Batman & Robin (1997)

Holy Crap Batman! This is your typical "absolutely cannot fail" franchise (Alien, Terminator etc) film gettingass-raped by studio execs making crucial content decisions, when they have no talent, gut or sufficient background to do so. The Cape Crusader got crucified head and thumbs down, in the wake of a crusade for dollars, not even half as successful as each one of the previous attempts. If you wanna know how this miraculous anti-miracle happened and caught everyone off guard, read more and swear, or forever be silenced.
The Batman series started as a reinvention by Tim Burton. He took his dark mood and adapted it to a tortured comic book hero. The results were breathtaking. Batman was a fleshy, noir, psy, multilayered, new age medieval, over the top acting and setting movie, that if you didn’t want to follow it deep, it was also a fun flick to watch. Batman Returns was too dark too soon, (because a little later “dark” became a must, synonymous to movie realism), and so a motion was put forth to lighten up the next film, Tim Burton walked away for better (for him) or for worse (for the fans). Anyhow, in both cases we are talking about a mountainous achievement throughout all movie aspects, a cornerstone in not only how a comic reproduction should be made, but how an action movie should be treated in general.
Enter Joel Schumacher.
Exit reason.
Now, not that Joel Schumacher is an evil director, but he is kinda. His idea to turn Batman into a big-starred parody somehow managed to go by with little scrutiny in Batman Forever. Bad pop-ups out of nowhere. Ok, the Riddler played by the Mask was not a bad idea at all. The Saint was not a sinful of acting either – but that’s not entirely true. The shots and overall pacing were not Burton, but they were certainly up to the task. The soundtrack was a collection of dark jewels shining a disturbing light. But Two Face was an impalpable disgrace and the fun park sets and the dialogue right from the shit-dump of idiocy, oh they were right there from the beginning. TOO much unwanted facts and figures everywhere, bad add-ons and contradictions all over.
So, from early on, the hellish gayness (did I just say GAY?) seemed to unfold slowly, not so discretely, and painfully in a way nobody was used to up to that time. But still ok. Probably all, because there was so much hype and chat around Burton’s veil of dark genius. Not much of an excuse, that is.
And then Batman and Robin aka Shit & Shack aka Nipple & Dickle. Flat & Furious that is, just like that neon toy bat mobile, that neon toy bat pods and the comically unnatural and over proportioned action scenes taken right from a Friday-night stunt men show for urban freaks. Gay (oh, did I say GAY again??) vs. bad day, throttle vs. ice skating, action vs. common sense, acting vs. dignity, production vs. taste and EVERYTHING vs. the stunned, shocked, disgusted, freaked out fan and even worse, the unaware movie bystander. In this quasi dark, pink and purple mess that every faith in Hollywood and humanity is lost, no need for a good actor either. George Clooney says he'll do it. Square-jawed. Popular with the ladies. Fair and square. But Looney Clooney just plays George Clooney. Which is the road he usually takes, but in this case this suave, dashing, and charming Batman seems more like a James Bond by day-Captain Amazing by night trendy dandy, than the tormented knightly investigator of legend. And that's not just it.
In the history of comic & movie bad ideas, Robin is probably one of the worst, but watching this is like staring at a happy graffiti tombstone amidst a desert of a post apocalyptic Eden, set to be chaotically reconstructed. Robin is acted like an all childish, bad tempered punko, and the only thing that he actually beats the crap off is O’ Donnell’s lost bet of a career (at last for †uck’s shake!)
Alicia’s forced, out of place add on of a role, seems surprisingly and exhaustingly too much for her zero talent, grace and charm, and her tough-girl-rag-doll kicking performance is sprinkled with not so kind reminders of her Clueless days. Batman’s shameful spirit and Holy Fan Fury ended her career too.
Uma Thurman, who the last we knew of, she COULD act, is hamming it up to ridiculous proportions. First, when she's playing the nerdo-weirdo Dr. Pamela, exaggerating that part to a level I thought impossible. And then she inexplicably turns into an extremely sexualized villainess whose master plan, by the way, would kill all the plants she advocated protecting.
Arnold wasn’t a bad casting idea at first. His acting is always frozen (no surprise here) and his structure is that of an iceberg (not only the tip of it). When you see Freeze in comics and Arnold’s stills from the movie, somehow it makes sense and it also fired up another great hype wave of fan anticipation back in these days of innocence. But that's all. When you hear Freeze tell Batman "Yew arr not zending mee too da cooola" the urge to laugh, scream and press the red button uncontrollably, is almost indiscriminate and insurmountable. What Arnie can’t terminate, the script can.
Akiva Goldsman should have been banned from Hollywood after this script. Damn, I am so into sarcastic and maybe cheap poetics in my free time, but here I encountered a level of expression so laid low, that it could hardly giggle my balls. It was a completely brainless jumbled crack. Everyone was – miraculously once again – drown in shallow waters. The story, which was pitiful at best, gets completely lost in entirely too many characters. It was so frustrating seeing the origins of certain characters burst to pulp as Goldsman attempted to jam them into the script. Batgirl, who should have never been in this film in the first place, was changed from Commissioner Gordon's daughter to Alfred's niece, which made absolutely no sense. In an attempt, to explain why Freeze was so muscular it was pointed that he was an Olympic gymnast. How freakin' stupid is that? Gymnasts by necessity need to be small in stature to perform well in gymnastics and Arnold is a enormous Bareback Mountain (I said BAREBACK – don’t take pride on it Schumie!) This is indeed a movie full of shit in every single detail from papers to paper sets and paper actors. Goldsman's use of dialogue was highly irritating consisting of nothing but kitsch and pesky juvenile one-liners, one after another, and another, and another, and yet another, till the end of fan.
Even Bane was a misshaped waste. Bane is a much more vicious villain in the comics (read Knightfall epic and weep) with a pretty edgy background but this movie reduced him to a mindless c-gorilla no more important than the costumed bad-ass-my-ass clowns throughout the whole movie.
Finally, when the ghost of Batman past, Alfred, enters the scene, you just want to cry in pain and nostalgia.
It’s just too FOCKIN’ late.
The outcome is a cataclysmic, worth shuttering, mind splitting disaster, making all believability and style Batman had, go out the window – without a bat chute. A conspiracy level act of malevolence that took almost ten years of waste and woe and a miracle man called Nolan to set things right in to the glory ride. Joel Schumacher other than building up a hill of pennies (and not at all the satisfying lot), just didn't give a penny about the characters, dialogue, integrity and the minimum given watching ability of the film. Seriously, I'd have more respect for Schumacher if he had stated that he hated Batman outright, and had intentionally ruined it with his shoot-cute-world of garbage. I‘d hate him again, but this might actually have been just his own personal joke, his what-the-fuck-for-anyway, anti-super hero statement of all time. Instead, it borders harshly on gruesome scars, in a tragic travesty, that anything that is good and worthy in and around the movie business, will never forget or forgive. So, I LOATHE the misacted, miss casted, insipid, disgusting, intentionally flawed, sea full of shame, butcherly disrespectful, provocative to the core of the minimum human artistic condolence, Batman & Robin.
Well Schumie, you miserable little clown, if you want to really know how a great clown is made and what a great clown is being made of, try watching the last Batman instalment. As for us, if Hell hath no less than seven pits, we shall certainly dig and tear you a new one called Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane Directors. Cut.

The Spirit (2008)

A parody? A comedy? A romance? A film - noir? A mystery? An adventure? Is it possible to cut my wrists with a movie ticket or else with the battery door of the remote control? Smart asses usually point out that cinema is first and foremost about visuals and imagery.
Yeah, right, that’s the spirit.
Unfortunately, that isn’t The Spirit. Here you‘ll become witnesses – sorry I meant martyrs – of how a movie with sharp visuals and cutting edge imagery, can be the violent opposite of the words “first” and “foremost”. Honestly, I have never seen such an insanely abysmal movie before. Really, I am SO shocked that I can hardly swear or produce some kind of naturally profane reaction.
The Sin City breakthrough, the 300 epic visualization, all faded away screaming for their creator' s lost soul. Frank Miller’s pencils are almighty but as a director he sucks cock fields like a nuclear vacuum cleaner. I still can’t believe how he could manage to play out such a horrible conception, so jerkily executed. Even if you create such an abomination on purpose, you still have to be exceptionally untalented and even uncultivated to succeed. Was he thinking that he was an Uber-deity or something and wanted to make a cheap rip-off of himself, just to get real – you know!
I don’t even know where to start here. A cliché vigilante story that struggles between promiscuously contradicted themes and idiotic complexities to appear something more than what really is – a formal address to retards exclusively, pseudo avant garde art aesthetics, quotes and lines ripped from some 80s nightmarish asylum, toilet humor jokes worse than the “toilet cistern” first, endlessly long, kitsch, boring, without purpose fight scene of the movie, more and more disgusting gags, a colorless – and not because of the filters – protagonist that is not able to pull a right grin, destined to embrace “nobodiness”, a Samuel Jackson embarrassingly OVER-overacting, a Scarlet Johansson bound to fetishes as the apple of any pervert’s eye, building her puny part from kinky schoolgirl to slutty teacher, from slutty teacher to horny executive, and from horny executive to Reichshuredominazitrix, an Eva Mendez starring as “Her Ass That Won’t Save The Film” – both ladies dead gorgeous and acting like dead – and a multiple cloned bozo – dressed in ancient Greek names because American grunt Miller probably thinks they make him look more intellectual – that makes viewer’s redemption a fat chance.
Overall, the puke of artistic evilness and immaturity rises from the gutters in an excruciating experience that threatens to shred Hollywood’ s spirit via fool and foul necromancy. Miller’s spirits are certainly down after this film and his chips buried all the way down to Davy Jones locker.
Next time, if you want a spirit, just try a scotch malt or something.

Catwoman (2004)

This movie is so rightfully bad that we don't even have to compare Halle Berry with the catwoman archetype Michelle Pfeifer to make a point.
Bloopy and unbalanced action that doesn't succeed in making a climax worth watching, totally out of place hip-hop aesthetics because some assholes think that every movie with black people got to have such, three writers for a story that could have been easily written by a ten year old taking a morning crap, evil-bad acting throughout the whole movie from every living soul having a part, a monument of plastic surgery called Sharon Stone way beyond the end of her career and CGI of a third class video game that no one ever bothered to play. Batman would have commited suicide if he had watched this one, but he has a couple of his own reasons to worry about - both directed by Schumacher.
This time, curiosity won't kill the cat, but it will certainly kill the viewer's good taste.

Showgirls (1995)

Vile vs. Bile. Paul Verhoeven directed this bag of sleaze, but like a lot of his movies, there is this mood of depression, showing life at the bottom, where it can’t get any worse. If you've seen Total Recall, RoboCop and Starship Troopers you'll notice this running theme of his. That makes good cinema sometimes. But this time made a bad excuse of a social parody.
Wow! Paul is reeeeally tough if you ask me. Especially, when it comes to robocops and, recently, robosluts. Mean machines that operate on money and produce pleasure and pain. I’ve been thinking of this since Basic Instinct, Sliver and the works, but this movie really got the best of Paul – away.
Let’s see: hard-boiled brothel veterans, literally tough-ass chicks, a red-neck vampire lesbian dominatrix, a fat-mouth-fat-chance lady, dirty cash, Flashdancing stars and sex, not on the beach but certainly on the bitch. Hookers take it all-everyone else shall fall. The movie follows the destiny of a walking bag of “fuckin’ hostile” trash named Nomi Malone (played by Elizabeth Berkley whose acting comes in two flavours: blank and blink) who has killer looks and the brain of an appliance bulb. She's a leather-clad, bad-chick from the wrong side of the tracks who hitches to Vegas to become a dancer. How are we to be sure that she's bad? She wears leather, carries a switchblade and cakes on enough make-up to make the Joker cry. Perhaps, she figures, all that badness makes her a human shield against that cold and unfeeling landscape of bitter failure and resentment known as Las Vegas. When she gets there she finds that Vegas is, well, a cold and unfeeling landscape of bitter failure and resentment. Well, everyone knows that life is a bitch, but Paul throws a looot worse in our face. Over-swearing, over-bitching, and overacting. And you know something? If it was meant to hurt that much, it would have been skip the “happy” ending. So, was it shock tactics or just sex tactics?? Usually, when sex scenes from movies come back to us, they come with a hard on. This is not so like the Showgirls. When I think of the "highlights" of this movie, I just want to puke at all things feminine, most of the times after extreme laughter. Indeed, when I saw Elizabeth Berkley flailing like an electrocuted dummy plugged by a dick, I was caught between sneering and abdominal disturbance. Cash in on Sharon’s fans and the past, genius, but I won’t invest my time and my admiration to you in this shiny-close-to-nothing.
Pass by for once the middle man called Verhoeven guys, and go download directly, full time soft porn.