Knight’s in Black Battin’. A young Batman, in his second year of fighting crime, feels futility mounting in his quest to rid Gotham of corruption. When he is enlisted to help Lieutenant Jim Gordon against a terrorist known as The Riddler who is killing politicians, he begins to question how high up the corruption goes, and is confronted with … Read More
ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE
Justice for the Justice League. A harrowing journey from Zack Snyder’s brain to our eyes, but at long last the true vision of JUSTICE LEAGUE has been realized. And it is everything a superhero movie should be: gods and devils, bombast and quietude, punching and mind-games, good and evil, sacrifice and hope, with the fate of the Earth hanging… on … Read More
BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS – PART 2
Should I Bats or should I go? A decade after retiring, Batman has returned to Gotham. So has The Joker. A new police commissioner wants Batman arrested. And the president wants Batman dead – enlisting the aid of Superman. BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS – PART 2 concludes the epic journey of Bruce Wayne/Batman (voiced by Peter Weller) in his … Read More
BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS – PART 1
A Chinful Of Knight. Published in 1986, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns was a watershed moment for The Batman. After a ten-year absence, a 55-year-old Batman returns to fight spiraling crime, though fiercer criminals and simple old age threatens to stultify his efforts to redeem Gotham. And then there’s the problem of exorcising his own demons that made him … Read More
BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE
The joke’s on us. The Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill) intends to prove once and for all that even the most stable person is merely “one bad day” away from madness, so kidnaps Commissioner Gordon whilst maiming his daughter Barbara in front of him, and runs the Commissioner through a gamut of torture designed to tip him into lunacy, thus … Read More
JOKER 2019
Wanna know how I got these (O)scars?… Joaquin Phoenix is unpredictable, funny, disturbing, and when you meet him, he might just kill you. In JOKER, he won the 2020 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor… But was he really acting? JOKER, like STEPHEN KING’S IT, shows clowns for what they really are: insecure, unbalanced, traumatized sociopaths. Again, was Joaquin … Read More
JUSTICE LEAGUE
The League of Extraordinary Superpeeps. Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes. — John Wayne. An interstellar villain tries to destroy Earth, but is vanquished with punching and computer jargon, by a fresh clique of supers called the JUSTICE LEAGUE. Batman (grizzled Ben Affleck) recruits The Aquaman (warrior Jason Momoa), and Barry Allen not-yet-called The Flash … Read More
BATMAN AND ROBIN 1949
Thrills! Mystery! Man-Panty! Batman Returns! For the first time. Six years after Columbia Pictures’ success with THE BATMAN (1943), they release a sequel, another serial of 15 chapters called BATMAN AND ROBIN. And all cloth cosplay breaks loose. Robert Lowery plays Batman/Bruce Wayne (looking like Victor Mature), and Johnny Duncan plays Robin/Dick Grayson (and we can’t quite figure whether he … Read More
THE BATMAN
The Paunch Knight. The very first Movie Batman! After Bob Kane created the name of The Batman in 1939 and Bill Finger created all the elements that would become Batman canon (from the costume to the Batmobile), THE BATMAN follows the caped crusader in a 15-part serial released just four years into the character’s comicbook adventures. No wonder Batman didn’t … Read More
GOTHAM
The Batmanless Years. GOTHAM: It’s the city of the Batman. Before the Batman. And that’s the Damoclean ambiguity hanging over the bat-eared head of this television series. We all “know” this city of sin; we all “know” who turns up to clean everyone’s clock; we all “know” this spunk-filled ‘burg is holding its breath for a dark savior – but … Read More
BATMAN: THE MOVIE
Holy jumble! Where’s the hope of the world now?! The Bat. The Robin. The Cheese. BATMAN: THE MOVIE, the big screen fintuzula of the mid-60s fruitopia TV series (released in June 1966, between the first and second seasons of the TV show). The dark avenger of the night, The Batman, played by the greatest actor of his generation, Adam West. … Read More
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Darkest Knight. 60 years ago writer-director Christopher Nolan would have been one of the premier exponents of film noir. Conceptually and cinematically, his DARK KNIGHT trilogy is one of the most somber excursions into dual personality crises, moral relativism, vigilantism and nihilism. And Batman would have been Humphrey Bogart. “Here’s lookin’ at you, Gotham…” Just as dour as Bogart, Christian … Read More
BATMAN RETURNS
The Bat, The Cat and The Fat. Something happened between BATMAN and BATMAN RETURNS. The eighties had ended, George H.W. Bush ended his one-term presidency, CGI was invented, and director Tim Burton was so depressed about all these things that the tears in his eyes must’ve clouded his Dark Knight vision. Crooked businessman Max Shreck makes an underground freak, The … Read More
BATMAN FOREVER
From Dark Knight to Boogie Knight. After Tim Burton gave us the brooding BATMAN (1989) and the dark-yet-kinda-silly BATMAN RETURNS, he relinquished the director’s chair to Joel Schumacher, who promptly made Batman fruitier than Adam West. In BATMAN FOREVER, the third installment of the modern Batman legacy, Val Kilmer is the fruit bat whom we cannot be sure is hero … Read More
THE DARK KNIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good knight… Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. – Dylan Thomas If Batman is the untamed world, The Joker is the unbalanced world. THE DARK KNIGHT tells us humanity lives somewhere in between. … Read More
BATMAN
Part Noir, Part Comicbook, All Knight. Who knew MR. MOM could make such an awe-inspiring, vigilante crimefighter? With gadgets formulated from watching Martha Stewart, a cape hewn from a reconditioned wooby and an unsurpassed knowledge of daytime soaps, Michael Keaton squeezed his distinctive lip structure into that sacred cowl and surprised everyone to become the Sean Connery of Batmen. Arguably … Read More
CATWOMAN
Pussy Galore. Halle Berry brings her cat scratch fever to bear upon corporate villainy and meddling-cop lovers alike in CATWOMAN, with the style of an Egyptian priestess oozing Western sadomasochismo; a puss in boots by any other name. Strictly Felis silvestris, no doggy-style for this feline. The MPAA prove beyond a doubt that they are so blunt-skulled as to be … Read More
BATMAN VERSUS BATMAN | Keaton or Bale? Blow by Blow.
The Alter-Ego The Batman The Butler The Car The Cave The Chick The Chin The City The Commissioner The Costume The Logo The Music The Opening The Statement The Villain THE COSTUME Both Keaton’s and Bale’s costumes have been radically altered from the Giordano/Aparo halcyon days of the 70s comicbooks. The comicbook costume was gray with dark blue cape … Read More
BATMAN AND ROBIN
The Battiest of them all. Why does George Clooney waggle his head like that when he talks?… And how did he infiltrate Wayne Manor’s impenetrable security system – Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Gough) – to become the next Batman? I suppose Alfred – in seeing no less than three Batmen pass through his hallowed halls (Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney), simply puts it … Read More
BATMAN BEGINS
Dark Knight Reconstructionist Theory. Droves of bats against an ocher sunset, teasing out the infamous Bat Logo on the sky with their swarming bodies; the first five seconds of BATMAN BEGINS are scintillating. Then it just keeps getting better. If there is bedrock truth in the axiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” then surely the inverse is also … Read More