JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Usually we find the work of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu irritating, self-important and gimmicky. It thinks it’s really deep. We like his Oscar-nominated movie Birdman, which is a gimmick—the whole film is made to look like one long take, accompanied by a single drummer whom we occasionally glimpse in the theatre hallway—that works. It is deeper than it looks. The subtitle The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance reminds us why we were irritated at his previous films, but that’s a minor quibble at a movie that is entertaining on so many levels. Maybe the director’s decision to shorten his credit to “Alejandro G. Iñarritu” signals a change in direction?

It’s the meta level that probably appeals to Academy viewers: Michael Keaton, who played Batman in the Tim Burton movies, plays Riggan Thompson, an actor verging on washed-up who had played a superhero in a blockbuster series called Birdman. Now Thompson is trying to regain his artistic credibility by starring and directing his own adaptation of Raymond Carver’s story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. After Thompson, who has eliminated the ham in the cast with a little telekinesis-induced accident (apparently playing a superhero has given him powers, one of the surreal aspects the director wisely does not explain), the cast is joined by Mike Shiner, a Method actor jerk played by Edward Norton. Who also has that reputation, and is himself a superhero alumnus, having played Bruce Banner/The Hulk in a movie the Marvel cinematic universe has wisely wiped from our memories.

The resulting movie is, among many things, an examination of the creative process, a critique of how superhero franchises have eaten the film industry, and a resurrection of the career of Michael Keaton, a brilliant actor who seems to have disappeared post-Batman (He didn’t, it just feels that way).

Here’s the movie that announced Michael Keaton: Night Shift, where he played a morgue attendant who comes up with a money-making scheme.