My Reaction to Ben Affleck as the New Batman, In Gifs

At first I was like: "Ben Affleck as Batman? That's weird."

Because over the last few years he seems to have been making a concerted effort to transition from actor-very-few-people-take-seriously to director-that-lots-of-people-take-seriously. He's not the last person I would expect to jump into spandex for a high-profile popcorn movie role. That would be this guy:

But still, Affleck definitely doesn't fit the comic book movie casting rubric, a.k.a. an actor who's gained some attention for TV work

and/or a supporting

or guest role

in a popular film, but hasn't yet landed the lead in a major movie. Oh, and they're probably Australian or British.

The benefit of choosing a relative unknown is that the audience will have very few preconceived notions about the actor. Nobody really knew who Chris Hemsworth was before he was chosen, and now when they look at him, they see Thor. Ditto Henry Cavill and Superman. When people see Ben Affleck, they see... well, they see Ben Affleck. Or, judging by the Twitter response to his casting, they see:

The thing is, fucked up as WB/DC has been in regards to their superhero movies (y u no Wonder Woman?), they're not completely stupid. They knew the fan backlash would happen. They knew people would start screaming "Daredevil!" and "Gigli!"Weird as it may seem, the fact that Affleck is a counterintuitive choice makes me think there must be something about him, something about his approach to Batman, that made the casting people go

And look, I gave Zack Snyder a lot of shit for Man of Steel (review here). I stand by all of it. But the casting was not one of that movie's problems. From Cavill to Amy Adams to Michael Shannon to, in other movies, Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, and Lena Headey, dude (usually) knows talent when he sees it. He just doesn't tend to do much with it.

A common argument against Affleck's casting is that he pretty much only plays variations of himself. And yeah, that's valid. When I look at him, I see Bruce Wayne, but I don't see Batman at all.

But let's give the dude a shot. We're so used to seeing Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale's Batman, who's so intense and... well...

...that it's been easy for me, for one, to lose track of Batman as an occasional billionaire playboy who dresses up in black latex to sneak around at night fighting crime. Not that I'm saying Snyder will go all Tim Burton caricature-esque for his version, or even that he should. What I am saying is that we just don't know what his approach to the character will be. Affleck might be perfect for it. Let's wait and see, at least until the first trailer. For all we know we could be like:

And anyway, speaking personally, Batman vs Superman or Man of Steel 2 or whatever it ends up being called is a Zack Snyder movie, so I probably won't like it anyway.

But when I do inevitably dislike it, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't be because of Affleck. Dude might not have the best range, but he's still a good actor.

So screw it. Now that I've moved from

to

let's have a dance party

Fruitvale Station Will Kick You To The Ground And Make You Cry, And You'll Want To Thank It For Doing So

I had mixed emotions going into Fruitvale Station. It's gotten a lot of buzz—and I mean a lot—since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, particularly focused on lead actor Michael B. Jordan. I've heard nothing but good things about it. Which concerned me, because what if my expectations are too high? It's not like I've never been disappointed by one of The Weinstein Company's adopted Oscar babies. For example: The King's Speech and Silver Linings Playbook. They're both OK movies, but they're in no way deserving of all the praise they got… the same sort of praise Fruitvale has been getting. What if this movie neither good, nor bad, but average? What if I'd enjoy it more if I mentally talked it down a bit before seeing it?

I needn't have worried. Fruitvale Station is every bit as good as they say it is.

Jordan plays Oscar Grant, a 22-year old man living in the Bay Area with his girlfriend and their young daughter. Oscar's had some trouble with the law in the past, but he's reformed himself. He's nice to strangers, animals, and his elders. His life's not easy, and it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to fall back into old habits, but he doesn't.

We get to know all this over a 24-hour period stretching from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, 2009. It happens to be the last day of Oscar's life. (That's not a spoiler. The movie informs us of Oscar's fate first thing. Also, it's based on a true story, so it's not exactly a secret.)

The quality of Fruitvale Station creeps up on you, or at least it did on me. I wasn't feeling it at first because of the way it's very, very sure to let you know how great a guy Oscar is, almost to the point of establishing him as some sort of saint. One who used to be not-so-saintly, sure, but that just makes the conversion more admirable. One of the first scenes has Oscar texting his Mom right after midnight on her birthday because he's just that good a son, for goodness' sake. It was a bit heavy-handed.

But when Oscar's fate rushes to its inevitable end like a train to the eponymous Fruitvale Station, you realize that every moral, selfless thing you've seen Oscar do up to this point was absolutely necessary. Without it, the last third of the movie would not be the emotional gut-punch that it is. It's not just sad. It's gutting, which must've been a tough clhallenge for writer/director Ryan Coogler to pull off when the audience already knows exactly what's coming. I had to sit and stare at the screen during the credits just to give myself enough time to emotionally recover. It's a brilliantly made masterpiece of a movie, but boy it is rough.

Jordan's performance is also every bit as good as you might have heard it is. The movie skirts along the edge of over-the-top at times, but his nuanced performance never does. He keeps the movie grounded, just as his terror near the end is what really takes your heart, squeezes it in a medieval torture device, and hurls it over a cliff.

And since Fruitvale Station is based on a true story, let's add "putting your heart in a blender and pushing puree" to that list.

Is Fruitvale Station a subtle movie? Absolutely not. But the subject it tackles isn't a subtle one, and when it comes to police perpetuating violence against citizens based on their race… well, we don't exactly live in subtle times. Every single scene, every line, every shot Coogler put in the film heightens its emotion and hammers home its message, and it's a message that, particularly now, is worth hearing.

I've been known to stand up on a soapbox and yell about how much I dislike blatantly emotionally manipulative movies (*cough*GraveoftheFireflies*cough*), and maybe if I ever get up the nerve to watch Fruitvale Station again I won't like it so much. Something tells me I will, though. Because it doesn't use emotional manipulation as a crutch. It's 85 minutes of tightly paced, perfectly constructed emotional torment. It's only after you've sat through every horrible, brilliant second of it that you truly realize how good what you watched just is.

An Open Letter to Johnny Depp on the Subject Of Whitewashing

Hey, JD. Can I call you JD? I don't mean to come off as aggressive or anything. I'm sure you're a great guy. But I just have to ask...

...What the hell are you smoking, dude?

Review: The Lost Potential of World War Z

Let me start by saying that Max Brooks' World War Z is one of my favorite books I've read in the last ten years. As such, when it comes to watching a film that's very honest about making changes from its source material, I was biased from the start. Hell, I'm still biased. I admit that. All the same, I tried to go into World War Z with an open mind. After all, though it may not be good (as in accurate) as an adaptation of Brooks' book, it could still be good as a movie. And that's what important. People complaining that "Waaaah, you changed [some tiny thing]" always gets on my nerves. A movie has to work as itself, and every individual element has to be in service of that, not the book/comic book/whatever.

So attending a screening of World War Z started with me tamping down my inner hypocrite. And then, near the end, saying "screw it" and letting my inner hypocrite fly from my mouth like a shrieking (but silently, because movie theater), movie-obsessed banshee. Because World War Z? Is just bad.

Gif Review: Much Ado About Nothing

My gif collection is way, way larger than it by all rights should be. And so, to give some purpose to the hours I've spent building and organizing that collection (don't look at me), here's my review of Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing… in gifs.

Review: Meh of Steel

I didn't expect greatness from Man of Steel. I generally go into summer blockbusters hoping for a good, entertaining movie that will hold my interest and not bug me too much. Hell, Fast & Furious 6 has been one of my favorite movies so far this summer. I don't require The Dark Knight-level quality. I think my expectations are pretty reasonable.

Unfortunately, Man of Steel failed to meet them.

Now You See Me Review: All Flash, No Substance

Early on in Now You See Me Daniel Atlas, a smug, jerk-ish magician played by Jesse Eisenberg, tells the viewers "The closer you look, the less you see." I would modify that line and apply it to the whole movie: "You can look as closely as you want, there's just not much there."

Now You See Me is an entertaining movie filled with good actors and characters that are interesting, if a bit flat. You don't really get to know any of them all that well. Even the ones whom you supposedly get insight into over the course of the film—Mark Ruffalo's detective, Mélanie Laurent's INTERPOL agent, Morgan Freeman's professional magician debunker—still feel slick and shiny by the end of the film. You may at some point feel like you've gotten into the character's head, and the movie's many twists and turns tell you things about certain characters that invite reinterpretation of their motives and personalities, but like the magician's mirror-in-a-box that pops up several times throughout the course of the movie, what you're seeing is only what you're being told. There's no more to it that than.

The same is true of the film's plot, which starts down one path only to wing off in a different direction, offering no explanation of or follow-up to the subject of its previous attentions. It's quite admirable, in a way: The film's about magicians, who are most successful when they distract their audience by something shiny while they go off and do the real magic behind the scenes, as is pointed out in the movie several times. And that's exactly what the movie's doing. It's form meets content.

But, just as magic shows are ultimately empty of actual magic, so too Now You See Me is empty of depth. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, I loved Fast & Furious 6. I don't need all my movies to be thought-provoking. And if one or two major elements of Now You See Me don't make any sense when you really stop and think about them, well, that a plane would continue to try and take off when it has three cars dangling from it is pretty stupid, too.

It bugs me with Now You See Me, though, probably because its cast—in addition to Ruffalo, Eisenberg, Freeman, and Laurent, there's Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, Dave Franco (who was great in 21 Jump Street) and Isla Fisher (whose character brought an insane amount of charisma, good looks, and… well, that's about it. But that level of depth is held by most of the characters. Eisenberg: Cocky and an asshole. Laurent: Sorta spiritual, love interest… French. Et cetera.) Director Louis Leterrier brought all these wonderful people together and gave us nothing better than a run-of-the-mill crime thriller.

Maybe that I got so little out of the movie is my fault. Maybe if I watched it again, without expecting so much, I'd appreciate it more.

And yet. I don't think I'll be giving this one another two hours of my life.