I saw The Batman yesterday. In the theater. Had to catch an early show. It is quite long. Close to three hours, so more than that when you count coming attractions et al. If I watched it at home I probably would have split it into two nights.
A three hour movie about men in spandex doesn't sound like it should work. The length isn't really a problem in context, though. Since the plot is set into play by the Riddler, who has a thing about making things unnecessarily complex, you just have to figure on the whole thing taking its sweet time to work out.
Paul Dano, who I first saw as a mute teenager in Little Miss Sunshine, has always struck me as a Bud Cort-type actor born to a later time. His spectacularly innocuous features are made menacing, once you can see his face.
Which you don't, really, until another villain is pushed out of the way. John Turturro plays a vicious but courteous gangster. While as far as I know he has never been nominated for an Oscar―which shows you how seriously you should take the Oscars―Turturro is the best actor in whatever he's in far more often than not. So he is here as well, even if he's in a secondary role.
Overall I approve. I do feel like I should be getting out to see non-franchise movies. It's just been hard the last couple of years. It doesn't help that while Providence used to have two good independent movie theaters, now it's just got one.
2 comments:
I'm pretty sure Mad Max: Fury Road was the last film we saw in a theatre. The 3D effects were cool but the coming attractions, never mind the pre-film commercials, can become tedious. They do have a habit of making movie trailers so long and detailed you end up feeling as though there's no need to come back to watch most of them - even if you may have been curious previously. For years I've rarely been curious.
I'm glad you enjoyed the new Batman despite its length. A series of complex puzzles can be fun to spend some time figuring out and I can imagine Dano was a pretty good Riddler, although somewhat more violent than Frank Gorshin.
Paul Dano has been in a number of movies, most of them we haven't seen or if we did he played a minor role - like Looper, for instance, or 12 Years a Slave. He was very good in There Will be Blood and not that long ago we saw him in Prisoners where he played a mentally deficient suspect in a kidnapping case who himself is kidnapped. It's well worth a watch. I understand what you mean in comparing him to Bud Cort when Bud was young.
I like John Turturro too. It's hard to pick a favorite performance between Barton Fink and Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski. Both deserved an Oscar (when they were still worth winning). It's funny how some actors make an especially strong impression on me even though I've only seen a couple of their films. That's true of both Paul Dano and John Turturro.
We used to enjoy going to the movies long before the past two crazy years. But even without the lockdowns, videos, dvds, and streaming were throttling the theatres. I can't think of a movie house we've seen in Victoria, any survivors are likely on the lowest level of a shopping mall.
Mad Max: Fury Road seems like a good one to go out on, or at least for a while. I'm not sure how much Mel Gibson's politically incorrect tendencies hurt him in terms of staying in the role, but you could argue that he aged out of it and further he'd lost the Australian accent he acquired in adolescence. Anyway, Tom Hardy's a good one to pass the torch to. But yes, you're absolutely right about trailers. They should rouse your curiosity, not exhaust it as is all too often what happens.
Gorshin was volatile as the Riddler. If anyone on that show had the temperament to be a really dangerous criminal it could well be him. But company-owned characters do often go through some pretty weird changes.
I've never seen Prisoners, although it sounds interesting on a couple of levels. For one thing Dennis Villeneuve has gotten more associated with science fiction and epics, the new Dune being an example of both. So I'm curious to see what this kind of gritty crime drama looks like in his hands. Also from a character/acting perspective.
Turturro always brings something to the Coen Brothers' movies. Besides the ones you mentioned he was also great in both Miller's Crossing and O Brother Where Art Thou, although in the latter case Tim Blake Nelson was a definite scene stealer. Some actors can leave a deep impression without you seeing them all that much, perhaps just having one or two short scenes in a movie.
Having a couple of years where movies had to be simultaneously released on streaming almost by government decree might have been a deathblow to movie theaters, although I hope it wasn't. Of course for a number of years now they've mostly been crammed into pretty anonymous buildings, and even when you see one on the big screen now there's a good chance it's really a digital video stream.
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