Oh, What A ‘Knight’!: Batman Meets The Bane Of His Existence

Here’s the thing — I like Batman.

I like a guy who puts on a cape and cowl and goes out into the night to fight crime. I like the colorful, often kooky villains who bring mayhem to Gotham City. I’ve heard some say they like Spider-Man because Peter Parker is a nerdy everyman they can relate to, but not me. I like Bruce Wayne, the broody billionaire. I like the Tim Burton Batman films best of all, because they’re just the right amount of campy without going full-throttle (I am, of course, looking at you, Mr. Schumacher). A superhero story like this should be fun, after all… right?

Right, Christopher Nolan?

Right…?

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Bang & Whimper: Gregg Araki’s ‘Kaboom’

From the Vault: Here is my review of Kaboom, originally posted on Fabulous Apple.

Sex! Blood! Sex! Drugs! Sex! Witch! Sex! Vomit! Sex! Cult! Sex! Apocalypse! KABOOM! End credits.

Or so goes the plot of Gregg Araki’s latest film, Kaboom — only with less subtlety. Araki is the filmmaker behind 2005′s hauntingly beautiful, moody Mysterious Skin, which gave the world its first taste of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a seriously talented performer, and the stoner comedy Smiley Face, a silly trifle worth watching to see the inimitable Anna Faris in full-out gonzo crazy mode as she rolls from her car to the floor of her garage because she thinks Satan is after her. Of course, Araki also has a cult following thanks to early films like Nowhere and The Doom Generation, which were also about disaffected, strung-out, promiscuous youths, many of them gay/lesbian/bi/whatever. Ostensibly, Kaboom is a throwback to those films, dubbed the “teen apocalypse trilogy” — is it now a quadrology? If you ever watched Dr. Strangelove and thought it could use more gay sex and a witch-melting scene, then Kaboom is the movie for you.

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