The Greatest Trick

Is The Dark Knight a great film? I don’t know. It’s certainly an unusually good one, but I suspect it is not the masterpiece everyone claims. As I write this I know I could well end up eating my words, because I felt the same way about Batman Begins when that was initially released. However, after repeated viewings I now consider that film to be the best Batman film, despite at the time preferring Tim Burton’s twisted fairytale take on the franchise.

The plot begins in suitably explosive fashion as the Joker (Heath Ledger) stages an audacious, Heat-esque bank heist. Following this, Batman (Christian Bale) captures the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), presumably for no other reason than to tie up a loose end from the previous film. We are then reintroduced to honest cop and soon to be Commissioner, James Gordon (Gary Oldman), and DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is working hard to put the mob behind bars. With Dent’s crusade in full swing, Bruce Wayne thinks it might be time to hang up the Bat cape and move on. However, when the Joker begins to target public officials, events escalate and take a much darker turn.

With The Dark Knight, there are a number of bubbles I feel the need to, if not exactly burst, then deflate slightly. Firstly and most obviously, there is the issue of Heath Ledger’s performance. Since his tragic death earlier in the year, critics have been excitedly waxing lyrical about a potential posthumous Oscar. Whilst it is true that Ledger is superb in the role and manages to surpass Jack Nicholson’s take on the character (no mean feat), he is no more impressive than Christian Bale, again excellent as both Batman and playboy Bruce Wayne. Equally impressive are Gary Oldman, again brilliantly cast against type, and particularly Aaron Eckhart, who contribute a performance of infinitely greater subtlety than Ledger. Yet unlike the Joker, because they are not the showy roles the Academy loves it is unlikely any of them will be nominated. Elsewhere in the cast, there are solid supporting turns from Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Maggie Gyllenhaal (who replaced Katie Holmes).

My next complaint may seem like nit-picking to most viewers, but I was once again disappointed with James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer’s music score. Admittedly the music works effectively enough, but they have deliberately eschewed the big epic themes that prove so memorable in great superhero movies of old, such as Superman and Tim Burton’s version of Batman. The current trend towards more percussive underscores irritates me greatly, especially where it is appropriate to write big bold themes. The argument for doing this goes something like “big themes lack subtlety”, but with a great composer this is actually completely untrue. Take for example John Williams’ epic orchestrations of the Darth Vader march. There are many superb and infinitely subtle variations of it played throughout the Star Wars films from epic to fast, exciting, scary, sinister, melancholy and tragic. And everyone knows the theme. Ever since Erich von Korngold’s magnificent music score for The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, classic adventure films have benefited greatly from recognisable themes. My four year old son instantly recognises the unforgettable music for that, Superman and many other classic adventure movies. But no-one will be humming the themes from Iron Man or The Dark Knight in twenty or thirty years.

Director Christopher Nolan abandons his trademark non-linear narratives here for the first time, and directs with considerable flair, especially in the stunning, gadget driven action sequences and some very tense moments (one in particular involving hostages on ferries). The tough, gritty feel of Batman Begins is maintained here, and ultimately the screenplay feels more like an epic crime drama than a comic book. Needless to say, the visual and sound effects are first rate, but as a whole, I feel the story is less satisfying than its predecessor, despite the presence of a proper villain this time.

Speaking of which, Ledger plays the Joker not so much as a person but as an evil force. He has no character arc, no background and no name. He doesn’t fear death or pain, and seems to take a masochistic delight when on the receiving end of violence. If anything, it seems to make him stronger. Even when incarcerated, he is absolutely unstoppable, utterly psychotic and apparently without motivation. At one point he says he’s like a dog chasing a car. He wouldn’t know what to do with one if he caught it. The Joker could be symbolic of something like international terrorism. Indeed, much of the film can be taken as an allegory of post 9/11 America and its responses to that tragedy, including how good men can turn evil in their responses to such atrocity. Is Harvey Dent ultimately a symbol of the Bush Administration’s more controversial reactions, such as the invasion of Iraq and Guantanamo bay? If so, then The Dark Knight is also a pseudo-Biblical tale, with the Joker obviously representing Satan and Batman representing if not exactly God then some kind of force for good in the battle for Harvey Dent’s soul.

SPOILER WARNING: My feelings about the ending were somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, the idea of Batman taking on Harvey Dent’s sins and destroying his own reputation in the process brings a Christ-like dimension to his character. On the other hand, he is lying, and I’m always uneasy where lying for the greater good is seen as a positive moral quality. That said, overall, The Dark Knight is a very good, but flawed, comic book adventure. Perhaps I will look more favourably on it with repeated viewings, so with that in mind I do recommend seeing it.

Simon Dillon, July 2008.

Reviewing Pixar films is getting increasingly predictable. Every feature they make seems to stretch their creative, storytelling and technical abilities to breaking point, yet they always manage to pull it off. So when I say Wall-E is their most technically accomplished and probably most brilliant film to date, it sounds completely redundant. But even by Pixar’s ludicrously high standards director Andrew Stanton (who made Finding Nemo) has crafted an instant masterpiece that stands tall and proud among the very greatest of family films.

In the year 2110, mankind abandoned the Earth because it was covered with rubbish and uninhabitable. Left behind were several thousand robots, Wall-E units, assigned to clear up. 700 years later, they have all long since broken down except one who has developed something of an eccentric personality. He has a little home filled with curious objects he has discovered (light bulbs, whisks, and so forth), and a penchant for the not exactly classic Barbra Streisand musical Hello Dolly, which he watches endlessly on an old VHS tape. His only companion is a cockroach who he has trained as a pet. But Wall-E is desperately lonely.

His mundane garbage clearing routine is suddenly disrupted by the arrival of Eve, a sleek female robot who has been sent to Earth by surviving humans to see whether plant life is growing there again. In the process she meets Wall-E and although at first she tries to blast him into atoms, the two eventually make friends and begin to fall in love.

I know the plot sounds preposterous, but Pixar have made a career out of taking inanimate objects such as toys and cars, bringing them to life and investing them with a depth of humanity often greater than those of actual human performances! Wall-E has this in spades, and the developing relationship between him and Eve is so full of humour, warmth, melancholy and excitement that suspension of disbelief is effortlessly achieved.

The first half of Wall-E has been hailed as an audacious experiment in that it contains no dialogue. The plot is told visually through bleeped robotic responses and movements (especially in the eyes) that convey the necessary emotions, but then cinema is a visual medium and this ought to be the ideal. As screenwriting guru Robert McKee says, “Image is the first choice. Dialogue is the regrettable second choice”. Before Wall-E was released, some were initially unsure children would go for such a return to what is essentially silent cinema, but I recall as a child massively enjoying silent classics such as Buster Keaton’s The General and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. Besides, there are hugely effective dialogue free sequences in many classic family films (the brilliant opening of ET for instance). In addition, the convention of many cartoons (such as Tom and Jerry) is to have as little dialogue as possible, and therefore I am sure children should be more than ready for the not-as-audacious-as-it-sounds, first half.

In the second half, Eve is taken by a spacecraft and Wall-E tries to rescue her. This leads to an amazing journey through space to the gigantic starship Axiom, where the surviving humans reside. To say anymore at this stage would spoil the fun suffice to say the plot unfolds simply and beautifully.

Here I must insert the obligatory paragraph about Pixar’s magnificent visuals, and there are images here that will stay with you for the rest of your life. The bleak, dystopian visions of an abandoned, rubbish-covered Earth are vast, epic, and astonishingly lonely. The level of detail in the rusted buildings, deserted roads, dust storms and smog once again fuels my suspicions that those who work for Pixar have some kind of artistic obsessive compulsive disorder that drives them to improve on perfection. In the second half of the film, the look changes with a journey through space so achingly beautiful it almost brings a tear to the eye. Once aboard the Axiom, the polished sheen of the spacecraft interiors are so phenomenally detailed that I am forced to conclude that if Michelangelo was alive today, he’d be working for Pixar. Such artistic craftsmanship simply has to be seen on a big screen to be properly appreciated.

Wall-E is also an extraordinary auditory experience. Much of the credit must go to Ben Burtt, the man behind some of the greatest sound effects in cinema history (R2 D2, lightsabres, Jurassic Park dinosaurs, etc). It is appropriate that here Burtt uses samples of his own voice amid his orchestra of bleeps, whistles and other sounds that bring the character of Wall-E to life.

Even though Wall-E owes and acknowledges a debt to science fiction classics such as Silent Running and 2001: A Space Odyssey (there’s even a HAL-like villain), at heart it’s more akin to optimistic modern fantasy tales like Star Wars or ET. Yet it still seems miraculously fresh and original – a potential science fiction classic in its own right, and one that leaves the viewer on a dizzying high.

What raises this above the level of merely an absolutely first-rate entertainment is the timely but non-preachy warning about the dangers of greed and environmental mismanagement. It is also an interesting examination of what could happen to the human race should it ever become overly dependant on automation. Sequences where the now obese, brainwashed humans aboard the Axiom rediscover one another, (as opposed to images of one another on video screens) and learn about things they have long since forgotten centuries ago (such as agriculture) as a result of Wall-E’s antics underscore this point. In addition, Wall-E is a surprisingly profound study of loneliness and longing, and even has a Biblical worldview (without mentioning Jesus or God) in that it depicts its central character as being someone who is prepared to heroically lay down his life for his friends.

One lovely, lovely sequence where Wall-E and Eve dance through space using a fire extinguisher to propel them, will go down in cinema history as one of the greatest visualisations of pure joy ever seen on the big screen (and please, I beg you, see it on a big screen). For this scene alone, I suspect that in years to come, Wall-E will join the elite ranks alongside The Wizard of Oz, The Railway Children, The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins and ET as one of the greatest family films ever made.

Simon Dillon, July 2008.

Before I am flooded with responses from those unable to tolerate American abuses of the Queen’s English, Journey to the Center of the Earth is an American film, hence the incorrect spelling of the word centre. Linguistic pedantry notwithstanding, this is a surprisingly entertaining film and far better than I expected.

In a niftily post-modern twist on Jules Verne’s classic novel, volcano scientist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) discovers that his brother, who mysteriously vanished ten years previously, was a “Vernean”, a member of a secret club who believe Jules Verne’s novels were factual accounts. With his thirteen year old nephew Sean and plucky mountain guide Hannah in tow, Trevor travels to Iceland to investigate mysterious readings on the same volcano where his brother vanished. Events conspire to trap them underground at the centre of the Earth where everything is precisely as described in Verne’s novel.

Part of the reason for the success of the film is the immensely likeable characters. Fraser is as fun here as he was in The Mummy. Anita Briem brings tremendous warmth and humour to the resourceful Hannah, and as Sean Josh Hutcherson is that rarity; a non-annoying kid. Michael Weiss’ swift, no-nonsense script gives each of them several opportunities to shine, and this above all will mean the film has life beyond its cinema run. Unlike other recent 3D movies such as Beowulf and The Polar Express, Journey to the Center of the Earth is interested in character and does not exclusively invest in special effects that will render the film worthless on a small screen.

That’s not to say one shouldn’t make the effort to see this in a cinema, and if possible, a 3D print. All the usual 3D money shots are present and correct, though when watching a 2D print, viewers may wonder why it was necessary for Brendan Fraser to spit on the camera lens. But regardless of whether it is viewed in 3D or 2D, director Eric Brevig creates many outstanding set pieces, my favourite of which involved magnetised rocks hovering over an abyss. Those familiar with the novel will also be pleased to see the various key events, such as the journey across the ocean, are all present and correct.

It’s not perfect. One or two nods to classic Steven Spielberg movies feel a little forced – notably a Jurassic Park style T-Rex chase and a mine car ride that shamelessly rips off Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Some of the effects don’t fully convince, and its certainly not groundbreaking cinema. That said if you enjoy adventure films and especially if you have children between about eight and twelve, this is a must-see. Your children will probably think its one of the best films they’ve ever seen, and it’s all the better for being clean as a whistle – no sex, violence or bad language but packed with thrills and excitement.

Simon Dillon, July 2008.

There is an interesting production story behind The Mist’s intensely disturbing finale. Apparently studio bosses told director Frank Darabont that there was no way he would be allowed to film it as such bleakness would affect box office takings. Darabont’s solution was to half the budget by cutting back on effects and using B-list actors, which meant he was allowed to keep the ending he wanted. The result is a much better film than would have resulted from a watered down compromise. The Mist can now join that hallowed pantheon of horror films with really, really upsetting endings, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Don’t Look Now, Seven, Angel Heart, The Vanishing (the original version, not the US remake), and more recently The Descent (the British version – for some insane reason, in the US the ending was cut out).

Darabont’s previous collaboration with Stephen King resulted in The Shawshank Redemption – a film that went from underrated (I was one of the two people who actually saw it in the cinema) to overrated (it’s now frequently cited as the greatest film of the 1990s). In adapting another King novella, Darabont appears at first to have taken a step back, since The Mist initially has the trappings of a sci-fi/horror B-movie, albeit an enjoyable one. But despite initial appearances, The Mist is more – much more – than mere pulp fiction. It is a fascinating political allegory of Bush’s America, 9/11 and the Iraq war, and also a deeply disturbing Lord of the Flies type examination of human nature.

The main character is artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane), whom movie buffs will immediately sympathise with because he paints film posters for a living and moans about how it is a lost art with studios these days turning to Photoshop to do quick, cheap posters. After a fierce storm which leaves his small town without power, David and his young son go to the supermarket to stock up on food, only to find a mysterious mist suddenly descend on the town, enveloping the supermarket and everyone in it. Very soon it becomes apparent there is something deadly in the mist killing people off, so the scene is set for a tense, claustrophobic siege drama as the people inside the shop try to defend themselves from these mysterious deadly creatures.

But although the monsters in the mist are truly horrible – especially in one monumentally gruesome sequence that will give arachnophobics nightmares for the rest of their lives – the real danger comes from inside the shop. It is here that The Mist is at its most interesting, as fanatically religious Mrs Camody (Marcia Gay Harden) tries to convince others trapped in the shop that this is God’s judgement. When she begins to convert people to her cause, it becomes clear that she intends to use non-believers as human sacrifices to appease the monsters. It is then hinted that military scientists may in some way have been responsible for the mist by experimenting with parallel realities, thus bringing these creatures into our universe.

The allegories are there for whoever wants to see them. The mist is international terrorism and specifically 9/11, brought about by interfering in something we had no business interfering in (parallel universe equals the Middle East). It is no mistake that the first “sacrifice” made by Mrs Camody is a US soldier. Such symbolism is clearly intentional, and though it might be tempting to view the film as anti-military, I think that is too simplistic. The soldiers trapped in the shop are honourable men who are simply following the instructions of their political overlords. There are many soldiers in Iraq who don’t agree with what is happening, but have no choice but to go because they are stationed (and often “sacrificed”) there.

The B-list cast – including such stalwarts as William Sadler, Brent Norton and the excellent Toby Jones – do a terrific job and really get their teeth into some very memorable characters. The visual effects are limited but well done (hiding CG in mist always helps), and the music (Mark Isham) and sound effects are employed to brilliant effect. It’s not always perfect. Occasionally the film slips into B-movie clichés including a couple of cheap, jump-out-of-your-skin-at-something-perfectly-harmless moments. It also feels a little overlong and rough around the edges, but overall this doesn’t harm the film particularly.

One area that must be addressed is the portrayal of Christians/Christianity and this presents some difficultly. Firstly and most obviously, Mrs Camody is not a genuine Christian but a fanatic who uses the Bible and the Book of Revelation in particular out of context to manipulate people into frenzied lunacy. She is clearly meant to be a Bush type figure, and as a result the viewer’s political beliefs will largely affect how offensive they find the film. But politics aside, I find it impossible to divorce the Mrs Camody character from the anti-Christian trend in Stephen King’s writing. King clearly sees American Christians as insane fanatics and even a cursory knowledge of his work reveals this (Carrie for instance and even The Shawshank Redemption). Quite possibly King has something to criticise, in that America does have more than its fair share of loony cultists, but it is his refusal to ever counter balance this with good portrayals of Christians that leads me to conclude he has something of an axe to grind. So with that baggage, I am forced to conclude that there is something here to offend Christians. But as I often say, I’d rather be offended than bored.

Which brings me to the stunningly cruel ending – one of the most disturbing, bleak, feel-bad, punch-in-the-guts horror finales I have seen for some time. If, like me, you want your pseudo-intellectual horror movies at full strength with no compromises then this couldn’t come more highly recommended. Others had best steer clear not just for the scares but for graphic bloody violence and strong swearing.

Simon Dillon, July 2008.

Kung Fu Panda is one of those films that has everything you need to know about it in the title. This slight but diverting animated tale of a fat Panda called Po who dreams of being a Kung Fu legend should entertain most children, whilst providing some amusing send-ups of classic Kung Fu movies for the adults.

The plot concerns Po, whose dream to join Kung Fu fighters Crane, Tigress, Monkey, Mantis and Viper, whom he idolises, suddenly comes true when it is revealed he is destined to become the “Dragon Fighter”, the one who will free their valley of the evil Tai Lung (a particularly vicious leopard). Along the way, audiences are subjected to the predictable but worthwhile message about being yourself.

There are some fairly good laughs to be had here, especially Po’s fanboyish behaviour as he meets his heroes. There is plenty of inspired slapstick too, in sequences ranging from a thrillingly ludicrous prison breakout, a fight on a rope bridge, a hugely amusing training montage involving chopsticks, and an action packed final duel.

The animation is rich and detailed, though not quite up to Pixar’s impossibly high standards. Various big name vocal talents all contribute amusing performances, including Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogan, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, and of course Jack Black. The screenplay is engaging, and directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson make good use of the widescreen format.

In short, this is nothing particularly remarkable or particularly bad, and as such, there’s not a lot to write about.

Simon Dillon, July 2008.