Brace Yourselves - It's Time For Batman

Ok, guys.  Let's talk Batman.

I saw the film on Saturday, almost a week after it was released in theaters, and despite my best efforts I couldn't quite shield myself from all the reactions pouring in.  With one major exception, I did go in spoiler free, but I wasn't free from the baggage of those detestable fanboys who took it upon themselves to actually threaten the movie critics, and I certainly wasn't free from the pall of Aurora, CO.  My heart breaks for those families.

Because of the hurricane of emotion surrounding The Dark Knight Rises, I don't think it's possible to watch it free from expectations or preconceptions.  However, I believe that The Dark Knight is as close to cinematic perfection as I've ever witnessed, so I was both prepared to like TDKR and comfortable with the idea that it would not, could not reach the same heights as Christopher Nolan's second Batman movement.

I had...feelings about it.  Not all of them are good.  As I put it on twitter right after the show, the film had some excellent parts - but the sum wasn't equal to them, and multiplying excellence by zero (zero being, in this case, a tremendously wooden and boring Marion Cotillard, who I am normally quite fond of) still leaves you with zero.  She is perhaps the perfect illustration of my biggest issue with the film: it reeks of missed opportunities.  Without spoiling you deeply, there could have been a fascinating story here about revenge, power, tragedy, hubris, and identity - but due to poor writing and two poorly developed (and deeply important) characters, the film never quite gets there.

Rarely does it feel like Nolan puts plot points in his films just to have them exist - yet he does that here, not just once but several times.  Including a brief, and ultimately pointless, romance for Bruce Wayne that seems occur only for some comic book accuracy...accuracy which comes across as, again, pointless, when you consider the gulf between the Bane of Nightfall and the Bane we see here.  Why, when given an actor of Tom Hardy's caliber, do you waste him on a mushy-mouthed musclehead with no unique features?  I'm told the Bane of the comics was not only Batman's physical equal, but his mental equal as well.  That would have been nice to see.

Nolan is tackling some big issues (and a lot of them) here, but I wish he'd stuck more solidly to the identity questions that have run through his films since Batman Begins.  His Batman trilogy feels daring because it questions the very nature of heroism: does Gotham City need Batman?  Superficially, the answer is yes; but consider how much of Gotham's problems originate because Batman exists.  His very purpose is held up for judgment: does Gotham need Batman?  This is the issue I wanted Nolan to explore even further, the philosophical question that has driven the whole trilogy.  Instead, a large part of the film is given over to class warfare and economic questions of ethics; important topics, yes, but I'm not sure Nolan is saying anything new here.

The more interesting feature of The Dark Knight Rises is that it is a Batman film with very little Batman.  I have heard this aspect of it criticized, but I think it says a lot about the world Nolan has crafted, that it is complete in and of itself, and not wholly dependent on the cowl.  Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt command a large portion of the second half of the film, in a compelling siege under Bane-as-warlord.  It's a good thing our Commissioner and his prodigee turn in such strong performances, because (regardless of how you feel about Bane as a character or villain) he's weak sauce; not just compared to the chaotic force of nature that was Ledger's Joker, but even to the sardonic, almost whimsically mad Cillian Murphy, reprising his role (once again) as the good Doctor Jonathan Crane.

I'd also like to interject a word here about Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle, who is slinky, 1920s femme fatale perfection.  Her voice drips with sleek disdain, and even though she runs around the ruined city in stiletto boots she never feels less than perfectly capable.  There are a few shining moments of flawlessness that could not have been so great with someone else in the leather catsuit.

There are fleeting moments of perfection.  The opening sequence, which begins without context, is heart-stopping and daring; the collapsing stadium, which we all saw in the trailer, is tremendously tragic in its level of sheer destruction.  It is being said in reviews that any comic book/super hero movie would kill to be the weakest Nolan Batman film; I'm not sure I agree, but I can say for certain that even though Nolan crashes some leaps, there are places this movie soars.

Horror Movies I Secretly Kind Of Like

In the spirit of the impending holiday, I thought I might do another top ten list.  Everyone likes lists, right?

Despite my almost pathological aversion to horror movies, I have managed to see a handful in my movie-loving life.  I present to you: The Top Ten Horror Movies I Could Bring Myself To Watch, And Also Kind Of Really Liked (But Don't Tell Anyone).  These are in alphabetical order, rather than ranked in any sort of fashion.

American Psycho

I've heard mixed reviews about the book, but this film is phenomenal.  Christian Bale is just so GOOD in this role: you feel like you're being personally invited by Patrick Bateman to watch his mental unraveling, and as the things he does escalate up the horror scale Bale manages to preserve that smooth, shiny edge which makes the whole film surreal in addition to terrifying.  Bateman's shark-toothed grin will haunt you while you ponder the movie's messages of social emptiness (preferably while listening to Huey Lewis and the News).

Cthulhu (2007)

NIGHTMARES, you guys. Legitimate nightmares, made all the more insidious by the fact that while I was watching this one I wasn't all that scared.  In this little indie jewel, a history professor returns to his birthplace in a little seaside town in Oregon for a funeral, and discovers that his family (and the whole town) is deeply involved in an Elder Gods cult.  The movie is filmed in a very amateur, hand-held camera style, but it adds to the creepy atmosphere.  Dan Gildark, the director, is sparing with his jumpy moments and horror images, which makes them all the more effective - the film's stark style will give you chills during the last beach scene.

The Dark Crystal

More frightening than Labyrinth and Willow rolled into one, if you ask me (that scene were the witch turns everyone into pigs?  Scared the HELL out of me as a child).  The lack of human faces makes the dark fantasy setting even more eerie, playing up the alien nature of the gelflings and skeksis and of the environment itself.  The scene where Kira, one of our gelfling heroes, is being drained of life by the vicious, vulture-like skeksis, has pretty much haunted me since I first saw this as a child.

In The Mouth Of Madness

If Stephen King had written Cthulhu, the result would have been In The Mouth Of Madness.  The story of Sutter Cane, a horror writer who molds reality with his macabre stories, is like a batshit Neil Gaiman; one fabulous sequence has him banging on a typewriter in a church while a thick wooden door pulsates malevolently behind him.  A wonderfully nihilistic horror film that blithely plays with your sense of reality, and laughs the whole time: some of the things in this film are so completely absurd that, like Sam Neill's John Trent, you can't help but laugh helplessly.

Jennifer's Body

At this point, you might have guessed that I appreciate my horror balanced with a nice dose of sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek, and this particular film has a heaping share of both. Megan Fox is COMPLETELY believable as a man-eating demon (gee, I wonder why...?), but she also clearly is not taking the movie too seriously, and neither is anyone else.  They're having fun with it, which is good, because shit is ridiculous and the movie totally owns it; the indie punk Satanic band members are just icing on the demonic cake.  It's kind of like Buffy, if the script had been more self-conscious and less tasteful.

Let Me In

What I didn't know about this before I saw it is that it's actually a love story.  The relationship between Abby the vampire and Owen the outcast kid is sweet and awkward, even after you see Abby flip out like a ninja to snack on some hobo.  Low lighting and fantastic sound editing are used to great effect, and Chloe Moretz-as-monster brings some much needed excitement to a movie that could have ended up over-wrought and moodily dull.  The tender moments and the scary bits add to the tension, and the ending is both touching and depressingly inevitable.

The Ruins

The Ruins should have been a dumb creature feature, but it actually has a lot going for it that makes it quite effective.  A group of co-eds goes hiking in Mexico and ends up on a Mayan pyramid covered in a parasitic, man-eating plant; native people surround them to keep them on the pyramid or kill them so as not to spread the growth of the plant.  The plant itself is a surprisingly fantastic villain; it creeps under the skin like an alien parasite, mimics human voices to separate the co-eds, and eats away at them, driving them insane. It almost feels like a medical horror, featuring sequences where the plant gets under the skin like some kind of bug, threads its way into injuries, and one particularly imaginative amputation scene that ends with cauterization by frying pan (these kids are nothing if not resourceful).  Not for the faint of heart.

Saw

They go way downhill after number two, but before they descend into tasteless torture porn the Saw franchise was more about psychological horror than spilling blood.  Asking that all important question, "how far would you go to save your own life?" Saw the first is all yellow lighting, fast-paced editing, and clever film shots that don't quite show you all the gore it hints at.  Where the subsequent films lose their restraint in favor of cheap shock value, this first film reaches in and grabs your brain right in its survival center. Plus, that ENDING.  Whatever criticisms you have about the sequels, you have to acknowledge that, at least for the first outing, someone on the scriptwriting staff was really being clever.

Silence of the Lambs

Will we ever have another villain as charismatic as Hannibal Lecter?  I rather hope not.  Anthony Hopkins is a complete scene stealer in this classy slasher flick, dominating the background with his panoramas of intestines while Buffalo Bill skins his victims in the main plotline.  A film that's become iconic for a reason; the scene where Jodie Foster bumbles around in pitch black while being stalked by the night vision goggles-wearing Bill still gives me chills.

A Tale of Two Sisters

Unlike the other films on this list, I never re-watched this Korean horror film and have no desire to - but that doesn't mean that, while I was watching it, I didn't appreciate its construction and effect.  Equal parts mental exercise and ghost story, the family elements and the relationship between the young sisters are surprising spots of warmth in an otherwise chilling movie.  It's also a kind of fairytale, a play on the Cinderella story, and rather beautiful - the camera work finds beauty in an imposing wardrobe as well as a shot of a dead bird.  Even when it's being poetic, though, the tension still pulls you thin, and waiting to find out what's inside that wardrobe made my knuckles go white.