Film review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Designed by Ben Whitesell

Well, it's over. The final film in Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy is here, wrapping it all up. Sort of.

Two warnings before you read any further: I'm gonna get all SPOILERY up in here and this is less a "review" and more a grab-bag of thoughts on the film and trilogy as a whole.

And one final thought before I get further into the "review" or whatever I'm going to call it of the film itself. As we are all aware, someone made the horrific decision to fire upon and kill 14 people at a midnight showing of Rises in Aurora, Colorado. I'm going to try and keep my own thoughts and opinions about this frightening incident out of this post, as I frankly don't think this is the proper forum for me to be talking about it and I don't know that I'm even qualified to offer an opinion past the obvious horror and sadness. Honestly, what can I even offer that a multitude of other, better, writers haven't already? Instead this post will be solely focussed on the film itself and my thoughts on same.

With that said, on with the grab-bag.

The reason for it being more a grab-bag, more a series of impressions and thoughts than a well-rounded review? Well, to be honest, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I thought of the film. I came out of the two-and-a-half plus hours with a shrug of the shoulders and a vague feeling of "that's it?"

Let's get all the plot guff out of the way first shall we? 8 years on from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a hobbling recluse and the Batman has disappeared. However, ol' Brucie ventures out of the mansion when a slinky, seductive cat-burglar by the name of Selina Kyle swipes his mother's pearls. And just as Bruce is coming out of his self-imposed exile, a new villain arrives on the Gotham scene: Tom Hardy's massive and masked Bane. He's in town to follow through on Liam Neeson's plot to destroy Gotham from Batman Begins, with an overly complicated plot designed to net him a fusion-powered nuclear reactor or something. Which, after breaking Batman and tossing him down a hole, he sets on the looooongest countdown in history. Seriously, the bomb has a 5 month countdown. Why? Who the hell knows?

That 5 month countdown is really just a convenient plot device to allow Batman time to heal. Bane makes some mention of the wait being to allow the citizens of Gotham to hope for a saviour but... you never see a regular Gothamite or their reaction and the intangible idea of hope never coalesces in any meaningful fashion.

With Nolan's previous Bat-films, he has used them to explore or, at the very least, raise interesting themes and ideas and explored them through the Bat-villains. With Begins it was Fear tying into the Scarecrow and, on a larger scale, the League of Shadows and Batman himself. With Dark Knight it was Anarchy and Chaos, embodied in Heath Ledger's ghoulish Joker, as a directly opposing force to Batman's Order. With Rises... I hesitate to call it thematically inconsistent, as Nolan doesn't seem to really be truly engaging with any themes here. There are a number of possible avenues opened up (Hope? Evil?) but none that are fully explored. There are dalliances with popular uprisings and a tip-toe into the waters of the financial crises but the scatter-gun approach leads to the film feeling muddled on a fundamental level. What is it, exactly, that Bane represents? Whatever it may or may not be, it's completely undercut by the completely unnecessary and obvious twist reveal before the end. And once his usefulness to the plot is done with, he is summarily dispatched. Almost offhandedly.

Something I'm still processing, as a comic-book reader more than anything, is that this may not be Batman as we know him but it is unequivocally Nolan's Batman. The Batman I, and many other comic-book fans, know would not have quit after the events of The Dark Knight. In fact, the end of that film seemed to give Batman more impetus to continue his mission.

Which brings me to another point. Every other death in the trilogy has meant something; has resonated somehow. Whether it be Ra's al Ghul/Ducard in Begins or Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. In Dark Knight Rises, they just... happen. They don't tie in to the life of Bruce Wayne/Batman or the larger thematic concerns that Nolan may (or may not) be exploring.

Is Batman a conservative hero? What, if anything, is Nolan saying about the Occupy movement? Should Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Officer Blake have taken up the mantle of the Bat earlier in the film? Can anyone but Bruce Wayne be Batman? Where did Bruce Wayne's secret stash of inheritance money come from? Why did he have a bum leg if he quit crime-fighting? There's more to consider with The Dark Knight Rises but, for now, these are my thoughts.  

Also, Liam Neeson's ghost dissolve?! Really?! And "Robin"? C'mon. It's just so... off. 

Film review: HUGO

Martin Scorsese's first foray in to new territory - a 3D family adventure film - is nothing short of a cinematic wonder and further proof that Scorsese is a master of cinema working at the top of his game. Surprisingly, the film also serves as something of a call to arms for film history and film preservation; a fact that is all but excluded from the advertising material.

The opening few minutes of the film contain no dialogue, Scorsese telling us what we need to know through the visual language of film: a wide cityscape shot of Paris, the life of the city briefly becoming a cog in a larger machine, before sweeping through into and around the train station that plays home to the film and then (still on the same, long, single take here) close in on the peering eyes hidden behind one of the clock faces: Hugo.

Hugo is an orphan boy living in the walls of the train station, running from clock to clock and ensuring they all run on time. His father (Jude Law) was a watchmaker who worked a second job in a museum. It was in the museum he found the small mechanical man he and Hugo have been working to fix and it is also in the museum where he dies. This leaves young Hugo, and the automaton, in the care of his drunken Uncle (Ray Winstone), the man who cares for the clocks at the station.

The train station is patrolled with relentless and vicious determination by the prat-falling Sacha Baron Cohens Station Inspector; he and his Doberman hunt the station for thieving orphans, to pack away to the orphanage in cages. Hugo has to dodge him while stealing gears, cogs and more from the old toymaker's store. The toymaker catches him though, and is revealed to be all but forgotten cinematic pioneer Georges Melies.

It is around this point that the film becomes less about Hugo and his quest to complete his and his father's automaton and more about the lost work of Melies. The two are connected - it is soon revealed that Melies is the man who created the wondrous automaton and Hugo comes across Melies' god-daughter Isabelle, who carries the key to the automaton around her neck. It's a shift of focus I wasn't expecting but was wrapped up in nonetheless. 

There are no villains in this film; though Hugo comes up against Melies and, of course, the Station Inspector these people are less villains and more broken people. Baron Cohen is especially effective as the orphan persecuting Station Inspector with a shy affection for the pretty flower girl (Emily Mortimer). He was an orphan himself and badly injured his leg in the Great War - leading to bouts of physical comedy as he swings about the station and moments of quiet desperation as he attempts to approach the flower girl.

Grace Moretz as the bookish but adventure seeking Isabelle is a fizzing joy of a character, easily outshining Asa Butterfield's Hugo. She loses herself in the imaginary worlds of the adventure books she finds in Monsieur Labisse's (Christopher Lee) book-store; always wanting to have an adventure of her own but never taking those steps until Hugo brings her along. Sir Ben Kingsley as Melies himself is a commanding, sorrowful and broken performance.

I remember the first time I watched Melies' Le voyage dans la lune in film class. I was absolutely blown away. Floored. Here was a short film, from the dawn of cinema with no sound and no colour, that was a technological marvel and a wondrous film. It was a fantastical adventure with effects that left me gobsmacked - moreso than any number of computer effects in recent years. And one of the joys of Hugo is the opportunity to, within the film, witness Melies' films as they were meant to be: on the big screen. They have even been, interestingly, post-converted to 3D. It is a choice I am sure Melies, the magician and pioneer would have approved of. 

The 3D in Hugo is easily the best use of the effect/gimmick that I've seen. Scorsese knows exactly what to do with it, exactly how to use the effect to help tell his story. It is truly immersive and a tool wielded by a master movie-maker. But for all of it's technological gimmickery, it is a film firmly focussed on the past; on the ongoing need for the preservation of our film history. In Hugo, Melies is all but forgotten; a magician tired of his tricks and a man with no more stomach for the fantastic after the horrible reality of War. The majority of his films (and, indeed, many of the world's earliest films) are thought lost - destroyed, reconstituted, left to moulder and rot. Even the surviving film are films that may never again be experienced on the big screen, that may never hold the attention of an entire audience. As much as I love my Buster Keaton DVDs, nothing beats seeing The General and Steamboat Bill Jr. with an audience (and live accompaniment).

Hugo, despite some (very) minor flaws, was the first film this year to truly, utterly hold me. I was rapt from to start to finish, caught up in the adventure, the emotion and the sheer joy of cinema that exudes from every frame. Scorsese has crafted something beyond a "family adventure film", though it certainly works as that. It's a love-letter, a call-to-arms, an impassioned plea, a ride, an adventure, an entertaining history lesson. I loved Hugo. 

Film review: SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

I LOVE that there's even an official
character poster for the frakkin' dog

My first choice for my next film was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, to complete the Benedict Cumberbatch triumvirate. However, A Game of Shadows maintains some sort of consistency to the pattern: Cumberbatch of course plays the famous detective in the recent BBC miniseries and A Game of Shadows also continues the World War I through-line begun with War Horse - SPOILERS! - as Moriarty's big plan is to start WWI some 25 years early.

I enjoyed the first Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law starring Sherlock Holmes enough. It was no definitive edition of Doyle's famous sleuth, but it was a bit of rock 'em sock 'em adventure with a wonderful chemistry between the two leads; it was pulpy, a little silly but it had enough momentum to it to carry you through. Since that first film, however, I have gone back and re-read the original short stories and have become enamoured of the BBC series. Guy Ritchie's less nuanced approach to the Great Detective can only pale in comparison.

Jude Law's Dr. John Watson is soon to be married, while Holmes obsesses over a new, grand case involving many tenuous links, seemingly masterminded by one man: Professor James Moriarty. Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, is a villain who looms large not just over the Sherlock mythos but over literature in general and is one of the few people able to match wits with Holmes. He is an equal opposite number; the flip-side of the coin. Holmes is chasing him down and, once again, uses Watson in his deductive quest. A gypsy fortune teller in the guise of Noomi Rapace is also swept up in the cross-country gallivanting as Holmes et al chase Moriarty - as he travels about on a book tour no less! It all culminates, as we all knew it would, in Switzerland at the Reichenbach Falls.

There's plenty of running about in between, with Ritchie really pushing the use of speed ramping during action scenes. Because, I dunno, it's cool or something I guess. It's a technique that makes some story & character sense in the mental planning Holmes does before each physical confrontation - the audience can see precisely how Holmes goes about disabling an opponent. But when the action slows down and speeds up while shit explodes around the characters, it becomes more of an affectation with no real basis beyond looking cool.

The relationship between Holmes and Watson or, more specifically, the chemistry between Downey Jr. and Law seems decidedly more strained, more high-pitched than the previous film. Where in Sherlock Holmes you genuinely felt that these two were close to being a bickering old married couple who feel a closeness and affection for one another, in A Game of Shadows the feeling is more one of one-upmanship and yelling at one another. Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler makes a return from Sherlock Holmes, although really makes less of an impact than her character deserves while The Gypsy With No Tatoo seems to have just been brought along for the ride.

Both Holmes films have taken the "who" out of the central mysteries; there is never any doubt as to who is behind the dastardly deeds (Mark Strong in the first and Moriarty here), rather the mystery is in the "how" and "why". And, frankly, the "why" behind Moriarty's grand plan is really rather pedestrian and boring. Hell, he's just doing it all for the money. Woop-de-doo. It strikes me as really far too vulgar a reason for the greatest criminal mind in history to do what he does.

A Game of Shadows was enjoyable enough, with a number of nods and shout-outs to Holmes history. But it is a film I struggled to remember anything about a day or two after.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Like a lot of people (including producer Peter Jackson), I enjoyed the adventures of Herge's coiffed boy reporter when I was young. Heck, my Dad enjoyed Tintin books when he was a kid; Tintin is a character who has been around world literature for some time with any number of kids growing up with him. I can still remember the first adventure I ever read - Tintin in America - and still have a firm favourite in the two-part Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (somewhat betraying my early interest in sci-fi). So the Peter Jackson produced, Steven Spielberg directed, performance-captured Adventures of Tintin had my interest piqued.

It is an interesting choice Jackson and Spielberg made, going down the route of performance capture. They wanted to capture the distinctive look of Herge's characters and world but with a more realistic look; an exaggerated realism if you will. This of course meant that they could then cast pretty much whoever they wanted. Nevertheless Jamie Bell as the eponymous hero and Andy Serkis as the irrepressible drunk Captain Archibald Haddock are spot-on.

Opening with a fun credit sequence filled with the sorts of adventures typical of Tintin and reminiscent of his Saul Bass inspired Catch Me if You Can, Spielberg then takes us into the world of the film via a rather neat cameo. It's not long at all before the boy reporter finds himself in a whole mess of trouble - at the market he finds a rather stunning model ship which he purchases just before two other gentlemen show an interest. One is a little more forceful - the devious Sakharine (Daniel Craig). This model ship leads Tintin and his faithful terrier Snowy on a globe-trotting adventure with mutineers, a water-plane, kidnappers, a desert, pirates, the bumbling detectives Thomson & Thompson (Simon Pegg & Nick Frost) and a drunken no-hoper ship's Captain by the name of Haddock.

The script by Brit geek-geniuses Stephen Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish is a propulsive ride, taking Tintin & Snowy (and, later, Haddock) from encounter to encounter with barely a moment to catch your breath. Those three writers are a trifecta of perfection, in terms of genre filmmaking and writing; Moffat's run on Dr. Who has been universally acclaimed as he balances single episodes with a larger mythology and Wright & Cornish have, between them, made four modern classics, each film fully aware and playing to it's genre. Spielberg makes the script dance and Tintin, Snowy and the audience are all quickly caught up in this adventure; this quest for the secret of the unicorn.

And I think there's a distinction that has to be made here - between action and adventure. The Adventures of Tintin is sure filled with its fair share of action but it is primarily an adventure film. A film about adventure, directed and produced by two of the greatest purveyors of modern-day adventure cinema. Spielberg, when firing on all cylinders as he is here, can craft an action sequence like few others, knowing exactly when to bring them in and how to play the audience through them. He melds that with Herge's world and sense of humour, as filtered through Moffat, Wright & Cornish, to create a number of stand-out gags throughout. There's Tintin attempting to grab a set of keys from a room full of sleeping thugs - one who is notably missing his eyelids altogether; there's Snowy leaping in and out of the background and foreground, going after sandwiches and seeing off big dogs; there's Captain Haddock misfiring a bazooka, shouting in splenetic fury and drinking every drop of alcohol he can get his hands on.

Andy Serkis once again proves himself to be the pre-eminent performance capture artist working today; his Haddock is the life and soul of the film. Where Bell's Tintin is intentionally left as something of a blank, Serkis' Haddock is a rough, world-worn and soulful character. And a lot of that is thanks simply to the performance of Serkis. You can add Haddock to the growing list of timeless characters Serkis has brought to life. The criticism I have with regards to the performance capture animation may just be me but I occasionally felt like the characters were lacking in weight. Some of their movements struck me as 'off' and unnatural; understand that none of this is poor work or a large distraction. Indeed, I have some trouble really putting my finger on what I felt to be 'wrong' here - is it just because I knew it was performance capture? Or were there really some moments that were not quite right? However, the entirely digital creation of Snowy is a wonder, helping to bring mischief and care to the adventure and he always feels entirely real.

Spielberg (with the more than capable assistance of the lads and lasses out at WETA) swings his camera wherever he damn well pleases. While this is another aspect of performance capture filmmaking I am on the fence about; where a swooping camera is allowed to go anywhere within a scene that can do anything with characters able to achieve impossible physicality, this is Spielberg and he is working with one of the most adventurous characters in literature. The Beard is a director who knows precisely where the camera needs to go and how to use the effect of 3D. I'm not the biggest supporter of 3D but neither am I the biggest detractor. When used correctly it can achieve effects like opening up huge vistas. When used incorrectly it can make the film look like a cheap diorama. While The Adventures of Tintin is a film I would happily watch in 2D and feel like I wasn't missing anything. In fact, it might even closer approximate the world of the original comics. It helps that Spielberg is one of the master directors of the modern age and thus understands how to utilise every tool at his disposal, 3D included.

Working from timeless and much loved source material (and culling from a number of Tintin adventures), Moffat and Wright & Cornish have worked up a fun, propulsive and intelligent script. Spielberg and Jackson have then gathered a note-perfect cast to help bring the characters to life. Spielberg, with WETA, has then taken all of these elements and filtered them through his own brand of cinematic alchemy to give Herge's intrepid reporter big-screen life. The Adventures of Tintin is Spielberg at his "fun, globe-trotting adventure time Spielberg" best. I look forward to seeing what Peter Jackson does with his follow-up adventure.