Two Weeks of Movie Nights
CGI nonsense, more Holmes, and dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight
The new academic year has been crushing me with work, and on top of that my neck is acting up a bit, so I’ve been trying to stay off the computer as much as possible. But we’re still watching movies, so here’s the last couple of weeks of cinema with the sillyheads:
Thor: Love and Thunder:
Back before this was released, I had some hope that it might be better than the usual Marvel fare, because Ragnarok was different enough to be interesting. There’s just a whooooole lot of CGI nonsense here, though. Christian Bale is really going for it as the creepy villain, which is kind of fun, but beyond that, meh.
Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows:
A re-watch for me, first time for The Pip. Downey and Law remain good fun as Holmes and Watson, and Jared Harris’s Moriarty is also enjoyable. Also very Guy Ritchie with all the changes of film speed and whatnot. Fun movie.
Batman (1989):
The Pip didn’t have a strong preference this Friday, so we opted to just scroll recommendations on a streamer, and it had been a while sinc eI looked at what HBO Max had on offer. They had “Batman Movies” as a category, which I clicked on expecting the Nolan films, and instead found the Tim Burton/ Michael Keaton/ Jack Nicholson OG Batman from my high school years.
I can’t really be entirely rational about this movie, because it was such a phenomenon at a relatively impressionable age. Nicholson’s Joker remains absolutely iconic, and Keaton is fascinatingly weird as Bruce Wayne. Some of the setpieces haven’t aged especially well, but it was fun to revisit.
Batman Returns:
As I said on social media, this is one of the most Tim Burton-y movies that ever Tim Burton-ed its way onto multiplex screens. All the weird Gothic flourishes of the first one are turned up to 11, and Christopher Walken dressed like a Dr. Seuss character to play evil tycoon Max Shreck is only about the fourth weirdest performance in this movie.
This was not super well received back in the day, but has been re-evaluated to some degree more recently. I was extremely tired last night, though, and actually dozed off for a stretch at the end, which kind of puts me in the retrograde “not especially well received” camp.
And that’s what we’ve been watching recently. I haven’t had to do any exercise biking, so my backlog of streaming shows I ought to watch more of continues to grow. But, like the man said, Winter is Coming… If you want to see what happens when it arrives, here’s a button:
And if you want to berate me for not being energized by the brilliance of Tim Burton’s unique vision, the comments will be open: