Like Paul Bunyan, Bigfoot, and Pecos Bill, the heroes and villains of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are more mythical than super, writing a new page in American folklore as they split the skies with each thunderous blow. Director Zack Snyder‘s approach to DC’s now timeless characters is apt—few modern myths stand taller than Batman and Superman—but, as usual, the Watchmen and Man of Steel director gets lost in the grandeur, delivering a solemn, overly studied, slog of a movie.

The super-brawl promised in the movie’s title is as spectacular as anyone could have dreamed, but before we reach the main event melee, there’s a two-hour-long preliminary bout that sees Snyder pitted in a sweaty grappling match against complex themes of ideology and theology. Spoiler: he loses. Consequently, we lose too. By the time Batman and Superman (and a few surprise guests) get all bashy-bashy, stabby-stabby, we’re bored to tears by Snyder’s glorified lecture on man v god.

Henry Cavill returns as alien do-gooder Superman, who, at the story’s outset, is the subject of worldwide debate. His city-levelling battle with General Zod (Michael Shannon) at the end of Man of Steel cost the lives of thousands, calling into question whether his actions were justified and whether his presence on earth is a benefit or detriment to the future and well-being of mankind. Some see him as a messiah; others, an omnipotent pariah who could reduce our planet to dust should we refuse to bow down.

One man who has no plans of kneeling to “the Superman” is billionaire brooder Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck). One of the buildings decimated by Superman and Zod was Wayne Enterprises, which toppled right in front of Bruce’s eyes, hundreds of his employees’ lives blinked out in what some would call “collateral damage.” It’s a tragedy that haunts Bruce almost as much as the memory of losing his parents to a mugger in that classic alleyway scene we all know so well from countless movie, comic book, and TV iterations of the Batman origin story (which Snyder mercifully zips through in the opening credits). The story picks up 18 months later, with the Bat keeping a watchful eye on the bulletproof Kryptonian as he patrols the skies, above all men and above the law.

Bruce and the rest of Superman’s detractors are given more fuel to feed their fire when more lives are lost during a rescue of his beloved Lois Lane (Amy Adams). A reactionary congressional hearing is held, calling for him to appear in court to consider the consequences and ethicality of his actions. As fear and paranoia surrounding the continue to spread, tech genius Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) offers a solution to the world’s Superman problem in the form of Kryptonite weaponry. All he needs is to get his hands on a chunk of the extraterrestrial rock, but his political maneuverings to do so are blocked by Senator June Finch (Holly Hunter, unexpectedly one of the movie’s strongest assets). As Superman is increasingly viewed as more of a threat than a savior, however, Luthor’s scheme begins to fall more easily into place.

For what seems like ages, Snyder and writers David S. Goyer and Chris Terrio bat around big ideas like the ever-evolving nature of homeland security and, most predominantly, the fraught relationship between man and god. The movie’s got the “god” part down: Batman, Superman, and the debuting Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, a delightfully entertaining ass-kicker) come across as all-powerful goliaths, striking the most epic superhero poses this critic has ever seen (Snyder’s signature slo-mo, while as excessively implemented as ever, lends itself to characters of this magnitude).

As for the “man” half of the “man v god” thing, the movie drops the ball with an earth-shattering thud. The story’s obsessed with outlining the principles and lofty motivations of its heroes and villains without giving us a sense of what they are like as people. We’re so drowned in doom and gloom and planet-sized moral quandaries that we have no real grasp on what these heroes are actually fighting for. Clark’s got Lois and his mother Martha (a returning Diane Lane), and Bruce has got his butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) and the memory of his parents, but all of these side characters are presented more as plot devices and pawns rather than living, breathing, relatable people. Snyder paints in such broad strokes that the nuances and details of our world are lost in the monstrous swirl of dark, folkloric imagery and ham-fisted dialogue.

When Batman and Superman finally fight, it’s so brutal and well-staged and irresistibly geeky that, while it doesn’t make up for the disastrous bulk of the movie that preceded it, it at least wakes us up from our stupor. Things get even better when Wonder Woman arrives to help them fight the Big Bad that eventually arrives to crash the party, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the hell out of the climactic battle. If there’s a criticism, it’s that much of the dichotomous intrigue of Batman and Superman’s comic book confrontations is lost. When the two have battled on the page, the hook is that Superman should be able to crush Batman, but the fact that Bruce Wayne is not a good person (and is willing to cheat to win) gives him an unexpected edge. In the movie, Bruce is indeed a bad person; problem is, Clark doesn’t seem to be one either. He acts decidedly un-heroic on several occasions, flexing his super powers with a smug smirk on his face as he tosses Bats around like a ragdoll.

The character work is flawed all around, but this incarnation of Lex Luthor is the most confusing of the bunch. He’s more of a lunatic manchild cut from the same cloth as classic Bat-villain The Riddler than the imposing intellectual bully we’ve seen in the past. Is that a good thing? Sometimes. Eisenberg puts on a good, charismatic performance, and his wiry frame is an interesting visual juxtaposition to the heroes’ bulky physiques. But a part of me would rather have a supervillain who’s more menacing and less of a mischievous meddler.

Batman v Superman is a bonafide letdown, but the blame doesn’t rest on the shoulders of the actors. Everyone’s game and looks great, especially Cavill and Affleck, who are both black belts in the art of chin-jutting, come-at-me-bro machismo. Adams, Lane, and Irons are invaluable as they try valiantly to ground the story in some sense of realism. But alas, the script doesn’t give them enough room to work (the movie’s 153 minutes, for goodness sake). If the aim was to offer a more mature, “serious” superhero experience than Marvel Studios’ Avengers movies, Snyder and his team overachieved; this is as cynical, depressing, and emotionally hollow a blockbuster as we’ve seen in some time, a filmic representation of the adulthood misery that’s pushed the wonder of childhood fantasies out of the hearts of crotchety old-timers everywhere. Surely we were meant to have more fun than this.

The man behind Austin Powers and Meet the Parents, Jay Roach, joins the podcast today to talk about his new film, Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston as legendary Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, whose career was cut short when he and a handful of his associates were blacklisted due to their association with the communist party. Bernard goes solo to review Tom McCarthy‘s newsroom drama Spotlight as well as share his Indie Pick of the Week.

Topics

• Indie Picks (1:23)
• Spotlight (5:28)
• Trumbo (26:49)
• Jay Roach (35:39)

Articles Referenced

Trumbo Review
Spotlight Review
Doomsdays Interview
Doomsdays Indiecast

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“The pen is mightier than the sword.” An overused adage, yes, but one can’t help but think of it while watching Trumbo, Jay Roach’s film following the most famous of the Hollywood Ten, the film industry professionals blacklisted during the communist scare of post-World War II America. But the fact that the film conjures up played out inspirational quotation rather speaks to the film’s methods in portraying Dalton Trumbo’s subversive and clever discrediting of the blacklist. This is clearly an important historical tale and Hollywood loves nothing more than it loves stories about itself, but it’s this assumed dignity that ultimately lessens the impact of the film and detracts from the very real significance of what Trumbo accomplished.

Roach has a rather focused directorial collection ranging mostly from comedy (Meet the Parents) to fact-based politicals (Game Change), his interest in wit and politics is clear. In this regard Dalton Trumbo is understandably attractive. John McNamara—known mostly for his TV writing—adapted a script from Bruce Cook’s novel Dalton Trumbo, and maybe it’s because the film takes place over the entire span of the blacklist’s inception in 1947 to its eventual dissolution around 1960 that the film’s pacing does feel a bit episodic in bursts of plot development. Trumbo’s strength lies in Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of Dalton Trumbo, his wide mouth and dramatic facial features giving an amount of gravitas to this quick-witted writer.

The film flies, barely giving us a chance to get to know the group that makes up those who are starting to speak out against the wave of conservative nationalism flowing through Hollywood, headed by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren). Trumbo is at the height of his career and making more than any screenwriter in Hollywood ever has, but his penchant for wearing his political beliefs on his sleeve quickly pushes him into the spotlight. Russia has turned from being a WWII ally to an elusive threat as the beginnings of the Cold War push at the growing paranoia in America. Much of this is shown in newsreel soundbites and meetings held by Trumbo with his colleagues in the industry who also identify as either Communist or liberal. It doesn’t take long for Trumbo and his associates, among them Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.) a fellow screenwriter, to be brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee to explain themselves. The now famous Hollywood Ten refused to reveal their personal affiliations and called into the question the constitutionality of such a hearing, as a result several of them went to jail, were fined, and most significantly were fired and/or stigmatized to the point of losing their livelihoods.

The film takes a more dramatic turn when Trumbo serves his time in prison, reflecting on the personal struggle of prison life and that of his family surviving without him back home. Diane Lane plays Cleo, Trumbo’s sweet, supportive and perhaps too tame wife. When he finally comes home from prison almost a year later, it’s Trumbo’s eldest daughter Niki (Elle Fanning) who becomes the film’s other strong character, a contrived decision attempting to better paint Trumbo as both family man and hero. Trumbo enacts a plan that allows him to continue writing—a craft he seems supernaturally good at—and allows him to undermine the blacklist as well. He begins writing for Frank King (John Goodman), a B-movie filmmaker who happily trades Trumbo’s talent for small money, no credit, and a shot to get Trumbo’s movies made. Trumbo begins a sort of screenwriting factory, cranking out originals and doctoring those that need work, enlisting his fellow blacklisters to help. It isn’t long until his pseudonym-written scripts pick up some attention. The man can’t help but be talented.

It would be great to take away from all of this that true talent shines, or right will prevail, or one rock can fell a mighty giant, except that what ultimately allows Trumbo to discredit the blacklist is the combined consciences of several others in the industry who supported him, most notably Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas. So while Trumbo certainly got a sort of revenge on those who imprisoned and blacklisted him, it was the growing evidence that McCarthy’s scare-tactics weren’t leading to any hard evidence of espionage within the film industry. The truth of this doesn’t detract from Trumbo’s role, but ideally the film would have opted for a more humble approach than spotlight the cleverness of its subject.

The film has a distinct lighting scheme and familiar musical mood, very clearly trying to invoke an old Hollywood nostalgia, but mostly working to make the film far too cartoonish. The introduction of historical figures at every point feels like name-dropping and self-congratulatory (no matter how much Dean O’Gorman looks like Kirk Douglas) and the film’s distinct self-love for the industry seems out of place in a story depicting that industry’s darkest hour. At one point in the film Louis C.K.’s Arlen Hird says to Trumbo “Do you have to say everything like it’s going to be chiseled into a rock?” and this sentiment speaks more to the entire film than anything else muttered.

It’s interesting to note that there will be—and indeed already have been—those who want to remind us that Trumbo’s writing was ripe with socialist messages, as if this proves his complicity in some masterful scheme and marks him as not entirely clean of guilt. Considering the philosophical beginnings of Communism, it hardly seems duplicitous that one would include its main themes in storytelling. If everyone were to feel equally as sensitive to biblical themes in film, there’d be hardly a movie out there that didn’t appear to be propaganda. There may be an amount of historical re-writing, but this hardly seems the film’s worst quality, instead it’s that Trumbo draws a larger picture of its title character than it does the entire tragedy and injustice that propelled him.

Without that level of context Trumbo is reasonably enjoyable, but mostly begs that there be a better film made at least equal to what this Oscar-winning man could have come up with.

It Was You Charlie, directed by Emmanuel Shirinian, follows Abner (Michael D. Cohen), a graveyard shift doorman with a lot on his mind: He’s plagued by suicidal thoughts, haunted by the memory of a car accident that claimed the life of a woman, and still mulling over a conflict involving the woman he loved and his own brother.

A dark comedy that blurs genre lines, the film is a showcase for Cohen, who along with his fellow cast and crew was nominated for a Gemini for the Canadian animated series Grossology, has appeared on numerous TV shows including The Mindy Project, Modern Family, and Eagleheart, and will appear alongside Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in the upcoming drummer drama Whiplash. It Was You Charlie is playing in select theaters in Canada. Visit the film’s facebook page for screening info.

We spoke with Cohen about an acting technique called “Brain Spotting”, his attraction to psychologically stimulating roles, Diane Lane, finding our cerebral “Garden of Eden”, the under-appreciated role of a film’s first AD, and more.

You’re an acting coach in Los Angeles, and you teach something called “Brain Spotting”. Tell me about it.
Michael: It’s one aspect of what I do. One of the tools in my tool belt of techniques, I suppose. Brain spotting a technique that was developed by a man named David Grand, who is a trauma therapist based in New York. He specialized in a technique called EMDR, which is used by trauma therapists, and from that he spun out brain spotting. He found he was able to use these techniques with actors to shortcut certain emotional preps that need to happen. The idea is, our brain is so vast and untapped that we can actually create memories and experiences and tap into them completely through the subconscious that is the character’s, and not our own. It sounds very strange, but when you experience it, it feels very natural. It’s a very expansive, powerful tool, but it’s not the only tool. I believe brain-based work like this is the cutting edge, the next frontier for creative people.

Because you’re drawn to these sort of psychological approaches to acting, the role of Abner must have appealed to you quite a bit.
Michael: Yeah, in a lot of different ways. When I did this role, I had just met David. So I didn’t really get to sink my teeth into it to the degree one could, but this character has experienced post-traumatic stress, is suicidal, and has black-outs, so there’s a lot of psychological and emotional background to this guy. Having someone like David on my team to reference was great. I’d ask him, “Is this what someone would do if they had post-traumatic stress?” I wanted to keep it as authentic as possible. I have a background in human physiology and biochemistry, so I’ve always been fascinated with how the mind and body intersect. As a teacher, I watch students process and help them understand their instrument, and as an actor, I study how a character sees their world, how they process trauma…it’s fascinating to me on so many different levels.

What’s a performance by an actor in which you think they exhibited a good psychological understanding of their character?
Michael: What comes to mind right away is Diane Lane in Unfaithful. She’s sitting on the subway coming back from just having been with the artist she’s having an affair with, and she goes through this non-verbal process of guilt, complete post-coital bliss, and shame. Her face gets red. You watch her go through this process, and this is someone who is so connected to the reality of the character that her body is responding.

What a lot of our techniques as actors do is work from the outside in: You create a backstory, and you go in through the cognitive, down into the subconscious. When you really understand your character, it lights a spark in the subconscious and allows information to filter up as opposed to starting from the cognitive and going down into the subconscious. As David would say, there’s the cortical brain, which is our conscious brain, and there’s the neo-cortical, which is the subconscious, the part of our brain that’s older. That’s the part that’s rich with creative information. It’s like a Garden of Eden. Gifted actors like Diane Lane tap into that so much more readily. We’re trying to access our authentic self and get that engine going that motors the acting instrument. Do you remember that scene in Unfaithful?

Sure do. She’s biting her nails, squirming, smiling, crying. Really great.
Michael: Yes! She’s doing exactly what you would do if you’d just done what she’s done. She’s so specific and resonant and relatable.

As an actor, are you on the hunt for material that will allow you to use these sort of cerebral tools?
Michael: I’m on the hunt for any material that resonates. I don’t have a specific agenda. The roles that have come to me has been kind of perfect at the time. I’m not going to be so cocky as to pretend I know what the next step in my career is. It’s going to show up, and I’m going to say, “This feels right.”

I haven’t seen the film yet, but from the trailer I gather I have a few things in common with Abner!
Michael: [laughs] In many ways, the film is a dark comedy. There are comedic moments that you wouldn’t find in a normal drama. Comedy is very near and dear to my heart; I grew up idolizing Carol Burnett. I’ve realized that humor is a really big deal in terms of drama. There’s a difference between comedy and humor. If we omit the humor–even in the darkest moments–we’re not representing humanity accurately. We use humor as a tool to cope, especially in our darkest moments. Otherwise, we’d go nuts. What’s amazing about this film is that Emmanuel managed to straddle genres and create consistency in tone, which I think is an incredible feat. Even though we have moments where there’s physical comedy involved, when we go back into something dark or emotional, people are onboard. It was a really collaborative process between me and Emmanuel.

The film actually takes place over the course of 24 hours. My character’s a doorman at a hotel, so he’s a nightshift worker. Over the course of the day, he has flashbacks–three years back, two years back–but the real time is one day. We were shooting out of sequence, so we had to make sure we were hitting the right emotional points and that my character was at a particular point of paranoia, because he’s getting paranoid at different points. I had a big chart on my wall to tell me where I should be emotionally when we shot out of sequence.

How difficult was it to shift your emotional state so frequently?
Michael: Mark Pancer, who’s a very experienced first AD in Toronto, is an artist when it comes to scheduling scenes. He tried to put all the scenes together that fit, emotionally. Given all the location restraints that he had, given cast and crew availability, he put together a shooting schedule that made it so much easier for me. I only started to realize this about two thirds of the way through. He gave me a great appreciation for the first AD’s job.