Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Well, this is going to be an interesting review to write. These days most movies come packaged in an excitingly huge and shiny cardboard box made of reconstituted hype and nonsense, but it’s rare for genuine expectation to find itself saddled to a blockbuster superhero flick. Everyone is usually too jaded, too flooded with media and too brutalised by box office turds to set their expectations very high even when all the signs are positive. That’s why no one was particularly surprised when the likes of Prometheus or Avatar hit home with very mixed receptions. Disappointing is the new black, and as an audience our current default setting is one of post-modern cynicism.

The Dark Knight Rises hype machine beat all that off with a nail-studded stick. I don’t know anyone who was intending to see this at the cinema that wasn’t looking forward to it with a feverish enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism. Admittedly, I know a lot of nerds. But I maintain that the general feeling was that this was going to be something special, a superhero movie that stood a chance of eclipsing its predecessors and wrapping the Nolan Batman trilogy into a neat little best-ever-cape-series package.

Well, it has done the latter. There’s no disputing that between them, these three films summarise the story of Batman into an extremely satisfying  tale with multiple distinct character arcs, loaded with subtext and imagery that make them some of the only movies capable of hitting the brain as hard as they hit the guts. In many ways The Dark Knight Rises is closer to a sequel to Batman Begins that the second film was – it carries over a lot of similar themes, as well as offering a continuation of that original narrative that I will desperately try not to spoilerise within this review.

What it has not done is step up the trilogy’s game. Now, should that be a criticism? Honestly, I don’t know. But when the second film in a series aces the first (which was already pretty firmly the best film of its genre ever made), one can’t help but feel some mild disappointment when the third film pulls back to quality of Batman Begins. Is The Dark Knight Rises good? Undoubtedly. Is it worth seeing, and worthy of being the conclusion of the Christian Bale as Batman saga? Oh yes.

But if what follows seems to have an excess of negative spin on it, now you know why.

We return to Gotham eight years after the devastating events of The Dark Knight, and immediately are thrown into an environment both familiar and alien. This is the Gotham and the characters we have seen before, but swaddled in inertia and neutered by past decisions. This inertia spills out onto the screen, to the point where the film feels like it takes a good hour to get up and running. It’s definitely a slow burn rather than an immediate cackling blaze of fury – albeit a slow burn that eventually rolls into an intensity that is as uncomfortable as it is adrenalising.

As with the previous films (and most of Nolan’s work in general), the ensemble performances are off the chart for something which is nominally a summer blockbuster. More than ever before, Bale’s Batman shines as a man broken into the shape of fear and justice by events beyond his control. Tom Hardy proves to be an inspired choice for Bane, an immediate fusion of cerebral and physical intimidation whose cold and clinical voice terrifies without ever raising itself above a barely-audible mechanical whisper. Anne Hathaway is also surprisingly effective as Selina Kyle (the name ‘Catwoman’ never actually escaping past anyone’s lips), languidly providing the manipulative not-quite-amoral slink that is required for the role. And it’s difficult to over-exaggerate just how refreshing it is to see a portrayal of the character outside the seminal 1990’s animated series who isn’t just defined by her sexual overtones. Into both , the writers have introduced a 99%-er sensibility that makes it difficult not to agree with their aims, even when decrying their methods.

The mostly unsung heroes of the trilogy have, however, always been Michael Caine’s Alfred and Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon. Both continue to turn in powerful and subtle performances, though Oldman has much less to do in Dark Knight Rises than he has previously. Alfred, on the other hand, proves to be the furiously beating emotional heart of this final third. It makes for less of the easy humour and comradely banter that marked the relationship between Wayne and his primary father figure before, but leads to some genuinely devastating emotional moments. This will be the only superhero film of the year you might shed a tear for.

Cast aside, Dark Knight Rises runs a genuine risk of losing its way on several occasions through the lengthy running time. Incorporating multiple character threads throughout (though unlike The Dark Knight, always keeping Batman front and centre), sometimes these people seem to be revolving around each other rather than genuinely connecting. That isn’t the case across the board, and it’s not enough that you fail to care about them at all. But as an example, try as I might I couldn’t build up much empathy for new guy Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s earnest cop. As the film strolled onward, this left me in an awkward half-engaged posture due to the eventual importance of the role he plays. These are good characters in bad situations but often there’s just nothing to hook me in within this part of the trilogy. That’s less important for the characters who have jumped aboard two films ago, but when Nolan puts the onus on the newbies (of which there are quite a few), the ground just doesn’t seem solid. Perhaps it’s because almost everything within the film is a gamechanger.

It really, really is.

If Batman Begins was the taut origin story and The Dark Knight was the Heat-style hero vs. villain character study, then The Dark Knight Rises is the epic disaster movie. There is awe here with a capital A. Certain setpieces will make your jaw drop and your heart race, no two ways about it. This can partly be laid at the door of the cinematography, which is superb. Every single shot has been crisply assembled to be pitched at the audience in just the right way to deliver.

But when so much sweeping change is thrown at you right off the bat, it’s hard to keep up. You have no time to become invested into a status quo before it is twisted and turned around. Said twists are never illogical Shyamalan-style cheats, but there is an over-reliance on MacGuffins and flinging the surprises/dramatic changes at you faster than a speeding bullet. How’s that for crossover DC referencing, folks?

Speaking of DC referencing – if you are a comic book geek like me, there is much here to love. In the same way that Ledger’s Joker unconsciously took elements of most of the Clown Prince Of Crime’s portrayals from the last 30 or so years and melded them together into a horrifically joyous whole, Nolan rams picture-perfect versions of Catwoman and Bane onto the screen for your enjoyment. It’s especially satisfying given they’ve been done so very, very wrong before now. And if you are familiar with the definitive Batman/Bane story arc from the latter’s first appearances, a confrontation halfway through will be extremely gratifying. That’s veering dangerously close to spoiler right there. But only if you’re a massive Batman nerd, in which case you’ve probably already seen it. So that’s ok.

This has rambled on too long already.

So, The Dark Knight Rises. Has it arrived like a swooping bat-shaped thing from the darkness to save us from the generic bilge that infests the summer blockbuster release schedule? Yes. Has it upped the ante from the superb dynamics of The Dark Knight and set the bar still higher for the trilogy’s swansong? Not really, no.

Does that actually matter? Mileage may vary. For me, no. The Batman trilogy created by Nolan & co. is best viewed as one coherent whole, and as a conclusion to that whole this film does the job – and does it very well. It is a film that makes you feel and think and want to punch bad guys all at the same time, while wrapped comfortably around themes that capture the public zeitgeist with an almost impossibly casual ease. Any disappointment I had while walking out of the cinema felt like it was essentially my fault for being a curmudgeonly overanalysing prick. When that’s internalised rather than being shouted at me by other people, it must be a sign of something. If this third part of Nolan’s Batman feels to me like a weak link in the chain when viewed in isolation, it is still one that makes the chain stronger.

Movie Review: Prometheus

Unusually, the internet seems to have been somewhat coy about Prometheus in terms of spoilers. The trailers and previews were castigated for giving away too much plot, too many setpieces, too much of Noomi Rapace's perma-shocked expression.

In a token effort to honour that, I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. But that's going to be difficult,because trying to explain why something is an absolute unholy mess the first thing you need is precise examples.

And Prometheus is a mess. Oh, it really is.

So. A pick n' mix team of scientists, space pilot types and corporate manipulators go on a three year voyage to a distant moon in order to meet some mysterious aliens they think are potentially responsible for creating life on Earth. Or just humans. It's not too specific, really. They get there, mild disaster ensues, things happen in a randomly selected order. The whole thing is a sort-of-prequel to the Alien franchise, inasmuch as it is supposedly set a fair way before it and has events tangentally linked to the first discovery of the xenomorph by the crew of the Nostromo.

CGI is thrown at the viewer with enthusiasm, in an unsurprising move for a sci-fi movie in 2012. Said CGI is pretty well put together, and visually is a striking mix between the visuals of the Alien trilogy (shut up, it's a trilogy - the latest three films were horrible cheese hallucinations I had) and somewhat generic-but-pretty sci-fi fare. It suffers slightly from the Star-Wars-prequels-syndrome of looking like technology is much further along years before the events of the original movies, but given that (a) we're a long way from the audience expectations of 1979, and (b) the ship in Alien was meant to be a crappy tug and not a top class scientific research vessel - I don't mind too much. There are far bigger holes to plug. Not to mention that nowadays, being impressed by CGI is such a standard sensation that I have become immune to its charms.

The film as a whole tries to balance on a knife-edge between a slow philosophical sci-fi musing, and a faster-paced sci-fi horror. It desperately fails at this. Not because of any innate problem with this fusion - far from it, other films have managed this capably. Sunshine springs to mind. It fails because it has very little internal consistency, the characters are mostly blank nothings and the writing is shockingly poor given the pretensions at high concept and the proven talents of Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof.

Characters will be terrified and fleeing for their lives one moment, and the next giggling and trying to make friends with an alien snake creature. They will be having high-minded discussions of the creation of mankind, and segue awkwardly into a relationship argument. A technological MacGuffin is examined by Rapace's tabula rasa archaeologist lead - she is amazed to have seen one, since only 12 have ever been made. Shortly after this she operates it competently without any hesitation or need for training. These last two examples are also linked to another problem, one of long-range telegraphing that disrupts the flow for the viewer with astonishing clumsiness. The relationship argument is an obvious lead-in to a plot twist that is resolved utilising the MacGuffin, and then virtually thrown away without comment by any other character. The crew just revolve around each other without caring about life, death or any sense of planning through what is fundamentally the most important scientific mission in human history. You get the sense they're making it up as they go along, which in turn makes you feel Ridley Scott and the writers were doing the same thing.

If this were a pure schlock sci-fi horror, that wouldn't matter. It also wouldn't matter that the inevitable alien (though not Alien) nastyness that emerges doesn't seem to behave or operate under any sense of internal logic. Are they monsters? Do they turn people into monsters? Or into themselves, via any method that is contrived in order to put the cast into a hazardous situation? Oh, all of the above. Unfortunately, when you have pretensions of philosophising and more serious sci-fi these things jar harshly with your suspension of disbelief. Individually these are all nitpicking elements that nerds like me throw out with a snorting sneer, but unfortunately in the case of Prometheus they pile on top of each other until all you're left with is lots of almost-but-not-quite Alien trilogy referencing and a ship full of scientists and blue collar workers who all look like underwear models. There are quite a few extra frustrations I am leaving out of this review, for the sake of spoilerisation and the boredom you would feel from reading the offshoots from my mighty Organ Of Cynicism.

So, anything decent in the whole turgid junk pile? Well, as I said before it looks nice. The opening scene is superb, mysterious and beautifully shot - but that probably just contributes to the eventual disappointment of the rest of the film. Michael Fassbender is excellent as the morally dubious android David, pushing his performance head and shoulders out of the dross surrounding him to become the finest camp robot in cinema since C-3PO. But other than that, Prometheus badly fails to live up to its promise. Ridley Scott can direct much better than this. Damon Lindelof can write much better than this. Most of the cast can act much better than this.

And while I appreciate the notion of expanding an established universe into an odd sideways direction, the creative team have really shot themselves in the foot by linking themselves to superior cinematic efforts.

D-, guys. Must try harder.

Movie Review: Due Date

If you should purchase a ticket to view Due Date you will have an absolute bargain clutched in your sweaty little reptilian claws. What you have actually bought is a ticket to see two movies. Now, one of these is a beautifully shot, well-acted quirky character-based road movie . Well done you. Unfortunately, the other one is a typically asinine teen gross-out comedy that has been bolted on the genuinely interesting film with masking tape and PVA glue.

The central concept is hackneyed stuff – mismatched strangers (uptight and intolerant soon-to-be-family man and ineffective lonely dreamer) are thrown together by unlikely circumstances into a race-against-time across the highways of America, and hi-jinx ensue. Lessons are learned along the way and emotional weight is piled on in the form of a newly arriving baby and a recently departed father. It is all very Planes, Trains And Automobiles, and it suffers badly in comparison. Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis pick up the reigns of their respective characters with verve and enthusiasm, and at times their performances are significantly better than the passable script and sub-par easy laugh scenarios should be able to muster. Both have superb senses of comic timing, as well as the ability to layer the sketchy, stereotyped characters with a surprising layer of emotive heft. Downey Jr.'s talents are a known quality, but at times Galifianakis is a real revelation – packing wannabe-actor and stoner Ethan with ambiguous sexuality and a subtle sense of deep loss.

This brings about a peculiar mercurial feel to the movie, which is perfectly comfortable to follow up a surprisingly gutwrenching scene of Galifianakis breaking down in a rest area toilet with another that is primarily focused around a masturbating dog. I like a total, unsatisfying shift in mood as much as the next guy but it left me baffled as to who the whole piece could possibly be aimed at. Unfortunately I think the only target audience is potentially the writers, who perhaps get a bit bored of all the gently amusing and bittersweet character material and occasionally feel the need to throw in a few weed, wheelchair and desecration gags. The crisp, lingering cinematography that frames their journey just adds to the sense of incongruity. It's lovely stuff, but really wasted on the material.

The great irritation in all this is that excised of the fratboy nonsense Due Date could be a decent quality Wes Anderson-style quirkfest. I would throw out accusations of dumbing down for the lowest common denominator, but I'm genuinely not sure whether the writers and director Todd Phillips knew what kind of film they wanted to make. In the end, the best recommendation I can give this is that it made me want to watch the two lead actors in better written roles. If that's all you easily pleased little monkeys want from your hard-earned cash then knock yourselves out.

Movie Review: Inception

A few years ago now an ex-girlfriend bought me a windup Nightcrawler toy (Nightcrawler being the discerning gent's favourite X-Man) for my birthday. He usually lives somewhere around my disgustingly messy desk area, and in times of boredom - game loading screens, extended guitar solos, crushing moments of nihilistic self-examination – I have the habit of winding him up and setting him going. Now, thanks to Inception, I am assailed by a nagging worry that he might not stop walking across my desk.

I will explain. Inception, unlike most films that get pumped onto our cinema screens these days, is in possession of a surfeit of ideas. I would go so far as to say that in the first half hour, more fresh new concepts are flung at the audience than are present in all of the mainstream movies from this millennium combined. While this has the potential to become quite confusing, there are introduced in such a naturalistic, even fashion that the points when you are left wallowing in confusion are enjoyably stimulating rather than irritating frustration. At its heart, Inception is a heist movie. Only instead of the usual bank job, Leonardo DiCaprio's team of excellently cast specialists are tasked with inserting a counter-intuitive notion into a corporate heir's head via infiltration of multiple layers of his internal dreamscape.

Not exactly Michael Bay fodder. One of the ideas introduced fairly early on is that while roaming through another person's dreams, the infiltrator generally carries a totem – an item with personal significance that acts as an indicator of whether someone is still within a dream or reality. DiCaprio's emotionally unstable extractor Cobb carries a small spinning top that carries on spinning while in dreams, whereas his calmly capable pointman Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) carries a loaded die only he knows the weighting of. So I figure, as long as Nightcrawler winds down I'm safely ensconced in reality.

This particular idea setting up home in my brain long after I've left the cinema is by no means unique for Inception. Appropriately for a film about planting seeds in another man's brain, the plot is loaded with questions that are open to more or less endless interpretation – largely because the world in which most of the events occur (Cillian Murphy's head) is so fluid in and of itself. It doesn't so much have plot twists as plot contortions, with the internal logic always holding and never particularly springing surprises on you. Instead writer/director Chris Nolan delights in taking what he has shown you so far and turning the direction in a whole new angle you had not anticipated, without feeling the need to patronise the viewer and explain every single development to them in exacting detail. By the end, you may or may not have followed everything – but you can guarantee to have been entertained by the ride.

I would say that I am probably more inclined than most to try and find hidden significance in the smallest details of various media (I'm sure many of my friends will attest to this, following my attempts to desperately crack apart the bones of films or games in conversations), and even I was left feeling that there were elements of Inception that had entirely escaped me on first viewing. I'm sure there is some deeper significance to the naming of the characters, for instance – Fischer, Yusuf, Arthur, Ariadne, Mal – but without viewing again and boring people with my opinions for a while I doubt I'll really grasp it. Even if there isn't, I'm sure I can make something fun up.

As with most of Chris Nolan's films, the cinematography carries an understated cool and the ensemble cast is excellently put together. All of the main cast pull off their roles without forcing themselves into either a cliché or an irrelevance, with Ellen Page's rookie dream architect (forming conceptual mazes from raw imagination) and Tom Hardy's sarcastic forger (shaping his image within dreams to impersonate others) perhaps the most obvious standouts.

It's perhaps the most overused critical tool in the book, but as I was watching this I couldn't help but try and draw comparisons with other off-kilter mainstream films. The nearest I could get? Inception is like a cross between The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. It makes me a lazy hack for even trying to build that image, but if that rudimentary notion doesn't get you sweaty - you're no friend of mine. The real beauty of Inception is that Nolan & Co. have developed a film that manages to fill the screen with big-budget bombast and spectacle while also loading it with subtext and plenty of room for actual thought. Between this, The Prestige and The Dark Knight, Nolan is swiftly hammering out new ground as the 21^st century king of the intelligent blockbuster. And in amongst the sludge that seems to increasingly fill up the cinema release schedules, that is a breath of fresh air indeed.