Quiet And Controlled, Following Launched Christopher Nolan!

The Good: Decent acting, Good direction, Generally interesting characters
The Bad: Plot develops from an intriguing concept to a very standard crime caper
The Basics: Following starts as an original concept film before transitioning into a fairly predictable crime conspiracy film.


Every now and then, it is fun to go back and see how artists who made it big got their start. As Interstellar (reviewed here!) hits DVD and Blu-Ray, I figured it was about time to go back and see how Christopher Nolan got to his position. Long before he worked with Hollywood a-listers on major films that used the scope of IMAX film beautifully, Christopher Nolan created a much more intimate film with a cast of virtual unknowns (indeed, the only IMDB credit for co-star Alex Haw is the one film!): Following.

Following is a black and white film that is short, simple and presages Memento (reviewed here!) with its out-of-order narrative technique more than the big blockbusters Nolan became known for. The thing about Following is that it truly sucks the viewer in by having a concept that is intriguing and original . . . before it becomes a remarkably familiar crime film. Following is not bad; it is just more of a formula film (at least for fans of genre crime movies) than it is a truly original and different movie.

Bill is a writer who gets his ideas for his writing by following people. He starts with a number of rules, chief among them is not to follow the same person twice. But when he follows a good-looking man with a mysterious bag into a diner, the man turns the tables on Bill (which is what he tells the stranger his name is, though it is pretty obviously a lie), by walking over and sitting down. The stranger, Cobb, feels Bill out before revealing that he is a burglar and Bill, intrigued, accompanies him on a “job.” Cobb seems to have standards as well (he always takes a single earring from the flats he burgles, he claims to want to simply shake up the lives of the people whose houses he breaks into, and he refuses to steal from people who are dirt poor) and that allows Bill to truly bond with him.

At the same time, Bill becomes enamored with The Blonde. After meeting Cobb, he strikes up a conversation with her and learns that she has recently been burgled herself. She is anxious because her ex-boyfriend is a violent mobster and he gets very jealous of her being with other guys. Bill soon learns that he fears her because he had a man killed in her apartment. When Cobb sets Bill up to rob the mobster’s bar, it sets off a dangerous series of events. The more Bill becomes like Cobb, the deeper he falls into implicating himself in a series of murders . . . that the police suspect were perpetrated by a burglar with a very specific m.o.!

Bill is an instantly intriguing protagonist. The way he follows people around is a cool concept (back in college, I did something similar – a far less invasive method, though – I would go to the Pizza Hut lunch buffet, stake out a corner and observe people for three hours while filling my gut). And if Following had explored that long-held character trait of the writer, the film might have been a truly original and bold film. Instead, Following becomes a con film and there are so many of those that it is disappointing how formulaic the film becomes when it starts treading in that direction.

Perhaps the film’s short duration is the result of writer-director Christopher Nolan having nothing significant or new to say about the crime genre. While Cobb embodies a different type of criminal seen on screen (he is a small-time burglar with his own set of principles), he soon evolves into exactly the type of manipulator and tool that viewers are familiar with. Cobb is like Kaiser Soze from The Usual Suspects (reviewed here!) without the hook or hyped legend to back him up.

Jeremy Theobald leads the cast of Following and he has about the screen presence of Jeremy Renner in the film. He is credible in his down-and-out loner persona. Alex Haw steals the scenes he is in by playing a completely believable professional of an atypical craft. Lucy Russell is fine as The Blonde, though she seems to have been cast more for her look (very classic Noir blonde) than for any real on-screen charisma.

The result is that Following is a solid and interesting start for Christopher Nolan, but it is hardly a real foreshadowing of how he landed his subsequent works.

For other works with Lucy Russell, please visit my reviews of:
World War Z
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
Batman Begins

5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Hardly An Epic, Sadly Unincredible, Why Interstellar Is Not All It Should Have Been. . .

The Good: Decent plot, Adequate acting, Moments of character, Metaphysics
The Bad: Not stellar on the character or performance fronts, Huge detail problem that is never addressed
The Basics: (Mostly) Well-constructed, Interstellar is still deeply unsatisfying.


Coming into Oscar Pandering Season, indeed for most of the year, it is easy to say that the film I was most anticipating was Interstellar. I have largely enjoyed the works of Christopher Nolan and I am a fan of Anne Hathaway. Eager for her biggest film since Les Miserables (reviewed here!), I spent the day on a splurge: I went downstate to see Anne Hathaway in IMAX. I was excited to spend the day out and splurge seeing Interstellar in IMAX [Rant #1 – Hey, you, jackasses at the Warner Brothers advertising department! If you’re going to make the claim that “This film will be released two days early in IMAX” live up to your promise! There were no IMAX showings of Interstellar in Michigan on November 5, but your commercials sure made it here! Grumble!]. I otherwise went into Interstellar virtually blind; I managed to avoid spoilers, reviews and previews.  So, having made a day of it . . .

. . . it is hard to discuss my level of disappointment now. I know the moment the film was done that I enjoyed it more than I did Gravity (reviewed here!). But, when I went to assign a number rating on Interstellar, I had to go back to my literal, strict, formula for rating and Gravity, it turns out has a half point on Interstellar by the numbers! My wife asked me before if it was the worst Christopher Nolan film and I said, “No,” thinking that I liked Interstellar more than The Prestige (reviewed here!). While this might be an implicit argument that sometimes films get rated higher based on a first viewing (The Dark Knight Rises, I am most certainly looking at you!), my gut tells me that Interstellar is suffering in the opposite direction . . . and yet . . . and yet. There is much to recommend Interstellar, but there are some gaping holes in the science and science fiction of the film. As a result, I have decided that the best way for me to approach reviewing Interstellar is with a fractured review; the top half will have the spoiler-free critique (Jessica Chastain had a much bigger role than Anne Hathaway, the visual effects were not actually all that spectacular, etc.) and then a more thorough analysis of the problems with Interstellar (which is impossible to do without some spoilers). There will be a clear delineation.

Set in a nebulous future where blight has killed off many major crops and made farmers more important to Earth than engineers and astronauts (not to mention military powers), Cooper is a farmer who was once, briefly, a pilot. Living in the new dust bowl, Cooper farms corn and raises his son – Tom - and daughter, Murph, because humanity has turned so against science and medicine that MRIs no longer exist to find things like cancerous tumors in time to save the life of Cooper’s wife. Murph is a bit of a troublemaker at school and refuses to believe things like the Apollo missions were just government productions devised to bleed the Soviet Union financially dry and she is convinced she has a ghost in her room because books keep falling down. After a particularly violent dust storm floods Murph’s room with dust and dirt, Cooper becomes convinced that there is something going on in Murph’s room; the dust lands along specific lines of gravity and from those lines, Cooper discerns a simple binary message. Something is giving Cooper and Murph coordinates and Cooper (unwittingly taking Murph with him) makes a journey to find what is at those coordinates.

What they find is an old NORAD facility, which has been secretly used by NASA, which has existed in secret long after the public thought it was gone. Cooper meets Amelia Brand, who shows him the truth: in the years to come, the Blight will adapt to corn and the Earth will be unable to feeds its people and NASA is working on an ambitious project to evacuate the population or repopulate a distant planet with humans using embryonic genetic material. Cooper is reunited with Dr. Brand, whom he knew from his past days in NASA, and he meets Doyle and Romilly, along with the robots TARS and CASE, who are intended to go on a mission through a wormhole that appeared 48 years prior out near Saturn. Cooper learness that their mission would be the second endeavor through the wormhole; a decade ago, the Lazarus Project under Dr. Edmund went through the wormhole and sent twelve pods out to nearby planets to try to find a habitable one. Despite Murph being furious at Cooper for going, Cooper joins the mission as the pilot, leaving behind a watch for Murph and hoping to return by the time she is his age.

The crew of the Endurance goes to sleep for two years and wakes up when the ship reaches Saturn and the wormhole there. Cooper pilots the Endurance through the wormhole – in which Brand has a close encounter of sorts – and arriving near the black hole (Gargantua) in a far away galaxy, the crew discovers that three of the twelve probes give them reason to hope. The crew heads right away to Miller’s planet, where the orbit of the planet has such a relativistic distortion that an hour on the planet is equivalent to seven years outside the distortion field! Trying to track down Miller turns disastrous, though; her planet is all-water and while the lander finds her wreckage, they lose Doyle and are delayed while the engines drain of water. Returning to space, Brand and Cooper learn from Romilly that twenty-two years have passed. While he has managed to learn all he can about gravity from the nearby black hole, the years have drained most of the Endurance’s power and now the Endurance has only enough fuel to investigate one of the two remaining close planets. When Cooper exposes Brand’s determination to go to Edmund’s planet as a result of her love for him, he makes the choice to take the ship to Mann’s planet. During that time, Cooper finally starts getting messages from Murph, who has begun working with Dr. Brand on the project to get a worldship off the ground. As the years go by, Murph struggles to keep hope up for saving humanity. Hope is in short supply, though, when Dr. Mann’s optimistic appraisal of the planet he has been marooned on for decades turns out to be way too good to be true and Dr. Brand delivers a deathbed confession to Murph that causes her to question the whole nature of the mission her father is on.

Throughout Interstellar, the lingering question is who They are. They are the people who sent Murph and Cooper a message in the dust by manipulating gravity, They are the ones who created the artificial wormhole and other gravity anomalies, They seem to want humanity to survive, but They do not communicate directly with humanity. Unfortunately, the narrative technique of Interstellar makes this answer troublingly obvious – more about that in the spoilerific section below the rating! For no particular reason that makes much sense, Interstellar opens with elderly people discussing their childhood in the time period that the film begins in. While this is wonderful for creating a sense of time and place – they put plates on the table flipped over because of all the dust – it telegraphs the largest possible arc of the movie in a disappointing way. From almost the first frames of Interstellar, writers Jonathan and Christopher Nolan seem to be obsessed with saying, “Don’t worry, humanity will survive!”

Ultimately, though, that is at the root of the problems with Interstellar; the film tries to make mysteries and then completely lets down the audience with the payoffs to them. The film is riddled with inconsistencies much larger than Murph’s disappearing necklace between a p.o.v. shot change; the audience is meant to feel a sense of peril, but there is no larger sense of jeopardy because we already know humanity lives on. Similarly, Cooper opens the film as a scientist of such strength and conviction that it gave me hope that should Matthew McConaughey win any awards for his portrayal of Cooper in Interstellar, he could not reasonably waste time thanking the Divine in his acceptance speech. But for all of the rigid science of Cooper’s views, much of Interstellar is about faith. Anne Hathaway’s Amelia has her most impassioned speech of the film about the power of love; Murph is an educated scientist whose devotion to the cause borders on the fanatical in the absence of any reasonable reinforcement for decades!

This is not a complaint about the final act’s metaphysical nature. In fact, I enjoyed that. After a very literal film about the perils of space travel, Interstellar evolves and goes into cerebral territory much akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have no problem with cerebral science fiction; indeed, I enjoyed Love (reviewed here!) more than most and more than I did Interstellar. But for a film that is supposed to be about human resilience and hope in the face of potential extinction, Interstellar really cheaps out with a faith angle that is not at all scientific.

On the performance front, Interstellar is adequate. Some of the casting is a little weird; Mackenzie Foy looks like a pre-teen version of Anne Hathaway, yet her character Murph grows up to be played by Jessica Chastain and then Ellen Burstyn, so there’s really no clear evolution in how her body changes throughout her life cycle! That said, all three actresses make incredible use of their time on screen – Foy especially is a scene stealer. Jessica Chastain has a powerfully substantive role in Interstellar and what is perhaps most impressive about her performance is how she sells some of the most ridiculous leaps a scientist could make as plausible. For plot purposes, Murph realizes something impossibly obscure and Chastain acts around the improbability remarkably well.

Interstellar has an impressive supporting cast, led by Anne Hathaway. Hathaway is given remarkably little to do; her character of Amelia seems cold initially and Hathaway has to play the part with a bad-enough poker face for Cooper to realize that Amelia has an attachment to Edmund and she does that. But Hathaway has only one big scene in Interstellar where she is otherwise given enough space to act and give her character any dimension. Ironically, Matt Damon’s character of Dr. Mann is in Interstellar for far less time, but he is given more to do with greater range. Damon is able to evolve Mann from good-natured and grateful to unsettling and unhinged, with careful gradations in his behaviors! Wes Bentley, Michael Caine, Topher Grace, Casey Affleck, John Lithgow and David Gyasi (wow, Interstellar sure is a sausage fest – are all the women in this bleak future out farming, too?!) all have moments that make their characters watchable and/or interesting. But no one in the film really shines and makes the viewer think “wow, that’s an amazing performance!”

That includes Matthey McConaughey as Cooper. McConaughy plays Cooper as a reluctant leader who is determined to juggle two potentially opposite things; save the Earth and get back to Earth before his daughter dies! McConaughey is good for the film’s physical moments and he does most of the jargon just fine, but his performance is nothing superlative.

Sadly, the same can be said about the special effects in Interstellar. I was psyched to go see Interstellar in IMAX and once the film finally got off Earth, I became excited again. Just as Prometheus (reviewed here!) made great use of the massive IMAX canvas for illustrating a tiny ship next to a massive planet (it’s a very different effect on Blu-Ray on a small screen!), Interstellar features a tiny space ship next to Jupiter. And the spherical wormhole is pretty cool. And the trip through the wormhole is appropriately trippy. And the film’s climactic, metaphysical, event is awesome. But in between . . . meh. Director Christopher Nolan tells a few cool things using effects – the lander hitting a frozen cloud in the atmosphere of Mann’s planet is neat – but the effects are more mundane and obvious than they are incredible or truly special.

In fact, in the quest to make some good special effects frequently works to the detriment of the story in Interstellar. The Coopers are farmers in a society that values farmers; why is their house falling apart?! Seriously, we have better windows and doors today than the Coopers do and there is no real rational reason for that to be so (see the spoilerific section for more on this!).

The result is a surprisingly middle-of-the-road science fiction piece that does what it promises in the film’s first few moments - it tells the story of how humanity was saved – it just does not do it very well. In fact, Doctor Who pounded the same theme on the importance of exploration in the recent episode “Kill The Moon” (reviewed here!); that might have had an equally preposterous underlying supposition, but at least it was shorter!

6/10

So, beyond this point is the crux of my issues with Interstellar - SPOILERS ABOUND! READ BEYOND HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK TO ENJOYING THE MOVIEGOING EXPERIENCE!!!

Interstellar is plagued with some serious problems that the film is unable to reconcile and it is unfortunate for how a film that tries to be smart ends up being so very, very stupid. First, the narrative technique; old people discussing life in the future, where they were children. The Nolans seem to think viewers who they want to be smart enough to understand physics and philosophy will be unable to grasp that the narrative technique they use to establish the precepts of their near-future also deny the viewer of any question as to whether the mission of the Endeavor and Lazarus Project will be successful! This film is not like “The Inner Light” (reviewed here!) where all that is going to survive are the planet’s stories.

The second big problem is They. “They” are referred to as being interested in saving humanity and giving Cooper the coordinates to the NORAD facility. They set off a story that is inherently cyclical. Unlike Inception (reviewed here!) where the movie may be viewed as a loop that the audience is working back to, Interstellar depends upon the loop. In fact, the film is all about the loop. Unfortunately, the nature of the loop is obvious from almost the very first moments of the film. When a time/space anomaly is detected that is clearly artificial and has such specific effects as coding a message to a single person in a specific place and time, the nature of that loop is pretty obvious. Anyone who likes science fiction will know that Cooper is sending himself on the mission.

But, wow, does Cooper go the long way around! “They” are influencing gravity to make messages in dust. That ability could be used, any time after Cooper has left on his mission, to write messages in the dust without causing a paradox. In fact, if the Cooper house had just had modern windows, “They” could have written pretty decent, concrete, messages in the dust on the windows. Cooper could have written something in the dust that would have made Murph’s ridiculous leap make sense, something like “Second hand!” But alas, Interstellar does not do anything quite that smart, even as it is appearing to be smart.

That is because the entire conceit of the movie defies any sense of logic and reason. I understand paradoxes and I love narrative loops. I have absolutely no problem with effect preceding cause . . . but it has to make sense. Sadly, Interstellar doesn’t. Even non-linear narratives need to have a sense of reason; if time is a loop, events must conspire such that the first time through time, people or planets get to a point where the loop may occur (i.e. if the Earth is destroyed by all-out nuclear war before the time machine is invented, a human from the future cannot come back to influence the past). The reason it fails to make sense comes during the metaphysical climax to the movie. Cooper does not do enough to influence his own timeline to make events happen after he and TARS enter the black hole. Cooper should have created the gravity anomaly that crashed his first mission, but the Nolans forgot to address that.

The wormhole is a problem that is a macguffin that is not satisfactorily addressed. The Lazarus Project and the Endeavor are only able to go out to a distant galaxy thanks to the wormhole. The wormhole was supposedly created by Them, which would be Cooper and TARS, but they forgot to make it before reality on the other side the event horizon collapsed. Therefore, someone else had to make the wormhole and the only implication in the film is that it is hyper-evolved humans who exist in five dimensions in the distant future. But, here’s the problem; without Cooper getting saved by them, they can never exist. Cooper’s own story which puts him in the distant galaxy on the other side of the wormhole hinges on him getting messages back to Murph in both the past and present. Cooper’s message cannot be transmitted unless he and TARS solve the equation from within the event horizon. The choices then are that he is saved by aliens who have mastered the fifth dimension or that he and TARS create the wormhole to save themselves. Otherwise, cause and effect be damned; humans would not have come through the wormhole to evolve into fifth dimensional beings to save Cooper! They couldn’t have left the planet to get there. So, that puts Interstellar once again in remarkably unsatisfying territory; Cooper and TARS forgot to engineer the wormhole so they were saved by unseen aliens who manufactured a wormhole . . . why?!

Seriously, if we’re to buy that aliens save humans what. the. hell.?! Many, many galaxies away, aliens bend time and space to discover humans and they commit themselves to saving them . . . by putting a hole in space not really near enough to them to be particularly useful. Ugh!

For other works with Jessica Chastain, please check out my reviews of:
The Martian
The Help

6/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Summer Blockbuster Season’s Big Legitimate Hit Is Made With Man Of Steel!

The Good: Character, Most of the performances, Special effects
The Bad: Plot progression is painfully predictable.
The Basics: A complete reboot of Superman, Man Of Steel presents a more angsty version of Clark Kent and Kal-El and a bigger threat to Earth in his first real adventure.


I am not a fan of Superman. The character spent decades as a monolithic ideal who evolved from an ultra-powerful man who helped cats out of trees into a blandly virtuous, virtually invincible fighter for peace, justice, the “American Way” and the protection of Earth. In recent years, the Superman comic books have moved away from the absolutism that defined the character, but he’s not been placed in a situation like Wonder Woman where to save the world from an unstoppable killing machine, a human being has to die, like Wonder Woman did in The OMAC Project (reviewed here!). So, the idea of the new reboot of the Superman cinematic franchise with Man Of Steel had no inherent draw to me and, if anything, I was biased against it.

First, I felt bad for Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh. For all of the problems with Superman Returns (reviewed here!), Routh’s performance was not the reason the film failed. Routh took the blame much like Eric Bana did for Hulk (reviewed here!). And after seeing Immortals (reviewed here!), I was not convinced Henry Cavill was the one to take up the role of Clark Kent/Superman. But, with Man Of Steel he lands it and the film works becoming a surprisingly compelling super hero film that ups the stakes for the DC (cinematic) universe and gives viewers a smarter superhero film than they have seen in some time.

As an environmental calamity sweeps over the ancient planet Krypton, the infamous General Zod seizes the opportunity for a political coup. Opposing his political action, but agreeing with his desire to save the Kryptonian people, the scientist, Jor-El, makes a final bid to save the genetic coding of the planned Kryptonians. Sending his newborn son, Kal-El - the first naturally born Kryptonian in generations - off-planet, Jor-El seeks to save the Kryptonian genome. With his political revolution ending in failure, Zod and his forces are sentenced to a sleep prison in the phantom zone where they survive the destruction of Krypton.

Meanwhile, on Earth Kal-El grows up as the son of Jonathan and Martha Kent. Raised to be virtuous, kind, and giving, Jonathan also raised his adopted son to be cautious and not reveal his extraordinary abilities – like amazing strength and speed. Despite some incidents, like saving a bus load of children from an accident as a youth, Clark Kent (as Kal-El goes by in his life “passing” as a human) gets by. In his young adulthood, though, he begins to feel isolated and he starts to avoid people in order to not have his incredible abilities discovered. His journey of self discovery brings him to an abandoned craft frozen beneath a glacier that was also from Krypton. There, under the tutalege of a holographic version of his father he learns of his Kryptonian heritage.

In exploring his abilities, Kal-El comes to the attention of the U.S. military and Lois Lane, intrepid reporter from Metropolis. The curiosity about his nature, though, quickly is trumped when an alien invasion force arrives. Led by General Zod, Jor-El’s enemy, the Kryptonian force comes for Kal-El and when Zod’s forces begin laying waste to Earth, Kal-El decides to step up and become humanity’s savior.

Having recently watched the 1970’s Superman (reviewed here!), it is worth noting that Man Of Steel distances itself well from that vision of Superman. Man Of Steel is darker and works to fit Clark Kent into more of a real world than a fantastic or cinematic rendition of our world (though everyone looks Hollywood beautiful in Man Of Steel). Thus, Man Of Steel sacrifices much of the charm of Christopher Reeves’s Superman in favor of an outsider protagonist who is caught between using his powers to help people and struggling to avoid persecution that his alien nature will bring from the xenophobic and fearful humans (who could desperately use his help).

The biggest tone change is the lack of humor in Man Of Steel. This Clark Kent is not an “aww shucks” farm boy, he’s a guy who has methodically covered his tracks to avoid making a splash until normal human incident after normal human incident conspires to reveal his true nature (by him using his extraordinary and inhuman abilities to help other people). Man Of Steel has a few amusing lines, but for the most part, it is a much more stark, character-driven piece with a protagonist who is far more consciously created as an outsider than prior renditions (at least cinematically) of Superman have been. This, naturally, is expected of the director of Watchmen (reviewed here!) and Zack Snyder’s trend for delivering characters who face overwhelming odds and making smarter-than-average super hero films remains unchallenged.

Significant in Man Of Steel is the tone. The set-up for Clark Kent and coming to terms with his identity as Kal-El is appropriately belabored and conflicted, drawn out until General Zod returns to the narrative. But when Zod arrives at Earth, the film takes a somewhat troubling turn toward the familiar. Man Of Steel was delayed from a planned release last year and while the studio’s reason might be that they wanted to get the effects (especially 3-D conversion) right, it is not long into Zod’s reign of terror that loyal viewers of DC-based films will suspect that they did not want viewers to start noting the plot comparisons (the whole “under siege” plot) with The Dark Knight Rises (reviewed here!). And as one of the few fans of the cinematic Green Lantern (reviewed here!), the whole DC Universe problem with Man Of Steel is certainly the lack of presence of the space cops of the galaxy. After all, prior incarnations which had Clark Kent as the sole surviving Kryptonian did not exactly warrant the presence of the interstellar police force, but in Man Of Steel, Zod and his allies come in force with an invasion plan and weapons which seem like they would fall pretty safely under the purview of the Green Lantern Corps . . .

. . . so, Man Of Steel is plotted like a super hero origin story. That’s fine, it is what it is. The character front has Man Of Steel making a fresh take on the familiar elements of the Superman story and it makes Kal-El’s alien nature – something which the graphic novels have only focused on in the past few decades as a source of conflict with the more refined version of Lex Luthor – an issue that is presented in an unfortunately realistic way. Yes, human beings are not the most accepting race and Jonathan Kent is proven right for urging his son to be cautious in his exposing himself to humans. Human xenophobia and fear is a predominate theme in Man Of Steel (much like fear was in Batman Begins) and writers David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan do a decent job of making the film about more than just an alien with incredible abilities and, instead, about broader themes about the state of humanity and how we treat one another. Fortunately, Clark Kent’s ethics prevent him from simply imposing growth on our backwards planet – a point which is driven home when General Zod and his soldiers come to extort humanity and destroy the masses who cannot reasonably stand in his way.

On the acting front, I wanted to start my commentary of Man Of Steel with the note that my longstanding disdain of Russell Crowe’s narrow acting range does not prevent me from openly acknowledging that he takes the role of Jor-El (who comparatively has exceptionally little screentime) and makes him empathetic and seem like a father deeply torn between having the life he wants (with his family) and trying to protect his son and his planet. Crowe is decent for the part of Jor-El and his performance makes the mentoring that Jor-El provides his son seem like more than banal exposition or bland moralizing and actually seem inspiring.

The supporting cast in Man Of Steel is fleshed out well. Like Crowe, Kevin Costner is given the role of Jonathan Kent, which could have been presented as campy or over-the-top and Costner delivers subtle and restrained. Michael Shannon’s General Zod is powerful in voice and posture, even if the character is incredibly monolithic and utterly unsympathetic and Richard Schiff and Christopher Meloni make their roles as Dr. Emil Hamilton and Colonel Hardy seem like quite a bit more than background characters. Schiff and Meloni embody their characters in such a way that makes them seem like their entire existence does not revolve around Kal-El, like they were living in a world before his appearance and they have other things going on besides him and the plot of Man Of Steel. I like the sense that such comparatively minor characters have an identity that is not simply built around the one story. Laurence Fishburne is characteristically great as Lois Lane’s boss at The Daily Planet, Perry White.

That brings us to Amy Adams. Adams plays Lois Lane in Man Of Steel and she brings all the pluck and determination fans of the Superman franchise would expect from Lois Lane. More importantly, Adams has great on-screen chemistry with the film’s star Henry Cavill.

Henry Cavill is more than just a pair of toned pectoral muscles and abs that won’t quit as Kal-El. Just as Christopher Reeve brought a wholesome and obviously kind disposition to his version of Clark Kent, Cavill is able to portray conflict and uncertainty well . . . then change it up plausibly with powerful and unafraid. At his best, Henry Cavill uses his eyes to emote and express the idea that Kal-El is terrified of what the people in the world will do to him, while knowing that he could change everything. His scenes opposite Michael Shannon’s Zod give him the chance to both show of physical strength and spout noble aphorisms.

On the effects front, Man Of Steel is good, but not (pardon the pun) super. I cannot speak to the 3-D, but the standard CG effects look great, though many of the attack sequences happen at a speed that does not allow the viewer to appreciate them or the consequences of them. So, for example, the shots of Kal-El’s cape when he is in his Kryptonian suits looks real (Snyder and his effects team got the effects right) and the digital models of Cavill when he is flying look like they are in the real world as well. But at the other end of the spectrum, characters moving with super speed are basically a blink of an eye and buildings fall and ships fire without enough time to truly appreciate the level of special effects devastation as the scenes are occurring. Snyder owes a great debt to Firefly (reviewed here!) for the style with the camerawork blending with the effects and at times it is nauseating, but in general the effects are decent.

Despite the issues where Man Of Steel is plotted like a familiar super hero origin story, the film feels fresher than most and is not only solidly entertaining, it makes a decent commentary on the human and alien here on Earth.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Catwoman
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 - 1997
Supergirl
Wonder Woman

7/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the film reviews I have written.

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Christopher Nolan Makes Superhero Films Respectable With The Dark Knight Trilogy!

The Good: Interesting characters, Great thematic development, Amazing acting, Generally good plot progression.
The Bad: Pacing, Predictability of the final act
The Basics: With Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the Batman mythos with The Dark Knight Trilogy, viewers are treated to a sufficiently adult superhero story that nevertheless drags at times.


As one who does not go back and re-rate products and media, it is a rare thing for me to have an opportunity to make commentary on something that I might have rated unfairly the first time around. When considering individual films versus the entire series or boxed set of a movie, there is the opportunity to consider how the pieces fit together. Sometimes, the sum of the parts is greater, like with The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (reviewed here!), but more often than not, the full video collection forces one to realize that the pieces might not fit together as well as fans hope. With The Dark Knight Trilogy, watching Christopher Nolan’s Batman films back to back to back, one realizes how much the final act truly suffers in comparison.

I am one of the rare critics who was not entirely bowled over by Batman Begins; I found it slower and more ponderous than clever and engaging. Rewatching it, the pacing does not bother me nearly as much, and while I respect the thematic development in the movie, his exploration of fear is not as well-developed as the themes in the other movies. On the other end of the Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises seems disturbingly predictable, formulaic, and unsophisticated coming off the complexity and perfection of The Dark Knight. Viewed in order, in the eight hours of The Dark Knight Trilogy is, hands-down the best superhero film series yet made and it owes much of that to the writing and the able direction of Christopher Nolan, but it is not at all perfect.

Comprised of: Batman Begins (reviewed here!), The Dark Knight (reviewed here!), and The Dark Knight Rises (reviewed here!), The Dark Knight Trilogy assembles the three films and adds the value of two bonus discs.

In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne returns from years of wandering the world to explore what gives criminals their power to Gotham City, a city his murdered parents were influential in cleaning up. There, he rejoins his father’s company and uses the research and development department to equip himself for a nighttime war on crime in Gotham City. As Batman, he begins to strike fear into the mob, while during the day posing as an irresponsible playboy. Bruce Wayne’s efforts clash with the machinations of Dr. Jonathan Crane, the psychologist at Arkham Asylum, where he experiments on the criminally insane and the League Of Shadows, which seeks to destroy Gotham City as a statement against the decadence of the world.

After years of fighting crime, The Dark Knight sees the potential to retire when Gotham City’s new district attorney, Harvey Dent, begins his own war on crime in the city by prosecuting the mobsters. Wayne’s romantic life is complicated by the fact that his childhood love is romantically involved with Harvey Dent and his vigilante actions are met with resolve of the psychopathic Joker. Meant to bring chaos to the attempts at order of Batman and Jim Gordon, the Joker strikes at the heart of the city by attacking Rachel Dawes and working to corrupt Harvey Dent.

Eight years later, with Batman having been vilified, a mysterious woman breaks into Wayne Manor to steal a copy of Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints. As Wayne Enterprises stock suffers, with the research and development department sitting on an incredible power source that could be perverted into a weapon, a thug named Bane makes an assault on the Gotham City stock exchange. Bane shatters Bruce Wayne and deports him while taking over Gotham City. Cut off from the rest of the world when Bane steals the reactor and destroys the bridges out of the city, Bane crushes the spirit of the city by exposing the deception of Jim Gordon and holds Gotham City hostage. Bruce Wayne must physically recover, return to Gotham City and resume his role as Batman to save the people who turned against him.

The Dark Knight Trilogy smartly develops themes in each film and those themes interact well with one another. From fear to the struggle between order and chaos to an exploration on the nature of consequences, The Dark Knight Trilogy strives to be more than just a repetitive saga of superhero films. By developing themes over the course of the three films, Christopher Nolan and his co-writers manage to shake up the familiar and often formulaic superhero stories.

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy is an epic of ever-increasing sacrifice on the part of Bruce Wayne. Starting as the man who has everything, Bruce Wayne’s character arc is far less defined by his romantic entanglements, as it is by the steep curve of his level of sacrifice. Bruce Wayne gives up more and more in order to combat evil in Gotham City. While his mansion is rebuilt, Bruce Wayne’s adherence to rules and his singleminded ambition are challenged before he encounters an enemy who he might have to give up his life to defeat.

The Dark Knight Trilogy is supported by wonderful supporting characters. Bruce Wayne is not in his fight alone. Supported personally by the family butler, Alfred, supplied professionally by his father’s trusted aid Lucius Fox, and directed on the streets by the one uncorrupted cop, Jim Gordon (and later Blake), Bruce Wayne becomes a viable character who seems to have a reasonable investment in the city he is trying to save. Instead of simply being a superhero motivated by some sense of idealism, The Dark Knight Trilogy instead develops a character whose family ties and then his own friendships motivate him to fight organized crime.

Just as the characters in The Dark Knight Trilogy are compelling and developed enough to have complex motivations that make for a surprisingly sophisticated series of movies, the performers are all top-notch and playing at the top of their game. Consistently great are Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne), Michael Caine (Alfred), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), and Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon), with wonderful supporting performances by Cillian Murphy (Dr. Crane), Liam Neeson, Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent), Heath Ledger (The Joker), Nestor Carbonell (the Mayor), Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Blake).

On DVD and Blu-Ray, The Dark Knight Trilogy includes the three films, with bonus discs for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, with enough behind-the-scenes content to please the fans.

Cinephiles enjoy The Dark Knight Trilogy and while the fans of superhero films reasonably go gaga over the set, discriminating film critics have to admit that the Trilogy is hardly perfect. It’s close, but the pacing and inevitable predictability of The Dark Knight Trilogy is off enough to make it just shy of absolute perfection.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman
Supergirl
Wonder Woman - Season 1

8.5/10

For other film reviews, check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Grim But Neither Dismal Or Disappointing, The Dark Knight Rises Will Please The Discriminating Fans.

The Good: Acting, Plot, Character, Themes, Continuity/Style
The Bad: I could have lived without Miranda Tate/Marion Cotillard, Some of the premise is hard to buy.
The Basics: In the sprawling conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman, The Dark Knight Rises pits Bruce Wayne against a brutish general and a catburglar who inspires him to once again take up the mantle of Batman.


Christopher Nolan had a near-impossible task in following up The Dark Knight (reviewed here!). The difficulty was not in how to follow the plot or where to take the characters, but how to develop Bruce Wayne (and Batman) from where he was left into a new story that is both compelling and utilizes villains in a way that does not feel familiar from prior Batman films. In that sense, The Dark Knight Rises is the success many of the fans have been clamoring for. The film effectively concludes the current Batman Saga and it does so in a way that is (it is hard to call such a depressing film “satisfying”) consistent with the mood and direction of its predecessors.

The Dark Knight Rises is not one of Christopher Nolan’s perfect films, but it is close and it remains better than at least ninety percent of the other films ever made (or, at least, that I’ve seen). Because there seems to be a lot of vehemence by fans (who have not seen The Dark Knight Rises) against critics who do not consider the film “flawless,” I’ll dispense with the negatives right up front. First, The Dark Knight Rises hinges on a premise that is somewhat hard to buy. Without explicitly referencing the Joker, The Dark Knight Rises proves his ultimate thesis from The Dark Knight; that when the chips are down people will turn on one another like a pack of dogs. When Gotham City comes under siege, the masses turn on one another and seem to largely accept Bane's rule as "freedom." As an anti-capitalist, it is pretty offensive to think that The Dark Knight Rises equates tearing off the shackles of economic slavery with the willingness to follow a criminal psychopath. Moreover, the idea of "exile" from the beseiged Gotham works fine for winter, but it was not winter when the city fell; how there was not a mass exodus of swimmers is a bit tough buy.

The only other issue of note with The Dark Knight Rises came in the form of Marion Cotillard’s Miranda Tate. Cotillard plays opposite Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and the two have no real chemistry and the character of Miranda Tate did not add enough to the mix to justify her presence. I could have lived without her in the film and felt the movie would have done just fine with a strategic rearrange around her character. Sure, her character brought symmetry to the Trilogy - and it is highly recommended viewers rewatch Batman Begins (reviewed here!) before checking this film out, but for the die-hard fans, Cotillard's true role is utterly unsurprising. In fact, for a film that makes so many implicit connections - like Holly being Selina's sister, the iconic moment where Bane injures Batman, etc. - based on the established Batman universe of the books, Miranda Tate's role is more insulting than enlightening. But more than that, outside the convenient symmetry, she adds nothing to the mix. In other words, in a ship filled with familiar characters and compelling new ones – Bane, Selina Kyle, and John Blake – Miranda Tate just felt like deadweight or a symbol.

Eight years after Batman had Commissioner Gordon begin a chase that allowed Harvey Dent to die as an apparent hero, times have changed in Gotham City. Bruce Wayne is no longer the flamboyant playboy and Commissioner Gordon and his police force have effectively cleaned up the streets of Gotham City. While Bruce Wayne is drawn out of his seclusion in the rebuilt Wayne Manor by Wayne Enterprises business, he encounters Selina Kyle at a benefit for Harvey Dent. When Kyle steals his mother's pearls and his fingerprints, Bruce Wayne sees a larger plot brewing. Forewarned is not forearmed, though, and soon Bane begins a series of attacks on Gotham City.

Liberating prisoners to create his own private army and capturing Bruce Wayne to make him suffer as he destroys the peace of Gotham City are steps in Bane’s larger plan, a plan that is solidified by isolating the island and arming a nuclear weapon. As Gordon and John Blake work to find Bruce Wayne and stop Bane, Selina Kyle faces her own demons and as Gotham City crumbles, Batman must overcome the wounds Bane left him with and return to Gotham City to save its populace.

Bane is a much more convincing and interesting character than he has been portrayed as on the big screen before now. In fact, seeing Tom Hardy as Bane made me go back to look up Bane’s appearances in the Batman graphic novels, as he is in the only Batman book I have in my collection, Knightfall (volume 1 is reviewed here!). In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane is an effective and ruthless general. Nolan is smart to make him more than simply an agent of chaos; he is not just a villain who wants to watch the world burn. While Nolan's motivation for Bane as a criminal agent of freedom is fine, it is not quite as compelling as Selina Kyle's motivations (i.e. to save her sister and get a clean slate). While Nolan ultimately gives him sufficient motivation by the end of the film to make him a compelling villain, in many ways, Bane is just a tool. And he is damn near impossible to understand in many moments with his mask in place!

As for the special effects, the best thing that can be said about the special effects is that the film does not feel like a special effects film. Instead, the various tech elements that Lucius Fox cooks up and Batman utilizes look and feel very real, lending a credibility to the action scenes. The grounding of the special effects helps the viewer remain rooted in a very dark, but compelling world.

Which brings us to the themes. One of the key elements that has separated Nolan’s Batman films from other cinematic Batman endeavors is the strong use of compelling, deeply-intelligent, well-developed themes. More than simply a generic battle of good versus evil (Superman, I’m looking in your direction!), Nolan’s Batman endeavors have a thematic resonance to them that outlasts the action-adventure elements. In the case of The Dark Knight Rises, the film is deeply concerned with consequences and responsibility. The theme is developed well with both Bruce Wayne/Batman and Selena Kyle as she grows throughout the film.

On the acting front, the returning cast gives their usual impeccable performances. Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine provide constants that help the viewer buy into the fact that this is the same general world we left at the end of The Dark Knight. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a wonderful addition to the ensemble and he brings an energy and enthusiasm as John Blake that replaces well the character of Rachel Dawes. My perennial favorite Anne Hathaway takes the role of Selina Kyle and makes it her own. I suppose I shall have to go back to my argument advocating Hathaway for Wonder Woman (that’s here, be sure to check it out!) and change all the “if’s” in relation to her pulling off the action role of Catwoman to “now that she has” because Hathaway is entirely convincing when she does the physical work as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises.

Tom Hardy is unrecognizable and wonderful as Bane. A far cry from a role like Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis, the role of Bane requires him to be both the tactician and the brute and he pulls it off. Hardy is at his best, though, when he must use his body language (not just brute strength) to emote in scenes opposite Christian Bale and he lands those scenes.

As for Christian Bale, he returns as Bruce Wayne with the intensity that has made him so plausible in prior outings. He is given more to do as Bruce Wayne that requires him to be a more physical actor and he lives up to all our expectations of him.

Ultimately, The Dark Knight Rises might not be flawless, but for the discriminating fans who have been dreading that the film cannot possibly live up to the hype, it is time to relax; The Dark Knight Rises is a worthy conclusion of a dark story that refuses to give viewers an easy answer or replace substance and reality with a feel-good ending.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman
Supergirl
Wonder Woman - Season 1

9/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Inspired Brilliance Starts The Career Of Christopher Nolan: Memento

The Good: Incredible acting, Excellent concept, Interesting characters, A lot of good bonuses on DVD
The Bad: It's going to take real study to figure out the whole truth
The Basics: A man with no short-term memory works a hunt for the man who killed his wife backwards in a stylish, clever movie by Christopher Nolan.


Guy Pearce is an actor whose day came and went rather quickly, it seems. He was robbed of his rightful top billing in L.A. Confidential (reviewed here!) because he lacked celebrity and he was given the lead in such uninspired films as The Time Machine. And in between, he created the magnum opus of his career thus far with Memento, a film where he looks more like Brad Pitt (a la Fight Club) than Guy Pearce. The truth is Memento has been on my list for years and having finally seen is, I'm glad I saw it. Memento makes me wish that underrated movies would be re-released in theaters every couple of years until they "take." Memento is a high-concept movie that I'm unsure the movie-going public appreciated enough in 2000, when it was released.

Leonard suffers from a rather serious brain disorder where cannot form any new memories, so his short-term memory never gets archived into his long-term memory. Thus, roughly every five minutes, Leonard's life restarts. This is problematic as he is searching for the man who killed his wife an indeterminate amount of time ago. Starting with the moment Leonard believes he has found his wife's killer, Memento works backward to through a sequence of events that put him at the moment of vindication.

Leonard functions by taking Polaroid photographs of people he encounters and making notes about them. This allows him to do such things as figure out which car is his, define allegiances and know where he is bunking. Leonard tattoos the most important notes onto his body so they become permanent. The thing is, other people may - or may not - be using Leonard's system of keeping track of his life against him.

Memento is most respectfully reviewed with a minimalist review. My review is successful only if it gets you to watch this film and the truth is, it's exceptionally hard to do that at length without delving into the complexities that make Memento worth seeing. It's unfortunate, because ideally, the viewer should go into a first viewing of Memento with minimal information. The movie gives the viewer all they need in order to figure out what is going on, what the truth is, and how the movie works. So, for example, one of the characters explicitly postulates that Leonard's disorder would be like living his life backwards, not knowing if he was coming or going, which basically informs any viewer who hasn't picked up the technique of the movie (i.e. that it is going backwards) by that point what is going on.

This is an ambitious project for director Christopher Nolan. This was his first major studio, successful, feature-length project and it's amazing that his career started on such a high note (though I suppose I ought not to be surprised as I enjoyed his more recent The Prestige, reviewed here!). Nolan takes a complicated screenplay (which he wrote based on the short story "Memento Mori") and executes it with flair, style and distinction. Nolan does more than use a plot technique to make the movie distinctive or weird, but he creates a visual style that immediately transforms the viewer's reality. The opening credit sequence drags the viewer backward and it's a very intriguing and intoxicating method for getting the viewer into the film's mindset.

The characters in Memento are instantly engrossing, starting with Leonard. Leonard's condition could be all that is used to define his character, but wisely Nolan does not allow his disorder to be the end all and be all of his personality. Leonard has love, loss and no small amount of obsession, making his character interesting and watchable. His disorder makes his lack of immediate passion for vengeance realistic; scenes exploring the continual sense of loss Leonard experiences over the death of his wife, give him heart that make him memorable and essentially human.

Leonard is surrounded by intriguing characters, who include Burt, Teddy and Natalie. Burt is simply the hotel lobby clerk who pops up through the movie to amuse the viewer and jerk Leonard around. Far more important are Burt and Natalie. Natalie is a woman who appears to be aiding Leonard in his quest to find the man who killed his wife. She is sympathetic, sad and she captivates the attention of both Leonard and the viewer.

Teddy is the character who seems most ambiguous and troubling to both Leonard and the viewer. He's slick and it's easy to view him as a con man and the truth is part of that comes from the way the movie is structured and some from the way Joe Pantoliano plays Teddy. Pantoliano treats the viewer to his wide-mouthed smile and jocular speeches from the beginning, making us feel like he's trying to pull one over on both Leonard and the viewer. Pantoliano is great at that sort of role and in Memento, he creates the masterpiece performance of sleazy sidekick.

Carrie-Anne Moss plays Natalie and her performance is the one that shakes the viewer. Moss transforms Natalie throughout the movie in such a way that jerks at the viewer, not simply for the character manipulations but by the genius portrayal Moss gives. To explain more and go into depth about how specifically Moss is genius in her performance would give too much away about the twists in the movie, so please take it on my word that her acting in the movie is amazing and worth the price of admission alone.

Guy Pearce is exceptional as Leonard. Throughout the film, Leonard tells the story of Sammy Jankis, someone who suffered from a similar condition as he does. Leonard suggests that Sammy was faking his condition and the "tells" he indicates clued him into the possible acting on Sammy's part are never present in Leonard's character. Pearce fully embraces the character and completely sells the audience on who he is and why he is the way he is.

In the end, Memento is an exceptional movie that I'm going to have to go back and rewatch several times. To put it all together, to make a coherent argument about who is truly telling the truth is a real task. There are some concepts that become undeniable and wrenching (again, I'm not going to ruin the surprises for you), but there are giant leaps in Memento that seem up for debate. The DVD has an exceptional number of bonus features to help the interested viewer get into the story even more and it's almost worth making a guarantee that if you pick the disc up and watch Memento, you'll want to watch and listen to those bonus features.

This is not a movie the viewer can give half (or less) attention to. It is a movie that demands attention, but it rewards the viewer with its attention to detail and the integrity and interest of the story created. It is an incredible debut and well worth the buy.

For other works with Stephen Tobolowsky, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax
Peep World
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Heroes - Season 2
Adaptation.

9.5/10

For other movie reviews, be sure to visit my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Better Than The Illusionist, The Prestige Does Not Hinge On The Reveal

The Good: Good acting, interesting plot, themes, Some elements of character
The Bad: Character sleight of hand falls through
The Basics: While sometimes long and ponderous, the tale of obsession in The Prestige makes the film more than a simple magic show.


When I was in college, one of my favorite professors, who was himself a student of Melville’s works, shared with me that the most true adaptation his mentor had found of Moby Dick in the cinema was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (reviewed here!). It makes sense, I suppose if one views Khan as Ahab and Captain Kirk as the white whale. I suppose next time I run into William Shatner at a convention I ought to ask him how he feels about being the white whale. I have the urge, after seeing The Prestige to contact my former professor and ask him if that – the Trek movie as superior Moby Dick transposition – is still true.

Robert Angier and Alfred Borden are magicians who start out as assistants to another magician and his technical wizard, Cutter. When Alfred’s pursuit of a magic trick accidentally kills Angier’s wife, Robert and Alfred have a falling out. Through a series of events, Angier shoots Alfred, Alfred sabotages Angier’s new routine. Cutter eventually offers Angier a chance to perform again, while Alfred pursues a family. Angier’s career is sabotaged again by Alfred, who develops a trick called the transported man, which Angier cannot figure out and he becomes obsessed with possessing. His obsession causes him to journey to America, forsake his relationships, and puts him on a collision course with Alfred that will change both their lives.

The thing about The Prestige is that, as educated movie viewers and people who are watching a movie on magic, we are waiting for the reversals, the tricks. This anticipation makes us ready for almost everything that comes our way. And The Prestige does not disappoint . . . for the most part.

Robert Angier begins the story as the less interesting of the two protagonists. Angier seems less clever and less intriguing than the moody, adept Alfred. His obsession with besting Alfred makes him into the more interesting character as the movie progresses and his character’s resolution makes the movie worth watching. His journey to see Tesla is compelling and the results of that trip are clever and reveal the true depth of his devotion to his art.

Amidst that, there is still Alfred. Alfred’s trick, the transported man, is supposed to intrigue the viewer. Angier becomes obsessed with how Alfred is doing the trick, which even Cutter cannot figure out. The thing is, The Prestige gives the viewers the answer, but far too late. By the time Alfred’s secrets are revealed, the viewer does not care, we’re far more invested in Angier’s story. Indeed, when the revelation came, my reaction honestly was, “I had forgotten to care about how he was doing his trick.” Angier’s story is so much more captivating than Alfred’s, especially by that point.

The net result is a film out of balance. No doubt director Christopher Nolan and his co-writers Jonathan Nolan and novelist Christopher Priest wanted to keep the viewer engaged and guessing up until the end. When the viewers fail to care about guessing about how Alfred does his masterpiece trick, the writers and director fall short of their goal.

Where they cannot be faulted is in the acting. Nolan once again utilizes Christian Bale and Michael Caine, with Hugh Jackman taking the lead. Scarlett Johansson is also highly billed in The Prestige, though her role is far less integral. Indeed, the role of Johansson as Olivia appears more as a plot support than anything organic on the character front. It is hard to see her purpose other than to help reveal . . . well, the prestige (the magical term whose jargon is explained at the beginning of the movie). The shining cameos come from Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.

Michael Caine does a decent job as Cutter, though the role does not challenge him significantly. Caine is essentially playing the same role he played in Batman Begins (reviewed here!), the supporting guide. Caine does the role well, but those looking for a star performance by Caine that expands his repertoire will be disappointed.

Christian Bale does a decent job as Alfred, though there are some limitations to the character that make it difficult to judge Bale’s acting. Bale is playing a quiet, moody magician whose big failure is one of showmanship. In that way, Bale excels, creating the character with a credibility that is undeniable; Alfred is at once dull to watch and almost unforgettable.

It is Hugh Jackman as Angier who rules the day. Angier’s story of obsession is masterfully played by Jackman. Jackman plays Angier unlike anyone else we have seen him portray and that is refreshing. It is the definintion of a fine actor and here Jackman makes the performance distinct and his own.

Recently I panned The Illusionist (reviewed here!) and I’m pleased to say The Prestige is a much better, much more original, choice for those looking to be entertained.

For other works with Scarlett Johansson, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Avengers
Iron Man 2
He’s Just Not That Into You
The Perfect Score
The Girl With A Pearl Earring
Lost In Translation


6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Batman Reloaded: Batman Begins Reinvigorates The Franchise And Grows On Me With Age!

The Good: Good acting, Nice character development, Decent story
The Bad: Some pacing issues, Underuse of Cillian Murphy
The Basics: When Bruce Wayne watches his parents get killed, he becomes introverted and vows revenge, becoming a vigilante superhero in Batman Begins.


One of the lowest days of my life was back in college; I did movie reviews for the school newspaper and for the summer issue, I was asked to review a number of movies and I was given a day to do it. I watched Con Air, Men In Black, and Batman And Robin all in one day. It was hellish; the movies got worse as the day went on. Batman And Robin remains one of the bottom five movies of all time in my estimation and it should have disqualified Arnold Schwarzenegger from running for governor of California.

So, when I first heard about Batman Begins, my thoughts were: It can't be worse than Batman And Robin and I hope it isn't as bad as Batman And Robin. Fortunately for fans of Batman, Batman Begins is not a continuation of the Joel Schumacher farce that the latter two Batman films were. Instead, director Christopher Nolan is given the opportunity to reboot the Batman franchise and thus we are treated to the story of how Batman began.

Having witnessed the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne - a child of privilege - becomes reclusive and isolated. After becoming frustrated with "the way things are," Wayne leaves Gotham City to find himself. He finds himself in the wilderness at a secret monastery of ninjas under the guidance of the mysterious Ra's Al Ghul. There he determines that the best way to fight evil is to vanquish fear and become powerful.

However, at the climax of his training, Wayne realizes that those that trained him do not share his same basic humanity and he leaves. Returning to Gotham City, Wayne discovers corruption and fear are widespread, leading him to use his resources to become a vigilante fighter.

Right off the bat, pun intended, one of the distinctive aspects of Batman Begins are the sets. The sets are phenomenal and Gotham City looks like a wonderful cross between the city of Dark City (reviewed here!) and the decay of The City of Lost Children. It is big, it is grimy, it looks sturdy and industrial and not at all plastic or unreal. Gotham City comes alive as a plagued place in Batman Begins.

The casting in Batman Begins is well done as well. Katie Holmes portrays love interest Rachel Dawes well, rather effectively being something other than simply arm candy for the hero. Holmes is charming and articulate as the D.A. Dawes. Gary Oldman does well as the incorruptible Gordon, realistically portraying a man of integrity caught in a bad place. And Michael Caine perfectly plays the slightly younger Alfred, lending dignity and stature to the role that is very appropriate for his level of involvement in this particular story.

Liam Neeson is excellent as Henri Ducard and it is somewhat disappointing the surprise that comes about involving his character. Neeson as Ducard is involved in training Wayne and Neeson does an excellent job with the role, playing him with an interesting mix of the mentor Qui-Gon Jinn and a thug. Certainly one who watched Love Actually would not guess that the reserved Neeson could handle all of the physical work he is forced to in this movie, but he does. Amazingly well.

Morgan Freeman's portrayal of disgruntled Wayne Enterprises employee Lucius Fox is wonderful. Freeman steals each scene he is in. He has a presence and smooth attitude that fits the reserved engineer in the R&D department exceptionally well. He plays Fox with subtlety, making him more than simply an accessory to Batman. He becomes a vital character of his own.

The movie, of course, turns on the performance of Christian Bale who portrays Bruce Wayne/Batman. Bale seems to find the perfect balance for Wayne that the prior two actors (since Michael Keaton) did not quite manage. Bale portrays a man of strong moral conviction who is very much an apprentice yet. He pulls the role off with great facial expressions and genuine moments of emoting that carry much of the movie, especially during some of the slowest parts. Bale plays with the internal struggle, the agony of loss and makes story about fear and loss and he does it quite well.

In fact, the only serious acting problem comes in the form of Cillian Murphy. Murphy is an excellent actor and in Batman Begins he plays Dr. Jonathan Crane, who is the Scarecrow. Murphy does well, but he is severely under-represented in the movie. He has a great deal to give as an actor and instead he is relegated to almost no screen time and a disturbingly slight amount of character development or even character establishment.

Dr. Crane, in fact, is the unlucky card in the character deck. Every other character in the movie is well established and has a decent character arc. Obviously, the Bruce Wayne arc dominates, but Gordon, Dawes and Fox all have intriguing arcs that leave the characters transformed from their established characters to the characters that endure at the end of the movie.

The only other major problem with Batman Begins is in its pacing. This is a movie that takes a long time to develop and rightfully so. This is a story about developing, about getting the strength to banish fear and stand up. To be compelling and realistic, that cannot happen instantly. Unfortunately, there are points in Batman Begins where the pace slows to distracting levels and one wonders when the story is actually going to begin.

Conversely, more than any other superhero movie to date, Batman Begins concerns itself with the practical elements, neatly establishing how everything works and how Bruce Wayne obtained the materials he needed in order to make Batman a reality.

Batman Begins works much better as a film in context, as the prelude to the stories that come next. On its own, Batman Begins is fairly strong, but it just isn't as entertaining as some other movies.

For other films featuring Liam Neeson, please check out my reviews of:
Unknown
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
The Next Three Days
The A-Team
Clash Of The Titans
The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Love Actually
Star Wars - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Schindler's List

8/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2005 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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