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Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

The Dark Knight Returns
introduced the theory that Batman riding a horse is the mark of a good movie. Director Sam Liu's Gotham by Gaslight is compelling evidence and a great movie in its own right anyway.

Gotham by Gaslight is an alternative universe story where a 19th century Batman (Bruce Greenwood) must catch Jack the Ripper. At 78 minutes, that sounds like a streamlined story, but Liu and screenwriter Jim Kreig fit a lot into their runtime. This new setting includes a reestablished origin for Gotham.

Don't worry, Bruce Wayne's parents aren't featured in the movie, but the Monarch Theatre plays a central role, as Jack attacks women who perform there. First up, is a de-powered Poison Ivy (Kari Wuhrer) who starts things off on the wrong foot. The movie opens with her performance, and the animation feels noticeably rigid. While not wanting Poison Ivy to dance to provocatively is a good thing, there are ways to give her a creative, well-animated performance that's clean. She just kind of moves left and right a little. Luckily, once Batman tries to intervene the animation picks up considerably. The fight scenes are choreographed and sound similar to the ones in The Dark Knight Returns. Batman and Jack are fast, but their blows feel heavy and satisfying.

After their first meeting, a lot of time is spent on Bruce Wayne and the locals of Victorian Gotham, and Gotham by Gaslight becomes its own film. The setting and characters are well-developed and set up in a way that suggests Liu and Kreig will return them. Characters featured include Harvey Dent (Yuri Lowenthal), Catwoman (Jennifer Carpenter), and, interestingly, multiple pre-Robin Robins who already know each other. There's no telling how this could evolve, and Gotham by Gaslight encourages second-guessing of ideas.

Similar to the opening of the movie, animation, unfortunately, isn't the only thing that's occasionally rushed. Harvey, also unfortunately, isn't that well written as the links between Jack the Ripper and Two Face are clear to anyone old enough to watch the movie. It's handled in a very upfront matter, and how annoying the audience finds it will vary. At the very least, all the lines are delivered well by the cast, especially Batman's.

Bruce Greenwood as Batman
Also, is there any correlation between a distinctive cowl and a well-portrayed Batman, or a good Batman movie? | Copyright 2018 Warner Brothers

Bruce Greenwood returns to the booth, after voicing Batman in Under the Red Hood and Young Justice. He's fantastic, and like Kevin Conroy and Roger Craig Smith (Batman: Arkham Origins), he understands what makes Bruce Wayne compelling with and without the cowl. Working with Jennifer's Carpenter's Catwoman and an extended amount of time as Gotham's socialite adds new dimensions to a role he already had down to a science.

Occasionally rushed writing and animation hold back a would-be perfect addition to the DC Animated Universe, but these moments are in a world as well-realized as the one in The Dark Knight Returns. That one, technically, got a sequel, so maybe this one should too?

3.5/5

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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place
 doesn't string audiences along through tension, building it from the beginning until the scares ultimately pay off or fall flat. Instead, it starts with an actual sense of security backed by the film's family. When the monsters appear, we're with this family as tightly as they're with each other, through thick and thin.

John Krasinsky's film is directed extremely carefully, as the premise dictates. It relies on characters, a couple (Krasinksy and Emily Blunt) and their three children (Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward, and deaf actress Millicent Simmonds), making as little noise as possible to avoid the detection of blind monsters with extra-sensitive hearing. Every movement is deliberate to create as little sound as possible. And the use of sound, and shots, is completely engrossing, but loose enough to create needed breaths of fresh air every now and then.

A Quiet Place is surprisingly not scoreless, thanks to composer Marco Beltrami, and speaking is as crucial in the film as communication is in real life. Sign Language is used throughout the film, but what's surprising is what's being signed can be every so slightly heard sometimes by some characters. The variances in the language are brought out through moments like that and shows, if only for a moment, security has broken through the tension. Your heartbeat may spike at a moment's notice, but it is not toyed with.

The family, however, is toyed with. Krasinksy is not starting with a perfect story, as writers Bryan Woods and Scott Beck pull the rug out from under the family with a tight grip every once in a while. The monsters aren't given an unfair advantage, it's just whatever starts a potential attack, to a certain extent, is avoidable, sometimes it's frustratingly avoidable. Once that is out of their hands though, the movie doesn't add insult to injury by placing the family somewhere like a wind chime factory. In fact, great care is taken in showing that their environment is the anti-wind chime factory, with many everyday objects they use replaced with paper and fabric versions, so it evens these "get the ball rolling" moments out pretty well. The only other cheap shot like this that stuck out was some exposition, but at least it was given visually. The history of the monsters and the family's situation is slammed in the audience's face a little harder than it needed to be with some shots that could've been cut. 

A Quiet Place Poster
Theatrical Poster | Copyright 2018 Paramount Pictures

On that subject, the use of shots, by cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, beautifully display the Hudson Valley and upstate New York. Parts were filmed in the same county as my college. What's displayed is quite an original site, aside from the woods and beautiful mix of natural and nighttime lighting. Krasinsky and his crew imagine new pits of terror and impersonal, environment-based torture. Those impersonal moments are heightened when the audio-centric monsters, designed by Jeffrey Beecroft and Scott Farrar, attack. The shots are too. Whenever the camera is on them, there's a want for it to stay there, to study the design. It should be considered an honor. One given to the Xenomorphs and Heptapods, and many in-between, that came before.

It's not necessary to encourage viewers to watch where they're going upon exiting the theatre. They'll be doing that on their own, at least until they start driving or return and feel comfortable to crank the volume on something, anything, to make sure they've snapped out of it.

4/5

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