Movie Review: "The Monster Squad" by David Pretty

 
In the past I've looked at several films that have achieved a significant amount of nostalgic worship.  Some of these movies deserve a place on the pop culture pedestal and some don't.  In an example of the latter, it's totally inexplicable as to why The Monster Squad receives any sort of retro love.  To me, it's nothing more than a cynical pastiche of The Goonies, Lost Boys, and the Universal Monsters, with a little dash of Stand By Me's irreverence thrown in for good measure.

For what it's worth, here's the film's incredibly derivative trailer:

Andre Gower plays Sean, a pushy, obnoxious twelve year old dipshit who, along with his interchangeable cronies, fancy themselves monster enthusiasts. Headquartered in a tree house that looks like it was built by a team of civil engineers, Sean holds court over a host of Our Gang stereotypes: wise-ass Patrick (Robby Kiger), Fat Kid (literally!) Horace (Brent Chalem), chain-smoking (!) bad-ass Rudy (Ryan Lambert), shy Eugene (Michael Faustino) and his precocious little sister Phoebe (Ashley Bank).

This pack of underwritten creeps bone up on their creature-killing trivia while verbally abusing one another a la Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern in the infinitely superior Stand By Me.  Meanwhile, in a brain-dead script convenience, Dracula himself (Duncan Ragehr) conspires with his pals the Wolfman (Carl Thibault), Frankenstein's Monster (Tom Noonan), the Mummy (Michael MacKay) and the Gill-Man (Tom Woodruff Jr) to destroy a Macguffin, er...amulet which is comprised of "pure good".

Naturally, once every hundred years this amulet becomes vulnerable to attack and if the monsters succeed in destroying it well, then...ummmm, something BAD'll happen.  I guess.  Oh, and did I mention that this precious talisman just so happens to be sitting in the basement of a spooky house in the very same town where the Monster Squad has their base of operations?  

I had some hope going into this since I kinda liked director Fred Dekker's consistently surprising Night of the Creeps.  Not only that, the effects were provided by Stan Winston and Richard Edlund and the screenplay was drawn up by Shane Black of Lethal Weapon fame.

But when it comes right down to it, The Monster Squad feels like the product of market research, like a test screening checklist.  Kids like monsters, so let's cram four or 'em in there!  Oooo!  OooOoo!!! People liked those precocious brats in The Goonies, so let's stock this flick with a bunch of pale imitations!  Audiences also dig montages set to music like in Lost Boys so let's shoe-horn in one of those!  And, hey, folks got a kick out of kids using salty dialogue in Stand By Me a year ago, so let's have the little larvae use words like "shit", "faggot" and "tits" just for novelty value! 

Honestly it's no surprise that this film sunk into oblivion when it was first released; it had no clear audience.  It was too goofy and childish for adults and too violent and profane for its hypothetical target audience (i.e. kids who were the same age as the characters).  The likely reason it's popular now is because, for an entire generation of young adults, this was the first time they ever saw impalings, gory bits and the word "nards" used in a movie.  But, let's face it folks, breaking these childhood taboos shouldn't automatically qualify the film for nostalgic plaudits.     

 
Above all the film's biggest transgression is its shamefully lazy screenwriting.  Can anyone think of any other reason why Dracula (or "Alucard"...wow, that's never been done before) conveniently calls Sean's house and leaves a message other than to let the kid know that there's a legendary vampire on the loose?  Plus there's no way you can convince me that an older kid like Rudy would ever be caught dead hanging around with the rest of these whiny infants.  

The only reason I'm rating The Monster Squad as high as I am is because some of the special effects are fairly decent. The Mummy and the Gil-Man are well realized, but that's pretty much where my praise ends.  The werewolf design is absolutely terrible.  He looks like one of the John Carl Buechler's Ghoulies after it was hit with a Gamma bomb.  Tom Noonan, so memorable as the killer in Manhunter, actually gives a fairly nuanced performance as Frankenstein's Monster.  Unfortunately he's buried under an avalanche of wretched makeup that makes you pine for Jack Pierce's Karloffian creation from over eighty years ago!

To make matters worse, Duncan Regehr is a shamefully poor Dracula.  Despite the fact that he strangles little Phoebe and calls her a bitch (!), he's about as menacing as your average insurance salesman.  Then, in the cinematic equivalent of giving us a great big paper cut and pouring lemon juice all over it, the film gives us the truly execrable Monster Squad rap theme song over the end credits.

Honestly, this thing is a total failure.  It's a kid's film that I'd personally never watch again and one that I'd actually feel guilty showing to a kid.

        Tilt: down.

Movie Review: "Blue Velvet" by David Pretty

Like Twin Peaks which followed four years later, Blue Velvet is David Lynch's deconstruction of the 1950's, suburban, small town, Norman Rockwell idyll.  It begins with a litany of wholesome images: rescue trucks bearing genial firemen, crossing guards guiding winsome children across the street, yellow tulips blowing in the breeze, and an older gentleman dutifully watering his immaculate lawn.

Some of which can be briefly glimpsed in the film's deceptively tame trailer:

But since this is David Lynch's version of the American Camelot, it isn't long before our hirsute gardener is prone on the ground while his pet Jack Russell terrier playfully frolics in the jet of water coming from the now-upturned hose.  Then the camera tracks away into the surrounding lawn, past the blades of grass and into the earth below, which is roiling with beetles and other vermin.  The message is clear: Lynch intends to move past the false edifice of reality and plunge us into the dark netherworld which lurks below.

The stroke victim is revealed to be the father of Kyle MacLachlan's character, Jeffrey Beaumont.  Even here, Lynch evokes shades of the actor who played prototypically wholesome all-American dad Ward Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver.  It's just another sly wink from Lynch who would have us believe that even squeaky-clean 50's-era T.V. dads had hang-ups.       

Jeffrey returns to his timber-obsessed home town of Lumberton to visit his ailing dad and take care of the family hardware store.  While walking home from the hospital one day, he makes a grisly discovery: a severed ear discarded in a field.  He takes the ear to the police where Detective John Williams (George Dickerson) seems oddly nonplussed by its discovery.

Jeffrey soon meets the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern) who suggests a possible link to the ear and a mysterious lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini).  Intrigued by the burgeoning mystery, Jeffrey hides in Dorothy's apartment to glean the truth but soon finds himself way over his head courtesy of the gas-sniffing psychotic thug Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper).

Dorothy is the unfortunate nexus for Frank's deviant interpretations of love and sex he seems willing to say or do anything to posses and control her.  Pretty soon Jeffrey's amateur investigations open up a veritable Pandora's Box of mayhem which invariably begins to infect his own psyche.

Midway through my first viewing of Blue Velvet, I began to realize, to my horror, that I was at the mercy of a director who was willing to do anything to shock and disturb.  Like so many other great films of note (such as Reservoir Dogs, The Exorcist and Deliverance), Lynch quickly lets us know that all bets are off.

Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth really showcased his aptitude for bringing scary, intense, and unconventional characters to life.  Booth's bizarre sexual proclivities (which include dry-humping, huffing amyl nitrite and gagging himself with the titular fabric swatches) seems terrifyingly real if only because it's hard to imagine that Lynch actually came up with something so weird.  Hopper really is tremendous here, walking into every room like a caged animal and employing the most shocking and profane language in order to bully what he wants from people.

As horrible as the language and moments of sexual violence can be, there are also some delirious scenes of coal-black humor.  If I'm not mistaken, this may be the very first time I've ever heard a character in a movie referred to as a "fuck".  When Frank grills Jeffrey about his favorite beer and his terrified hostage replies "Heineken" Booth freaks out and screams "Heineken!? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!"

Speaking of MacLachlan, he really does a great job embodying a complicated and unconventional protagonist.  Indeed he's the perfect cinema avatar for Lynch: semi-formal, polite, freshly-scrubbed, and just a bit off-center.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that the director is working through his own complicated thoughts when Jeffrey first indulges in voyeurism and then slips into moments of violence.

Hopper's performance may be the film's most flamboyant, but the most daring is surely Isabella Rossellini's Dorothy Valens.  When the film was first released, critic Roger Ebert was genuinely upset by Lynch forcing his lead actress to film scenes of "public degradation".  Rossellini has since gone on record to say that these brutally impartial moments were integral to depicting the character as "somebody beautiful...yet...completely destroyed inside", essentially a "broken doll".

In the film's most shocking and contentious scene, Dorothy stumbles naked and bruised onto the front lawn of Jeffrey's house.  It's certainly a horrible moment but it's also based on something Lynch actually witnessed as a child, a sight that was clearly tragic, not titillating.  In Rossellini's own words, the scene is evocative of Nick Ut's famous photo of a young Vietnamese girl who's had her clothes and skin burned off by a napalm attack.  Although clearly a distasteful image, it's also unforgettable and representative of something much larger.

The principal cast is rounded out by some tremendous supporting roles.  Long-time Lynchian muse Laura Dern is the angelic flip-side of Dorothy's femme fatale, and she's possessed with just enough dark curiosity to kick-start the initial mystery.  Dean Stockwell also has a memorable appearance as Ben, an effete, nearly-comatose lounge lizard.  With his vacant, lip-synced rendition of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" (while creepily underlit by a work lamp), Stockwell instantly creates one of the most oddly iconic scenes in cinema history.

Indeed, Lynch proves to be a master of using music to establish moods. Witness Rossellini's Bobby-Vinton-by-way-of-Nico-from-Velvet-Underground rendition of the title track.  Also Julee Cruise's melancholy ballad "Mysteries of Love" is used to tremendous impact, although I suspect that it'd probably be a bigger party-killer then "Hotel California".

All told, Blue Velvet is a consistently startling, brave and innovative work of cinematic art.  It's the product of a single director's undiluted vision instead of decision by committee.  If you're tired of the doldrums inherent in cookie-cutter, paint-by-number screenplays, then look no further.  Just be warned: you'll be privy to a lot of genuinely dark and disturbing subject matter before that wacky clockwork robin shows up.  

 
        Tilt: up.

Movie Review: "The Campaign" by David Pretty

The Campaign arrives at rather opportune time.  Ninety percent of Americans disapprove of the job that Congress is doing.  We're smack-dab in the middle of a federal election which looks to pit a centrist sitting President paralyzed by Republican sour grapes versus an obscenely wealthy corporate shill who's willing to say or do anything in order to win.  Negative campaign ads are flying like spitballs in Grade Eight English class.

Although The Campaign is timely it's neither as clever nor as creatively weird as the reality it's trying to parody.  What could have been a viciously funny, sharp critique of the U.S. political system ends up being a series of increasingly wacky escalating hi-jinx that make you feel like you're watching a sitcom.

Not only does the film's trailer hint at these flaws but interestingly enough, it has a slew of footage which doesn't even appear in the final film.

   

Will Ferrell plays Camden "Cam" Brady, a shiftless, unethical, barely-conscious philandering lout who's return ticket to Congress gets renewed every year by virtue of running unopposed.  When the rich, opportunistic Motch Brothers (played by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) are doubtful that the scandal-ridden Brady can fulfill their goal of establishing a Chinese-style sweatshop in the middle of North Carolina, they decide to assemble their own candidate from scratch.

Their patsy comes in the form of Martin "Marty" Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), a woefully unstylish, decidedly effeminate tourism director.  Thinking that he's just been tapped to do some good for his home district, Marty agrees to run against the entrenched incumbent.  

At first, the sweet and naive Marty gets chewed up by Cam in their first few encounters.  To improve his son's odds, wealthy industrialist Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox) retains the ruthless and laconic services of campaign strategist Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott).  Between his fraudulent metamorphosis and the rigors of dirty politics, Marty's wide-eyed innocence begins to fade, putting a strain on his marriage to the equally buttoned-down Mitzi (Sarah Baker).          

As one might expect, the campaign quickly becomes contentious.  At an early "civility luncheon", Cam blindsides Marty with incriminating photos of his "Chinese" pets as well as his work-out routine at Curves.  Marty fires back by challenging Cam's religious faith and waving around a "Communist Manifesto" that his opponent wrote when he was eight years old.  Cam turns around and accuses Marty's facial hair of being an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.    

Which brings me to the main problem with the film.  Although some of the initial gaffes and ridiculous charges are funny and have real-world precedents, the script escalates things to such ludicrous heights that both candidate would have been politically ruined if not thrown in jail.  Trust me when I say this, there's plenty of real-life political fodder which is a helluva lot more original, funny and believable then what we see here.  

But I don't want to take anything away from the exceptional cast.  Although Will Ferrell is essentially doing his Dubya-by-way-of-Clinton routine, he's certainly captured the perfect alchemy of pompous boobery and corn-pone hucksterism.  I especially loved watching him unravel in tandem with his campaign.  Confronted with "opposition" for the first time ever, Cam beings to crack up and at one point launches into a glorious tirade which culminates in him essentially speaking in tongues. 

I've always been a fan of the off-kilter humor of Zach Galifianakis (witness his brilliant turn as 1700's stand-up Nathaniel Buckner in The Comedians of Comedy).  Here he manages to bring a very funny and wildly original role to life.  Despite all of his peccadilloes, Marty Huggins still seems like the real quintessential American to me: horribly conflicted, repressed and mired in self-guilt.  I just wish the script was on the same level as Zach's efforts.  

Almost immediately Marty starts doing the same underhanded and despicable things his rival is doing, which is really out of step with the character established in the first half of the film.  In turn, this makes his eleventh hour confessional come off as incredibly hackneyed.  It comes to a point when I really didn't want to see either of these guys succeed.  I think it would have been a lot funnier and more original to see Cam's ultra-nasty campaign get undone by a "kill 'em with kindness" approach from Marty.     

Special mention has to go to Sarah Baker as Marty's equally oddball wife Mitzi.  I'm not sure how much up of what's up on the screen is performance or how much is just genius casting, but Sarah is note-perfect as a genuine Desperate Housewife.  The writers give her plenty of odd quirks (such as an owl fetish and an unhealthy interest in Drew Carey) but this really doesn't pass for character development.  Like her husband, Mitzi also does some pretty baffling things, presumably because the script demands it of her.

Dylan McDermott is hilariously intense and surprisingly deep as Marty's "go for the jugular" campaign manager Tim.  With his clenched deliveries and bouts of intoxication, you get the impression that Tim's self-hatred is palpable.  His ninja-like ability to spring up from out of nowhere results in some amusing visual gags, my favorite being when Mitzi grows frustrated by her husband's constant acquiescence and yells: "When did he become a part of this family!?!"  The resulting deep background focus revealing Tim sitting in their kitchen...slowly...eating...ice..cream...while staring intently at them is oddly hilarious.

Also worth mentioning is Karen Maruyama as Mrs. Yao, who's been tasked by her boss Raymond Huggins to adopt a rather, shall we say, traditional approach to her job.  She manages to steal every scene she's in with her over the top line readings and outrageous take on Prissy from Gone With The Wind.  Equally on point is Katherine LaNasa as Rose Brady, Cam's emasculating trophy wife of convenience.      

The always-great Jason Sudeikis brings the funny as Cam's long-suffering campaign manger Mitch.  He's the perfect straight man for Will's dull machinations and burgeoning lunacy.  I loved his reaction to being CC'ed on an Cam's Anthony Wiener-inspired email and doing his damnedest to play "Lord's Prayer charades" with his dull-witted charge

A slew of formidable minor players round out the cast, but their roles are criminally shallow.  Brian Cox as Marty's dad Raymond is a crusty, miserable sonovabitch who has nothing but utter contempt for his son.  Brian's great, but his character has absolutely no other dimension and frankly it's something that we've seen a million times before.

Both John Lithgow and Dan Akroyd are squandered while going through the motions as cartoonish caricatures of the legitimately evil Koch Brothers.  Their plan is so nakedly villainous that audiences might be tempted to think that corporate crime is nothing but a script contrivance.  In actuality, all the writers really needed to do was take a look at any random page in a newspaper to give this fanciful material a bit of weight.

Jay Roach tries to import the same broad, over-the-top, Austin Powers approach here but it ends up being counter-intuitive.  I really wish screen writers Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell had shown a bit more restraint, since the wackiness really works against the very real message that the U.S. government is actually under the thrall of criminally negligent corporations.

Although the movie has its heart in the right place and serves up its share of cheap laughs, until The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Fox News cease to exist, the exaggerated foolishness depicted in The Campaign will always pale in comparison.

 
     Tilt: down.   

    

  

E.T. Roundtable - Episode One: "He's The Goddamned Batman!"

In our inaugural episode, the E.T. gang sound off on the following diverse topics:

• "Chris Nolan is a talentless hack."  Or at least that's what a certain contingent of anonymous, whiney, dickless, fanboys are saying on the Internet about The Dark Knight Rises.   
• Is The Amazing Spider-Man the reboot equivalent of a screen door on a submarine?  
• The Hobbit suddenly becomes three films instead of two.  Epic storytelling or cynical cash grab?  
• The new X-Men film will feature the Days of Future Past storyline.  Will studio pinheads try to incorporate the Shi'ar, Apocalypse, the Brood, Proteus, Dark Phoenix, The Morlocks and the Fall of the Mutants story line as well?           
• The 23'rd Bond film Skyfall gets a promising new trailer.  Is this 007's Batman Begins?       

The Afflicted

Michael Chiasson is a movie, music and gaming connoisseur, a talented musician and vocalist and an unrepentant Star Wars prequel apologist.  For the record he is not one of the reasons why ET has an adult warning and most if us feel sorta guilty about surrounding him with a bunch of assholes.  If you aren't convinced that Mike's one of the nicest human beings on the planet by the end of the podcast then check out his blog for proof positive.   

Dean Langley is a pop culture scientist, a rabid console, PC and tabletop gamer, as well as an A-list contrarian.  He's also at least half the reason why Entertainment Tourettes comes with an adult warning label.

Sarah MacDonald single-handedly gives our motley crew some semblance of legitimacy. In addition to being an major authority on the horror film genre, Sarah is the diligent cartoonist behind the kitty-riffic webcomic Bunk.  She's also supremely confident that she'll be able to do her part to justify the site's content warning on a regular basis.

Mark Rose is a comic book fiend as well as a movie and T.V. junkie who holds nothing but contempt for what passes as entertainment today in Hollywood.  He also has a Rain Man-like capacity to remember everything that's happened in the music industry in the past thirty years.   Mark will also be the first to admit that he's another major reason as to why this blog is "adults only".

David Pretty is your host and moderator-in-vain.  You can read his entertainment reviews right here at ET., check out his table top gaming blog, or witness him yammer on incessantly about totally random crap via his Emblogification Capture Device.  Oh, yeah, he also wrote some crappy book.  Unlike his fellow panelists, he's polite to a fault and wouldn't dream of using profanity.

Making Sense of the Blurtings

South Park Season Five Episode One "It Hits The Fan", Bronies, Was Tom Waits The Inspiration for Health Ledger's Joker?, Damian Wayne.  

Movie Review: "American Movie" by David Pretty

Since truth is considerably stranger then fiction, I'm an unabashed and voracious documentary junkie.  The "plots" are consistently surprising, the "dialogue" always sounds natural (with the possible exception of Trekkies) and the "characters" are often wildly original.  Of this genre American Movie is, without a doubt, my favorite documentary of all time.

Here's the trailer:

If you're looking for interesting characters then look no further then Mark Borchardt.  Mark's always wanted to make movies for a living but he has a couple of strikes working against him.  He lives in a small town in Wisconsin, has no formal training, no mentor to speak of, struggles with a handful of personal problems and is drowning in a whirlpool of debt.  Despite the fact that he has no guidance, discipline or help, he's completely and totally obsessed with the concept of makin' movies.

Actually, he does have some nominal help in the form of hetero life-mate Mike Schank, who does what he can to encourage Mark's low-budget endeavors.  Regrettably, a history of drug abuse has taken it's toll on poor Mike, who often comes across as a genial but oblivious combination of Ron Jeremy and David Crosby.  Viewers will be amazed when Mike displays his savant-level guitar skills (his masterful acoustic tribute to the late Randy Rhodes is worth it's own documentary) and his easy-going nature obviously keeps Mark from going completely off the deep end.

And then there's Uncle Bill.  Once a brilliant man with all the potential in the world, Bill has all but given up on life.  He sits alone in a ramshackle trailer and feigns ignorance when Mark grills him about the "American Dream".  Although Bill is a black hole of negativity he does have a tremendous stockpile of savings, which results in some darkly comedic scenes in which Mark attempts to lure his Uncle into the role of "film producer".

But Mark doesn't visit Bill merely to weasel cash out of him, he tries desperately to rouse the old man out of his funk.  Indeed, the old man seems to be the physical embodiment of Mark's greatest fears.  He does everything he can to involve Bill in his life because he probably knows that he might very well end up like Bill in a few years.

Sadly, very few people in Mark's dysfunctional circle seem to understand what he's trying to accomplish.  One of his brothers even goes so far as to call his sanity into question and declares that Mark is "probably best suited to working in a factory".  Between a disastrous stint in the army and plugging away at a series of dead end jobs (literally), Mark understands that he's staring down a life of solitary confinement in a cold, empty trailer if he doesn't keep pursuing his dreams.

And Mark certainly stumbles.  A lot.  Though technically competent and blessed with a great eye for shot composition and camera movement, Mark's writing talents are questionable at best.  He's terrified to complete a project, probably because it'll open him up to criticism.  He drinks too much.  Indeed, the deck is stacked against our hero.  If Mark eventually throws in the towel and fails in his bid to become a film-maker, it certainly won't be from any lack of passion.

Which brings me to Mark's good qualities; those personality traits which give him a fighting chance.  First off he's patient to the point of sainthood.  On more then one occasion you expect him to break down and/or flip out (and admittedly Mark does seem like the kinda guy who was voted "MOST LIKELY TO GO POSTAL" in his High School yearbook).  But when things fall apart, he just sighs, drops a couple of f-bombs and then gets right back at it again.  And, as Uncle Bill knew full-well, Mark's also a born salesman, which is really half the battle of movie-making.

I imagine that documentarian Chris Smith had to be pretty patient himself, since it took Mark three years before he finally completed his forty-minute debut film Coven (pronounced COVE-In by it's director to ensure that it doesn't rhyme with a certain kitchen appliance).  Smith probably had miles of footage to contend with, so kudos to him for recognizing a fascinating subject matter and sticking with it to its natural conclusion.

Although American Movie is sometimes pathetic to the point of wince-inducing, it's also incredibly inspirational.  If you fear a lifetime of of cleaning up someone else's shit (which Mike is actually reduced to at one point), I heartily recommend that you give this doc a watch.

Movie Review: "The Dark Knight Rises" by David Pretty

There's a long and painful history of movie franchises flying off the rails with the third film (witness Godfather, Blade, Spider-Man, Superman, Alien, X-Men and Terminator just name a few).  But with The Dark Knight Rises we get to revel in that rarest of achievements: a movie trilogy where the same uniform quality runs throughout all three films.

So, how did director Christopher Nolan and writing partners David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan pull this off?  The answer is deceptively simple: they merely sustained the same creative team throughout all three films.  This alone gives the series a clarity of vision, tonal continuity and a natural escalation of the stakes.

You can certainly get a feel for the film's epic scope and artistic qualities in the theatrical trailer:

The movie takes place eight years after the events depicted in The Dark Knight.  Batman has all but vanished from Gotham City, having taken the fall for the crimes of white knight District Attorney Harvey Dent while he was under the guise of Two-Face.  But his retirement hasn't been in vain.  With sweeping powers granted to law enforcement courtesy of the Dent Act, the authorities have almost eliminated organized and violent crime in the city.

Feeling rudderless, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) lives a Howard Hughes-style existence away from the public eye.  To make matters worse, Wayne Enterprises is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy after Bruce invested heavily in a sustainable energy project but backed out after discovering that the technology could be perverted into a weapon.  Needless to say the project's originator, Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), is less then impressed when she hears the news.

The situation gets even murkier when a physically imposing masked mercenary / terrorist calling himself Bane (Tom Hardy) appears in Gotham and begins to rally the city's homeless underground population to his anarchic cause.  In a pivotal early encounter, Bane leaves police commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) wounded and bereft of an important document which reveals the awful truth about Harvey Dent.

Between Bane's brazen attack on the Gotham City Stock Exchange and a personal theft by cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), Batman feels compelled to leap back into action.  Naturally, after eight years of sedentary retirement, the caped crusader is a tad rusty and Bruce's stalwart butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) quits after refusing to preside over what he believes is certain suicide.     
   
Alfred's predictions prove to be painfully accurate.  Bane manages to seize control of the entire city and handily bests Batman in their first encounter.  As we share Bruce's agonizing recovery and rebirth we begin to learn more about Bane's motivations as well as his ties to our hero.  Their open warfare over the heart and soul of Gotham City forms the centerpiece for the final act, which I firmly believe will leave no fan unfulfilled.

Honestly, The Dark Knight Rises is huge in every possible way.  It may be hard to fathom but the conflict that's documented here actually makes the previous two films look humble in comparison.  When we see Bane crack into Bruce Wayne's secret armory we know that the scale of the battle is going to be kicked up a notch.  Nolan and his stunt team are certainly up to the challenge, giving us some impeccably staged vehicle chases and hand-to-hand skirmishes that resemble vicious but balletic street-fight.

All the previous Bat-trappings are in fine form here.  Although the suit has been nicely streamlined, they still can't seem to match the lustrous-looking sable cape with the flat black costume.  The cowl persists with the turned-in ears and concave neck but the brow sculpt is pretty badass.  Add the fact that Christian Bale fills the suit with pure authoritah and such quibbles become superficial.

In addition to some hot "Tumbler" action, the Batpod also gets a workout in The Dark Knight Rises, often expertly guided by the fetching Selina Kyle.  We also get to see "The Bat" a new Harrier-type aircraft designed by Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) which features prominently in the film's tense finale.  Finally, the Batcave gets pimped out with secret platforms bearing computers, gear and costumes cleverly rising out of their underwater concealment.

I don't often mention soundtracks, but Hans Zimmer's score really deserves special mention.  The eerie ceremonial chant heard during Bruce's attempt to "rise" from his prison really gives the scene an off-balanced quality and adds to the already-palpable tension.  The tonal strains and minimalist piano keys that accompany Bane's sacking of Gotham are also incredibly evocative.  The percussive drive and brassy arrangements heard during the action sequences are transcendent.  Zimmer even succeeds in making "The Star Spangled Banner" sound unnerving as the preamble to an ill-fated football game.

The script is monstrously self-aware.  Although the film begins with a dozen random elements up in the air, each character, plot thread and motivation eventually falls into place.  As soon as this happens (approximately a third of the way through the film) the story starts firing on all cylinders and it never slacks off until the end.  I absolutely loved all the call-backs and cameos referencing the previous films (Batman Begins in particular), none of which I'll mention here for fear of revealing even the most innocuous revelation.

For long-time Bat-fans as well as folks who are only familiar with Nolan's take on the character, there are plenty of awesome little Easter Eggs to look out for.  One particular sequence is a direct homage to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, perhaps the most influential Batman graphic novel of the modern age.  Two cops are in hot pursuit of Bane's gang when our eponymous hero suddenly re-appears after an eight year absence.  Upon spying the Dark Knight, the veteran cop turns to his rookie partner and says:

"Oh boy, you are in for a show tonight, son."                   
     

The jittery noob is even foolish enough to point his firearm at Batman, resulting in a classic dressing down that comes straight from source.  It's a wonderful nod to the nearly single-handed renaissance that Frank Miller's work kicked off for this classic character.

The dialogue is a shade over-wrought at times, but if there's ever an appropriate place for melodrama, it's in a comic book film.  If anything, many of the lines are particularly relevant.  "No one cared who I was until I put on the mask," Bane says at one point, evoking shades of real-life urban terrorists.  When Selina Kyle tells Bruce that "there's a storm coming" and "when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us" you can't help but wonder if this heralds a real-life paradigm shift.

Every member of the cast brings their "A" game.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is Christian Bale's best turn in the role.  Even after three films, Bale and his writers manage to navigate Bruce Wayne through a considerable character arc.  He begins the film as a physically wrecked recluse, segues into believing his own legend, gets reduced to rock bottom (literally) and then manages to claw his way back again.  Throughout it all, Bale is supremely self assured and there's never a false step in his performance.  He even had the foresight to moderate his oft-parodied Batman voice.

I still can't belive that Tom Hardy is the same guy who played Shinzon, the scrawny, pasty-faced Picard clone in Star Trek: Nemesis.   Bulked up for his role as Bane, Hardy stalks through the film's environs like a scary, swaggering amalgam of Darth Vader, Sean Connery and Zangeif from Street Fighter.  With half of his face obscured by a mask, Hardy really had to rely on his body language, his eyes and his voice, all of which are used in good measure.  Just by taking Hardy's veddy propah  English accent and filtering it through what sounds like an ancient phonograph player, it produces a really weird contrast to Bane's intimidating physical presence.  At first, I was going to bitch about a couple of incomprehensible line readings, but in the end that'll probably just improve the film's repeat viewing appeal.

At the beginning of TDKR, Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon is like a veteran general who's usefulness comes into question after an unfortunate outbreak of peace.  Eight years of concealing secrets clearly has him itching to prove himself on a  street level.  Even after sustaining a crippling injury, he isn't content to live vicariously through his younger contemporaries.  It's a blast to watch him experience his own "rise" and lead the rebellion against Bane.  Personally, I'd love to see an ongoing HBO series called Gotham P.D. which features James Gordon at the epicenter.  Call me, Warner Brothers!    

After the stunt casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker, I didn't even blink when Anne Hathaway was tapped to play Selina Kyle / Catwoman.  Once again, there's probably an entire legion of contrite fanboys out there who have egg on their face after watching Hathaway's acutely intelligent performance.  In Nolan's quest to ground the Batman mythos in reality, not once is the name "Catwoman" ever evoked.  Instead, Selina Kyle is merely a lithe, slinky, inhumanly gifted cat burglar who just so happens to dress up in stiletto high heels, cat-eared infrared goggles and Lulu Lemon bondage gear.  Hathaway is absolutely terrific: moving effortlessly between cocky, self-serving, indignant, sultry and semi-noble.

The supporting cast is equally game.  Michael Caine trumps all previous showings as Alfred Pennyworth, providing his best speeches of sagacity and some genuine heartbreak after he refuses to enable Bruce Wayne's death wish.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is genuinely earnest and stalwart as "new cop on the block" John Blake, a young, idealistic officer who puzzles out Batman's secret identity, inspires the Dark Knight's ascension and then serves diligently in the uprising against Bane.

Morgan Freeman doesn't get quite as much to do as Lucius Fox, but he still gets few cheeky scenes showing off his latest technological prodigy to an appreciative Bruce Wayne.  It's a fantastic scene that harkens back to their first meeting in Batman Begins.  Series newcomer Marion Cotillard exhibits a steely resolve and tremendous insight as Miranda Tate.  Bat-fans will absolutely love the revelations that come part and parcel with this character.

Just like in Chris Nolan's Inception, there are plenty of armchair director nits to pick.  There's a pretty glaring day-to-night continuity error that occurs just after Bane's assault on the Gotham Stock Exchange.  Some folks are likely to grouse about the ease in which Bruce Wayne breaks back into Fortress Gotham.  Comic book purists may also take umbrage with the changes to Bane's origins and his direct link to a previous Bat-villain.

I'd be prone to jump all over these things as well if not for the fact that everything else in The Dark Knight Rises is so goddamned good.  It's a monumental piece of entertainment and an emotional powerhouse.  Unlike most modern blockbusters, all of the major characters experience some sort of growth or development by the end of the film.  The action sequences are exhilarating, not because it's a dazzling CGI spectacle, but because we're emotionally invested in every conflict.  The risk seems genuine for all of the characters, even the ones we're supposed to boo and hiss.

I'm so happy with the success of Nolan's entire trilogy that a re-boot a few years down the road wouldn't even faze me.  This series has always been about taking a realistic crime drama and populating it with exotic characters, like a remake of Heat with Batman, Bane and Catwoman standing in for Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer.  I think it'd be awesome if another equally-gifted and visionary director explored a completely different facet of the character.

We could see Batman more as The World's Greatest Detective.  We could get a deeper psychological analysis of the Caped Crusader and his Rogues Gallery of villains.  Hell, if the producers are competent enough, we could even be treated to a lighter, primary-colored, fun depiction of the Dark Knight from a classic Dennis O'Neil / Neal Adams perspective.

I really welcome any future re-interpretations of this iconic character.  As long as the producers can find another director with the same purity of vision and commitment to follow through.    
      

    Tilt: up.

Movie Review: "The Amazing Spider-Man"

I really don't envy anyone tasked to reboot the Spider-Man franchise since the last film was in theaters only five friggin' years ago.  The Sam Raimi trilogy wasn't perfect but it got just enough right to prevent new director Marc Webb from including certain beats in Spidey's iconic origin for fear of being labeled derivative.  Ultimately, all this really does is weaken the original spirit of the character.

Before we start swinging down Disappointment Avenue, here's the film's super-slick trailer:

  

One marginal improvement here is actually in the characterization of Peter Parker.  In the Raimi films, he's often portrayed as a complete nebbish, the sort of shlub that Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory might feel compelled to beat up.  That's not to say that Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker doesn't have his fair share of issues.  He can't string a coherent sentence together in the presence of his secret crush Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and he routinely gets slapped around by prototypical bully Flash Thompson.  But he's also reasonably hip and good-hearted; certainly not the hopeless sad-sack that we've come to see in previous entries.  

Of course the big conceit that screenwriting posse James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves will hold up as their standard for "originality" is the story of Peter Parker's purloined parents (man, try saying that five times real quick).  Here we get a mysterious (and ultimately pointless) preamble featuring Campbell Scott as Richard Parker packing up his wife and young son in the middle of the night after his home office has been ransacked, presumably for his secret research material.  We then witness Peter's parents handing him off to Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) for safekeeping.

But then precious little else is done with this.  In fact, all this revelation seems to do is give Peter a dubious link to Oscorp and his father's former partner Dr. Curtis Connors (Rhys Ifans).  Anyone familiar with comic book lore knows that this entire angle is merely the symptom of screenwriters who are trying to cram in as much Spidey-mythos in as little screen time as possible.

The MacGuffin headquarters building. 

Tying Peter to Oscorp accomplishes a slew of script conveniences.  First off, it gets him closer to his  chronologically-appropriate love interest Gwen Stacy, who is inexplicably shown herding interns there.  Next it develops a relationship between Peter and the inevitable villain.  And in a final (and not insignificant) liberty taken with Spidey's origin: it provides an environment for Peter to receive his power-granting spider-bite.  

Readers out there who were horrified by that minor deviation are in for bigger shocks.  Perhaps the film's biggest transgression is the gloss-over job done on the whole Uncle Ben / "With Great Power" speech and Peter's dalliance as an amateur wrestler.  Again, Raimi did this so well in his first go-round that Marc Webb and company wisely decided to avoid aping it.  Unfortunately this damages the integrity of the character.     

In fact, Peter develops his super-hero persona primarily to hunt down and punish his Uncle's killer.  Although this certainly does wonders for story economy, it completely telegraphs a pivotal component of the character's fabled arc.  The point of Stan Lee's original story is that our hero's initial mercenary         motivations are shamed by his Uncle's sage words and subsequent demise.  When this happens, we know that Peter's been set on the straight and narrow path for life.

"Oh, Ben, look!  I think he's on the marijuana!"  

Despite omitting pertinent lore for the sake of making the story "fresh", there's a huge feeling of déjà vu hanging over the film.  Peter discovers a secret cache of his father's work and gives Doc Connors the missing half of formula which might allow the scientist to re-grow his missing arm.  Just like in Raimi's Spider-Man, the embattled Connors finds himself under pressure to expedite human trials before proper testing is complete.  Just like Norman Osbourne in Raimi's Spider-Man, Connors ends up taking the formula himself.  And just like in Raimi's first two Spider-flicks, Connors is transformed into a super-villain (Lizard-flavored this time) and promptly starts losing his marbles.  

And this is where the film completely falters.  I find it disheartening that super hero movies always insist on cramming a major villain into the first film.  As if the story about a guy being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining all kinds of incredible powers isn't compelling enough, they try and develop an adversarial figure at the same time.  In my opinion, it's virtually impossible to do this properly, which is why, of every previous iteration, only Spider-Man 2 really soars.

It's frustrating that this one fails overall in spite of getting so many things right.  I've catalogued a few genuine bright spots below:

• Peter is shown developing his mechanical web shooters.  Another bird killed by the Oscorp stone!         
• There's no Mary Jane Watson to be seen!  Yet...   
• Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are so great together that their on-screen relationship became a real-life alternate ending. 

"Spider-sense...and...various...other.. appendages...tingling..."

• Dennis Leary's performance is fantastic, even if they did fuck up George Stacy's character.  See rant in "CON" section below...
• The dialogue is considerably less goofy then in Raimi's films.  Now some might argue that a movie about a guy dressed up in red and blue tights should be goofy, but these people obviously have never read "Kraven's Last Hunt".  There needs to be a balance and the script actually does a pretty decent job with that.  Given his constant tsunami of personal problems, Peter Parker has always been pretty dour and introspective, but this always melts away when he changes into his arachnid alter-ego.  The swingin' Spidey on display here is true to form: mischievous, irreverent and consistently smart-assed.
• The producers have mercifully solved the whole web slinging / wall-crawling conundrum.  The effects in the Raimi trilogy went from cartoony to decent but they really can't hold a candle to the impressive acrobatics on display in The Amazing Spider-Man.  Indeed, there are several comic book panels come to glorious life here.  

Finally!  No more shades of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends in the new web-swinging scenes.  

And then, to add to the pile of things that suck:

• Let's face it, the Lizard is a pretty one-dimensional, Jekyll-and-Hyde type character.  In fact, in the comics, he's little more then a destructive brute.  Yet here, he manages to mastermind the sort of ambitious (yet imaginatively braid-dead) mad scientist plot that ends up threatening the entire city.  Been, there, done that, got the "I Tried To Destroy New York" t-shirt.
• Oddly enough, although the Spidey-in-action special effects are awesome, the Lizard himself kinda looks like the CGI bastard child of the Abomination from Hulk and Cayman from Battle Beyond the Stars.  

"Dad?"

• The fight scenes suffer so badly from Michael Bay-itis that I half-expected Optimus Prime to swoop in and break up the final scrap.
• GWEN KNOWS TOO MUCH!!!
• There's no Daily Bugle, no Robbie Robertson, no Betty Brant and worse still, no J. Jonah Jameson.  It's not hard to tell why: if Webb hadn't cast J.K. Simmons as Jameson he would have been run out of Hollywood by roving bands of nerds armed with torches and pitchforks.     
• Partly because the flinty publisher of the Bugle is absent, Captain George Stacy becomes the de facto anti-Spider-Man authority figure.  In the erudite opinion of this humble fan and film critic this is complete and total horse shit.   
• The Spidey suit.  Seriously, why fuck around with something so iconic?  Oh well, at least it isn't half as retarded-looking as the new Superman uniform.                 

Like Khan Noonian Singh, these Spider-Man scripts are like poor marksman who keep missing the target.  But what the fuck do I know?  The Amazing Spider-Man is raking in some major cheddar right now, which goes to show that the movie-going public have all the memory capacity of a fucking goldfish.  

Maybe when this new Spidey franchise fucks up, it'll get rebooted again in another four or five years.  I can only hope that when this happens ol' web-head will finally get the Batman Begins treatment that he deserves.  

     Tilt: down.