FILM REVIEW By Chris McCoy & Chris Davis
No-Win Situation No one emerges victorious in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
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THE W/WOOD BROTHERS SMOKEY & THE MIRROR
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Now playing Multiple locations
I Saw the Shite
Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light fails to enlighten. The Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light looks and feels like a movie that was scrapped halfway through shooting but cobbled together anyway, awkwardly, with many key and climactic moments left out. To patch all the disparate bits together, director Marc Abraham inserts aged, blackand-white footage of Bradley Whitford as the enormous and all-knowing head of music publisher Fred Rose, who appears on screen anytime somebody needs to explain what the hell’s going on or why anybody might care. Instead of creating a sense of authenticity, indiscrimicontinued on page 42
APRIL 6 & 20
CHUCK MEAD
& HIS GRASSY KNOLL BOYS
3/30 BRENNAN VILLINES 8PM | 3/31 CHA WA (CD RELEASE PARTY) 9PM | 4/1 ERIC HUGHES BAND 10PM | 4/2 SOUL TRACK MIND 10PM | 4/3 THE RECORD COMPANY 8PM | 4/4 JOHN PAUL KEITH & FRIENDS 6PM | 4/5 THE WOOD BROTHERS W/ SMOKEY & THE MIRROR 8PM | 4/6 CHUCK MEAD & HIS GRASSY KNOLL BOYS 8PM 2 1 1 9 M A D I S O N AV E N U E M E M P H I S , T N 3 8 1 0 4
F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N V I S I T L A FAY E T T E S M U S I C R O O M . C O M
m e m p h i s f l y e r. c o m
APRIL 5
Henry Cavill (left) and Ben Affleck challenge each other to a duel of grimaces in Snyder’s Frank Miller-inspired superhero smash-up.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
he problem with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is right there in the title. Granted, there are a lot of problems with Zack Snyder’s $250 million epic of super conflict, but the biggest one is that DC and Warner Bros. have tried to mash two films into one. The first film is Batman v Superman: Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) are set on a collision course by the machinations of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). The second film is Dawn of Justice — Batman discovers the existence of hidden “metahumans,” and gets the idea of uniting them into a super team — a “Justice League,” if you will — to protect the world from extraterrestrial threats. Both plots have the potential of forming the spine of a good movie, but, in a cowardly Woman, but there’s simply no reason for her to be move that is all too typical of contemporary corporate introduced in this super mixture rather than in her own filmmaking, the producers have tried to make a movie that headlining picture. In the post-Katniss Everdeen era, is all things to all people and delivered a soggy mess. there’s no excuse for Wonder Woman to play third fiddle. Batman and Superman are supposed to be two very Snyder’s direction is a cavalcade of bad decisions, different characters. Batman is a brooding, tortured soul beginning in the opening sequence with the baffling haunted by the loss of his parents. Superman’s disposition notion that we needed to see Bruce Wayne’s parents is sunny, optimistic, and virtuous, the result of some die again, when the second sequence, where we see the exceptional child rearing by Ma and Pa Kent in Smallville. battle between Superman and General Zod from Bruce Ben Affleck does a pretty good job as Batman/Bruce Wayne’s point of view, is so much stronger. Multiple Wayne — at least he’s no George Clooney. Henry Cavill, dream sequences and momentum-killing digressions, on the other hand, plays Superman as a brooding, tortured including one trip into a parallel universe, pad out the soul, haunted in his dreams by the loss of his father (Kevin running time to a grueling 151 minutes. Snyder’s good at Costner) and the deaths of innocents in the climatic battle composing an interesting image, and the top-billed Bats/ of Man of Steel. This isn’t Batman v Superman. It’s Batman Supes throwdown delivers the goods before its emotion v Batman. But the biggest miscalculation is Jesse Eisenberg is dispelled by the completely unnecessary team up with playing Lex Luthor as a cross between Mark Zuckerberg Wonder Woman to fight Kryptonian mutant Doomsday. in The Social Network and a twitchy, 12 Monkeys Brad Pitt, To be fair to Snyder, who has produced one of when he should have been portrayed as a megalomaniacal the greatest comic book movies in 2009’s Watchmen Elon Musk by someone other than Eisenberg. There’s adaptation, Batman films have been overstuffed messes 8PM | s 3/4 MAC & THE more3/3 than PAUL a whiff THORN of Heath Ledger’ JokerJOHNNY in this Luthor, since Tim Burton left the franchise. There hasn’t been a HEART AT TACK 10PMPoisoning. | 3/5 WILLIAM CL ARK GREEN another symptom of Batman decent Superman movie since the Carter administration, 10PM | 3/6 JOHNSON BANDis 8PM | 3/7 THE The women fareBRIAN a little better. Amy Adams and the decision to glom the Justice League origin story RUST Yas PIECES | s3/8 MASON JAR FIREFLIES inoffensive Lois Lane,6PM but she’ wearing the same onto the Batman v Superman story probably came from 8PM | 3/9 DEERING & DOWN 8PM grim countenance as everyone in this dark nightmare. the corporate level. But none of that excuses the fact that When she and Cavill share the screen, there’s no hint this film is just no fun. DC vs. Marvel is the closest thing of the explosive chemistry between Margot Kidder and to a sports rivalry in the geek world, and while DC fans are Christopher Reeve that propelled the Richard Donner still showing up in droves, they now know what it feels like Superman. Gal Gadot makes a big impression as Wonder when their team is in a rebuilding year. — CM
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