The Batman Review: A Renewed Legacy of Night

In the dead of night, amidst the crime spree revelry of misdemeanours and injustice, a signal lights the dark sky. Criminals are aghast with fear, as their gaze trembles towards the shadowy alleys and hallways near them. No one emerges from those shadows, but the fear of who might appear is enough to scare them off. Because more than the Bat signal, Batman’s ultimate calling card is the terror of darkness.

That’s how Matt Reeves’ The Batman rousingly opens its nearly 3-hour-long neo-noir crime saga, which more than anything is an apotheosis of astonishing cinematography that captures the moody and corrupt-ridden aesthetic of a dilapidated Gotham City and the scum of villainy that infects its dangerous street corners – all while being punctuated by Micheal Giacchino’s intense, crescendo-inducing score.

This allows Gotham to actually becomes its own character in the story. Through Reeves’ deft direction and script, this cesspool of a city invariably hides its own terrifying secrets and devious tricks that other personas like Catwoman, Carmine Falcone and the Riddler use to their own advantage.

Unsettlingly noble and intriguingly ingenious on one hand, but somewhat vexing in with his elongated and incomprehensible enragements, the Riddler is the only true mixed bag for me. Regardless, his dastardly masterplan, which is an intricate and tendrilous mystery of violent crime and aristocratic corruption, is gripping.

True to the noir genre, I also loved that Batman’s monologuing feels like its ripped straight out from The Long Halloween graphic novel (which The Batman partially takes inspiration from).

While the film’s pacing surprisingly does enough to hold up throughout its long run time, especially in the initial two-thirds of the film, the final third suffers from a couple of glaring plot holes revolving around scenes in the indoor arena. That aside, ultimately the film achieves its primary goal of providing an effective introduction to our newest iteration of the Caped Crusader, embodied by a brooding Robert Pattinson teetering between being stunningly gothic as Batman and hoarsely soft-spoken as Bruce Wayne.

It’s an interesting combination of dual identities that mostly works because it is thankfully not superficially stoic, as this Dark Knight’s narrative inception is one of subverting the norms of the character’s established pillars of metamorphosis. Batman’s family legacy and perceptions of justice are disfigured into a metaphoric ball and chain that he is forced to wrestle out from – a similar narrative notion explored in the Telltale Batman games.

In rising above this confluence of earth-shattering personal revelations, no more is Batman a champion of vengeance haunted by past tragedies and spirits, but a master of his darkest fears of loved ones lost and legacies destroyed to finally understand that he alone must stay behind in the haunting shadows of evil’s abyss to lead innocents out into the light.

Stray Dog Review: The Fog of Post-War Morality

‘Noir’ may not be the first word you think of when you hear the name Akira Kurosawa, yet the acclaimed auteur of a genre-defining samurai filmography that includes Yojimbo and Seven Samurai endeavours to emblazon Japan’s post-war frailty with an astute noir detective film, Stray Dog.

Seamless onscreen chemistry overflows from stalwart Kurosawa leads, Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Mifune embodies a dutiful but rash homicide detective that had his service gun stolen and is brilliantly juxtaposed by Shimura being his older, sagacious partner in crime that aids in hunting down the pilfered firearm.

However, when the case further unravels through gruesome twists to become more than just about a stolen weapon, both detectives are forced to become embroiled in an intriguing cat-and-mouse game that constantly tests their moralistic aptitude towards Japan’s d’après-guerre epidemic – dogs of war (disconsolate Japanese soldiers returning home after World War II) that have strayed from their own society’s embrace as they remain languishing in self-defeatism.

And when a stray dog of war is cornered into desperation, morality becomes too high a road to take – a road where only few will ever reach, with most tumbling down into a nihilistic abyss.

‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ Review: The Duality of Fate

Shakespearean literature has long been imbued into the very fibre of modern myths and legends, with countless adaptations spanning centuries that illuminate the soloist calamities of human beings against the backdrop of grandiosity – cautioning everyone that none can escape life’s sorrow, no matter your social status.

The story of Macbeth may be Shakespeare’s most accessible work in navigating these thematic signatures, with Joel Coen (one half of the illustrious directorial duo, the Coen Brothers) becoming the latest steward of adapting Macbeth in the film ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’.

The black-and-white cinematic appearance of the film reminded me of a similar Macbeth film adaptation, Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. Both films stoically captured the desolate landscapes and empty halls that stress the searing solace that the lead characters face, especially Macbeth and his wife.  In Coen’s film, this black-and-white filmic canvas further artistically accentuates the morally grey areas that Macbeth and his wife are tormented with as they languish in the strife in their souls, their deeds of blood and betrayal ascending them to royalty. It is as if their blackened souls, masked behind their pure-white virtuous appearance, emerges outward in every frame of the film.

Of the film’s talented cast, Denzel Washington stands out in the lead as Macbeth, giving a thunderously theatrical tour de force that injects a measured amount of his signature suave in his dialogue and acting, whether it be in wit, anger, deceit or terror. His chemistry with Frances MacDormand is effectually hollow, a good thing given the tragic and distant nature of Macbeth and his wife’s relationship which further crumbles as the film goes on.

Illuminate the soloist calamities of human beings against the backdrop of grandiosity

The film bestows the perfect avenue for those unfamiliar with Macbeth tale, even though the classical source material may seem a tad too highbrow for new viewers (some may even misconstrue it as browbeating). However, the onus remains on the viewer to peer through the classical lens and language to unearth the striking universal themes the film portrays.

The most striking of them all? The sanctification of the one inescapable tragedy that befalls us all – fate. Many of us assume fate can either only be a boon or bane, depending on the person. However, Macbeth’s destiny of becoming king, foretold by three witches, becomes the initial boon that also augurs his baneful existence.

His active role in instigating the quicker arrival of his destiny through murder and deception only further exacerbates the guilt and burden Macbeth was meant to shoulder in the first place, enlightening us viewers with an interesting lesson of how much, and at the same time how little, our choices play in our future. Do choices change fate, or merely hasten or delay its inevitability? Macbeth’s tale suggests the latter.

The tragedy of Macbeth isn’t his actual downfall in conscience or status nor that his prophesied providence led him down a road of catastrophe, but his failure to ultimately understand the duality of fate itself. That fate is double-edged sword of benevolence and malevolence, and no choice made can change how this sword will impale you.

Netflix’s ‘The House’ Review: A House Does Not Maketh A Home

A house. The spacious shelter that warms your tranquility and wellbeing in a cosy embrace of rooms and furniture. Where brick and mortar bid a welcoming sight for returning residents seeking luxury. A steadfast abode safeguarding you from the day’s dangers and the night’s horrors.

Or so it would seem. Netflix’s latest stop-motion anthology burrows headfirst into these themes, deconstructing our presuppositions about what makes a home through an ominous house that becomes the centre of three vaguely-connected tales about different residents through the passage of time.

The first tale, the most masterfully told of the three tales, opens with the abrupt construction of this grand house. A humble family is beckoned by an enigmatic benefactor to freely move out of their decrepit cottage and into this foreboding house. The family’s parents bask in this newfound affluence which they’ve never had. Their daughter, Mabel, remains innocently ignorant of this providential fluke, choosing instead to focus more attention on her baby sister whom her parents neglect.

Brilliant eerie undertones akin to Kubrick’s The Shining finally give way to a crescendo of genuine creepiness when the parents finally meet a dastardly fate befitting their material fixations. By the end, when Mabel and her newborn sister flee the house, she witnesses her dollhouse burning in the fireplace. It’s a startling symbolic shot that signifies Mabel’s baptism by fire as she sheds her view of ever attaining the perfect household, once characterised by her dollhouse. Also, the fact that it’s the fireplace, the material fixation of her father, that sets the dollhouse ablaze represents how parental failings can scorch a child’s idealistic view of the world. Their imperfections tear down her perfection.

Deconstructing our presuppositions about what makes a home…

This morbid and cautionary motif is carried over into the second tale, where a lone developer, or D, has sunk his entire wealth into reconstructing this same house into an extravagant mansion to be sold. D’s fixation, while largely material-based too, also embodies financial daydreams that leech off his motivations. This tale layers its allegories of leeching in multiple ways, beginning from actual pests to freeloading tenants plaguing D’s house. At first resistant, D finally succumbs to his primal rat-like ways, his parasitical motivations manifesting physically as his civilised house appropriately dissolves into a rodent haven.

The third tale then emerges to bestow the much-needed redemption arc to punctuate all these thematic learnings. This tale is more straightforward and less intriguing than the others, but its lesson justify its telling. The lesson? We spend so much focus on our house that we fail to make a home of it, and that the value of a home lies not in spacious shelters, brick and mortar or even steadfast abodes, but in the lives of those that live within its walls.

Sounds simple enough, but lessons like these often fade from our moral compass as we grow older. We think we understand that the ‘home is where the heart is’ but we never stop to consider whether our heart is truly in the right place like in family and love, or in belongings and comforts.

Picture your home now. What pops in your head first? An image of your house, room or bed? Or is it your loved ones and the joyful memories spent together, no matter where you all were?

Work towards achieving the right answer.

‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ Review: The Odyssey of Melancholy

Rarely do I rewatch a film. But 7 years later, stumbling upon Inside Llewyn Davis’ beautiful folk music imbued a nostalgic feeling that had me revisiting a personally haunting cinematic experience. These are the same rustic tunes that enchant the day-to-day melancholia of downtrodden folk singer Llewyn Davis as he struggles to deal with bereavement, failure and everything in between.

Llewyn Davis just might be my cinematic spirit animal (one glance at me and him and you’ll see the physical similarities, let alone the intrinsic ones). To me, this film’s as deeply relatable as it is complex to decipher. That is, until the name of the peripatetic cat accompanying the nomadic Llewyn is revealed – Ulysses.

Ulysses is a Latin variant of Odysseus – the Greek hero of Homer’s literary epic, The Odyssey. Ulysses is also the name of James Joyce’s seminal post-modern novel that’s deemed a “modern parallel” to The Odyssey. Joyce’s protagonist Leopold and his day-in-the-life tale, however, is seen as a mocking reflection of Odysseus’ grandiose seafaring voyages.

These are the same rustic tunes that enchant the day-to-day melancholia of downtrodden folk singer Llewyn Davis as he struggles to deal with bereavement, failure and everything in between.

Throughout the film, the cat scurries off to its own “adventures” offscreen as Llewyn remains stuck with his present difficulties. Llewyn’s (Leopold) inhibited suffering is a mocking reflection of the cat’s uninhibited freedom (Odysseus).

A mocking reflection. I guess that’s it, right? Life’s just a mocking reflection of our aspirations for it.

Not all stories end with a light at the of the tunnel. Sometimes it ends beaten and bruised in a murky alleyway covered in blood and dirt, like Llewyn by the film’s end. Depression and dark times never truly disappear, even when you’ve finally hit that glimmer of respite. All you can do, is what Llewyn does – bid your misery a knowing au revoir as you brace for impending misfortunes returning around the bend.

A sad truth, but oddly comforting once illuminated.

‘Last Night In Soho’ Review: The ‘Inception’ of Genre Subversion

As the master of modern filmmaking kineticism, writer-director Edgar Wright’s latest labour of love, Last Night In Soho, was no doubt already riding high on many ardent fans’ ‘most anticipated films’ lists in 2021. Yet, instead of expecting the high-octane action set pieces of Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, or the signature satirical British wit of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, brand new and long-time fans alike may find themselves refreshingly fascinated, flustered and perhaps downright frightened of Wright’s Soho.

Soho opens with Eloise, or Ellie; a small-town girl whose dream of becoming a fashion designer sees her leaving her countryside abode to step foot onto the cobblestoned streets of London to pursue a higher education in her dream career. Naturally, naivety and prudence rank high on her mind as Ellie’s immediately plunged into the bustling big city of explicit brazenness and implicit cruelty, much to her discomfiture.

Some observers may have realised that Soho’s aforementioned premise harkens back to the tonality and themes of 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring Audrey Hepburn. The fact that Wright primes the viewers of this insinuated link via the inclusion of the Breakfast at Tiffany’s film poster in Soho’s very first scene is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of Wright’s brilliant foreshadowing – but not kind of foreshadowing we’d expect.

Just as viewers begin to settle into an expected rudimentary flow of a ‘country girl moves to the big city’ film, Soho organically upends this preconceived notion (which it alone had initially planted in viewers’ minds) by transporting Ellie into technicoloured vignettes of the classic 1960s London night life during her dreams. Grandiosity is lavished upon every iota of the screen, mirroring painstakingly detailed cabarets and stage musicals.

Speaking of mirrors, in these dreamscapes, Ellie’s corporeality is reduced to a mirror reflection that follows a strikingly spirited persona whom the dream is centered on, an aspiring actress named Sandie. Sandie’s gusto and grit begins rubbing off on Ellie’s reality. Ellie begins transforming herself into a bolder individual while also infusing inspirations from her illusory muse into her fashion project in class.

This dual, or mirror, personality as well as these dreamscape sequences are meant to be the smoking guns alluding to film’s “actual” genre – psychological drama. This may lead viewers to believe that they have now finally discovered the underlying theme of Soho. Once again, this was also pre-planned by Wright’s foresight as he had implanted swinging sixties songs as Ellie’s favourite music in the film’s opening scene, slyly suggesting to viewers that Sandie is no more than a conjured up repose to Ellie’s burgeoning solitude in London.

Soho’s genre evolutions throughout its runtime might be exasperating on paper, yet they smoothly unfold on screen thanks to Wright’s deft writing which imbues natural connective tendrils that facilitate the progression of one genre to the next.

Yet, this genre twist only plants the seeds for the film’s final trick up its sleeves. Soho dares to further subvert the preceding genres it has carefully layered on top one another by ultimately revealing its true nature – horror. Not psychological horror, as the film tricked viewers into thinking, but actual supernatural horror. I’ll stop short of any real spoilers.

Soho’s genre evolutions throughout its runtime might be exasperating on paper, yet they smoothly unfold on screen thanks to Wright’s deft writing which imbues natural connective tendrils that facilitate the progression of one genre to the next. In fact, by the film’s end, Wright adequately wraps up the narrative arcs introduced in all three genres, with lessons and truths to take away from each of them.

TLDR, Soho is the ‘Inception’ of genre subversion.

‘Dune’ Review: Of How A Leader Is Born

Frank Herbert’s beloved 1965 epic sci-fi novel, Dune, has been a staple of its genre for decades. As someone who has never read the book but acknowledges its cultural resonance, my curiosity of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (Part 1) cinematic adaptation soon mushroomed into an eagerness to let this film become my gateway drug into this expansive sci-fi opera.

First off, the film’s a technical marvel that’ll sweep you off your seat. Dune’s vast desert enclaves and dreary metropolitans are stunningly realised through some breathtaking cinematography, while Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack, which utilises electric riffs and looming bass undertones, reminded me of a more stoic variant on his iconic Man of Steel score and helps to paint a foreboding tone encapsulating the strong narrative heft underpinning the whole film.

And this narrative heft lies not in the film’s interesting world-building attributes or the dramatic political zealotry between warring factions, although both are deftly executed. What gradually piqued my interest as I watched Dune was how it tries weaving Nietzschean philosophy into the narrative construct of Moses’ biblical journey.

Both Moses and Dune’s protagonist, Paul Atreides, walk in similar shoes of initially inheriting regality as a birthright, only to later shed their bureaucratic royalty to take up a prophetic leadership mantle over a pious downtrodden population (in the Bible it’s the Jewish slaves, in Dune it’s the Fremen).

Yet, when it comes to Paul’s ultimate destiny, we simultaneously see the exploration of a convergence and a divergence between Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ubermensch philosophy and theological connotation of God’s favour.

What I mean by this is that while the all-father figure of God bestows the divine blessing of righteous values to Moses so that he becomes the enlightened shepherd that leads the Jews to freedom at Canaan, Paul’s tragedy of his father figures perishing means that he has to look within himself to rise above his own fears and limitations to create values of virtuous leadership instead of receiving that divine awakening from a higher power like Moses did.

Moses and Dune’s protagonist, Paul Atreides, walk in similar shoes of initially inheriting regality as a birthright, only to later shed their bureaucratic royalty to take up a prophetic leadership mantle.

In this sense, Paul’s journey mirrors the Ubermensch ideal, since Nietzsche conceptualised that when the notion of “God is dead” materialises (essentially the demise of our traditional structure of values), humans will have to resort to introspective value creation, and the Ubermensch would be that one representative that rises above the rest of humanity to undergo that psychological enlightenment and become the creator of a new structure of values that brings newfound hope to the rest of mankind.

Dune directly alludes to this through the Bene Gesserit’s prophecies of a male-born Kwisatz Haderach – a powerful mind that will surpass space and time, past and future, to bring about a better future.

Thus, there is a convergence in the parallel narrative arcs that both Moses and Paul tread, yet also a divergence in the different ways that Moses and Paul receive their transcendental awakening to fulfill their endgame destiny.

With so much admirable philosophical and narrative groundwork laid, Part 2 of Dune will have to live up to a lot more than just its technical grandiosity.

‘Cry Macho’ Review: Clint Eastwood’s Cinematic Elegy

Long gone is the cinematic epoch of westerns bearing the hallowed diadem of Hollywood royalty (now inhabited with the popular and overcrowded superhero genre of modern cinema). And Cry Macho – the latest silver screen rodeo from legendary director and lead star Clint Eastwood – by no means signals a thunderous resurgence of westerns.

Eastwood’s body of work is peppered with hallmark ‘tough guy’ characters, but characters of the “gritty lone gunslinger” ilk in westerns essentially etched Eastwood into filmic stardom, simultaneously inspiring the western genre’s golden age in the 60s.

Eastwood and westerns have a lot to thank each other for, and thus he wistfully completes a sentimental full circle by returning into the fedora-donning fold of westerns with Cry Macho – a film about a retired bull riding champion (played by Eastwood) named Mike Milo, and his reluctant excursion into Mexico to retrieve his old boss’ teenage son, Rafo, and return him home.

Cry Macho – the latest silver screen rodeo from legendary director and lead star Clint Eastwood – by no means signals a thunderous resurgence of westerns.

Cry Macho isn’t a typical western by traditional standards. It’s futile to expect swift gunplay and destructive shootouts from the 91-year-old Eastwood. Cry Macho is instead a fittingly quiet, ruminating swansong to classic westerns that meditates on the twilight of a progeny born from the bygone wild west era.

Something as beautifully subtle as Mike driving a truck alongside string of galloping horses at the film’s beginning effectively evokes the horse-riding bravado of Eastwood’s older westerns, and subsequently sets the stage for an elegiac voyage into unearthing Mike’s long-buried cowboy gusto once thought lost to geriatric rot.

With modern Texas no longer being the yardstick of classic wild west adventurism like before, Mexico is a perfect neo-western haven, with its remote towns and dangerous dunescapes reminiscent of the lawless West of yore. It’s here Mike meets Rafo and his prized fighter cock, Macho. Their time together is wrought with squabble, with Rafo exhibiting an unbridled tough guy front, and it’s at these pivotal moments where Mike tries to impart salient advice to Rafo on what it really means to a tough guy – to be macho.

It’s not about dramatic displays of strength amidst rebellious zeal – akin to feral fighter cocks (hence Macho’s symbolism). Being macho is embodying matured grit amongst measured tenacity, as Eastwood’s characters and real-life persona have always been.

Profoundly simple yet scarcely found today, it’s this unpretentious and often forgotten age-old wisdom that Eastwood wants to impart to us as an eternal requiem before his proverbial ride into the sunset – and for that, and more, I can’t thank him enough.

‘The Green Knight’​ Review: The Existential Truth of 2021’s Best Film

David Lowery’s The Green Knight perpetuates a deep resonance for Arthurian philosophy to undergird the importance of distinguishing honour and virtue in the pursuit of self-actualisation.

The film opens with the enigmatic Green Knight riding into King Arthur’s hall and challenging any knight to strike him, forcefully bidding that knight to receive an equal fate from the Green Knight a year later.

Young knight Sir Gawain, in a rash bid to etch personal glory, naively steps in and beheads the Green Knight, who then proceeds to walk away unscathed while reminding Gawain of the reciprocal covenant that Gawain must now uphold. And so by roaming plains of grey pall and jade forests of dangerous haunts, Gawain grudgingly marches towards his apparent doom.

In his naivety, Gawain becomes a green knight facing the corporeal Green Knight and this effortlessly embeds early symbolic intrigue into the film. However, that’s just scratching the surface of the film’s wellspring of mythological and biblical symbolism that is founded on insightful allegories about honour and virtue.

Gawain’s initial fortitude of exalting honour above all else by keeping true with the Green Knight’s covenant is seen as exemplary – adhering to the classic hero’s quest of chivalry as obligatory. Lowery then fiercely subverts this traditional heroism by unpacking the nihilism and cowardice of attaining glory without truth, piety without morality, honour without virtue.

The Green Knight perpetuates a deep resonance for Arthurian philosophy to undergird the importance of distinguishing honour and virtue in the pursuit of self-actualisation.

The beheading alone encapsulates this dichotomy. The head is the haven of reason that ascribes purpose and virtue. The body, or heart, is the temple of valour that underscores honour. The separation of reason from valour negates valour’s sanctity. For without virtuous reasoning dictating your valour, valour is but the bellowing of hollow nobility.

Gawain’s journey towards his destined decapitation unfolds this struggle, albeit indirectly. When Gawain gives in to the temptation of adorning an enchanted waist girdle to protect him from being beheaded, his obsession to keep his head and body intact ironically severs the virtue and moral reasoning of his quest from the valour and honour he wants to attain from it. He saves his body, but damns his soul.

Biblically, the Green Knight’s beheading by Gawain’s hand strongly represent man’s adoption of secularism, if the Green Knight is seen as a representation of God – man severs divine virtue (head) from the meaning of existence (body) through will (the neck), which mirrors Adam and Eve cutting themselves from God’s will in favour of free will when eating the forbidden fruit, hence losing their divine reality in the Garden of Eden.

In The Green Knight, the connected neck may denote divine virtue through God’s will in giving meaning to our existence, whereas the severed or “freed” neck signifies that free will away from God’s divinity is what alone drives the meaning of life. In that sense, Gawain’s theistic voyage towards the Green Knight is the inevitable reunion of man to God, and the fulfillment of the Green Knight’s covenant to behead Gawain back is akin to man’s penitence in finally relinquishing life’s meaning back into God’s will.

The film bestows us the gift of letting us unearth our own profound truths from it. If nothing else, that alone makes it the best film of the year.

‘The Suicide Squad’ Review: A Shot-Gunn to the Face (and Heart)

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad entertainingly poeticises gratuitous violence with his signature zany aplomb, soaking your heart with a warming tale of outcast deviancy as much as it also serves the blood-pumping organ on a tantalising silver screen platter of gory intestinal splatter for your amusement.

While I admire David Ayer’s earlier Suicide Squad film in 2016 for managing to unearth the core of the squad’s tragic predicament of essentially being suicide-for-hire entrants who ultimately wrestle back the fate of their lives, Ayer’s all-star squad of anti-heroes felt leashed to an umbrella classification of being nothing more than a band of generic misfit mercenaries or soldiers, rather than being fleshed out as the colourful personalities each of them are.

Gunn, on the other hand, unshackles his squad of unsavoury avengers and allows the madcap temperament of almost every character to guide the film’s tonal outlook. And why wouldn’t he.

The fact that any squad member in the film can be arbitrarily wiped out at any moment by their headstrong supervisor, Amanda Waller, gifts The Suicide Squad the perfect premise to play out the facetious dark humour of the seemingly doomed squad members.

A warming tale of outcast deviancy as much as it also serves the blood-pumping organ on a tantalising silver screen platter of gory intestinal splatter for your amusement.

This only further endeared me towards the squad, as I too could cut loose and let my inner chaotic frivolity run wild alongside the havoc-induced revelry and anguish of the squad’s misadventures.

This is how Gunn emotionally hooks you into this thrill fest, with these characters slowly attaching themselves to you like a bomb embedded inside your heartstrings, and akin to the implanted bomb inside each squad member’s skull in the film.

Both explosives ready to go off at any time to cruelly blow up the emotional affinity for these characters in a manner that feels as impactful as a squad member’s head exploding into smithereens.