Death By Cat Scratch Fever...

I don't know what to say. Let me start with this. I have been watching films for some fifty years and I have seen some pretty awful movies including some bad Fassbinder films, the In a Year of Thirteen Moons (1978) in particular, and the awful End of the Game (1975, Maximilian Schell). But nothing, nothing prepared me for the awfulness that is 2004's Catwoman.

Catwoman, a film that reaches its height during the opening credits and goes downhill very quickly from there, has, in its cinematic DNA, all of the things that make contemporary Hollywood so dreadful: obvious cgi, camera movements that seem to be done largely for camera movements sake, a style that seems more appropriate to a rock video or video games, scenes which rarely last more than a few minutes, unmemorable pop music for the kiddies (physical or mental) at whom most Hollywood films are aimed these days, a pop music, of course, that is in the film in the first place to sell corporate pop music product not to say something about the character or the cinematographic landscapes the films characters traverse, the sex that sells, cliched catch phrases masquerading as wit, and a star who is in the film not because she was born to play the role of the Catwoman but because the makers of the film thought her presence, the presence of Halle Berry, would sell tickets. Blah.

One more word to the wise, it is always advisable to steer far clear of any film directed by someone who apparently fancies that he is so cool that he only needs one name. In Catwoman's case the one named bandit is Pitoff. Pfft.