The Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan should learn how to end movies. The Dark Knight and Inception both have enjoyable setups before collapsing in ill-conceived third acts. The Dark Knight Rises continues this trend: an excellent first hour, middling second act, and tedious finale. Pity, as this ambitious blockbuster nearly achieves superhero greatness.

Eight years after Harvey Dent's death, Bruce Wayne lives as a recluse and Gotham is nearly crime-free. When Wayne catches burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) stealing his fingerprints, he's intrigued enough to come out of hiding. Kyle (Catwoman) is working for Bane (Tom Hardy), a hulking mercenary with ties to the League of Shadows. Bane defeats Batman and takes over Gotham, using a jerry-rigged A-bomb to impose a tyrannical regime. While Batman slowly recovers, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and rookie cop Blake (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt) organize resistance to Bane's regime.

The Dark Knight Rises starts off swimmingly, with a thrilling midair action scene and respectable exposition. Nolan provides humor and playfulness previously lacking in this series, especially with Catwoman on the prowl. Yet he also allows the gravity of the situation to sink in. Compared to the Joker's existential threat, Bane makes a credibly nasty villain, at least early on. Alfred's (Michael Caine) growing despair over Bruce's lifestyle adds genuine pathos.

Indeed, Bruce is the film's greatest strength. Nolan scores points showing Wayne beaten down, physically and mentally, by years of crime fighting. A fusion generator designed to "save the world" ruined him financially and falls into Bane's hands. He still can't get over Rachel and is drawn too easily to both Selina and businesswoman Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), ignoring their obvious agendas. Then his less-than-great physical condition makes him an easy mark for Bane. This makes his redemption extremely satisfying. No longer overshadowed by villains, Nolan's Batman finally becomes compelling in his own right.

Then Nolan takes an abrupt turn into bizarre political commentary. Bane turns Gotham into a Jacobin society, with roving death squads and show trials for the rich and powerful. Co-opting French Revolution/Khmer Rouge imagery for a superhero flick is either inspired or crass. Regardless, these scenes drag on far too long, producing not suspense but frustration as we wait for Batman's inevitable return.

Predictably, later sequences amp up the action. The rumble at City Hall is fun but the chase scene is mind-numbing; we've already had two so why bother? The cast gets gypped, with Catwoman switching sides for no reason and not one, but two cringe-worthy character reveals. In the rush to a climax, certain plot elements are overlooked, like why the villains leave thousands of cops alive, with guns, after taking over the city. Batman flying a nuke into the sunset would be more effective if The Avengers hadn't come out two months ago.

Christian Bale enjoys the chance to finally show some acting range. Tom Hardy is an imposing villain (inexplicable Scots brogue and all) despite facile attempts at humanizing him. Anne Hathaway makes an agreeably sultry Catwoman, but her last-minute change of heart is unconvincing. Michael Caine finally transcends snarky sidekick shtick and becomes a poignant figure.

Nolan reassembles his stock company: not only regulars Caine, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman but Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Marion Cotillard from Inception return. Sadly, aside from Hardy and Caine none make much impression. Cotillard is particularly ill-served, existing solely for her "shocking" revelation. Buried deeper in the cast list are Tom Conti, Juno Temple, Matthew Modine and William Devane.

The Dark Knight Rises is another victim of Christopher Nolan Syndrome. It's fun for awhile, and I at least got a kick out of the familiar Pittsburgh locales. But at nearly three hours long it runs out of steam, resulting in another uneven outing for the Caped Crusader.

The Ultimate in Fanboy Idiocy, Redux

Today is the release of the newest (and hopefully) last Bat-astrophe from Christopher Nolan. I'll probably see it eventually, because a) a good chunk of it was shot in Pittsburgh, b) a few of my friends are extras in it. My actual excitement level is slim-to-none. The fact that I've never written more about The Dark Knight than the desultory few paragraphs in the blog's early days should indicate my level of interest.

I would have let this momentous date slide without comment, except now the Nolan fanboys are crawling over each other to be the dumbest, lamest, nerdiest loser alive.

The IMDB boards are a reliable source for idiocy. Just browse through some of the thread titles here to get an idea. Of course they'll be completely different ones 15 minutes from now.

Then there's Rotten Tomatoes, where a critic who dared dislike this movie got rather vicious death threats.

Of course, a real-life tragedy has dwarfed the web chatting. At one midnight screening in Colorado, a psycho showed up and killed 14 people. My condolences to those killed in this horrible tragedy.

Of course, some IMDBers, being cretinous slugs, have decided to blame Avengers fans for this shooting.

So yeah, wake me when they bring back this guy:

I'm planning to go out this weekend with friends so probably not a lot of movie-watching in the near-future. I'll try and find something to keep you all entertained. See you in the history books, people.

Inception

Watching Inception (2010) is like being bludgeoned to death with an ice mallet. In sadly predictable fashion, Christopher Nolan takes the film from an interesting beginning to a painfully convoluted and unsatisfying finish. The result is a film that thinks it's a lot more clever and complex than it really is.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an expert at stealing ideas from people's minds via their dreams. Will doing such a job on industrialist Saito (Ken Watanabe), Cobb's cover is blown, and he and sidekick Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are shanghaied into doing a different job for Saito: to plant an idea in the head of rival businessman Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) and bring down his business empire. Cobb and Arthur assemble a new team, including weapons guy Eames (Tom Hardy), a chemist/sleep expert (Dillip Rao) and an architectural student (Ellen Page) to pull it off. Things quickly become complicated when Cobb's own memories of his wife (Marion Cotillard) begin interfering with the dreamworld, and when heavily-armed "security" forces show up to wipe our protagonists out.

It must be said that Inception starts off very well. The first 80 minutes or so are engrossing and promise a superb movie. There's lots of talk and exposition - it wouldn't be a Nolan film if there weren't - but the talk is interesting, and we have a nice cross-section of characters assembled for the job. The concept of the movie is fascinating, and the early scenes of dream-exploring create high hopes for the main story. It's set up as a cerebral heist film with a sci-fi twist, and by God it looks like it will be fun to go along for the ride.

Once the actual job gets under way, however, Inception begins to unravel. By the time we've penetrated a third level of reality, the movie has devoured its own tail, only to keep going until it bursts out its own stomach. The pace becanes schizophrenic, trying to balance long dialogue scenes with action and the layers of reality are awkwardly juggled. The dreams themselves, aside from a few nice bits early on, are flat and bereft of wonder: compared to Shutter Island's bizarre phantasmagorias, Inception's aren't remotely convincing and undermine the facile musings about "the nature of reality." Nolan falls back on action movie cliches to pad out the run time, with a shoot-'em-up finale that wouldn't be out of place in a Die Hard or Bond flick. Nolan spends half the film building up our expectations only to steer it off a cliff.

Perhaps most irritating of all is the screenplay. Nolan's hamfisted homilies in The Dark Knight got a bit grating, but didn't seriously detract from the film. Unfortunately, Inception is largely sunk by its script, a shining example of obvious storytelling. Everything is spelled out in the most excrutiating detail: backstory, key plot points, everything that's going on. The twist involving Cobb could have been interesting were it not handled with awkward, clunky and long montages and monologues. It's not that the film is confusing or hard to follow; far from it, with everything hammered into the audience's skull, even the densest viewer can fully grasp what's going on. A complete lack of humor or ambiguity and one-note characters don't help either. Nolan either needs to acquaint himself with the concept of subtlety, or get someone else to write his movies.

Nolan's direction is mostly good. The action scenes are a mixed bag: some are creative and interesting - Arthur's zero-gravity showdown with dream-world thugs - others more banal and generic, though at least we're spared obnoxious shaky cam and quick-editing. The pace is a bit uneven, with the movie awkwardly balancing action and exposition within the same scenes, but flows reasonably well. A major weak point is Hans Zimmer's strikingly banal score: the talented composer who gave us the scores for The Lion King, Crimson Tide and Pirates of the Caribbean has been reduced to repetitive, mind-numbing mixtures of insistent strings and loud electronic noise.

Nolan does his ensemble cast few favors, though a few manage to shine. Leonardo DiCaprio has the only meaty role and he nails it, even if his Cobb comes off as a watered-down variation on his Teddy Marcus from Shutter Island. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer) and Tom Hardy (Black Hawk Down) are good, and Ellen Paige (Juno) divests herself of her usual obnoxious persona. Marion Cotillard (Public Enemies) mostly has to be sad and pretty, both of which she nails. Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe mostly bring baggage from previous Nolan films. Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father) and Tom Berenger (Rough Riders) are squandered in the tiniest of bit parts.

Inception is ultimately a big, fat, mindfucking disappointment. That it starts off so well makes its ultimate mediocrity that much more frustrating.

Batman Begins

Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005) has been credited, along with its ultra-successful sequel, last year's The Dark Knight, with breathing new life into the played-out and tiresome superhero genre - a genre that has been stretched to the breaking point with film after mediocre film in recent years (two Incredible Hulks, Fantastic 4, Spider-Man, etc.). Personally, I'm not sure that I buy this line of reasoning. To me, despite its pretensions to seriousness, Batman Begins is yet another generic superhero film with the same mixture of overwrought self-importance and unconscious cheesiness that has characterized the genre over the past decade. I'm not the biggest fan of The Dark Knight, or the same year's Iron Man for that matter, but those films are a genuine breath of fresh air compared to this one.

Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) watches his super-rich parents gunned down by a petty criminal in the streets of Gotham, and grows up wanting revenge. His revenge is denied by agents of Gotham crime boss Carmine Falconi (Tom Wilkinson), whose syndicate controls Gotham with bribes, drugs and guns. Wayne goes on the lam as a criminal and ends up in the monestary of the shadowy Raas a'Ghul (Ken Wantanabe) and his mentor Henri Ducard (who else but Liam Neeson?), who run the League of Shadows, a secret society of vigilantes dedicated to wiping out crime and decadence in the world. Bruce finds out that the League is planning an outright destruction of Gotham, and races back to his home city. With the help of his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and loyal corporate associate Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Wayne transforms himself to the vigilante Batman, taking on Falconi and Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), who as "the Scarecrow" is working with Raas al'Ghul to destroy Gotham with a hallucinogenic drug that will cause Gothamites to go mad with fear and destroy each other. Also playing a part are Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), Bruce's childhood sweetheart-turned-Assistant D.A. (and later turned-Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), one of the few honest cops left in Gotham, who becomes Batman's primary ally.

Claims of critics and fanboys to the contrary, Batman Begins really isn't THAT much different than most superhero films. Despite Nolan's pretensions of creating a darker and more realistic world for the bat to play in, the movie is just as goofy. Semi-realistic villains like Falconi and Crane are left hanging for yet another all-seeing, all-power evil secret society (because who could get enough of them?), whose plot for world domination (or at least Gotham's destruction) seems like the scheme of a particularly lame Bond villain. Characters are only sketchily introduced, and the film has the typical throat-clearing backstory that is both rushed and poorly done. The script is full of clunkily-written pseudo-profundities (along with some just plain cheesy dialogue) that inevitably ring false, when they aren't outright laughable (Falconi's "Don't burden yourself with the secrets of scary people" line may be the worst non-Garbage Day! dialogue in any film); they smack of self-important posturing that can be found in pretty much any film of this genre. All in all, Batman Begins has little to offer that can't be found in pretty much any other superhero film; it's musings on morality and fear are remarkably simplistic and beaten into the audience so often that even the densest three year old would get it.

Technically, the film is pretty good. Nolan's direction is generally solid; he shows a knack for visual style, and handles the film's action scenes reasonably well (though the film lacks a stand-up-and-cheer set-piece like, say, the convoy ambush in The Dark Knight). The movie looks good, for what its worth; it's mostly the script and story that lets the proceedings down. The score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard is repetitive and bland assembly-line junk, with lots of insistent strings and trilling brass that could be culled from any number of action flicks you could care to name.

The cast is a big disappointment; a lot of talent is assembled and mostly wasted. Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is bland, stiff and boring (let's not even mention the ludicrous Batman voice); I'm becoming more convinced with each film of his I watch that his great performance in Empire of the Sun was a fluke, as he's scarcely given a worthwhile performance since reaching puberty. Katie Holmes is mostly annoying and makes one pine for Maggie Gyllenhaal. Tom Wilkinson, Ken Wantanabe and Cillian Murphy are given thankless roles as secondary bad guys who are poorly introduced and have little to do. Gary Oldman does what he can, but in this installment Gordon is mostly a humorous role. Michael Caine provides wheezy comic relief, and Morgan Freeman's role is virtually superfluous (say what you will about the Burton-Schumaker Batmans, they at least economized their characters). It's Liam Neeson who gives the best performance; he's played the mentor guy in pretty much every film of the last ten years, from The Phantom Menace to Kingdom of Heaven to The Chronicles of Narnia, but he's good at it by now - though he doesn't quite make the transition to evil that the script requires of him. The Dark Knight would do a much better job with its ensemble cast; Oldman, Aaron Eckhardt, and yes, Heath Ledger would all give fine performances far beyond any of the acting on display here.

On the whole, Batman Begins was rather disappointing and has little to offer that the Spider-Man and Fantastic 4 films didn't already bring to the table. Fortunately, Nolan and Company would get a lot more right the second time around, creating a solid, well-written and -acted superhero film distinctly different from the cookie-cutter superhero formula.

Rating: 5/10 - Mediocre

The Dark Knight

Another celebrity loss: Isaac Hayes died at age 65.

Today I finally got around to watching the uber-hyped The Dark Knight, a film which has been hyped to the moon for a variety of reasons, so much that it is currently Number One on the IMDB's Top 250. So, after weeks of being annoyed by mountains of IMDB threads about it, what did i think?

Well, I thought it was a pretty darn entertaining film, actually. It bites off a bit more than it can chew - a bit too much is covered in too little time, and after the Joker's escape from jail, the movie loses a lot of its interest by becoming repetitive and drawn out. (To be fair, it seems as a general rule that no one knows when to end an action movie these days.) But up until that point, it's a very well-made, entertaining film. The cinematography is nice, the moral issues raised by the movie are quite interesting (how can you fight crime by the rules, when the criminals don't play by the rules?), the characters are for the most part well-drawn and interesting. Most of the flaws are of form, rather than content - if that makes the least bit of sense.

Christian Bale is a very good Batman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is adequate as his ex-girlfriend. Heath Ledger, who for obvious reasons has received virtually all of the acting hype, is pretty good, relishing his opportunity to play one of the nastiest villains in recent memory - although I wouldn't rate it as the amazing, Earth-shattering turn it's listed as by most critics. The two great supporting cast members are Gary Oldman, who gives us a layered and conflicted Commissioner Gordon, and Aaron Eckhart, who gives a fine performance as the naive Elliot Ness-like crusader who becomes a vengeful killer. The only real question is, why they decided to (apparently) kill him off in his first movie?

So, that's my take. Greatest film of all time? No. Very good for what it was, though. It gets an 8/10, which might be a mite generous, but what the hell, I enjoyed it.

I also watched Jaws 3 today, but I hope you don't expect me to say anything about that... I'll be working on my Pirates article, should be done by the end of the day tomorrow.