Category Archives: Fantasy

Movie Review: The Batman

There have been quite a few feature films of DC’s ‘The World’s Greatest Detective’ Batman, 1 quickly rushed production derived from the campy television series, 4 in the franchise launch in 1989, Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, 1 where he shared titular billing with Superman, and another 1 or 2, depending on how you count Justice League, where is a driving force and a major character and now Director and Co-writer Matt Reeves brings us The Batman, another relaunch of the character and continuity, and perhaps my favorite Batman film yet.

The Batman brings us into the story two years into Bruce Wayne’s ‘Batman experiment,’ as Bruce is suffering doubts about the effectiveness of his vigilantism. Despite his nightly patrols crimes seems not only unabated but growing. When the mayor is brutally murdered days before the election by a mysterious madman obsessed with riddles Batman’s investigates pull

Credit: WB Studios

him in a dark web of conspiracy, corruption, and crime entangling Gotham’s political and economic elites. The trail of clues in his hunt for The Riddler leads Batman through the city’s organized crime, its police force, and crossing paths with a dangerous cat burglar on her own path of vengeance. The answers to the Riddler’s horrific murders and his motivation erodes Batman’s sense of self and history leading him to finally understand himself and what his experiment’s actual results.

The Batman delivers on the promise Matt Reeves made when he took over the project to redirect the character back to its detective roots. Tim Burton’s films luxuriated in a brooding Gothic aesthetic, Schumacher’s run were neon and gaudy, Nolan’s trilogy attempted a realism never before seen with Batman, and Snyder’s tone can be best described as brutalism with The Batman Reeves has reached back into Hollywood’s classic era for a film noir interpretation of a superhero movie. Very little of the film takes place in daylight and nearly none of that involves the Batman. As the character narrates himself into the experiment’s logbook, he is not in the shadows, he is the shadows. And unseen by himself, there is a shadow over his heart that is the story’s psychological center. The three characters close the Batman provide the emotional and psychic tension to pulls at him, Alfred with the debt of family and history, Gordon with the drive for justice, and Selina Kyle with a thrust for vengeance. resolving these competing tensions is the real story of The Batman.

Beautifully photographed by cinematographer Greig Fraser and with deliciously detailed production design by James Chinlund The Batman creates a Gotham that feels real, feels lived in, while preserving the epic scope required for our modern mythology that is the superhero movie.

The Batman is still currently playing in a few theaters and is now streaming on HBO Max.

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Streaming Review: Moon Knight

 

I find it difficult to adequately review a story where the ending has not yet been revealed. So much hinges upon a tale’s ending and a poor one, yes I am looking at you Game of Thrones, can wreck all that came before it. However, to build conversation Disney+ and Marvel Studios have opted for the week-by-week release format and so here are my thoughts on Moon Knight with just two episodes released. (It seems quite wrong to refer to them as ‘aired’ when they exist on a streaming service and not a broadcast one.)

Freed from the shackles that had once forbidden reference magic or time travel, both elements now firmly embedded with the greater MCU, Moon Knight embraces mysticism and ancient gods

Image: Marvel Studios

as the titular character is an avatar for an Egyptian deity devoted to justice. An additional level of complexity and complication is that the story’s protagonist suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, (DID), commonly known as ‘split personality’. Steven Grant is a quiet, unassuming English gift shop employee with an interest in Egyptology, but when asleep or under stress, the personality of Marc Spector, and tough capable American Mercenary, emerges. Chased by enemies Marc has instigated by stealing a mystical artifact from a secretive Egyptian cult, Steven learns that not only is his world unlike anything he has imagined but that everyone’s fate may be tied to his own.

Oscar Isaac delivers a subtle but large performance at Steven/Marc with only minimal changes to his hair styling as a visual cue to the currently dominate personality. Ethan Hawke is charming, controlled, and fanatical Arthur Harrow, devote to rival Egyptian god, and the leader of the cult pursuing Steven/Marc. The supporting characters as of episode two have had only cursory development but the writing is strong enough that they hold promise we can hope will be fulfilled.

Overall, the series is engaging, mysterious, and worth watching more episodes. We can hope that they don’t muff the ending. After the disappointment of Eternals is it good to see that Marvel can still launch a new cast of characters now the question is can they land them?

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My Latest Blu-Ray Acquisition

 

Last week I purchased Shout Factory’s 4K Blu-ray release of 1982’s The Sword and the Sorcerer a low budget fantasy movie of warring kingdoms, evil sorcerers, and a muscle-bound hero there to set everything right.

Produced on a budget of just 4 million dollars and grossing nearly 40 at the box office The Sword and the Sorcerer was, despite perhaps cinema’s silliest sword design, a very successful independent feature. Upon its release, I adored the film, not because it is great cinema, no one will ever count it among cinema’s masterpieces, but rather because no film before or since has captured so perfectly the mood and fun of an over-the-top Dungeons and Dragons adventure like this movie did.

Yes, the film is a complete mishmash of culture from medical England to the middle east, yes, it had anachronisms galore, and yes, the characters exist only to move the plot along, but it is also fun. At a spare 99 minutes the movie doesn’t waste it’s time and for such a limited budget, even by 1982 standards, every penny they spent is up there on the screen.

This release, mastered in 4K from a fresh negative, and packed with bonus feature is a joy and I am quite happy to add it to my library.

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The Past is Not Today

 

I can’t be counted as among the great fans of historical fiction. There are plenty of historical dramas, comedies, and even some fantasies, I’m looking at you Tim Powers, that I enjoy but it is not my primary genre of fiction.

However, if your historical fiction, be it fantastic or not, gets some very basic things wrong, so wrong that I am noticing, then you are in trouble.

It is important to remember that the people of the past, while still very much people, had utterly different world views than people today. The further into the past you set your fiction the further removed from modern thinking and speaking will be the characters actions. And that doesn’t get into the little trick of language that are more modern than you might expect.

‘Hello’ as a general greeting is a product of the telephone and as very nearly ‘ahoy.’ (Something C.L. Polk dropped into her Witchmark series without explanation that I just adored.)

‘Point of no return’ is a turn of phrase coined with the coming of the age of aircraft.

‘Hands of time’ is something you only say once clocks have become common.

And the ahistorical element that bugged me last night.

People conquered by Imperial Rome did NOT become citizens of Rome. That was a vastly tiny number of people they became subjects of the empire. Getting that wrong displays, a vast ignorance of Rome, its history, and its people.

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Doctor Who’s James Bond Problem

 

I have been fairly unengaged with the last few seasons of Britain’s most popular cultural export, Doctor Who, the long-running fantasy adventure series about a space and time traveling alien and his various human companions.

The series, first started in the 60s, has told stories that spanned galaxies and stories restricted to a single isolated lighthouse. Sometimes the Doctor, for the character is never properly named, has a curt gruff personality, sometimes the Doctor is silly, and sometimes, tragic. The eternal ‘regeneration’ that has allowed the character to pass from actor to actor has also allowed the series to remain relevant to the times of each series giving the show powerful staying ability.

Lately however it has come to resemble late period James Bond before the reboot of that classic franchise in 2006. Bond’s adventures grew in scale and stakes, or at least attempted to. The truth of the matter is there are only so many times you can ‘save the world’ before that become old hat and the audience turns disinterested.

Who took this issue to greater heights. With settings beyond one planet the Doctor began saving the universe, then destroying and recreating the universe. And each iteration presented stranger and more powerful antagonists for the doctor to battle, replacing emotional connection based in character with what they hoped was thrilling expansive scale.

For me scale never surpasses character as emotionally engaging. I remember the 2009 Christmas Special for Doctor Who The Waters of Mars with the Doctor one a single planet trying to save a small, doomed crew far more clearly than I do the season that just finished with another universe threatening pair villain and absolutely no emotional heft.

The problem is the writing. Which is strange because show runner Chris Chibnall has turned out very compelling character-based drama such as with his series Broadchurch but seeming has forgotten the basic of good character and story when handed a fantasy franchise.

I hope the Doctor’s future has more small scale but greater character driven stories rather than more failed attempts at ‘mind blowing’ concept that are emotionally meaningless.

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Icelandic Folk Horror: Tilbury

Icelandic Folk Horror: Tilbury

Made for Icelandic television in 1987 Tilbury is a short, just 53-minute, folk horror set during the British occupation of Iceland in 1940.

Audun is young man from rural Iceland. When he is sent near Reykjavik to part of the labor force building up defenses for the occupying British forces, he’s asked by the village priest to check in on a young woman, the priest’s daughter, who traveled there earlier and who has now fallen out of contact.

Out of place and naive Audun eventually finds the young woman but begins to suspect that a British officer she’s having an affair with may in fact be an imp from Icelandic folklore. As Audun investigates his experiences become more and more nightmarish.

Despite the limitations of television and budget Tilbury has much to offer; Lynchian dream logic sequences, amusing portrayals of British and American stereotypes by Icelandic performers, and a different vibe of folk horror.

The follow bit of text I am striking through. Please see my follow-up post but essentially it was wrong and I regret the error.

That said it must be noted that halfway through the run time the piece takes an ugly anti-Semitic turn that is truly baffling and utterly unnecessary to story or plot. At first these viewpoints can be dismissed as a character’s bigotry but the movie’s climatic sequence present imagery that invalidates such an interpretation.

With such an ugly turn I cannot recommend anyone support what otherwise might have been an interesting discovery.

Tilbury is currently streaming on Shudder.

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Eternals

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe returned to solely theatrical distribution this weekend with the release of the Kirby inspired, grand cosmically themed movie Eternals. Sadly, Eternals is the MCU’s first unqualified miss of an entry into their massively successful and expanding set of shared stories.

Boasting a roster of ten powered cosmic beings the Eternals were dispatched to Earth at the dawn of human civilization to protect humanity from extraterrestrial monstrosities Deviants that feed on intelligent lifeforms. Having extinguished the deviant threat in the 16th century the Eternals now mission-less scattered around the globe only to be surprised by the return of their ancient foe a heralding a greater threat and a darker truth about their mission.

The reasons why Eternals did not work for me falls into three major elements.

1) Too many major characters. With the limited scope of a feature film, even one with a running time of just over two and half hours, it is very difficult to have that many characters with their own arcs and issues. I found the plotlines that were emotionally resonate for me sidelined and given only cursory attention. There was only a surface treatment of interesting characters and as such only surface emotional engagement.

2) Too much mythology for a single story. Eternals opens with a block of text giving the audience backstory on the situation, then several times stops for more extended blocks of exposition revising the history and lore of the story. Again, and again narrative moment is killed in the name of exposition.

3) Spectacle over story. Eternals has several large set-piece special effects battles, each more massive in scale than the previous but flash/bang doesn’t create emotional meaning. Whose yet there are times when the filmmakers simply cheat the audience. Presenting one thing as reality directly contradicting a few moments later for the sake of a ‘reveal.’ In the theaters I sat in none of the moments evoked much of an audience response.

Despite an engaging and talented cast Eternals fails to deliver on a story that can make audiences care about the events on the screen. It is a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

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The Film That Almost Got Away

 

Wednesday when I posted about all the movies and films, I plan to see in theaters during October I missed one that had nearly passed by unnoticed in the crush, Lamb.

Lamb appears to be a folk horror film set among the windswept terrain of Iceland. It stars Noomi Rapace and Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson as a grieving farming couple who discover and adapt a strange and unsettling changeling in a desperate attempt to assuage their sorrow.

I fully expect Lamb to be a film that deals in symbolism, imagery, and the power of what is left unsaid rather than a run-and-scream sort of horror. Rotten Tomatoes is currently running a 40 point deficit between critical and audience response a pattern most often seen with artistic, experimental, and challenging films. (As an example, Robert Eggers’, The Witch (2015) one of my favorite recent horror films runs a 31 point deficit.)

Lamb is an A24 Studios release. A24 has released a fair number of interesting, thoughtful, and challenging films including such unusual fare as Under the Skin, Locke, Ex Machina, Moonlight, Uncut Gems, and Midsommar to list just a few from their quite eclectic catalog. I am quite looking forward to Lamb, which opens this weekend, but we are seeing next Sunday.

 

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Another Reason What the GOT Ending Doesn’t Work

 

When HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones ended after 8 seasons many fans were disappointed. After leaving the source material behind because they had simply run out of novel to adapt the series changed in tone and pacing with the vast distances now seemingly crossed quickly with ease, the complex social/political dynamic reduced to dispatched plot points, and a final resolution so rushed it failed to build to the emotional punch required and instead felt to many as a disrespect of one of the story’s most beloved characters. (How’s that for summing it up without spoiling?)

I would argue an additional trouble came from the sequencing of the plotlines. Two massing concurrently running plots were, How to Deal with the Army of the Dead and Who is going to take the Iron Throne and rule the Seven Kingdoms?

The Army of the Dead seek to extinguish all life. The Iron Throne while consequential is a lesser issue. If everyone is dead no one is going to sit on that throne and whoever sits on that throne is only going to be there for a few decades and can be removed by revolt if needed. A bad person sitting on the throne is a resolvable issue being dead cannot be fixed. No matter how you slice it the Army of the Dead is the much more important issue. It is the issue the series resolved first.

Once the Army of the Dead is defeated and life preserved in the world the issue of the throne just doesn’t carry the same weight. Mind you they didn’t treat the Throne Issue as a denouement, something to resolve as the story ended but rather of the final six episodes of season eight half are after the more serious issue has been solved. Hours and Hours dealing with badly with a lesser problem. It just one more reason why the series left the rail and crashed.

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Movie Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

 

After experimenting releasing major films in both theaters and on ‘Premium Access’ as a method of mitigating restricted audiences due to the pandemic, and inciting a revolt of its artists, Disney has released the 25th Marvel Cinematic Universe feature, Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, exclusively for theatrical distribution.

Shang-Chi stars Simu Liu as the titular character, the son of Xu Wenwu, played by Tony Leung, a nearly immortal warlord whose mastery of ten mystical rings grants him fantastic powers and long life. Repelled by his father’s criminal life Shang-chi flees living in secret working as car valet alongside his equally underachieving best friend Katy played by rapper, writer, actress Awkwafina. After his father’s assassins failed to kill Shang-chi his secret of revealed and he along with Katy rush to save Shang-Chi estranged sister before she falls to the killers drawing the pair into a globe spanning mystical adventure that leads Shang-chi in revelation about himself, his heritage, and the meaning of family.

Shang-Chi is a solid entry in the MCU’s ever expanding cannon. It is quite pleasing that the character’s origins have been modified, removing the stain of ‘yellow peril’ and instead centered on a more respectful and accurate portrayal, at least to my under educated eyes, of Chinese culture and tradition. I will leave analysis of the films depiction of Chinese diaspora to those more fully equipped for such examination and restrict my opinions to the movie itself and its place in the MCU.

This film is neither the best nor the worst offering from the franchise’s feature catalog. It is stylish, well produced and directed with solid emotionally grounded performances from the entire cast. It doesn’t fail to have a bit of fun or occasional laugh utilizing the comedic talent of the actors while maintaining a family drama that explores the theme that we are, for both better and ill, the product of our families. A few of characters from other MCU properties make customary and expected appearances but there is one whose inclusion is a genie surprise and thoroughly entertaining. More so if one kept up with Marvel’s studio’s brief experiment run with ‘One Shot’ short films that had been included for a time as bonus material on the home video releases.

Where the film fails to reach the level of the very best Marvel movies are in the areas of the villain’s motivation, which is relatable and character driven but fails to have greater thematic importance such as will Killmonger in Black Panther, and in the a vaguely defined power set for the titular Ten Rings that leads to a climatic battle that at times feels a bit deus ex machina, not so much as to ruin the film’s resolution but enough in my eyes to undercut it. Still the writers and filmmaker avoided tired tropes and cliches such as the villain using the hero’s female friend as hostage, a tactic I would most happily hope to never witness in a film again.

There are two post credit sequences, the first more lighthearted the second more critical to further developments for Shang-chi and his story.

If you have enjoyed the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far then there is every reason to expect that Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings should provide you with a couple of hours of enjoyment the exact amount dependent upon your precise tastes.

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