LOL at Catwoman’s satisfied mewing on the back of the jetpack umbrella.

LOL at Batman and Robin standing straight up as they test the foam rubber (in its crude form) in the middle of a milling crowd, no one looking at them or the crashed the Batcopter.

LOL at the Riddler sweeping up ambassador dust.

LOL at so much of this, big moments and small. Didn’t think there was any way it could keep up with the lunacy of the first 20 minutes and stay engaging, and I was wrong. Surpasses Mel Brooks’ entire career over a matter of 100 minutes. Genius.

"They want a modern market now."

This movie is sad as hell.

Straddles the fence between creature feature and romantic drama—two genres I’m sure aren’t in adjacent pens—and does it pretty much perfectly. In that sense, it’s the embodiment of my ambivalence about favoring prestige pictures over little genre movies that hit all their marks. It’s been overwhelmingly rewarding to leave behind my prejudice against old films, so here’s to my next pet project. Cronenberg’s touching and creepy fusion is an encouraging place to start.

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?"

Cultural hubris too lax to even qualify as "casual"; an atrophied, hypocritical rumor mill of xenophobic misogynists passing as friends, all the more embarrassing for the intimacy and warmth they could share and the welcome they could offer. "A regular life is not to be sneezed at." The pivot from visceral, physical resentment to economic exploitation via hospitality is genius.