the story. I viewed the 1961 film before viewing the Spielberg film. I found it anachronistic and, frankly, a little bit silly. In this respect, Spielberg’s film is much, much better. Spielberg’s film makes the love affair of Tony and Maria a tad more believable than the 1961 film. Yet, I still find the romance, taking place over two days, somewhat far-fetched, although admittedly possible.

Bottom line: Spielberg brings dramatic tension to a story that is not wholly reliant on music and dance, and I found the story much more believable than the 1961 film. Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, strong language, thematic content, suggestive material, and brief smoking, you should enjoy Mr. Spielberg’s official entry into the genre if you like dance musicals.

Trailer

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tick, tick… BOOM!

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Earlier this year, Lin Manuel Miranda teamed with director Jon M. Chu to adapt his Broadway play, In The Heights. It was a musical tour de force of a summer musical which introduced bright new stars, fabulous music, and a remarkable story about a neighborhood in transition and the people who live there. For whatever reason, it was largely ignored. In promoting the film, Miranda talked about how his play cum movie was partially inspired by the work of another young playwright. That playwright was Jonathan Larson, and the play was Rent.

Regardless of how his film was received, Miranda didn’t complain. He didn’t have time. He had other irons in the fire.  One of those irons was a film about that other young playwright, Larson. Miranda had a story to tell about how Larson dealt with being a struggling young playwright, all the while juggling a faltering romance, a distancing friendship, and all matter of turmoil swirling around him while trying to get his play, Superbia, produced.

Miranda, the producer, teamed with producer Julie Oh and executive producers Brian Glazer, Ron Howard, and screenwriter Steven Levenson (who wrote the screenplay earlier this year for the dismal Dear Evan Hansen). He assigned himself as a first-time director to bring this adaptation of Larson’s autobiographical play to the screen. Miranda, who had masterfully adapted his own music for In The Heights, has done the same for Larson’s music in tick, tick… BOOM!

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Those of you sitting around waiting for him to appear or not in a forthcoming movie about a web-slinger are missing the boat. The he in him is Andrew Garfield, who puts on a masterful performance as Jonathan Larson. I don’t know about anybody else, but I never realized that Garfield could sing. Sing he does, for if you read the credits as I usually do, you’ll find that Garfield performed all the songs in the film.  He was ably backed by Alexandra Shipp, who played Susan, his dancer girlfriend, who is dealing with her own career choices, and a boyfriend unable to have a difficult conversation. The voice of Susan is played by Vanessa Hudgins in Larson’s play, Superbia.

Wait, what?

Yes, you see, Miranda has staged a musical within a musical because Superbia is the device that drives the plot of tick, tick… BOOM! forward. It takes a little bit to realize what is happening but when you do, the drama that unfolds before our eyes is deft and compelling without being maudlin. Robin de Jesus plays Larson’s childhood friend, Michael. He and Jonathan have known each other since the age of eight, and now Michael is dealing with Jon’s crisis of turning 30 —this was a thing in the 20th century— while dealing with a personal crisis of his own.

De Jesús gives such a heartfelt performance that it makes me want to cry every time I think about it. (Those are tears of joy and trepidation all mixed up together.) Two other noteworthy performances from the main cast. The first is Joshua Henry (Roger), whose powerful voice propels many of the songs in Superbia. The other is Jonathan Marc Schwartz, who plays Ira Weitzman, the owner of the rehearsal space who takes a chance on Larsen’s apparently over-produced musical.

The film is populated with a variety of cameos in the movie. You’ll be sitting there enjoying the story when you realize… wait a minute… isn’t that…?  It doesn’t matter.  Most, if not all, of the cameos are identified in the credits at the film’s end.  Two significant “guest stars” of note: Judith Light, who plays Jon’s agent Rosa Stevens and a nearly unrecognizable Bradley Whitford playing playwright Stephen Sondheim. Whitford plays the role so understated that you hardly realize that it’s Whitford in there. Oh, and see if you spot Miranda’s Hitchcock moment in the film.

I’ve so enjoyed Lin Manuel Miranda’s productions this year that I’m eagerly anticipating the release of Encanto, which is premiering in theatres next Wednesday.

tick, tick… BOOM!, as far as I’m concerned, only suffers from a tad bit of confusion from what story is being told, but once you catch onto the story structure, it’s smooth sailing until the end.  Rated PG-13 for some strong language, some suggestive material, and drug references, tick, tick… BOOM! played in theatres and is now appearing on Netflix.

BOOM!