REBEL RIDGE

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Rebel Ridge is not like other thrillers, and not just because it just gets better as it goes on. This is the kind of movie I wish I could have seen in a theater, except the fact that it was released on Netflix this week instead is precisely why we are able to experience a purity of writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s vision. Such is the contradictory state of the modern film industry, where certain compromises must be made in order to produce the highest quality product—at least this way a lot more people are apt to see this, a film that absolutely deserves your attention. I went into this expectng to enjoy it, and still it significantly exceeded my expectations.

What’s so great about it, I imagine you wondering. Where do I start? With the premise: a Black man, Terry Richmond (a stupendously controlled Aaron Pierre) is railroaded by local small-town Southern law enforcement when they knock him over on his bike, find a large amount of money on him, decide to declare it suspected drug money, and seize it. The rest of the film is an extended riff on the revenge thriller genre, and although it takes its time, the way Saulnier innovates the narrative really is a thrill to watch. We’ll come back to that.

Because we have to come back to how it starts: with a real thing, an actually-legal practice called civil asset forfeiture. As stated by Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), a helpful clerk Terry encounters, “Your property has no civil rights.” Law enforcement can take whatever is yours, keep it for as long as they want, and in many cases even sell it. This is a longstanding practice, often abused by local police departments to make up for budget shortfalls. Anyone watching Rebel Ridge may watch this play out in its opening scene and feel incredulous that it feels too unrealistic—but this is one of those things where truth is wilder than fiction. This shit actually happens, and you rightly feel infuriated on Terry’s behalf.

There are countless stories and countless ways in which civil asset forfeiture fucks people over. In Terry’s case, the reason he has all this cash is because he sold a car and is taking it in to post bail for his cousin, who has been detained for possession. Terry is facing a sort of countdown because there is a plan to transfer his cousin to a prison where he faces a lethal threat from a gang he testified against.

All of this is just setup. The thrill of the story is in seeing Terry get thwarted at enough turns to make him desperate, and force him to take drastic action. But here’s where the narrative innovation comes in: this is not Rambo. Spoiler alert, Terry never kills anyone in this movie. I can only think of one death at all, and it’s not part of any of the scenes of hand-to-hand combat. Among the many things that make Rebel Ridge stand out is that, while we do get some pretty significant injuries in an excellent climactic battle scene, all of the combat in it is nonlethal. And still it’s just as thrilling as the best-choreographed gun battles in other movies—in many cases more so. Just watching him disarm his opponents, over and over again, is incredibly cool.

It should be noted, however, that Rebel Ridge is still much more suspense thriller than it is action movie. There’s a lot of plot, which Saulnier simmers expertly. It may test some viewers’ patience, but I would argue such people are missing the point, not understanding what this movie is and should be. There’s a difference between “lackluster” and “restrained.” In another writer’s or another director’s hands, this could quickly go over the top. We’ve been served more than enough decades’ worth of those movies already.

Saulnier gives the story the time and space to breathe, allowing us to understand Terry’s motivations—and, as it happens, those of the local police upending his life (and the lives of countless others) for their own gain. They are headed by Police Chief Sandy Burnne, played by Don Johnson in a bit of perfectly inspired casting. Although Terry faces off with many different cops, several of whom get their own showcase of narrative thread—particularly Zsane Jhe as an officer caught in the cross-combat at the police station—ultimately this is a battle of wills between Terry and Chief Burnne.

Summer proves to be a much more significant part of the story as it unfolds, with many different turns you won’t ever see coming—she’s the very reason Terry returns to the town he’s been told to stay away from, at the halfway point. Rebel Ridge could be thought of as two one-hour episodes, but still they fit together exceptionally well. I do have some slightly mixed feelings about how Summer is handled as a character, particularly when it comes to agency. But, she remains a compellingly competent character drawn with dimension.

In any case, I was rapt and on the edge of my seat from start to finish watching Rebel Ridge. A significant amount of that could be attributed to the affectingly ambient score by brother-musicians Brooke and Will Blair. There simply isn’t any major misstep anywhere in the production of this movie, with exceptional direction, writing and performances. Much as it pains me to admit it, sometimes one of the best movies of the year is actually a streaming release. I would still argue Rebel Ridge would play better in a movie theater, but we’ll take great cinema wherever we can get it, from the screening room to the living room.

There are many more tensions at play than what’s first noticed in any given frame.

Overall: A-

MAXXXINE

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B

There was a time when actresses famous or their roles in horror films were called “Scream Queens,” and that is indeed what the title character in MaXXXine aspires to be—even though no one ever uses the phrase in the film. As it happens, Mia Goth has carved out a similar niche for herself, although it exists a few steps to the side of “Scream Queen.” I’m not sure what similar title we could give her—Feature Eater? Picture Witcher? Wackadoodle Chicken Noodle? We can worship it.

One thing that’s for certain is that Mia Goth has a vibe. And it’s one of a woman barely feigning stability. Such is the case as Maxine Mix, a porn star attempting to break into Hollywood in 1985 with the backdrop of the Night Stalker serial killer. People close to Maxine keep dying, and it’s made clear early on that the homicide detectives investigating suspect someone besides the serial killer, just trying to make the murders look like the work of the Night Stalker.

This is all fertile ground for a fun homage to eighties slasher flicks, replete with a banger soundtrack of mid-eighties pop hits. (Frustratingly, movies like this never assemble the featured pop tracks into soundtrack albums anymore; search for the title on your music streamer of choice and all you’ll get is the motion picture score. Boring!) And, for a little while, MaXXXine really is fun, with a protagonist who is delightfully damaged and demented.

We’re made to expect that Maxine can handle herself even in the face of danger. In arguably the most memorable scene in the film, she turns the tables on a would-be attacker in a dark alley, forces him to strip naked at gunpoint, and forces him to suck on the barrel of the gun before she does something kind of hilariously grotesque to him. And there was something I really liked about this scene, the way it flips the script on so many of those old slasher movies with helpless women victims: here, it’s the man who is degraded onscreen, the woman with the agency. It has the exact same exploitative vibe, just with the gender roles reversed.

But, strangely, I’d have to say that’s where MaXXXine peaks, although there’s another pretty great scene involving a man trapped in a car getting compacted. MaXXXine has nearly all the elements you’re looking for in a movie of this sort—except that it presents itself as something with more depth than what it’s imitating, and in the end, it actually doesn’t.

As time goes on, and we get hints of Maxine’s secret past, our protagonist proves to be more helpless than you might expect—resourceful for sure, but she gets out of multiple scrapes only with the assistance of others, mostly men. And when her secret past is revealed and becomes an integral part of a climactic sequence around the Hollywood sign, it’s all fairly disappointing. I wanted more out of this movie, which starts out with an inventive spirit and then just gets lazy with it.

On the upside, MaXXXine still has a compellingly retro-moody tone, and more importantly, very good performances, particularly by Goth, and by Elizabeth Debicki as a ruthlessly ambitious film director. Several other actors are a bit wasted, though: Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan as the two relatively dull detectives; Kevin Bacon as a dirtbag private investigator; Giancarlo Esposito as a shady agent. I just wish the script were better. For all its retro neon-mood recreations, this film still feels very much a product of its time, when homage runs rampant without anything new to say.

I don’t know if she’ll blow you away but she might cock your gun.

Overall: B-

HIT MAN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

It’s been a dismal June so far for theatrical wide releases, and I’ll have to include the end of May in that: May 31 had no major movie releases at all, less because of the inevitable shift of moviegoing habits in a post-covid world—although that’s certainly part of it—than because of countless postponements after last year’s writer and actor strikes. And for the record: any movie studio crying about the sad state of box office returns so far this year has only themselves to blame, as they could have accepted the unions’ quite reasonable demands from the start instead of digging in their heels for months in 2023.

So, here we are. This weekend, there actually are theatrical wide releases—a couple of them—it’s just just that I don’t personally have any interest in them. If you thought you might come here for my take on Bad Boys Ride or Die, you were mistaken. (I don’t flatter myself that any of you particularly did, mind you. Still, I’d have to be actually getting paid for it to write a review of that movie, in which I would likely write much about my undampened distaste for Will Smith. And even if Smith had never slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, I’d have little faith that his new film was any good, given 2020’s Bad Boys for Life certainly wasn’t.) The other is The Watchers, by Ishana Shyamalan, which is clearly “M. Night Lite,” and: no thank you.

What to do in the absence of anything worth seeing in theaters, then? Something I haven’t done in five months: turn to a streamer—specifically, Netflix—for a significant release to watch and review. And releases like this going to streamers instead of theaters, at least some of the time, is clearly here to stay. There is no question that five years ago, a film starring Glen Powell, cowritten by Glen Powell and Richard Linklater, and directed by Richard Linklater—this is the guy who gave us Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, School of Rock, and Boyhood—would have gotten wide release in theaters. It was indeed five years ago when his last live action narrative feature got a wide release, and that one wasn’t even particularly good.

Admittedly I found something immediate to get past about Hit Man—which was originally set to be released around the same time as The Killer (also on Netflix!), ostensibly similarly themed but a very, very different movie. The visual vibe of the movie, I can’t quite put my finger on it precisely, except to say that it feels a little . . . low-rent. A bit like a “TV movie,” to be honest. And yet, as the story unfolds, it somehow fits: both as a Richard Linklater film in particular, and as part of the film’s knowingly yet deeply subtle cornball tone.

Unlike The Killer, and hundreds of other films before it, Hit Man openly acknowledges that “hit men” as we think of them in pop culture are a myth: “Hit men don’t really exist,” says Powell’s title character, Gary Johnson. But Gary has been hired by the New Orleans police department to pose as the “hit men” would-be murderers expect to see, in sting operations to arrest them before the kill can actually happen. And this is a side gig: Gary’s day job is as a psychology and philosophy professor, scenes of which provide fertile ground for scenes exploring the nature of identity, which fall just short of metatextual.

It takes a while for the real crux of the story to take hold: after helping arrest several would-be criminals, Gary, in one of the many disguises he’s thrown himself into with this job (many of which are subtly but very effectively funny), comes across a young woman who is meeting him about killing her asshole husband. But this time, seeing a young, beautiful, and seemingly very vulnerable woman named Madison (all of it expertly played by Adria Arjona; hopefully with a great career ahead of her), Gary—as “Ron”—convinces her to change her mind, much to the consternation of the NOPD.

There are too many fantastic plot turns that ensue from there, so I won’t spoil them. Just do yourself a favor and watch the movie on Netflix. Viewers should be forewarned about one thing, though: I truly don’t know why anyone is listing this movie under “action” as a genre. Crime and comedy, sure; but action—there is none to speak of in this movie. If you have any familiarity with Richard Linklater whatsoever, you’d know not to expect it, as his films are all constructed around dialogue. We see a literal gun onscreen maybe once, and in neither case does it even get fired.

And yet: people do get killed in this movie. This is the genius of Richard Linklater, if you know how to appreciate his specific brand of art. Hit Man has some uniquely clever story turns, if not outright plot twists, and they are quite satisfying. He has an impressive knack for economy of storytelling, particularly on a budget: consider the police officer Jasper (Austin Amelio), a thorn in the NOPD’s side due to his suspension after violent excessive force on some teenagers, an incident that was caught on tape. This information is only ever revealed through well-written dialogue you barely even register as expositional, and (thankfully) we never see the video footage—although the Police Chief does hold up his phone at one point while talking about it, while his phone isn’t even on.

Jasper inevitably becomes a crucial plot point himself, worming his way in between Gary and Madison. Jasper is a deeply annoying douchebag of a man, which is a credit to how Austin Amelio plays him, which makes his fate by the end of the film, thematically complex as it is, deeply satisfying. Just about all the performances are great in Hit Man, but none are as great as Glen Powell’s, an undeniably handsome man who manages to be believably dorky as a professor and then convincingly hot as “Ron,” who is the guy Madison is into. Still, the montage of character disguises Gary takes on is great fun.

Hit Man on the whole is just a fun hang, an impressive achievement for a film in which little more than talking and plotting actually takes place onscreen. I suppose we could argue that’s what makes this perfect for a streamer release—there are no special effects and no action set pieces to make anyone insist it should be seen on the big screen. I would counter that there’s something to be said for seeing a fun movie of any sort with an audience, where there can be a sense of collective enjoyment. On the other hand, no theatrical release would have the breadth of reach that Netflix now does, and it does make me happy to think how many people will see, and likely enjoy, this movie.

This is the most action you’ll see in this movie—but it’s still really fun I swear!

Overall: B+

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

As 21st-century noirs go, Love Lies Bleeding is pretty great—until it takes an inexplicably wild swing at the end. I would recommend this film, but I would have to warn you about that at the same time. I won’t spoil what happens, except to say it’s somewhat debatable whether what happens is something we are meant to believe is actually happening, or if it’s a character fantasy. I am not averse to wild swings as a concept, mind you; I just want them to be clear in their purpose or what they represent, which is really lacking here—in spite of several allusions to it earlier in the film, which only make at least that much sense in retrospect. Without the wild turn at the end, I might have felt confident that this could be one of the year’s best movies.

It could be argued that, so far at least, it still is. There’s a lot of far worse stuff out there, after all. It’s just that there’s a sequence of maybe five minutes in this movie that really straddles the line between subversive and bafflingly weird.

All that aside, Love Lies Bleeding is a dark, twisted, violent, lesbian romance thriller that is absolutely worth a look. It’s beautifully shot in New Mexico, starting with an opening shot that we only realize well into the story later was the camera lifting out of a ravine that plays into the plot. And it’s edited with a unique sort of precision, moving the plot forward without any excess bloat while keeping the pace at a steady clip. Best of all, it’s exceptionally well cast, with Kristen Stewart as gym manager Lou, who falls for mysterious body builder Jackie, played actual body builder Katy O'Brian, wandering in from out of town. They both get increasingly mixed up with Lou’s gun range owner and insect enthusiast dad Lou Sr (Ed Harris, with both his telltale bald head and a ring of hair that is nuts-long, and somehow it fits the character.)

We learn early on that Lou doesn’t speak to her father, and one of many refreshing elements of Love Lies Bleeding is that this estrangement has nothing to do with Lou’s sexuality—evidently he couldn’t give half a shit about that. I expected some kind of cathartic confrontation between Lou and her father by the end, but much of the story goes by without giving a sense of any catharsis coming with an earned payoff. This is where director and co-writer Rose Glass’s expert construction of the story comes in, because eventually we get just enough revealed about Lou’s dark history with her father, and we understand perfectly why she doesn’t speak to him.

In the meantime, both Lou and Jackie find themselves suffering the consequences of impulsive, violent mistakes. It should be noted that, in at least two scenes, something pretty gruesome occurs. In the first, we see the same shockingly horrid wound so many times, it begins to feel like Rose Glass is toying with us. She’s certainly having fun with this movie: the comic moments are few and far between, but when they do come, they are pretty hilarious.

And that’s the bottom line with Love Lies Bleeding: this is a postmodern take on film noir, with its own sensibility, in a world that is dark and dangerous and yet you love being witness to it. It takes a brief detour into “Wait, what?” territory that I could have lived without—but then immediately reeled me right back in with one final bit of humor, and then a bit of interpretive dance over the end credits. You kind of have to be there. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there.

I don’t know if you’ll root for them exactly but you’ll still want to know where they’re going.

Overall: B+

THE KILLER

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

The Killer could also have been called The Assassin’s Odyssey. It’s presented in a series of “Chapters,” each in a different location where the title character (Michael Fassbender) makes a kill. Or, as in the case of the deliberately tedious opening sequence, attempts to make a kill. His botched hit makes for the entire premise of the film: he stupidly heads home, stupidly waits an extra night, discovers his girlfriend severely injured in Santo Domingo, and spends the rest of the film hunting down all of those responsible for harming her.

I’m hard pressed to find this plot to be exceptional or memorable, except that, ironically, it is exceptionally and memorably executed. In spite of it veering on being self-satisfied, the editing, and particularly the sound editing are consistently clever. This is a David Fincher film released as a Netflix movie on November 10, after a theatrical release limited enough that I was not able to see it theatrically—and I found myself, watching it at home, rather wishing I had seen it in a theater. The sound editing alone would have made it a much better, certainly more immersive experience.

It’s an objectively fun watch even at home, at least once it gets past that opening scene, hanging out with The Killer in an abandoned WeWork office, waiting out the right time to shoot a mark in a building across the street, and truly overwhelming us with voiceover narration. Voiceover is often pointless and lazy, but it proves to have a point here, coming from an unreliable narrator with a penchant for self-delusion. I was bracing myself for the voiceover to overwhelm the entire film, but mercifully, it’s used comparatively sparingly once that first shot is missed. It’s the inciting incident, and it comes roughly 15 minutes into the film.

The locations of each “Chapter” span the globe and virtually every corner of the States: Paris, Santo Domingo, New Orleans, Florida, New York, Chicago. Each has a vibe distinct from all the others. Only one—Florida—proves to feature a legitimate action sequence, with his mark getting the job on The Killer after he’s crept into his house in the middle of the night. And to be clear, the sequence is tense, and thrilling to watch, with excellent fight choreography.

This is what I like most about The Killer: each change of scenery is given room to breathe, all the while with The Killer not so much getting character development, as gradually revealing his subtle ineptitude. This is a guy who exudes confidence, and then regularly makes preventable mistakes. Much as I lapped up the crackling energy of the Floridian house fight, my favorite of all the hits we follow The Killer on is the one in New York, where he catches up with the one woman on his list. Even when the movie is already quite good, Tilda Swinton manages to elevate anything she’s in. Her sequence is the one with real dialogue, a verbal sparring partner with Michael Fassbender who not only matches his talents but exceeds them.

It seems a lot more common for a film to run out of steam, its second half being the weaker half. The Killer achieves the inverse of this, in fact with each scene being better than the last. That opening scene left me skeptical, but by the time The Killer meets up with “The Lawyer” (Charles Parnell) and fatally ropes in his secretary (Kerry O’Malley), revealing to us some bullshit about empathy in his inner monologue, it becomes clear that The Killer is not your standard hitman movie.

I wasn’t quite as satisfied as I wanted to be by the end of this movie, essentially a series of creatively violent vignettes. So many of the preceding scenes so far exceeded my expectations, though, I’m willing to let it go. Everything builds effectively on what came before it, and the destination being a bit hollow means less when the journey is the point.

You want your sociopaths to be at least competent.

Overall: B+

THE PALE BLUE EYE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

There are so many familiar faces in The Pale Blue Eye, it gets genuinely distracting. There are four Harry Potter series cast alumni, although to be fair Toby Jones was merely the voice of the house elf Dobby in those films; his actual face is familiar from countless other films. The same goes for Simon McBurney, to a lesser degree: he voiced Kreacher in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. The genuinely jarring faces are two who were much larger characters in the Harry Potter universe but are much older and thinner now: Timothy Spall as Superintendent Thayer; and Harry Melling as Cadet Edgar Allen Poe—yes, the Edgar Allan Poe, played by the young man who once played the far heavier Dudley Dursley.

As it happens, Melling is inspired casting. This guy grew into a gaunt, almost crater-eyed young man, perfect for the aesthetic of a 19th-century poet with a taste for the truly morbid. He works well for ambiguity as well: Poe has a flair for the eccentric and dark, but it is well established early on that he is not the villain.

Who is the villain proves to be complex, arguably even convoluted, in The Pale Blue Eye, which is wrtier-director Scott Cooper’s version of a murder mystery. Cooper is the man who previously brought us such varied titles as Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Black Mass and Hostiles, and this body of work evidently granted him a blank check from Netflix: this new film was granted limited release just prior to Christmas, and has otherwise been streaming exclusively on Netflix since January 6.

I rather wish I could have seen it in a theater. The Pale Blue Eye is the kind of movie that moves at a glacial pace but rewards patience, and strikes a compellingly melancholy tone that would far more successfully draw viewers entirely into its world from inside a cinema. As for whether it’s worth watching at home, at best that depends on your interest in the film’s genre, and particularly, its aesthetic.

To be honest, this movie isn’t quite dark enough. It establishes an eerie vibe, but never manages to be unsettling, or even particularly spooky. I dug it when Poe asked a woman out on a date to a cemetery, where she proceeds to have a seizure. More of this please! But really, even with its element of Satan worship—which itself is really quite sanitized—this film is really nothing more than a conventional murder mystery, grafted onto a 19th-century American setting.

That’s not to say I still didn’t find it worth watching, mind you. Christian Bale returns to work with Scott Cooper for the third time—that’s half of his feature films, to date—as the detective summoned to investigate grisly murders involving the removal of corpse’s hearts. He makes a rather unlikely but oddly workable pairing with Melling as Poe, as they team up to suss out clues together.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is underused in a supporting part as a passing love interest of Bale’s. Robert Duvall appears in two scenes as a crusty old academic. And Gillian Anderson is both virtually unrecognizable and iconic as Toby Jones’s tightly wound wife—the wife of the local doctor. The glacial pace picks up about halfway through the run time, which for me at least made it worth the wait. And then, about three quarters of the way through the story, there is a sequence climactic enough to feel like a solid ending to the film. Anyone not already familiar with the runtime would no doubt be surprised to find another half an hour left to go, in which we are treated to the final twist, turning everything we saw on its head.

It’s fun enough, I suppose. Not as thrilling in surprise as I might have liked. But, to its credit, The Pale Blue Eye offered a world I enjoyed inhabiting for a couple of hours.

We’re not on Privet Drive anymore: Christian Bale and Harry Melling have an unlikely meeting of the minds two hundred years in the past.

Overall: B

THE BATMAN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: A-

The Batman is markedly different from the many other iterations of movies, and movie series, featuring DC Comics’ most iconic superhero character. It’s certainly the longest, at 175 minutes. Too long? Perhaps; a good half an hour could have been shaved off this film and it would not feel as though anything were missing. On the other hand, given the style, tone, and pacing of this film, that run time gives it room to breathe. Some might feel that it has lulls, but those people would not understand the modern noir vibe that director Matt Reeves (War for the Planet of the Apes) was going for.

One could also argue that Reeves, who also co-wrote the script with Peter Craig, throws in too many characters, with Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, and John Turturro all playing villains—two of them iconic ones from Batman lore: The Riddler and The Penguin. This is not to mention Jeffrey Wright as Lt. James Gordon; Andy Serkis as Alfred; Peter Sarsgaard as District Attorney Gil Colson; and notably Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle, the cat burglar who will later become (but is never once referred to here as) Catwoman.

As always, I must reiterate that a film should be judged on its own terms. That proves a unique challenge with The Batman, which qualifies as a third reboot of a Batman film franchise in the past 33 years, and the fourth series of films featuring the same Caped Crusader character within a single film universe, when counting Ben Afleck in the “DC Universe” films that largely flopped with both critics and audiences. In other words, The Batman has to do a huge amount of heavily lifting in order to justify its own existence. What reason is there for yet another Batman?

There isn’t one, truthfully, except to keep raking in box office dollars. Only time will tell whether The Batman proves itself on that front; when I was leaving the theater, other patrons were overheard complaining about how long it was. Some people are finding it a “bland” take on Batman, but I wholeheartedly disagree. I fear I may be in the minority here, but if they had to cram this many significant characters into the story, giving it a three-hour run time actually allows The Batman to do what I have long wished more comic book superhero movies would do: prioritize story over spectacle.

And that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of spectacle to be seen here, which is kind of the point: once we get to its several stunning action set pieces, it works as a payoff few other blockbuster movies in recent years have achieved. The Batman does not open with a blowout action extravaganza, but rather a dark and creepy scene in which we the first in a series of murders by the serial killer we learn soon enough is The Riddler (excellently portrayed by the criminally under-seen Paul Dano). When we’re not watching action scenes, The Batman is unusually quiet, its characters uniformly speaking in hushed tones barely above a whisper.

A lot of this film brought to mind the first of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, the underrated Batman Begins (2005). Both films focus on Bruce Wayne’s early days as Batman, and both films feature several characters, some of them less well known, that would qualify as villains. The difference in The Batman is that the title character is still relatively new to Gotham City, yet already established as a known presence. And if I had any complaint about the Nolan films, it’s that he traded in the hyper stylized universe of the Tim Burton films (still the best ones) for a “gritty,” more realistic world much like our own—which doesn’t as effectively present a vigilante dressed as a bat and working with the local police as a plausible idea. It’s clearly a fantasy and should be contextualized in a world that is also fantasy.

Matt Reeves’s Gotham City isn’t anywhere near as stylized as Burton’s was, but it is much more so than Nolan’s was, a bit of a happy medium. Gotham City itself is largely made up in visual renderings, quite well done actually, but still grounded as a city that looks like a city in our world. It’s the film noir cinematography, lighting and coloring that gives The Batman its signature style, very distinct from the many films that came before it. Granted, there have been many Batman films and there have been countless examples of film noir, but Reeves blends them in a way that sets a new kind of mood. It’s a dark mood, with only occasional bits of humor, but it’s a mood that is very much my jam nonetheless. Combine that with an invigorating score by Michael Giacchino, and you’ve got a movie I will happily go see again, its length notwithstanding.

If I had any true complaint about The Batman, it would be that the sexual chemistry between Zoë Kravitz and Robert Pattinson is not well enough explored. In fact, although I must say I liked her better as Catwoman than I did Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Kravitz’s Selina Kyle lacks a certain charisma; there is no bite to her. This is no fault of Kravitz’s, who does exceedingly well with the part she is given; the issue, really is how she is written—much more as a hero than as even a potential villain. And Catwoman works best as a character when she can’t seem to decide which she actually is.

The rest of the characters, however, are well written and very well cast, especially Robert Pattinson as The Batman himself, instantly becoming my second-favorite Batman ever (after the obvious, Michael Keaton). Pattinson is now the sixth actor to play Batman on film since 1989, and he succeeds better than most at the “Batman voice” used while in the bat suit. (Christian Bale, much as I liked him otherwise, really overdid it with his gruff delivery.) Pattinson’s delivery here works well because he speaks fairly low the same way all the characters do, and is hardly distinguishable from how he speaks as just Bruce Wayne.

I want to tell you that I found The Batman thrilling, but for the fact that so much of it is quite subdued in its tone and pacing. What I can say is this: it works. It works better than it even deserves to, perhaps. And it spends just the right amount of time slowly building toward its multiple genuine thrills, particularly a beautifully shot car chase with The Penguin (the impressive makeup for which renders Colin Farrell all but unrecognizable), and a climactic sequence in which a flooding Gotham is taken under siege. It took me a few minutes at the start to decide whether I was going to like The Batman, but then it settled into its noir tone, and I was into it. Then it moved toward its set pieces in an unusually organic way, and I found myself thinking, I love this movie. I can feel that way about it while acknowledging it’s not exactly a masterwork, nor is it even the best Batman movie ever made. But it’s a movie that delivers on its promise, and meets the moment.

Woman! Cat! Why can’t you be naughtier!

Overall: B+

KIMI

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Here we are with Steven Soderbergh again, offering his fourth straight-to-streaming film in as many years. Okay, they weren’t quite all straight-to-streaming, although they’re certainly trending that way: The Laundromat was streaming less than a month after a brief theatrical release in late September 2019; Let Them All Talk was released straight to HBO Max in December 2020; No Sudden Move was released on HBO Max in July 2021; and now we’ve got Kimi, also on HBO Max as of yesterday (February 11). It would be tempting to say Soderbergh is trending this way due to the rippling effects of the pandemic on the film industry—except that the pandemic only accelerated industry changes that began well before it, and considering that 2019 streaming release, it would seem Soderbergh saw the writing on the wall well before any of us had any idea Covid was coming. One wonders whether he’ll make movies for theaters ever again. His next project is Magic Mike’s Last Dance, so, who knows?

Whatever the case, this guy sure as shit keeps busy. He clearly isn’t obsessed with making “great cinema,” either, opting instead for steady work making competent offerings on an annual basis. He just likes making movies.

And, to his credit, he’s capable of adapting. In the case of Kimi, he has finally made a movie that directly acknowledges the pandemic, with its central character, Angela (Zoë Kravitz), being an agoraphobic tech worker who works from home, having had made some progress but noting that the pandemic cause a relapse of sorts. She has an ongoing, very socially distanced relationship with a man in the building across the street (Byron Bowers)—having established a connection during lockdown—as well as a mysterious man on another floor we regularly see looking her way. His very existence in the movie means he will become a key figure in the plot eventually, and when that inevitably happens, it’s in an unexpected way.

A bit of fun for the locals where I live: Kimi is set in Seattle. Interiors mostly shot in Los Angeles, but there are plenty of exterior scenes—especially once Angela is given no choice but to leave her apartment. I got taken out of the story momentarily when Angela takes a light rail train from International District Station to an office building by the grain silos on the waterfront. Light rail doesn’t go there! Of course, no one outside of Seattle will know that or care. And it was still a minor thrill to see Sound Transit get such prominent, onscreen product placement.

Anyway, you might be wondering who the hell Kimi is. It’s more of a what, actually: it’s a virtual assistant, like Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Siri. Angela works the error logs of voice commands that didn’t work and resolves or corrects them, and then runs across one which sounds as though a murder may have been recorded. Angela looks into it, and peril ensues.

Clearly Kimi shares a lot of its DNA with Alfred Kitchcock’s Rear Window, but it’s just different enough for that not to be to its detriment. The virtual assistant element is a nice twist for the modern age, and Angela’s relapse into agoraphobia provides a logical context wherein the pandemic also exists. Kimi was filmed in the spring of 2021, just after the peak of vaccination drives, when we were headed into a brief period of relaxed mitigation measures. This allows the production to feature characters here and there with masks on, but most of the time people are going around maskless. There’s one scene in downtown Seattle that is unusually crowded, but whatever, it’s a movie. I enjoyed spying Seattle landmarks and locations in these scenes.

One of the bigger surprises is Derek DelGaudio, previously seen as the jaw dropping illusionist in last year’s Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself (that one streaming on Hulu), as Kimi’s villain. He actually only gets a few scenes, and anyone carrying a threat or intent of violence would qualify as his henchman. DelGaudio plays Bradley Hasling, the creator of the Kimi virtual assistant. The well constructed script draws connections between all these characters that, while they are contrivances, are also the hallmarks of effective storytelling. Kimi starts off a bit slow, much of the story confined to Angela’s apartment. But, the world broadens a bit when her need to report what she heard on the recording forces her decision to leave home, and then for the last third or so of the film, things get much more exciting as the action and suspense ramps up.

There’s also a sprinkling of humorous moments here and there that are a nice touch. Kimi frankly feels a little like a movie made for streaming rathe than theatrical release, but it serves its purpose. It’s a mid-level Soderbergh offering, and at a cool 89 minutes in length, it makes for a perfectly good diversion at home over the weekend.

Check it out, Zoë Kravitz at a Seattle bus stop!

Overall: B

COPSHOP

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I can’t help but wonder, is Copshop another movie that’s the product of the pandemic? The cast may not be especially small—there are 23 credited parts—but the setting is still characteristically limited: probably 80% or more of the movie takes place at a rural Nevada police station (hence the title). I would guess that at least a third of the movie features only the three leads: Val (Alexis Louder), the cop looking after two criminals in the jail downstairs: Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo), the man on the run from Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), the man hired to kill him. Several scenes feature just the three of them, bantering in the jail, Murretto and Viddick in separate cells.

The rest of the cast, ultimately, ultimately serves to up the body count, which is quite high in this film. There’s a lot of gun fights, and a lot of relatively multidimensional characters we’ve spent some time getting to know get dispatched unceremoniously. Given the action-crime genre, I have mixed feelings about this. Director Joe Carnahan is offering a quasi-stylized movie clearly meant to be more fun than gritty, in which case, why bum us out like that? On the other hand, it could be seen as a refreshing change of approach: these people may be characters, but their lives mean something. Something tells me, though, that Carnahan wasn’t thinking too much about that.

It’s not that big a deal, anyway; I found myself having a good time with this movie regardless. In fact, I never did watch a trailer to this movie before seeing it, and only went to see it based on relatively good reviews and a synopsis that made it sound more dramatic than action-packed. As a result, this movie was a pleasant surprise, and exceeded my expectations.

Granted, there is no question that Carnahan is emulating far better directors here, like Quentin Tarantino or Edgar Wright. Or even Shane Black, whose 2016 film The Nice Guys is vaguely similar in tone but lands its humor with far greater success.

In the moment, though, Copshop suffices, and I did enjoy the supporting turn by Toby Huss as Anthony, the unhinged rival assassin who shows up and ultimately wreaks all the havoc that makes this movie as entertaining as it is. As for Gerard Butler, this is the kind of low-rent crime thriller he’s basically typecast to be a part of these days, his very screen presence is generic, and the character of Viddick manages more than one implausible plot twist that made me wonder if he moonlights as an illusionist.

Butler aside, it’s the casting of Copshop that elevates the material at least a little bit, especially Alexis Louder as the unusual choice of a Black woman as the hero in a film of this type. There’s a lot of genuine gun loving in this movie, of course, but that just goes with the territory here. Part of the fun is the confined setting at the police station for the vast majority of the film, much of it with Val, Murretto and Viddick locked behind the bulletproof door to. the jail while Anthony, cracking weird jokes—and Copshop is best when it gets weird, which it honestly doesn’t do enough—as he tries to get in after them all.

Copshop could have benefitted from some polishing, but its minor messiness, even when it gets a little hackneyed at times, is part of its charm. I wouldn’t say anyone should rush out. to theaters to see it, but I still found it well worth my time.

Val is a gunslinging badass,

Overall: B

NO SUDDEN MOVE

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

What exactly defines a “noir,” anyway? I’ll freely admit I could be off base here, but when I think film noir I think 1940s, black and white, crime drama, maybe mystery. Lots of stark imagery, lots of shadows. I may have a narrow idea of what qualifies for the genre. I have long thought of Blade Runner as “future noir” because of its blend of crime drama and clear 1940s aesthetic influences, even though it was set decades into the future.

Hmm. “A genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.” Okay, fine. No Sudden Move definitely fits the bill.

Of course, so could countless other crime dramas, particularly ones—as this one does—that double as a period piece. What distinguishes No Sudden Move as a “noir film” as opposed to simply a crime drama that happens to be set in 1950s Detroit?

The literal French translation is black film. A curious point, given the story and setting here, Detroit at the height of its prominence in America, when it had 1.8 million people and was the fifth-largest city in the United States (behind, at the time, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles); the city ranks 14th today, having declined in population by nearly 64% over the past seventy years. Furthermore, several of the characters are Black, with Don Cheadle getting top billing. There’s something you don’t see in “classic noir,” but it certainly gives new meaning to the idea of film noir.

The rest of the principal cast is either Black or white, although one of them is Latino: Benicio del Toro, who gets second billing. He and Cheadle play Ronald and Curt, respectively, who are hired along with the young white guy Charlie (Kieran Culkin) to “babysit” a family at their house while the dad (David Harbour) is escorted to the office of his boss (Hugh Maguire) to steal an incriminating document about the automobile industry in his safe.

It’s quite clear that a lot of actors have great respect or Steven Soderbergh as a director, and are either eager or happy to take part in often large ensemble casts for his projects, regardless of the medium. Lately Soderbergh is using HBO as the conduit for his output, most recently with Let Them All Talk, starring Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen and Diane Wiest as old friends on a cruise. That movie and this one could not be more different, except that they serve as the latest example of how prolific and eclectic Soderbergh is and has long been. Plus—and this is key—they are the kinds of movies that get little support for major studio releases in movie theaters anymore, and so they get released direct to streaming.

This is almost certainly less lucrative for Soderbergh, but all evidence points to his being more creatively fulfilled. And when it comes to No Sudden Move, a whole lot of name actors seem to agree, with the cast also including the likes of Brendan Frasher (almost unrecognizable), John Hamm, Ray Liotta, Matt Damon, and even Noah Jupe as David Harbour’s teenage son.

If I had any particular criticism of this film, it would be that, as is typical of films of this type, the women aren’t given enough to do. A fair number of women get speaking parts, and No Sudden Move at the very least passes the Bechdel Test, and a key twist near the end involves one of the women and is impossible to see coming—all of which I appreciate. None of this changes the fact that every woman onscreen, including even Amy Seimetz as David Harbour’s wife, are fundamentally secondary not just to the plot, but to all of the men involved in it. I want to see a crime noir that is “modernized” in a way that gives women equal footing in the way the plot unfolds, rather than them just being angry or resentful about their husbands’ behaviors and personal associations.

That said, we take what we can get, and among the men at least, this is a hearteningly diverse cast. And the script, by Ed Solomon (Men In Black), brings all these characters together in uniquely satisfying ways. That “babysitting” job of the aforementioned family goes sideways very early on, and every turn that follows is just unpredictable enough to be not overdone, and the story remains consistently compelling from there to the end. When it comes to crime dramas, No Sudden Moves holds up to the tenets of the genre.

These two experience a lot of close calls.

Overall: B+