Batman: TAS, episode #45: Terror in the Sky

As noted over four years ago, the intro episode for the character of Man-Bat was notable for most of the elements other than that character. Since it was the premiere of the series and being shown at prime time, that episode is fairly suffused in the noir atmosphere that Bruce Timm and Co. wanted the series to carry. But that atmosphere started to wane a bit by the closing stages of season one and this follow-up story, Terror in the Sky, doesn't have nearly the aura that that premiere did. Of course, given that Man-Bat was always kind of a knock-off, in-house joke (Man-Bat instead of the Bat-Man), it can't be too surprising when the plot surrounding him (or, in this case, her) turns out to be kind of shallow. And, yes, it's not even a Man-Bat but rather a Wo-Man-Bat in this episode, as Kirk Langstrom's (Marc Singer) wife, Francine (Meredith MacRae) ends up being the creature that is once again terrorizing Gotham. In fact, the whole crew makes a return, as Langstrom's partner, Dr. March (René Auberjonois) is also present as the source of the renewed formula that is once again being misused.

I used the phrase "once again" more than once in that opening paragraph which may strike some as repetitive and it is because this episode's plot is. That's frustrating enough for those of us who are fans, but it also seemed to be a source of irritation for pretty much everyone who appeared onscreen. Francine was frustrated (and quite unsympathetic) with her husband's inability to sleep and then with his supposed reuse of the bat mutagen. Kirk was frustrated that The Batman's antidote hadn't really worked, if everyone's suspicions about him were true. Our hero was frustrated that Langstrom would get involved with what he absolutely knew was a source of danger. And March was aggravated that he had to share lab space with all of these kooks, which is perhaps the most understandable of all of them. The scene at the lab was probably the largest collection of distinctly unlikeable people in the entire series, to date. Our hero carries that sterner attitude forward throughout the rest of the episode, being quite taciturn and short with almost everyone he meets or speaks with, including Alfred.

Add to that frustration the fact that one of the original selling points of the character was Neal Adams' art. Given the visual style of the cartoon (and the probable influence of the censors, who wouldn't have permitted something as graphic as Adams usually drew in a "children's show"), it wasn't going to be possible to imitate that here. So, the depiction we get of the She-Bat is just this side of goofy, when it's supposed to be terrifying. On top of that, it was an interesting storytelling choice to keep presenting the creature as if she was tracking things by sonar, when it was perfectly obvious from all of her actions that she could see perfectly, just as most bats can. That leap of reason is almost comparable to the similar effort in the plot, where we have Francine adamant about the fact that she can't live with Kirk if he's flying again, but doesn't see fit to question why she'd be returning home with her clothes shredded from transforming into the creature. Even Bruce Banner usually ended up with wisps of shirt hanging off him as a sign that he'd become his alter ego, even if his purple pants were indestructible and always shrank to fit. Although it is kind of a subpar episode, it does contain appearances by two infrequent examples of Bat-technology, in both the Batcycle (with studded tires for winter weather) and the Batwing, which plays a key role in the resolution of the conflict.

Next, we do a villains' revue of their history with the Caped Crusader in Almost Got 'Im.

Batman: TAS, episode #44: Day of the Samurai

This episode is an odd bird in the series. Not only is it a follow-up to an earlier episode, Night of the Ninja, without being a direct second part, but it's also the only one that I know of with non-English dialogue and subtitles, as many of the characters speak in their native tongue of Japanese; as does Bruce Wayne and The Batman at various points. Day of the Samurai is, to its credit, quite different in tone to its predecessor, despite being written by the same person (Steve Perry.) Like the previous post, it's not hard to see this genre as an expression of another aspect of the 1970s. When horror comics became popular (permitted) again, there was another topic bursting forth on the American mindset in film, TV, and comics, which was martial arts and East Asian cultures. Most of it was the Hong Kong action flicks of people like Bruce Lee or dim attempts at the American past in series like Kung Fu. Conics were no different, as characters like Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu because popular for a time. DC's answer was, of course, a White guy called Karate Kid from the Legion of Superheroes whose solo series lasted a whole 15 issues. To Shang-Chi's credit, his ran to issue #125 and 1983. (I chalk that up to the former being created by Jim Shooter and the latter being created by Jim Starlin and Steve Engelhart (of Laughing Fish fame.))

But also to Perry and the producers' credit, by the late 80s/early 90s when this was being written, a lot of people had tried to steer away from the often misrepresented aspects of Japanese culture. The most notable example in this episode was that use of subtitles, but also the exploration of concepts like giri ("obligation" or "duty") and a deeper exploration of Bruce Wayne's awareness of the concept of honor and how return villain, Kyodai Ken (James Ito), is besmirching it. Of course, little details remain important, where the idea of a self-avowed ninja wielding a katana isn't really in line with proper perspective (unless he's doing so as a deliberate insult?) but also when the entire plot of the episode revolves around the hunt for an ancient technique hidden away as too dangerous which is essentially the Touch of Death made famous by AD&D monks from the late 70s, where the only reason to play a monk (couldn't use magic weapons, couldn't wear armor, basically had no reason to be a looting murder hobo) was to reach level 13, whereupon you learned said Touch of Death and could kill things just by, y'know, touching them. This idea has lasted down the years in forms like the Five Finger Death Punch (now a band because why not?), the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, and so on.

One stereotype that Perry thankfully avoids (unlike the episode just before this one) is the question of The Batman's identity. Bruce notes that "fighting styles are like fingerprints" so Kyodai already knows that he and the Darknight Detective are one and the same. The fact that Bruce Wayne's sensei, Yoro (Goh Misawa) (occasionally misspelled as "sensi" in the subtitles) somehow doesn't know this, despite having trained Bruce for years, is something of a head-scratcher, though. Regardless, the high point of this episode is almost certainly the actions scenes between Kyodai and The Batman, since it's one of the few times that we really see fighting technique emphasized; not least in their final encounter, where our hero finally demonstrates his considerable superiority by casually batting aside Kyodai's attacks after revealing that his Touch of Death had no effect on someone who was prepared for it (Speaking of Karate Kid, this is where I was impressed to hear the writers of Cobra Kai have Daniel Larusso saying that the only reason the "Crane technique" worked in the original film is because Johnny Lawrence walked right into it...) Of course, the only way to provide regular drama in The Batman's regular martial encounters is to have him show weakness and, thus, create threat. But the number of times it seems to happen to average thugs on the streets of Gotham City gets kind of onerous over multiple episodes, so it's gratifying to see him display the kind of expertise that we'd all expect in this moment.

Despite the obvious poor choice of fight location on the side of an active volcano (which The Batman does point out), the visual of that final fight, taking place in front of the flowing lava and literally highlighting the motion of their two shadowed figures, was really well done. Again, small things mean a lot in this case and this episode was interested in focusing on those details. There's a lot of slower-paced story exploration here, which is a nice change from the often frantic pace of other episodes. This is one of those moments where you'd find editors talking about "character development" for both the hero and the villain, even if there's no traumatic exploration of either. In this respect, I much prefer Day to Night, even if we are talking about the scourge of Gotham's underworld.

Next time, we see another villain return in Terror in the Sky...

The essence of popularity

One of the films that we most wanted to see in this year's Oscar batch was largely unavailable through our regular channels. Despite showing many more popular films at the Michigan and State theatres in recent years, The Substance didn't seem to have anything approaching a normal run for something that was seemingly as well-received as it was (standing ovation at Cannes, plus winning Best Screenplay there; 90% positive at RT.) The distributor was pretty low on the totem pole (Mubi) and there was reportedly major pushback by the studio that was going to do distribution (Universal) and, given how the industry is generally portrayed, that's probably not too much of a surprise. But word of mouth got around and after lead actress, Demi Moore, began winning every award available (the first trophies she's ever won in her career...), it finally hit the streaming possibilities and Tricia and I found it last night.

Right away, I have to mention that the story isn't mindblowing. It's a vanity tale and, in fact, once we'd seen enough of it, the first thing that came to mind (comics nerd that I am) was a Tales from the Crypt episode from that series' first season, "Only Sin Deep", in which Lea Thompson sells her beauty to a pawnbroker in order to land a rich guy and be on Easy Street for the rest of her life. You can see the ending of that already, I'm sure. This film is no different in that respect. You can see how it's going to end from the very outset, but the way it's presented- in a very pointed perspective on Hollywood, America's version of misogyny, and the careers of people like, say, Demi Moore -is far more explicit than many similar stories. Moore's character, Elisabeth Sparkle (just a bit on-the-nose there...) is being shown the door by her boss, Harvey (a perfectly-sleazy if a bit over the top Dennis Quaid) after decades as the studio's fitness/sex symbol because the "shareholders" are looking for new blood (aka more money.) After being clued in to an opportunity to get around this whole "age" problem via back-alley (literally) science, Elisabeth decides to take advantage of it and start us on our spiral downward.

The thing that struck me right away was the visuals. Writer/director/producer, Coralie Fargeat, filled all three of those roles because she wanted creative control of this story that was extremely personal to her and followed the perspective of her previous critically-hailed film, Revenge. (Rumor has it that one of the reasons Universal objected was because Fargeat had final cut in her contract. You can view that as misogynistically as you'd like because it's probably all true.) But Fargeat and cinematographer, Benjamin Kračun, did an amazing job of keeping the eyes of the viewer entertained at all points of the story. One of their most prominent devices was that every hallway in the film was extraordinarily long, presenting us with the notion both of the detachment from self that the Substance process presented (despite its providers' insistence that the users were "one" and not distinct from their other selves) and also the imagery of Alice down the rabbit hole and the farther you go, the weirder it gets. The other image, of course, is that in Hollywood, no matter how far you go, that point of perfection is still out of reach. Every environment is also very clean and very precise until they look at almost anything organic that isn't the "upside" of the Substance. Food, the traumatic changes (e.g. the body horror), fluids (both fantastical and normal); everything is shown as viscerally as possible in complete contrast to the shells that all of these organic things inhabit (buildings, etc.) That, too, is part of the message and it's never one that is used to club the viewers over the head. It's all just part of the visual realization that you make as you proceed through the film.

The later progression of those organic themes will summon some flashbacks to John Carpenter's The Thing, one of the best horror films ever made, so if you're the squeamish type, you should get ready to squirm a bit. But that comparison works on more than one level, as the point of this film is demonstrating that "monster" within us (vanity, pride, envy) that can drive us to these outrageous acts and, with enough money, can harm a lot of other people along the way. Moore plays it straight and the anguish is totally believable the whole way through. Similarly, co-star Margaret Qualley, who plays Sue, is also on top of her game, as you can feel the compulsion that she's displaying as she tries to escape the one thing that many humans fear more than anything else: embarrassment. It's just that this time it comes with a slightly more traumatic end if it's not evaded. Again, it's not a new story, so Story Guy kinda shrugs his shoulders at that side of my usual perspective. But the storytelling- the process and delivery -make this a standout of the current Oscar season. Among those films nominated for Best Picture, it's definitely among the, uh, more attractive offerings. Recommended.

Batman: TAS, episode #43: Moon of the Wolf

There are initial pros and cons when looking at Moon of the Wolf, because involving The Batman in something that's relatively bog-standard like werewolves is generally not going to be numbered among my favorite topics for our hero. But the initial pro is that this episode was written by Len Wein, a legendary figure in the comics industry, for both writing and editing. He worked many years for both Marvel and DC and, importantly here, was part of Marvel's horror revival in the early 70s once the Comics Code was neutered and it was finally considered safe to show kids ghosts and goblins again (on top of the fact that Marvel had long since been aware that its primary audience was college-aged.) Wein worked on titles like Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, and so forth, so tagging him to write a Batman/werewolf story seems wholly appropriate. And, like many comic writers of that era, he wastes no time getting right to the topic at hand, as there is no setup to the story. We simply see a zoo guard (Peter Scolari) walking his dog and being accosted by the main enemy right away, with The Batman dropping in to rescue him.

The larger thematics are present here, of course, in that our hero's imagery is right in the (ahem) vein of another classic monster: the vampire, what with the big, dark (and even scalloped) cloak and the bat imagery which is usually attached to those horrors. The idea of a conflict between vampires and werewolves is the subject of all kinds of other media, from movies to RPGs, so we're right in the wheelhouse of those of us who are fond of such things. Again, my reluctance is normally that attaching characters like The Batman to tales like this is generally going to make them rather formulaic. But Wein was probably conscious of this phenomenon, too. Much of the writing of things like Tomb of Dracula was hailed back in the day, but when editorial (which, uh, often included Wein) decided that the way to really make sales was to include the new horror books in the broader Marvel Universe™, the quality began to suffer because the two genres don't always mix very well. This is why DC later decided to separate their horror tales into an imprint called Vertigo, but Marvel were content to let the new set of horror books die on the vine. For my own part, I recognize the genre friction, but acknowledge that there's still room to play around. (Level four is the "horror" level.)

But Wein's experience shines through here in other ways, too. The Batman meets with Commissioner Gordon about the weird, wolf-suited mugger he just encountered and Gordon decides that the best cop to put on this case would be Harvey Bullock. This is one of those instances where Bullock is considered a competent, relatively non-corrupt cop; distinct from his frequent presentation in the series. He later goes on to prove his bona fides in that respect, but not only keeping his men organized but acknowledging that, after the werewolf seemingly disappears, the only way to be sure that it's gone is to wait four weeks for the next full moon. He not only does his job, but fully engages the "reality" of the story (e.g. this is a werewolf, so this is how werewolves operate.) Other little details like this, in which Wein demonstrates that there are other aspects/depth to the usual characters, are exemplified by Alfred being shown doing regular maintenance to the engine of the Batmobile, rather than just bringing tea to the Batcave or some other relatively menial task. It looks like he was attempting to deviate from the stereotypes. That is, of course, until the villains, Anthony Romulus (Harry Hamlin) and Achilles Milo (Treat Williams) manage to capture The Batman and, for whatever the age-old reason is, don't pull his cowl off to reveal our hero's identity. I have no idea why both villains had legendary Roman and Greek hero names, either, but there it is.

Wein also does the best thing for a modern telling of this kind of story and makes the lycanthropy the result of deranged science, rather than someone being bit by a werewolf or some other stock cause. The visuals for both Romulus returning to human form and transforming the first time that Milo gave him the formula are well done, too, and clearly drew from the more modern versions of that kind of transformation (The Howling, etc.), rather than just Lon Chaney, Jr. doing his thing and growing more hair all over. Wein, as a horror writer, kept abreast of the changes to horror films and stories, which is always a positive. The final fight even has a no capes moment. In the end, the motivation for the villain(s) is greed, like usual, but also vanity, since Romulus wanted the fame that comes with being the "world's greatest athlete" (Bruce's ego is on full display here when he trains alongside Romulus at a public gym.) That's kind of a nice segue into another post for the blog on that same topic. But, next time, we're going back to another American fan-favorite of the 1970s: martial arts and East Asian culture.

Evil genius

No, it's not not another Batman post (yet.) Today it's an unfortunate, off-the-cuff writeup about the loss of one of the great actors of the modern era: Gene Hackman, who was found dead today with his wife and dog, at the age of 95.

I first remember him from his performance as Lex Luthor in the Superman films of the late 70s. Comic nerd that I was, I first objected to the idea of a Luthor with hair. But he won me over quite quickly ("Miss Teschmacherrrrr!") and then I began to see other things, like Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and Col. Jason Rhodes in Uncommon Valor and Coach Norman Dale in Hoosiers and Special Agent Rupert Anderson in Mississippi Burning. Even bit parts like Pete Van Wherry in Reds and lesser parts like Defense Secretary David Brice in No Way Out. Not all of those were great movies, but Hackman's part of all of them was almost always top tier and that's not even getting into more of the acknowledged bouts of excellence, like "Little Bill" Daggett in Unforgiven and Royal Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums. It's about as rich a career as it's possible to have in modern cinema and he was almost always one of the names that you would perk your ears up at when you heard that he was doing another project. He's been absent (retired) for much of the past two decades but his legacy will last a long time. But, oddly, the one role that stuck with me and which I still kind of enjoy more than any other is the one for which he was uncredited:

I've watched that scene I don't know how many dozens of times (I'm a lifelong Mel Brooks fan) and I still convulse with laughter every time I see it. There's no debate that Peter Boyle does his share of heavy lifting here, but it's the subtlety that Hackman brings where, as with almost all his characters, he totally sells the perspective of whomever he's inhabiting while still riding the wave of the absurdity of it all, that does it for me. Acting was fun for him and you could see him having fun in almost every role that he took. It strikes me as a life that was well-lived and is, thus, a parting that was well made.

Too bright for a dirge - 2025 documentary shorts

There was an interesting dichotomy in this collection, in that two were about music and three were about death in one form or another. A full house of contrasts, although there is certainly music about death and if the first selection had been about children playing Mozart, I definitely would have made a reference to the Requiem. This collection was among the best we've seen, I think, as none of them failed to get their message across and all of them were worth the time spent, even if one did run a little long (for a short.)

Instruments of a Beating Heart- The opener started us off on a (ahem) high note, with a presentation of Japanese first graders about to move on to second grade and being given the task of performing Beethoven's Ode to Joy for the incoming class of new first graders. If that sounds like quite the task for kids that young, you're not alone. It was a good example of the standards set by the Japanese educational system and what many Americans see as hallmarks of Japanese society (elegance, pressure, achievement, determination) for good or ill. The central focus was one young girl, Ayame, who first aspired to the drum and then to the cymbal for their performance and fell short of the needed diligence to produce what their teacher was asking, only to be encouraged by him, her classmates, and another teacher to reach the level that all of them were striving for. It's something that sung to both my musical and socialist hearts about the cooperation and tolerance among humanity to bring more literal joy out of our daily existence than the spontaneous frivolity of children would otherwise produce. It was also just this side of unbearably cute in every scene and moment, not least for the eagerness displayed by the children to come to grips with a project that they likely didn't quite understand the scope of, but were constantly assured that they were capable of doing. It was an incredibly positive and entertaining story.

Incident- Of course, the next entry was one enormous pile of outrage and cynicism that wiped away all of the joy and brightness that its predecessor had introduced. It's the story of the murder of Harith "Snoop" Augustus by Chicago police in 2018, told entirely through body- and surveillance cameras. When Augustus is first accosted and then assaulted by police for no reason whatsoever, he attempts to escape and is gunned down. Watching the police, from the probationary officer who shot him to lieutenants scheming, prevaricating, and excusing in an attempt to cover up the fact that multiple officers had committed crimes ranging from simple assault and unlawful detention to second degree murder in the space of a couple minutes and then, of course, committed several other crimes in an attempt to cover it up was just a reminder of both the level of violence that is tolerated by society's "protectors" and their near-absolute authority in escaping the very justice that they're nominally responsible to uphold. This was, by far, the best production of the five we saw, as the screen was split into two, three, or four parts to show the progression of the incident from every angle available and even following some of the police away from the scene of the crime. That multi-perspective depiction also put on full display the power disparity between the normal citizens that came to ask questions of their "protectors" and the indifference of the latter to that inquisition. The film lacked the narrative style of most of the other entries, but the technical excellence and the power of the simple message it delivered made it a strong favorite for me (which means, of course, that it won't win.)

I Am Ready, Warden- Continuing the theme of death, we came to the case of John Henry Ramirez, who was convicted of the stabbing murder of Pablo Castro outside the convenience store where the latter worked in 1984 in Corpus Christi, TX. After being caught four years later, Ramirez was placed on death row and the film was about his last few days and how he was dealing with what he deemed his final release from prison, as well as how Pablo's son, Aaron, 14 at the time of his father's death, was confronting it, as well. The situation was brought to a tipping point when the local DA, Mark Gonzalez, tried to withdraw the death warrant for Ramirez after Gonzalez changed his mind about the morality of the death penalty. It was a careful examination of both the ethical situations involved in the murder, the conviction, and the impending execution, as well as the emotions that suffused all of those. The film handled those ethical questions with a very light touch, which is always the most effective method, IMO. As a death penalty opponent, I'm also quite sympathetic to the tacit idea of "justice" needing to be meted out to the perpetrators of heinous crimes; not least the ones they freely admit committing and to which they agree they probably deserve the harshest punishment, as in the case of Ramirez. Of course, given that region of Texas and the predilection of everyone involved to invoke Christianity into these matters, I couldn't help but regularly think of Deuteronomy: "Vengeance is mine" (saith the Lord...)

The Only Girl in the Orchestra- Returning to our theme of music, this film was about the life and career of Orin O'Brien, a double bassist who was also the first woman to play as part of the New York Philharmonic; hired by Lenny Bernstein himself. Like the first film, it was an incredibly positive piece about a woman who wouldn't let anything slow her down in any way, including the trappings of fame that came with her standout role as "the only girl." It was a great story of determination and passion for music while constantly professing the desire to not be in the spotlight and to embody the "support" role that she says that the double bass occupies in that form of music. The film was produced and directed by her niece, Molly, who regularly encourages Orin to wax rhapsodic on what she's accomplished, to which Orin responds by waving away any and all platitudes. It's a remarkable expression of humility by someone not only highly intelligent and clearly talented, but also driven by the memory of her Hollywood parents, whose careers took a downturn in the second half of their lives and left them both feeling unfulfilled. Orin, 87 at the time of filming and retired from playing (but still teaching!), regularly emphasizes that she had done pretty much everything she wanted to do in her professional career, but still felt the urge to keep going because of the happiness that that success generated. To her, it was about passing on that passion to her students and those around her. While it felt like this one ran a little long, given the relative lightness of its subject matter in comparison to the others, it was still really enjoyable.

Death by Numbers- And, finally, the denouement of death. This is a film based on the journals of Sam Fuentes, one of the survivors of the Parkland high school shooting, and how she was processing what had been happening to her while the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was involved in a four-month long sentencing hearing to determine whether he would be given life without parole or the death penalty. A talented writer with a poetic turn of phrase, Fuentes' running narration of the events and her perception of them, as well as her victim's statement at the trial, delivered a message as powerful as any other that we saw tonight. I also thought that its placement as the finale was yet another statement about the current political climate, given Cruz's affection for the ideas expressed by both the historical Nazis and the ones currently controlling the US government. The fact that Fuentes has been attending a class about the history of the Holocaust while Cruz, his AR-15 emblazoned with swastikas, fired through the window is a discombobulating coincidence and something of a cosmic statement on the absurdity of US gun laws, the casual shrug with which yet another school shooting is accepted on a weekly basis, and the fact that bigots like Cruz have not only perpetuated both of those farces but are now in control of the government. In an ironic twist, the vengeful reaction of other bigots like Ron DeSantis to the result of Cruz's sentencing again brings us back to the ethics of vengeance and the question of how important it is to redress the crimes after they've happened or try to change our society before they occur.

Again, my favorite, simply for the way it was produced, is Incident. However, I think both the timeliness and the emotional impact of Death by Numbers will hand it the statue; fully deserved. So, those are the shorts for this year. It was probably the best total batch we've seen in some time, with no single glaring failure in any category. Now to track down four of the five feature-length docs that we haven't seen.

Whimsical but fascinating - 2025 animation shorts

This is the category that has most frequently had the entry or entries that simply didn't measure up. When we were walking into last year's showing, my friend, Brian, said to me: "I'm pretty sure there's one you're going to absolutely hate." He was right. Consequently, this is the category that Tricia, Jaime, and Larissa are often least interested in seeing and I'm the voice in the wilderness saying: "No, really. Animation is good." Thankfully, this year's nominees had no such cinderblocks attached.

Magic Candies- This is a Japanese film, based on the Korean picture book of the same name. The story is about Dong-Dong, a lonely, little boy who spends most of his time by himself and loves to play marbles. A local shop owner convinces him to buy a packet of marble-looking magical candies. Putting one in his mouth leads to the sofa in his and his dad's apartment talking to him and complaining about things like his dad farting all the time. That kind of magical encounter soon follows with the other candies, ranging from his pet dog to the falling leaves in the local park. The animation style is CGI, but emblematic of the rounded, stop-motion style used in Christmas classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It's a great message about the power of children's imagination and how they create their own worlds when there's no one else around to share their experiences. It was also quite upbeat and funny, so it was a good launching point after having seen the live action nominees an hour beforehand.

In the Shadow of the Cypress- This was an Iranian entry and done solely in pen-and-ink animation with the classic, wavery lines that come with individually drawn cells. There's no dialogue, so the viewer just has to follow along with the tale of a former sea captain struggling with PTSD and his poor relationship with his daughter. One day, a sperm whale is beached outside their home and their struggles to alleviate the creature's suffering leads to him questioning not only his connection with his daughter, but how he's conducting life, in general. Speaking of connections, this is the one entry that I didn't really find an attachment to. It wasn't a bad film and I'd be willing to watch it again to try to discern where I just didn't land with it. Their travails with the whale and how to address the problem are nicely detailed, so it's a very "realistic" story, but I never felt like I really got the message other than what was already obvious.

Yuck!- This one, OTOH, was a delight. It's a French film about pre-teens figuring out the concept of kissing, romance, and human connection and whether they'd ever want to let themselves be drawn into such a disgusting concept. Director Loic Espuche used a great delivery method by having those disgusting adults' lips shimmer pink whenever they were planning to kiss or actually doing so. Léo (voiced by Noé Chabbat) while repelled by the whole idea has also noticed that his own lips are starting to do the same thing as he confronts childhood curiosity about what his siblings and friends insist isn't something they will ever do. It was probably the funniest of the 10 films we saw this evening, paced well, and replete with the little reminders of being that age and not really understanding what all of the fuss was about... until it happens to you. I could easily see this one snagging the statue.

Wander to Wonder- This one was a joint French, British, Belgian, and Dutch production (Channel bros, unite!) and my absolute favorite of the evening for a few different reasons. One, it's stop-motion animation, which I've been a fan of since seeing my first Ray Harryhausen film. Two, it's virtually a post-apocalyptic setting, as the three characters are puppets from a Mr. Rogers-style show who are then left behind in the abandoned studio when the show's host passes away and food is becoming scarce. Three, the puppets in question: Fumbleton (the great Toby Jones), Mary (Amanda Lawrence), and Billybud (Terence Dunn) are these bizarre, hyper-happy bear-like things in the first place which would probably have been the source of many children's nightmares in an evil clown fashion if the show had actually existed. As I've noted many times, I'm always a sucker for post-apoc stuff and this one was no different. The elaborate settings, their interactions with the local pigeons, and the very blunt presentation of all of it in the nominal "children's show" just had enough of the edge of the bizarre for me to really enjoy it. I think it's just a bit too edgy to garner the trophy, but I would've handed it off without thinking twice.

Beautiful Men- The final entry was again a joint production between France, Belgium, and the Netherlands about the hair replacement industry that is currently running full steam in Istanbul and other ports of Türkiye. Three brothers, Bart (Peter Van den Begin), Koen (Peter De Graef), and Steven (Tom Dewispelaere) decide to take the plunge together and almost immediately run into practical problems, as well as the lurking issues in their relationships with each other caused by their various insecurities (about all the things other than their lack of hair.) It was quite funny and had very realistically-presented characters, along with great dialogue ("You're a doctor." "I'm a dentist!" "So what? I'm a sales manager but I still fix your car for you!") The animation style was quite similar to Magic Candies and, like that film, very smooth and fluid throughout. I suspect this one will walk away as the winner.

So, a much more positive result than in prior years. The last category, documentaries, will either be tomorrow or Tuesday.

Heavy on tragedy again - 2025 live action shorts

Like last year, the live action shorts were mostly dominated by a sense of tragedy, both past and present, with one bit of comedy (albeit dark) and a sliver of light that eventually shone through the pain. One of the best themes that stretched across almost all of the nominees was that of uncertainty; leaving their endings largely ambiguous and allowing the viewers to fill in the blanks, whether obvious or not.

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent- This is a Croatian film about the Štrpci Massacre, where a Serbian paramilitary unit abducted multiple Bosnian Muslims and one Croatian from a train in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, beat them, and eventually executed them in 1993, during the height of the Yugoslav disintegration conflicts. At the center of the story is Tomo Buzov (Dragan Mićanović), a retired army officer who was the only passenger who tried to confront the attackers and was taken away with the rest of their targets and killed as a consequence. I enjoyed this one and the careful cinematography that kept the confusion of the passengers highlighted and the uncertainty about both what was happening and the subsequent events that everyone assumed would be happening. I did think it was too short, but still effective in the delivery of its story.

Anuja- This was an American-Indian production about two young sisters who work in a garment factory in Delhi. The younger one, Anuja (Sajda Pathan), has a talent for math that the local educator is aware of and he tries to convince her to take the national test which will get her placed in school and off the street but, of course, leave her sister behind. There's a significant amount of emotional weight behind this one, as the audience (and the characters) know the best choice for Anuja but also understand her circumstances and those of her sister, Palak (Ananya Shabhag) and how it might feel to "betray" the most important person in your life. There ends up being a fairly positive message here, despite its rather dire setting, but this is also one of those that left the ending vague so that the central element of the plot- choosing how and whether to better oneself, even while those closest won't benefit -is still there for the audience to consider.

I'm Not a Robot- This is a Dutch entry and Dutch language film, despite the presence of a heavy dose of English technical language. Lara (Ellen Parren) is a music producer who gets locked out of her system and has to take several CAPTCHA tests to reenter. Said tests lead her to a conclusion about her humanity in very Blade Runner-esque fashion, which her boyfriend, Daniel (Henry van Loon), grudgingly confesses to. The rest of the story is about Lara trying to convince everyone, including herself, that she's not what they (and she) all think she is. It's a black comedy, but it is a comedy and was hugely entertaining, not only for its modern relevance to Internet security foibles, but because it pointedly asks similar questions to Blade Runner: What makes us human? Like most of the rest, the ending is also somewhat ambiguous, when Lara takes the final (ahem) step toward proving her point and perhaps discovers that she wasn't as right as she thought she was. I really enjoyed this one, not least for its SF elements and comparison to the best SF film ever made. Probably my favorite.

A Lien- This is an American film and probably the most poignantly-timed of the nominees, given the American fascists that have taken control of the government and their draconian concept about immigration and who actually qualifies as a citizen. Oscar (William Martinez), his wife, Sophia (Victoria Ratermanis), and daughter, Nina (Koralyn Rivera) are attempting to get Oscar's green card processing completed. Of course, showing up at the immigration office to complete said paperwork also makes one an easy target to be apprehended by ICE just for trying to comply with the law. As with so many people in Oscar's circumstances, his situation is complicated by having been brought here as a child but, having a established a career, a family, and a life here, the possibility of being sent "back" to a nation that he has no memory of and has no foundation in is exactly as traumatic as it sounds for everyone involved. Except ICE and the fascists, of course. This one is played quite well by the whole cast and I expect that its timeliness will gain it enough votes to be considered the winner, which is, like so many things involving immigration, no genuine crime. Due credit for the nice wordplay of the title, too.

The Last Ranger- The main topic of this one- protecting animals from poaching -is close to my heart, so that won me over almost instantly. But it's also a great depiction of the dangers and struggles involved with being an anti-poaching ranger in sub-Saharan Africa, not least because it's based on a true story about a young girl who accompanied a couple rangers into the field and was present when poachers attacked a white rhino and those rangers. It centers largely around Litha (Liyabana Mroqoza), a young Xhosa girl, who is fascinated by the rhinos and holds the passion for protecting animals that most young humans do and takes it one step further by wanting to understand the ranger mindset of her friend, Khuselwa (Avumile Qongqo.) This one was perhaps loaded with more anguish and tragedy than any of the rest of them on the face of it, but also ended with the most upbeat message of all of them, so wins the prize for meeting both extremes. It's also very possible that this one could walk away with the trophy.

All in all, a good batch. There were none that any of us walked away thinking of as a waste of time or that somehow didn't measure up to the rest in at least some fashion. Next up, animation.

Batman: TAS, episode #42: Joker's Wild

As noted in every instance prior, the Joker episodes are almost always high points in the progression of the series. Similarly to how The Batman is the best and most enduring superhero character of DC Comics, his primary opposition, The Joker, is a vastly superior villain to any of the other classic opposite numbers of DC's stable (Lex Luthor, Cheetah, Sinestro, etc.) Inasmuch as most would consider someone who runs around in a bat costume beating up criminals to be "crazy", The Batman is an exercise of control within the story framework. He's the cork in the bottle of Gotham City. The Joker, of course, is the polar opposite of that control, with chaos being his calling card at all times, whether to his advantage or not. This episode is also built on the framework of the idea of DC's intellectual properties. Not only does casino owner, Cameron Kaiser (voiced by Harry Hamlin, of Perseus in Clash of the Titans fame) "steal" The Joker's image to establish his casino, but the producers do their own little nods to other Warner Bros. properties. Our main villain enters the scene at Arkham whistling the coda to the Looney Tunes theme and other characters at Arkham (Poison Ivy, the Mad Hatter) are seen watching Bugs Bunny do his thing at the end of this episode.

The Joker's interactions at Arkham are once again presented inside his larger worldview. He and Ivy squabble like children over what's on the TV ("He started it!" "I know you are, but what am I?") and he demonstrates that, once again, he only tolerates imprisonment at Arkham until he becomes inspired. Once he observes Kaiser's "theft" of his image, it's a matter of minutes before he sails out of the asylum. It's obviously a way to serve the plot of the episode, but I think it's also a larger statement on the way he views the world. Something has to catch his interest or he's willing to simply cool his heels in confinement. Once that interest is activated, he can go where and when he wants. It's a perspective that I think Heath Ledger perfectly captured in his interpretation of the character in The Dark Knight. This is also an episode which dovetails neatly with my overall theory about The Batman being the antagonist in his own stories. The hero is absolutely a secondary character in this story. Despite taking a few minutes to observe Bruce Wayne's interactions with Alfred and his eventual actions to bring act 3 to a close, we spend most of our time observing the antics of The Joker and the epilogue is in Arkham with no Batman in sight. Again, he's that element of control that provides boundaries for the color and chaos that his villains otherwise provide. The scenes on the casino floor are emblematic of that, as we watch The Joker execute all manner of card shuffling tricks to entertain both us and presumably other people within the story while Bruce Wayne sits calmly, the grounding rod to the lunacy.

That's not to say that our hero isn't capable of some tricks of his own. The use of the grapple to both encircle the framework of a skylight and to grab a bouncing grenade and propel it directly into the machine that's about to kill him are both uses that hadn't been presented to date in the series. It's that kind of dynamism that The Joker brings out in his nemesis, as well. But on top of the other intellectual properties, we also get a good look at a classic Jokermobile, which reminded me of the Mego toys from the 1970s, but with this version later being produced by McFarlane Toys (of Spawn and Image fame, just to bring us all the way around back to comics.) But that seems natural in an episode that fully engaged the Jokerisms, from the ending of act 2 occurring with a a shot of The Joker in full-on cackle which extends into the fade-to-black and commercial break to the villain declaring that: "I'll settle my score with Kaiser, man to clown!" Those elements mesh with the overall plot as smoothly as the moment of our hero on the Bat-glider, soaring past a building that shows someone parting their drapes in their apartment just before The Batman goes by. This feels like an episode that was fully within the grasp of writer, Paul Dini, from the first moment to the last, which included an exciting back-and-forth round of classic superhero fisticuffs between hero and villain in a helicopter. It had all the elements of the 1950s-era DC that I normally decry, but told in a manner that elevated it beyond that target audience of eight-year-olds, while still visually interesting enough for them to embrace. Again, it's really one of the high points of the series that encapsulates several of its core principles and not only because it contains the best villain.

Deeper and detached meanings

I've been picking up a lot of Blu-rays (and occasional DVDs) these days after I realized that things "bought" on streaming services like Amazon can be lost, not by disconnecting from the service (obvsly), but if they happen to lose the license. The only way to rewatch Gandhi a couple years ago was to buy it for your Amazon library for $8 or whatever. I wanted to see it again, so I paid my $8. A few months ago, I noticed it was missing and upon further investigation, discovered that they had lost the license for it. So, despite me "owning" the digital copy of said film, I no longer did because they no longer had access.

The other thing is that I'm not interested in being tied to someone else's service fee and, if we do end up relocating to somewhere cheaper to live for retirement, I want to be able to watch what I want to whenever I damn well feel like it and regardless of whether we have access to this or that service. My friend, Roger, who retired to Panama with his wife last summer approached things the same way. He brought along a few hundred DVDs and Blu-Rays that he'd been acquiring over the years. I'd always been a movie acquirer, too, as I once had a huge collection of VHS tapes and now have a substantial collection of discs. At the very least, said discs are more durable than the tapes, which I eventually abandoned because it was more and more difficult to find a VHS player that could connect with modern TVs. Anyway, last night I decided to rewatch my newly-acquired copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's not a great film, but I think it's one of Johnny Depp's (and Benicio Del Toro's) better performances and I really liked the book. (It was also on sale, having been sitting on one of my Amazon lists for some time.) When it was done, Tricia looked over and said: "What's so entertaining about a couple of drugged-out idiots?", which is a valid question in most contexts and could be leveled at the current man actually running the White House.

I told her that the point of the book wasn't just to relay all of the weird visions that Hunter Thompson had while ostensibly on assignment for Sports Illustrated (and also while finding a place away from the LAPD to talk about the latter's murder of journalist, Rubén Salazar.) It was more to make a statement about just what drugs could do to the way you perceive things and if you were able to use that perception to talk about things from a broader angle; in this case the end of an era, being the 60s and hippie culture and the idea that expressions of peace were the only answer to institutional violence, whether at home or abroad. I compared it to Jack Kerouac's On the Road in the same way that it took a snapshot of the period in time and talked about life, the culture, the zeitgeist, and how people interacted with and were affected by all of those. She'd never read either of them, so I said that the best approximation I could make was of the difference between what I post about our trips to different places in the world and what she'd expect (and has suggested, pointedly) a normal "travel report/blog" would say. 

The obvious rejoinder is that I'm not writing a "normal" travel blog any more than Fear and Loathing is a "normal" novel. The fact that it wasn't normal is why it originally garnered so much attention and has lasted down through the decades as a significant piece of American literature. In the same fashion, I don't spend much time talking about where we went and what we saw and did, but more about the people we encountered and the differences in culture and the general "feel" of the place. You can bring up 1000 different reactions on Yelp or Tripadvisor about where to go and what to see. I'm not interested in replicating that. Instead, I'm going to tell you what I was thinking about while we were there, which is more of what interests me and which is kinda what Thompson and Kerouac were doing and what ended up delivering the greater impact of both their works.

The film is a decent approximation of that story and its theme. After all, it does give some prominence to "the wave speech", which is the central moment of the novel, really. But I think director Terry Gilliam's focus on the visuals (as is logical in, y'know, a film) clouded a lot of what Thompson's words otherwise delivered in the book. It's the most common problem with translation from one medium to another (typically prose to film; "the book was better-!") and this film does not escape it. Given Gilliam's general tendencies, it's hard to imagine how he could have. But I wanted a preserved copy of it because I think it is saying a lot more with those images than I think many gave it credit for or still do. It is, of course, in part because I have an appreciation for the novel and for Thompson's approach to life, in general. Suggesting that I'm trying to do what he did is only the most facile of comparisons, as it has never really been my intent. It's just the way I do things which, in the end, is about as much respect as can be conveyed. Kinda like making sure you can hold the film in your hand when the world starts dissolving around us. And not because of the drugs.

Cinderblocks, ahoy

I've often criticized storytellers of all kinds of being too obvious in their delivery of their central themes. In most cases, you want the audience to draw out and discover the themes of your work as they're conveyed by situations and characters, unless you happen to be writing a polemic, the sole purpose of which is to deliver The Message. The Brutalist is not a polemic, but its method of delivery is both as blunt as the architectural style from which it draws its title, and sometimes as direct as "being hit over the head with a cinderblock", which is my usual phrase of derision for storytellers who do that in their work. There are several themes at work here: the immigrant experience in America; the post-war European Jewish experience of processing what had been done to them; the casual bigoted disdain for Jews in America during the war and even afterwards; all of these things are presented in this film. The problem is that none of them are delivered by any stories or character that feel human or even really interesting. They're just kinda there.

Fair warning: This is a three-and-a-half-hour film, which is something to sit through for a lot of people, which is why it comes equipped with a 15-minute intermission. Now, unlike travesties like Megalopolis, it didn't have me checking my phone to see what time it was 10 minutes in. This isn't a horrible film. With a cast that includes Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce, most films are still going to be at least watchable so that you can see where it's going and this one is no different. I was eager to find out where it was going, but largely because most of the time it didn't feel like it was going anywhere. I kept waiting for a dramatic moment to emerge or some kind of real emotional response that felt like I was watching a human being, rather than a character designed solely to deliver the cinderblock to your skull. And this is a film with Adrien Brody-! Despite my affection for films like Julia and Schindler's List, I will continue to say that the best representation of the Holocaust that I've seen on film is The Pianist, mostly for Brody's spectacular rendition of one human who was lucky enough to live through it. So, I know that he can deliver that kind of performance and, indeed, the most interesting aspect to his character was absolutely the most human: his addiction. But even that ended up being more of a detail that was an obvious segue into a dramatic moment with his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), that everyone was anticipating for at least an hour before it happened, thus sapping it of any emotional effect it might have had.

And that's probably the film's biggest failing. Despite being interesting enough to keep watching for three-and-a-half hours (at least until they get to the search scene for Harrison Van Buren (Pearce) at which point I was doing the 'hand twirling to move things along' motion), at no point does the film escape the essential style of the architecture: it's all just basic story motions that are apparent to everyone and none of them deliver any sense of style or human texture that would make them memorable. I'm sitting here less than an hour after walking out of the theater and struggling to remember any moment in the film that stood out to me as one that I could mentally point at the screen and say: "Yeah. That's something to file away for a writing moment." Maybe the only one that approached that is a couple views of the marble mines at Carrara; complete with Lászlô's (Brody) friend, Orazio (Salvatore Sansone) who at least talked about doing something dramatic, by stating how he traveled across the country near the end of the war to beat Mussolini's corpse with his bare hands. But that's almost three hours into the film and, even then, is a bit part to set up a rather intimate encounter between Lászlô and Van Buren that is, once again, so obvious a depiction of Pearce's character that's just this side of parody.

The most galling thing was the epilogue, where co-writer and director, Brady Corbet, apparently decided to stop to explain all of the subtexts in his story, just in case the audience didn't get them. It was a 10-minute encapsulation of the previous 3+ hours that felt like a coda to an encyclopedia entry. Why do we need this reminder of the things that you've been tossing in front of us for three hours? If they had injected a small amount of the emotion that adult Zsôfia (Ariane Labed) carries when memorializing her still-living father (seated not far away, in a wheelchair just like Erzsébet used throughout the film; did you get it?), then there might have been something else to remember. As it is, the most prominent emotional message I carried from the film was me pining for something interesting to happen for most of it. Even if it involved just dropping a block of Carrara marble on someone's head, it might've been worth it.

Blood wasn't the only thing that sucked

The original Nosferatu has a story that's possibly even more interesting than that of the film itself. Not only is it one of the finest examples of the German expressionist era in film and a further example of the fragility of the early art form, after most copies were ordered to be destroyed until a few were later (ahem) unearthed and has since been preserved in various other forms, but it's also a shining example of copyright infringement and an attempt to not pay creators what they're owed. Prana Film, a short-lived production company, didn't want to pay for the rights to Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, and thus ordered their screenwriter, Henrik Galeen, to change minor details (like Count Dracula becoming Count Orlok and half the story taking place in Germany, rather than England) in an attempt to claim that it was an original story. Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe, promptly sued after its 1922 release and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed by the court. Thankfully, not all of them were, so we can still see the film today and appreciate F. W. Murnau's storytelling technique and innovations in the medium and with the vampire concept, in general (like suggesting that they're destroyed by sunlight, rather than just typically trying to avoid it.) So, there's a space for the film in the history of the medium, even if it was an attempted ripoff. Indeed, the story of its production is fascinating enough that Elias Merhige and Steven Katz collaborated on Shadow of the Vampire about 25 years ago, which is a fictionalized retelling of the filming of Nosferatu which involves some suspicion among the crew as to whether Max Schreck, who plays Count Orlok in the original film and is played in this reexamination by Willem Dafoe, is exactly what he says he is...

So, it was kind of exciting to learn that Robert Eggers was going to attempt a genuine remake of the F. W. Murnau film. I wasn't blown away by The Lighthouse, but I was willing to give it a chance because the latter wasn't terrible and because of my attachment to the original film, which I've seen three times, including at our Michigan Theater, accompanied by the organ to add to the eeriness of its overall tone. Well, in Eggers' new version, tone is definitely an issue because the one he was apparently aiming for was loud, overwrought, and lacking any of the subtlety of the original. You would think that, at the very least, the one upside would be the ability to take advantage of modern production techniques and technology for the visuals, but even those come across as a lesser version of the 1922 film because they're not really used to convey anything interesting. The fascination with Murnau's version was the use of the vampire's shadow to convey threat and accomplish things from a distance and Eggers duplicates that here but it lacks the jittery charm of the original, such that I found myself pining for Coppala's homage to it in his Bram Stoker's Dracula from 33 years ago, if only because it was clearly an effect and didn't look so perfectly clean and manufactured as the version employed by Eggers.

But that's kind of a minor detail because the main problem was simply how loud and abrasive everything was, from the acting to the score. It seems like the instruction given to the cast was that, since they were in a film set at the beginning of the Victorian era (1838), everyone had to act as if they needed a fainting couch at the ready because their next line might drain them of the will to live (kinda like a vampire...) The gushing and exhalation was constant. It was akin to watching an endless series of Loveswept novel covers, one after the other. I thought that it was a cute twist to have Dafoe included in the cast for this film as a seeming nod to Shadow, but I also kind of hoped that his gravitas and capacity for eeriness with just a glance or two might ground it in something akin to Murnau's version. Not so much. He was chewing as much scenery as anyone else and, in a film where the main villain is constantly biting people, that becomes more of a meta description than I care to make. And everything about this production was at that level of OTT. One of the worst parts was the score. This film can easily be summarized by the phrase "orchestral crash" because there were so many of them that the constant din became a genuine annoyance. You really don't need that many strings to announce that someone has once again rushed to a window in anguish/horror/plaintive longing/whathaveyou yet again. We've been there. You use music for atmosphere but here it might have been used as a way to keep people awake. Those of us who had no issue with that just found it irritating.

But that inability to keep people interested is a major issue, as well. I was distinctly bored about 2/3 of the way through the film and was restraining myself from checking the phone to see how much longer this might take. Part of the problem for me is certainly that I've seen this same story (and read the book) so many times I honestly can't count them. I know I've seen Murnau's version three times. I've seen Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi's version multiple times, as well. And then there's Coppola's and the Universal derivations of the Lugosi picture (often with Lugosi reprising the role) and on and on. I don't want to say that once you've seen one version, you've seen them all, but the novel has kind of been woven into the cultural fabric, such that seeing it reworked for the dozenth (and more) time isn't going to be mindblowing. With that in mind, it's fair to say that trying to do something slightly innovative with the story might not be a bad idea. But this was bog-standard vampire flick from the very outset, but made worse because it genuinely lacked any of the sense of style that the Prana film or any of the Universal films brought to the screen. There are no moments here that you would point at in the manner of Max Shreck's hand along the wall or Lugosi's penetrating stare and say that it's something that will become iconic or an instant identifier for this film. Instead, the identifier is going to be Lily-Rose Depp falling onto a bed again while we hear the orchestra telling us what's happening right in front of us. For the fifth time in the last ten minutes. So, I cannot recommend this one at all. Find the original streaming somewhere and play something like Danse Macabre in the background if you want an experience with some genuine atmosphere.