Tag: Michael Gough

Batman & Robin (1997, Joel Schumacher)

I’m not going to defend Batman & Robin. It’s not so much a matter of the film being indefensible, it’s just a matter of it being a pointless exercise. And, by defend, I don’t mean identifying who gives the least embarrassing performance (Michael Gough) or who is just jaw-droppingly bad (Chris O’Donnell). Watching Batman & Robin, you can see the trailer moments, you can see the toy commercial moments, you can see the Happy Meal commercial moments. These moments aren’t hidden–Batman & Robin invites the audience to reveal in its brand possibilities.

It’s so blissfully unaware of itself, I almost don’t want to disturb that delusion. At the time of the film’s release, a friend of mine said, “if Schumacher wanted to do the TV show, they should’ve just done the TV show.” He was correct. Throw in the Neal Hefti “Batman Theme” and Batman & Robin would’ve been… well, it would’ve still been awful, because director Schumacher is making a movie for kids and trying to throw in adult stuff to make it appear grown-up.

Sure, the film’s objectively bad. Arnold Schwarzenegger is awful. Akiva Goldsman’s script is awful. Stephen Goldblatt’s photography is flat and boring (though everything except establishing shots being done on sets might have something to do with that boredom). The film’s so bad, you can’t even tell if it’s poorly edited or if it’s everything else about it. Elliot Goldenthal’s music’s awful though.

I should do a word count on “awful” for this post. But, see, I didn’t defend it. The film is a perfectly natural extension of where the franchise was going. It’s not about franchise fatigue or anything lofty; suspension of disbelief isn’t just plot holes and bad casting, it’s also about the work’s basic agreement. With Batman & Robin, Schumacher and company just told the viewers what they thought of them.

There’s nothing interesting to watch in Batman & Robin. I was sort of hoping Alicia Silverstone secretly gave a good performance or something wacky, but not really. She’s better than O’Donnell but so’s the guy who played Bane and he didn’t even have any dialogue. And it is interesting to compare George Clooney in this film to his later work. But none of those expectations or inquiries have anything to do with the film.

When you gaze long at Batman & Robin (and you do, because it’s endlessly long), Batman & Robin also gazes into you.

Journey to the Unknown (1968) s01e01 – Eve

For all of its problems, Eve rarely feels stagy. Director Robert Stevens makes the most of his location shooting, whether it’s town or country, and there are enough scenes out doors to make up for the utter lack of establishing shots. It’s for television, it’s on a budget.

It’s also got a rather poorly conceived narrative. Writers Michael Ashe and Paul Wheeler seem like they’re trying to keep Eve interesting–it’s about listless young man Dennis Waterman falling in love with a mannequin. Murder and madness ensue. Carol Lynley plays the mannequin in his imagination and Ashe, Wheeler and possibly Stevens make the odd choice of keeping her quiet.

Waterman’s in need of an imaginary friend due to the Swinging Sixties going on around him; he just wants classy romance. And Lynley is fully capable of the performance, she just doesn’t get the chance.

At least Michael Gough has some fun.

Batman Returns (1992, Tim Burton)

Batman Returns is one of those films I always hope will end a little differently. Tim Burton gets such wonderful performances out of Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer, their penultimate scene always has this glimmer of a different outcome. There’s so much energy between the two actors, such rich characters, it’s tragically unfair they don’t make it.

Keaton and Pfeiffer–actually, more Pfeiffer and Keaton–take up a quarter of Returns’s glorious mess. Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters don’t have a natural way to tie all of the film’s plots together and they don’t bother trying to find one. Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is the connective tissue, in a lot of ways, to the villains, Christopher Walken and Danny DeVito. Keaton’s Batman just gets thrown in the mix from time to time. Trying to imagine a plot chart for Batman Returns… I think of spaghetti.

But, like I said, Burton doesn’t try to fix that problem. He just makes it the best spaghetti he can. For every plot problem, there’s some amazing visual or wonderful little moment or maybe just DeVito. DeVito’s performance is spellbinding. He creates a villain who’s without humanity and the lack is part of his performance’s appeal. It’s funny.

Great performances, wonderful music from Danny Elfman, beautiful Stefan Czapsky photography, Bo Welch’s amazing production design.

Burton creates a space for these grotesque, complicated, beautiful characters to play with one another. He loves them and doesn’t care if the viewer doesn’t.

Batman Returns is a singular motion picture.

Batman (1989, Tim Burton)

Batman‘s an odd success. It has almost constant problems–Kim Basinger’s bad, Jack Nicholson’s phoning it in (but never contemptuous of the material, which makes it a peculiar performance) and the movie never really finishes the story it starts in the first act–but it’s also got constant greatness. Tim Burton’s direction is fantastic–the only scenes he doesn’t wow with are the ones both he and the viewer are bored with–Danny Elfman’s score makes the movie in a way no one’s done since John Williams and the original Star Wars trilogy, Michael Keaton’s mesmerizing and there’s a whole lot of good stuff.

This good stuff occasionally features the badly acting Basinger, mostly in her romantic scenes with Keaton, only because the combination of writing, direction, music and Keaton are so strong, they overpower any of her silliness (and her goofy outfits). The Batman action is all good too, again because of the direction and the music. Batman might have kicked off the contemporary blockbuster, but it does so in a way no one else has ever duplicated. Burton, apparently unintentionally, peppers the film with iconic sequences. It’s hard not to get involved with the scenes, even though they don’t make any sense, when Burton’s really going. The big Batmobile car chase is not a particularly interesting car chase, but it’s spell-binding. Burton’s Gotham City is obviously false–the matte backgrounds and the (excellent) miniatures–but once the viewer accepts it, it’s impossible to leave.

Still, as the film enters the third act, the good isn’t quite overpowering the bad. The bad’s still putting up a pretty good fight. Strangely, it isn’t the Prince music empowering the bad… though it certainly isn’t hurting it.

But more than any other film–with the possible exception of The Last Temptation of Christ and that example doesn’t count because it’s a far more precise moment–the last five or ten minutes of Batman make the movie. It finally delivers. Keaton’s been good as Batman throughout (in the costume) and great otherwise, but when he faces off with Nicholson and the two banter… it’s other-worldly. I think my favorite part is the use of Keaton’s Bruce Wayne voice. He drops the Batman voice a little for the last scene and it works beautifully. The scene’s so good, the illogically, instantly appearing goons he fights before Nicholson didn’t even bother me.

Then there’s the close and the close is perfect. Not even Basinger can screw it up (though she only has a few lines, but her outfit is ridiculous for a photojournalist).

There’s some really good supporting acting in the film. Billy Dee Williams, Robert Wuhl, Michael Gough. Tracey Walter’s pretty good too. But there’s some absolutely atrocious acting as well–both Jack Palance and William Hootkins are astoundingly bad. They’re both so bad, I can’t believe they weren’t recast. Palance wasn’t famous again yet and Hootkins was going to be pulling in a lot of Porkins supporters.

Technically, besides Burton, Elfman and production designer Anton Furst, Batman‘s kind of underwhelming. Roger Pratt’s cinematography is competent but indistinct. Ray Lovejoy’s editing is fantastic though, especially how he cuts the effects sequences together (I love how Batman’s obviously a little model in the Batwing, but it doesn’t matter).

The last time I saw Batman–must have been ten years ago–I was really down on it. But it’s solid. It’s a chore to get through the first third, but after it, the movie’s solid.

Uncovered (1994, Jim McBride)

With irregular fade outs, elevator muzak for a score, bad direction and a British cast pretending to be Spanish, Uncovered plays like a mix between a British television movie and a–Canadian–after school special (albeit one with a European approach to nudity). I’ve read the source novel, an intricate thriller, and this filmic adaptation is absent any suspense. That lack is a combination of elements. First, Jim McBride directs with less enthusiasm than a Pringles commercial. He avoids Barcelona scenery and actually makes the choice to flash back to the fifteen century. It’s like he was desperate to sell the finished product to a television network. The film has a few interesting moments–the art restoration scenes–but McBride brings nothing to it.

The next problem is that score. According to IMDb, Philippe Sarde has an inordinately prolific career (around two hundred films). Based on his work for Uncovered, I imagine only three of them aren’t atrocious.

So the combination of McBride and Sarde make Uncovered incredibly problematic, but with good direction and an acceptable score, could the film survive the production philosophy? Possibly.

The production philosophy is simple and unbelievably stupid. Uncovered requests the viewer ignore accents and ethnicity. It asks the viewer to ignore John Wood is British, it asks the viewer to pretend heavily accented Irishman Paudge Behan is a gypsy. A blond-haired, blue-eyed one who wears around Hawaiian shirts. Sinéad Cusack’s character is never defined as Spanish, so maybe that one’s forgivable. Kate Beckinsale’s character is apparently supposed to be British, just living in Barcelona for the majority of her life. As Spanish nobility, Michael Gough is funny enough to ignore the major problems.

But where Uncovered is conflicting is in its approach to the characters. Even if McBride can’t direct a scene, the conversations between the characters are startlingly refreshing and blunt. Beckinsale’s character’s obsession with her weight (probably direct from the novel, since the movie doesn’t show much ingenuity), is a welcome cinematic approach. It’s part of her character, not a plot point. It began before the present action and it’s going to continue following.

Also interesting is–again from the novel–the lurking danger of AIDS.

The character stuff–and the awkwardly successful romance between Beckinsale and Behan, mostly because Beckinsale’s good enough to rise above the defects–almost makes Uncovered all right. But then the end does it in, mostly because of the terrible score and Wood’s performance going down the toilet.

Had the filmmakers just set the movie in England and hired a decent director (it’d be hard to use Sarde’s score in England), Uncovered would have probably been all right. Had they gotten a good feminist rewrite of the script, it would have been excellent.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Jim McBride; screenplay by Michael Hirst, McBride and Jack Baran, based on a novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte; director of photography, Affonso Beato; edited by Éva Gárdos; music by Philippe Sarde; production designer, Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski; produced by Enrique Posner; released by CiBy 2000.

Starring Kate Beckinsale (Julia), John Wood (Cesar), Sinéad Cusack (Menchu), Paudge Behan (Domenec), Peter Wingfield (Max), Helen McCrory (Lola), Michael Gough (Don Manuel) and Art Malik (Alvaro).

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Batman Forever (1995, Joel Schumacher)

Joel Schumacher once commented he was first credited with saving the Batman franchise (with Batman Forever), then destroying it (with Batman & Robin). I think I’d watched his second venture (or tried to watch it) more recently than I had seen Forever… anyway, it isn’t like Schumacher made one good one and one bad one. He made two bad ones and the second one just happened to be worse, but Batman Forever is atrocious in its own right. When Drew Barrymore gives a film’s best performance, it’s trouble.

The problems with the film are a list of its cast (with the except of Barrymore, Val Kilmer–who isn’t good but isn’t bad either, it’s not like he could do anything with the role–and maybe Alfred Gough), its crew (whoever did the composites should be blacklisted and Elliot Goldenthal’s score is an offense to the ears) and particularly Schumacher and the writers.

I’ve long been under the impression the Batchlers worked on “Batman: The Animated Series,” explaining some of the more cartoon-like elements of the plot (particularly the Statue of Liberty stand-in), but I can’t find that credit on IMDb so they’re probably just Warner Bros. in-house writers… Forever’s other credited writer, Akiva Goldsman, is, of course, the guy who has somehow gotten respectable in modernity, though it’s probably because he helped dumb down theatergoers so much in the 1990s… I’m not sure who is responsible for each of the terrible scenes–Batman Forever’s most interesting in its inability to have a single honest frame of celluloid, and it might be my new candidate for the turning point of Hollywood, when everything started its descent into garbage (I need to admit, right now, I used to like Batman Forever, but I was a teenager and apparently a dumb one).

Another possible reason for a genial defense of the film is Jim Carrey. People used to love him, though it’s hard to remember those days. He’s absolutely terrible, as is Tommy Lee Jones (Nicole Kidman and Chris O’Donnell are as well, but no one should expect anything from either of them). But Jones… it’s painful to watch him. I thought he took the role for his kids (but, again, can’t find any online citation of it).

Schumacher’s direction of the film is both incompetent and incredibly interesting. Besides the terrible composites (I sort of remember them always looking poorly lighted), Schumacher appears to have been shooting unfinished sets. Or it was stylistic–a bad style–never shooting any establishing shots, never setting up anything in the film (with the possible except of Wayne Manor) as believable. But, it’s still interesting how he can keep up such a visually unintelligible film.

Schumacher got a lot of crap for making the next one as a toy commercial, but this one is just the same… it even looks like an old toy commercial, the kind with the toys shot as though they were life-size, which pretty much sums up Batman Forever… It’s so bad, I’m surprised I–as the teenager who thought it was good–was literate.