Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Theatrical Release

Have you learned nothing?

Plot:  Lex Luthor inexplicably plays the two smartest, most powerful people in the DC universe while simultaneously keeping everything needed to shoehorn references to DC's movie plans.

Score:  2 out 5 Batman Murders

Review:  I realize I'm incredibly late to the party but I think I can finally processes this movie enough to where I can talk about it.  When I went to go see this movie it was at theater that served booze.  I had already had a stiff drink before, having ate at the attached restaurant, and my buzz was mostly gone by the movie.  However when we took our seats someone was going around taking drink orders from people.  This was the first time I had seen the theater do this after having seen a couple of movies there, in retrospect they clearly knew something I didn't.  I turned down the drink, in retrospect I should have taken the hint.

The Batman/Superman Movie: World’s Finest (1996) DVD

Worlds Finest and Worlds Worst

Rating:  3 out of 5 progressively larger robots of destruction

Plot Synopsis:  Batman and Superman team up.  They are the World’s Finest.  Joker and Lex Luthor team up.  They are not.

Batman: Arkham Origins: Blackgate Deluxe Edition (2014) Xbox 360

Rating: 3 out 5 Origins That Have Nothing To Do With Arkham

Plot Synopsis:  Blackgate has been taken over by villains, again, and it's your job to stop them, again.

Batman: Arkham City (2011) Xbox 360

I AM VENGEANCE!

Rating:  6 out of 5 Awesome Cakes Made by Magic Elves

Plot Synopsis:  Batman takes it out of the Asylum and into an abandoned chunk of Gotham City that’s being used to house all of Gotham’s criminals.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) X-Box 360

I AM THE NIGHT!

Rating:  4 out of 5 Batarangs Whipped at the Heads of Thugs

Plot Synopsis:  Joker takes over the Asylum and it’s up to Batman to stop him.

Batgirl: I heart Yvonne Craig

When I lived in my old place I was watching old episodes of Batman on the ME channel, I currently don't have cable, I can't afford it, so I haven't seen an episode in a while.  But I have to say my favorite episodes are the ones with Yvonne Craig as Batgirl.  Look at that picture to left.  Look at the fringe and the lace and those colors.  The episodes are terribly, terribly sexist.  One episode in particular is about a female activist, who is played as the villain, organizes the women of Gotham against the men.  Eventually the mayor gives into her demands, which include an all female police force and a female commissioner, because his wife hasn't cleaned his shirts for a week, and he's running low on laundry, his house is dirty and he hasn't eaten a decent meal in days.  Meanwhile the idea of a female doing anything beyond these cooking and cleaning duties is treated like some kind of preposterous joke.  Granted the men are shown be sort of hopeless and helpless but are also the ones in charge.  As the plot goes on the female police force allows a bank robbery to happen because the two bank guards are swapping recipes, one beat cop just painted her nails and another beat cop refuses to chase the criminal because she just got new shoes.  However that is not the crux of the evil scheme, the point of replacing all the police force was so that when the big bad released explosive mice the police would be too afraid to act and allow her to either destroy the city or hold it hostage.  That part is a bit vague.

  But I share that as an example, albeit an extreme example, of the kind of thing regularly happening in Batman '66.  This is the kind of madness they spew at you on a per episode basis.  But then there's Yvonne Craig as Batgirl and the way she handles everything.  In the above episode she's always there as the strong counterpoint.  She doesn't soapbox about women's right but dismisses the men as being ridiculous with how she converses with them or the looks she gives them.  More importantly she demonstrates, by example, why the men are being stupid.  She jumps in there and is just as competent and capable as Batman, sometimes even more competent and capable than Batman.  She is the frequently the bastion of sanity in this crazy ass universe that they've built and often it's simply through body language.  Rarely is it a verbal throwdown that makes her seem like a bad person, they don't portray her as "bitchy" or "preachy" but she comes off as THE ONE person who has a good head on their shoulders while the rest of the world is drenched in hammy, pastel lunacy.  That character, for its time, is actually a really well written female character.  You never hear her carrying on about boys or needing a man.  She lives on her own, she supports herself with a job as a librarian and fights crime without anybody's help.  She is a totally separate, strong entity that is also a woman and who acts as a counterpoint to the male chauvinism that occurs.  The only other strong female characters from that era that come to mind are probably from The Dick Van Dyke Show.  In that show you had Rose Marie and Mary Tyler Moore playing good female characters but Rose Marie is probably close to Batgirl in her level of independence (although I do remember Rose Marie being kind of man crazy and Mary Tyler Moore was kind of defined by her role as wife, but Mel Cooley was fucking hilarious).  Also probably Uhura, but I never like classic Star Trek so I know nothing about that role.  That's really all I wanted to say because I found that picture on a blog and it made me think of that and reminded my that I love Yvonne Craig for being Batgirl.

Batman: Arkham Origins (2013, Xbox 360)

At no point do you play as the asylum

Rating: 5 out 5 Batman Ass Whuppings

Review:  I've been seeing some negative press on this game so I thought I would weigh in with a quick review that's more in the vein of my opening weekend movie reviews.  I'm also very tired as I literally just finished the game after a lengthy couple of sessions, it's pretty much all done except finding a few location files and the challenge maps.

  The game is good.  The game is really good, I would say it's the best game in the series when it comes to pretty much everything.  My still-in-progress Arkham City review puts that game at a 6 out of 5, if this is better then why does it only get a 5.  Well we'll get to that but for now we'll focus on why I think it's better.

Bane, Bane, Koom bi yah!

I love these infographics.  Since the full sized thing is so huge here is the small version.  The full sized version is after the jump.  Or click the link.  Or don't.  Do what you want.  What am I?  Your mom?

link

Start saving up...again...

Just when I finally had enough to be Tony Stark I got to save up to be Bruce Wayne...

Superheroes.Memebase

For Lack of a Better Comic :: The Dark Knight Retires

For Lack of a Better Comic :: The Dark Knight Retires

Batman (1966) DVD

Rating:  3 out of 5 needlessly complex but easily solved riddles

Plot Synopsis: The rouges gallery gathers together in the ultimate attack against the masked Cossack.

Batman: Gotham Knight (2008) DVD

Rating:  2 out of 5 boring segments in an endless series of vignettes.

Plot Synopsis:  There are a million naked stories in the city of Gotham.  Fortunately (or not as the case may be) that is the only thing naked in this series of vignettes that are a shameless rip off of the failed franchise cash in Animatrix.

Batman: Year One (2011) Blu-Ray

Rating:  3 out of 5 pimps who sound like Spike beaten to a pulp.

Plot Synopsis:  It’s Bruce Wayne’s first year as Batman and Jim Gordon’s first year on the GCPD.  Along for the ride is a Catwoman short.

Batman: Dark Knight Rises (2012) Theatrical Release

Rating: 5 out of 5 billionaire playboy orphaned vigilantes

Review:  First off I want to say that this totally lived up to the hype for me and was a great conclusion to the trilogy.  It's sad, with how the movie ended, that it is the conclusion because there would be some awesome future movies coming from this franchise if it were to continue.

  That being said this is definitely now my second favorite of the trilogy.  Better than Begins but not as good as Dark Knight.  Begins will always sort of be the red headed step child of the franchise to me.  It's sort of necessary to see it to get a feeling for the series, to be introduced to the characters in order to give those characters more weight going into Dark Knight.  But you could almost skip Begins entirely and go directly to Dark Knight, seeing Begins accentuates Dark Knight but Dark Knight just has something these other movies don't.  And it's more than just Joker.

  Dark Knight Rises manages to deliver to us something totally different than the previous two movies while still using the movies and building blocks and somehow managing to be in tone with the other films while also being something totally its own.  The plot is intriguing with several twists, some of them I saw coming, some of them I didn't and one that I thought I saw coming early but the the payoff was so long I thought for sure I was wrong until I was proven right, which just made it more awesome when it happened.  It's a great movie about people, the crime and the crime fighting are sort of secondary.  The characters are all just so great, the returning characters get deepened and the new characters really get established well.  No one feels wooden or phoned in.  Michael Caine put's in such a fantastic performance, when he get's emotional about Bruce you really feel it, he is the stand out.  Commissioner Gordon continues to be awesome and well played by Gary Oldman and new comer (to the series) Anne Hathaway is hypnotic as Catwoman.  She plays the character with a lot of depth and you can see that she feels trapped and empathize with her desire for redemption.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Policeman Blake is great as well in the role of frustrated but passionate cop.  Christian Bale, as always, does great and bring passion to every role he's in.  As Bruce he can still look amusingly dumbfounded in his playboy persona but is still intimidating as hell as Batman.  He's toned down the Bat Voice quite a bit for this last performance and it's probably at its least distracting here.  Finally Bane is well done by Tom Hardy.  He plays him as a cold blooded, brutal terrorist.  This comes through in everything he does, his actions, his words, his body language, he looks incredibly intimidating in just the way he stands and walks.  My only problem is with the voice.  I eventually got used to it but it sort of sounds like Sean Connery with a cold talking through a tin can and string which can lead to a problem understanding every word of his dialog.  I lost some of it, especially in the fight with Batman (spoiler: Batman fights Bane).  It was weird at first but I was on board by the end of the movie.

  Dark Knight Rises is a great movie and well worth seeing but it's just missing something that Dark Knight had.  In my opinion Dark Knight had the more intriguing characters in Harvey Dent and Joker, had better action and a better plot.  It was just a more interesting movie and despite its, at times, heavy handed messages it was a perfect Batman movie.  This is close, this is really close but just something in me can't give it more than 4.  I will definitely be buying this when it's released on Blu-Ray and I'll probably watch it several more times but it won't replace Dark Knight as my go to movie.

The Dark Knight (2008) Blu-Ray

Rating: 6 out of 5 things in my pockets are knives and lint

Plot Synopsis:  Some men just want to see the world burn.

Batman Begins (2005) DVD

Rating: 4 out of 5 snarky British butlers

Plot Synopsis:  Bruce Wayne done lost his parents.  He’s handling it well.

Batman & Robin (1997) DVD

I think we could add more characters.

Rating:  -1 out of 5 fucks I give about this cinematic late term abortion

Plot Synopsis:  Joel Shumacher rapes our childhood in the fourth installment of the old Batman franchise.  Seriously though, this thing is a mess plot wise.  We have Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Bane vs. Batman, Robin and Batgirl in this fucking train wreck of a movie.  The plot is bad, the script is bad, the cinematography is bad, the sound track is alright but everything else is shit.  This movie is a terrorist act against people of every creed, race and religion.

Friday's With Blinky: Anything You Say Mr. J

  The follow up to Call Me Mr. J with the same main characters in Chris .R. Notarile as Joker and Johanna Telander as Harley Quinn.

  This time we pick up after the last session with Joker in the the chaos of murder that follows during his escape.  We open with a doctor tied to a chair, Joker covered in blood and Harley Quinn looking a little worse for wear.  The short follows Harley's letting the last of herself go before truly embracing the Harley Quinn persona.

  There really isn't much more to say about this one.  It's a good little character piece.  Chris seems more comfortable as Joker and Johanna does a good job making the transition from 'normie' to psycho.  The setting is dark and disturbing, this little out of the way, perhaps under construction or possibly forgotten area of Arkham with a doctor that Joker blames for his recent trouble.  It's a good portrayal of the Heath Ledger style Joker as more of a homage than direct impression which, I think, makes it better.  So many people now, especially on YouTube, try to directly ape the Ledger style Joker thinking that the closer you get to a direct impression the better.  But the thing is only one person could do that Joker and he (meaning Heath Ledger) did it.  It's an interesting take on Joker and there's no reason to not add elements of it to a portrayal of the Joker but Chris' performance isn't just him doing a Heath Ledger impression.  He takes that base and builds on it.  The awkwardness in the acting in the first one may come from trying to do a more direct impression but this time around you don't get that feeling, it's similar but different, which makes it infinitely more watchable than something like "The Joker Blogs".

  Kim Santiago does a good job in the director seat again.  We get a good atmospheric soundtrack with the occasional rock exclamation points and a good ending theme.  The camera angles are a bit more run of the mill but we see a lot more of the Joker next to Harley with the same low angle shots to establish them as more on the same level.  Well done all around.

  It's a good ramp up for what's coming up next so I recommend checking it out.

Batman Forever (1995) DVD

Rating:  3 out 5 faces that you find, and another, and another until revenge becomes your whole life.

Plot Synopsis:  Riddler teams with Two Face in a plot to brainwash Gotham.  A lot of green is involved.  There’s a crappy subplot with a super hot Nicole Kidman and we get Robin.  And Bat-nipples.

Friday's with Blinky: Call Me Mr. J

  This week, to go with the Endless Knight theme that this blog will have for the indeterminate future, we take a look at Call Me Mr. J, the first in a series of four short films starring Chris .R. Notarile as the Joker and Johanna Telander as Harley Quinn.