Category: Diane Lane

THE OUTSIDERS

By Marc S. Sanders

As we are about to embark on a trip to New York City to celebrate my wife’s half century milestone (wish her a Happy Birthday, please), we decided to watch the film adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s celebrated novel The Outsiders, read by many high school juniors and seniors, and now a beloved Broadway musical.  The play has to be better than the movie.  It truly would not take much.

Francis Ford Coppola is the director of this very amateur piece that is best known for introducing a who’s who of the brightest actors that would go on to occupy some of the biggest films of the 1980s and 90s.  One of these guys, someone named Tom Cruise, is still a money maker elite. Ironically, he’s got one of the smallest roles in this film.

I can see the potential talent of C Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze (age 29 here), Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon.  Diane Lane is likely giving the best performance in a next to nothing role as a could’ve been puppy love interest.  However, I said potential.  Had they been directed with just a little bit of passion, it’d be nothing but apparent. Coppola didn’t put enough work into getting this cast into shape.

Hinton’s story focuses on two factions of kids from small town Oklahoma, the greasers dressed in jeans with slicked back hair and tough guy attitudes all portrayed by the gang listed above and the Socs (pronounced Sosh), who are the spoiled rich kids dressed in school letterman jackets and khakis.  Their leader is Leif Garrett, the only known celebrity name at the time of this film’s release.  The antagonism between the groups is as evident as the Jets and Sharks.  The greasers flash their switchblades, curse and strut, particularly Matt Dillon as the fearless tough guy leader Dallas. Yet, within this screenplay, and among the performances by the whole cast, Coppola often relies on hokey, cornball drama that is on par with an after school special.  This is a lousy, rejected Hallmark card come to life. I’ve cried more at “Deep Thoughts With Jack Handy.”

The edits of the picture hide much of the bloodshed until a climactic rumble in the pouring rain presents itself with many endless, overdramatized punches and kicks that clearly don’t make contact.  Yes.  I heard Tom Cruise broke his teeth from a slug to his jaw. Otherwise, the ballet boxing of West Side Story has much more threatening smacks and cracks. 

C Thomas Howell is Pony Boy and Ralph Macchio is Johnny – the sixteen-year-olds who are overtaken by the Socs in the middle of the night. One of the prep kids turns up dead as the two young greasers defend themselves.  They hop a freight train and hide out of town, only to be brought into the spotlight when they rescue a group of little kids from a burning church. Pictures are smack dab on the front page.

The Outsiders is a very brief ninety-minute film that does not do enough to establish relationships among these kids.  Howell has the most fleshed out role.  With his two older brothers (Swayze and Lowe), Pony Boy dresses the part but his appreciation for literature and poetry by Margaret Mitchell and Robert Frost says that his life as a greaser is not for him.  His current situation does not allow for any other opportunities, though. Howell is just mediocre in his performance.  I cannot say I related to his supposed anguish and conflict.  He’s a body saying the lines and standing on his mark for the camera.

Just as in The Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio is an annoying over actor.  His character has an abusive relationship with his parents. However, we never see the parents. Frustratingly speaking, I’d question if this kid Johnny is simply a storyteller looking for attention. Why would Coppola leave out this dimension of one the main character’s home life that is frequently mentioned? Macchio looks more concerned with making sure the collar on his jean jacket is popped up with his bangs hanging down just right for a cover photo on Seventeen Magazine.  The profile that has the cute scar imbedded in his tan complexion is front and center. He always looks like he’s posing for a still shot in front of Coppola’s movie camera.  Macchio delivers the final monologue of the piece, and it’s near impossible to believe the actor truly embraced any of the dialogue of the script.  His performance appears mechanically memorized. 

Matt Dillon looks like he was genuinely trying to turn in a tough guy performance, but his moments on film, especially his final scene, look terribly edited and off kilter.  The cutaways that Coppola uses are awful, like a TV movie that is interrupted by commercials.  Only someone axed the ads from the final print and did not tape the film reel properly together.  

The Outsiders is a coming-of-age story hinged on tragedy and the yearning for a better life, particularly for Pony Boy.  Hinton’s book remains essential reading for young adults needing to relate to characters their own age.  It also serves as an effective homework assignment.  Francis Ford Coppola’s film though offers little focus on what makes any character tick or why there’s a conflict between the rival groups.  Where’s the history and backstory?  Most of the actors, especially Estevez and Cruise, come off as if they are high on sugar with incomplete sentences for lines. What are you guys doing here if not to look anything but hyperactive?

West Side Story and Stand By Me quickly found their footing for adolescent boys with insecurities and uncertain futures.   The respective settings of those films knew these misfit kids, and they in turn interacted within the environments. Coppola went the wrong route because there is hardly any bond between the kids and the other folks who reside in this picture.

From a technical standpoint, The Outsiders is a muddled mess of poorly timed original scores, from Carmine Coppola, wedged into scenes that do not call for anything to enhance the emotional heft.  The director often puts one actor’s close up at a zoom in, while a buddy will be in the foreground. This technique looks like an Olan Mills family photograph you get in the mall.  It’s cringey.  It’s hard to take seriously as well.  

The Outsiders simply does not work to acquire an emotional punch of despair and loss.  These pretty boy tough guys have no effective humor even with Tom Cruise behaving like an ugly, incomprehensible wild man and Emilio Estevez donning a Mickey Mouse t-shirt with his signature cackle.  There’s just too little to relate to anything in this picture that S. E. Hinton magnetically achieved within her pages.  Her book was published when she was age seventeen by the way. What an amazing accomplishment!

Regrettably, the filmmaker who upped the scales of the war picture (Apocalypse Now) with terror and disillusionment, and successfully delivered two of the greatest, most operatic films of all time (The Godfather movies), not to mention his smaller but shocking films like The Conversation offered little attention to what S.E. Hinton captured and impressed upon young readers.  If anything, Coppola was more concerned with shooting picturesque, midwestern sunset landscapes that honestly have an artificial texture to the eye.  Nothing from the music to the photography to the editing to the overt contrivances or the acting seems natural here.

The Outsiders is equally regarded as assembling one of the most impressive groupings of eventual male box office stars, as it is for Francis Ford Coppola’s lazy and uninspired film work.

MAN OF STEEL (2013)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 56% (damn…haters gonna hate)

PLOT: The last son of a dead planet finds a home on Earth and, thanks to enhanced senses and powers, becomes its mightiest defender when an ancient enemy attacks.


I never tire of repeating this: the majority of my enjoyment of a movie is derived from how it affects me on an emotional level.  And, brother, in my case, Man of Steel knows exactly which buttons to push to make the hairs on my arm stand on end.

I can still remember the first time I saw the very first teaser trailer, back in 2012.  It fired my imagination almost as much as the first trailers for The Phantom Menace did.  “At last,” I thought, “someone is going to make a SERIOUS Superman movie!  It worked for The Dark Knight, why not Superman?”

And in my humble opinion, it did work.  But before I get into the debate between different Superman versions, let me talk about this movie first.

Man of Steel is ambitious, audacious, and visually spectacular.  Its one major fault lies in the finale, in which a human family is threatened by a heat ray, and it seems all they have to do is just…run the other way.  But a point is being made (a good one, I might add), so I can forgive it after the fact.  On first viewing, though, I will admit the mildly absurd situation took me a little bit out of the moment.

But I’m picking nits.  The rest of Man of Steel is just a great experience at the movies.

Right from the get-go, we know we’re in for something different when, for the first time since Superman II [1980], we get a glimpse of Kal-El’s homeworld, Krypton.  But this is not your father’s Krypton.  This is a lush, red-sky world, with stunning vistas, flying creatures, and hyper-advanced technology.

The familiar story is all there: a dying race and a loving mother and father who send their infant son to the stars for one last chance of survival, for him and for their race.  In flashback, we see Kal-El’s childhood in Kansas, as he struggles to adapt to his enhanced senses.  This is one of the great concepts I’m glad the movie took the time to show.  We see him trying to cope with seeing and hearing EVERYTHING, all at once, and learning to focus his powers so he can function in this new world.  That was a nice touch.  The school bus scene was handled especially well.

We see him as a grown man (played by Henry Cavill) before he dons the familiar suit, a drifter, only reluctantly playing the hero from time to time.  I liked the beats in this section because they echoed some of the good deeds we saw in “Superman” [1978], but everything was done from a standpoint of genuine awe and astonishment.

Then an alien ship is discovered buried under the ice in northern Canada, Clark investigates, and so does ace reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams), and things start to snowball from there.  But in “Man of Steel”, everything is handled in a way that makes the far-fetched story seem more real and relatable, more so than its predecessors.  And that appeals to some part of me that is hard to quantify or put into words.

Ever since I was a kid, I was drawn to the darker, grittier aspects of comic books.  My favorite Batman comic?  “The Dark Knight Returns,” Frank Miller’s magnum opus in which Bruce Wayne is an old man, the Joker winds up getting killed, and Batman and Superman fight to the death.  My favorite Marvel comic?  “Identity Crisis,” in which a superhero’s wife is murdered and the Justice League bands together to find her killer.  My other favorite comics?  “Preacher”, “Y: The Last Man”, “Saga”, “Watchmen”, “V for Vendetta”, and “Ronin.”  I was always, and still am, a fan of how the medium of comics can be used for telling mature stories that don’t always depend on happy endings, or heroes swooping from the skies to catch falling helicopters.

So when a movie DOES come along that, by default, has swooping heroes and a happy ending, but can ALSO make things a little darker or grittier than usual, I am thrilled, because it means the filmmakers are not confining themselves to ancient stereotypes.  They’re trying to surprise me.  They’re making a movie for ME.  …at least, that’s how I feel, because it’s right up my alley.  For example, one of the heaviest criticisms involves the overblown battle scenes.  But, man, I was TOTALLY okay with it.  No flying sheets of cellophane or creepy identical twins here.  These guys are playing for KEEPS.

Does this mean I am somehow in favor of comic book movies removing all traces of fun?  Of course not.  One of my favorite DC movies is “Shazam!” which was WAY more fun than I anticipated.  It’s pretty much a straight up comedy.  Would I prefer a grittier “Shazam” movie drained of fun, with dark skies and a darker ending?  No.  For “Shazam”, the fun approach worked.

When it comes to Superman, I think it’s a mark of the character’s versatility and endurance that it’s even possible for the “fun” Superman (yes, including “Superman Returns [2006]) to exist alongside the darker Superman.  It’s not like “Man of Steel” or its sequels somehow erased or replaced previously existing versions.  They’re still there.  If the comic book industry has taught us anything, it’s that the market for reboots and “remixes” is almost inexhaustible, as long as you stay true to the core principles of the character you’re working with.  In my opinion, “Man of Steel” does exactly that.  It keeps Clark Kent’s innate principles and values in place while dressing up the story to give us one of the best reboots of a character since “The Dark Knight” [2005].

There is, perhaps, one glaring exception, and it comes at the finale of “Man of Steel”, so SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER.

SPOILER ALERT.  You have been warned.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about: Superman is forced to kill General Zod (Michael Shannon) when it becomes clear that Zod will never stop his war on humanity, when he vows to kill everyone on Earth to avenge his lost civilization.  In the comic book, it’s a given that Superman himself does not kill anyone.  (There may be exceptions, but give me a break, I don’t read comic books religiously.)  So why this egregious contradiction?

Since “Man of Steel” is a reboot, I choose to think of it this way:

This is Kal-El’s first test as a hero, his first battle with an enemy as strong as he is in every physical way possible.  He is faced with an impossible choice: kill Zod, or allow countless more humans to die in who-knows-how-many-more battles.  He may be more powerful than a locomotive, but he is just plain inexperienced when it comes to this kind of decision.  So he does what he feels is necessary to preserve life.  He is definitely NOT okay with it.  Watch the movie, and you’ll see his howl of anguish and regret after the deed is done.

But he makes his choice.  He is the son of two worlds, but he chooses Earth.  “Krypton had its chance,” he yells at one point.  It’s time for him to move on.

I know, movies are subjective, and there are no doubt many excellent arguments against my interpretation.  Maybe that’s what makes “Man of Steel” and the Superman character so durable: the fact that there are so many vastly differing interpretations, and that they all apply equally.  Superman can be many things to many people, but no matter how many years go by, he’ll still be what he’s always been: a symbol of hope.

(Got a little mushy there at the end, hope you don’t mind.)

MAN OF STEEL

By Marc S. Sanders

The first time I saw Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel, I was disappointed.  Very disappointed.  It was only after a second viewing about a year later that I realized I was simply biased and unfair with my perception of the film.  I grew up with the Richards’, Donner and Lester, films that featured Christopher Reeve in the role of Superman/Clark Kent.  Nothing could violate what was done in those films from the ’70s and ’80s. 

My impression of Man Of Steel now is that it is a marvelous film.  It’s an exploration of a stranger in a strange land questioning how to adapt to a living environment that he is not from, nor where anyone around him is genetically built like him either.  Henry Cavill fills the role of the title character.  What’s especially important is that he is not attempting to do what Reeve memorably did before him.  Actually, David S Goyer’s script really doesn’t allow for the hijinks of the prior films.  Clark Kent is not portrayed as a goofy and lovable klutz this time around.  Instead, the boy from Smallville, Kansas is challenged to limit his abilities at the behest of his Earthling father, Jonathan (Kevin Costner).  It’s dangerous for Clark to show all that he is capable of from his super strength to his heat vision.  Clark’s Earth mother, Martha (Diane Lane), is more protective of her son.  A really powerful scene occurs when young Clark is in the classroom and he has a bout with sensory overload of super hearing and super x-ray vision.  He can’t get the encompassing sounds and sights out of his head.  One of many CGI effects in the film come with Snyder showing the skeletal insides of Clark’s classmates and teachers.  It’s frightening; even to an innocent alien boy from another world.  This is good conflict.  Does the world need Clark Kent?  Would Clark Kent be better off someplace else?  Can he manage to live with daily life drowning out his sensibilities?

Another dilemma opens the film on Clark’s home planet of Krypton where he was born with the name Kal-el.  His father, Jor-el (Russell Crowe) has insisted to the governing body that the planet is expected to self destruct soon, and civilization needs to be relocated to another planet.  The politicians refuse to accept his theory.  Jor-el’s friend, the military leader General Zod (Michael Shannon) sides with his opinion.  Though his approach is violent insurrection of the Kryptonians.  Zod is punished for his crimes and sentenced to an eternal prison known as The Phantom Zone before baby Kal-el is shipped away, and the planet implodes with all its inhabitants.

Following this opening, Snyder cuts his film with flashbacks and forwards showing Clark in various different roles as either a fishing boat crewman or a bartender trying his best to remain undercover even when the temptation for use of his powers repeatedly shows itself.  Clark reflects on moments from his childhood when he and his Earth parents questioned how to present himself.  

Superman’s known love interest eventually shows herself, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Daily Planet, Lois Lane (Amy Adams).  She’s following up on an alien ship that has been discovered in the arctic after 20,000 years.  Clark and Lois connect at this moment.  Of all the Superman angles that are familiar to so many of us, this is where Goyer and Snyder perhaps do not focus enough.  Man Of Steel is a satisfyingly long film, but there’s a lot of material and drawn out action to cover as well.  So the Lois and Clark relationship is somewhat sacrificed and not as nuanced as we have experienced in other iterations.

Zod arrives on Earth requesting that Kal-el reveal himself along with the intent to destructively turn Earth into a new Krypton at the sacrifice of the planet’s human population.  Naturally, a city wide battle will ensue. and lemme tell you reader you wanna talk about destroying the village just to save it….well…that’s what happens here.  When New York got destroyed in Marvel’s The Avengers or Ghostbusters, those pictures looked like spilled milk compared to what Superman and Zod do here.

Man Of Steel is the best film of the new Warner Bros/DC universe.  It might be Zack Snyder’s best film as well.  The assembly of the picture is masterful.  Hans Zimmer’s score has these great build ups as Clark discovers more of his capabilities.  It especially lends to when the character dons the cape and costume for the first time ready to leap in the sky and fly.  Snyder shows the efforts needed for Superman to carry out this talent.  The flying doesn’t come easy.  It looks like work on the super hero.  Zimmer’s score starts out quiet and then advances to these powerful notes as Superman soars higher and higher.  The boy from Kansas is making himself into something greater that he has no familiarity with.

Michael Shannon plays another of many kinds of villains and antagonists on his resume.  I’m not sick of this guy’s antics yet.  It’s time he become a James Bond villain.  He plays Zod with an uncompromising determination and disregard for anything else but to rule.  It’s all very sci fi like but I love how unforgiving he is with the role.  Much less Shakespearean than when Terrance Stamp played the part so well with Reeve as the hero.  Shannon is more direct and bloodthirsty.  Michael Shannon just knows how to be scary on film. This kind of personality would work great in a silly comedy from the Farrelly brothers as well.

Amy Adams is fine as Lois, but there’s not much here to work with honestly.  More details of her relationship with Superman come through in later films.  However, this story development soured me on my initial viewing.  The iconic irony of Superman pathos is that as sharp a reporter as Lois Lane is, she can not realize that the guy wearing the glasses who is working right next to her is actually Clark Kent?!?!?! Readers and viewers were always thankfully in on the joke.  On follow up viewings of Man Of Steel, I understand that Goyer and Snyder were never aiming for irony.  Lois knows who Clark really is from the get go. What was once an unforgivable departure for me, no longer is a concern.  There are deeper angles to question in Man Of Steel, like a purpose to others and the freedom to force a change because it can be done.

Snyder and Goyer broach on the well known Christ allegory with Superman.  The film takes place in Clark’s thirty third Earth year.  Jor-el is slain with with a stabbing to his rib.  There’s also the crucifixion  pose on a number of occasions.  I must admit, as a Jew raised conservatively with just the Old Testament, I am not very educated on the texts of Jesus Christ.  However, the basics are explored in Man Of Steel.  Is Superman a savior?  Snyder wisely even has Clark visit with his Smallville priest to question his obligations to Earth and to Zod’s calling, with window artwork of Christ in the background.  

One vice I have with Snyder’s picture is the shameless plugging.  How overt must signage from Sears, U-Haul, 7-Eleven and IHop be?  Granted, all of these summer blockbuster films have the inserts of brand labels going all the way back to the original Superman films.  Here though, the corporate advertising is a true eyesore.  Superman being thrown into the dining area of an IHop is not as memorably funny as when Zod’s underling, Non, crashed into New York’s famed Coca-Cola sign back in 1981.

The seemingly endless battle consuming about forty five minutes of the third act of the film are over the top outrageous.  I might normally be saying I’ve seen enough while casualties are never considered as buildings literally topple over into mushroom clouds of concrete dust.  Still, the cast keeps these moments alive.  Shannon and Cavill, along with Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, the Daily Planet editor, and Amy Adams, actually show risk and fear amid all of this bombastic action.  Still, Snyder is insistent on his freedom to go crazy with CGI effects.  It’s more than a bit much, but the characters up to this point keep me engaged with the film all the way through.  Later DC films in this franchise don’t do it so much for me, but that’s another column altogether.  

Again, what I especially like about Man Of Steel is how Snyder cuts back and forth with the film.  Heroic moments occur and then are reflected back to times in Clark’s childhood with Jonathan and Martha.  With Zimmer’s score, it seems to allow Clark to consider conversations and moments from his past as meaningful to what he is experiencing in the present.  When Zack Snyder stays on this trajectory it makes Man Of Steel more than just another comic book movie for summer box office.  There’s depth from Goyer’s script that Snyder wisely does not disregard.  

Man Of Steel is a new and unfamiliar kind of Superman, but its a very welcome Superman too.

BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

By Marc S. Sanders

Zack Snyder may have been indulging in too many cookies from the jar when he made Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice.  I can not deny how ambitious this film is, but did it ever need to be this ambitious?  There are too many storylines, too many characters, and not enough thought provoking dialogue to really make any sense of the gobblety gook that’s splattered all over the screen.

Reader, my favorite super hero of all time is Batman.  Nearly any variation of Batman (including moments from the dreadful Joel Schumacher films) contains an element that I just love about the character.  Ben Affleck is cast as The Dark Knight here.  He’s fine in the role.  I knew since he had done Daredevil, that he could pull off this part.  He might be too long in the tooth, and too busy an actor/director, for a new series of super hero films, but I digress.  That being said, the movies have gone into overkill on the Batman character.  It’s time the Gotham crusader hide in his cave for a little while and let some of the other super heroes out to play.  Snyder’s film proves my theory.  After all, the true highlight is neither title character in this movie.  

Actually Wonder Woman (Gal Godot) making her big screen debut is the draw above anything else here.  Even that is problematic, though.  I’ve seen this film twice now.  Can anyone tell me why Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince even makes an appearance in this film?  From a story perspective, what justifies Diana creeping into this film, other than to plaster her picture on DVD covers and merchandise a new action figure?

Events begin right after Snyder’s stellar Superman film, Man Of Steel.  An older and experienced Bruce Wayne is dubious of the benefits that Superman (Henry Cavill) can serve on Earth.  After all, his bout with the Krypton villain, General Zod, practically leveled Metropolis.  Heaven forbid if one day this powerful alien with the red cape goes out of control.  Bruce, as well as politicians led by Holly Hunter, ask a wise question.  Who on earth could ever stop him?  So Bruce, with assistance from Alfred (Jeremy Irons playing the well known sidekick more as a strategist, than a polite butler) begin preparing for a seemingly inevitable battle to eliminate the Kryptonian. 

Meanwhile, a young, brainy Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) is planning for his own undoing of both of these super heroes by living up to the film’s title; pitting the Bat of Gotham against the God of Metropolis; mano y mano.  Like most iterations, Luthor plays with defying the odds of nature.  In this case, he is experimenting with a green element sourced from Krypton which we all know is Kryptonite, as well as extracting blood from the corpse of Zod to create his own monster movie.  That last part feels like a side gig for the supposedly genius villain.

In addition, a mysteriously exotic and beautiful woman is turning up on various occasions.  Somehow, only Bruce seems to take notice of her.  Why?  I don’t know.  There’s really no purpose for him to scope out this person amid a sea of other extras attending a Luthor gala. 

There’s also Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane).  There’s a retread of Bruce Wayne’s origin story that we’ve seen countless times before.  There’s a bitter and disabled former employee of Wayne Enterprises.  There’s a dream sequence showing vague plague like foreshadowing to come.  There’s an arms dealer/terrorist sequence in the desert for Lois to investigate, and another figure for Bruce to track.  There’s the eventual gladiator battle between the two heroes, and then there’s another battle thereafter for the two guys to team up with the the woman who carries a magic lasso to defeat a Doomsday monster; likely rejected sketches from the Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises.  Oh yeah.  There’s also some teaser material for what’s yet to come in the DC cinematic universe.

Do you see where I am going with all of this?  There’s just too much stuff here.  Eventually it all gets tedious.  A laundry list of storylines with little to no connection with one another feels burdensome.  I wish the screenwriters, Chris Terrio and David S Goyer, finished writing a script before starting another script.  As lengthy as all of these stories feel, they also seem unfinished, and, I can’t understand why.  

Forgive me.  It’s easy to compare the DC Comics film adaptations to the Marvel Comics films that Disney now owns.  The latter franchise seems well structured and outlined.  The former franchise helmed by Snyder seems rushed to catch up to everything that Marvel has already accomplished.  If the intent was to have a huge franchise of films, then why smash all of your material together in one sitting?

That gets back to my viewpoint on Batman.  Why Batman, all over again?  Snyder and the producers really aced it with the casting of Gal Godot.  She is Wonder Woman.  Snyder also struck gold on Man Of Steel with Cavill as Superman.  I wanted more exploration of that guy.  So why make this a Superman and Batman film?  We’ve seen enough Batman through the last thirty years.  Let’s give someone else a chance.  Much could have been accomplished had this installment been a Superman and Wonder Woman team up with maybe a teaser ending of a new Batman yet to come.  This Batman shows me nothing I hadn’t already seen.  There’s a new car and gadgets and cables to swing from.  It’s all been done before.  Lemme see some of what this Wonder Woman can do.  As well, if Wonder Woman is here, then tell me why she is here.  Again, she just comes out of nowhere and never explains why she’s there.  My wife and daughter tried to explain it to me.  Apparently, she wants to acquire a photograph of her with her war comrades from the first World War, and Lex Luthor is in possession of it.  Really?  That’s it?  She just needs to get a sentimental photograph back?  By the way, why does Lex have this photo, and how did she know he has it anyway?

Good stories always answer questions with more questions until it’s eventually tied off at the end.  Moments in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice seem to begin in the middle of their stories with questions that did not answer questions that likely came before, and by the end of the picture, there’s no ending or answers in sight.

I had already reviewed Wonder Woman, and in that column I specifically noted that DC films with Warner Bros always seems to come close, but never gets it completely right.  This film boasts an impressive cast, and all are good in their respective roles.  My approach to this Lex Luthor from Eisenberg might have been different if I were in charge; make him more like a Steve Jobs kinda guy rather than a slight variation of the actor’s other famous role as Mark Zuckerberg.  Still, it’s not good enough and it’s hardly forgivable for what the filmmakers churned out with this picture.  The writers have an infinite wealth of source material to select from.  Pick up a comic book, guys!!!!  They have the funds and opportunity to divide up the best moments of these outstanding characters for the next ten years of film installments.  Nevertheless, they don’t take the time to think strategically, and flesh out the environments and the characters that inhabit these settings.  

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice is just a sloppy mountain of peas, carrots, corn and green beans, with lumpy mashed potatoes and covered in lots of over seasoned gravy.