“Any questions?”

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 his own dead father’s morally ambiguous ties to the very sociopaths he pursues.

THE BATMAN is a nitrous fueled noir detective thriller, brimming with fear and darkness and hubris and heroism, sweeping across gutshock action and granular detective work with equal verve. The Batman not yet a legend, more a vicious rumor – emphasis on vicious; the police tolerating him as an eccentric vigilante, useful to their Lieutenant for his off-the-book skills. Batman keeps a journal titled “Year Two” – a nod to the legendary 1987 Frank Miller origin story Batman: Year One (yet this movie has little to do with Year One and nothing to do with the 1987 Mike Barr/Todd McFarlane comic, Batman: Year Two).

An epic character study and crime drama, with such sweep and nuance, it seems almost a crime to just focus on: THE BATMAN Top 5 Bottom 5.

B4 – THE DUMBO FOLLOWERS: NO MORE LEADERS
THE BATMAN has captured real world cultism at its worst. So why is this in the Bottom 5? Because it exists in the real world, and this film is coloring too close to the dumbo donald diarrhea of rightwing nutjobs. When the Riddler gun-nut cultist mimics Batman, “I’m Vengeance!” there’s a terrifying message here – at first, it seems like that trope of Hero and Villain being two sides of the same coin, but it’s actually mimicking our reality, of those who are on the wrong side of history wholeheartedly believing they are right, because they follow a demagogue who tells them they are. Criminals calling themselves “lawful,” anti-choicers calling themselves “pro-choice” and xenophobes calling themselves “patriots.” Because their cult leader has made it passe to misrepresent yourself with lies. Only difference between dumbo and Riddler, is that Riddler was doing a noble thing regarded as a crime – ridding the world of lying politicians; whereas dumbo donald IS the crime.

B3 –  THE PENGUIN: NO MORE ACTORS
Now, understand this: Colin Farrell puts his heart and soul into the goombah character of Oz, aka The Penguin, under layers of doughy-guy makeup. He’s the muscle for the city’s crime boss, Carmine Falcone (played with effortless slime by John Turturro). It’s also excellent how they’ve made Oz the owner of a nightclub patronized by politicians as slimy as the crime boss – showing the relationship between the underworld and the people supposedly keeping us safe from it – hand-in-glove. But uh, why is Farrell made up to look like that? This is not Gary Oldman made up to look like a famous figure – this is a skinny, good-looking actor made to look doughy. But in a revisionist movie like this, there is no “standard” look for the Penguin – he could have looked like Colin Farrell. So the question becomes: if they wanted someone to look like that, why didn’t they get an actor who looked like that? Are there no more fucken actors?

B2 – ANDY SERKIS: NO ALFRED
Let’s get this straight: Andy Serkis is the master of mocap – can make you weep for a computer blip of his character; is therefore one of the premier actors of our generation. But he’s no Alfred. Also: Are there no more fucken actors?

B1 – CATWOMAN: NO NEED THE HERO
The worst thing about THE BATMAN: I’m frankly sick of seeing Catwoman turned into a hero. They did it with Halle Berry, they did it with Anne Hathaway and now they’re doing it here with Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle, a cat burglar who is never called Catwoman. She is given a suitably tragic backstory as to why she’s committing robberies, but how is her avocation any different to the street thug who robs a liquor store, also with a suitably tragic backstory? Matter of fact, the street thug would have to rob 1000 liquor stores and old woman’s purses to make what Selina makes on one haul. So who’s the bigger criminal? Oh, that’s right. She’s hot.

Reminds me of those female schoolteachers who statutorily rape underage boys and are given a pass. The feminine double standard is alive and well in these times of Woman Empowerment, gender fluidity and #MeToo. Yet women will never complain about the culture giving a female criminal a pass; will never correct you if you regard a criminal woman as too cute to incarcerate; will turn a blind eye when Hollywood coddles a female felon into a hero; will never whine “toxic femininity” when SHE kicks the asses of people who are trying to stop her stealing from them.

And the lore of Batman being attracted to Catwoman works best only when Catwoman is a criminal. That’s the whole point of why that romance was engineered in the first place. Batman has to sift his way through his emotions – is he drawn to her musk because she’s a woman or because she’s a criminal? It’s no big thang if Batman is attracted to another hero vigilante – who cares?! – the dynamic only becomes dangerous and interesting if it’s a forbidden romance. Instead, we’re left with this bland hero-on-hero cosplay.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Jeffrey Wright is Gordon, Batman’s ally on the force – another remarkable, controlled performance from one of the greatest character actors; Paul Dano brings a new look to an old nutter as The Riddler, in a bondage headmask and goggles. There’s a scene heavily evocative of John Doe from SEVEN, where Gordon narrates Riddler’s diaries, scrawled in tiny deliberate hand.

And now… the Top 5 things about THE BATMAN…

T5 – THE BATMOBILE: MUSCLE
Not yet the angular batular rampager it would come to be, the Batmobile here is just a musclecar – tech lite, yet a sleek weaponized projectile. It turns one of the dumbest tropes in car chases into the most inspiring explosive moment the Batmobile has ever had in cinema. You know the gag: either a fleeing car or a chasing car will drive up one of those car-transport semi-trailers that conveniently has its ramp flush to the ground and is conveniently empty of cars, to leap traffic and get in front of the chase. Corny. Stupid. Unrealistic—and the Batmobile thunders up the ramp giving chase to Penguin’s car and, amidst explosions, comes flying through fire on the other side, to CRASH into the fleeing Penguin… with a view from inside Pengiun’s rolling car, coming to a stop upside down… as we see the halted Batmobile in the distance, from Penguin’s perspective – UPSIDE DOWN, silhouetted by flames – as the Batman exits, choral slow motion, menacing score by Michael Giacchino, as he walks toward us, black figure in rain and cape and fire and fear. If Vengeance had a car, it could only be this.

T4 – THE BATMAN: VENGEANCE
Fear is a tool. A gang of thugs pauses in their attack on a citizen, as they hear approaching boots, like the impact tremors of a tyrannosaur, with all the terror associated with that flesh-eater. The first entrance of the Batman is from a pitch-black alley – I have not seen a movie weighted with this much dark lighting since THE GODFATHER – and he steps to the first thug and with lightning strokes BEATS him down before answering the age-old question, “The hell are YOU s’posed ta be?”

“I’m vengeance!”

I think we ALL lost our shit when we saw that trailer.

T3 – THOMAS WAYNE: POLITICIAN
I think Kevin Smith said “We all know the story of Batman’s parents better than we know our own.” But now there’s a wrinkle in our memory of Thomas Wayne… In the grand tradition of Nolan re-writing the MAN OF STEEL’s purpose on Earth with a new terraforming spin, writer Peter Craig and writer-director Matt Reeves have re-written Thomas Wayne’s legacy; they’ve dug into the calcified goody-two-shoes image and burdened this POLITICIAN – because that’s what a prince of the city truly is – with a morally ambiguous rise to power. Incurring the wrath of many, thus making his murder not such an arbitrary event, as portrayed all these decades. I mean, this was the most powerful man in Gotham – he had no enemies?!

T2 – THE ARC: SALVATION
Upon realizing the dumbo Riddler cultists reappropriated his slogan – “I’m Vengeance” – Batman is driven to go further than simple punchaboo: “Vengeance won’t change the past – I have to become more…”  From vengeance… to salvation, as he realizes that though he was powerless to save Gotham from Riddler’s explosives – like a Superman or a Flash – he could still be an agent of good, and we see his role subtly change when the flood victims follow his red flare through the waters. A light in the darkness. It is messianic. It is the other side of hero-dom: not only enacting vengeance, but caring for those for whom the vengeance is enacted. He puts a woman on a stretcher – and she doesn’t want to let go of his arm. From an icon of terror, to a trusted savior; like a Superman, she just wanted this god of hope near.

Some viewers complain about this third act as pointless filler; these would be the same people who don’t understand why Rooster Cogburn makes that last deliverance ride in TRUE GRIT, after the baddie is killed – because it shows the true measure of the hero’s worth, not just killing the bad, but saving the innocent. And Giacchino’s score will make you weep.

T1 – ROBERT PATTINSON: THE BATMAN
Ladies and Gentlemen: Robert Pattinson… The Batman. After all the speculation and whining, coming to us from TWILIGHT (blech!) and THE LIGHTHOUSE (whoa!) and TENET (uh, wha–?), Pattinson slays this role, pulling one of the most stolid, violent, and tortured performances ever for both Bruce Wayne and Batman. After being accused of being physically unfit for the role, to buffing up and doing many of his own stunts, Pattinson morphs into that state where we feel that no other actor has done justice to this world-scrutinized role as much as him at this cinematic moment.

And the filmmakers have done him proud in accoutrement. His cowl is cutaway with more face-space than previous Batmans, almost like a leer; his eyes seem to glow in the dark (there is much focus on Batman’s eyes here, because we discover he wears contact lens recording devices that allow him to review the night’s travails). And when he removes the cowl, that “black mascara” that we see behind every hero’s hood is smudged (like a modern Joker! Also keeping that connection to Kristen Stewart in TWILIGHT, who wore enough mascara to embarrass a prostitute). When it comes to masks, Marvel have totally lost the plot with their helmets and masks that magic on and off people’s heads, but here, DC gets it right, with the Batman’s street-cred, real-life cowl! To add to the real-life utility, his chest symbol is a knife-edged tool!

His combat style is efficient and vicious; bulletproof armor, arrows on his gauntlets, tasers in his gloves! A cape with a collar! As he wades into gunfire, muzzle flashes lighting up his face in the black, like jagged freeze frames, we ask ourselves: How could we doubt? How could we doubt?!

The Batman’s growing legend is played perfectly in this movie. When the Bat-signal scars across the rainclouds, some run, some scoff, some cower, but all wonder: Is the new apparition on the streets of Gotham real? Or a mythic harbinger of doom? Robert Pattinson done good – from a fruity vampire bat to one of the Top Three Batmen of all time. With a bullet– uh, batarang.

B5 – Maybe some of you noticed that I didn’t have a B5. Here it is: In the final frames, Riddler in his cell speaks to another Arkham inmate, a cackling character, a real joker… He’s played by Barry Keoghan – but that ain’t right, Movie Maniacs! I think it’s time for THIS Batman to meet… THIS Joker!

Y’know, I could be wrong… but you know I’m right!

END

Twelve Thousand Years A Slave… and Counting…

12 YEARS A SLAVE is a great movie on its surface, is a horrible story when viewed in context of American history and is unspeakably terrifying when placed against the larger sociological canvas. I’ll explain all this in a moment if you’ll just stop fussing about the n-word…

on the surface

Solomon Northup

12 YEARS A SLAVE is the true story of Solomon Northup, a respected African businessman and violinist, living in Saratoga, New York in 1841, with his wife and two children, who was lured to Washington DC (where slavery is legal) by two men posing as circus performers hiring him as a violinist, and then kidnapped and sold into slavery. It’s an amazing plot point, but one that I’m presuming happened many times over in an environment where slaves existed alongside “free men.” If you were of the mind to consider black people property, then every African was nothing more than a walking flat screen TV waiting to be snatched. Northup was one of the lucky ones who happened to escape and write about it (Twelve Years a Slave, published 1853).

The movie follows Solomon’s literally death-defying journey from slave owner to slave owner in New Orleans, trying to plead his case as a free man to men conditioned not to hear the voices of slaves. There is unabashed nudity, shocking scenes of casual violence; flowery language to suit the era, pleasant to the ear (back then, even downtrodden people were more literate than the social butterflies allowed to stink up the internet tubes these days); performances are uniformly excellent, Brad Pitt playing his lovable self, Michael Fassbender going out on a limb to be despicable, and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o winning an Oscar right outa the gate.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is Solomon Northup (renamed Platt by his captors), in a blazing performance, courage tempered by mortal fear of masters who considered him a beast. Ejiofor consistently raises the level of every movie he is cast in as a B-star (LOVE ACTUALLY, SERENITY, 2012), and I’ve loved his work since he came to my attention in KINKY BOOTS (2005). At last he is “free” to soar as a leading man.

The smallest details clutch at our primal fears, as when Solomon tries to send a message to his family using blackberries. No, not the mobile phone – real blackberries, their juice as ink and a sharpened twig as a pen. In this age of instantaneous communication, the claustrophobia of being suddenly enchained and isolated is as sobering as a cat-o-nine-tails to the nubs of your vertebrae.

Benedict Cumberbatch is a sympathetic slaveowner, who reads the bible to his slaves – before they are sent into the fields to pick cotton. As if to highlight the incongruity of this act, it is juxtaposed with a slavemaster (Paul Dano) singing a song called Run Nigger Run. After a dispute, Dano would try to hang Solomon, but is stopped by one of the farmhands. Instead of being cut down, Solomon is left to dangle on tippytoe – while life goes on behind him casually. 12 YEARS is filled with scenes like this that seem “new” to our jaded slave-movie sensibilities. But is it saying anything new – or even original?

Epps the landowner (Fassbender), known as a “nigger-breaker,” is more the type of Whitey we’re used to: quoting from the bible to justify his whipping of slaves. His wife (Sarah Paulson) would jealously try to find any reason to thrash one of their female slaves, Patsey (Nyong’o) for Epps having an affair with her (which is the Whitey way of saying ‘rape’), and later, Epps would force Solomon to lash Patsey for his own rage at his wife and his slave-lust.

Brad Pitt, straight from the set of Weird Al’s Amish Paradise video, is a Canadian who detests slavery. He is Solomon’s salvation. But no matter Solomon’s illegal slavery, as a black man he was unable to testify against whites in courts, so couldn’t bring his kidnappers or anyone else to trial. Everyone walked free. Nothing’s changed, huh? Like I said – new? Original?

american history context

In the context of American history, 12 YEARS A SLAVE is horrible, not just for the fact of slavery per se, but that everyone was complicit. Even the good guys were inculcated to believe the condition of slavery was normal. Even those who liberate Solomon from his bondage, do so because he was being held illegally, yet they still abide by the fact that Epps owns “legal” slaves. It was all wrapped in a kind of gentleman’s agreement. It would take over a hundred more years to even raise the desire to abolish that technicality.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “the origins of slavery are lost to human memory,” and it is “known to have existed as early as the Shang dynasty (18th–12th century BCE) in China.” Slavery’s existence predates history, i.e. writing. And its earliest records are from 20 centuries ago. So is it a dumb boast or an ignorant aggrandizement when people of the United States claim slavery as their very own invention, and/or embrace its soul-stink as if they are the worst/most famous offenders?

Funnily enough, a line from ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER sums it up: “Men have enslaved each other since they invented gods to forgive them for doing it.”

And the Oscar for Whitey Guilt goes to…

sociological context

The most terrifying aspect of 12 YEARS: People looooove seeing African Americans as slaves. Really. It’s getting to be a habit. A bad habit – that even black people are embracing! Ultimately, 12 YEARS A SLAVE is the same old torture-as-entertainment that we’ve grown inured to in GONE WITH THE WIND, ROOTS, AMISTAD, GLORY, PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Whereas once it was a physical, tangible enslavement, the New Slavery is the media’s depiction of slavery.

Kunta Kinte – Django – Cinque.
All kneel before Whitey!

Audiences would much rather see African Americans portrayed as slaves than as equals in white society. Doubt my cynicism? Look at the box office. Look at the awards. Yes, 12 YEARS is undoubtedly a well-made movie – but so is JUMPING THE BROOM, BEST MAN WEDDING, ABOUT LAST NIGHT (2014). Though you might dismiss some of these as unserious films, they are no better or worse than their white counterparts starring Jennifer Aniston or Matthew McConaughey. Why then, have these films won no awards? Why are movies like THE HELP or THE BUTLER (where uppity African Americans are “kept in their place”) considered serious, sober, educational treatises on American history, while other movies with a predominantly black cast that play an integral part of modern society (FIRST SUNDAY, DEATH AT A FUNERAL) are dismissed as fluff?

And is there an unidentifiable element in the film industry that allows the “downtrodden blacks” films to BE better made (more budget, more publicity, more acceptance in media outlets) than non-downtrodden films? A vicious element that grants the best resources to the films pitched about niggers and fewer resources to those pitched about African-Americans as fully functioning members of modern society? And this element feeds off itself – the “nigger” films becoming more prominent, spawning more “nigger” films, while natural selection attritions the “society” films…

Are we starting to see the real sociological horror lurking beneath the fake cinematic horrors portrayed in 12 YEARS A SLAVE?

12 Years a Cuke

Why make this movie? Director Steve McQueen and the cast tell us it’s to keep the discussion about slavery going. The question is: Why keep it going? (Unless you’re Republican.) If “racism” is not quite a dead issue, at least “slavery” – as represented in this film – IS dead. Picking cotton in the South has long since been replaced by OTHER modes of slavery. If they want to “keep the discussion going” then make a film about modern slavery – Stop and Frisk, or Stand your Ground, or Black and Nearby.

12 YEARS is nothing more than another easy grab at “nobility” – yes, the brutality and unthinking savagery of the slave owners is unconscionable (Paul Giamatti talking about the boy he is selling “growing into a fine beast”; Paul Dano singing Run Nigger Run; Michael Fassbender quoting the bible to justify his lashing as punishment), but there’s an undercurrent of fakery to it; the ultimate knowledge that it’s just art, that no matter how much they try to represent human bondage and backs split open from lashing, it’s just a movie – about a guy who’s going to escape anyway.

Has it occurred to these filmmakers – and to any who “enjoy” the movie (for whatever reason: as art, or history, or tittygawking) – that because people are still talking about slavery, slavery is still around? That because it is still prominent in media, it is not being eradicated? (It’s like that checkbox marked “race” on all government forms, hospital forms, arrest forms, airport forms – as long as that box marked “race” exists, race-ISM will exist.) Has it occurred to black people that when they represent themselves so often in media this way, it becomes a complacency, with whites comfortable seeing them this way? That a movie with the awards and recognition of 12 YEARS only exacerbates the black position as subservient. And with the black community crowing about this film being great, the whites are seemingly right in thinking that black people like being represented this way!

Rednecks know they don’t have to SAY “nigger” anymore – they can just say “appeaser” or “socialist” or “weak” or “Kenyan” or just come right out and say “Barack HUSSEIN Obama.” Dane Cook once cracked, “I’m not racist – I have a black president.” Even though many thought an African American president would curtail racism if not abolish it, the black debbil in the White House has proven to be like that checkbox on government forms: As long as he is there, it reminds the rednecks to be as racist as they wanna be. Twelve thousand years of slavery… and still going strong…

END

Mission: Implausible.

A movie built around its stunts. Ergo, if the audience was purely stuntpeople, KNIGHT AND DAY is awesome!

But we’re just regular little cucumbers out here in the fluttering dark. As much as it thrills me to see a car flip over and miss Tom Cruise’s head by inches (even though thrills would have magnified had it connected), I’d rather see a story structured around a… well, a story.

Meet Cute between Spy (Tom Cruise) and Mandrill (Cameron Diaz) onboard a plane, Mandrill completely unaware Spy is a spy; more concerned with fluffing out her flat chest to entice Spy like a baboon in estrus. At Meet Cute, already she’s deep intimate, “When my father died…” Whoa! Slow down there, Ms. High Maintenance! How about a handjob first?

Chase movie ensues with Mandrill batting her eyelids, being preciously incompetent and following Spy around globe obediently, oft-times unconsciously, yet always in heat. Spy is omniscient, cannot die, has unlimited ammo, and a body carved from 500 situps a day, pec implants and the power of prayer. Mandrill’s misshapen body attributed to working out incorrectly, Botox and CGI painting, still retaining the awesomely flat chest she mistakenly thinks is alluring to the male of the species.

McGuffin is a perpetual power source battery known as Zephyr, created by Paul Dano (doppelganger for Sam Huntington), resident twitchy ubergeek, more helpless than Mandrill, yet better looking even with scraggly Shaggy beard and tendency to dribble.

Spy protects Ubergeek and Mandrill while being pursued by Peter Sarsgaard with eyes deader than a Terminator.

Stunt coordinator overdoses on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, steals all their gags. Writer Patrick O’Neill saw MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – stole story. Director James Mangold saw MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, remade it.

Spy suffers the KING KONG Syndrome: tolerates Mandrill continually getting him into hot water and not taking advice, because blondes of any species just do it for him.

FBI pursuers tell Mandrill that Spy’s training leached any “loving” out of his persona, proven by fact that his parents think him dead from a young age – but when she discovers his PMD constantly monitoring his parents’ home via spy satellite, heart melts. On the other hand, Spy sees in her someone who loves her parents the way he never could. And prospective handjobs.

I get it now: his name’s not Knight and her name’s not Day. What was the question again?

END

Bloody Awesome.

I look at people and I see nothing worth liking.
– Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

In the words of Jack’s Joker, “I like him already.”

Yet I fear him like I’ve feared no other man. Speaking of Jokers, Daniel Day-Lewis is probably the only person on Earth who could replace Heath Ledger in a sequel to THE DARK KNIGHT and still scare the makeup off our pants.

In THERE WILL BE BLOOD, as in many of his films, Day-Lewis is once again the char-blackened engine and screaming lifeblood of the movie. Without him, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s tale of a ruthless oil baron would simply be a very good movie, rather than a steel-toed boot to the groin and a good cry on the shoulder of a wild west hooker.

Black Gold – Cucumber Tea.

Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar 2007 for this role as Daniel Plainview, a hardworking prospector who exploits the turn-of-the-century American oil rush by buying drilling lands from uninformed homesteaders, convincing them of his good intent for their properties with a charm and duplicity like the talking snake from the King James bible, ultimately elevating himself to power so absolute that it not only teetered on the edge of madness, but dove in and sensuously rubbed madness all over its thrumming willy.

A brutal accident kills one of Plainview’s oil-hands, who leaves a baby, which Plainview informally adopts as his own, calling him H.W. At first we believe this shows a tender, humane side of the monstrous Plainview, but we soon realize H.W. is merely a strategic prop for Plainview’s pitches to land-owners, to lull them into believing a doted-upon son signifies Plainview is a “nice family man.” Which is farther from truth than the King James bible is from reality. When an oil-rig explosion deafens H.W., Plainview spends the whole night kneeling before the shattered rig, before visiting his son and discovering his deafness.

From a novel by Upton Sinclair, with a soundtrack that threatens to beat you senseless (by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood), THERE WILL BE BLOOD is not concerned with the macro historical significance of the oil rush, only with this one amoral, irreligious sociopath whose veins flowed with the viscous black lubricant of the land, intent on keeping humanity at a distance – he never takes a wife, sends his adoptive son to a home, and a long-lost brother proves fake – to the extent that he will ultimately forget what made him strive so hard to amass a fortune he would never have the capacity to enjoy.

Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday, who also sees potential in the untamed wild land and takes advantage of the simpleminded folk – but in a diametrically opposite manner to Plainview – as an evangelist. In any other movie, his flamboyant, frenetic performance would have gobbled scenery more than Matthew McConaughey in REIGN OF FIRE, and stolen the show. But there is no overshadowing Daniel Day-Lewis and his scary mustache.

Not averse to faking remorse in order to secure the contract for a piece of land, Plainview makes a public “confession” in Eli’s church, to having no patience for raising H.W., handing him over to a tutor in the city. Eli badgers Plainview into screaming “I’ve abandoned my boy!”

By movie’s end, this psychological bitchslap has reversed itself into a literal bitchslapping of Eli from Plainview, as Plainview badgers a “confession” out of Eli that he is a false prophet and that God is a superstition – on the proviso that upon his recant, Plainview would buy land from Eli and save him from bankruptcy. One of the movie’s best scenes, illustrating how both men held no remorse in prostituting themselves for what they regarded as beneficial (also illustrating the shallowness of the christian “faith” when poverty scratches at the door).

Some may say Plainview’s “descent into madness” was foreseen, but he was already there at the start of this tale; movie opens by showing us his formidable resolve to power, as he breaks his leg falling down a mine, then claws his way out to strike black gold. His soaring dollar value only heightened his ambivalence towards humanity – if that is called madness, I wanna be in that straightjacket. “I look at people and I see nothing worth liking.” Plainview wielded unlimited power as flippantly as any man with inherent power who knows how to bend people to his will. In this story’s telling, that characteristic proves to be his downfall. But we don’t see his undoing unfold as –

An unresolved sudden ending snaps our necks, and we wonder how to stand and exit graciously while kneeling in awe at the altar of Daniel Day-Lewis.

END