Lego Batman Movie review

Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s “The Lego Movie” conceptualized a meta world where many characters from different pop culture entities could collide and collaborate in support of the same comedic context. “The Lego Batman Movie,” takes this premise and explores the world of DC’s Gotham City. Here, the characters are aware that they are in a spoof, and the long-standing comic book lore is only used a basis for something broader, while also taking specific jabs at previous iterations of the caped crusader.

In this blocky, hyper-stylized universe, Batman (Voiced by Will Arnett) is an ego-maniacal loner who saves the city for attention at night, so he can enjoy the privacy to watch rom-coms and eat lobster in his mansion during the day.  His butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) is concerned that he’s walled away his emotions and isn’t reaching out to others for support. Even The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) doesn’t understand why Batman can’t appreciate their unique hero/villain relationship, so he takes it upon himself to prove that he’s Batman’s greatest foe, by releasing the world’s greatest supervillains on the city. This forces the stubborn Bat to save Lego Gotham from certain destruction by collaborating with his newly adopted ward Robin (Michael Cera) and the city’s new Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Roserio Dawson).

Obviously, much of this is supposed to be silly. The humor is tossed off as scenes quickly jump from reference to reference and joke to joke. The speedy pace of the film keeps things from drowning in its own absurdity but it also keeps things rather light and surface-oriented as well. Whereas the first Lego Movie had a statement to make about commercialization and the corporate nature of its own existence, there’s nothing quite as lofty or as subversive attempted in this straight-forward style parody.

Visually, the Lego novelty is used to good effect. The production design is stylish and appealing and many of the action scenes, while sometimes over-crowding the frame and edited too quickly to fully register, are creative and exceptional within the world of family-oriented entertainment.

Director and co-writer Chris McKay comes from the world of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, having directed many episodes of “Moral Orel” and “Robot Chicken.” Though “The Lego Batman Movie” is painted on a much larger canvass, it has the same disposable, premise-oriented frivolity of something like a “Robot Chicken” sketch, especially as characters from “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Jaws” are roped into the final act of the feature for meta-comedic effect.  

The approach here is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Given the sheer volume and variety of jokes, there’s enough laughs to justify the other bits that thud, but this scattershot, writers-room approach occasionally dilutes the overall vision of the project. Nevertheless, there was an attempt to create an actual story-arc with Arnett’s Batman and his adopted family.  Because that arc is never dropped amidst the joke-a-minute riffing and the visually cluttered Lego action sequences, the movie is allowed some amount of sloppiness so long as the story’s foundation can support it, and, for the most part, it does.

Grade: B- 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "The Lego Batman Movie"

Split review

M. Knight Shyamalan’s latest film “Split” combines his love of Hitchcockian thrills and with his predilection for high-concept myth-making and fuses these obsessions in a way that’s surprisingly energetic and captivating. I have to say surprising because since the heights of his career in early 2000 Shyamalan has only recently come off a long losing-streak s. After big budget genre-flops such as “Lady in the Water” and “The Last Airbender” he lost of lot of credibility as a coherent storyteller with both audiences and critics alike. Halving his costs under the pop-horror banner of Blumhouse Productions, it seems that he’s now able to make smaller, more efficient work without the pretenses of prestige. 

James McAvoy is given the spotlight playing a troubled man named Kevin who constantly switches between multiple personalities. After a complicated battle of dominance between the personalities inside of his mind, he kidnaps three teenage girls in the hopes to appease a brooding darkness growing from within. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Casey Cook, the most introverted and ostracized of these women, and through this kidnapping experience she's forced to relive her past abuse. Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula portray the other two girls who can’t understand why Casey has no will to fight. As they try to come up with clever ways to escape McAvoy’s underground lair, Casey tries to get to know and manipulate Kevin’s separate personalities.

We get to know McAvoy as a brutish clean-freak and fetishist named Dennis, a passive-aggressive English woman named Patricia, a nine-year-old attention-seeker named Hedwig, a nervous fashionista named Barry and a demonic force of nature known only as The Beast. While Dennis and Patricia--the personalities responsible for the kidnapping--have the most control over their host, the others have sought the help of a psychiatrist named Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who's beginning to notice that her patient has something to hide.

Like any Shyamalan film, there’s a lot of plot here and his characters are subservient to the whims of the director’s set-ups and reveals. His depiction of mental illness has less to do with diagnose-able science and more with pulp mythology that’s rooted in past psychodramas and paranormal science-fiction.  If you’re willing to suspend your disbelief and give in to the script’s wacky concepts, as a thriller, the movie works well enough. The ticking-clock set up at the beginning of the film allows for constant tension that keeps everything on a track, even as scenes digresses into long-winded explanations of the movie rules through clunky, expository dialogue.

McAvoy’s having a lot of fun with these multiple roles and approaches the film’s goofy plot with just the right amount on whit and sarcasm to aid in its occasional black comedy. Anya Taylor-Joy is more informed by her character’s flashbacks than by her performance, but her emotional stillness helps to ground the movie’s themes and dramatic stakes.

“Split” is a mixed bag; it’s overwritten, it’s a bit hokey and Shyamalan has some problematic and concerning ideas about abuse-survival as a means of martyrdom, but the film is never boring and it managed to keep me engaged with the story as it moved along.  Thrill rides don’t necessarily have to be realistic, and though I wish this ride hadn’t stopped every ten minute to explain something that didn’t need explaining, despite it's failings, I appreciated the end-result.

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Split."

XOXO review

Netflix has created a seismic shift the world of film and television distribution. Not only are they producing several movies and series on their own, they are now releasing several projects bought from the festival circuit. Their platform has become so popular that its becoming less and less necessary to house older material, which would be a shame, considering they helped destroy video-store culture all around the country. 

Whatever. Netflix recently released a garbage dump of a movie about CW-looking ravers called “XOXO” and it’s barely a movie and it’s really stupid and I just can’t even.

This is supposed to be a portmanteau-structured narrative, which features Graham Phillips as Ethan, a laptop DJ who’s blowing up on youtube and whose best friend Tariq (Brett DelBuono) has booked him a slot on a desert EDM festival called XOXO. Attending the fest is Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland as an innocent suburban girl hoping to finally meet her online boyfriend for the first time, Hayley Kiyoko and Colin Woodell as a couple looking to cut loose before Kiyoko’s character Shannie moves away, and comedian Chris D’Elia plays aged hipster named Neil who can barely stand being in this movie as much I can barely stand watching it.

The plot is structured so that Ethan’s big debut at XOXO ties together these shifting story threads and all the characters are supposed to overcome their petty life complications through the power of thumping dance music and recreational drug use. I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t a culture that I’m a part of or know much about, but the movie never gives me a reason to be interested in the dance music scene or to invest in any of these competing character dilemmas. Furthermore, the actors are given terrible dialogue and they can’t seem to compensate that with any personality in their performances.

I would say this movie has tone issues, but I’m not sure if there was a pointed attempt at capturing a specific mood or emotion. The neon, black-light rave stuff is supposed to have a dark and mysterious effect on the drama, but the plot moves around so much and direction by Christopher Louie is so flat and cheap looking that it never registers as dream-like or psychedelic. Also, is this a comedy? There’s some clumsy attempts drug humor and misunderstanding humor but neither are groomed in a way that informs the rest of what’s going on. As the movie unfolds, you get the feeling that each scene and each set up was shot and directed with no consideration of how it would fit with the completed product.

For a film that’s all about the uniting power of music and community (I guess that’s what it’s about. *shrugs*) there’s nothing remotely effecting or memorable about the movie’s music either. Our hero Ethan’s hit song is barely hummable and it doesn’t stand out among any of the other bland EDM selections pulsing in the background.

“XOXO” is so lazy and slapped together that to even review as a real movie feels like a form of legitimacy that I’m uncomfortable participating in. It looks like low-grade television and it montages its way through the plot, racing to a pointless conclusion.  Even though it’s available to watch free on Netflix, your 90 minutes are better spent scrolling through their selection for something else.

Grade: F 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2017