Reviews Worth Reading
This moral naysaying is shockingly against type for a film bursting with Copacabana headliners. Remember that these are the guys hired explicitly to hold a mic in one hand, a drink in the other, and to generate a fantasy of wealth and well-meaningness that makes thousands of less charming people mistake clubbing for having fun. Robin and the 7 Hoods is drastically less endearing than any of its hoods.
Batman is the man Bruce Wayne wishes he was, an empowerment trip mythologized into a performance. Batman is Bruce’s mania, his love, his coming-into-being. Batman Returns is as perfect at portraying him as live-action has been, though there were many angry mothers whose frightened children screamed to recall its atrocities.
The pay-off is stalled beyond normal human tolerance, as though Godzilla was a nervous groom who simply won’t commit to marriage until he has enough buildup. Even advertising the closeted meanings of such serious-contra-seriousness idioms native to the giant monster bash as nature vs man and the brutalities of war, the dialogue in “Godzilla” asserts itself to such meaning like a crowbar asserts itself to a jammed service door. This is when it remembers to have dialogue at all.
Suicide Squad is a petty crime. It is a work of stupid badness, clumsy as a graffiti scrawl, and less motivated on a world stage where it hopes to earn $800 million than actual scrawls I’ve seen, on the bottoms of bridges where they expect to earn nothing but contempt.