The Batman Review - Cinemassacre

i just saw the batman now has this holed up against other batman films well i'll tell you what i think but first a word from this video sponsor the world after is a full motion video point-and-click adventure game from burning sunset about a man trying to uncover the truth behind his strange nightmares and the secrets surrounding the village he's staying in explore 32 different environments talk to locals and solve puzzles to find the truth behind the strange occurrences surrounding the village set during a pandemic lockdown in france you play as vincent a writer that fled the big city to work on his new book in the countryside while checking out an old castle vincent discovers a way to change night into day only to have a terrifying monster the night watcher begin chasing him starring jean-claude dreyfus of lost city of children fame the world after combines modern cinematography with old school point-and-click adventure mechanics to bring an all-new gaming experience unlock eleven secret logs three different endings and an entire visual novel too all in full motion video the world after play it now available on steam so the batman i'll only do one spoiler at the very very end and it's just because i wanted to bring up a little little piece of trivia just a little observation and i'll give a spoiler warning before that happens but to start off with the opinion well i'm just gonna say it right out i think this is the best overall batman film ever yeah now i think the two burden films will always be the closest to my heart and will always be my personal favorites probably but this one objectively hits all the right notes that atmosphere and tone is spot-on it's exactly what i was hoping for i'm always a fan of creating mood so that's what i liked best about it it embraces the film noir style beginning with the look of gotham city dark rainy streets lit with neon signs there's piles of trash and i must emphasize it rains a lot and it's always nighttime the city itself becomes a character people are shot with low key lighting sometimes there's dim or silhouetted shots it has just enough of a stylized look to make you feel like you're looking at the pages of a comic book come to life but grounded in reality at the same time sometimes there's out of focus shots where you can't tell what you're seeing but it doesn't feel annoying it feels like you're being disoriented for the right reasons there's shots where something important is hiding in an obscure area of the frame so your eyes are always exploring as your mind takes on an active part investigating i also like how the music has this ambient almost horror movie tone to it keeping you on edge especially with the traps set forth by the villain it even feels like a saw movie at times so with the dark combination of visuals and sounds it always feels tense and never lets up to me it feels like the right balance between the nolan films and the burden films it borrows from the strengths of each without repeating any of their weaknesses i never feel like i'm being hammered with pretentious dialogue in the way the nolan films do nor does it have any of the awkward cheesiness of the burden films and just to be clear i like all those movies but this is the best of all worlds director matt reeves has a great sense of pace i really love the planet of the apes sequels he directed especially war for the planet of the apes i like how it reboots batman without having to start over if you know what i mean we never have to see a flashback showing bruce wayne's parents being murdered it just starts up and hits the ground running i do feel like there might have been a missed opportunity to connect it with the film joker which i loved by the way i thought it was a fascinating and terrifying character study of a psychopath again much like a horror film i think with minor adjustments to the timeline you could almost think of the batman as a soft sequel or taking place in the same world as a batman film i think it gives you just about everything you could ask for you want to see batman apprehending a criminal in some you know exhilarating chase and the moment he catches his prey you get that [ __ ] yeah feeling you want to see some intimidating shots of batman staring somebody down or silhouetted with his cape fluttering or emerging from a fiery background yeah you get all that kind of stuff i'm vengeance you want to see him meet his match with some insanely clever villain mastermind you want to see his mission become personal as he goes on he's not just fighting for gotham he's fighting for himself too you get everything i also like how it goes back to the detective aspect of the original comics you know detective comics even the title the batman was used in the original stories so batman uses his crime solving skills a lot more this time it's also in line with the crime thriller movies of the 40s all you need to do is swap out his bat suit for a trench coat and fedora hat and put a cigarette in his mouth if you watch a movie like the big sleep for example you see bogart go from scene to scene asking people questions and investigating while the plot just thickens and keeps getting more complicated but the plot isn't what's important it's the character's journey and the cynical grim film noir style those detective film sensibilities in the 40s have always been right in tune with batman and this film remembers that it also uses a lot of voice over which is in line with the comic book narrations and the film noir movies it also draws from later comics like the long halloween or the mask of the phantasm the animated film which borrows from the year 2 comic or catwoman selena's big score batman earth 1 with alfred and many more so they combined a lot of stuff to great advantage let's talk about the characters batman played by robert pattinson he's great he masters the art of silent acting the way batman moves around and stares at people or looks inward to himself as he contemplates something it all displays itself in a wonderful way i gotta be honest before today i didn't know who robert pattinson is i've never seen twilight i don't usually look up actors before i see the movie i let the movie speak for itself catwoman played by zoe kravitz was also fantastic she has a major role as a protagonist alongside batman and has her own story you got a lot of cats everything about strikes alfred played by andy circus is also great as always gordon played by jeffrey wright is as excellent as ever as the only guy who trusts batman the penguin played by colin farrell is awesome i was very surprised how well the character was handled they took the approach to make him into a guy with some you know exaggerated features sort of like a dick tracy villain which is from the same era as batman i liked how his mannerisms were very penguin-like without having to look so much like a penguin carmine falcone played by john tatura was an even bigger surprise for me because usually i don't care for the crime lords like in dark knight i only wanted to see the joker and found all the mob characters boring here falcone is so sinister and mesmerizing and at last the main villain which everybody knows the riddler played by paul dano he's excellent i'm so glad they used the riddler because ever since the jim carrey version i was always curious to see what a serious take on the riddler would look like i'm surprised that nolan never wanted to use the character especially since the nolan movies are so much like riddles anyway i won't say too much but i think with this riddler it takes a lot of time before it gets really good overall i really love this movie i gotta be honest there's too many superhero movies to keep up with and i get kind of burned out on the subject but especially after i saw the joker i came to realize yeah i do like superhero movies when they're done with a you know fresh approach i think what it is that i've become tired with is all the uh cg action scenes these days i'm tired of seeing some guy floating in the air shooting lasers at his fingers while surrounded by a literal storm of digital [ __ ] i think batman always appeals to me more because batman doesn't have any superpowers so it's more down to earth and tangible so that's probably why i like batman best i won't say it's a perfect movie i do have some gripes uh one is that it seems batman is fired at so often and it's acceptable that his body armor protects him but how come he's so lucky with all those bullets firing none of them ever hit him in the chin also why don't the bad guys and bad cops just go to where the bat signal is to find it also a better version of the bat cave would have been nice also a lot of the climactic scenes i won't give specifics but i felt they were very uh depressing and anxiety inducing i don't mean to contradict what i said earlier how i like that it has a tense mood but when you see events unfolding that remind you of real trauma in the world it's no longer escapism entertainment so while i like the dark aspects of the batman movies i think maybe next time i'd like it to be a little more i don't know fun and while it does have an optimistic light at the end of the tunnel it's heavy stuff and is kind of a bummer i've already mentioned i thought it was well paced but with that said i do feel somewhere after the two hour mark it starts to feel it should be wrapping up but instead it just keeps on going i don't mean to say it drags but it starts to feel like binging a serialized tv show rather than a feature film with a story that reaches closure within a predictable run time i think we all know this movie's pushing three hours which by all definition is a long movie i think this is an opportunity here to address this trend in the film industry of making every action and superhero movie over two hours this is becoming the norm and i don't think it should be the norm not every movie needs to be ben hur just to be clear some of my favorite films are pushing three hours the good the bad the ugly the great escape and my number one all-time favorite it's a mad mad mad mad world but i think if you're gonna make a movie over two hours you should have a good reason such as lure the rings it's long because it's based on a book and they're trying to fit everything in but it's my opinion that long running times are best suited for historical epics literary adaptations or dramas where you need to spend a lot of time with the characters and see them go through lots of emotional changes the batman is an excellent long movie but it's not excellent because it's long length and quality aren't the same thing and there's no rules but i think long movies should be the exception not the norm besides from a studio's perspective i don't understand what the reason is i can only see them losing money from it it's more expensive to shoot and you can't sell as many tickets because you can't show it as many times in a day anyway check out the movie see what you think so what's next for batman what would you like to see i prefer not to have a sequel but instead another stand-alone film i'm always a fan of seeing batman being explored from a new angle that's what makes the character so great you can have a comedic one like adam west that's all bright and colorful and then go from that to burton who gave us the darker version and then schumacher took kind of a hybrid approach and kind of went back to the camp style batman's one of those characters where you can take all different approaches so i always like changing it up for me what i'd like to see is a batman movie that takes place in the late 30s and 40s like the original comics sure the tech and gadgets would be different but that would be cool to see what batman can create in those times i also think it would be interesting to see it from the gangsters perspectives like it's the first ever appearance of batman they just see this shadowy figure in the alley and it scares the crap out of them it would almost feel like a mystery stalker who's bringing them all to justice i'd also like to see another lego batman that was fun so anyway i have uh one little piece of trivia here which is a spoiler so here we go spoiler alert spoiler alert spoiler alert just a little tiny fact and i don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but it almost made me laugh in a way what does this movie have in common with batman the movie 1966 it's the first batman movie since then to have the riddler catwoman the penguin and the joker

Channel: Cinemassacre

Views: 406,779

Keywords: james rolfe, cinemassacre, batman, the batman, james rolfe batman, avgn batman, avgn the batman, james rolfe review, cinemassacre review

Id: OJxzWApUux8

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2022