Film Review: “The Batman” Is Again Overshadowed by a Cat

The Batman (c) Warner Bros

Film:  The Batman
In Cinemas 

Premise: Two years into his young crime fighting (or as he likes to call it “VENGEANCE!!”) career, The Batman (emphasis on the “The”) faces his biggest mystery yet. People elected or hired to protect Gotham City are ending up gruesomely killed, and always with a greeting card for The Batman with a riddle (could the villain be the Hallmark Killer? No spoilers here). The only one who trusts The Batman (played with more growl than bite by Robert Pattinson) is Police Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). His search for the killer leads to many suspects, including shady bar owner Oswald Cobblepot (Colin Farrell), best known as The Penguin (emphasis on the Jared Leto-style prosthetics, which should be a warning sign that handsome Hollywood Stars are taking jobs away from real Italian actors who could play offensive Italian stereotypes); mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro); amateur cat burglar Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), as well as a host of other seedy Gotham City types played by the likes of Peter Sarsgaard (whose real-life wife was a previous Batman damsel) and Paul Dano. Also making what amounts to a cameo appearance is Bruce Wayne (played with a throwback Edward Cullen emo veneer by Pattinson), the young, bang-challenged, orphan billionaire who has essentially been in hiding since his parents’ deaths with his trusty butler Alfred (Andy Serkis). 

Oscar Nominees’ Other Performances

The Power of the Dog (c) Netflix / Paranorman (c) Laika

Here's a guide to where you can stream all the Oscar Performance and Directing nominees as well as a suggestion to other performances and movies from that actor or director.   Remember, the Oscars will air on Sunday, March 27.

Reviews: Three Victims Try to Escape a Horror Not of Their Making in “Great Freedom,” “Fresh” and “No Exit”

Great Freedom (c) Mubi

Reviews:  Great Freedom, Fresh, No Exit

Film: Great Freedom 
In Cinemas 

It is a stretch to call Sebastian Meise’s “Great Freedom” a horror movie, but ask Hans (a terrific Frans Rogowski), who was thrown in a concentration camp during World War II for being gay (per the Paragraph 175 law), and when liberated was thrown in jail to serve the rest of his sentence. “Great Freedom” won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2021 and was Austria’s submission for Oscar’s Best International Feature – it made the shortlist but didn’t get nominated. Based on the synopsis alone, I really didn’t want to see another gay prison drama, but the movie is so much more. It jumps between three periods: 1945, when Hans first arrives in prison and shares a cell with the angry and very straight Viktor (Georg Friedrich); 1957, when they meet again with some hostility; and 1968, as older men who have been through way too much. The evolution of their relationship is at the heart of this film, which is both a story of survival and the pains of living in a homophobic society. “Great Freedom” goes through the usual prison tropes of violence and solitary confinement, but it is more interested in the sad life of Hans than addressing prison atrocities. Rogowski’s heartbreaking performance will stay with you long after the film is over. 

Review: Excellent "After Yang" Explores the Memories of an Absent Brother

After Yang (c) A24 / Showtime

Film: After Yang 
In Cinemas and Showtime 

Premise: Two questions. First, who is Yang (Justin H. Min)? That’s the easy one. He’s the android brother purchased for Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrwidajazu), the adopted Chinese daughter of Jake and Kyra (Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith) to teach her Chinese culture. The second, much more difficult question: Who was Yang? When Yang stops working, the couple discovers that fixing him is going to be a difficult task and will probably be very expensive, if they can find a way to do it. Of course, this is made more difficult because their daughter has grown up with this AI as if he was her brother and she is not easily assuaged by grown-up logic. A small subplot regarding this futuristic society is if these androids are actually spying on the families they are placed with. So, when Jake is asked to watch Yang’s stored memories to see if this is the case (in 15 seconds blasts), he realizes he may not have known how complex and inquisitive Yang really was. 

Reviews: "English" and "The Daughter-in-Law" Play with Culture and Language while "Hollywood/Ukraine" is Old-Fashioned fun.

Reviews: English, The Daughter-in-Law, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine 

English (c) Ahron R. Foster

Theater: English 
At Atlantic Theater Company with Roundabout Theatre 

In Sanaz Toossi’s chamber play “English,” the drama is evident to anyone who has gone through what four of the five characters are trying to do: learn a foreign language. Unfortunately, like all good playwrights, Tossi tries to create a drama within this world for the audience, and it does feel like the most artificial part of the proceedings. The class in question takes place in Iran, in the city Karaj in 2008, and the four students are taking an Advanced English class to take the TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Among the students are a young girl (Ava Lalezarzadeh), who feels English might be helpful down the line; a scientist (Tala Ashe) hoping to do research in Australia; Roya (Pooya Mohseni), a grandmother hoping to be proficient enough to talk to her Canadian grandchild; and the lone male, Omid (Hadi Tabbal), who seems to speak English remarkably well. His presence in the class is the mystery and drama that, of no fault of Tabbal, is the most extraneous and least believable in a production that is nothing but honest yearnings of a group whose fate is tied to their success. Their teacher is Marjan (Marjan Neshat), who lived in England for 12 years and insists that the only way to learn English is to only speak English in her class. Tossi uses the convention that when the characters are speaking English, it’s broken, but when they speak Farsi, it’s fluent English. The acting is the best thing about the production, even if Mohseni, who is otherwise wonderful, seems a bit young to be a grandmother. Seeing these characters in and out of the classroom setting is so believable and relatable that even with the unnecessary storyline, I felt immersed enough to learn about a culture that is as foreign to me as English is to the students.