High Life (2018) directed by Claire Denis

 

I have seen more Robert Pattinson led films than I ever imagined I would the last couple of years and I have been amazed at how he has grown as an actor and how open he is to interesting roles. So I can see how he was drawn into this film, it is Claire Denis’ first  English language film and on paper I am sure it looked profound. In practice however, the film produced makes little sense. Juliette Binoche, another interesting performer is also a main character and like  Pattinson is wasted in à confusing nonsensical role. 

In short, this film lacks any sort of sense on most levels. For some reason criminals with death sentences are experimented on spaceships heading to black hole(s?) looking for an energy source. The lack of a coherent story and poorly drawn characters make it impossible for the actors to give decent performances and even harder for the viewer to figure out what is going on. Sometimes you can see the seed of the great idea behind a disappointing movie but this one seems more concerned with appearing profound without putting the work into putting anything behind those appearances. 

The Batman (2022) directed by Matt Reeves

 

There are far too many Batman films, particularly Batman origin films and only a couple of them have been worth a rematch to me. This film tries to reboot the character yet again by reintroducing some of the elements from the original comics and some of the better later comics and finally accepting that every person on planet earth know why Batman is Batman and does retread that ground yet another time. 

Robert Pattinson plays the lead and was not the obvious choice, which is why I think it works. He has a new intensity and anger that we haven’t seen before. The character is much more human and not some indestructible hero but gets hurt, often, and actually grows as a character during the movie. One really welcome addition is that the “world’s greatest detective” actually does a lot of detecting for once. There is a lot more of him figuring things out than action sequences, not that this 3 hour film lacks action sequences. The villain are more humanize as well and the world for the most part seems plausible and as over the top as previous incarnations in this franchise. 

Some weak points are the lack of humour throughout. It could have used a little levity here and there to break it up and the obligatory special effect set-piece involved the sea walls around Gotham City being danger… you didn’t know Gotham was on the ocean? Well neither did I until the sea walls were suddenly part of the plot. Speaking of the plot, it does get a little rambling and over complicated as it suffers like many DC superhero films do with an access of villain and plot twists some of which are poorly executed. 

One of the better Batman movies overall but still suffering from some of the same stuff many other comic book adaptions do which might be unavoidable especially with such a well know main character.