Renfield (2023)

Director: Chris McKay

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz

Have I Seen it Before: Well, sure. Scenes of it have been pulled directly out of Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), and Lammle knows I’ve see that one plenty of times.

Did I Like It: And that’s one of the points where I’m a bit stuck on the film. The original Dracula is a tragically… and it really pains me to say this… boring film. It’s not its fault, it;s barely a sound film, so can’t rise too far above a recorded stage performance. You can read all about my thoughts of that film in the review for it, but as charmed as I am by inserting Hoult and Cage into the scenes from that film, it is another example of a film lionized beyond what it had earned on its own merits.

The film’s other flaws to tend to be its most memorable parts, unfortunately. There are a number of pleasantly diverting jokes throughout, but as I type this, I am having pronounced difficulty coming up with any that weren’t already in the trailers you’ve already seen. Worse yet, those gags are about the only thing propping up. an organized crime subplot that exists only to make sure that the film fills a feature-length runtime.

And yet, there are a few things to make this a moderately worthy weekend diversion. Cage is having so much fun chewing—often literally—the scenery that it becomes even more of an unfortunate tragedy that he never ended up playing a Batman villain, and that the mere prospect of him playing Superman was doomed to fail before it ever began. Beyond that, the makeup work on Dracula himself is genuinely fun, taking him from an injured animal all the way through to his “full power” as it were.

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

Director: Chris McKay

Cast: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Rosario Dawson, Michael Cera

Have I Seen it Before: There was very little chance that a film like this was going to fly under my radar, right?

Did I Like It: The version of me that is five-years old—that same version of myself which steadfastly refuses to see any flaws in Batman (1989)—would probably label this movie asa my favorite movie of all time.

The version of me that had been refreshing LEGO.com every fifteen minutes over the past few days to make sure my order of the LEGO 1989 Batmobile has shipped* can also find plenty about the film to enjoy, too. It is steeped heavily in the lore (perplexing and sort of stupid though it sometimes is) of The Dark Knight. References abound, and as Warner Bros./DC keeps doing grave disservice to Barbara Gordon, Rosario Dawson’s portrayal of the character may just be the best for which we can hope for a little while. Will Arnett—extending his work from the superlative The LEGO Movie (2014)—perfectly captures every bad thing about the character I’ve spent the vast majority of my life** apologizing for. The rest of the characters get their due, which is hard to do when there are dozens of them, and double hard when more than a few live-action Batman films have fallen apart when they try to service half a dozen main characters***.

And still, there is some part of me that is unsatisfied. The LEGO Movie was such a perfect exercise in anarchy, that I can’t help but wish there was something a little more subversive at the core of this one, too. “You’re my best friend, and friends are family” is… nice, I guess? I want something darker and more serious. Kind of like Batman.

That may say more about me than it does the film.

*Update: It has.

**Side note: I don’t at all remember the first time I had heard of Batman. The summer of 1989 happened, and it was like I had always been aware of him? I even added a scene in Orson Welles of Mars where several characters realize that it is next to impossible to explain the character without a common frame of reference, aside from calling him “The Shadow, but minus guns and add pointy ears.”

***You may be thinking that I’m talking about Batman & Robin (1997), and well… I am. But I’m also throwing in any live-action bat-production since The Dark Knight (2008).