Caw or (Knock Knock Knock)

Rating: 10/10 (30 July 2015)

How the hell'd we wind up here.
Trite, cursory internet film criticism. Smells like balls.
Look at you – all ready to go on gushing about how much you love this movie. Having the audacity to think of it as 'intimate' and 'personal' just because it combines all of your 'favourite things': superheroes, theatre, Fellini-pastiche surrealism, Raymond Carver, long takes, drumming, and in-jokes that make you feel smart because you've heard the name Roland Barthes before. There's even a Robert Downey Jr. joke. Because he played Iron Man. Get it? Oh yes. You're so original. Aren't you clever. Aren't you special.
No. You're a loser. You're washed up. Worthless. Just like that hack Iñárritu, who thinks he can prance from pretentious sob-fests like Babel and Biutiful to this piece of self-glorifying artsy trash. He thinks he can make fun of popular things and have everyone love him for it, that reminding everyone that actors are ridiculous is his meal ticket to even more critical success. And you're going to buy into it, and call this his 'masterpiece?' Pathetic.
You probably think it's so clever he cast that dirtbag, Keaton, and smugly bite your tongue from pointing out how deliciously meta that is, because not stating the obvious makes you seem smarter. You'd probably go as far as to call it some kind of "a gleefully satirical commentary on our times," or use impressive turns of phrase like "an elegiac rumination on the dichotomy between artistry and populism in a media-oversaturated postmodern epoch". You WOULD call it hilarious, devastating, and riveting, and get off on "discussing the increasingly anxious, claustrophobic blurring of fantasy and reality" with your nerd friends. Wipe that stupid grin off your face when you think about Birdman yelling into the camera about how audiences love violence and action; I don't care how much it reflected your lame sensibilities. You were probably even stunned to silence by that pointless ending, just sitting there, your tiny brain overwhelmed, with the word "perfect" bouncing around your head. You probably even laughed at the cheap underwear gag, like a sap.
Ohoho, you DID, didn't you? You're more shameful than I thought. You little worm.
now you're preparing a pithy comeback about how you are a worm, who was devoured by the experience of Birdman? You disgust me.
Look at yourself. You were made for more than this. Sounding off, namelessly, facelessly, on the internet, about a film you loved so much that it broke your feeble little heart when the rest of the world loved it too and it won all of those rigged (Riggan. Get it? I can be witty too. Like Birdman) Oscars because it ruined your hipster cred of loving the little superhero spoof that could. You could have had the whole world at your feet if you hadn't wasted eleven years knocking off internet movie reviews in your basement instead of doing anything of value. You criminal waste of space. And no, cackling like a fiend at Lindsay Duncan's venomous theatre critic in Birdman doesn't make it better. You're still a failure.
Oh – but let's not forget to list all the little things in this little movie that made your little brain feel so many feelings. You could write an essay on Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, and how it's so 'lively', 'effervescent', and 'innovative', positioning the audience as a ghost tramping alongside Keaton, watching him steadily fray to pieces (maybe we ARE the scary voice in his head. Does that make us Birdman? Ooooooh. Complex). You probably only love the long takes because you can smarmily compare them to Hitchcock's Rope from 1948. And let's not forget the drumming. You love drums, so you've probably convinced yourself the drum score is the haunting 'heartbeat' of the film – engrossing, hypnotic, ingeniously sparse. I bet you walked home from the theatre with spectral drumming in your head, trying to graft some second-hand meaning onto your useless life. Of course you did. Why am I surprised? It's not like you could be any tackier.
have you really sunk to individually praising the actors embarrassed enough to show their faces in this filth? Oh yes – casting actors from superhero movies like Edward Norton and Emma Stone is so terribly droll. You'd probably call their mugging here 'inspired,' that Norton is a 'hysterical live-wire of self-parody,' and that Stone doesn't just sulk like a petulant pre-teen – no, she gives 'the most ferociously raw and honest performance of her career.' Ugh. You probably thought that mug Galifianakis is so restrained and witty here, and that Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan, and Andrea Riseborough aren't just whiny caricatures – they're elegantly emotional. Right. And Keaton. Michael Keaton. You're just aching to call him Hollywood's comeback glory boy, as if lampooning his own sad career is so fearless. But you know better, I'm sure. You see a fiery light in his buggy eyes, like he's disturbingly in-tune with Riggan's madness. To you, he's probably tapped into an almost transcendent form of performance, and that his quirky twitches, manic braying and goofball staring into space is somehow a window into the human soul, or some drivel like that. We all know he's a Hollywood clown, so obvious and forced it makes me sick. But hey – look who's talking.
Oh. I forgot. Birdman is 'flooring, virtually flawless, and the most gripping, hilarious, fiendishly intelligent parable of the year – nay, of many years.' This is REAL ART. Like it's not a pedantic, overblown student film passing itself off as a modern masterpiece to all the sheep too stupefied to object. Whatever. You dote on your silly film. I have better things to do. Like wallow in my own filth. Just pump it out and get on with your pointless existence. Scum.
-10/10