News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Friday December 19th 2025
The Batman
Warner Bros. Pictures (2022)
★★★★☆
Movie Corner
By HOWARD MCQUITTER II
Welcome, again, to the dystopian world of Gotham City where crime is out of control, the mayor is murdered, Batman’s nemeses the Penguin (Colin Farrell)and the Riddler (Paul Dano)are loose on the streets, the police officers are overworked and weary. But there’s Batman (Robert Pattinson) in the midst of all the chaos, with a surly attitude of his own, bound and determined to solve the murder and
see that the misfits are behind bars. Initially, many city officials and high-ranking police officials see Batman as a vigilante, more part of the problem than part of the solution. But wait! There’s Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) whois more than glad to work with Batman to find the culprit(s) in the crime waves in Gotham City. (So much of Gotham City is a reflection of the typical American city today.)
Director Matt Reeves’ version of Batman spends little time with Batman’s alter ego Bruce Wayne. Unlike other adaptations which present Bruce Wayne as a garrulous or ambitious billionaire, Wayne is seen here as dispirited or an eccentric eremite.
What has Batman and Lt. James Gordon puzzled is the killer (who apparently wants to kill all the corrupt politicians) leaves countless cryptic clues as a way of throwing them off his trail.… Read the rest “The Batman ”
Tales from the Cemetery: Righting History
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
Something important happened in Minneapolis at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 17, 2022. Street signs along the nine-block stretch of road between 34th Street and 43rd Street in South Minneapolis were replaced. What had been known as Dight Avenue became Cheatham Avenue. It’s the kind of change that causes some folks to rage about “cancel culture,” but others will see it for what it is—honoring John Cheatham, an honorable man whose contributions to the city’s history should have been recognized long ago.
Charles F. Dight, a Socialist, served on the Minneapolis City Council from 1914 to 1918. He was one of three Socialists on the City Council at the time but the only one who lived in what was more or less a tree house that he built on 39th Avenue and Minnehaha Creek. He was described as a “conservative Socialist” meaning that he opposed the use of violence to effect social change which was not in and of itself a bad thing. If it stopped there, he might have gone down in history as an amiable eccentric.… Read the rest “Tales from the Cemetery: Righting History”
CHAPTER 19: LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?
RETURNING
by PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL
Imagine finding yourself in the same place you just left, but in a different time: 140 years before the time you left, to be exact. You wouldn’t just be in a different time though; you’d be in a whole different world. For our four travelers — Luz, Angel, little Angel and their captor, Brian Fleming — well, to say it was a shock would be an understatement. Fortunately for them, it was a moonless night, with fog all around. The reality that they were “some-when” else didn’t strike them at first.
Brian Fleming thought that the tunnel he had discovered when remaking the garage into his enterprise was just an escape route in case of a police raid or some other calamity. He and his “associates” had excavated the tunnel until it reached the cemetery a little over a block away. They had not reached the end of the old tunnel; there were large boulders, railroad ties and debris that blocked it. With their flashlights, they had seen that it went on for aways. But it was clear walking into the cemetery a good 40 yards, which for their purposes was enough. They dug an entrance that led behind a large pine, and practiced running through it at night, with only the flashlights from their phones.… Read the rest “CHAPTER 19: LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?”
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