'Batman v Superman' - Film review

Review contains spoilers for this film. (But lets be honest the majority of the spoilers in this film are ridiculous. Besides, who worries about spoilers for the second film in a series?)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was directed by Zack Snyder and is the second entry in the DCCU (If Marvel have the MCU then do Detective Comics have the DCCU? Does it have a name yet?). The first was Man of Steel which was fairly well received in the comic-book movies community but which I personally haven't seen. To be honest you don't have to have seen it to watch this film because Superman is Superman and he's pretty well established in this film anyway. I'll try to avoid comparisons to the MCU, although it can't be ignored that, coming second, the DCCU has to make a clear decision whether to avoid or embrace emulation.

This is a very large image if you click on it.

First let's talk about what the film got really right - Ben Affleck's Batman. Here we have the new best film interpretation of the caped crusader, better, even, than his incarnation in the Arkham videogame series. This dark knight really is a force of nature: the first time we as an audience encounter him from the perspective of an outsider, a policeman investigating a case, the atmosphere is distinctly oppressive and threatening and his first appearance heart-jolting. Maybe Bale's Batman was more valiant and honourable but he now seems lumbering, relying merely on brute force in comparison to Affleck's, who uses stealth and intelligence and demonstrates martial and athletic prowess in all of his confrontations. What's more, Affleck's more cerebral, reserved Bruce Wayne who gives the impression of an inner strength was a more complimentary and coherent fit to his Batman than in Bale's Bruce/Bat pair. There's something about the distance the audience are afforded from Wayne here which creates a sense of mythology around this bat - a force of nature, something of the dark which is separate from our sense of reality, which doesn't necessarily obey our laws of physics as he leaps from wall to wall and vanishes into darkness. We're occasionally offered a little look into how this effect is created, for example seeing Alfred tinkering with the voice alterer, but here Batman v Superman somehow manages to have its cake and eat it because while we see that it's just technology and can marvel at Wayne's prowess it doesn't take away from the fact that that 'Tell me, do you bleed?' is chillingly un-human.

'Eye in the Sky' - Film review

Eye in the Sky is an international political thriller directed by Gavin Hood and starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul and the late, great Alan Rickman. It tells the story of a British military officer seeking authorisation for a drone strike in a foreign country on a British national.

The film is a hugely complex moral question based on a very simple premise, so its strength comes from the attention it gives to setting the stage and form the time it took to be intelligent, thoughtful and sensitive. Take for instance the news/documentary exposition on El Shabaab at the beginning of the film. This sequence stands out so much in contrast to the cliche of other more low-brow thrillers, exemplified perfectly by the breakfast scene in Olympus Has Fallen with the offhand reference to rising tensions on the Korean peninsular to create a vague sense of intrigue. There the news programme is used for the opposite purpose for which it's intended in the real world - to tantalise slightly, but mostly to leave the audience in the dark. Eye in the Sky totally turns this trope on its head in the opening sequence, as the news programme is probably the best way to get vital information across. What's more, this blatant exposition doesn't feel in anyway cynical, or rather its cynicism completely pays off as the film evolves requiring a well-informed audience.

Inheritance (for S. Davies)

That you and I are similar this is true,
Lucretius' glass reflects again to see
What great bounty I owe to thee:
Love of art and life inherited of you.
Damned procrastination though
You think part of this fillial 'deed';
So think you that document dishevelled be -
What good be goals if wait is all I do?

But fear not, there may be hope, perchance:
Aware I was that soon was Mother's Day
I actually wrote this sonnet in advance!
So, aye, flit and fancy rule me that they may
But if surely I can write a couple stanzas,
Surely, then, concerns are washed away!

Explanation for a Hiatus

Having a while ago received praise from a friend (and fellow-blogger) on the regularity and consistency of my work on this blog, I feel I owe an explanation for a hiatus which as of this writing has lasted just in excess of 2 months. Besides this I'm pleased to see growing evidence of an irregular and inconsistent yet relatively sizeable readership - and my gratitude for this is another part of what compels me to justify this lack of content from me.

Firstly, what started it to begin with. As I may have referenced before, I'm an actor in my local youth theatre, the Nuffield Youth Theatre, while on my gap year before going to university in October. Shortly after my last post here would have been my last show with the Youth Theatre proper, as Odysseus in an adaptation of The Odyssey which played on allegories of the current refugee crisis. (Disclaimer: this is a large youth theatre, so I wasn't actually playing the main character, I was one of six people playing Odysseus at different points). Immediately after this I was in a 'grassroots' production directed by a member of that youth theatre, Emil Rousseau - whose name I include here as a possible claim to fame when I'm older, yes I was in my youth in a play directed by Emil Rousseau. The play was called Scuttlers and was set in gang-ridden 19th century Manchester, which meant producing my best Mancunian accent, which was awful.