Iro's Film Diary

I enjoyed the film a great deal but still can see where you are coming from on almost all your points. The plot is heavy and seems to get suspended at a point. Like you said this alienates casual movie goers and also makes you wonder where a this is headed. Also makes you wonder if Snyder even knows.

I think two things probably made me enjoy this film more than most. Batman has been my favorite superhero since the Burton films. So I am always happier watching comic films when he is involved. Secondly, I liked the Eisenberg scene chewing you decried. I love my villains a little on the over the top crazy side. I think he did it well. I will be thinking about that jolly rancher for a long while.

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Letterboxd

I think "Batman vs. Superman" had more depth than most superhero flicks. Also it was aesthetically nice or even beautiful at times.

You're not talking about Desert Batman are you?

Aw yeah.

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Top 100 Action Movie Countdown (2015): List | Thread
"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

It's interesting to see people who actually do defend Zack Snyder as some kind of underrated visionary who not only knows to how to craft striking visuals but also have them mean something in a way that people are liable to miss because they have their own rigid expectations of what his movies should be like. I can respect the decision to actually try to offer a serious deconstruction but it's not strong enough to support the film.

Also, I usually like scenery-chewing villains but context is important. In a different thread, I compared him against Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending and John Travolta in Battlefield Earth because of the whole "giggling megalomaniac" factor, but those particularly films still come across as generally goofy affairs (intentionally or not), thus allowing their hammy villains to not only feel like part of the film but also come across as highlights. In a film as overly serious as BvS, Eisenberg's theatrics are just too much at odds with the rest of the film's vibe. If the film had actually been a more light-hearted affair, I could see him working, but in this context his every scene feels like an intrusion.

What other superhero flicks do you consider to have equal or greater depth, by the way?

I am. Shame it got immediately followed up with one goofy-looking fake-out involving the Flash because that did ruin things a bit. Am I to assume that you are asking out of skepticism?

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

"Unbreakable" (2000)
"The Dark Knight" (2008)
"Watchmen" (2009)
and now "Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016)

Yeah. Batman looks bizarre and he's completely breaking tradition by using guns in a fight that feels totally unimaginative by comparison to the later scene in which he beats up those thugs in a warehouse.

*laughs* No friggen' way.

#100 - Excalibur
John Boorman, 1981



Based on the legend of King Arthur.

I put Excalibur into my top 50 back in 2013 and I think this might be the first time I've revisited it since then. I still like it quite a lot, but on this viewing it seemed just a little too long and silly at some points. Good actors like Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren throw performers like Nigel Terry or Nicholas Clay into some extremely sharp relief and the extremely tedious infidelity sub-plot is easily the weakest part of the movie. However, these are still minor quibbles as Boorman is able to temper the fantastic weirdness he showed in Zardoz by linking it to a great myth about the death of legend (which now strikes me as a metaphor for the demise of the auteur system given how the film's release came after the New Hollywood era had effectively come to an end) and the visuals are still incredibly lush. Having swords and armour reflect neon-green light in a forest may not make the most sense but who cares? The general aesthetic of Excalibur is an astoundingly remarkable one and more than compensates for any narrative goofiness that may eventuate, plus it's got a masterful command of music that involves everything from uneasy droning to the triumphant strains of "O Fortuna". This doesn't feel like Top 50 material anymore, but I still consider it a remarkable piece of work that blends the medieval epic with colourful fantasy to strong effect.

#101 - The Quick and the Dead
Sam Raimi, 1995



A female gunslinger rides into a frontier town that is holding a tournament where participants must beat each other in quick-draw contests.

Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi directs a Western that has a vaguely horror-like plot about people entering into a dangerous game and getting eliminated in increasingly violent manners, all played out by a variety of recognisable faces who all look very at home on a dusty Main Street. However, his usual visual flourishes are toned down a bit in favour of a Western pastiche that features a number of recognisable tropes or call-backs to older films, and while this is kind of fun to keep an eye out for it doesn't say too much about the strength of the film's actual story. Not even having Sharon Stone lead the film as a gunslinger who is constantly fending off a variety of unpleasant men with little more than a one-liner or a swift spot of gun-play is enough to really grant the film enough personality to truly work in its own right (though it is a nice touch, especially given her tense interplay with Russell Crowe's anguished preacher). The Quick and the Dead boasts a good cast and a solid premise that's at least given a somewhat vibrant execution by Raimi, but the final film never feels anywhere near as fun as it should.

#102 - Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle, 2008



A young lower-class man becomes a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and is suspected of cheating.

First time re-watching this since it was in theatres and, while I thought it was good then, now it just feels a bit...whatever. Though I can respect Boyle's ambitious technical style to an extent as it indulges thick orange hues and countless Dutch angles, they do feel like they're papering over one very thin story that is only barely distinguished by its Indian setting. This leads to some good points - Anil Kapoor proves an appropriately affable presence as the show's host, for example - but doesn't do the film too many favours. Not even the vibrancy provided by the visuals or soundtrack is enough to really make this fundamentally pedestrian story stand out too much, but I guess it doesn't actively make me hate it.

#103 - Rain Man
Barry Levinson, 1988



A slick car dealer learns that he has an autistic brother who is set to inherit millions of dollars from their late father so the pair end up taking a road trip.

Original review posted here.

#104 - Sucker Punch
Zack Snyder, 2011



When a young woman is committed to a mental institution, she launches an elaborate escape plan with a group of fellow patients.

While most of Zack Snyder's films have been based on other people's stories, Sucker Punch marks the first instance of him directing a film based on a story he himself created. The story concerns a young mental patient (Emily Browning) whose response to being wrongfully committed to a sinister-looking asylum is to delve into a multi-layered fantasy where she re-imagines the asylum as a high-end burlesque parlour. The different steps of her escape plan play out as a series of fantastic action scenes where she and her fellow patients fight their way through a variety of enemies. Sucker Punch may just be the purest distillation of Snyder's cinematic sensibilities, but that really doesn't make for an enjoyable film. The convoluted yet fundamentally flimsy premise seems like it'll promise an inventive variation on what could have been a rather rote psychological thriller, but it never truly pans out. Despite the set-up involving imaginary worlds allowing for a variety of potentially creative dreamscapes on which the action can take place, the creativity is limited to a series of lifeless genre pastiches that are all captured with the sort of washed-out palette Snyder favoured in 300. Any visual wonder is subsequently buried in the murk and there is a general lack of excitement or tension that stems from the sequences being placed at a remove from Browning's reality. Throw in an extremely muddled approach to the concept of female empowerment and some rather mediocre covers of great songs to get a tonal mishmash that barely functions as either semi-nuanced psychodrama or off-the-wall action extravaganza.

#105 - Safety Not Guaranteed
Colin Trevorrow, 2012



A magazine contributor takes a couple of interns with him in order to write an article based on a classified ad posted by an alleged time-traveller.

Can you really spin a feature-length movie out of an Internet meme? Safety Not Guaranteed certainly gives it a shot by taking a classified ad about time travel and using it as the springboard for one extremely pedestrian indie comedy as a trio of misfits head off in search of the author of the ad. Even though the film barely reaches the eighty-minute mark, it never seems to offer too much of substance. Sure, one can read it as a sardonic deconstruction of ironic humour (the premise comes about because of Jake Johnson's writer search for funny material to write about for a magazine) and how it's better to find something real to hang onto - even if is something as fundamentally impossible as the ability to travel through time - but such a thesis is given a very superficial treatment here amid a bunch of understated performances and lapses into bittersweet whimsy.

#106 - Captain Ron
Thom Eberhardt, 1992



A middle-class suburban family inherits an old sailboat but must hire an eccentric boat captain to sail it back home.

Today on "I'll watch Kurt Russell in anything", I give you Captain Ron, a film where a harried family man (Martin Short) with a soul-crushing office job leaps at the chance to take his dysfunctional family with him in order to claim a sailboat that he has recently inherited. This naturally involves hiring the eponymous captain (Russell) to sail the boat for them, but he proves to be quite the handful as he leads them through a variety of wacky adventures. While Russell gets by on raw charisma even as he plays one incredibly wacked-out buffoon who is just as likely to hinder Short as he is to help him, he can only do so much within the confines of this dire excuse for a family-friendly comedy. While Captain Ron may not have the same wholly off-putting vibe as Overboard, it doesn't fare much better due to its sub-Vacation plotting and thoroughly underwhelming attempts at humour (physical and otherwise).

#107 - Weird Science
John Hughes, 1985



A pair of nerdy high-schoolers use a computer in order to create their dream woman.

It's so weird to me that John Hughes made both this and The Breakfast Club in the same year. These films feel like the work of two completely different filmmakers, and I do not mean that in a good way. Weird Science may acknowledge how twisted and scientifically impossible its Frankensteinian premise is from time to time but it hardly justifies it in a way that comes across as anything more than hollow wish-fulfillment for its geeky protagonists. Though I do like how unapologetically '80s the effects work tends to feel (especially during the sequences where Kelly LeBrock's synthetic woman is created), that's about as far as the appeal goes when the film can't even throw in any good jokes. Seeing a drunken Anthony Michael Hall jive-talking around a group of tough-looking black guys is one thing, but the extremely trite fable involving him and Ilan Mitchell-Smith building self-confidence to be cool and win over some female classmates through LeBrock's magical machinations feels extremely unearned and doesn't even guarantee any laughs in the process. Some nice little touches here and there such as Bill Paxton playing Mitchell-Smith's meathead brother or Vernon Wells showing up in his Road Warrior gear (or even a Killing Joke song being on the soundtrack) do little to redeem the film - but on the plus side, it's still better than Sixteen Candles.

And here I thought that was an Escape From L.A. avatar.

Which was previously Return to Oz, which was afterwards DMC: Devil May Cry.

I love Weird Science, although I only know seeing it at the movies for the first time at 14 with a bunch of friends.

No, I just figured that it'd make for a good April Fool's gag to swap it with the only other Russell character to wear a mullet and eye-patch. Still, an Escape From L.A. avatar wouldn't be a bad idea...

My main point of reference would be TimeSplitters, if only because of the fact that they both involve the main character jumping through a series of chronologically different worlds and fighting various twisted enemies (one segment even involves the group trying to acquire special crystals, which was the end goal of every level in TimeSplitters 2).

Man, I miss TimeSplitters.

Care to elaborate?

That might do it, yeah. Wouldn't be surprised if I still found it pretty bad even at 14.

I found it pretty bad at 12, let alone 14.

I can't remember if I ever managed to make it through Captain Ron or not, but I feel as if I preferred Overboard. Exactly.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Yeah, I like that one better.

Both Return to Oz and DMC feature a main character in a repressive mental hospital who's hallucinating (maybe?) the events of the story.

Also, I tried Time Splitters: Future Perfect. It probably would've been really cool back in the day, but I've played better shooters so I wasn't impressed. Sadly, given the regression of video games today, the different modes and options offered by Time Splitters looks groundbreaking by comparison. Splitscreen!? Perish the thought!

Well, it just reminds me of all that Nicki Minaj crap that takes the most pitiful rationalization possible and then spreads it around as some sort of feminist gospel. It's bad enough when regular viewers get this impression, but I think it's worse when the creators think it themselves.

Arguably worse though, is when critics latch on to obvious low-hanging fruit like this, characterize it as the worst of it's kind, and then promptly ignore significantly more offensive material or fail to recognize true exceptions to the rule.

It's a tough call, to be sure.

I'd like to know what you consider to be better shooters. In any case, TimeSplitters more than made up for any technical shortcomings on the basis of sheer creativity alone, which is why I'm sad that there hasn't been (or probably will be) any games in the decade-plus since Future Perfect's release. That's why I have a soft spot for it while other FPS franchises like Halo or Call of Duty tend to inspire indifference.

Eh, I can see a better case being made for Nicki Minaj than for Sucker Punch. There are plenty of elements to Minaj's background and output that suggest that her approach to feminism is actually for real (if not necessarily perfect, as is exemplified by something like "Stupid Hoe"). "Anaconda" does seem like a banal sex jam on the surface, but I can appreciate how it does turn the male gaze on its head a bit by not only sampling "Baby Got Back" but also by involving the female viewpoint character actually shrugging off past male conquests in a manner that works to challenge attitudes surrounding sex and gender. I don't contend that it's perfect, but I don't think its defenders automatically deserve to be written off as pitiful rationalisations.

This is another instance where you're going to need to provide specific examples of what you're talking about when you mention "more offensive material" or "true exceptions". Sucker Punch isn't automatically low-hanging fruit either - it's a decidedly divisive film that still has its defenders who will actually argue in favour of the film. "Worst of its kind" sounds like an exaggeration that I didn't really get from Sarkeesian's video - she's addressing it as a singular entity and pointing out how it does indulge a lot of outwardly disagreeable tropes such as Strong Female Characters that more than overshadow any potentially genuine feminist connotations (as were apparently intended by Snyder and co.). I think that's why Sucker Punch draws so much ire - because its attempts to act like it's progressive ring seriously hollow and open the film up to even more criticism than if it was just blatantly regressive.