Danger: Diabolik (1968)

Let's take a journey back in time to before any of us were born pretty much. It's a magical time full of psychedelic colors, svelte soundtracks and action movie heroes who slaughter people indiscriminately. One of those three things has survived today, anyway, but unlike your latest Liam Neeson flick, this one has a complete lack of any moral center. But on the other hand, it has lots of gold and money that the characters have sex on top of, so you can live vicariously through that.

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Directed by renowned schlock artist Mario Bava, this was based off a comic book from back in the day. It was a cheesy flick back in the day and seems even moreso now. And since this comic is apparently being remade again now (because we don't have enough comic book movies yet), I'm sure we'll get a modern remake full of dark grittiness and moral grey areas and all kinds of melodrama. But maybe, just maybe, if I review the original, I can help steer Hollywood in the right direction to make a better film.

This movie begins with an acknowledgement that cars are pretty cool: 

We don't need to see your driver's license test, guys.

And especially when they drive under bridges and stuff!

We also get some sweet swirling psychedelic colors for the opening, which go on longer than that time you were given a swirly in the school bathroom by that kid who smells like his drunk father's cigarettes.

Groovy, man.

Apparently main character Diabolik and his girlfriend, Eva Kant, are professional criminals who have stolen a lot of money from under the noses of the cops. A recurring theme throughout this thing is that the cops are apparently completely powerless to stop these two – like they're demigods and the cops are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs at the donut counter. It's pretty one sided.

As this was the 60s, I guess the fashion is a bit different. I'm not one to harp on little things like fashion from a different time, but some of these choices are starting to push it, man. Like, Eva really needs a shirt with a hole right where her boobs are? Really? That's kinda like a guy wearing pants with the zipper wide open all the time.

For that matter, it takes a hell of a woman to want to fuck a guy who looks like the bad guy from The Collector.

Diabolik and the girlfriend go back to their mysterious cave home, because why not, you know? If you're rich enough, fuck it, just forsake housing altogether and live in a fucking cave with futuristic gizmos enough to make Superman blush.

Look at this shit – they have enough money to just throw it everywhere on their weird rotating circle-bed thing and have sex underneath the giant piles of money. I get the idea this is what rich people fantasize about doing with the money they get from tax write-offs and stuff. It's what Congress members would do if they still had any sex drive.

They say money can't buy happiness, but...well, they're probably poor as shit if they say that and are just jealous!

AGGRRRARGGGHHHH MONEY!!!!!

Afterwards, they take showers in the best showers ever made, which is to say they are completely transparent boxes with no curtains, just weird ornaments hanging over where the boobs and face are:

Ah yes, Salvador Dali's shower designs finally got some good use...

So I guess the plot, if you're really paying attention instead of just gawking at all the bizarre shit they put in this cave, goes like this – this other crime lord guy makes a deal with the cops after they catch up to him, telling them he can deliver Diabolik, who is a much more wanted criminal. The cops are apparently so baffled that they can't find the guy despite him driving fancy cars and living in a goddamn futuristic cave – but I guess we can excuse them.

After all, they are trying their best. Like when they let this obvious serial killer and sexual deviant up on the podium to waggle his crazy eyes at everyone:

He's supposed to be some kind of political figure, but I think he killed the real official and is a crazy impostor.

Diabolik, meanwhile, is enjoying the spotlight so much that he can just sneak up on an entire press conference full of cops and spray them with laughing gas and somehow get away afterwards.

Eh, it WAS pre-9/11...we'll give it a pass.

I think these cops just secretly like being bested by this guy. Maybe it gives them an odd titillation and thrill and helps them sleep better at night knowing a challenge is out there, always right outside their reach. Only this is a challenge that sometimes likes to blow the shit out of your police cars and slaughter innocent policemen with throwing knives.

"Don't tell my family I got killed by a guy in a GIMP costume!"
"No promises!"

Meanwhile, the other crime lord is flying on a plane with his henchmen, and when one of them doesn't agree with him, he opens up a trap door right where the guy is standing and lets him fall to his death. And I think that's great, because more planes need trap doors. It's a lost art.

But enough of that nonsense. Let's have a scene now where Diabolik stretches out a long role of mirrored screen so the oncoming cars will see it and crash into it because their headlights blind them, then go careening off a cliff to fiery, horrific deaths.

If this brutal violence for no reason bothers you, just pretend the guys who died were child molesters. Did that make it easier to swallow their deaths? I think it did.

That should be a good palette cleanser from these scenes that didn't have Diabolik in them!

Diabolik breaks into a castle to take some pictures and really just kind of fuck with the cops some more. He's also trying to steal a necklace for Eva, which he does very easily, because this place leaves its valuables on a platter for any thief to take. Like almost every scene in this movie, there are just some things that don't make sense. There's a “secret” security camera hidden inside of a painting. It's instantly noticeable, because when I think of terrible security, I think of defacing classic works of art.

There are also a bunch of guys dressed as Revolutionary War soldiers hunting Diabolik right alongside the cops, because again, why the fuck not? It makes perfect sense to me.

The powdered wigs help them aim better.

Diabolik himself has chosen a fitting outfit – he's dressed like a sperm as he crawls up walls and takes pictures inside fancy rooms.

I will also accept 'KKK ninja.'

Then he ditches the suit so the cops go chasing after that while he hides, presumably naked, up on the roof of this castle. Good job, Diabolik. They'll never notice a naked man wandering around their weird castle place. But then again, even though that was sarcasm, somehow it's true and they really won't ever notice him.

Meanwhile, some goons working for that crime boss kidnap Eva while she's at this spa place and take her away. They use her as leverage against Diabolik, forcing him to give himself up. He agrees, but then throws himself along with the crime lord out of that conveniently placed trap door in the plane. They go free-falling through the air like sacks of potatoes dropped from the sky, landing right where they need to be to find Eva – who is tied to a bed and getting burned with cigarettes by her captor.

There truly is no middle ground between damsel in distress and hot kick ass "Black Widow" type chick with no personality. It's just a matter of which kind of sexism you prefer more.

To let Eva get away, Diabolik pretends to be dead by taking a pill. He gets taken to the morgue and presumed dead while apparently every member of the media comes to see. Eva somehow poses as a nurse and gets him out of there.

They go back to Diabolik's cave and sit in a pool while Diabolik puts priceless gemstones all over Eva's breasts and shoulders. Not to echo a sentiment done too many times already, but again – why the fuck not? You got that much money and jewels, hire a girl with big tits and put them all over her. I'd do it too if I was that shamelessly wealthy.

They also blow up a bunch of buildings, which is totally reprehensible and bad, until they hit this one:

In their infinite wisdom, the cops decide to move a shitload of gold right now – right after the notorious unstoppable thieves who have proven they can fuck you over just for fun escaped being dead. Yeah. I'm sure THIS won't backfire at all, right? I'm sure that gold will get to its right place without any incident. That's why they're showing this part in the movie – to show how effortlessly the authorities can move gold without it getting stolen!

Couldn't just keep it in one place for a while, huh guys?

Also, get this – they melt it down and put it inside of some kind of indestructible container. Bit overkill when you know nothing bad is gonna happen and this gold isn't gonna get stolen at all, guys. Come on. Have some faith in yourselves.

Big surprise, Diabolik and Eva manage to steal the gold. Through a complex sequence of events involving seducing truck drivers and scuba diving, they get the gold back to their cave. The cops find the cave NOW of course, because it's the climax of the film. A shoot out ensues, in which the gold explodes and covers Diabolik. The film ends with him alive and encased in gold.

Which I'm sure, despite the fact that he can no longer move, eat or drink anything, makes him happy – the guy's lust for wealth has finally led him to its logical conclusion. This is what he deserved all along.

This movie is pretty bonkers and over the top, but it's not bad for all that, and it remains entertaining with no real plotholes. It's a crazy, wild and bizarre movie from a crazy, wild, bizarre time. The action is fun and the characters are enjoyably insane. It's also very colorful and fast paced and it doesn't take itself all that seriously.

Really, a lot of modern action flicks like John Wick and The Equalizer just glorify revenge and make it too glamorous looking. They goad us to root for unstoppable killing machines and make us not care about how many random goons die at their hands who didn't deserve to. Most action movies do that in some measure, but the ones I'm talking about are worse because they try and make it a moral thing. They want you to root for these killing machines because they're doing it for a good reason. So, you know, that makes mass murder okay.

The random thugs killed in a movie like John Wick are made to look as despicable and one-dimensionally evil as possible. They don't have any humanity to them on purpose, because they aren't real characters – they're tools used to elicit a cheap emotional response. The movie isn't terrible or anything, but the way it's written just doesn't lend any kind of depth to the revenge storyline. It comes off as hackneyed and morally bent, and rather than a compelling story it's mostly just a silly good versus evil cartoon. Since the movie was not going for that, the effect is dampened a bit.

At least in movies like Die Hard where the main character kills a lot of people, he's doing it because they attacked the building he was in first. And he's also not invincible, and really struggles like an underdog to save everyone in the building. In John Wick and The Equalizer, the main dudes are just completely immortal badasses who hunt down their prey like serial killers. But again, it's okay, because they're doing it for the right reason. Right?

Danger: Diabolik forsakes all of this. It doesn't try to have a moral at all. The main character just kills whoever the hell he wants, with no hesitation, and then never thinks about it again. It's just a goofy action flick, and I love it for that. I guess if you take one thing away from this, well, uh...if you can get rich off stealing from people, do it. The rewards are pretty fucking sweet.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Ender's Game (2013)

You know, some people, when they try to justify why video games are good for them, they just make a long-winded self-important rant on Facebook, maybe complete with one of those greeting card memes. Well, the director of Wolverine: Origins (always a reliable pedigree) took that just a few steps further and made a multi-million dollar special effect jerk-off movie just to prove that. Wow. Couldn’t have just stuck to Facebook, huh?

Director: Gavin Hood

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford

IMDb

Before I go any further, no, I haven’t read the book, and no, I’m not going to bother letting that ruin this review. Because this movie sucks. It’s a pretentious, bloated mess that thinks it’s way more than it is and I’m sick of it. I don’t see a point in beating around the bush. No...I just see a point in needlessly drawing this whole charade out with play-by-play descriptions of things I could sum up in a fourth of the time.

……………..

The movie begins in a fashion guaranteed to make me want to turn off any movie immediately - a goofy looking space battle like something out of a childish RPG, told in super-fast fashion with no room for drama or background story - but I guess those aren’t that important when you have SUPER COOL LASERS and shiiiiiiit!

Apparently this is a future world where the military relies on children to fight in the military for them. Why? Did Obama’s drone program just not work out so this was the most viable alternative?

Then we get main character Ender, played by Asa Butterfield. I know it’s tough on kid actors, 99% of the time because - let’s be frank here - nobody really knows how to fucking write kids anymore in movies. But this character is just bad. There’s no other word. The performance isn’t that much better - he’s constantly wooden and flat, with basically no emotion at all. Maybe it’s the way the character is supposed to be, I dunno, but as a way of trying to get us invested in the character, it failed for me.

Don't get me wrong; bullying sucks, but the way this kid acts is kinda asking for it a little bit.

His thing is, he gets picked on a lot by bullies! I can’t imagine why when he beats them in Battleship and then makes stiff, snobby sounding rants about it afterward that would make even the characters from the Big Bang Theory want to clobber him.

There’s also Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, whose performance in this movie makes Indiana Jones 4 look like an impassioned, devoted career performance done out of a love for the art of acting. He’s terrible in this. He never sounds like he gives a crap. But to be fair, how could you when you’re handed a character who has about half of one dimension - no personality save for monotone shouting and “rah rah” speeches. Like a high school football coach run through a Han Solo filter, then whitewashed out completely.

Let's be honest now; this is really just a warm-up for Star Wars VII.

Apparently Graff thinks Ender is some kind of prodigy to lead them in battle, or some shit like that. This is even more confirmed when he sees Ender fight a bunch of kids and nearly kill one of them:

The dead-eyed rage and lack of any compassion or humanity in this kid's face is clearly proof that he is a born leader and the only one who can save us all.

"I have a fossil and I'm not afraid to use it!"

But we see it runs in the family, though, as when he gets home he has to face an incredibly common aspect of sibling rivalry: where his douchebag of a brother makes him put on a goofy alien mask and fight him right there in the room. His brother gets him in a chokehold and nearly kills him. I sure am glad these kids’ parents keep such a close watch on them! Maybe in the future the dominant style of parenting is “out of sight, out of mind.”

I miss when kids just smoked crack after school. It wasn't good, but it was better than...whatever the hell THIS is.

Ender’s sister is also shown; a complete non-entity of a character who just exists to make Ender feel better about himself. Which I guess I can understand, as approximately 80% of the other characters in this fucking thing act unpleasant and rude to him for no damn reason other than “hey! We really need to show some conflict, but we forgot to make characters with any human traits at all! They’re just fuckin’ wooden planks! What should we do?” “Try just making them all shout at one another!” “GENIUS!”

I know I keep reinforcing how poor that kind of writing is in my reviews, but movies keep doing it to begin with. So I have no choice. The sister is maybe even more annoying, as they don't even try to make her have any emotion or character of her own. She just exists to comfort Ender; nothing else.

After dinner, Colonel Graff and his sidekick Major Anderson, played by Viola Davis, arrive at Ender’s house to tell him he’s perfect for their super-special military program because they saw him get in a few fights. His parents don’t seem to give two shits that he’s like 12 and not nearly emotionally developed yet to make such a drastic choice, and send him straight off to Space Military School!

They don’t even make it all the way there yet before the movie begins to indulge in its favorite pastime - telling the audience that Ender (and by extension the movie’s creators for putting him on screen) is the GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD. And frankly even the sliced bread is beginning to pale in comparison!

Yes apparently the zero-G atmosphere in the space ship exists for no damned reason other than for Ender to make some asinine comment about how in space, there is no up or down because it’s all relative. Graff for some reason (I’m guessing all the space-weed he was hitting behind his trailer doors) thinks this is hilarious, and talks about how Ender is “the only one on the ship with a brain.”

"My happy pills are in my right breast pocket. I took a handful right before I came on scene for this shot!"

Gee. That’s pretty sad then, considering how the rest of these kids are also among the smartest in the fucking world. Are they just chopped liver now or something because the oh-so-great and powerful Ender is there? Or is this “military program” really the most desperate thing ever since that creepy guy on OkCupid messaging every girl who has a profile picture and working his way down to the hyper-Christian lady who’s married with five kids and yet still goes on OkCupid?

The space military camp scenes are pretty much no better: adults on ego power trips because their lives are fucking sad, shouting at a bunch of little kids, then Ender gets praised for being so different and cool and wonderful and Jesus-ish for no reason. Repeat until you vomit just like the kids did earlier in that zero gravity spaceship thing:

"I SHOUT AT CHILDREN TO MASK MY OWN CRIPPLING INSECURITIES."

Ender's Game: it makes you vomit.

There’s also battle scenes in this training room place, where the kids wear ridiculous looking space-suits and float around shooting lasers at each other and stuff. My favorite of these scenes is the first one, where the kids are all horsing around shooting each other with stun guns and acting amazed when, BIG SHOCK, their limbs can’t move afterward:

The paraplegics in the audience are rolling in their chairs!

Then the control-freak Freud-bait adults come out and scream at them to stop playing around. I’m just so amazed these children acted like children when we gave them free reign in a battlefield with no rules! The scene ends with them being given some kind of game to play where they shoot each other with the stun guns … you know, exactly like what they were doing before you shouted at them to stop fucking around.

I’m just glad to see military camp hasn’t changed in the future; through a mix of intimidation from adults with self-esteem problems and bullying from other kids, cadets are turned into cold blooded killers. Great job!

There’s also this weird video game he keeps playing where he is a rat who has to run around in a post-apocalyptic landscape and choose cups of poison from an ugly giant:

Insert your own acid trip joke here. I'm too lazy to come up with one. In fact, all my jokes will be like this soon...I won't even write them anymore; I'll just continually ask you to insert your own. THE POWER OF LAZY PREVAILS!

I guess we do get a sort-of explanation from Graff - it’s supposed to “master his emotions” or something and reflect his emotional maturing. Graff is unhappy, though, when Ender’s psychotic brother shows up in the game, as it indicates his emotions are going a different way than what Graff wanted. You mean children who haven't fully developed emotionally yet are unpredictable? Color me shocked, Sherlock fucking Holmes. How’d you come up with THAT brilliant deduction?

Doesn't this poor fuck look like he could use a drink right about now? Somebody make that happen for him.

And again, maybe this whole “using kids for the military” thing ISN’T a good idea?!

Ender keeps on fighting battles, even assembling a team he thinks will do well, until it’s revealed that they WEREN’T really playing a game after all but actually fighting a war against these huge Mothra wannabes that Graff and the other adults have constantly called “the enemy.” Dun dun DUN!!!

So he just walks off the ship and immediately finds this thing right away and negotiates peace with it. How the fuck was there some kind of big war between these bugs and the humans anyway? Did anyone even consider any options beyond "BLOW THEM THE FUCK UP"? I mean it seems like they're pretty easy to get along with so long as you're not sticking guns in their faces or blowing up their home planet. So I guess it really just comes down to one ultimate truth: this whole thing was just another poorly written social commentary on how we act today. Snoooooooore.

Ender ends up leaving the space station and walking to the ship where the main Mothra-alien-thing is, and does the unthinkable by talking to the alien and finding out that all it wants is a place to live without the constant threat of human extermination. So Ender leaves with the alien to help it find a new place to nest its egg. Thus proving that he truly is the smartest and best human being ever in the history of creation, so you should get on your knees and alternatingly bow and suck off the film’s director, who clearly is the One True Messiah for bringing this story to the screen for us mere homo-sapiens to experience.

That’s a bit exaggerated, sure, but you get my point: this whole movie is just so self-involved, masturbatory and revelatory that it’s insufferable. It’s horrible! Every other line is just praising Ender for how Godlike he is and there’s no depth, complexity or humanity to his character. There’s just no sense of real struggle here - Ender is waaaay too perfect, constantly monotone and static, and seems to just exist so adults can point at him and go “Look how perfect this kid is!” He’s not a realistic or interesting character when there’s no sense of who he IS as a person. All you hear about him is what others think about him, and while that MIGHT be an interesting social commentary in a better film, the character isn’t compelling enough to glean much depth or subtlety out of that concept.

I can tell Asa Butterfield tried to bring the emotion out in the character, but the script handwaves away any kind of character development in favor of more “Look how great Ender is!” crap, over and over again. We get it. He’s the fucking Messiah. You can stop hammering that in with all the subtlety of a nuclear war now. It got old in the first ten minutes, and after that it’s so omnipresent and in-your-face that it becomes less a storytelling decision and more a proxy for the creators of the film to wax their own egos until they’re as shiny as a new Cadillac. By talking about how great Ender is, I never got the sense they were telling a story; rather just primping up their own egos for making this movie. It’s lazy, self-important, pretentious, pompous crap.

The rest of the movie isn’t any better - the action isn’t that good, I’m not a fan of the sci-fi aesthetics at all and the pace is either blitzkrieg-fast at the beginning or trudgingly slow for the other two acts. I never read the book, and I’m sure some people will try and tell me I missed the point, but this is just what I got from the film - an alternatingly boring and pretentious story made by people who just wanted to show off and talk about how great they are. If you got something else from it, that’s great, but I really didn’t, and even after seeing this thing twice now, I still couldn’t stay awake without forcing myself to.

So that’s where I stand on this. Just go watch The Hunger Games and its sequel Catching Fire instead if you want a good YA movie.

Images copyright of their original owners. I own none of them.

REVIEW: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies truly have taken the superhero movie genre and – maybe redefined isn’t the best word – more like “done something entirely new” with it. Nolan’s movies aren’t the be-all-end-all, and some people won’t gel with their often dark and intensely gritty tones, but he created this really engrossing world of Gotham City that I think is just fascinating, despite how many times things get blown up in these movies. Seriously, don’t the bad guys in these have any other plans than just blowing shit up? I guess not.

Director: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman

Website: www.thedarkknightrises.com

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/

But the inimitable footprint of Nolan on the superhero movie-genre remains, as he took a silly concept formerly relegated to campy action movies and injected it with some very compelling and relevant themes as well as a killer sense of atmosphere and style that made them feel kind of like graphic novels come to life, they were so intricately woven and jam-packed with action and dialogue. Some people laud (or bash) these films for trying too hard to be realistic, and I say – what? These movies were realistic? With ancient cults of black-hooded martial artists and deranged clowns who, despite supposedly not planning anything, had leagues and leagues of henchmen planting bombs strategically throughout the city for days and days on end? Please. They were darker, sure; grittier, definitely, but realistic? These two movies, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, were cinematic forays into the modern graphic novel. They had multiple parts to them where issue breaks in normal comics would be, lots of characters with complex relationships and were very long and detailed – like graphic novels are!

And now we have The Dark Knight Rises, the much ballyhooed and long-awaited third sequel to this trilogy and the final end to it all from Nolan. It’s hard to really sum up how I feel about this in a succinct manner, so I’ll have to go into a lengthier detail about it. I liked parts of it, but there were also some notable downgrades in quality from the previous two films. There were moments where I was completely invested and then others where I was taken out of the movie by something silly and Hollywood-esque that just felt out of place. The scope was magnificent and the length was fully supported by the gala of material Nolan crammed in, but it felt a bit spread-thin and disjointed, without the cohesive and singular impact of The Dark Knight.

I guess one of the most notable departures in style this one has is that it’s more comic book-y than the other ones. The other films had very mature and well-reasoned dialogue about 98% of the time that really did well to establish character, along with the superlative acting and Nolan’s own creative vision. This one sacrifices a little of that depth in lieu of a much more streamlined cinematic style of dialogue more in common with The Avengers or maybe Iron Man, although the complexity of the story and the acting still manage to save the writing/dialogue from completely falling off the map. Instead of the cuttingly dramatic edge some of the dialogue in The Dark Knight had, here we get more calculated witticisms and consciously humorous lines made to elicit a giggle from the audience, as if to offer a break from the suffocating darkness of the main plot. It’s not all bad, but I miss the more well thought out writing from the other movies, and there are some parts of this, mostly near the end, where I actually cringed at how melodramatic and silly it got. Not many parts, but the few there were made a sour impression.

One more comic book-y thing about this movie is the change in story-type. Batman Begins’ plot was very much in the vein of a stylized Asian action flick for the first half and then switched to a more traditional superhero origin story, albeit done up with a more complex emotional tone for Bruce Wayne’s character as well as some nice, gritty shots of Gotham City that elevated it above the norm at the time. The Dark Knight took things to another level with its high-speed and high-tension crime movie plot, and the intricacy of that combined with the typical Batman brooding and the Joker’s philosophy and insanity made for a movie that was staggeringly complex and layered to the point of being exhausting to watch at times.

This one is longer, and one of the longest Hollywood flicks in any recent memory, but it’s also less complex in the way I wanted it to be, in the way of the intricacy of the plot. There is a lot crammed into this movie and perhaps I missed a few things, but my overall impression was that it was streamlined in the storytelling department too, or rather just a bit too sloppy to be called endearing. Where The Dark Knight was interwoven with tons of themes and sub-plots that all added up to the film’s rather crushing overall themes of chaos, order and loss, this one is a lot broader and stretched thin to the point where it’s more like a bunch of discordant parts running simultaneously against one another. Things are explained too fast and sometimes get lost in the huge running time. Maybe with further viewings this will seem less of a problem, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is a big step back from TDK’s masterful unity. While the scope is grandiose, the details in between are rushed and rather sloppily written in at times.

Another gripe I had was some of the new actors Nolan got on board. He’s had a great run of picking unlikely actors and making great performances out of them – see Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger. So when I heard he was casting Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, I was like “OK, I’m sure he’ll be able to get the very best out of this rather unfitting actress and make it totally believable, right?” Not right. I guess Hathaway isn’t too bad, and she mostly seems interested and energized, but she’s just so cleaned up and cutesy for a role like Catwoman. When you see her in Selena Kyle’s run-down urban apartment, all dirty and ghetto, you don’t really buy it. This is a girl more at home in a fancy penthouse suite, not in some low-rent flea-bitten hole in the wall. And I’m sorry to say this, as it seemed like she was really into it, but she just lacks the necessary grit and cunning to be Catwoman. She’s too nice and too sassy and just seems out of place. A shame – it could have been done so well.

The real disappointment for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as this new character Detective Blake, a young guy with a strange connection to the long-missing Batman. This character could have been kind of cool…when he first showed up I figured he’d be doing something Dexter-esque like trying to discover the mystery of Batman and his real identity, but the real payoff is pretty mediocre, and as a character he’s mostly just kind of annoying and douchey. The acting is typically decent, and Levitt never turns in an outright bad performance. The problem is the writing for his character, which is probably the worst this movie got overall. He is just way too preachy and the writing for him seems like something out of a 90s anti-bullying PSA. Like they tried for ‘Boy Scout’ and ended up with ‘Captain Planet reject.’ Very disappointing from the usually quite subtle and efficient Nolan.

The regular cast is all good, though. Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne gets a lot more screentime here and he does really well, even though the absence of Heath Ledger’s Joker and the Rachel character makes this whole thing feel like a rock band without its famed lead singer, but hey, nothing we can do about that. Bale performs with the necessary dramatic flair and seriousness and hits all the right notes. His Batman is maybe my favorite one yet in these movies, as he seems older, more experienced and yet also more haunted, like the Batman that gained fame in the comics. That was one thing this movie did very, very well; it really gave you a Batman that was hardened and chiseled by his experiences and thus seems all the more conflicted as to why he’s even doing what he’s doing. And for a character who dresses up like a big bat, to make us contemplate his motives and psychology this much is a big accomplishment.

Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon isn’t as prominent as he was in the previous film, but he still does good, and the same goes for Morgan Freeman’s Lucious Fox. Michael Caine as Alfred is on-point as usual, despite a very poorly done scene at the end of the movie which I can’t spoil for you here, but I’ll excuse that because, hey, it’s Michael friggin’ Caine. You can’t argue with him even when he’s given poorly written lines to say in the context of incredibly rushed scenes. He’s just that good.

You might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned Bane yet, and that is because he is probably the film’s biggest asset overall. Tom Hardy was an odd choice, but DAMN does he deliver in this role! Bane in the comics was a calculating, bloodthirsty genius, and he broke Batman in every sense of the word. That character is about as well represented here as I think we’re likely to get in any near future, and although I would have liked a tiny more of the conflict between them in the way that Batman and the Joker had in the last one, Hardy absolutely DOMINATES on screen every scene he is in.

He steals the show. He’s got this really odd warbly Irish-accented voice like some old circus ringleader with a curly mustache, and at first it sounds funny, but when you hear that voice thundering out of the darkness of a dank, poorly-lit sewer lair, or when he’s beating the living daylights out of you…you’ll come to find it unsettling pretty quick. He moves effortlessly like a man who thinks he deserves to have his own moons orbiting around him, and he has this eerie fanaticism and charisma about him that just makes it seem like he really, truly believes everything he’s saying, and would die for it, with it on his lips in his last breath. Everything about him is just incredibly imposing and intimidating. Some of the scenes, like his one-on-one fight with Batman, or one where he addresses a football stadium, are the best in the entire film. A magnificent performance.

The scope of this thing is incredibly massive and covers a lot of different elements of this huge story, and while I mentioned earlier that sometimes the writing was off, I was always entertained by how big and immediate everything felt. At near three hours we get a lot of material, and the film covers a lot of ground in many locations. I really felt the danger the people of Gotham were in, and when the climax rolled around I was totally invested even despite the lame lines and a few trite clichés that Nolan is obviously above in his other movies. It’s so massive that you can’t help but be invested. And Nolan’s penchant for great car-chase action scenes is in full force here – not to be missed.

The ending is nice enough, if a bit rushed – like Nolan was thinking he had to wrap up the film really fast because it was already too long. It’s a happy ending, and that’s refreshing after the brooding last two movies, but at the same time I wish it was fleshed out more and had more emotion to it than it did.

Really what this movie accomplished was that it pointed out what was so good about The Dark Knight. The faults of this movie really bring to light the fact that The Dark Knight was a one of a kind thing, a special film that doesn’t come around more than once. Nolan’s combination of hard-assed political crime thriller and darkly epic superhero myth was spiced with the right kind of writing and dynamic to make something singular and fresh, which sadly wasn’t replicated in its sequel. A few of the best moments of this borrow from The Dark Knight more than I like to really admit to.

So The Dark Knight Rises was a disappointment, if an incredibly ambitious and sometimes engrossing disappointment. There are some moments of this that are stunning and fully encompass the epic scope Nolan was going for, and others that are oddly weak or rushed. This was not a half-assed movie and a lot of effort was put into it, and for that it is worth a viewing no matter what your final opinion of it is. So in the end, it was a beautiful and intriguing disappointment and something worth watching and talking about despite its weaknesses, because it really did have some very good, meaningful scenes and themes of pain and fighting through the pain. It’s a movie about a city in the throes of rebellion and political uprisings and doing what’s right even though people may not appreciate it – typical superhero themes and carried with dignity here.

I wish this was a stronger film, but it’s an odd paradox in that it is a disappointment worth watching anyway, just because of the massive effort put into it, and because it follows such a great duo of films. The writing was lacking and the plot could have been tighter, and those things were its more concrete and basic flaws, but this was mostly a failure of over-ambitiousness - it didn't totally work because Nolan consciously over-extended his reach in trying to make something more epic than The Dark Knight. But that kind of failure makes it more interesting to watch (as opposed to a mere failure of mediocre writing and loose plots), for the creativity and zeal of its creators in putting it together. So this wasn’t the masterpiece I wanted. But I think it still merits a watch. Give it a try anyway.

Image copyright of its original owners, I do not own it.

REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Director: Marc Webb

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948470/

Finally, we have a Spider-Man film that really captures what the character and story are really about. This is a reboot of the Spider-Man franchise that I think was the best possible move they could have done, seeing as the Raimi films…well, they weren’t exactly anything to write home about. This one, directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, is the truest to the comics I’ve seen yet and a spectacular friggin’ movie to boot, maybe the best summer blockbuster we’ve seen this summer yet. Does that get your ears perked up? Let’s dig into why.

First, the acting is just great in this. Andrew Garfield was an odd choice to play Peter Parker, as he looked very little like what we always associate the character with being. But he does a really good job at playing both Peter as the sometimes-troubled and awkward high school student with a brilliant mind and Spider-Man as a witty, wisecracking vigilante. He’s not as outwardly geeky and soft-spoken as some past incarnations have been, but he feels more like a three dimensional, real kid, and that’s why I think this is the best Peter Parker we’ve seen on any screen yet.

The scenes where he’s discovering his powers are really cool and show the wonder of it combined with the awkwardness and absurdity that Peter no doubt feels – there are numerous bits where his newfound strength completely destroys everyday tasks like opening doors and brushing teeth. Hell, when Peter is going home on the subway right after, he wrecks an entire car and gets into a huge fight scene all by accident by hitting people when he does not mean to. There’s one scene where he’s just sitting on his bed, wide-eyed and half-crazy after seeing what he can do now, that just encapsulates everything that a normal kid would feel after having these things happen to him. It’s silent, wordless moments like this that are spotted throughout the film and really show me what a talent this kid is, and how well the director managed to use him.

The humanity of the character really comes out through Garfield’s emotive and spot-on performance. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, who despite playing the usual Emma Stone kind of performance – you know, the whole sassy and independent girl thing she does in every movie – this time the writing is strong and actually supports her very well. So she does a good job.

Another great performance is veteran actor Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, who just does a really great job at playing a parental figure for such a troubled kid – you get the tender side and a more strict side, as well as just a great sense of personality and wit about him. At the end of the day, you really, really like Uncle Ben in this movie. I liked all of these characters a lot. Even if you knew nothing about Spider-Man, you could like and really care about these characters as much as you have with any movie – that is the sign of great acting and great writing.

The setting and lighting are wonderful, with beautifully lit shots of New York and some very pulpy old school-style comic book-esque locations – witness the glowering green lights and the cavernous depths of the sewers where The Lizard makes his infernal concoctions, and in contrast, the Parker house, warm and full of all the things you’d expect from an aunt making delicious things in the kitchen to movie posters and camera equipment in Peter’s bedroom. So aesthetically the movie gets it right – small stuff, but it counts. The settings all reminded me of comic books in their layouts and how they were set up.

The real meat of the movie comes from the bigger moments, though, like any time when Spider-Man is doing his thing around the city. This movie rocks some great, funny dialogue for him and some cool scenes where he apprehends all these small time crooks with his webs and super-speed and strength – they are scenes you will find in anything Spider-Man related, but they’re a lot of fun here and stand up to the past 50 years of his history with ease. One of the better moments comes when he saves a kid from a burning vehicle – I won’t spoil much else, but the grace and power with which this scene is handled are just epic, and the scene is really, really cool. The finale is a fast-paced, boiling thriller of a set-up that just rules. A great, blood-pumping finale for a great film.

The film remains entertaining whether it’s about Spidey kicking the crap out of a crook, about Peter Parker interacting with Aunt May or Gwen Stacey and her family or about Peter’s quest to find Curt Connors and solve the mystery of what happened to his dad. That’s really the mark of a first-rate script and director. The Amazing Spider-Man is one of those great cinematic moments where everything just came together like magic for a real winner of a movie.

REVIEW: Hulk (2003)

Well, with The Avengers finally out and winning worldwide acclaim, it looks like superhero films have finally hit their stride and become worth talking about again – it’s been a long time coming with a lot of steep roads, but finally we have some viable superhero flicks to lead the genre and prove that it isn’t a big half-assed joke just made to cash in on the comic books. Indeed, we certainly have come a long way since movies like the 2003 Hulk film with Eric Bana, a movie so lame and so boring that it feels like you yourself are getting a radioactive zap straight to the brain. And yes, I did just use a joke that bad. I should be ashamed, but then again, I’m still better than the people who made THIS.

Director: Ang Lee

Starring: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286716/

I mean MAN this is a dull, plodding, hackneyed piece of nothing. Who knew you could make The Hulk so boring? It’s got all the elements you’d expect a Hulk film to have, but they’re done incredibly poorly, and mostly it will just put you to sleep. Eh. Let’s…try and get it over with, I guess…

We start off with a guy named David Banner doing illegal experiments without the government’s permission like experimenting on his own son – what a douchebag. He gets sacked rightfully, as what he’s doing is highly illegal. He starts to freak out and break shit and then immediately runs home to kill his son; what a champion father. We don’t exactly see what happens next, because the movie is as incoherent as your average meth addict, and just fades into another scene with main character Bruce Banner as a teenager about to go off to college and leave Woody, Buzz and all the other toys behind for the last time:

Maybe I got the wrong movie franchise...

Okay, seriously, what’s up with the flashbacks? Does this director just not think we’ll be able to understand The Hulk’s plot without showing us Bruce Banner’s past? And for that matter, why change the story like this? Bruce Banner was a normal guy who got caught up in radiation and became a big green monster. THAT’S IT. What is all this nonsense about his father conducting secret experiments on him and trying to kill him as a little kid? It’s just needlessly complex and dark.

So we finally get to the present day as we see Bruce Banner played by Eric Bana and his ex-girlfriend Betty, played by Jennifer Connelly, neither one of whom ever seems to give a shit about any of their lines throughout this thing. I’m serious, you could get cardboard cutouts to play these characters and you’d have the same level of emotional attachment. These two are ex boyfriend and girlfriend and it seems like this is supposed to be a point of contention between them, but the way Bana and Connelly act, it’s just a minor inconvenience to laugh about. So glad THAT riveting emotional character development was avoided!

They mosey around for a while exchanging some nonsensical dialogue and the scenes are transitioned horribly through schizophrenic drug induced hallucinations that look like stuff you’d see in a 1995 computer game. The whole thing is just too cluttered and claustrophobic, with short scenes broken up by tons of bright, flashy colors enough to give small Japanese children seizures. How am I supposed to be invested in this? It’s practically the cinematic equivalent of a hyperactive little girl on too much sugar!

So Banner and Betty do some more experiments until their dumbass friend accidentally breaks the machine and gets Banner infected with the radiation. It should kill him, but instead, mysteriously, he’s OK, and even better than before. He then gets visited by a creepy old Unabomber impersonator, his own crazy father who escaped from a mental ward and disguised himself as the janitor of the building, played by veteran actor Nick Nolte. How did they get him to do this? Well, I imagine a lot of horrible, horrible blackmail was involved. And what’s up with the three random dogs he has with him all the time? Is this supposed to be taken seriously?

The true picture of villainy; a crazy homeless man from your local subway with a bunch of weird dogs around him for no reason.

Nolte hams it up in front of the camera as he’s going to do for the entire movie – this guy is seriously just terrible here, and it’s baffling because I know he can do good in other movies. What happened, was he just told to act as poorly as possible? I also love how he tries to get all self righteous and finger-pointing at Banner for not being a good scientist or whatever when HE was arrested for malpractice and experimenting on humans and then put into a mental ward. Not exactly in the position to chastise others, are you pal?

And what is also so strange about this is…HOW THE HELL DID HE GET HIRED BY A GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SCIENTIFIC BUILDING? He has a criminal history! Do they just not do any background checks on their employees? “Hey, I know this guy was arrested thirty years ago for doing illegal experiments and has been in a mental ward ever since, but I really think he’s perfect for our scientist building as a janitor! NOTHING BAD could possibly result from this!” USE YOUR BRAINS YOU MONGOLOIDS.

Banner turns into the Hulk and destroys the lab, causing everything to get shut down by the government and Banner to be arrested the next morning. Betty’s father the military general (Sam Elliott) comes in and arrests Banner despite Betty’s pleas otherwise – he’s ONLY a danger to all mankind as long as he’s free, after all! Why do some parents have to be so inconsiderate?

That night we see David Banner’s most diabolical plot yet…three rabid super-dogs, one of which is a French poodle. I swear I am not making that up:

Reminds me of The Breed...

Or, no, wait. It's like Cujo II:  Who Let the Dogs Out! There we go!

I…can’t tell if this is stupid or genius. But we get a pretty decent action scene I guess, remarkable enough for the fact that it involves a demonic French poodle, but decent enough otherwise, too. Then they go back and we find out that Betty really wasn’t so loyal after all, as despite the fact that Banner helped her, she tranquilizes him and lets the military take him. What a whore.

They take him to some compound where of course they NEVER do anything stupid like…just letting him walk around all he wants with his ex girlfriend with no guards or protection, thus putting everyone in danger…oh wait, they DO do that. What a bunch of morons! But at least they’re prepared for a Hulk break-out in case they do some experiments on him underwater and he gets angry and breaks out…oh, wait, they’re NOT prepared at all, and have to run around like their heads are up their asses just to make sure he doesn’t kill them.

Aren't you glad the US is paying taxes in this world to fund idiotic experiments like this, which could have literally been orchestrated better by a five year old? How is it THIS HARD to NOT waste valuable resources? If you want to make The Hulk come out, how about actually getting prepared for it, and setting up damage-proof settings where he won't destroy anything? But I guess that would make too much sense. Instead these guys just love to run around like turkeys with their heads cut off while The Hulk demolishes all their hard work. But hey, whatever works, ya know?!

Is anything these guys do sensible or smart AT ALL? I’ll just spoil that for you and say no, no it isn’t.

So the Hulk breaks out of the compound and goes on a rampage all around the desert and even through the Grand Canyon. And okay, even I have to admit, this is the only good part of the movie, with some excellent scenery and even some decent action for once. Seeing the Hulk jump around the Grand Canyon is pretty awesome.

But the movie RUINS it soon after by having David Banner, Bruce’s father and now a crazy Unabomber wannabe, talk to Betty alone and try to get her to let him talk to Bruce again, even offering to turn himself in. Now, in any rational universe, the military’s response would be “No, you crazy freak, we’re just arresting you and putting you back in that mental institution for the rest of your life.” However, in THIS MOVIE, the military just goes along with his demands and agrees to them!

…

…….

…………….

ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS? What kind of military is this? They ACTUALLY let him see his son after everything he’s done? I mean, he’s only an escaped mental patient locked up for doing dangerous experiments on human beings. It’s not like he’s, oh I don’t know, CRAZY or anything, right? This makes no sense! What kind of military organization would ever negotiate with a hostage like this? What do they gain? Brownie points for reuniting a son and his father, even though the father is a known lunatic and could do anything to activate his son’s Hulk persona and sabotage everything the military themselves is working for? Are they just TRYING to screw up as much as possible? Is that the experiment they're doing; how to royally mess up everything as much as possible? I’m sorry, I don’t get it, and this movie has officially crossed the line into complete WTF territory, never to return. Movie, YOU NEED HELP.

So anyway, now we have a second climax which involves David Banner biting on a big electric wire and turning into, well, what looks like a big pile of Transformer droppings:

Noogie noogie noogie!

They fight some more and David turns into…oh, do you even care anymore?

I really don't, so I'm not going to bother explaining this part.

Then the military bombs them and leaves them for dead without even checking to SEE if they’re dead or not – have I mentioned I’m not exactly enthralled with the way the military acts in this movie? – and we’re done, right? No? There’s still another ’1 year later’ epilogue scene? Oh come on, JUST END ALREADY, you big pile of green garbage!

Sigh. So apparently a year later, Jennifer Connelly still can’t act, as when she says she still loves Bruce, she sounds like she’s just saying she lost her shoes or something – don’t get TOO emotional there honey; don’t want to actually make us give a shit there or something! And we see Bruce himself in the jungle with some native tribe, getting robbed by some thieves. He glares at them and says, in a foreign language, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

So, just to recap that, the signature line of the Hulk series is only uttered in a foreign language at the very end of the movie – it’s not THAT BIG of a deal or anything, but it just points out how much this movie utterly fails.

And fail it does! This was crap. Aside from the awful special effects, acting and storyline, it was just so cluttered with nonsensical transitions and too many plotlines for what should have been a relatively simple movie. I didn’t really get a chance to mention it in the review, but this movie is also really, really friggin’ pretentious and ponderous, with far too many faux-philosophical ramblings from Nick Nolte’s character that just get on my nerves with how self-indulgent they are. For psychological superhero movies, The Dark Knight was still a long ways off.

So yeah, this sucks. Go see the 2008 one instead. It isn’t anything amazing, but it’s at least a real movie, unlike this haphazard collection of psychedelic music video images and pretentious college-student speeches. And I think that’s a big plus!

Images copyright of their original owners.