A Rankin/Bass Christmas

With Christmas two days away it's time for a holiday treat! We'll examine the much beloved Rankin/Bass specials. Their shows run constantly around the holiday season; in our house, Rudolph and the Frosty shorts are must-see TV.  Most of them are charming, a few great.

This article looks at four R/B specials and a fifth related short. Obviously this isn't a comprehensive list. Perhaps we can revisit The Little Drummer Boy and Jack Frost for next year.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer remains, along with A Charlie Brown Christmas, the gold standard for holiday specials. Exquisitely animated and effortlessly charming, it makes even the most cynical 50 year old feel like a kid.

Rudolph (Billie Mae Richards) is a young reindeer with a glowing red nose. Rudolph tries out for the reindeer games, an audition for Santa Claus's (Stan Francis) sleigh team, but is ridiculed once his nose is revealed. He falls for Clarice (Janis Orenstein), a young doe who's more sympathetic. Outcast Rudolph runs away with Hermey (Paul Soles), a elf who'd rather be a dentist than make toys. They pass through the Island of Misfit toys, befriend prospector Yukon Cornelius (Larry D. Mann) and fight off the Abominable Snowman. Rudolph returns home, just as a snowstorm threatens Santa's delivery plans.

Rudolph is near-perfect family entertainment. Unlike other R/B works, it has a solid plot to complement its technical charms, allowing for movement and settings (the snowy North Pole, barren tundra. dreamlike Island of Misfit Toys). There's a bushel of amusing characters, from the perky Hermy to the grizzled Yukon and his cranky 'Bomble. Rudolph is an immensely likeable protagonist, all naivety and gumption. His scenes with sweetheart Clarice are too cute for words, though his little nose lighting up is sufficient to win us over. The show's be-yourself message is simple, direct and endearing.

Rudolph's Animagic remains the highlight. This stop motion technique uses wooden/plastic dolls with felt trimming, giving the film an enjoyably original (though oft-parodied) look. Rudolph and his pals look like Christmas ornaments to come life, invested with spirit and charm. Johnny Marks's excellent soundtrack, sung by Burl Ives, spawned several Christmas standards, including Have a Holly Jolly Christmas and Silver and Gold. For Christmas fun and holiday cheer Rudolph can't be topped.
Frosty the Snowman (1969)

Our next short sees Rankin/Bass turning to traditional cel animation. Frosty the Snowman is thinner than Rudolph but retains the same spirit of straightforward fun.

Schoolgirl Karen (June Foray) constructs Frosty the Snowman (Jackie Vernon) who comes to life when adorned with Professor Hinkle's (Billy De Wolfe) magic hat. Hinkle wants the hat back, and chases Karen and Frosty to the North Pole. Santa Claus (Paul Frees) inevitably intervenes, saving the day and shaming Professor Hinkle.

Frosty the Snowman is less impressive than Rudolph. The plot is weak even for a 22 minute short (with a silly resolution that renders the story pointless) and the hand-drawn animation not especially striking. But Frosty redeems with its loveable characters. Frosty makes a fun protagonist, mixing dopey naivety with affection for Karen, matched by Professor Hinkle's frantic villainy ("Busy, busy, busy!"). Jimmy Durante's idiosyncratic narration adds a unique touch, as when he proclaims Frosty "the best belly-whopper in the world!" It's a simple short of simple charms, fine holiday entertainment.


Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970)

Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is less successful. It's a mostly forgettable show, with its '60s mentality providing perverse amusement. The last thing a holiday special should attempt is being "hip," a lesson Rankin/Bass fail to appreciate.

S.D. Kluger (Fred Astaire) narrates Santa Claus's origin story. He started life as Kris Kringle (Mickey Rooney), a friendly orphan who wishes to be a toymaker. Unfortunately, Kris faces the evil White Wizard (Keenan Wynn) and the more mundane threats of Burgermeister Meisterburger (Paul Frees), a fun-hating village official. Kris enlists the help of some woodland friends along with Miss Jessica (Robie Lester), a teacher who falls for Kris. Together they set up a workshop at the North Pole, and the rest is history.

Viewed with 40 years' distance, Santa Claus plays as painfully obvious counterculture pandering. The show recasts Santa as an anti-establishment rebel, a Robin Hood-type criminal providing illicit gifts to children everywhere. This extends to Mrs. Claus, who transforms from stuffy school marm to long-haired hippie, and the groovy Peter Max-style animation accompanying several musical numbers. The idea, presumably, being that the kids wanted a "with-it" cartoon between Mobe rallies and The Brady Bunch.

Santa Claus has its charms. The animation is predictably top-notch, while Paul Frees and Keenan Wynn provide memorable villain turns. But the story proves uneventful, the leads boring and the songs uncharacteristically flat. This makes it harder to overlook its time capsule qualities. If Rudolph and Frosty are timeless, Santa is painfully dated.

The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)

This oddity might be best-remembered for its association with Batman and Robin: at one point in Joel Schumacher's Bat-astrophe, Mr. Freeze forces his henchmen to sing along with the Snow Miser. This dubious recognition aside, Year Without a Santa Claus is an enjoyable mixed bag: its bloated story lacks the simple charm of earlier shorts, but makes up for it with inventive characters.

Santa Claus (Mickey Rooney again) becomes ill, forcing Mrs. Claus (Shirley Booth) to find a present-delivering altnerative or else cancel Christmas. Elves Jingle (Bob McFadden) and Jangle (Bradley Bolke) run away to gauge Earthly reaction, shocked to find kids don't believe in Santa. Mrs. Claus, the elves and Earth kid Iggy (Colin Duffy) get caught in needlessly complicated negotiations, trying to convince a) the town Mayor to let Santa's reindeer go; b) the feuding elementals Snow Miser (Dick Shawn) and Heat Miser (George S. Irving) to allow for snow in the Mayor's town; c) Mother Nature (Rhoda Mann) to knock some sense into the lot of them. Does that make sense?

The Year Without a Santa Claus makes a silly story very complex. Santa ends up a bit player with his wife and dopey sidekicks doing all the work. The movie feels like an animated Cold War allegory, with Mrs. Claus performing shuttle diplomacy between the Misers, earthly officials and Mother Nature Henry Kissinger-style. (Does this make Santa Richard Nixon?) If Frosty's plot was too simple, Year becomes convoluted, bogging down in negotiations and relying on set pieces to keep things fresh.

The Animagic provides Year's highpoint. The Misers are wonderfully designed as elemental demons, dripping icicles and fiery hair, with snappy personalities to match. The songs are uneven: while Mrs. Claus's songs are forgettable, the Miser cues provide a snappy theme with standards Blue Christmas and Here Comes Santa Claus picking up some slack. This makes Year fun for all its rough spots.

Frosty Returns (1995)

Our last item isn't official Rankin/Bass, rather an unloved (and unlovable) stepchild. In 1995 CBS roped Peanuts animator Bill Melendez into directing Frosty Returns, a joyless sequel that drags a classic character through the slush.

The small town of Beansboro prepares for its winter festival, but tycoon Mr. Twitchell (Brian Doyle-Murray) plans on ruining the fun with Summer Wheeze. This spray-on snow evaporator angers young Holly (Elisabeth Moss) and her nerdy friend Charles (Michael Patrick Carter). Holly enlists the help of Frosty (John Goodman), no longer endearingly naive but a punchable wiseacre. Together girl and snowman set out to foil the evil Twitchell, singing horribly along the way.

Frosty Returns is irredeemably awful. In this special, holiday cheer proves secondary to environmental preaching and cornball humor. Even with voices by John Goodman, Brian Doyle-Murray and Elisabeth Moss the characters are charmless; Goodman's smartass Frosty begs for a flamethrower to his snow-nads. Returns gets one laugh, when Twitchell drops a squawking environmentalist through a trapdoor. The five seconds of thought put into that gag clearly exhausted the crew's creativity.

Then there's the music. Never mind Mark Mothersbaugh's weird score, which sounds like recycled Rugrats cues. "Let There Be Snow" must be the worst song ever. It's obnoxiously atonal, relying on drawn out stanzas and painfully labored rhymes to deliver a treacly message about "the world dressed in white." And it's sung three times in this 20 minute short, surely the musical equivalent of waterboarding. This auditory excretion elevates Frosty Returns from regrettable cash-in to agonizing atrocity.

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Hopefully you've enjoyed this sardonic sojourn into Christmas cartoons. Stay tuned for more holiday cheer!

Batman: The Burton-Schumacher Saga

With the third and last (?) Christopher Nolan Batflick behind us, it's time to revisit the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher franchise. Nolan's gritty approach won over critics, comic fans and mass audiences but the earlier installments were extremely popular in their day. They certainly don't deserve to be uniformly written off as inferior hack jobs.

Make no mistake: the Batman films were the movie event of the '90s. Those movies were marketed to a degree unheard of even for summer blockbusters. I'm just old enough to remember the endless barrage of TV ads, toys and Happy Meals accompanying Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The first Batman sold an amazing $750,000,000 in merchandising alone. That's of course ignoring their gargantuan box office take; even Batman & Robin did solid business.

Surely studio hype deserves some credit, but moviegoers likely appreciated a Batman more grounded than goofy Adam West reruns. Richard Donner's Superman films showed there was a market for earnest comic book flicks, rescuing the genre from its camp doldrums. Certainly Batman was due for a revamp after Frank Miller and Alan Moore's angsty, brooding '80s update of the character. The formula worked swimmingly until Tim Burton left... but we'll get there momentarily.

Batman (1989, Tim Burton)

Batman (1989) is easily the series' best, with Burton ably mixing his goth chic style with superhero trappings. Coupled with some inspired casting, it's a fun ride.

Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) moonlights as Batman, a masked vigilante targeting Gotham City's underworld. He finds his archnemesis in Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), enforcer for mob boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) who reinvents himself as The Joker after a nasty chemical accident. The Joker menaces Gothamites with several bizarre schemes, including tainted make up and mime hit squads. Batman fights Joker while romancing Vicki Vale (Kim Bassinger), a snoopy photojournalist.

Batman achieves the right balance: it's relatively serious without neglecting comic book stylization. Burton sublimates his style to the material, mixing brooding noirish scenery with cool '40s retro fashions and weaponry. The action scenes make perfect use of Burton's mis en scene: a shootout in a chemical factory, Joker and goons trashing an art museum, a rooftop fight reminiscent of Charade. Danny Elfman contributes a marvelous score, with Prince's songs a solid addition. Aside from some awkward animated effects, the movie's technically faultless.

Michael Keaton proves a surprisingly solid Batman. Not an imposing physical presence, Keaton handles the action well-enough and scores as a quietly haunted Bruce Wayne. Jack Nicholson's Joker is an even bigger home run. Nicholson cuts loose with an endless barrage of weird sight gags, twisted make-up jobs and nonsensical rants. He's silly and menacing in equal measure, a perfect super-villain.

Michael Gough and Pat Hingle appeared throughout the series as Alfred Pennyworth and Commissioner Gordon. Hingle is completely wasted but Gough nails his role with droll suavity. Kim Bassinger makes an appealing love interest. Billy Dee Williams has a few scenes as Harvey Dent, a role he sadly didn't reprise in Batman Forever.

Batman's main failing is the story, a collection of set pieces and character moments without much drive. Most egregious is altering the Joker's back story, making him the killer of Bruce's parents. This reduces Batman from a conflicted vigilante to a simple avenger, something Nolan's flicks wisely avoided. Not to mention Alfred inexplicably letting Vicki into the Batcave... But Burton makes the ride so enjoyable these seem trivial.

Batman Returns (1992, Tim Burton)

Batman Returns is the franchise's most divisive entry, fans either calling it the best or overly dark. I'm more sympathetic to the latter viewpoint, though "darkness" isn't the problem. Rather, it's a Tim Burton flick with an abundance of his annoying quirks. Fortunately, Returns has enough inventive elements to remain watchable. 

Oswald Cobblepot is a deformed child raised by penguins in Gotham's sewers. Naturally he grows into the Penguin (Danny DeVito), who reemerges with help of unscrupulous businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) as candidate for Mayor of Gotham. Bruce Wayne falls for Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who happens to be Shreck's secretary. After Shreck tries to kill her for stumbling on a plan for scamming Gotham, Selina becomes the vengeful Catwoman. She teams up with the Penguin to destroy Batman, unaware of his secret identity.

Batman Returns embodies everything irritating about Burton's directorial style. It's annoyingly twee in a way its predecessor avoided, all nauseating goth whimsy and self-conscious weirdness. Burton's touches grow increasingly asinine, from Shreck's cartoon cat logo to Penguin's rubber ducky vehicle. Worse, so much time is spent on villain back stories that Batman becomes a bit player. Instead of meshing with the material as with Batman, Burton's direction reeks of self-indulgence.

Michael Keaton is overshadowed by the grotesque villains. Christopher Walken does best underplaying his vicious tycoon. Danny DeVito mugs, leers and cackles, ghoulishly made up like an ovoid Alistair Sim. Amusing at first, his schtick grows tiresome after 126 minutes. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman is poorly conceived as a feminist avenger ("Life's a bitch and so am I!") with no reason to hate Batman, aside from his testicles. Keep an eye for Paul Reubens and Vincent Schiavelli in bit parts.

Batman Returns isn't a total loss. The baroque satire of a Mayoral candidate leading in the polls after publicly biting off a man's nose is too rich to discount. Burton and scribe Daniel Waters keep the narrative taut despite its trio of villains. Burton again does a good job with the action, even silly bits like Penguin's driving simulator and the mass penguin attack. And best of all, the movie remains relatively serious for all its weirdness. With Burton's departure, these elements vanished.

Batman Forever (1995, Joel Schumacher)

Batman Returns is a downgrade from the original, but Batman Forever is a disaster. Tim Burton got "kicked upstairs" to producer, with Michael Keaton departing as well. Into their respective places stepped veteran hack journeyman Joel Schumacher and notoriously difficult Val Kilmer. Perhaps it's not surprising then that Forever sucks.

Batman (Val Kilmer) squares off with Harvey "Two-Face" Dent (Tommy Lee Jones), District Attorney-turned-deformed criminal. At a circus Dent murders the Flying Graysons, a troupe of acrobats whose sole survivor is petulant young Dick (Chris O'Donnell). Bruce Wayne takes Dick under his wing, but the latter soon discovers Wayne's secret and begs to help him fight crime. Disgruntled scientist Edward Nigma (Jim Carrey) becomes The Riddler, joining Dent to drain Gothamites' brains via a special TV device. And Bruce romances Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), a sultry psychologist who's really attracted to Batman.

Batman Forever opens with a closeup of Batman's crotch and a quip about fast food. This perfectly sums up Schumacher's mixture of the gauche and commercial. He re-envisions Gotham as a garish casino, all neon lights and Greco-Roman architecture, with action scenes dominated by obvious computer graphics. Everything from the Batmobile to the villains is re-imagined for Happy Meals, complete with nipple-bedecked Batman for prepubescent S&M fans. Riddler and Two-Face's dopey preening amps the camp to 11. The serious moments (the death of Robin's parents, Bruce's flashbacks) are jarring amidst slapstick fights and dizzying kitsch.

Val Kilmer is thoroughly dull, presenting Batman as wax dummy. Jim Carrey gets by playing his usual frantic self, but Tommy Lee Jones's hambone antics are embarrassing. Chris O'Donnell narrowly avoids punchability... this time. Nicole Kidman provides kittenish sensuality but little personality. Drew Barrymore and Debi Mazar play Two-Face's gal pals.

Batman & Robin (1997, Joel Schumacher)

Rarely has a movie deserved brickbats more than Batman & Robin. Abandoning all pretenses of quality, Schumacher mixes the goofiness of the '60s TV series with the gaudiness of a toy commercial. The result is painful to watch.

Batman (now George Clooney) and Robin have their hands full. Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) initiates a crime spree, stealing diamonds in a convoluted plot to research a cure for his wife's terminal illness. Meek scientist Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman) turns into Poison Ivy after a chemical accident (what else?) and determines to destroy humanity for plantkind. The two villains team up to destroy Gotham, while Batman and Robin bicker with each other. Alfred's terminal illness, and the arrival of his niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) further complicate things.

You know Batman & Robin's bad when the title characters make no impression. George Clooney seems thoroughly bored, as if waiting for E.R. to come back from hiatus. No longer Batman Forever's clingy acolyte, Chris O'Donnell's Robin is now a bitchy teenager in need of a vicious paddling. Alicia Silverstone isn't convincing as either a computer whiz or a badass biker chick. Michael Gough, terminally ill in a half-baked subplot, upstages them all. Even decked in the finest fetish wear, they're the dullest superheroes ever.

The villains are even worse. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Freeze is a pathetic running gag, his tragic back story snowed over by an avalanche of chilling puns ("Let's kick some ice!"). But he's imposing compared to Uma Thurman, delivering leafy innuendos ("My garden needs tending") in a stomach-turning Mae West impression. Jeep Swenson's Bane is a monosyllabic moron ("Monkey... WORK!") while John Glover devours scenery in a pathetic bit. It's a stretch bringing these diverse baddies together and Schumacher hardly tries.

Batman & Robin is just one wrong-headed, inexplicable blunder after another. Freeze's minions singing along to a Rankin-Bass cartoon is comic relief, but whose idea was Batman's credit card? How will Freeze covering the Earth in ice help Ivy's plants take root? What's with the ill-conceived Blonde Venus homage, with Ivy doing a simian striptease? Why the extended street race with bikers dressed like Kubrick characters? Why decorate Gotham with giant nude statues and Day-Glo graffiti? And Coolio, seriously?

George Clooney moved on to bigger things but his colleagues weren't so lucky. Schumacher found himself toiling in modest indie flicks. Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell's budding stardom abruptly ended. After this and The Avengers, Uma Thurman vanished until Kill Bill. Jeep Swenson died before the film's release. Meanwhile, writer Akiva Goldsman... won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. It's a cold town, indeed.

* * *

On the one hand, the Burton-Schumacher Batman films are inconsistent in quality and tone. From an excellent beginning they fell prey to the Law of Diminishing Returns, especially with Burton and Keaton's departures. And yes, Batman & Robin is exactly as bad as they say. Still, I'd probably rather revisit the first two films than Nolan's uber-serious entries. Whatever their flaws, they achieve a commendable mixture of superhero fun and pulp seriousness.

All right everyone, chill!

It's a COLD blog!

Unfortunately I haven't found much time for this blog lately. I've been reading a lot for my TE Lawrence blog and perhaps more importantly, had another failed job interview. Life stinks.

I present my interview with Lawrence biographer Stephen E. Tabachnick here. At least there's one thing to show for my recent efforts.

Enough self-pity. Returning to the movie realm, let's catch up with a few links:

DVD Savant has a very perceptive (and surprisingly positive) review of The Hunger Games, newly released on Blu-Ray. My take can be read here.

Margaret Peary's been doing an excellent rundown of TCM's Summer Under the Stars series on her Katherine Hepburn blog. Guess who today's star is?

Our friend Jim Tate has a podcast interview of '80s actress Diane Franklin (Better Off Dead, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) on his site.

A few months old but well worth sharing: J. Hoberman's take on "Un-American" Westerns.

Hopefully I'll have movie-watching time this weekend. Stay cool.

The Ultimate in Fanboy Idiocy, Redux

Today is the release of the newest (and hopefully) last Bat-astrophe from Christopher Nolan. I'll probably see it eventually, because a) a good chunk of it was shot in Pittsburgh, b) a few of my friends are extras in it. My actual excitement level is slim-to-none. The fact that I've never written more about The Dark Knight than the desultory few paragraphs in the blog's early days should indicate my level of interest.

I would have let this momentous date slide without comment, except now the Nolan fanboys are crawling over each other to be the dumbest, lamest, nerdiest loser alive.

The IMDB boards are a reliable source for idiocy. Just browse through some of the thread titles here to get an idea. Of course they'll be completely different ones 15 minutes from now.

Then there's Rotten Tomatoes, where a critic who dared dislike this movie got rather vicious death threats.

Of course, a real-life tragedy has dwarfed the web chatting. At one midnight screening in Colorado, a psycho showed up and killed 14 people. My condolences to those killed in this horrible tragedy.

Of course, some IMDBers, being cretinous slugs, have decided to blame Avengers fans for this shooting.

So yeah, wake me when they bring back this guy:

I'm planning to go out this weekend with friends so probably not a lot of movie-watching in the near-future. I'll try and find something to keep you all entertained. See you in the history books, people.

It's a COLD Town!

"Tonight's forecast... a FREEZE is coming!"

Yep, more snow, which means at least two snow days in a row due to this gigantomous blizzard. And looking at the weather schedules and the disgusting state of the streets outside, I wouldn't be surprised if this whole week is lost.

What this means, though, is a lot more movie watching, courtesy of TCM and Netflix and so on and so forth. So you can expect a steady stream of reviews over the next few days.

Also, not movie-related, but RIP to my former Congressman John Murtha.

New Years' Resolutions

Welcome to our second full year of Nothing is Written! For the eight or so of you who ever read this blog, thank you for your continued support. I hope you will continue reading my semi-legible scribblings until I die of exhaustion or run out of movies to review. I've already rewatched A Fistful of Dollars today, and TCM is obliging me with showings of The Informer, In Which We Serve and Notorious later this week - plus my first World Film History class on Wednesday! I hope to see either The Young Victoria or Avatar in theaters this week if my schedule permits, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

It's a New Year (and decade for that matter), and like most people, I'm making resolutions. I'm not bothering to make resolutions involving my weight or spendiness, although I hope a new girlfriend may be in the works, but for my faithful readers, I'll do my best. Just be warned that I'm no more apt to keep these promises than any in real life.

Here are some things you will hopefully see this year.

- I don't think I'm going to bother trying to see all ten Best Picture nominees this year; that's just too much of a goddamned hassle, especially with my classes and this weather, and in all honesty only a handful even look worthwhile. I'll see whatever looks interesting to me, which means you probably won't see a review of Nine any time soon. Whether I'll even watch the Oscars this year is open to question, but that may be the basis for a rant so I won't say too much.

- I'm finishing my film minor (no longer a major) with World Film History. I will try to review every movie we watch if it's interesting enough to review. If nothing else you'll see big, long essays turn up in early March/late April. I won't guarantee essays on A Trip to the Moon or assorted avante garde crap though. Let's just hope these bastards let me sit through an entire Eisenstein film this term...

- David Lean Quest 1.5! Which means that I'm going to back track, rewatch, and review the David Lean films that I missed during my previous quest. This shouldn't be too difficult; I own Bridge on the River Kwai on DVD, Summertime can be instantly watched on Netflix, In Which We Serve will be on TCM this week, and the Dickens films are at the Hillman for whenever I have time. I hope to do the same for Sergio Leone and Stanley Kubrick, time permitting.

- More John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock reviews than you can shake a stick at!

- A super-big omnibus article of the masterful Leprechaun franchise - if I can be bothered.

- More rantings about human stupidity! Because there's nothing people like better than seeing a loser 21-year-old spout off at blocks of text posted on teh Intrawebz!

- 1000% more IMDB!

- I would love to solicit recommendations for reviews/articles from my readers, if any of you are willing to contribute.

- Hopefully I can twist Analee's arm to have her provide another review. That's entirely up to her, of course.

Failure to live up to any of these promises will lead to my summary execution. I'm counting on you to hold me to this promise!

I just got done shovelling the driveway, so STAY COOL!

Groggy's Top 10 Villains

Today IMDB posted a link to this article, sort of a commentary of an interview with NPR film criic, talking about why people find movie villains so fascinating or some garbage like that. I think a lot of the reasoning therein is rather insipid, inaccurate and simplistic, but on the other hand, it did get my own brain working, which is occasionally a good thing.

What makes a villain interesting depends on the story - or the villain himself. There are tragic villains, men who were good at one time, but were corrupted into being evil, or are driven to evil by circumstance or revenge. These certainly make complex and interesting characters, who might well be protagonists in another story. A great many examples come to mind, from Shakespeare's Richard III and Iago to blockbuster villains like Mr. Freeze to Davy Jones. On occasion, though, the just plain evil rotters, who were born evil and have little or no justification for wickedness, are just as effective. Witness the popularity of Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, who despite the idiotic claims of the above-mentioned author, is best-observed as a psychotic who delights in causing chaos and destruction.

Really, what matters is that the villain is compelling - that the writer, director and actor do a good enough job of making him memorable, regardless of whether his motivation is avenging a slain family member or a loose screw.

Here is my fairly provisional list of my top ten movie villains. For a somewhat more comprehensive list, peruse this video of mine.

10. Colonel Saito - Sessue Hayakawa (Bridge on the River Kwai)

Saito is one of the ultimate examples of the tragic villain. The brutal head of a Japanese prison camp in World War II, he is an artist and engineer out of his depth dealing with an officer like the bullheaded Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), a born soldier with a literally unshakeable conscience and constitution. Despite his protestations of following the Bushido code, Saito clearly has no stomach for his work, and engages in a stand-off with Nicholson on account of sheer, bull-headed pride, even as his bridge project falls short of completion; the scene where he breaks down in his hut after ceding ground to Nicholson humanizes him to a degree that the British Colonel never is. Even with his limited command of English, former silent-film star Hayakawa (who won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor nod) makes Saito a compellingly tragic figure, nearly matching Guinness's Oscar-winning turn, and arguably emerging as the more sympathetic of the two.

9. Eve Harrington - Anne Baxter (All About Eve)

The only female on this list (probably because I'm some sort of sexist), Anne Baxter portrays Eve Harrington as a truly repulsive yet chillingly believable ladder-climber. At first, she's convincing enough as a star-struck aspiring actress worshipping Margo Channing (Bette Davis), whose bitter descent in decrepitude and obsolescence provides a perfect cover for Eve's creepy infiltration of Margo's celebrity. However, her subtle, near-undetectable scheming soon puts Eve towards the top, and always firmly in control. Her displays of false modesty become increasingly hollow, and after we learn her true motives - when she suddenly bears her blackened soul to the helpful Karen (Celeste Holm) - they become downright chilling. Ultimately though, even Eve is no match for the duplicitous theater critic Addison De Witt (George Sanders), who puts the conniving Eve in her place - for the moment. At the end of the film, we see Eve as arrogant as ever - though it seems the ultimate cinematic justice is just around the corner.

8. Emperor Maximillian II - Tom Hollander (Land of the Blind)

Tom Hollander is a perennial favorite of this blog, and his manic performance as the spoiled-brat dictator of Robert Evans' excellent dystopian satire is undoubtedly his career-best. Maximillian is alternately funny, frightening and even sympathetic - a Kim Jong-Il-esque dictator who uses the film's fictional country as a private playground, making Godawful films, engaging in sex games, randomly killing staff members, pigging out on lobster, and generally acting like a child too big for his britches - which indeed he is. He shows no signs of intelligence or insight, is manipulated by his Lady Macbeth-ish wife (Lara Flynn Boyle) and advisors, and his very imbecility is what makes him so dangerous - when this child throws a temper tantrum, people die. And yet, when Maximillian is faced with execution by his political rival Thorne (Donald Sutherland), he becomes strangely sympathetic - an ignorant, childish slug with no right to be where he is, he is somehow undeserving of his cold-blooded murder. Of course, it doesn't help his case that Thorne's totalitarian revolution proves even worse, even if there's a method to his madness.

7. Liberty Valance - Lee Marvin (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)

Lee Marvin's star-making turn as the sadistic Liberty Valance is one of the greatest rotters in film history. He's a bastard without a single redeeming feature, a gun-toting, whip-wielding loud-mouth who robs stagecoaches, whips old ladies, beats unarmed men, murders ranchers, steals steaks, shoots up towns, rigs elections, and hangs around Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef, oozing flamboyant menace from every pore. He's not a remotely subtle or layered character, but as a depiction of pure evil on film, he has very few equals. When it takes the combined might of James Stewart and John Wayne to take a man down, he has to be one hell of an SOB.

6. Uncle Charlie - Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt)

Casting actors against type is a common trick, but when it works, the effects can be devastating. Witness the role of Joseph Cotten, the nice guy-next-door from Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Third Man and Gaslight, as the psychotic Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Cotten and director Alfred Hitchcock trade brilliantly off of Cotten's screen persona; even though he's introduced as a vampiric figure hiding in a dark room at high noon, he's such a swell guy that it's no wonder everyone cottons (look, a pun!) to him.

Of course, it doesn't take long for the facade to break, as Charlie degenerates into impromptu rants about the uselessness of widows, and the generally foul nature of human society. Cotten is brilliantly chilling as he segues seamlessly from polite small talk to some of the nastiest monologues outside a Strindberg play. The seductive, hypnotic effect Charlie has on everyone around him makes him all the more creepy; he's evil hiding in plain sight, and no one except his niece (Teresa Wright) seems to notice. The banality of evil has never been more palpably portrayed on film.

5. Gentleman Brown - James Mason (Lord Jim)

About two hours into Lord Jim, around the time the plot goes off the rails, James Mason shows up out of nowhere with a wonderfully portentious introduction. He casually strolls up to co-villains Curt Jurgens and Akim Tamaroff, as the latter declaims:

"This Gentleman Captain Brown has given more men unto death than the bubonic plague. From Java to Fiji, he's wanted for slavery, for mutiny, piracy, rape, murder - and some things that aren't even mentioned in the Bible!"

Although Mason has maybe fifteen minutes of screen time, he's a wonderfully odious presence, whose mere appearance inspires foreboding and dread. It certainly doesn't hurt that he has some of the best dialogue in movie history, to wit:

"You're out, he's in - but HE'S the fool?"
"Drunk, you're useless!"
"His Highness has pretensions to heroism - a form of mental disease induced by vanity."
"You have a natural talent for disaster! Try and improve yourself into an ordinary failure by keeping your mouth shut!"
"Shut your gob!"
"If I'm an expert judge of human weakness, depravity and avarice - and I am - then we shall not go unrewarded for our labor."
"His Highness has the wreaking stench of a converted sinner."

Imagine James Mason saying those lines and you should have no trouble understanding my appreciation of the character. My only criticism is that he doesn't show up sooner.

4. Colonel Von Waldheim - Paul Scofield (The Train)

When we first meet Colonel Von Waldheim, he is enraptured by a gallery of French paintings, awed beyond words by sheer artistic beauty. He engages in a civil discussion with the museum curator (Suzanne Flon), who thanks him for protecting the art during four long years of Nazi occupation. Then Waldheim's henchmen arrive to take the paintings away, and the Colonel's cultured nice-guy image is immediately shattered. And we see that Waldheim's interest is not simply an aesthetic appreciation for art, but a personal obsession - he will stop at nothing to see this paintings protected, but only if they remain in his hands.

The beyond-brilliant Scofield (A Man for All Seasons) portrays Waldheim motivated by an abstract idea of beauty and its worth - nothing else matters but these expressions. Where he's villain is that he won't share the art with those considers unworthy of having it - but does he have a point here? When he declaims to Burt Lancaster's embattled Labiche at the end, "Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it", we can certainly understanding, even if we find the Colonel warped - how much blood has this man shed for the shake of a crate load of paintings? To be fair to Waldheim, however, it is at least something tangible, unlike the inscrutable riddle of patriotism and pride for which millions die.

3. Marcus Licinius Crassus - Laurence Olivier (Spartacus)

The ultimate in Roman decadence and brutality, Crassus is a ruthless fascist who flaunts his wealth and power, and will stop at nothing to return Rome to his bizarrely idealized "tradition". He is a Machiavellian schemer par excellence, engaging in a political chess game of with the gleefully crooked Republican Gracchus (Charles Laughton), fanning the flames of Spartacus's (Kirk Douglas) slave revolt into a major uprising that sees him poised to take over Rome. He is also, at base, an insecure man who wants to be loved, trying without success to seduce his servant Antoninus (Tony Curtis) and Spartacus's lover Varinia (Jean Simmons), and having little more success in persuading his political rivals to come to heel.

Though a bit hammy at times, Olivier is generally excellent, capturing all of Crassus's many facets: the cold-blooded schemer, the ruthless dictator, the driven patriot, the empty, insecure man. The scene where, with all the power of Rome behind him, he is humiliated by a bound and silent Spartacus is a wonderful piece of acting; Crassus's control is only illusory, and he is destined to lose it in short order anyway, as we see with his conversation with Julius Caesar (John Gavin) at film's end. Joaquin Phoenix's turn as Commodus in Gladiator was clearly modelled on Olivier's Crassus (don't bother mentioning Fall of the Roman Empire, which has a distinctly different characterization of Commodus) - if Olivier's Crassus were a whiny teenaged castrato.

2. Frank - Henry Fonda (Once Upon a Time in the West)

Imagine a smiling Tom Hanks shooting a defenseless eight year old and you have the shock registered by 1968 audiences in Henry Fonda's introductory scene in this film. The iconic Hollywood good guy, up there with John Wayne as the eternal symbol of righteousness in films like My Darling Clementine and 12 Angry Men, is a cold-blooded, remorseless hired gun, usurps the power of his dying boss (Gabriele Ferzetti), rapes our heroine (Claudia Cardinale), and all around proves himself to be a cold-blooded son of a bitch with not a single redeeming feature. And the most frightening thing is that it's all so casual; Fonda does not seem remotely ill at-ease playing a psychopathic killer, which makes his performance all the more chilling. Who doesn't get goosebumps as the final flashback unfolds, with a bearded younger Fonda slowly coming into focus, spitting out a cruel "Keep your lovin' brother happy!" to the young Harmonica before lynching his brother?

1. Bruno Anthony - Robert Walker (Strangers on a Train)

Another Hitchcock villain, even more chilling than Uncle Charlie, Walker's Bruno gets the top award. When we first see him, he seems a bit too friendly towards Guy (Farley Granger), but otherwise not a bad person. That he discusses murdering people shouldn't bother us overmuch in a Hitchcock film. However, the absolutely chilling scene where, seemingly on a whim, he stalks Guy's disloyal wife through a carnival and kills her, lets us know that we're dealing with a psycho - and not just any garden-variety psycho either. And, of course, he expects Guy to hold up his end of the bargain, leading to scene after chilling scene of Bruno watching Guy from a distance - at a party, a tennis match or a family gathering, there's nowhere he's safe.

Walker wins by delivering a marvellously subtle performance, not resorting to mad man stereotypes but remaining restrained and believable even in the depths of dementia. Although many critics read a homosexual angle into Walker's portrayal, it seems more to me that he's just plain sick - a highly intelligent and jovial, but childish, immature and utterly warped individual, spoiled rotten and turned into a killer by a combination of lousy parenting and mental illness. The film doesn't explain Bruno's psychosis (unlike, say, Psycho) but gives us enough clues (troubled past, domineering mother, distant father, posh lifestyle) for us to piece things together. A combination of Norman Bates and the Terminator, he is truly the most repulsive and frightening villain in film history.

The Boys From Brazil

"Shut up, you ugly BITCH!"

The Boys From Brazil is one of a slew of films about escaped Nazis and their diabolical plans to re-conquer the world, that became popular in the late '60s and '70s. Marathon Man is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this subgenre; other notable entries include The Quiller Memorandum, The ODESSA File, and the Grade-Z schlock film They Saved Hitler's Brain. Brazil has an incredible A-list cast with prestige director Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton, Planet of the Apes) at the helm, but it's a pretty flaky enterprise, with a plot outlandish even by '70s standards, and lots of cheese and camp. That certainly doesn't mean it isn't worth watching, however.

A young Jewish man (Steve Guttenberg) in Paraguay comes across an astonishing discovery: a cabal of escaped Nazi war criminals, headed by none other than Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), is meeting for nefarious purposes. Mengele is to set in motion a plot for Nazi domination: he has created 94 Hitler clones, sent them to various families around the world, and is planning to recreate the exact circumstances of the Fuhrer's youth by killing their father at just the right age. Guttenberg's murder (and, well, the killing of 94 random people all over the world) leads to the involvement of Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), a grimly determined free-lance Nazi hunter. It all leads to a showdown in beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Beth would appreciate that!), involving bloodthirsty dogs, a Hitler kid and two old-school actors wrestling on the carpet like little boys.

The basic problem with The Boys From Brazil is simple. The plot described above is so outlandish and ridiculous that even Lex Luthor and the Joker would dismiss it as insane. No, creating 94 Hitler clones surprisingly isn't the insane part; the idea that every one of them needs to have the exact circumstances of Hitler's youth is insanely illogical, to a degree Michael Bay would never dream of. So, what happens when there are 94 Hitlers running wild? Presumably this doesn't seem to bother Mengele (who is a nutcase, after all), but it seems rather inefficient to me; wouldn't one raised under the right circumstances be enough?

Still, despite the inherent silliness of the premise, the movie manages to be mostly entertaining due to a professional production job. As ridiculous as the story is, Heywood Gould's script is well-constructed and extremely well-paced, Schaffner provides polished, professional directions, and there are some effectivley unsettling moments - particularly the increasingly-creepy Hitler clones. Many bits, like the climactic tiff between Lieberman and Mengele, awkwardly balance cool and ridiculous camp - not necessarily a bad thing, as this can be said of many of my favorite movies.

Gregory Peck is a lot of things, and can be a great actor, but as proven in The Guns of Navarone, he is NOT a tough guy, and shouldn't try to play one - let alone an evil Nazi. Growling and rambling psychotic Nazi slogans in a phony accent that would make Mr. Freeze blush (except his was real), Peck is hilariously campy in his turn; his usual stiff and stentorian style turns to rancid ham. Instead of coming across as the embodiment of evil, he provides one of the funniest performances in film history - though I highly doubt that was intentional. On the other hand, you get to see him wrestle Laurence Olivier and get torn to pieces by Dobermans, which doesn't happen in too many films I'm aware of. And he does get one of the all-time great movie lines here:


"Shut up, you ugly BITCH!"

On the opposite end, Laurence Olivier (oddly the Mengele-esque doctor in Marathon Man), has fun as the Nazi hunter Lieberman (based on Simon Wiesenthal), with a bizarre Yiddish accent that makes him sound like an old lady. Accent aside, Olivier is at least believable in his role, and makes it work through force of will; the movie makes him a determined investigator rather than an elderly action hero, and he (almost) comes off well even in his scuffle with Mengele towards the end.

The movie has a solid supporting cast, though few of them have a lot to do. Third-billed James Mason has a largely superfluous role as an ODESSA officer; his role is pretty much restricted to an occasional argument with Peck. Uta Hagen has a strong scene as an unrepentant SS camp guard. A top-flight assembly of character actors is onhand to support: Michael Gough (The Horse's Mouth), Denholm Elliot (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Walter Gotell (General Gogol from various Bond films), Wolfgang Preiss (The Train). Pre-stardom Steve Guttenberg (Police Academy) and a very young Bruno Ganz (Downfall) have small but important roles. Jeremy Black is genuinely creepy as the various Hitler clones, despite lack of screen time.

The Boys From Brazil is either fun but silly, or silly but fun - such a thin line separates the two concepts. If nothing else, you'll never be able to think of Gregory Peck without giggling again.

A Word On Roman Polanski (Or, Why [Some] Of His Defenders are Degenerate Morons)

By now, I'm sure you're all aware that director Roman Polanski has been nabbed by authorities in Switzerland for his rape of then-13 year old Samantha Gailey in Los Angeles thirty-some years ago. After days of reading about the issue and arguing futilely about it on (where else?) Film General, here's my two cents.

A lot of people, from Hollywood directors to French politicians to geeky FGers, are rallying to Polanski's defense and making him into something of a perverse cause celebre. There are legitimate reasons, perhaps, to drop or reduce the charges on Polanski:

- Although I'm more inclined to believe the victim's side of the story in this instance, to be absolutely fair to Polanski, there's enough ambiguity in the situation that there could possibly be room for doubt as to what exactly went on.

- The crime happened thirty-two years ago. (I will say, though, that there is no statute of limitations since he was convicted and then fled.)

- Polanski himself is 76, hasn't (apparently) engaged in such activities since then, and at his age is arguably no danger to anyone.

- The victim herself has expressed willingness to forgive Polanski, on more than one occasion. This has little legal strength but it's certainly a powerful emotional appeal, and might in and of itself make the justice system's actions cold-blooded and hard to defend.

- The judge who was prosecuting him was an ambitious prick who planned to railroad Polanski for little good reason, and so he had at least some justification for fleeing.

These are arguments that, even if I take issue with them up to a point, I could accept and at least be on the same wavelength as. But too many people, from the misogynist amoral teenage apes of IMDB to the bone-headed gliteratti of Hollywood and beyond, to even French and Polish politicians (!), more specious, idiotic reasons are being advanced, that range from the illogical to the idiotic to the insane.

- What Polanski did was not a crime, or else should not be.

- There are people with far worse crimes out there, why should the US focus on Polanski?

- The girl in question was old enough to say no, she consented to it, etc. Some have even gone so far as to argue that because she may have had sexual relations prior to that, she somehow deserves it.

- Polanski has somehow atoned for the crime through his admittedly traumatic life.

- The American criminal justice is corrupt, mean-spriited and barbaric.

- Polanski has made a lot of great films since the crime - doesn't that exonerrate him?

Allow me to address each of these points in fairly abbreviated fashion:

- That's not for you to say, is it, bonehead? Too bad we don't have your wisdom to enlighten all of us, eh wot?

- Bullshit moral equivalence. What Henry Kissinger did in Chile or Cambodia or Angola may well be a crime, but it has no bearing on this case in particular, so drop your smug act of superiority. Unless you want to argue that only murderers and capital criminals should be prosecuted.

- Although Ms. Gailey (now Geiner) has expressed willingness to forgive Polanski, she has not changed her story but for a few details. Her testimony seems to indicate the equivalent of a date rape, where she was drugged and clearly resisted his advances. Not to mention, I would seriously argue that a 13 year old girl - let alone one who was drunk, on drugs, and being advanced upon by a much-older, very-famous film director - isn't old enough and sound enough to consent to sex anyway (If you believe otherwise, you're either overgeneralizing or just being a pig.) As for the latter point, I hope I don't need to detail how misogynistic and disgusting it is - but to the amoral monkeys who don't see pedophilia as a bad thing, well, there's no hope in persuading them anyway.

- Polanski certainly had one hell of an awful life, losing relatives in the Holocaust and the murder of Sharon Tate by the Mansons. Should that alone clear his record? No. Pretty much every criminal has some background circumstances that might drive them to crime, from a broken home to a traumatic incident to mental illness. Should they all be pardoned too? In any case, Polanski hasn't expressed any regret over the incident, so why should we factor this in?

- Maybe so, but I don't see it as being remotely relevant to this particular case. He committed a crime, was convicted of it, and fled justice. Most repulsive, to my way of thinking, is the implication that Polanski is somehow a martyr to justice for sodomizing a thirteen year old girl. Come on, you idiots, let's not make him into Martin Luther King Jr. (although it wouldn't surprise me after the way Hollywood rolled out the red carpet for Tookie Williams and Mumia Abu Jamal).

- This last one is, without a doubt, the most idiotic. If it were confined to IMDbers, that would be expected and no big deal, but members of the French and Polish governments are saying as much in protest of his arrest. Give me a fucking break, people! Art undoubtedly has its value in society, but that does not exonerrate an individual from responsibility for their own actions. To quote George Orwell, "If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear."

Not much more to say, except that those who advance such arguments reveal a great deal of unpleasantness about themselves.

Let's face facts here. Whatever the reasons advanced, most are defending him because he's a film director, plain and simple. If Polanski were Joe Schmoe, a politician, or (God forbid!) a priest, these people would either not care or be all over him like Mr. Freeze on an ice pun. But because Polanski is an artist and a celebrity, he's somehow above the law, and we must unquestioningly forgive him his trespasses.

Well, screw that. If you really think that a film career exonerrates a man of a heinous crime, you've forfeited my sympathy and respect, and outed yourself as an amoral ape.

Batman Begins

Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005) has been credited, along with its ultra-successful sequel, last year's The Dark Knight, with breathing new life into the played-out and tiresome superhero genre - a genre that has been stretched to the breaking point with film after mediocre film in recent years (two Incredible Hulks, Fantastic 4, Spider-Man, etc.). Personally, I'm not sure that I buy this line of reasoning. To me, despite its pretensions to seriousness, Batman Begins is yet another generic superhero film with the same mixture of overwrought self-importance and unconscious cheesiness that has characterized the genre over the past decade. I'm not the biggest fan of The Dark Knight, or the same year's Iron Man for that matter, but those films are a genuine breath of fresh air compared to this one.

Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) watches his super-rich parents gunned down by a petty criminal in the streets of Gotham, and grows up wanting revenge. His revenge is denied by agents of Gotham crime boss Carmine Falconi (Tom Wilkinson), whose syndicate controls Gotham with bribes, drugs and guns. Wayne goes on the lam as a criminal and ends up in the monestary of the shadowy Raas a'Ghul (Ken Wantanabe) and his mentor Henri Ducard (who else but Liam Neeson?), who run the League of Shadows, a secret society of vigilantes dedicated to wiping out crime and decadence in the world. Bruce finds out that the League is planning an outright destruction of Gotham, and races back to his home city. With the help of his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and loyal corporate associate Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Wayne transforms himself to the vigilante Batman, taking on Falconi and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), who as "the Scarecrow" is working with Raas al'Ghul to destroy Gotham with a hallucinogenic drug that will cause Gothamites to go mad with fear and destroy each other. Also playing a part are Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), Bruce's childhood sweetheart-turned-Assistant D.A. (and later turned-Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), one of the few honest cops left in Gotham, who becomes Batman's primary ally.

Claims of critics and fanboys to the contrary, Batman Begins really isn't THAT much different than most superhero films. Despite Nolan's pretensions of creating a darker and more realistic world for the bat to play in, the movie is just as goofy. Semi-realistic villains like Falconi and Crane are left hanging for yet another all-seeing, all-power evil secret society (because who could get enough of them?), whose plot for world domination (or at least Gotham's destruction) seems like the scheme of a particularly lame Bond villain. Characters are only sketchily introduced, and the film has the typical throat-clearing backstory that is both rushed and poorly done. The script is full of clunkily-written pseudo-profundities (along with some just plain cheesy dialogue) that inevitably ring false, when they aren't outright laughable (Falconi's "Don't burden yourself with the secrets of scary people" line may be the worst non-Garbage Day! dialogue in any film); they smack of self-important posturing that can be found in pretty much any film of this genre. All in all, Batman Begins has little to offer that can't be found in pretty much any other superhero film; it's musings on morality and fear are remarkably simplistic and beaten into the audience so often that even the densest three year old would get it.

Technically, the film is pretty good. Nolan's direction is generally solid; he shows a knack for visual style, and handles the film's action scenes reasonably well (though the film lacks a stand-up-and-cheer set-piece like, say, the convoy ambush in The Dark Knight). The movie looks good, for what its worth; it's mostly the script and story that lets the proceedings down. The score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard is repetitive and bland assembly-line junk, with lots of insistent strings and trilling brass that could be culled from any number of action flicks you could care to name.

The cast is a big disappointment; a lot of talent is assembled and mostly wasted. Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is bland, stiff and boring (let's not even mention the ludicrous Batman voice); I'm becoming more convinced with each film of his I watch that his great performance in Empire of the Sun was a fluke, as he's scarcely given a worthwhile performance since reaching puberty. Katie Holmes is mostly annoying and makes one pine for Maggie Gyllenhaal. Tom Wilkinson, Ken Wantanabe and Cillian Murphy are given thankless roles as secondary bad guys who are poorly introduced and have little to do. Gary Oldman does what he can, but in this installment Gordon is mostly a humorous role. Michael Caine provides wheezy comic relief, and Morgan Freeman's role is virtually superfluous (say what you will about the Burton-Schumaker Batmans, they at least economized their characters). It's Liam Neeson who gives the best performance; he's played the mentor guy in pretty much every film of the last ten years, from The Phantom Menace to Kingdom of Heaven to The Chronicles of Narnia, but he's good at it by now - though he doesn't quite make the transition to evil that the script requires of him. The Dark Knight would do a much better job with its ensemble cast; Oldman, Aaron Eckhardt, and yes, Heath Ledger would all give fine performances far beyond any of the acting on display here.

On the whole, Batman Begins was rather disappointing and has little to offer that the Spider-Man and Fantastic 4 films didn't already bring to the table. Fortunately, Nolan and Company would get a lot more right the second time around, creating a solid, well-written and -acted superhero film distinctly different from the cookie-cutter superhero formula.

Rating: 5/10 - Mediocre

Let's Kick Some ICE!

God help me.

Today I watched Joel Schumaker's Batman & Robin (1997). It had been quite awhile since I'd deliberately watched a notoriously awful movie without the help of MST3K. I knew from various YouTube videos and word of mouth that I was in for one hell of a ride, but nothing could prepare me for the dumbfounding sight that I witnessed today. While the Billy Jack and Leprechaun movies could at least plead "No budget!", this would-be blockbuster has no such excuse. Other than the Devlin-Emmerich Godzilla reboot, this is without a doubt the worst big-budget Hollywood movie I've ever seen.

Do you really need to know the plot? Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a cold-hearted ex-scientist who goes on a crime spree in an attempt to cure his dying wife of a rare disorder. He's helped by Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), a pheremone-spewing femme fatale created through a lab accident, burning for revenge against humanity in general. These two spew off bad pun after bad pun like a barrel full of MadTV writers. Batman (George Clooney) and Robin (Chris O'Donnell) strap on their nipple-adorned Batsuits and attempt to stop these guys, only to find themselves at odds with each other as much as their superfoes. Oh, and Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Gough in child molestor mode) has a terminal illness, and his niece (Alicia Silverstone) shows up to help our heroes kick some ice (and, er, leaf).

One comes away from Batman & Robin completely and utterly dumbfounded. I've never been a fan of Batman or superheroes in general, so I'm merely judging it based on basic human instincts. That being said, What the fuck is going on here? Did Schumaker and Company seriously think they were making a good film? Certainly some degree of camp is intentional - you don't write a million puns about ice without hoping at least one of them is funny - but how can one take this film even remotely seriously? With a boatful of A-list stars giving earth-shatteringly bad performances, an unbelievably turgid screenplay that's the stuff Internet memes are made of, a plot that goes nowhere in a hurry, laughably drawn characters, horrendously shot action sequences (with amusingly primitive CGI), and the visual sense of a squirrel on angel dust, Batman & Robin is not only mind-bendingly bizarre and inexplicable, but absolutely worthless as entertainment - even the justly-mocked camp elements are treading on thin ice towards the end.

The film is certainly creative visually, full of giant nude statues, Batnipples (and lots of crotch and butt close-ups), lots of icey and plant-adorned sets, and backdrops and settings that seem to be aimed at a deliberately cartoonish atmosphere. The result is surreal, inasmuch as a fever dream is surreal. Ultimately, it's also about as pleasant as a bad bout of the flu, or eating raw meat out of the ice box. If nothing else, this film provides Exhibit A that creative is by no means a synonym for good. One misses the rote, uncreative banality of a Michael Bay extravaganza here; with its multifaceted plot, large cast of characters, and whacky, drug-induced visual sense, Batman & Robin is nothing if not ambitious - but oh how it fails.

The cast seems to be engaging in a contest to see who can give the worst performance - and believe me, the competition is very stiff. George Clooney is stiff, wooden, boring and completely unemotive as the third '90s incarnation of Batman, and Chris O'Donnell is an obnoxious, utterly punchable prick as Robin. Arnold Schwarzenegger stops the competition cold with a frosty performance, spitting off frost-bitten puns every second that brings in gails of laughter. Uma Thurman trades him punch for punch as Poison Ivy, chewing off an endless string of equally atrocious plant puns in the most insufferable Barbara Stanwyck/Katharine Hepburn impersonation ever. I was expecting this from Ahnuld but damn, I was under the impression that Uma could act. Alicia Silverstone is just unspeakably annoying as Batgirl, and John Glover's brief appearance as Thurman's psychotic research partner surely deserves comparison with the theater douchebag from Silent Night Deadly Night 2 as the most obnoxious one-scene character in film history. In a smaller role, Coolio gives a performance every bit impressive as his turn in Leprechaun in the Hood. Only Michael Gough as Alfred and Pat Hingle as Gordon give anything resembling decent performances.

So, yeah, I may not be The Dark Knight's biggest fan, but after this glacial abomination I've no freezing desire to see more. Unless my ice deceive me, this film is as pleasant as an icicle through the eye, and just as painful. At least there are some laughs to be had, but the idea of sitting through this iceberg again is a chilling prospect indeed. It gives me frostbite just thinking about it...

All right, enough of that. All I have to add is: Vat kilt da dinosaurs?*

Rating: Absolute Zero/10 - Dat Means It's Really Cold... Er, Bad

* - DEE ICE AGE!!!