My Big Fat Movie Desicion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/03/2016 (3554 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Zack Snyder’s thundering and grim Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice offers the kind of blunt, mano-a-mano faceoff usually reserved for Predators, Godzillas and U.S. presidential candidates.

And just as has often been said of this election year, Batman v Superman takes a once almost charming tradition and plunges it into the gutter. Long gone are the telephone booths, corn fields or any other such tokens of innocence. And given the prevailing climate, Snyder may have judged the rock’em-sock’em moment wisely. Gentlemen, keep your fists up and your capes neatly tucked.

Batman v Superman, as heavy and humourless as a Supreme Court decision, is an 18-wheeler of a movie lumbering through a fallen world. It hurtles not with the kinetic momentum of Mad Max: Fury Road nor the comparatively spry skip of a Marvel movie, but with an operatic grandeur it sometimes earns and often doesn’t.

This is Paradise Lost for superheroes. It twists and grinds two of the most classic comic-book heroes, wringing new, less altruistic emotions out of them until their dashing smiles turn to angry grimaces.

After a handsome, impressionistic montage of Batman’s iconic childhood, the film picks up where Snyder’s Superman reboot Man of Steel left off but from a different perspective. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is driving through the falling debris of Metropolis while Superman (Henry Cavill) careens carelessly above.

Snyder has channelled the backlash over Man of Steel’s high death-toll finale into Wayne, who bitterly watches Superman from the dust-filled air on the ground — a cheap evocation of 9/11 designed to add solemnity where there isn’t any.

Months later, the two are still distrustfully circling each other. Snyder, working from a script by Chris Terrio (Argo) and David Goyer (Man of Steel), delves into their opposite natures: one a godlike power from another planet who favours primary colours, the other a well-equipped human prone to a darker palette.

At a party thrown by Lex Luthor (the badly miscast Jesse Eisenberg), the billionaire inventor who’s secretly weaponizing Kryptonite, their two alter-egos are surprisingly passive aggressive. Kent, the reporter, queries Wayne about “the Bat-vigilante problem,” while Wayne, citing the laudatory coverage of Superman in the Daily Planet, voices his distaste for “freaks who dress like clowns.”

Both are combating a new environment for superheroes best articulated by none other than astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who, on TV, describes supermen as altering man’s assumed supremacy in the universe like Copernicus’s discoveries did. “We’re criminals, Alfred,” Batman, fresh from torturing a foe, tells his butler (Jeremy Irons, adding an icy flair to the character). “We’ve always been criminals.”

Luthor’s plot gradually brings the heroes into the same orbit, along with Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). But it’s the genuine rigour of Snyder’s engagement with the psychology of Superman and Batman that keeps the film grounded and the rivalry plausible. Seeing the two warp toward villainy may be a trick, like Seinfeld’s Jerry and Kramer switching apartments, but Batman v Superman is serious about contemplating the curious positions these all-powerful beings occupy in a world that has grown to resent their might.

It’s in some ways an ideal film for Snyder, an exceptionally un-subtle filmmaker with the sensibility of a car crash. But as the director of 300, he knows his way around a ramming collision. And unlike Marvel films, DC Comic adaptations have, for better (Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy) and worse (Man of Steel), been works of distinct directors.

Snyder’s command is less sure when it comes to, well, normal life. Batman v Superman would rather spend its lengthy running time in the throes of myth than somewhere like the offices of the Daily Planet, where the eminently pert Amy Adams (Lois Lane) breezes in and out.

As for the much-discussed casting of Affleck, former Batmen Michael Keaton and Christian Bale have little to worry about. But Affleck is a worthy heir to the part, albeit with a chin that’s a dead giveaway in the suit. If anything, there’s only so much room for individual performance here; when armoured, Affleck’s already beefed-up Batman looks like a tank.

There’s an elemental fun in positing the winners of superhero square-offs. Is the Flash faster than Superman? Is Aquaman or Wonder Woman the better tipper?

Such debates are predicated on their inherent silliness, something the self-serious Batman v Superman ignores. Snyder’s task is considerable in that he’s marrying the realistic crime world of Batman and the more fantastical realm of Superman, plus providing the requisite cameos (including Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and Ezra Miller’s Flash) to tease movies to come.

But what’s there to fight about anyway? The most important battle was already decided: Batman, long our favourite, already has top billing.

— The Associated Press

 

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

It’s been 14 years since Winnipeg-born Nia Vardalos introduced us to Toula Portokalos and her lovingly suffocating — suffocatingly loving? — family in the runaway rom-com hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Toula’s own big fat Greek wedding is now long behind her, and she and her non-Greek husband Ian (John Corbett) are parents to the teenage Paris (Elena Kampouris). A family secret involving Toula’s parents eventually leads to an even bigger, fatter, Greeker wedding in this uneven sequel. And while the buffet table looks great — really, you’ll want to stop for spanakopita on the way home — the comedy is only so-so.

In 2002, the first MBFGW told a sweet Cinderella story. It also became a sweet Cinderella story, a modest indie project that parlayed infectious audience affection into a $240-million box office success. The second outing has lost that fresh, slightly awkward charm, and it feels a lot more like Vardalos’s forced 2003 TV sitcom spinoff.

Still living in Chicago, just down the block from her parents’ Acropolis-themed suburban two-storey, Toula is now a poster girl for the sandwich generation. She deals with the sullen, silent, alarmingly eye-linered Paris while juggling the care of her aging parents. She’s the family fixer, but as her Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) sagely suggests, “You baby your parents because you can’t parent your baby.”

Vardalos is an immensely likable screen presence, and Toula’s situation will be relatable for many midlife viewers. The scene in which she tries to teach her elderly father, Gus (Michael Constantine), how to use a computer will be immediately — and probably painfully — familiar to many 50-somethings.

But Vardalos’s screenplay keeps careening past relatable to cutesy and broad. And most of the jokes are just leftovers from the 2002 original.

Gus is still solving any and all problems with Windex, still announcing that the Greeks invented democracy and philosophy… and also hockey and Facebook and pretty much anything else you can think of. Aunt Voula is still oversharing, offering altogether Too Much Information on her malfunctioning ovaries and wayward moles.

Some things work. Martin, as usual, is a comic gem, and Constantine and Lainie Kazan (who plays Toula’s long-suffering mother) add some real poignancy to the sentimental side of the story. Corbett and Vardalos share a nice, easy chemistry.

But these familiar pleasures don’t outweigh the fact Vardalos doesn’t find much new to say about the Portokalos clan or the immigrant family experience in general. Scenes in which Gus tells his 17-year-old granddaughter to “find a nice Greek boy and make Greek babies” feel a bit weird and dated at this point, as does the stereotyped feud between the “colourful ethnics” and their hush-hushing, feta-cheese-hating, beige-coat-wearing Anglo neighbours.

I mean, it’s 2016. Who doesn’t like spanakopita these days, Greek or not?

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca