The Dark Knight Rises

The final installment of Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ has grander scope and epic than it’s predecessors, but that doesn’t mean it’s better than the previous two.  The second installment, ‘The Dark Knight’ with Heath Ledger’s powerhouse performance as the Joker, was as close to movie perfection as one can get, so in fairness, how does one improve upon that? Director Chris Nolan (and let’s not forget his brother Jonathon Nolan who writes these incredible scripts) is probably the finest film maker today.  Every one of his films are visually beautiful with complex and riveting story lines. Truly an impressive artist.

Nolan’s gift is taking something as outlandish as a superhero and making it seem completely plausible.  He takes epic sized story lines and completely suspends our disbelief.  We are too caught up trying to keep up with the intricacies and weaves of his story telling that we forget the impossibilities of what we are seeing.  It is an intellectual mind blowing exercise with each one of his films and we leave the theatre feeling that we just got off a mental roller coaster ride.

'The Dark Knight Rises' is ambitious to be sure.  There are inevitable comparisons of the new villain Bane (played by Tom Hardy) with Heath Ledger’s Joker.  In my opinion, Bane doesn’t measure up to that iconic performance, but that doesn’t mean that Hardy doesn’t create a villain of pure evil and menace to challenge the Dark Knight.  Bane’s mask causes him to have an almost Darth Vaderesque voice, rich with menacing baritones ,that causes goosebumps from the pure evil that emanates from it.  A more than respectable performance.  Where The Joker was chaos and random evil, Bane is meticulous and precise in his malevolence.  Bane is an intellectual and physical brute force equal if not superior to Batman.

The film itself opens 8 years after the death of Harvey Dent.  Bruce Wayne has become a Howard Hughes style recluse in his mansion, so permanently damaged that he hobbles around with a cane, while Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman, love him) wrestles with his conscience for the lies surrounding Dent’s death that have risen him to hero status.  The once cesspool that was Gotham City is now free of organized crime and is a peaceful and idealistic city despite being based on Batman’s martyrdom and Gordon’s lies.  Batman is long retired and Commissioner Gordon is viewed as a warhorse past his usefulness. A situation ripe for the arrival of evil.

Nolan has always been topical in his story telling.  Where ‘The Dark Knight’ explored our feelings post 9/11, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ explores the current Occupy Wall Street movement and our thoughts around class warfare.  Bane arrives with his mercenaries and invades the Stock Exchange with the purpose of crashing the market and giving the city of Gotham over to the people.  Nolan’s plots are too complex with too many surprises to go into full detail.  It would do it a disservice as well as spoil the twists and turns of the film.  Suffice it to say that Bane is pure evil and malevolence despite his message of liberation to the people of Gotham.  Nolan obviously has disdain for the one-percenters given his portrayal of stock traders, but neither do the actions of 99-percenters sit well with him.  It’s not that he’s trying to be diplomatic or a fence sitter, it’s just that he doesn’t wear idealistic rose colored glasses.  He turns the lens on human nature, which isn’t always pretty.

Introduced into the story is the reimagined Catwoman (played surprisingly seductive by Anne Hathaway).  She is a hardened burglar and a grifter, and despite her resentment of the rich, she finds herself drawn to the reclusive Bruce Wayne after robbing him.  Even though she is never referred to as Catwoman, her functional outfits leave no doubt of who she is.  She is not just a sexy femme fatale as played in previous incarnations.  This is a well developed role that could probably support a movie of it’s own.  She’s not the one dimensional social anarchist that we believe in the beginning and Nolan evolves her character as the movie develops.  She injects welcome humor into an otherwise somber film.

How can one forget Oscar winning actors Michael Caine reprising his role as Alfred and the great Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox?  Each great supporting performances of characters increasingly concerned that they will not be able to save Bruce Wayne from himself.  The ray of hope is the rookie cop, John Blake (played by the Nolan favored Joseph Gordon Levitt).  He is the idealist in a sea of cynicism and is Batman’s biggest believer. Even when disillusioned with his idols, he continues to believe.  Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate provides Bruce’s love interest (or is she?).  What starts out as a minor character becomes central as the film progresses. There are almost too many great characters to shove into one movie, but that’s what happens after numerous sequels; the baggage piles up. Nolan does a great job weaving an epic that does not feel like a superhero movie.  This movie could stand on it’s own (or even stand above) as a Nolan film even without the superhero dimension, so don’t think you have to be a super hero fan to enjoy it.

The film is dark, somber, and horrifying and takes the story to surprising levels of nightmare reminiscent of Nolan’s last film, ‘Inception’.  Despite or because of this, we are riveted and can’t turn away as the horrors pile on themselves.  I’m not giving away any spoilers here, but I will say that the ending and the conclusion to the trilogy is immensely satisfying and leaves the series with respect and a feeling of completion.  A serious film maker, not only does Nolan never look down his nose at the subject matter, you sense his deep love for the characters.

Nolan continues his roll as a maker of complex and intellectual films (whoever would have thought a superhero movie could fall in that category).   While I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Dark Knight, it is an impressive accomplishment and a worthy series finale to probably the best superhero franchise ever produced.

I give this film **** stars

The Amazing Spiderman

       I always feel I have to qualify that I don’t approach superhero movies objectively.  I’m either too generous or too critical given my childhood love of the genre.  I desperately want to love them, so when I am disappointed I can be fairly vindictive in my opinions. In this case, I was incredibly disappointed in the rebooted ‘The Amazing Spiderman’.

I don’t believe a film should be rebooted unless you can make it better than the original (most notable example of a successful reboot is ‘The Dark Knight’).  All the ingredients are here for success; an all star cast with up and coming talent alongside veteran Hollywood royalty, state of the art special effects, and an impressive blockbuster budget.  Director Marc Webb fails to capture any of the magic and wonder that made the original 2002 Spiderman such a worldwide hit.  

The original Spiderman, starring Tobey Maguire, was one of the first films to take superheroes seriously and achieve box office super status.  It’s hard to remember a time when super hero movies didn’t fuel the box office, but it’s only been for the last 12 years.  Now Spiderman and his story is a well known commodity.  The first Spiderman director, Sam Raimi, was able to capture the wonder and excitement of a high school kid discovering he was a superhero.  The rebooted Spiderman has none of that.  It seeks to impress with flashy technology and a super villain monster that is surprisingly poorly animated.  All of this mired in a dark and visually unimpressive atmosphere.

British Import Andrew Garfield takes on the role of Peter Parker this time around.  I was excited as I was impressed with his work in ‘The Social Network’ and I was looking forward to seeing what he could do.  The female lead is Gwen Stacey (played by the lovely Emma Stone) replacing Mary Jane Watson.  Garfield and Stone are an item in real life, but you would never know from the awkward chemistry they display on screen.  Each scene was meant to convey bumbling puppy love, but random unimpressive dialogue combined with lack of chemistry provided no real connection.  Sally Field and Martin Sheen are completely miscast to play Aunt May and Uncle Ben.  Columbia Pictures just went for the big star power instead of properly casting the roles.  Aunt May is as pivotal to the Spiderman character as Peter Parker himself, yet Sally Field seemed relegated to a small supporting role.   Instead of being Peter’s moral compass, she simply seemed to be the generic worried mother figure.

My main beef with Garfield’s performance was that he’s a better actor than what he showed here.  His twitchy mumbling interpretation was difficult to understand at times and failed to capture the All-American lovable nerd that Tobey Maguire channeled so perfectly.  I’m always amazed when Brits or any other nationality can capture an American accent (no on can do it better than Gary Oldman).  Garfield did it fairly well (despite playing a Brazilian) in ‘The Social Network’,  which is why it surprised me here where he went for most of the world’s interpretation, which is a constant string of mumbling.  I consider this lazy acting.

As for the plot of the movie, the story itself was fairly comic book generic; mad scientist, evil corporation, science experiment gone wrong.  Ryhs Ifan plays Dr Curt Connors (Ryhs is a gifted actor, but a little old to be the bad boy that the press reports recount).  Connors is a one armed scientist who was once a colleague of Peter’s father.  He is exploring the use of cross species genetics to regrow his arm, much the same way lizards can grow back a tail.  This study links into Spiderman’s origin story of being bitten by a mutated spider.  I will say that I was intrigued how the two stories were intertwined.

The Lizard was a poor choice for a villain as he was never that good in the comics.  As a kid, I would always pass on any Spiderman comic with The Lizard on the cover. On the big screen it’s no different.  The movie slowly dissolves into a monster movie reminiscent of ‘Godzilla’  (a reference unwisely made several times throughout the film).  Nevertheless, Rhys does the best he can and his performances when he is still human are among the best in the film.

The story of Peter’s origin is retold with a modern twist (i.e cell phones, high tech computer labs).  I will say many things in this version are more true to the comic, like Gwen Stacey being his high school love instead of Mary Jane as well as the nature of his famous webbing.  The one thing that was glaringly missing was the catch phrase that is the essence of Spiderman; ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’.  A simplistic phrase, but one that has for decades been associated with the character.  Gwen’s father, who just happens to be the Police Captain pursuing Spiderman, is portrayed by the adequately annoyed Dennis Leary.  I wasn’t really sure why Spiderman was his top priority when there was a giant lizard terrorizing the city.  Also, while there were several shots of the cover of The Daily Bugle, the absence of longtime nemesis and Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson was very noticeable (I can’t remember a single issue that didn’t have him).  Personally, I think no one could come close to J.K. Simmons interpretation from the original film, so they decided to not even try.

A lot of the reviews I’ve read discuss how this story is deeper and flows better through ‘space and time’.  I found it to be the exact opposite.  There were several situations throughout the film that were forced and didn’t fit well into the storyline.  A scene where a grateful construction worker attempts to help Spiderman by lining up cranes throughout the city falls flat and really turned out to be unnecessary.  Dialogue and emotional outbursts seemed random and overacted.  Something people rarely comment on, but annoyed me to no end was the soundtrack.  Sound is a film’s unrecognized hero.  The right tracks can cause any array of emotions desired.  It can build suspense, cause terror, or even add humor to flat dialogue.  The sound choice in this was horrible and at times didn’t even fit the scene.  It’s not meant to be noticed (almost subliminal), so for me to notice how bad it was has to say something (hopefully about the film and not me).

I’m baffled by the positive reviews this film is getting.  Even some close friends whose opinions I respect have said good things about it.  I don’t see it.  This was as bad as last year’s Green Lantern and I hope it doesn’t go any farther than this (judging by the weekend box office take, there probably will be a sequel).  I haven’t been this disappointed since ‘Quantum of Solace’.

I rate this film * 1/2 stars

Ted

     Every child at one time wished that their childhood stuffed toy would come to life and be their best friend.  I can’t list all the movies and stories with this as a premise, but it goes as far back as Pinocchio at least.  All of that is well and good, but what happens twenty years later after both the stuffed teddy bear and child grow up to become pot smoking slackers?  That is the premise for ‘Ted’ and it is hilarious.

Seth MacFarlane, creator of ‘Family Guy’ brings his crass and crude, politically incorrect humor to this R-rated fairly tale of a boy and his teddy bear.  If you don’t appreciate MacFarlane’s brand of ‘I can’t believe he went there’ humor, then you probably won’t like this, but if you are thirsting for the type of humor that you really can’t repeat anywhere else in today’s politically correct world, then this is for you.  Even though the jokes are obvious, they hit their mark and I laughed throughout the entire film.

John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) and his teddy bear ‘Ted’ gained worldwide childhood fame when Ted came miraculously to life through John’s wish.  Unfortunately, Ted went down the path of most childhood celebrities and made some bad decisions in his life.  John grew up to be a pot smoking slacker employed at a minimum wage job at a rental car company, while Ted squandered his celebrity and spends his days on John’s couch. They waste countless hours watching their favorite movie ‘Flash Gordon’ over and over again.  There biggest intellectual conundrum is wondering how a movie that is so bad can be so good at the same time. They seem quite content living the slacker lifestyle, unfortunately the love of John’s life is Lori (played with approachable beauty Mila Kunis), a successful woman who is growing impatient waiting for her boyfriend to grow up.  John wants to make Lori happy, but her disapproval of Ted’s debauchurous lifestyle and influence makes it a challenge to keep their relationship.  John decides Ted must move out in order to keep Lori.  

Ted is hurt, but wants what is best for John.  He gets a menial job with a promise from John they will always hang out and be best buddies.  Just like always.  However, anyone who has been through that situation knows how impossible that is.  John does his best to leave that part of his life behind him, but Ted’s bachelor lifestyle of women, getting high, and wild parties makes it difficult for John to focus on his relationship with Lori.  When Ted lands a visit from the legendary Flash Gordon actor Sam Jones at one of his wild parties it is more than John can resist and he breaks his promise to Lori and skips out on her important company party.  Being fed up, Lori leaves John to wallow in eternal adolescence with Ted.

This is where the movie shows a little heart as Ted struggles to console his heartbroken buddy.  He can’t imagine life without John, but he knows that Lori and he were meant to be together.  I don’t mean for this to sound sappy because it’s not.  It’s just interesting to see a little warmth amongst all the hilarious vulgarity.  Ted does his best to convince Lori to take back John, but it’s not until a crisis happens that Ted shows what he is really made of.

Anyone who is a fan of Seth MacFafarlane knows what to expect.  Only this time it is completely uncensored and MacFarlane takes full advantage.  This is just an entertaining summer slacker film.  No depth or anything to dwell upon.  Just a lot of fun and guilty laughter.

I give this film *** stars

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

         ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ is a sweet, sad, and funny movie in that order.  Despite it’s apocalyptic title, it is a small pensive film that has none of the action or frenetics that one would expect in an end of the world film.  I would describe it as a romantic comedy, but not really.  

As an astroid nears Earth and total global annihilation is only a month a way, the wife of a man named Dodge (Steve Carrell) flees in a panic.  Dodge finds himself alone facing Judgement Day and decides to set out on a road trip to find his high school sweetheart whom he always considered the love of his life.  Dodge’s plan takes on a different direction when his quirky neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) decides to tag along after ending her romance with a freeloading boyfriend.  Along the way they pick up a stray dog named Sorry (cute backstory to the dog’s name).

The first part of the film is more about comedy.  Maybe that’s too strong of a word.  Perhaps a series of amusing situations.  There is a plethora of comic talent from the likes of Rob Corrdry and Patton Oswald.  The film examines all the ways people are choosing to spend the last days of their lives.  For the most part, in either non-stop revelry or mayhem.  Each situation is amusing, like Corrdry challenging his 8 year old daughter to a drinking contest or Dodge being set up on a blind date, but at the same time slightly sad in the surreal atmosphere that there is only 27 days left on Earth.

Some of the sad amusement (new coin phrase) is seeing some people clinging to their lives as tightly as possible.  Dodge shows up to work everyday and parks in his reserved space despite an almost barren parking garage.  The Human Resource director asks the remaining cubicle workers if anyone wants the recently vacated CFO job.  Dodge’s house cleaner whistles along as if nothing is happening.  When Dodge tells her she doesn’t have to come back anymore, she is terrified that he is firing her.  People striving for normalcy in the face of Armageddon.

As the rioting increases in the cities, Dodge grabs Penny and Sorry and sets out cross country to find his lost love.  When Penny asks Dodge if the woman he’s seeking is “the one that got away”, Dodge replies that they all got away, but she was the first.  Penny’s quirky artistic nature is the perfect compliment to Dodge’s milquetoast company man persona.  Dodge  seems to be the only one taking the end of the world with the somberness and seriousness that one would think it deserves.  Maybe that is part of his problem for how can one act rationally to such an irrational situation?

Carrell does a masterful job at portraying Dodge’s inner pain, not from the looming end of the world, but from life.  He has led a life of safe and rational choices and it did not bring him fulfillment.  From his loveless marriage to his strained relationship with his father (Martin Sheen) who left him when he was a boy, he played every step of his life the way he was supposed to and he has nothing to show for it.  I know a lot of people who don’t like Steve Carrell as an actor because they can only think of him as his character Michael Scott on ‘The Office’ (which baffles me how anyone can’t love Michael Scoot btw), but Carrell is truly a gifted actor with a broad range.  He is one of those actors whose expressions can fill long silences with more meaning than any amount of dialogue ever could.  He can combine  humor with deep emotion simultaneously. No easy feat.

Dodge’s calm demeanor takes a backseat to Penny’s antics and her love of life despite the coming apocalypse.  Penny is as alone as Dodge in the world, but the romantic in her is determined to see Dodge reunited with his lost love.  Despite Dodge’s disapproving nature, her lightness bolsters him.  In the midst of non-stop parties and frivolity, which has dark and somber undertones, she is the light that keeps him moving forward and looking ahead when there is no ahead.

This movie will not do well at the box office.  It is not that type of film.  It is a film that will please anyone who a happens to stumble upon it and takes the time to enjoy it.  It’s deeply philosophical while maintaining a lightness and humor.  I really enjoyed this film.

I give this film *** stars