The Big Fat Review Part I (Life of Pi, Lincoln & Django Unchained)

Story: It has been two months since I last posted a film review on this site. I just stopped writing, in the middle of the Oscar season. I had my reasons and I can come up with good excuses, but I also have something better. The Big Fat Review. Because the fact that I stopped writing about films, does not mean that I stopped watching them.

Life of Pi was astonishing. Mind-blowingly beautiful. I felt a bit uncomfortable at first with the entire religion subtext, but Oscar winning director Ang Lee solved this problem beautifully in the last act.  Central to this film is not, in my opinion, that this is a story that will make you believe in God. Life of Pi is a film that makes you understand why people, when confronted with circumstances wildly beyond their control, choose to believe in God. Curiously, the visual effects company that won the Life of Pi its second Oscar has gone bankrupt.

There is no director in the history of movies who can get away with a philosophical discussion in the middle of a dinosaur-movie for kids, and who also directs a political debate in a historical drama as if it were a nail biting action scene. Lincoln is a classic example of ‘pompous Spielberg’, following such films as Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Amistad and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This does not mean that the film is not good. Because it quite clearly is. Daniel Day-Lewis is astonishing as Lincoln, but his thunderous performance does draw too much attention away from equally fantastic turns by Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Curiously, while Lincoln was about the political fight for the abolition of slavery, it did not bother showing or pointing out what a terrible injustice and crime it was. That specific historical lesson is told by Quentin Tarantino in Django Unchained, his long-awaited ‘Southern’.  I have my issues with Tarantino, and these issues played up again during Django Unchained. I can do without the sadism. I don’t need to see a man being torn apart by dogs. It is enough for me if this cruelty is suggested. Tarantino films are almost always way too long. And too talky. And every character in it speaks like Quentin. But, and herein lies the great difference with the reprehensible Inglourious Basterds, I believe that Django Unchained has a clear moral centre. The sadism is inflicted by the bad guys, and is there to highlight the immorality of slavery.  It does help that the fantastic Christoph Waltz is this time one of the good guys. While Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio all put in good performances, they are blown away by mr. Waltz.

The Big Fat Review will continue this weekend, with discussions of Silver Linings Playbook, Robot & Frank, Pitch Perfect, Arbitrage and Zero Dark Thirty.

Review: Looper (dir. Rian Johnson)

Story: Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a ‘looper’: he assasinates people who are sent back, by criminals, from the future. He is pretty happy with this until one day, the person being sent back is his older self (Bruce Willis). Joe fails to make the kill, and subsequently both Joe’s are on the run from their criminal employers. But old Joe has a plan to make sure that all of this will actually never happen…

Time travel films are tricky. They are necessarily filled with inconsistencies. Take for example this scenario. Person A travels back in time to prevent disaster X from happening. However, if he succeeds, then there will be no need, in the future, for person A to travel back and prevent disaster X from happening. So it will happen, prompting person A, in the future, to travel back in time and prevent it from happening. The big question is always, if someone from the future travels back in time, is his past (the future) than past or future? And what is that that you are changing? The past or the future?

The only film I ever saw getting it right was Back to the Future. And that film took two guys three years to write! So, considering that we quite enjoy time travel films, we must necessarily accept that there are often loopholes in them. Plotholes. Inconsistencies. Mistakes. Actually, part of the fun of the time travel film is trying to figure out where they went wrong…

Of course, not too much time doing that must be spent while the film is still playing. It is best if you only start puzzling after the end credits roll. As was for instance the case with last year’s Source Code. This film certainly wasn’t flawless in its time-travelling logic, but I only noticed that after the film. While it was playing I was completely involved in the action and the story.

Unfortunately, Looper had me puzzling throughout the film. Which is not to say that it is more inconsistent or illogical than other time travelling films. It is just too complex. Too tricky. Back in the middle ages an English monk called William of Ockham proposed the following: if two explanations of the same phenomenon explain that phenomenon well, than the simplest explanation must be right. ‘Ockham’s Razor’ this is called. And Looper would benefit from a close shave by old William. Why, for instance, must future loopers always be killed by their past selves? Isn’t that unnecessarily complex, and asking for problems?

All of which is, again, not to say that Looper isn’t a good film. Quite the contrary. It is well acted. Joseph Gordon-Levitt carries the film, proving himself as a confident and grown-up lead actor. Bruce Willis does a good job, especially in a devastating scene with a little kid that will have you on the tip of your seat. And Emily Blunt, Paul Dano and Jeff Daniels have interesting supporting roles.

Director Rian Johnson previously made equally stylish (if not equally succesfull) films with Brick and The Brothers Bloom. Johnson is a bit of an oddball director. His earlier films had an air of cold detachment to them. This worked very well for Brick, but less so for The Brothers Bloom. In Looper, there is hardly any detachment. In the shocking finale, there is no lack of engagement. You are there, with the characters, in their world and their story. And yet you do keep puzzling: “Wait, if he does this now, than what will yet to have been happening in the future…?”

Final verdict: Although a bit too complex for its own good, Looper is an engaging and thrilling action adventure. A plot like a Moebius strip does not get in the way of caring for the characters, which is central to making a succesfull film.

Trailer Tuesday: Die, Despicable Lincoln Effects!

A Good Day to Die Hard

Dir. John Moore. Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and (rumoured) Patrick Stewart

Release date NL: February 14, 2013

 

Despicable Me 2

Dir. Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud. Voices by: Steve Carrell, Al Pacino, Kristen Wiig, Russell Brand & Steve Coogan

Release date NL: July 3, 2013

 

Lincoln

Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Jospeh Gordon-Levitt, David Strathairn, John Hawkes, Jackie Earle Haly, Tim Blake Nelson, Jared Harris & Tommy Lee Jones

Release date NL: January 13, 2013

 

Side Effects

Dir. Steve Soderbergh. Starring: Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law & Catherine Zeta-Jones

Release date NL: March 7, 2013

Review: The Dark Knight Rises (dir. Christopher Nolan)

Story: Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) lives in recluse. Mentally and physically broken by his years as Batman he sees Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) clean up the streets of Gotham. However, the arrivals of the gymnastic burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and of the cruel mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy) force Batman out of retirement. The question is if he is able to rise up again and confront his present foes as well as the demons of his past.

If The Dark Knight Rises is quite a disappointment, then it is so because of the enormous expectations of fans, and the high bar set by its predecessors, Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). In fact, to call ‘TDKR’ a bad film is unjustified. It is a good summer blockbuster; by far the best of this summer. It grabs such fodder as The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-man in their necks and scoulingly sends them back to kindergarten. And yet it disappoints.

The biggest let down for me was that director Christopher Nolan does not chart new territories and themes in TDKR. Rather, he returns to the issues already covered in quite some extent in Batman Begins. And although Bruce Wayne / Batman does grow as a character, I miss the expansion to Batman’s universe and psychology that made The Dark Knight so very special. From a storytelling point of view it makes sense to make the circle complete, and Nolan does not hesitate to emphasize this, using quite a big number of flashbacks to Batman Begins. But I think he is mistaken to pressume that his audience is not already overly familiar with the previous films.

Valuable time is lost with these flashbacks, and although I do not think that The Dark Knight Rises is too long, I do think it could have spent some of its running time (a whopping 164 minutes) in a more effective manner. On many an occasion, especially in the climactic final hour, Nolan falls back on cheap short-cuts in his staging of the battle over Gotham’s fate. On first viewing these moments may be mistaken for plot holes, but on second viewing they appear to be the result of cramped storytelling and shoddy editing. Unnecessary mistakes that could easily have been solved had Nolan allowed himself more time to stage these scenes properly and less time reinvoking worn down, and this trilogy unworthy, generic stereotypes.

Nolan likes to work with the same people over and over again: Story writer David Goyer, producer Emma Thomas, writer Jonathan Nolan (yes, the brother), composer Hans Zimmer, editor Lee smith and cinematographer Wally Pfister. If I would recommend Nolan to look for another editor if he continues in action films, I must also praise Wally Pfister. Pfister was nominated for an Oscar for The Dark Knight, and he won one for Inception, and in The Dark Knight Rises he delivers again. The vistas of a Gotham under siege are stunning. In cooperation with the special effects team Pfister does something extraordinary: the stunts and effects that in other films seem weightless and immaterial digital constructions have heft and weight and, consequently, realism in TDKR.

Nolan also prefers to work with actors he already knows. Of course he brings back Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox) and Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth), but he also calls in the services of his Inception veterans Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard (as business woman and love interest Miranda Tate) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as Gotham city cop John Blake). And there are surprising cameos by some old characters as well. The only major new face is Anne Hathaway. And it must be said that, in such an enormous ensemble, it is Hathaway who stands out, next to Bale and Gorden-Levitt. The other actors suffer from the fact that their roles are perhaps slightly too marginal and underwritten. Tom Hardy is imposing, threatening and scary as Bane, but he can not rival Heath Ledger’s Joker. He should not want to either, and we should not expect it from him.

As an action spectacle, this film is stunning. Big set-pieces involve a chase scene with multiple motorcycles, a street battle between cops and thugs and, perhaps most memorable, a mid-air abduction in the opening sequence. We should not underestimate the contribution of composer Hans Zimmer to these scenes. The master of the genre almost overplays his hand with a thunderous score that drowns out bits of the dialogue, but the crucial word in this sentence is ‘almost’. Empire compared Zimmer’s soundtrack with an earthquake, and that is an appropriate metaphor. The music defies further description.

By not offering us something fundamentally new, apart from some interesting characters, Nolan deprives his film from the depth and the political commentary that The Dark Knight had. Complaints that TDKR is politically reactionary or conservative miss the point that there is actually a shocking lack of politics in this film. If there is any, it only serves as a masquerade of or a detraction from the actual plot, which then is too light to justify the epic ambitions of the film.

But Nolan does deliver emotionally. The fans who have made his films the huge successes that they are have invested in this world and in these characters. And although this individual film may not be able to match the quality of its predecessors, it does succeed in satisfyingly finishing this particular story of Bruce Wayne. Actually, it might be its strongest point (and this is the only small spoiler! I put into this review) that it finishes the story of Bruce Wayne, but not necessarily that of Batman. A relief for the studio and for the fans.

Final verdict: The Dark Knight Rises is a fitting and satisfying conclusion to what we can now call the best superheroe franchise to date. However, it is also demonstrably the weakest link in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and so it is with appropriate heartache that fans have to say goodbye to their holiday fling of three summers.

Trailer Tuesday: Lay Miserables’ Premium Legacy

Lay the Favourite

Dir. Stephen Frears. Starring: Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones & Vince Vaughn

Release date NL: TBA

 

Les Miserables

Dir. Tom Hooper. Starring: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen & Amanda Seyfried

Release date NL: January 10, 2013

 

Premium Rush

Dir. David Koepp. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Aaron Tveit & Jamie Chung

Release date NL: November 22, 2012

 

The Bourne Legacy

Dir. Tony Gilroy. Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Donna Murphy & David Strathairn

Release date NL: August 30, 2012

Trailer Tuesday: Lawless Prometheus Rises

Lawless

Dir. John Hillcoat. Starring: Shia LeBoeuf, Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska & Gary Oldman

Release date NL: November 2012

 

Prometheus

Dir. Ridley Scott. Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce & Idris Elba

Release date NL: 31 May 2012

 

The Dark Knight Rises

Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard, Aidan Gillen & Liam Neeson

Release date NL: 20 July 2012

Trailer Tuesday: A Fantastic Little Looper School

A Fantastic Fear of Everything

Dir. Crispian Mills & Chris Hopewell. Starring: Simon Pegg, Amara Karan & Clare Higgins

Dutch release date: TBA

 

Little Birds

Dir. Elgin James. Starring: Juno Temple, Kate Bosworth, Leslie Mann & Kyle Gallner

Dutch release date: TBA

 

Looper

Dir. Rian Johnson. Starring: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Emily Blunt

Dutch release date: October 11 2012

 

Red Lights

Dir. Rodrigo Cortés. Starring: Cilian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver, Toby Jones, Elizabeth Olsen & Robert De Niro

Dutch release date: September 6 2012

And the winner might be… [best actor]

The nominations for the 2012 Oscars will be announced on January 24, but on this site we have still three predictions to make. Best Film, Best Director and, today, Best Actor. A tricky category. Last year the little golden fellow went to Colin Firth for The King’s Speech, while he should have received it in 2010 for A Serious Man. In that year, ironically, Jeff Bridges won for Crazy Heart although his 2011 performance in True Grit. The point I’m trying to make is that the Best Actor award, even more so than the Best Actress one, is a career prize. It is not about the specific movie you happen to be in, it is about it being yuor turn. That is why there is only one big favourite this year, although there are many Oscar-worthy performances.

 

The big favourite:

George Clooney for The Descendants.

 

The other ones:

Jean Dujardin for The Artist

Brad Pitt for Moneyball

Leonardo diCaprio for J. Edgar

Michael Fassbender for Shame

and

Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (my favourite, could easily work as a career prize)

 

The career thingy is also the reason that, while they might score a nomination, it is just still too early for Ryan Gosling (Drive), Michael Shannon (Take Shelter) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (50/50)

Trailer for The Dark Knight Rises online!!!

Quick analysis? This is gonna be dark stuff, with Bruce Wayne leaning on a cane. Michael Caine’s Alfred is in tears and Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is in a tight spot, politically. A masked Anne Hathaway whispers ominously, and then the shit hits the fan. The Arkham prioners are set loose on the streets of Gotham once more and it turns into a very nasty revolution.  With Batman getting Bane’s “permission to die”… Wow.

Most remarkable is how light the film looks. Batman used to lurk in the shadows: now he is brought into full daylight.

My only worry is about the CG on the collapsing football field and the flying Batwing-kinda-thing. That really needs some more polishing. But there is plenty of time for that in post-production, as The Dark Knight Rises is not set to premiere until July.

Preview: The Dark Knight Rises

Last week Warner Bros. released the teaser poster for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, and yesterday they also put an HD version of the first teaser online. A shoddy low-quality version had already been leaked to the internet, but its quality was so bad that hardly anything could be seen or heard in it.

The new teaser still tells us little about the plot: there are some images from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and a voice-over by Liam Neeson that comes from the first film. Then: an image of Gary Oldman’s commissioner Gordon on a hospital bed: hurt, weak. He insists that Batman must come back, that they were “in this together”. An unseen Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) doubt whether Batman still exists. Then there are shots of someone climbing out of a hole and of Bane (Tom Hardy). One of his face and one of him approaching a stumbling Batman in an underground location.

And that is it. I am thrilled. I am very much looking forward to the film, yet I am afraid as well. Mostly because of the cast list. The Dark Knight Rises sees Bale returning as Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) and Michael Caine (Alfred) return as well.

Tom Hardy will be Bane, who in the comics is a genetically engineered super-soldier or villain. Anne Hathaway is cast as Selina Kyle, and may transform into Catwoman. Hathaway is new to Nolan, but Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gorden-Levitt are not: they worked with him on Inception. Gorden-Levitt will be police officer John Blake, and Cotillard will play Miranda Tate, in the comics also known as Talia Al Ghul, the estranged daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, Batman’s enemy from Begins. Josh Pence is cast as a young Ra’s, and Liam Neeson is rumoured to return as the old version of the character.

Such long cast lists lead to problems; see last years Iron Man 2. All these well-known actors and characters can hardly all be given the screen time they need to develop their characters properly and play a major role in what still should be the story of Batman. At worst, we could get a mess of a film. However, considering Nolan’s disciplined style of filmmaking that is not likely. More likely is that the film will show an extreme version of the template of The Dark Knight and Inception, in which supporting characters’ emotional or personal development are sidelined in order for them to schematically inhabit the various political, moral or mythological points Nolan wants make.

Something else I fear is that Nolan might move away from the realistic tone of his previous Batman films, and indulge in the more metaphysical themes and plotlines some of the comics (for instance Frank Millar’s “The Dark Knight Returns”) offer. That is something I would not be fond of.

But I had similar fears back in 2007, when I first learned that Heath Ledger, whom I, at the time, only remembered as the teenage heart-throb from 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s Tale, would play The Joker, a role made iconic by Jack Nicholson. And I had my doubts about the pitch for Inception as well: A thriller set within the architecture of the mind? And in both cases my doubts and fears were met by great films. Let’s hope Nolan can do it again.