(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Director: Marc Webb

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel. Geoffrey Arend, Chloë Grace Moretz

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s odd. Had I seen it in while it was still making the rounds in the festival circuit, it might have been a High Fidelity (2000) for a newer, somehow more neurotic age. Had I seen it during its theatrical run, it probably would have meant very little to me.

Did I Like It: Seeing it over a decade and a half later, it becomew something of an interesting cultural artifact. I’ve been Tom (Gordon-Levitt), although I wanted to make motion pictures and was* the guy who had all the DVDs and would have followed a woman practically anywhere if she expressed even a tolerance for the films of Woody Allen**.

You watch this film and you’re supposed to either feel more deeply the fact that you are Tom, or remember the time in which you were him. Summer (Deschanel, evoking the pupa stage between the cynical bloodhound of her earlier work, and the guileless Gal Friday she metamophosed into during New Girl) thus becomes the perfect black hat for that time in your life.

But let’s be honest, people: Hasn’t there beena time when we were Summer, just as much as we were Tom? Where our armor was impenetrable and the only governing element in our lives was our suspicion of other people?

Didn’t we leave some people in our wake during those times? I missed this movie for the better part of seventeen years***, but maybe that’s the right amount of time to wait. During that entire time, Summer has been painted memetically as one of the great villains of the screen, but we are the villain, just as much as we are the hero.

Maybe I picked exactly the right time to watch the film.

Oh.

Wait.

I get it. Her name is Summer. Now I’m all caught up.

*Still am, technically.

*Don’t still do that, for the record.

**How in the hell have we gotten to the point where people born after the release of The Dark Knight (2008) are now able to go to R-rated movies unencumbered? Don’t answer that.

Batman: Hush (2019)

Director: Justin Copeland

Cast: Jason O’Mara, Jennifer Morrison, Geoffrey Arend, Jerry O’Connell

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve certainly read it a couple of times.

Did I Like It: Really, truly, an adaptation of the Hush storyline from the Batman comic books of the is a wonderful idea, not necessarily because of the events surrounding the new enemy Hush, but because the sprawling storyline manages to make the lions share of the Dark Knight’s rogue’s gallery vital supporting characters to a larger story.

But that story took the better part of a year to tell correctly and give everyone their due. Jamming it all into a package less than 90 minutes allows for the film to go through a halfway decent plot synopsis, but the magic of those books is gone.

This has been an ongoing problem with the ongoing slate of direct-to-video DC animated films. Hush suffers from many of the same problems that dragged down both The Death of Superman (2018) and Reign of the Supermen (2019), and it’s no wonder why, as this appears to be a spinoff of those two films, featuring much of the same cast reprising their roles. The film also wastes several minutes of its screen time apparently setting up some Ra’s al Ghul storyline for a future film that—by the time it becomes available for streaming on the DC Universe app—I’ll have long since cancelled my membership. As it turns out the brief turn into the world of the Lazarus Pit turns out to be a quick way to tie Hush, the Riddler, and the final act together in as few minutes as possible.

Unlike the wobbly and problematic adaptation of Batman: The Killing Joke (2016), this film can’t even offer voice talent that has become ubiquitous with DC animation over the last thirty years. All of those present are game and give the characters the needed distinctive tone, but I’d be far more forgiving of the film if Kevin Conroy played Batman and Mark Hamill returned to play Joker. Granted, the Clown Prince of Crime is not much more of a cameo role in this story, but it would have given Hamill far more to do than he had in either Star Wars – Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) or Star Wars – Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). It doesn’t help matters much that the actors who are playing the roles are trying their best to sound like the people who have been iconic in the roles in the past.

Every time Warner Bros. announces an adaptation of one of these beloved storylines, I allow myself to get a little bit excited by the prospect. As I type this, The Long Halloween is in development. I should probably surpass my inner Charlie Brown, opt not to kick Lucy’s proffered football, and just re-read the original comic book instead.