Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Direction: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Country: USA 

This strenuous eccentricity from the directors of Swiss Army Man, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, translates into a three-part Matrix-style fantasy where human bodies can be controlled by other universes. But there are positive messages delivered within the zaniness of its parallel realities. 

Brimming with a spiraling energy and packed with humor, this story follows Chinese immigrant Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a messy laundromat owner who’s not on good terms with her patient husband (Ke Huy Quan), nor with her lesbian teen daughter (Stephanie Hsu). Her conservative and cranky father (James Hong) is another trouble, but what’s really giving her heebie-jeebies is the laundromat’s cheating taxes and the IRS worker (Jamie Lee Curtis) who’s dealing with the case. In a split second, she gets involved in a spiral of requests and flashbacks from other universes in which she also plays a role. 

Having the sci-fi aspect blending with faster-than-Bruce-Lee kung fu scenes, the creators pile a few too many additional oddities into the mix, but the film supports its wild premise with a skillful direction and fine responses from the stellar ensemble cast. To my surprise, among oodles of unhinged sequences, I ended up enjoying this chaotic and far-fetched movie, which also happens to be conceptual and deliciously satiric.

The Outfit (2022)

Direction: Graham Moore
Country: USA

Graham Moore, the award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game (2014), makes his directorial debut with The Outfit, a diverting Hitchcockian picture that packs a gut-level wallop in the name of entertainment. This atmospheric crime thriller set in 1956 Chicago is tailored like a classic, relying on sharp and quick story turns to prevent you from dwelling on any possible inconsistency.

At the center of the narrative is Leonard (Mark Rylance), a middle-aged English tailor who is somehow involved with the Chicago organized crime as he lets the men of Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale), a powerful crime kingpin, use his store both as a refuge and a point of communication. One night, Roy’s son, Richie Boyle (Dylan O'Brien), and his dubious associate, Francis (Johnny Flynn), have a misunderstanding about a tape that uncovers a snitch inside their gang. Blood is shed, and Leonard is forced to cover up the murderer. This submissive and meek man is also opaque and calculative. Always listening and barely talking, he has to find a way to save himself and his beloved receptionist, Mable (Zoey Deutch), from a bigger imbroglio. 

Although I wish that very last section wouldn’t exist, the film’s controlled cynicism quietly penetrated my mind, leaving a good mark. Rylance (Bridge of Spies, 2015; The BFG, 2016) is excellent, and Flynn (Beast, 2017; Emma, 2020) makes for a truly insidious villain.

Marvelous and the Black Hole (2022)

Direction: Kate Tsang
Country: USA

Marvelous and the Black Hole marks the feature debut from writer-director Kate Tsang, who had difficulty wrangling the material amassed and finding a way through it. Loosely based on her teenage years, the film depicts an atypical friendship between an angsty Chinese American teen, Sammy (Miya Cech), and a cranky magician woman, Margot (Rhea Perlman), who becomes her mentor. 

In spots, the friendship between these two multi-generational characters brings the coming-of-age dark comedy Harold and Maude to mind, even if massively undarkened and smaller in interest. Here, death is replaced with magic, but Tsang’s move, being thin in dialogue while sputtering out cacophonous doses of anger and insurgent mood, feels secondhand, disguising elementarily formulaic tactics behind an apparent forthright posture.

I cannot say it's not well-intentioned and kind in nature, I just wasn’t particularly stricken by its attempting spells, which felt more conventional than magical. Both execution and performances never cut above most buddy movies, and the results, far from groundbreaking, leave you stuck on the cusp of an outburst of teen’s exasperation, which, by the way, is the film’s weakest spot.

All My Friends Hate Me (2022)

Direction: Andrew Gaynord
Country: UK 

Penned by Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, who also shines as the lead actor, All My Friends Hate Me is a British paranoid and conspiracy comedy assembled with a succession of awkward episodes that ensure the viewer is kept guessing. The film’s direction by Andrew Gaynord is fairly good, but the constant tactics and unflinching mood become a bit of a problem along the way.

The story follows Pete (Stourton), a soon-to-be-engaged refugee worker, who reunites with his university friends for a birthday week after eight years of absence. The meeting place is an old-fashioned manor in the countryside, belonging to the parents of one of his friends. While excited to see them, this once popular socializer feels very uncomfortable around Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), a funny local stranger they met in a pub. This man, besides stealing all the attention he would like to have for himself, seems to purposely pick on him. Everyone seems to care more about the outsider, easily taking his side whenever an argument occurs. Is this paranoia or just a simple prank?

Although just fraught enough to make us keep watching, the film manages to keep these deceptive plates spinning for longer than most, but ultimately lacks ambition. Even a bit tired of this unchanging game of secrets, assumptions and mistakes, and not impressed with the emotional trifles of the last act, I still enjoyed the finale’s sarcasm. Strouton is a saving grace in this effort, delivering an inspired performance that perfectly shapes a more mature, reticent man who once was the captain of all parties.

You Are Not My Mother (2022)

Direction: Kate Dolan
Country: UK

In her feature debut, writer-director Kate Dolan presents a suspenseful horror film whose coming of age linkage comes tempered with balanced doses of familiarity and originality, and characters to whom you could relate. This grim yet soberly discrete possession account is set in North Dublin and takes shape one week prior to Halloween. 

The very first scenes, however, take us to a freakish ritual in the woods involving a baby girl and her opaque grandmother, Rita (Ingrid Craigie). Then the story is brought forward in time and the baby, Char (Hazel Doupe), is now a bullied teen who is frequently struck by uncanny dreams about her odd, depressive mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken). After vanishing without a trace, the latter returns a few days later with an ever weirder and scarier behavior. Is grandmother responsible for all this? We ask ourselves. 

Dolan’s supernatural magnetism is augmented by the bullying topic, showing a genuine care for human feelings that is rarely found in the genre. Though the controlled shocks are well conveyed, it's the family bond that lingers, and the results don’t disappoint. The tension cranks up to frightening levels thanks to an adequate atmosphere and solid performances, but You Are Not My Mother is much at its best when playing with subtleness. The pleasures here are not gory or frenzy but rather quiet chilly vibes that should equally resonate with horror film fans.

Here Before (2022)

Direction: Stacey Gregg
Country: UK

In this mournful Northern Irish psychological drama thriller, a middle-aged woman (Andrea Riseborough) becomes convinced that the daughter (Niamh Dornan) of her new neighbors is the reincarnation of the daughter she lost a few years before in a car accident. Her husband (Jonjo O'Neill), incredulous about that idea, sees their lives turning upside down before his very eyes.

In this first feature film, writer-director Stacey Gregg manages to give the audience just enough, without going much beyond the expected. Still, she has the ability to involve us as the tension accumulates, and the film doesn’t end without a fine twist. Suspense-wise, Gregg attempts no improvement, but mounts everything with a firm hand: perfect pacing, supple camera work, and an intriguing plot that is purposely shy in bringing stuff into the fold, creating a pervasive deceptiveness that suits the film’s narrative interest. 

Hence, what we have here is nothing transcendental nor mind-blowing; it’s just an exercise in mood that makes us believe we are stepping in supernatural terrain. It’s that sort of psychological puzzle interleaved with abrupt, rapid flashbacks meant to intrigue rather than horrify. Riseborough (Oblivion, 2013; Birdman, 2014), who proves to be a versatile actor, goes from grief-stricken to obsessive in a minute, while the haunting score by Adam Janota Bzowski (Saint Maud, 2019) makes everything feel slightly more disturbing.

Ballad of a White Cow (2021)

Direction: Behtash Sanaeeha, Maryam Moghaddam
Country: Iran 

The heartbreaking story depicted in Ballad of a White Cow is anchored in mourning, resilience, remorse, and moral dilemma. Written and directed by Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam, who also stars, the film is a quietly shattering meditation on capital punishment and the condition of women in ultra-rigid Iran. 

The topics couldn’t have been clearer and more subtlety depicted. The camera turns to Mina Eghbali (Moghadam), an anguished widow who learns that the execution of her husband, wrongly accused of murder, was a mistake. The state offers her financial compensation for the error, but Mina, whose grieving eyes convey an infinite sadness, still demands a formal apology from the responsible judges, wishing to make them accountable for her loss. 

This brave widow, who works in a dairy factory, decided to live alone with her 7-year-old deaf daughter (Avin Poor Raoufi), but that's also a problem. She's being sued by her father-in-law, who wants the guardianship of the child. For being a widow, she’s forced to move out of her Tehran apartment, but a stranger called Reza (Alireza Sani Far), saying to be a former friend of her husband, miraculously appears in her life, saving her from trouble.

This tale of grief, injustice and reprisal, decays in the last quarter, just to pack a punch with an unexpected final twist. The emotions are firmly kept in check throughout a story that brings enough to the table as another heinous example of wrongful conviction in the Iranian judicial history. Moghadam carries the film on her shoulders, assuring that Ballad of a White Cow becomes a pertinent and beautifully acted piece of work in its own right.

The Lost City (2022)

Direction: Adam Nee, Aaron Nee
Country: USA 

As a mindless romance-adventure flick with no twists, The Lost City seems blithely unaware of its utter predictability. The film, directed by The Nee brothers from a script they co-wrote with Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, is a blatant crowd-pleaser thronged with mediocrity and clumsiness both in the action and romance branches.

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum star as Loretta Sage, a reclusive award-winning novelist, and Alan Caprison, the popular cover model for her latest novel, respectively. Whereas the former is not bad, the latter is barely tolerable, but the winning performance goes to Brad Pitt. He plays Jack Trainer, the human tracker and expert rescuer hired to save Loretta from the hands of the wealthy criminal Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe). Sadly, his kinetic appearance is short-lived as he succumbs to the pressures of the jungle at an early stage.

The sought-after spirit of Indiana Jones never inhabits the landscapes of the exotic Atlantic island on which most of the story takes place. The jokes don’t work, the scenes are recklessly mounted with extravagant coincidence, and there’s a constant struggle to empathize with the protagonist duo. It’s all very unimaginative, and the entertaining qualities they claimed easily fall to pieces. Patience is a requisite if you want to sit through this soulless yet visually acceptable adventure.

Deep Water (2022)

Direction: Adrian Lyne
Country: USA 

20 years after a so-so adaptation of Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife, the distressingly erratic American filmmaker Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction; 1987; Indecent Proposal, 1993) returns with Deep Water, a crippled erotic thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. They form a discredited married couple who, no longer bonded by love, agrees to an open relationship where the lack of limits becomes intolerable. While she takes sexual partners home, he makes sure to get rid of them in the most discreet manner possible. 

The trouble with this film begins with its story, which never plays fair with the audience. Lyne doesn’t explore the dark side; he merely exploits it, and nearly every scene becomes ridiculous and tedious. Moreover, this is another failed effort at making Affleck a decent actor, whereas Armas is far from convincing either in her uncontrolled sexual impulses and provocations. 

Overall, Deep Water is a poor effort; one that’s difficult to forgive. In addition to the unlikable characters and an abominable screenplay by Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction, 2008) and Sam Levinson (Euphoria TV series, 2019-2022), who worked in accordance with Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, the film is turned into a further embarrassment through forced coincidences, the absence of thrilling moments, and an unremarkable execution. Believe it or not, its most outstanding achievement was making me laugh without even trying to be funny.

Topside (2022)

Direction: Logan George, Celine Held
Country: USA

In this haunting and emotional drama about homelessness, addiction and sacrifice, the debutant pair of filmmakers Logan George and Celine Held, who also stars, dive deep into damaged characters while setting them against a particularly interesting backdrop - the abandoned, labyrinthine subway tunnels of New York. Displaying a raw dramatic power that steals part of its narrative craftiness, the film follows drug addict Nikki (solid performance by Held) and her five-year-old daughter, Little (Zhaila Farmer). Forced to leave the sunless underground spot they call home, they emerge into the chaotic and threatening world above. 

What keeps you watching is its gritty look at how people react to a homeless young woman who, holding a kid in her arms, asks for help. This failing mother is psychologically tortured with the biggest decision of her life, and the finale provides you with one of the most gut-wrenching and compassionate moments in recent cinema. Fast and unhesitant camera movements trigger giddy sensations, increasing the sense of disorientation and affliction. It’s both heartbreaking and fascinating to watch. With minor quibbles, Topside offers an affecting, if distressing, glimpse into an appalling situation that, known as real, deserves more attention than it actually gets.

Jackass Forever (2022)

Direction: Jack Tremaine
Country: USA 

Insanely introduced and episodically mounted, Jackass Forever, the fourth installment in the Jackass film series, really lacks taste. Two decades after the original’s release, director/producer Jack Tremaine captures the known Jackass troupe of masochists - led by co-producer Johnny Knoxville and augmented here with some new cast members - performing their deranged acts. This film, being as boring as the previous, insists on disorderly sequences of silly calculated pranks, nonsensical staged situations and dangerous games. However, in addition to nasty farts, animal bites, electric shocks, and a nauseating collective puke, the worst of the film lies in a fatiguing persistence for damaging testicles.

It's all very obvious, gross and repellent in its deplorable show off. Thus, it’s sad that anyone can claim any type of cleverness or even good entertainment to what is offered here. These men seem to have balls of steel and tough skin, but I'm not giving them enough credit for that. The most appealing character in the film? A brown bear.

Sweat (2021)

Direction: Magnus von Horn
Country: Poland / Sweden

In Sweat, Magnus von Horn’s uptight psychological drama, a fitness influencer goes through an emotionally vulnerable phase, exposing her yearning for a true relationship on the social media, where she reigns with 600k followers. Hyper energetic while working out in public but melancholic while by herself, the motivator Silwia Zajac (Magdalena Koleśnik) just wants to be herself and show the world she’s a real person in a world of artificiality. She sulks at her mother’s birthday party and gets agitated with the stalker (Tomasz Orpinski) who is daily parked in front of her building. Once her lifestyle starts to overwhelm, pressure comes from fans, sponsors, media, and even the ones around her. 

The film sets off in a throbbing, irritating way but then suddenly grows in emotion, expanding toward an unexpected direction that will make you sympathize with the central character regardless of her flaws. Some of the film's observations about societal expectations and loneliness are more on-the-mark than any vigorous body moves it puts on display.

Sweat survives its glossy production varnish due to the emotional stakes of the plot and a confident performance by Koleśnik, who doesn’t vacillate when it comes to choosing between honesty and hypocrisy. The tension sometimes wanes along the way, but the final stretch ensures that the film ends on a fairly compelling note.

Immersion (2022)

Direction: Nic Postiglione
Country: Chile 

Immersion is a qualified low budget thriller that focuses on unfounded fear, class gaps and bourgeois prejudice. The debut feature of Chilean Nic Postiglione benefits from a simple but intelligent script as well as an effective direction, but couldn’t have been taken to an above-the-average level without the stunning actor Alfredo Castro. The latter, who showed superior acting skills in the past through films such as Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and White on White (2019), plays a biased middle-class man whose attitudes of superiority and mistrust - typical of a cultural zeitgeist in Chile that discriminates against the indigenous Mapuche people - lead to implacable consequences.

Ricardo (Castro) takes his two daughters - Tere (Consuelo Carreño) and Claudia (Mariela Mignot) - in his yacht to spend the day in the remote lake house where he spent his youth. While navigating the calm waters of the lake, he spotted three men on a small boat that appears to be sinking. He ignores their pleas for help at first but then goes back and agrees to help them.

The constantly tense atmosphere and dark tones of the film are stressed by the unfailingly rigorous lens of cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (a regular choice of the acclaimed director Pablo Larraín), and the sometimes unsettling, sometimes sad sound design of Mauricio López. Being discerning and direct to the point, the film is also measured in form, but it comes with an important message about fear and prejudice.

Compartment No. 6 (2022)

Direction: Juho Kuosmanen
Country: Finland / Russia / other

Helsinki-based writer-director Juho Kuosmanen made his directorial feature debut in 2016 with The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, a memorable black-and-white drama inspired by the true story of an amateur boxer. In his second move, Compartment No. 6, he changes style and mood, but his talent remains intact. The film is charged with resonant beauty and keen-eyed focus, despite the pervasive air of disquietude of an arresting road trip stirred by quirky romance. Working on a paradoxical balance of mirth and melancholy, the director reaps substance from the most precious details, showing us how two apparently incompatible persons can become attracted to each other.

The plot, based on Rosa Liksom’s novel of the same name, follows Laura (Seidi Haarla), a conflicted young Finnish student of archeology who leaves her Russian girlfriend (Dinara Drukarova) in Moscow to board a train to Murmansk. Her intention is to visit the ancient Kanozero petroglyphs. While on the train, she’s forced to share the minuscule compartment with Ljoha (Yuri Borisov), an indelicate, alcoholic Russian miner who ignores good manners. 

A lyrical sense of bittersweet acceptance permeates the film, and the cinematography amplifies the sense of wintry desolation. Still, the images are brashly poetic rather than debilitating. Not in any circumstances I was bored, and to that contributed the low-key performances by Haarla and Borisov. Unapologetically, the film feeds on the unimagined discoveries of their characters while getting to know each other. Sometimes obscure in tone, sometimes oddly appealing, this is not your conventional romance film.

Wood and Water (2022)

Direction: Jonas Bak
Country: Germany

Focusing on a naturalistic reality instead of the artificial, debutant German director Jonas Bak fixates his observant lens on a recently retired widow (played by the director’s mother Anke Bak) who tries to reunite with her daughter and son in the seashore house where they lived before. Since her elusive son, Max, couldn’t make it, she decides to travel to Hong Kong, where he lives and works, only to find the city immersed in pro-democracy protest.

After sleeping the first night in a shared room of a local motel, she was able to get into his apartment, located in the metropolitan area of Wan Chai. But no sight of him. To kill time and cover up the loneliness, she does tai-chi with the building’s doorman (Patrick Lo) and goes to a fortune teller, where she interacts with a former painter turned social activist (Ricky Yeung). 

Favoring a slow, simple style that recall Tsai Ming Liang’s contemplative cinema, Bak builds a ponderous story moved by a broad sense of emptiness, nostalgia and sadness. By using tilt shots to capture the main road and skyscrapers, he creates a sensation of slow motion that is reinforced by the minimalist drone-ambient music of Brian Eno, and even finds the time to incorporate some visual parcels of artistic sensibility. This is one of those drama films that requires patience. In that case , I hope you can extract something interesting from a handsomely framed meditation that straddles between documentary and fiction.

Fresh (2022)

Direction: Mimi Cave
Country: USA

Mimi Cave’s first feature film, Fresh, may have a few great shots, but it’s definitely not a great horror movie. Struggling with conflicting vibes and manipulative flippancy, the film doesn’t do justice to its title, often bordering on the silly rather than the psychologically scary. Cave, who works from a script by Lauryn Kahn, aims for a cult veneer with terrible dialogue and an oscillating tone that wavers uncertainly between inane comedy and blunt violence. 

The story follows Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones in her second big-screen appearance, following Pond Life), an unmarried young woman who practices boxing and hates dating. She has had terrible experiences with dating apps lately, but when unexpectedly approached by Steve (Sebastian Stan), a charming plastic surgeon, she couldn’t resist him. He seems a nice, funny man, but a romantic weekend getaway will unveil his freaky business. 

Unfortunately, the cruder the story grows, the less stimulating it becomes, no matter how efficiently crafted some scenes may look. The only comfort I could find here was to see three women kicking the ass of the Prince Charming who kept abusing them. With Stan delivering a painfully inept performance, Fresh, which listed Adam McKay (The Big Short, 2015; Don’t Look Up, 2021) as co-producer, becomes a largely unappetizing stew that feels oddly inconsistent and skimpy in texture. Not my type of delicacy in every way.

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet (2022)

Direction: Ana Katz
Country: Argentina

Ana Katz’s black-and-white experimentation, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, is a concise drama film that depicts life with all its struggles: loss, work, family, fatherhood, and even the unexpected. It’s also a wry commentary on the alienation and sense of despondency felt throughout the world. Shot over the course of five years but unspooling in just 73 minutes, the film’s sketchy montages quickly lull into slowly-paced monotony.

Sometimes tender, sometimes poignant, other times offbeat and speculative, this film can be thought provoking, especially while cloaking tragedy in a veil of humor. However, it doesn't add up to anything really bold apart from an unaccountable pandemic created by a meteor phenom. A mildly promising premise still sputters thanks to a completely silent dog said to be crying at all times, but even this segment feels ‘abandoned’. 

The director’s brother, actor Daniel Katz, is Seba, a man in his thirties who goes through some difficult moments before achieving some desired stability in life. Absurdist humor is injected, occasionally causing surprise. Yet, for the most part, the film is tonally balmy. I cannot say it was hard to sit through and try to figure out the potential of its ideas. The problem is that every idea is cut up to pieces in a split of a second. Despite the setbacks, including the numerous possibilities to become better articulated and less disintegrated, I’m sympathetic enough to Katz's unclassifiable project, which will certainly find an arthouse niche for itself.

Hold Me Tight (2021)

Direction: Mathieu Amalric
Country: France 

Touching on loss and grief, this puzzle of a film directed by Mathieu Amalric, who is better known as an actor (The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, 2007; The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014), is based on a contemporary play. The film stars Vicky Krieps (The Phantom Thread, 2017) as a woman who apparently tries to reconnect with her family after leaving them. Bafflingly structured, the story points out an ambiguous direction that can only be clarified as the film progresses.

The flashbacks sometimes confound us more, and the film purposely plunges us into constant dualities - reality and imagination, presence and absence, happiness and sadness - which requires patience. It’s all very intensely cerebral rather than powerfully emotional. 

Despite the pleasant frames, I found Hold Me Tight vapid in the assemblage and lethargic in pace, marked by a fluctuating narrative that, not being easy to follow, is not so unique or even unapproachable. The thing for me was that the strong premise gradually weakens with a series of subtleties that keep breaking the fragmentation to reach a conclusion. Even with Krieps infusing the required gravitas and the beautiful piano pieces composed by Beethoven and Schönberg, the film failed to move me profoundly. It ended without much of a payoff.

After Yang (2022)

Direction: Kogonada
Country: USA 

After Yang is the sophomore feature by South Korean director Kogonada, who presents us with another sensitive work after a tender, realistic debut with Columbus (2017). Yet, what he proposes this time is a sweet sci-fi drama film set in a mixed-race future populated by humans, techno-sapiens and clones. The filmmaker wrote the screenplay based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story Saying Goodbye to Yang, which tells the story of a family of three that mourns the loss of a certified refurbished robot. You can think of a somnambulistic intersection of elements and moods from Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina (2014) and Maria Schrader's I’m Your Man (2021).

Exploring relationships, both human and non-human, the film fabricates disconsolate moments with a modest warmth, following a concept that, even posing some questions about human vulnerability and machine memorabilia, doesn’t really go further in its thematic exploration. Both the unfocused direction and unvaried tone of the film make it a drowsy experience, which, failing to be thought-provoking, is unlikely to lodge in your memory. 

The idea is not totally unthinkable considering the technology-centered world we live in. However, this undercooked story never reached the beauty, or even the simplicity, of the images captured. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith are simultaneously restrained and practical in their performances, with the film raising some concerns about the lack of a twist or an emotional boost.

The Batman (2022)

Direction: Matt Reeves
Country: USA 

With its brooding atmosphere and formidable cast, this haunting superhero flick directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, 2008; War For the Planet of the Apes, 2017) has an infatuated, if depressed, Batman (Robert Pattinson doesn’t disappoint with his impersonation of the vigilante at a younger age) joining forces with the seductive Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) to fight the organized crime in Gotham while trying to grapple with the ghosts of their own families. 

This renewed installment puts on display not only unscrupulous villains with cynical postures - spearheaded by the cruel psycho killer Riddler (Paul Dano) and rounded out by the underground crime kingpin Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and a blander Penguin (Colin Farrell) - but also crooked politicians and police agents, exception made for the honorable officer James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). 

Reeves’ self-possessed direction digs into the character with gravitas and precision, making for a reinvigorating return to basics. Effectively paced, with sober special effects as well as depressingly noir scenarios, the film embraces this darkly captivating mood that, even clocking in at 180 minutes, never felt exhausting. Although falling short of brilliant, The Batman follows a competent plot that translates into some seriously spellbinding moments. It's definitely no ordinary movie, standing on its own as a solid piece of entertainment. Nirvana’s fantastic song “Something in the Way” bookends the story, reinforcing the gothic and the nihilistic in it.