…and I was honestly not expecting much more than a sporadically engaging in-and-outer. I was praying it wouldn’t be arduous. Well, it’s more than that — a good deal more. It’s not my idea of a stone masterpiece, but it’s awfully damn good for what it is. Much better than expected.
No bathroom breaks! And I have to hand it to RBatz…he holds his own and can regard all the other Bat dudes (Keaton, Bale, Kilmer, Clooney) on an equal footing.
Yes, another brooding, badass, seething, dark-as-shit Batman flick. But on its own terms it stands up to the Nolan aesthetic. It looks Nolan right in the eye, I mean, and says “this is another way to go, bruh…yes, similar in some ways…okay, in more than a few…how could it not be?”
But Matt Reeves has made this nearly three-hour noir work on its own dark, rainy-ass, soaked-in-sewer-water, steaming noir-scape terms.
It’s obvious from the get-go that The Batman has been directed by a sharp, highly intelligent maestro type who wears bow ties…this is no schlocko enterprise, no Peter Hyams paycheck thing.
The unrecognizable Colin Farrell for Best Supporting Actor! Seriously! He looks and sounds like Michael Rapaport under heavy makeup and a fat suit.
I loved the “Ave Maria” opening. Very impressive! Overall it played better than I expected. Paul Dano is fantastic — he out Kevin Spacey’s Kevin Spacey in Se7en.
And they’re both (Dano and RBatz) angels of vengeance, dammit.
The music is great!!
The constant rainy, gloomy, down-at-the-heels noir stylings and a steady stream of haunted minds and ominous undercurrents — The Batman really does have a kind of orchestral symphonic feeling…it all moves and emotes and groans and despairs from a single fierce place…the particulars all blend into a fused and multi-shaded whole.
It’s still a Batman movie, of course, and people keep getting shot, blown up, burned, knocked cold and blasted and bruised all to hell, and they all just kind of grunt and recover. A little bruised and bleeding but we’ll be okay in a while.
And the cape-and-cowl guy dropping off from the tops of super-tall skyscrapers….God, that cliche refuses to die!
I really didn’t recognize Farrell at all…amazing!
I liked Jeffrey Wright’s performance in this thing much more than his heralded performance in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch.
