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Batman 3 (out of 5) (1989)
Cast: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle
Directed by Tim Burton
In the bleak metropolis of Gotham City, police corruption by the underground crime syndicate runs rampant, causing a costumed vigilante to stalk the streets scaring the piss out of thugs all the while dressed as a bat-man. A couple of reporters attempt to cover the masked phenomenon and uncover who he is, but a new crime lord has emerged in the form of The Joker, a former henchman who was disfigured and discolored in an accidental run-in with Batman. The Joker loses the feeble hold he has on his sanity, and terrorizes the city of Gotham with only his archnemesis Batman out to stop him.
A marvel of art and set design, the film is quite the piece of eye candy. It's also not a fully finished product, with a barely held together script , with holes in logic and continuity errors galore. The film does manage to keep itself together for the first hour, before ultimately descending into ridiculousness long before the proposterous finale atop the large belltower/building.
It would have helped had the film had any rules. For instance, the Joker has a parade with large gas-spewing floats. Batman counteracts with a Batplane which lo and behold contains just the right tool to grab and release the balloons. Then the Joker has just the right weapon to take down the Batplane, and so on.
It's all very over-the-top and with the exception of the fantastic look and sound of the film, quite astonishing people ate this up so readily at the box office. I'm giving it a marginal recommendation simply because it's quite watchable and does deliver a certain entertainment, but it's still a disappointment that they dressed everyone up and gave them nowhere to go.
Jackie Brown 3 (out of 5) (1997)
Cast: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Deniro, Michael Keaton, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Based on the Elmore Leonard book RUM PUNCH, a flight attendant for a Mexican airline is smuggling up money to Compton from her criminal boss's gun selling operation. She gets busted by the feds, but thinks her boss will kill her to prevent her from talking after he bails her out. While trying to figure her way out of her predicament, she concocts a plan whereby she can appease both parties long enough for her to make with a half million dollars of her boss's and get away, with the help of her bailbondsman, who has taken a fancy to her.
Sensational performances and some niftily directed moments keep Tarantino from sinking this film in the quagmire of his own excess. Tarantino may be a brilliant writer but he shows here that his talents as director may take some time to catch up. To be fair, had he chopped out at least 45 minutes worth of slow and pointless scenes, he may have pulled off another Academy Award nomination, but instead he fell in love with his characters and script too much and decided to release this film badly needing tightening and editing. The film finally starts to heat up in the final third, where the real action starts happening. Robert Forster desevedly got the film's only Oscar nomination for his performance as the bailbondsman. Grier gives her best performance, with Keaton, Jackson, and Deniro delivering the quality you'd expect. Tarantino also shows flashes of one of his influences, Brian De Palma, when he employs his mentor's practice of split-screen action and revisiting the same scenes from different perspectives to give a complete story. But unlike De Palma, who tends to undo his movies through overdirecting and loving style over character, Tarantino almost undoes this film by underdirecting and loving his script more than his technique. Hopefully he learns this lesson before the studios crack down on him and he loses his ability to call his own shots. JACKIE BROWN remains a good film, but it's a disappointment because with a cast and writing this good, it shouldn't have been anything less than great.
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Batman Returns (1992)
Reviews and Comments
Sam: Tim Burton brings Batman to the screen a second time in a comparable film blemished by the same problems as the first: too many unfulfilling scenes that last too long. Again, the weakest scenes involve the main villain, this time the Pengiun, wonderfully portrayed by Danny DeVito. The end is one of the worst parts, where the Pengiun finally puts his evil plan in to action. Christopher Walken is adequate, and Michael Keaton is the best Batman, but Michelle Pfeiffer walks away with the picture with her portrayal of Catwoman. If there is one single reason to see this film, it's to see Pfeiffer's highly regarded yet still grossly underrated performance as the feline villain. As Selina Kyle, she is instantly convincing as an insecure secretary (assistant, that is) -- and as Catwoman, she talks, moves, and acts like she's been half-cat all her life. Expectedly, her scenes are the strongest, and her chemistry with Keaton's Batman is a delight to behold. As mentioned before, however, there are too many long dull scenes with the villains, too few scenes with Batman, and a finale that falls flat on its face.
Cast: Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Winona Rider, Catherine O'Hara
Directed by Tim Burton
Adam and Barbara Maitland love their little home in the country they've built for themselves, but after they are killed in a freak accident and come back as ghosts, they are appalled to find that their house has been sold to a tasteless and unpleasant family, who plan one tearing down all they've built to redo the house in the tackiest way possible. Now they are determined to do what they can to scare away the family and serve out their 125 year term as apparitions before moving on to the next phase, but a wrench stops up the works when the new owners are pleased with the financial possibilities of the attraction of a haunted house, and it seems the more they scare these new inhabitants, the more amused they get. The Maitlands call on the services of Betelguese (Beetlejuice), a crazy and psychotic ghoul who seems to do more harm than good for the Maitland's tastes.
A stylistic and fun film, but not always appealing. Keaton is terrific, and the rest of the cast is good as well. Burton does a good job giving the film an interestingly bizarre look, and Elfman's score is quite solid as well. Problems with the lightweight material and overbearing calypso score mar the film from taking off to high gear, and the simplistic nature of the plot doesn't make it very interesting. It's an entertaining film for older kids, if never great, and hit and miss for everyone else.
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