The Dark Knight Stutters

Right, I've got caught up with The Dark Knight Rises and well, frankly, I thought it was disappointing. Not terrible by any means but very, very average and by far the weakest of the Nolan Batman trilogy for me.

At no point during the film did a really engage with the characters of the story that was unfolding, because the characters were hardly developed and the story often didn't make sense and then ends on something ludicrous before having a cheat of a coda.

The film opens with Bane mounting a raid on a CIA plane to capture a scientist. A scientist who apparently is the only person in the world capable of turning a nuclear reactor into a bomb. This seems unlikely. It's a sequence however which is probably the most interesting action set pieces in the film. It is pretty cool but unfortunately also comes at the start of a film which runs for nearly another three hours.

Anyway we switch to a charity benefit which exists to remind us of Harvey Dent and the end of the last film. We find Bruce apparently largely crippled, for no apparent reason. We are told that Batman disappeared for eight years right after the death of Dent. So we meant to believe that despite Bruce not doing his thing for years his body has accumulated a number of serious injuries whilst he sat around at home.

Had it been eight years of him fighting crime then yes I could accept that the damage has built to leave Bruce struggling. But no, we are told a few times that he just stopped after that night. That chase with the police must of gone really badly.

Anyway soon we have Selina Kyle stealing Bruce's fingerprints (she is the best thing in the film, more on that later) to sell to an evil business man. Said evil man is in league with Bane in a plot to take over Wayne Enterprises. Together they mount an attack on the stock exchange to effectively bankrupt Bruce. However apparently despite physically taking over the exchange it appears they didn't need to.

For as this sequence moves on it appears the criminals can do their thing via Wi-Fi. Not only that but whilst in the midst of a high speed motorbike chase no less. Erm. Oh, and at not point do they use the fingerprints in this plan. So basically the fingerprint element is only an excuse to get Selina to meet Bruce.

The Upshot of all this is that Marion Cotillard's Miranda can get her hands on a fusion reactor for her evil plan. Despite the fact that her comrade Bane appears to know exactly where it is and basically just takes it.
So why bother with the whole stock-exchange, bankrupt Bruce to take over the company thing? If it was she learn how to flood the facility to stop it being used to disarm the bomb then surely they could place guards or even better just blow it up after they are finished with it. Yes basically the first third of the film serves no purpose if you think about it for two minutes.

Anyway, once Bane and co have their bomb, he fights Batman, easily defeating him and sending him to a prison in a foreign backwater, whilst swearing to torture his soul. Bane then spends five months just not really doing anything after taking over central Gotham and threatening to blow it up.

We have a few scenes of chaos and then apparently this translates just as empty streets everywhere despite there being no police on the streets at all.

So Bruce talks to a crazy old man who conveniently tells him half a story and never mentions the child he keeps talking about is a girl. Gets over his broken back, escapes and gets back to Gotham in what appears to be less than a day. Hmm.

Once he gets back he releases all the trapped cops (who seem fairly healthily for men trapped underground for five months) fights Bane (this time winning after thinking punching him in his obvious facemask is a good idea) is betrayed by the woman he's gone to save (about which we don't really care as she's been in about five scenes before this and Bruce has known her for all of about a week) and then seemingly sacrifices himself to detonate a nuclear bomb over the bay next to the city ( a 4megaton bomb as we are told. So er, yeah, I'm sure Gotham will be fine with that being detonated a couple of miles away), only he obviously doesn't.

Oh and all through this Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a good, honourable beat cop. So basically the story is simple but the first part is irrelevant and the shock betrayal is muted because the character behind it is under developed and it seems we are meant to believe Bruce loves her. But there really is no connection between the two. So Bruce looks shocked and the audience just shrugs it's shoulders.

And that is one of the main problems with the film, characters just aren't developed. For example Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle is the best thing the film. She is sassy, cool and capable. She however never is anything really beyond this. We get no real sense of her motivation or her past or role in things. She seems to be indebted to Bane's gang but we never get an understanding of why. If anything the character is mostly functional, showing up whenever Bruce needs help or the plot needs to be moved on.

As mentioned Miranda is not sufficiently developed to make her betrayal feel like anything, leaving us with Bane as the main villain. He also fails. Hampered by the fact the re-mastering of his lines after bad feedback to the initial mix meaning it never seems like he is actually saying his own lines but just being overdubbed by someone else entirely. His physically capable and seemingly smart but as mentioned his plan overall seems confused, and his is dismissed almost as an afterthought in the final third of the film. In fact his two figths with Bruce are both underwhelming and fairly dully choreographed.

So, yes the shadow of the Joker hangs over this film too; no-one here has his presence.

Elsewhere the secondary character perform their function and little more. But a key factor is we don't really get a reading on Bruce either. Is he supposed to be grieving? Maybe, but he seems to lurch from impassive to slightly annoyed and back. In one key scene where Alfred delivers what should be devastating news he just basically walks up the stairs. There is no visible reaction. And his great anger just comes across as someone a bit ticked off. (Also he goes from one scene refusing to use guns to the next where he is letting lose with the cannons on his flying heli-Bat thing)

The film is solidly lensed but there are no truly striking images or sequences, nothing comes close to the second film's police van chase for example.  Hans Zimmer's score repeats most of the beats from the opening instalments and occasionally actually works to drown out what characters are saying.

So, yeah overall, disappointing. And the coda is not open interpretation as people suggest. Inception is built around questioning what is real. Nothing in this film does that, we are not lead to question the reality of anything. So there is absolutely no reason to question the reality of the scene of Alfred seeing Bruce and Selina (who he never met, he only saw her photo, so why would he imagine her?).

Prometheus : Errm?

Right so some forty years after creating the Alien franchise Ridley Scott returns to the fictional world of his most famous creation. It's a return that's fully successfully sadly.

There is no mistaking that Prometheus is a fantastic looking film with sweeping cinematographer and outstanding work in the design of everything from the eponymous research ship to those telltale flashes of Gieger inspired design in the alien landscape. For instance the way the Prometheus both feels shiny and new but is reminiscent of the corridors and halls of the doomed colony from Aliens.

In fact of the best stuff is only glimpsed briefly such as the murals on the walls of the 'engineer' temple that quickly vanish. The design is undoubtedly the strongest single element of the film but it sadly lacks in other areas.

 One of the main problems is that none of the characters are really developed enough to engage with and as such you never really get drawn into the story. Idris Elba's captain of the ship only seems to there to be surely and deliver a plot point to explain he known part of what is happening despite him barely leaving the ship. Charlize Theron's Vickers delivers an early piece of exposition to establish the mission and then actually does nothing pretty much for the rest of the film. Well, she does have one significant act but it's one more inexplicably initiated by another character.

We have also a few other collected crew members who get names but not enough screen time to actually remember these names let alone establish themselves as people rather than disaster fodder.
Arguably the three central characters are Noomi Rapace's Dr Shaw, Logan Marshall-Green's Dr Holloway and Micheal Fassbender's David.

 Even here things are rather undeveloped as although we're supposed to understand Holloway's drive to push forward we never really do - he just seems to be a bit of a sulky twat and before we know it he's falling ill and deciding to off himself rather promptly.

Rapace's Shaw fares better and we get a slightly stronger sense of her as she becomes manifestly the central character although as the film goes and she increasingly becomes the 'Ripley' of events it becomes a little harder to believe this anthropologist is capable of seemingly shrugging off invasive surgery to be running around minutes later. Rapace she doesn't have that same ability to convey a layer of inner strength that Sigourney Weaver did, but it's a decent performance given she only really learnt English after hitting the spotlight in the 'Girl With..' series.

Fassbender's David is both the best performance in the film and the most interesting character, albeit one that doesn't really quite make sense. In some excellent early scenes he's establish as being an android along the lines of Ash and Bishop as he monitors ship and sleeping crew alone on the long voyage out. Fassbender gives him a very convincing sense of being almost human but just being that little bit 'off', a sort of uncanny valley sense about him. Things are muddled though as we are told repeatedly he is incapable of feelings yet we often see him smiling to himself and apparently experiencing wonder. The biggest problem though is he clearly has a secret agenda fairly on and no-one on the crew appears either smart enough (desptie him being fairly obvious about it) to notice or call him on it. He's also a little convienet and used to shorthand the story a couple of times. Why have people work out the alien writing when your android can 'learn it' by deconstructing early Earth languages whilst everyone else sleeps?

It's the story that does let things down in the main. It has some interesting ideas but to me the twists were fairly obviously signposted and chunks of it really don't make a lot of sense. So we have a expedition led to this planet by archaeological finds. Eventually we learn the 'enigneers' as they get called don't live on this planet and the facility that is found just seems to somekind of evil goo producing factory. So why signpost it to other civilisations?

Anyway, our crew arrive but not at the planet in Alien, find a mysterious structure and investigate. Inside for some reason there are helpful holograms that show them the way forward. We find a temple like room with a statue of a human face and jars of some black goo. This goo seems to either mutant things like worms into snake like things, people into super zombies or just disintegrate people from the inside. It's never clearly establish why each of these different things happen.

Eventually two of the crew get separated, one has face dissolved in our first encounter with that famous acidic blood whilst the other is grabbed but what is basically a protoface hugger. No-one seems to notice they're missing for a long, long time despite knowing they had been separated from the group.

 Meanwhile David has taken some of the goo back to the ship, an 'engineer' head explodes for an unexplained reason and a storm arrives. Vickers' has a joke about sex - almost literally one of the three things she actually does and then David poisons Holloway with the goo. Seemingly just for the hell of it. Meanwhile Shaw discovers we have the same DNA as the 'engineer' aliens.

 Holloway then impregnates Shaw, gets sick but in a different way to how we've see the goo affect other things and then basically forces Vickers to flambe him. Just after this the chap who was proto-face hugged turns up as a sort of zombie managing to kill a handful of the faceless crew before being stopped in a sequence that seems to have slipped in from The Thing. Shaw escapes isolation (after being placed there due her contact with Holloway - despite the fact that at this point everyone else has had the same level of contact to the knowledge of the crew) after discovering she is pregnant by knocking out two of the crew who fail to raise the alarm at all it seems. I say this because she then successfully carries out a cesarean section on herself to extract a alien squid from her womb which seemingly is ready to be born despite only being hours old without anyone trying to stop or assist her.

Meanwhile David has found a sleeping 'engineer', learnt how to work the alien ships, the Captain decides it's all a weapons factory despite setting foot off his ship once and old-man Weyland emerges from his not-so secret hiding place. Weyland, David, Shaw and some other people we don't care about then go to talk to the 'engineer'

Said 'engineer' however is not friendly, kills Weyland and the other non-descript characters and pulls David's head off. Shaw however despite having had surgery only hours ago manages to run away. The 'engineer' begins to take off so he can go to Earth and kill everything for some reason but is prevented by Captain Elba flying into his ship as it launches.

 Shaw survives the crash but is then attacked by the 'enginner' whom she kills by luring to the still alive alien squid that she birthed which has now become a huge Lovecraftian thing that proceeds to facehug the 'engineer'. She then retrieves David's head and body and takes off with him to find the home planet of the 'engineer' aliens with everyone else already dead (Vickers is amusingly crushed during the crash).

Finally the face hugged 'engineer' has a proto-Xeno burst from him. A proto-Xeno that was implanted by a giant squid, which was birthed from a woman who had sex with a goo infected man. So either the Xeno's are a random development or these 'engineers' have a really strange way of going about things.

So what was Weyland trying to find? What were the 'engineer' aliens actually doing? Why did they all die bar one? Why build this temple? What is the black goo and what exactly is it supposed to do? Why did that guy become a zombie? Why were the 'engineers' trying to kill humanity after seemingly having created it? Why did the 'engineer' ship seen in Alien apparently decide to store a cargo of Xeno eggs on it's bridge?


Basically none of the main questions that stem from Alien are answered, all that is achieved is to take away some of the sense of wonder from that ship. Whilst the 'stand alone' story that Ridley has championed is underwhelming because you don't care about any of the characters and it doesn't really make any sense (you can feel the pen of Damon 'Lost' Lindelof trying too hard to throw in some curveballs)

 The film also film also feels quite disjointed with characters seemingly jumping to certain conclusions/decisions very quickly - it definitely feels like a lot has been left on the cutting room floor. Fully expect a longer cut to emerge at some point that hopefully will fill in some of the gaps.

 It looked great but has fallen into the trap I fear of trying to explain something that was so much more interesting as some unknown, imagined story. They've tried to remove the mystery whilst keeping a sense of mystery and left themselves with a inconclusive mess that in the end all feels a bit hollow.

Looked good though.

Trailers: Rise of the Video game

Ok I'll admit my intentions to keep this more regularly updated as come to nought but hey lets go for occasional but hopefully interesting.

Anyway it is the impeding release of Mass Effect 3 that has stirred this one or more specifically it's trailers. It seems to me these days that trailers for the triple-A (basically the ones with the massive production budgets) game releases are increasingly proving far more interesting and well generally epic than a lot of film trailers.

Let's start with exhibit one, for the aforementioned Mass Effect 3 :



Even if you're not familiar with the franchise (and thus free of the "oh, my god it's so and so" moments) this still does a fantastic job of selling a big sci-fi adventure where the heroes to save Earth from sinister aliens (who intent on even attacking random fields).

It's very much in the no-dialogue, quick edit montage style of trailer that you often see with action blockbuster films of similar type. In fact compare it to something like The Avengers and you'll see very similar beats.

Next up we have this :



The above trailer for Gears of War 2 works because it is almost the opposite of the game itself. Quiet and reflective in contrast to the loud, frenetic action of the gameplay itself it managed to eek out those characters a little more.

Crucially it gives you just enough to wet the appetite and wonder what is in store as the team head out on what very much appears a suicide mission. It's franchise that has always had a good pedigree with it's trailers from day one;



And the franchise would go back and use that music again in a surprisingly effective sequence in the third game.

This next one really does something different and manages to really spark interest as at first you wonder what it's for before you start to recognise the battling foes. Again it's one that plays off the dynamic action of the game itself rather than directly presenting it.



Then we have a trailer that was actually better than the game it advertised and certainly more original in it's content than the game. And you know a trailer is effective when it garners disapproving press coverage.



But seriously this is really, really well edited and is actually in my view one of the best entries in the zombie genre for some time despite only being a 3 minute advert for a deeply average game.

The new Tomb Raider trailer suggests that very soon it'll be very hard to tell the difference between a video game trailer and film trailer at all. The uncanny valley is getting smaller all the time;



The trailer for Assassins Creed : Revelations is an excellent match of montage and music that really both suits and sets the mood of the franchise.



Anyway there's a few of my favourite examples and there are surprisingly many more I could have picked, but it's certainly true we've come a long from when video game advertising was this;

Trailer of the day

Right, the moving flat blackout is over so it's time to get back to posting the odd thing. A small start with the trailer for Ridley Scott's film with "Alien DNA".

Looks intriguing and Scott rarely makes out and out stinkers so could be the 'sleeper' hit of the blockbuster summer between those Avengers and Mr Wayne.

Senna

Right postings last year were a little bit stop and start but I shall at least pretend to try and be a bit more active this year for a little while.



First it's time to take a look at 'Senna' director Asif Kapadia's documentary about the Formula career of Ayrton Senna The film itself is constructed from existing footage of Senna from race broadcasts, family home videos, news reports, TV interviews of the day and is shaped by commentary from those who knew and worked with Senna

It's a brillant move to create the story this way and it is of course helped by the sensational career of the man himself. In fact Senna's rivalry with Alain Prost could almost be purposefully written for a sports drama

It does have to be said this is a somewhat blemish free treatment of Senna (it can be argued that he was indeed arrogant) but it's hard to detract too much from the determined man of faith presented here, especially in the sections that highlight how much the man meant to his country (and his country to him).

I challenge anyone not to be thrilled by the racing action caught here, outraged by the FIA's campaign against him, inspired by his determination to be all he could be and of course not moved and saddened by the events of that fateful weekend in Imola.

A fantastic chronicle of extra-ordinary career, recommended for even those with no knowledge or interest in the sport - the human story tells it all here.

Film 2011

Ok, after a long long gap we're back in action (sorry folks but I keep getting distracted by stuff whenever I meant to write anything) as in time to look back at the year that was 2011 in film.

We saw Harry Potter end (quite well I thought), Kevin Smith's film career give up it's final spluttering breaths (no Kevin, the man isn't against you, you just haven't made a good film since Chasing Amy).

No sign of Lindsay Lohan pulling herself together, Mel Gibson falling apart, Kirsten Stewart becoming the most bankable actor thanks to Twilight, Film 2011 reborn as a glossy er nothing (bring back Barry Norman) and finally the announcement that an Arrested Development film is indeed on the way!



So time to have a quick glance through some of my hits and misses of the year. Now if I don't mention a film it's either because it falls into the largest category which is "average" or it was entirely forgettable or I've not yet seen it. (And with the likes of 'Drive', 'Submarine', 'Senna', 'Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy' on the not seen list I've got some work to do).

So first of all lets go through some of my favourites from the year:

'True Grit' - the Coen brothers prove once again masters of genre they turn their hands to as they bring us a fully blown western. Jeff Bridges is always good value and his Rooster is more layered that Wayne's but it's Hallie Steinfield who is the real standout here giving an excellent performance for one so young.

'Thor' - undoubtedly my favourite of the 'blockbusters' this year. Somehow Brannagh pulls of the trick of marrying Thor's hyper real homeland with modern Earth without anyone looking silly. It helps that film has a healthy sense of humour throughout and it holds the most charismatic villain in any of the Avengers properties so far in Tom Hiddlestone's Loki.

'X-Men: 1st Class' - in the 2nd best blockbuster the X-Men get themselves a bit of James Bond 60's cool. Ok so continuity wise things get a bit messy but it's a fun romp that somehow even manages to invoke Inglorious Basterds at one stage. Fassbender makes for an excllent Magneto too - here's hoping for a 2nd Class.

'Meek's Cutoff' - a tale of a wagon slowly getting lost in the deserts of American gives low key character drama surrounding by glorious scenery and shows Michelle Williams promise (which is according to most currently underlining in My Week With Maryilyn)

'The Fighter' - another character drama this one and it's the tale of a down on his luck boxer who rises again brought to life by it's performances. Christian Bale got all the attention but Mark Whalberg's unassuming turn is the glue that holds it all together and Amy Adams shines as well throwing the best punch in the whole thing.

'Source Code' - Duncan Jones' follow up to Moon may not hold together to well if you really sit and think about it but if you give with it you'll find a tricksy little tale that isn't short of heart either.

'We Need To Talk About Kevin' - quite unnerving and emotionally raw but an excellent film and Tilda Swinton absolutely knocks it out of the park.

'Fast Five' - yes it's deeply stupid but it knows it's deeply stupid and it's a lot of fun. The casting of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to join the main players is also a stroke of genius. Now if only they can get The Stath to sign on for the inevitable sequel for the franchise that will not die. (Also best post credit teaser of the year..)

'Fair Game' - which seemed to slip out and go unnoticed by most but it's a fascinating drama about what happens when your government decides to turn on you and hang you out to dry as Naomi Watts' CIA operative has the rug pulled out from under her because her husband annoys the Bush whitehouse.

So those were my favourites of the year so far (of those I've seen) so what about the disappointments? Well most under par films I admit I forget having even seen most of the time, so these are more sort of the films where I saw some promise that just was delivered upon for one reason or another.

'Bad Teacher' had promise with a strong cast and good idea but watching it you get the distinct impression it's been robbed of it's bite by studio meddling and it ends up muddling along unsure of what it's really doing.

'Green Latern' is film where it feels like about a third of it was left on the cutting room floor in the edit suite. Nobody has a character arc, Ryan Reynolds doesn't learn a lesson about being a good person he just continues being a smug git and just happens to get a super magic ring. Events happen almost seemingly at random and it's a bit, well, silly in a way that Thor somehow managed to avoid.

'Sucker Punch', ok I can see what Zack Synder was trying to do, but it really does not work and ends up as a boring repetitive mess with a whiff of misogyny.

So there we go, I'm pretty sure I'll like Fincher's take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when that arrives just before the year's end and of course there some strong candidates in those I've yet to catch up with.

And it's time to move into 2012; will 3D finally prove it's worth or die away? Just how much money will Batman's nexy outing haul in? Will The Avengers actually succed in fitting everything in? And most excitingly what will be the films that surprise and come out of nowhere to be the year's best?

Scream 4

Arriving a decade after the last installment the Scream franchise returns to cast an eye over the state of the horror genre once more.

The first thing I'd say though is that Scream 4 is no longer a horror film in it's own right. Whilst Scream was undoubtedly a stalk and slash horror film with added commentary on the genre and knowing dark humour the latest film comes across much like an outright parody of the genre not the pastiche the first film was.

It's actually quite a funny film, the opening sequence is a great gag and it's full of brilliant lines ("The voice from the films or well, you know, your life"), but it never quite comes together as tries to balance various aspects as the original.

One of the key factors is the characterisation which was actually quite strong in the first two films. Then the main cast were people with believable lives, motivations, emotions and the secondary cast feel like, well, people rather than ciphers.

However this time around the returning cast aren't really given a chance to anything other than advance the plot or get chased around whilst the new generation of kids seem to neatly fall into either victim or suspect categories.

Emma Roberts is bland as Sidney's cousin failing to grasp the chance to be the new center of the film. Only really Hayden Panettiere's Kirby seems to have any real spark to her and as such is seemingly rewarded by having the most screen time of the new faces.

Another factor which stops the film from really excelling is the lack of intensity. Whilst director Craven still manages to pull out the odd effective moment this time out the attack sequences just don't seem to carry the same level of menace and tension as the first and second outings (probably about the same as the weaker third entry).

Interestingly whilst there is plenty of blood on show the violence here is much more theatrical in feel in comparison to the much more brutal, almost more real feeling violence of the original. That opening sequence in Scream still stands as something genuinely quite disturbing.

But perhaps the lack of characterisation and the stylisation of the slightly neutered violence is all part of the critique of the modern horror scene which this film certainly talks about. It does seem Kevin Williamson is not keen on the uptake of horror remakes and dismisses the likes of Saw within the opening ten minutes.

It is strange to watch a film which spends so much time telling you it shouldn't have been made in the first place. But it does raise some interesting points about the state of the genre the franchise did so much to revitalise in the mid-90's and it does also stir in the modern obsession with fame for the fake of fame.

So it's certainly fun (it made me laugh out loud a couple of times) but it lacks the intensity of the franchise's first steps but it's self awareness certainly makes it interesting for the film students amongst us.