Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Graham Day and Niall Glynn, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.
So this week, a new entry: Matt Reeves’ The Batman.
Bruce Wayne is in the second year of his war on crime in Gotham, and things are not improving. Indeed, the city is thrown into anarchy when a new villain calling themselves the Riddler begins targetting city officials and threatening to unmask the city’s darkest secrets. Can Bruce survive what is coming? Can the Batman? Can Gotham?
At time of recording, it was ranked 67th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Show Notes:
- Recorded 7th March 2022.
- Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
- The Batman at The Internet Movie Database.
- The Top 250 at time of recording.
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- Read Graham’s reviews at Scannain.
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- Ben Affleck talks to The New York Times about why he departed his Batman movie, February 2020.
- Matt Reeves talks to Esquire about how he came to co-write and direct The Batman, January 2022.
- Trey Barrineau at USA Today reports on the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman in Batman vs. Superman, August 2013.
- Jeff Sneider at The Wrap reports on what Ben Affleck’s casting as Batman means for his relationship with Warner Bros., August 2013.
- Scott Mendelson at Forbes reports on Ben Affleck’s direction of Live By Night between Batman vs. Superman and Justice League, January 2017.
- Warner Bros. announce the fiftieth anniversary of their creative partnership with Clint Eastwood, September 2021.
- Zack Sharf at IndieWire reports on Bradley Cooper’s invovlement in the production of Joker, January 2020.
- Kristen Howard at Den of Geek reports on how Ben Affleck’s Batman movie would have been built around Arkham Asylum, July 2019.
- Ben Affleck talks to The Los Angeles Times about the “sad Affleck” memes, January 2022.
- Kenzie Bryant at Vanity Fair discusses the memetic power of photographs of Ben Affleck, January 2021.
- Allie Jones at The Cut reports on the universality of the image of Ben Affleck smoking, August 2016.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist argues for the Planet of the Apes prequels as the last great movie trilogy, January 2022.
- Anthony Breznican at Vanity Fair reports on how coronavirus impacted the production of The Batman, September 2020.
- Bruce Haring at Deadline reports on a $100m production budget for The Batman, October 2021.
- Scott Mendelson at Forbes cites a $185m production budget for The Batman, February 2022.
- CinemaScore reports on the A- grade that audiences gave The Batman, March 2022.
- Bradford Young talks to The Chicago Tribune about shooting Solo: A Star Wars Story, May 2018.
- Jill Goldsmith at Deadline reports on AMC’s plans to charge audiences more to watch The Batman, March 2022.
- The British Board of Film Classification discusses why it gave The Batman a “15” rating, March 2022.
- Naomi Holland at The BBC reports on Belfast City Council’s decision to downgrade that rating to a “15A”, March 2022.
- Jamie Burton at Newsweek reports on Robert Pattinson’s response to discovering that The Batman received a “15” rating in the United Kingdom, March 2022.
- Beth Lee at The Boar on the evolution of male bodies in modern cinema, June 2020.
- James S. Fell at Time on the obsession with muscles on men’s bodies, June 2014.
- Leonardo DiCaprio talks to Vanity Fair about eating raw bison liver on the set of The Revenant, December 2015.
- Robert Pattinson talks to Vanity Fair about escaping the shadow of the Twilight films, March 2011.
- Robert Pattinson talks to USA Today about his evolving feelings towards the Twilight franchise, April 2019.
- Heidi MacDonald at Comics Beat reports on the lingering hostility in fandom spaces to Twilight, July 2013.
- Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano and Jeffrey Wright discuss The Batman fan theories with Vanity Fair, March 2022.
- Jeffrey Wright ranks cop movie moustaches for IGN, February 2022.
- Josh Kurp at Uproxx reports on Zoë Kravitz drinking milk from a bowl to prepare for the role of Catwoman, March 2022.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist discusses the muddled politics of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, April 2021.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist on the muddled immigration politics of Spider-Man: No Way Home, December 2021.
- Ryan Scott at /Film reports on the complete lack of counter-programming for The Batman, March 2022.
- Scott Mendelson at Forbes reports on Sony’s decision to movie Morbius to April, January 2022.
- Scott Mendelson at Forbes looks at the dearth of big releases between Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman, February 2022.
- Morgan Smith at CNBC reports on the challenges facing workplaces trying to retain millennial employees, September 2021.
- Samantha Subin at CNBC reports on millennials as a job-hopping generation, February 2021.
- Belinda Luscombe at Time reports that a quarter of millennials will never get married, September 2014.
- Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker reflects on the phenomenon of “bad fans”, September 2013.
- Otegha Uwagba at The Guardian reports on the prevalence of “parasocial” relationships, February 2022.
- Max Read at Vulture reports on the internet’s efforts to claim control of the “red pill” narrative, December 2021.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist looks at the Matrix sequels as movies that interrogate misreadings of the original film, December 2021.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist looks at The Matrix Resurrections as a film about rejecting the rigid binaries read into The Matrix, December 2021.
- Paulie Doyle at Vice looks at how Fight Club has been claimed by “men’s rights activists”, May 2017.
- Francis Ford Coppola talks to The New York Times about whether The Godfather actually “romanticised” gangsters, November 2016.
- Francis Ford Coppola talks to The New York Times about what he set out to do in making The Godfather: Part II, December 1974.
- David Thomson at Esquire writes about the romantic appeal of Michael Corleone to American men, October 1995.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist argues that The Batman is a movie about positioning the superhero as a distinct American archetype, March 2022.
- Eric Hobsbawm at The Guardian looks at how cowboys speak to certain facets of the American character, March 2013.
- Max Mulderrig at Movies Mxdwn looks at the gangster as a cynical embodiment of the pursuit of the American Dream, January 2022.
- Donald Trump declares that “the American Dream is dead!”, July 2019.
- Janan Ganesh at The Financial Times argues that public cynicism is eroding American politics, October 2019.
- Robert Pattinson talks to GQ about the various influences on The Batman, March 2022.
- Jeff Sneider at Collider reports on the influence of movies like Chinatown and Taxi Driver on The Batman, August 2020.
- Giovanni Russonello at The New York Times reports on the fragility of American optimism, May 2021.
- Alejandro González Iñárritu describes superhero movies as a “cultural genocide” to NME, October 2014.
- Jane Campion talks to The Guardian about how she feels about superhero movies, November 2021.
- Pedro Almodóvar describes superhero movies as “neutered” to IndieWire, April 2019.
- Steven Soderbergh talks to The Daily Beast about the sexlessness of superhero movies, February 2022.
- Bong Joon Ho talks to Variety about how superhero costumes make him uncomfortable, November 2019.
- RS Benedict at Blood Knife discusses the sexlessness of modern blockbusters, February 2021.
- Crazy Days & Nights reports on Chris Evans’ $100K “sex dungeon”, May 2019.
- Armie Hammer denies being cast in The Batman to IndieWire, February 2019.
- James White at Empire reports on Armie Hammer’s cowl from the aborted Justice League Mortal, October 2020.
- Karla Rodriguez at Complex reports on the controversies and accusations around Armie Hammer, December 2021.
- James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporter discusses the controversy around whether Batman performs oral sex, June 2021.
- Keith Baldwin at PopDust reports on Zack Snyder’s addition to the Batman oral sex debate, June 2021.
- Rory Cashin at Joe.ie discusses the horniness of The Batman, March 2022.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist discusses the weird horny energy of Batman Returns, December 2020.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist discusses Batman Forever as a puritanical response to the weird horniness of Batman Returns, July 2020.
- The New York Times publishes a transcript of a tape in which Donald Trump boasts about sexually assaulting women, October 2016.
- Adam Withnail looks back on Donald Trump’s history of inappropriate remarks about his daughter Ivanka, October 2016.
- Adam B. Vary and Jazz Tangcay at Variety report on the evolution of the design of the Penguin in The Batman, March 2022.
- Christian Zilko at IndieWire reports on Colin Farrell fighting for the Penguin to smoke a cigar in The Batman, February 2022.
- Joe Otterson at Variety reports on te plans for Colin Farrell to reprise his role as the Penguin on a HBO Max spin-off, December 2021.
- Matt Reeves talks to Variety about the Barry Keoghan cameo in The Batman, March 2022.
- Barry Keoghan talks to Esquire about his casting in The Batman, March 2022.
- ActionBoyz discuss Batman Returns, March 2021.
- Molly Edwards at GamesRadar reports on fan theories that the mayor’s son in The Batman is secretly Robin, March 2022.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist discusses the compelling ambiguities and mysteries of The Batman, March 2022.
- Brad Lang at Comic Book Resources wonders whether Bruce uses venom in The Batman, March 2022.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist considers how the superhero movie has become an empty power fantasy, January 2021.
- Christina Fawcett at The Royal College of Psychiatrists considers the problematic aspects of Arkham Asylum, January 2020.
- Samantha Bergeson at IndieWire reports on Matt Reeves’ plans for an Arkham Asylum television show, March 2022.
- Paul A. Eisenstein at NBC News reports on how Elon Musk tanked Tesla’s stock price, September 2018.
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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: action, america, batman, ben affleck, catwoman, colin farrell, cowboys, films, gangsters, greig fraser, incels, joker, mass shootings, matt reeves, Movies, niall glynn, Penguin, politics, power fantasies, reviews, riddler, Robert Pattinson, superheroes, the batman, trump, violence, Zoë Kravitz |
the m0vie blog 
Not sure I’d put it in the top 100 movies of all time, but it’s a very good film. It’s definitely a new take on the character rather than re-hashing what’s been done before. The villains “rogues gallery” was a nice touch, and who can deny the coolness of The Batman and Penguin Batmobile chase? I’m seeing it for my second time tomorrow and definitely looking forward to it.. : )