Category: Golden Oldies

Hey Everybody! Welcome to another review at Flickmuncher.com. I apologize for getting this review up so late. Things have been particularly crazy this last week. I will be putting up my Jungle Book review tomorrow at the usual schedule.

Today I’m going back in time to look at the movie that singlehandedly changed an industry and is widely recognized among movie-goers as a singularly unusual achievement and will forever be remembered both by those who worked on it and those who watched it. So without further ado, I give you Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin.

Hmhmhmhmhehehehaheeheeehahahaha ohohohohoho heheheeehehehe, ahah-hah-hah!

Excuse me while I catch my breath [wheezing].

My apologies for that opening line of hideously written laughter. I have a tendency whenever I watch this film to fall into episodes of Jokerish insanity. For the sake of all of you out there I will try to avoid this happening again. But I make no promises!

So what about this film inspired me to become a full-blown psychotic(which, for those who know me, doesn’t take that much doing)? Well, let’s take a look at the story first.

The film surrounds the adventures of our titular duo as they fight crime throughout Gotham City, whose artists seem strangely obsessed with neon paint for some reason. A new supervillain appears, calling himself Mr. Freeze(Arnold Schwarzenegger) who plans to freeze Gotham and hold it for ransom. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a botanist by the name of Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman) appears with a desire to eliminate all living animals [read: people] from first Gotham “and then THE WORLD!” As if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that Batman’s faithful butler Alfred (Micheal Gough) is dying from a degenerative disease right as his niece Barbara shows up on Wayne Manor’s doorstep. On top of all this Robin(Chris O’Donnell) has decided he is tired of living in Batman(George Clooney)’s shadow which leads to a division between our dynamic duo.

I first saw this movie in 1998 while on a trip to Washington D.C. with my Grandpa. I was six at the time and my exposure to film at that point was largely limited to Disney flicks, old World War II films, and Westerns. So I was watching television after a long day of seeing the sights and Batman and Robin was on. Being a young, impressionable lad I completely ate it up. I loved the neon colors and semi-gothic CGI sets even though I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening on the screen. Looking back on it now almost twenty years later though, I appreciate this film in an entirely new manner.

Batman and Robin has a reputation among many movie-lovers as an abomination that should never have come into existence and has no redeeming features whatsoever and helped to ruin a much beloved franchise. It is a film that is so terrible, sooo glorious in how bad it is that, strangely enough, it can actually be entertaining at times. But first lets look at the stuff that is legitimately terrible.

Let’s start with the action. As a super-hero movie you can expect a fair amount of action and boy is the action in this movie terrible. Batman and Robin fly around the screen like amateur trapeze artists. You can even see the wires in several shots. Now I’ve seen wirework in action movies done quite well. The X-Men franchise is a great example. Another thing is how, in the opening sequence of the movie, the Dynamic Duo is fighting Mr. Freeze and his goons in a museum that has been completely iced over. What starts as a rather mundane action sequence turns into a bizarre—yet no less violent—hockey game that uses a ridiculously large diamond as the puck. I feel sorry for Canadians everywhere who probably had to pick their collective jaws off the floor from the absurdity.

It doesn’t get much better going forward. There’re only three other major action sequences all of which feature the same boring wire-work and fake punches that are uninteresting to watch.

Then there are the subplots. Oh, the many, many subplots. I’ve already given a rundown on some of these in the story summary so I won’t waste time by repeating myself. To be clear, I’m not against subplots on principle. In many cases they can be quite useful in enriching the overall narrative and adding moments of characterization that the main story wouldn’t normally allow for. However, too many subplots can cause your story to lose focus and become less engaging for the audience. Such is the case with Batman and Robin. The subplot with Alfred is understandable because of how it ties back into Mr. Freeze and his attempts to find a cure for the disease afflicting both his wife and Alfred. But the Robin, and Batgirl subplots really add nothing to either the plot or the characters. In fact, I’m pretty sure Robin’s subplot makes him look worse as he ends up acting more like a petulant child than the Batman’s reliable partner. And as for Batgirl, why was she in this movie again? I’m serious, I honestly can’t think why she would be in this movie.

It doesn’t help that Alicia Silverstone’s is barely given anything to do beyond look cool and be Batgirl which is no fun for us as an audience. Speaking of acting though, that’s another thing that’s terribly lacking throughout this movie. Most of the cast knew how bad of a movie this was and so most of them just sound like they’re reading lines from a script and that’s because…they are just reading lines from a script. This is the movie where George Clooney famously quoted after filming wrapped, “Well, that was a disaster.”

The one bright spot in all of this is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. His puns in this film are the stuff of legend. Remembered by movie-goers long after the movie is over.

Yes they are absurd and corny to listen to but Schwarzenegger delivers them with such conviction that I’m personally convinced he was the only one having fun filming this movie. He’s like that kid who thinks, “Oh my gosh, I’m actually in a Batman film” and then makes the most out of everything he’s given. He just wants to enjoy himself in spite of how terrible the part was written.

Contrast that to Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. She has arguably as many puns as Freeze does but she just looks bored in her delivery. On top of Thurman’s delivery is the notion of Poison Ivy as a character which basically makes her into a pretty eco-terrorist with little to no motivation for actions like attempting to kill Nora Freeze or seducing Robin or Batman. It’s similar to my issue with Batgirl. Why is Poison Ivy in this movie? What does she add that couldn’t have been accomplished with just Mr. Freeze? I will admit though that I was glad she was admitted for one reason:

John Glover who plays Dr. Woodrue is AMAZING! When I rewatched the movie for this review I had to pause the video because I could not stop laughing at his psychotic scream when he kills Pamela Isley. He falls into the category of being so over-the-top crazy that if this was a comedy, he would be the funniest character in the entire film. For that matter, he is the funniest character and he’s only in the film for two minutes.

Then there’s Micheal Gough as Alfred. I feel bad for the poor man. He was with the Batman franchise right to the end when Joel Schumacher drove it straight off a cliff. He’s since passed away, but I can only imagine what it must have been like watching something that he put so much time and effort become a parody of itself. In any event he still attempted to bring a modicum of dignity to his performance as Alfred and I respect his tenacity if not the results.

Finally, there’s the set design and to be honest some of it actually looks quite interesting with the gothic underpinnings that Gotham became famous for with Batman ‘89. However, this was done at a time when studios were doing everything, especially backgrounds and environments in complete CGI, probably resulting from the success of Independence Day which came out a year before this. And to be honest, there are some shots that are so terribly rendered that they are almost painful to look at because you can tell right off the bat(hahaha, bat-pun, heeheehee. Ahem, excuse me) that everything on screen was generated in a computer. The big deal with this is that CGI is dependent on you as an audience member accepting what you’re seeing on screen even when you know it isn’t real. It’s a visual type of “suspension-of-disbelief”. That’s why movies like Avatar work so well. When you cease to accept it, then the CGI is completely pointless because you’re no longer engaged in the experience.

Conclusion:

So is Batman and Robin a terrible film? Absolutely! But I don’t think that means its entirely without merit. No movie is completely terrible just as no movie is completely perfect. Citizen Kane, widely regarded among movie critics as the best movie ever written has a major flaw. The titular Kane says his final word, “Rosebud” on his deathbed. Everyone spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out what that last word meant. The only problem with this is that if you watch the movie, no one was in the room to hear him say that last word, making the entire story a moot point.

Batman and Robin is an awful film but I think its biggest crime is that it is just boring. Beyond a few bright spots that I mentioned earlier, it just is uninteresting. Yet those bright spots still exist, just as the flaws in Citizen Kane still exist.To deny that fact would be completely hypocritical when deciding what makes a movie worth our time.

Also, I think fans and casual movie-goers alike owe this film a debt of gratitude. Its well known that Batman and Robin was a box-office bomb that killed the Batman franchise as well as superhero movies in general for the next five years. But people forget that at the time Superhero franchises weren’t about the movies; they were about how many toys they could market from those movies. This movie effectively killed the idea of superhero movies as large toy commercials and when they did come back, we got the X-Men, Spiderman, The Dark Knight Trilogy, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Would any of those have happened if Batman and Robin had been a hit? I don’t think so. At least, not as we know them today.

So the next time you see a super-hero movie that you’re really enjoying and then see someone bash Batman and Robin you might want to remember that you owe the existence of that good film to a movie you might hate. I certainly will, and for that I will always hold a special spot for this candy-colored trainwreck of a movie.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see a therapist for these psychotic episodes!

What do you think of Batman and Robin? Let me know in the comments below or contact me on twitter @Lightwielder524. Have a great day and, as always, May the Flick be with You!

Hey, everyone! Welcome to this review of The Mask of Zorro (1998). For the sake of those who’ve not seen this movie I will avoid giving away any spoilers for the movie so you can enjoy it for yourselves.

To give some background on this movie, Zorro is a character who was created in 1919 by Johnston McCulley. Set in California and Mexico during the 1840s, Zorro stories detailed stories of the young, foppish, bumbling nobleman Don Diego de la Vega as he fights for the common folk of his land against their corrupt governors as the dashing and daring black-cloaked outlaw, Zorro.

Taking obvious inspiration for the character from such literary legends as Robin Hood, The Scarlett Pimpernel, and others, Zorro first appeared in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly. Pulp magazines were an inexpensive form of enterainment back in the early 20^th century, operating similarly to how television works today, and were often heavily serialized.

What made Zorro truly famous however, was his first film appearance in The Mark of Zorro, a silent film in 1920. Made by the great Douglas Fairbanks it showed off and action rogue who had charisma, mystery, and was fun to watch and audiences loved it. The Mark of Zorro is often credited as setting the standard for action films throughout the remainder of the century. So why is this important?

Well, like all great characters and properties, Zorro has had his ups and downs. He saw much popularity through the 20s and 30s as Fairbanks continued to play the character but after 1940 he disappeared from the public eye (possibly due to the culture of World War II that had been established in America at the time) and a new Zorro movie was not released until 1958. From there through the 60s and 70s, the Zorro franchise only saw middling reception from audiences who had moved on from him to anti-heroes like Dirty Harry. Zorro was no longer cool. He was a cliché; a relic.

By the 1980s, Zorro had become little more than a punch line, inspiring a parody of the character by George Hamilton called Zorro, the Gay Blade. From that point it looked as though Zorro was fated to ride off into the sunset to be forgotten. But in 1996 the film rights for Zorro were picked up by Steven Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment.

Working with TriStar they started working on producing a film that would make Zorro more of a down-to-earth hero where Don Diego would pass the torch to a new generation. The new film went through a number of production hiccups and several directors (including a young Robert Rodriguez) before settling on Martin Campbell, with Anthony Hopkins [fresh off of Silence of the Lambs and Amistad] as Don Diego and mexican actor Antonio Banderez as the new Zorro. The result of their efforts was the film called The Mask of Zorro, released in 1998.

Let me make this absolutely clear. I. LOVE. THIS FILM. It is one of my personal favorite action movies of all time, mixing a dramatic and heartfelt revenge story with exciting sword-fights and horse chases that keep you invested straight from the get go. Is it perfect? No, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The movie starts with Zorro’s(Anthony Hopkins) quest to defeat his sworn-enemy, Governor Don Rafael Montero(Stuart Wilson), seemingly over as Montero is forced to leave California. Zorro returns home to retire his mantle and live out the rest of his days as Don Diego de la Vega with his wife and their child, Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Montero however, refuses to leave without a parting shot that leaves Don Diego’s life in ruins. Twenty years later, Montero returns with some new design for California. Determined to stop him and claim his revenge and his long-lost daughter, Don Diego escapes and enlists the help of a young former thief named Alejandro Murrieta(Antonio Banderas) who he trains to become his successor as the new Zorro.

The characters in this movie are amazing, especially Alejandro and Don Diego. Banderas is great as the well-meaning buffoonish thief who still has an edge to him that makes him human. His comedy chops are impressive and help to lend a good deal of levity to a film that has a lot of very dark elements. Anthony Hopkins is terrific as always playing the tormented Don Diego, though he’s not given as much room to work with as Banderas. He goes from rage when facing Montero, to calm control as he’s training Alejandro, to subtle regret in his scenes with Elena. It’s a very well done performance and gives and understanding of the mindset of a man who has had his whole life torn apart after giving years of his life to helping the people.

Of course, our heroes are only as good as the villains they face. While Stuart Wilson as Montero is an enjoyable, he sometimes feels like a bit of a Bond villain that does things simply because he wants power and because he’s the sworn enemy of Zorro. Fortunately, this is made up for by Matt Letscher as Cavalry Captain Harrison Love. He brings with him a brutal menace and a dark sadism that makes him very intimidating and a great opponent for the new brash Zorro.

That brings me to another great thing about this movie: the action. The sword choreography was done by a man named Bob Anderson, a swordsman who trained movie fighters for everything from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back to eventually training the fighters in The Lord of the Rings. It has a dance like quality to it that still feels real based on the energy of the characters and the situation. In addition to the phenomenal sword-fights, there’s a really fun horse chase that harkens back to the old days of movie stunt-work where stunt-men were continually risking life and limb to get the best shot on camera, and it shows a great deal of how much of this movie was done practically with live sets instead of CGI. This is significant because when Mask of Zorro was made, movies were in a period of time during the late 1990s where entire films all about the special effects. Disaster movies such as Independence Day, Godzilla, Armageddon and many others were created around the computer generated imagery, thinking that all they had to do to make a profit for their movies was to give the audience what amounted to a glorified light show. You can make the argument we’re seeing that again with movies like the Transformers films but that’s a conversation for another time.

By using largely practical stunt work and effects—including the largest actual explosion ever filmed at the time—The Mask of Zorro felt, for lack of a better term, more real. The stuntwork is such that you believe a guy in a black cloak and mask could do the things that you’re seeing. That’s the key to a successful illusion; what filmmakers and storytellers refer to as ‘suspension of disbelief’.

All of this is complemented by the authenticity of the set design and a beautiful score by James Horner (known for his work on movies such as Titanic, Apollo 13, and Braveheart). The score has a Latin-esque feel to it that sounds like an homage to the romantic delusions of the old school heroes that Zorro often personified.

So now that I’ve gushed about how great this movie is, what problems could it possibly have?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, Montero as the main villain lands with a bit of a thud, often being outdone by his more menacing lieutenant, Captain Love. This is further complicated by an evil plan that is not entirely clear beyond how our villains intend to fulfill their plot.

The other major problem with this movie lies in Catherine Zeta-Jones as Elena, Don Diego’s lost daughter. She’s the obvious love-interest for our hero and she plays a very vital role in the plot that I won’t spoil for you. However, she’s never given much development as a character. That is to say, she doesn’t make choices because of who she is, but rather because the plot says that’s what she was supposed to do. This is not a slight against Zeta-Jones’ acting ability—she has several scenes that she manages to convey a lot of emotion—but more the script she was given. It feels as if the writers didn’t have enough time to properly flesh her out when the project was in the cutting room for editing.

Also, remember how I went on about the score earlier? Well, the end credits don’t have the score on them. Instead they have a “hip” lyrical soundtrack in a way that was very popular back in the 90s, especially after Celine Dion did her number on Titanic. I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way, but whenever I watch a movie from the 90s, I always cringe whenever the titles start and one of those soundtracks starts. It’s become like a reflex action.

Overall, as a film, The Mask of Zorro is a flawed but fun action-adventure movie with exciting sword-fights and interesting characters that I would wholeheartedly recommend for anyone who hasn’t seen it. For those of you who have seen it, do you agree with me? What is your opinion on this movie?

Next Week: We shoot into the current popular dystopian young adult fictional adaptation where you’re entire future is determined by your Meyer’s-Briggs test with The Divergent Series: Allegiant 

What do you guys think of the reviews so far? Is there an older movie you’d like to see me review? Let me know in the comment section below or find me on Twitter @LightWielder524

Have a great week and as always, May the Flick be with you!

WARNING – If you havent seen this movie there will be SPOILERS in this review.

Soooo…here’s a bit of a disclaimer before I begin this review.

I don’t believe I’m an inherently negative person. I attempt to approach each review with a balanced view of what I think works while acknowledging—but not dwelling too heavily—on the things in every movie that don’t work so well. As I’ve stated before, the purpose of this site is to promote conversation about the value of movies that we love in a fashion that showcases their strengths and flaws equally.

That having been said, this was a tough movie for me to review. It is a slog to get through and though it has many cool, intriguing parts composing it they are completely wasted in the film as a whole.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s the story?

The film starts with James Bond (Sean Connery) following up leads rather violently as he hunts for his arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray), culminating in a short scene where Bond shoves Blofeld into a pit of boiling-hot mud before the opening credits roll. Then Bond is off on his next mission, infiltrating a South African diamond smuggling ring in which key members are being systematically killed off. On the way, he comes into contact with one of the members of the ring, Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), who agrees to help Bond find out who is killing off the ring members. They embark on a trip involving casinos, gangsters, reclusive billionaires, and orbital death-rays. Just another day on the job for 007.

Oookay, where do I start with this? How about with the things that I genuinely liked about this movie.

I will freely admit that I’m a huge Sean Connery fan, for more than just his work in the James Bond series. His turn as Captain Marco Ramius in Hunt for Red October is one of my personal favorites and he’s a scene stealer in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as Jones Sr. He is arguably the best thing in this movie despite being saddled with a somewhat stilted script and an ultimately uninteresting plot. Over the years people have talked about who played James Bond the best in his astounding twenty-five appearances on the silver screen. Whether it’s the suave, cavalier attitudes of Pierce Brosnan, the adventursome antics of Roger Moore, or gritty, flawed intelligence agent of Daniel Craig, everyone has a version of the character that they prefer. Connery is my personal favorite because in my opinion, he has all the qualities that made Bond such an established character. He was the suave international man of mystery, spouting one-liners at every turn. He was the cold intelligence agent who would shoot a man in his bedroom and not give it a second thought. And as his time went on, he showed Bond to be a man dealing with a great deal of anger. Why this is, I’ll get into later.

Regardless, Connery is the man who makes this movie work, so far as he is able, and its a credit to his skills as an actor that he can do so without much support from the rest of the cast and crew. One exception to this, however, is Jill St. John as Tiffany Case. Her chemistry with Connery is a lot of fun to watch as they get in and out of trouble together. Sadly, there isn’t enough time in the film where the two of them are together. Plus, the last fifteen minutes of the film make what had been an engaging female lead into a complete dunderhead who can’t do anything right. At one point Bond even calls her a “twit” for a particularly frustrating mistake.

That leads me to the climax of the film, which really impressed me. Not that the climax itself is anything special, even as Bond films go. It isn’t. But what impressed me was what they did for their climax. The final battle takes place on an oil rig somewhere in the Pacific ocean that ends up getting blown sky high. “That’s not so impressive,” you say. “I’ve seen entire cities destroyed on film. I watched INDEPENDENCE DAY!!” True, much bigger things have been blown up on the silver screen but in 1971, they didn’t have CGI where they could blow just about anything up and make it look real. They either had to do it with scale models—which they often did for the bigger explosions—or they had to do it for real. In the case of Diamonds are Forever it looks like they actually blew up an oil rig which isn’t something that I could see a studio going to the expense to do in today’s era. For that, I have to give them major credit.

Also, the premise of Bond infiltrating a diamond smuggling ring to find out who is taking out the members is a rather intriguing one that I would have liked to see explored. Unfortunately, that brings me to the movie’s biggest problem, it’s plot.

 

I could go on for days about the problems with this movie’s plot and my specific frustrations with it. But for the sake of brevity and my own personal sanity, I’ll do my best to be concise.

The movie suffers from a plot that is unnecessarily complicated and adds little to the overall experience. I realize that intricate plots are par-for-the-course in the spy movie genre but that shouldn’t come at the expense of the watching experience. While some movies are intentionally confusing for the audience—such as psychological thrillers and horror movies—in order to evoke a more emotional response, this is the type of confusing narrative that takes you out of the experience. It was genuinely challenging to figure out what each character was after and who they were connected to and how. Half-way through the film, I wasn’t even sure what Bond was after besides the vague “find the bad guy and stop him” cliché. Getting thrown out of the experience like that is something that should never happen in a good film.

In addition, the villain’s plot is so silly as to be cartoonish: holding the entire United States for ransom using an orbital death-ray powered by diamonds. That sounds like something Doctor Claw from the Inspector Gadget series would come up with. For a film that starts with a very down-to-earth premise, the evil plot feels like it doesn’t belong in the same movie.

Furthermore, many elements that would be great if they were handled in the right way feel awkward or out of place here. For example, in the opening with Blofeld, the film sets up that he’s been working on creating a set of doppelgangers for himself. After Bond seemingly kills him in the opening, Blofeld then reappears later, revealing that he was successful in creating doubles for himself including the “Blofeld” killed in the opening.

 

The possibilities of this are quite exciting. How does our hero kill a man who has multiple copies of himself? Even if he kills them both, they could both be doubles doing Blofeld’s will and the real one is still out there. It makes him a much more dangerous villain.

But the filmmakers get rid of the concept as quickly as they introduce it. Bond kills the double and the real Blofeld flees to his secret location for the climax.

Speaking of locations, the James Bond series has always showcased a wide variety of fabulous locations in its films. It’s sort of like watching a sight-seeing tour through the eyes of a secret agent. Unfortunately, the locations in this film are bland and uninteresting. First we’re in Amsterdam briefly, then we go to Las Vegas and the Nevada desert, then a non-descript oil rig in the Pacific. Hardly the most exciting locales to see 007 navigate. Compare this to Macau and the Scottish Highlands in Skyfall and you can see what I’m talking about.

All of these points, good and bad, make for an uneven film that is too difficult to fully enjoy and while the performance and chemistry of the leads is certainly enjoyable, there isn’t enough of them to offset all the other problems that the film has. Which is a shame because it had been set up so well by the films that had preceeded it.

Prior to this movie, the conflict between Bond and Blofeld had been set up as far back as Thunderball, the fourth movie in the series. This conflict came to a head in You only Live Twice and On her Majesty’s Secret Service, the two movies prior to this one. In Her Majesty’s Secret Service Blofeld delivers to Bond the worst hit he takes in the entire series up until Casino Royale three decades later. He kills James Bond’s wife right after they’ve been newly married. That moment is the impetus for the entire opening sequence of Diamonds Are Forever and informs much of Bond’s behavior throughout the rest of the film. Unfortunately, if you haven’t seen the previous two movies, you won’t know any of this because it’s never mentioned in the actual film itself.

For that reason, I would say that this is only a necessary watch as the last part of what I refer to as “The Blofeld Trilogy”, and that only as a completion of the overarching conflict between Bond and Blofeld. Otherwise, unless you’re a huge James Bond fan, I’d consider On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to be a better use of your time.

Next Week: We go to ancient Egypt in a tale of great deities, brave heroes, fierce monsters, and lots and lots of shiny CGI in Gods of Egypt!

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any movie. What James Bond movies do you like and why? Do you disagree with my review? Are there any movies you would like to see me review? Let me know in the comments section or find me on twitter @LightWielder524. Until then, have a great week and May the Flick be with you!