Interstellar Review

Interstellar
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Released in 2014

It’s odd, hearing Matthew McConaughey talk in space. His is a voice of the earth, American earth — the kind of slow, colloquial drawl to pass the time while watching baseball games, driving past cornfields or losing your mind on HBO.

In Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, McConaughey’s hero Cooper leaves these icons of Americana (well, two out of three) behind in order to save them. Naturally, Cooper takes that star-spangled sensibility with him through the cosmos, and it’s that from-the-gut-ness, as Stephen Colbert might say, that wins the day, or something like that. Throwing McConaughey and all he stands for into a sci-fi retelling of The Odyssey is a simple but potent concept, one this clumsy and often visually pedestrian movie works hard to undermine. Yet Interstellar drops its sentimental payload with such aplomb that it’s futile to resist it, which makes it, intentionally or not, a pretty thoroughly American movie.

On a remote, dust-ravaged farmhouse in the near future, Cooper lives with his family, or what remains of it: daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy), son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and the father of his deceased wife, Donald (John Lithgow). The days of Homo sapiens are numbered due to a disease called “blight” that destroys crops, but the timbre of the earthbound first act is quiet, even calm, as the adults adapt to or just ignore the intensifying hostility of their surroundings in order to provide for their children a comfortable existence.

Murph is daddy’s girl, a restless, red-haired intelligence nurtured by Cooper’s attention and playful humor. The rapport between father and daughter is sweet and just strong enough that their estrangement, once Professor Brand (Michael Caine) recruits Cooper, a former pilot, to lead an expedition through a wormhole adjacent to Saturn in search for hospitable planets, sets the emotional stakes for the rest of the film. With Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), the professor’s daughter, Doyle (Wes Bentley), Romilly (David Gyasi) and a sarcastic A.I. system named TARS (Bill Irwin) that uploads the comic relief of HAL 9000 into the shape of The Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cooper sets off, determined, of course, to find a new home and return to his own.

Interstellar is as flawed as Hollywood tent-poles come. It’s worth noting that Nolan’s style has long been one of the most compromised in the business, eschewing narrative concision for verbosity at every turn yet resorting to flat, recycled compositions to constrain actors hired to talk and talk and once in awhile act. That he and his brother Jonathan, who co-wrote the screenplay, so waste John Lithgow by sitting him down on a porch to listen to McConaughey spoon-feed purple prose (“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”) in static medium shots not once but twice should mandate a budget cut of 90 percent for their next film, with Lithgow and, I don’t know, Sigourney Weaver as leads.

This visual and verbal blandness carries over into space, where the razzle-dazzle you’re paying for sits next to a lot of shots of astronauts sitting around espousing the themes or else questions of their movie. Of the half-dozen people I have spoken to about this, not one has failed to mention Amelia’s speech about how love “transcends time and space,” or mock vomit while doing so. During one of the protracted sequences that cross-cuts between the astronauts quarreling and Cooper’s now grown-up children (more on that in a bit) back home for no purpose other than to remind you how little use the latter have in the plot, I wrote in my notes, “This is bad. How bad?”

Yet since watching Interstellar to its completion and mulling over it quite a bit, I have taken a softer tone. This is not cohesive or exemplary filmmaking, not at all, but a bunch of moments in it land, moments that define Cooper and present him to us without pretense. In an atypically understated scene, we learn that Cooper walks around the cabin listening to sounds of rain, thunder and chirping birds, an ambience that calms Romilly and reminds us of the simple pleasures (and completely unique ecosystems) they are fighting to preserve.

For the stakes here are devastating, are they not? Cooper not only faces the easy possibility of never seeing his children again but also, by exploring planets where time elapses at a slower rate (the relativity physics of which the film attempts to explain many, many times), of seeing them die before him. A parent’s worst nightmare, and Cooper grieves over those lost moments in one of the most affecting scenes in any blockbuster, ever. It’s the rare full stop in a movie that runs for almost three hours and yet always seems to be in a rush, and it cuts through all the talk of multiple dimensions and “quantum data” to get the heart of our heroes’ and Nolan’s endeavor.

For while he has gained a devoted (I’d say too devoted) following for his so-called “heady” themes and tricky narrative structures, Nolan has always been a closet sentimentalist, obsessed with dead family members mainly wives) and wringing these clichés for all the male angst, guilt and mopey faces they are worth. Here, at last, he has made an old-school tearjerker that starkly, painfully illustrates the new-school science of his plot through an intimate family drama that should resonate with just about anyone.

The trouble with Interstellar, then, is that it does not know how simple it is. The tension between inspiring awe and explaining that awe — a tension no doubt enforced by studio executives and the loathsome bunch that judges fiction for its scientific veracity — deflates a fascinating scene in the last act, where Cooper explores some Inception-like impossible architecture and refuses to stop postulating as to its origins. Kubrick, the obvious precedent, let his mysteries just sit there, unnervingly silent, and the legacy of Interstellar will be a short one for wrapping up all its loose ends so neatly and anxiously.

Yet as much as this film wears an unearned intelligence on its sleeve, it is still about a man who is not a thinker but a doer. No matter how much the directing or writing may saddle the purity of that man’s struggle, Cooper’s farm-grown charm carries him through a wormhole and pulls us in with him. Perhaps it’s only fitting that he comes face to face with the secrets of the universe and can hardly contain his excitement, for he holds the instinctive assumption that he must share these stories with his children, in due time.

3 Stars Out of 5

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location here.

Man of Steel Review

Man of Steel
Directed by Zack Snyder
Released in 2013

Man of Steel’s failures — as art, as drama or even as just mindless entertainment — pale in comparison to what its success (a $125 million opening weekend, as of press time) says about the current state and future trajectory of Hollywood cinema. Director Zack Snyder, producer Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer did not make a movie so much as a two-hour, 20-minute highlight reel — a joyless, soulless composite of the last 15 years of blockbusters, from the Star Wars prequels and Independence Day to Avatar and The Avengers. There is not one modicum of originality in Man of Steel’s plot, themes or aesthetics, yet here we all are, pitching this as the Movie To Beat this summer, buying, quite literally, into the hype and the grotesque Gillette/Wal-Mart/National Guard-marketing scheme some freshly promoted PR team drummed up. It’s all really depressing, if also fascinating when you stop and think about it.

Let’s get formalities out of the way. Like last year’s The Amazing Spider-Man, Man of Steel is the latest summer-superhero-reboot-of-a-franchise-that-was-only-rebooted-like-less-than-10-years-ago. Bryan Singer directed Superman Returns in 2006, with Brandon Routh as the titular man in tights. That film dragged, overlong and histrionic, but you could sense a real, almost operatic ambition throughout, particularly whenever Superman and supervillain Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) shared the screen. Now, Snyder and Goyer play the Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Kal-El origin story once more, this time without almost any feeling at all. Sure, Henry Cavill dons the spandex with a real winning smile. Too bad he has to fight the dull, lumbering military-industrial complex that is General Zod (played by Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Shannon, who is unforgettable in that show but not here) and has not the least supply of wit or charisma to get him through the by-the-numbers plot.

Said plot never materializes as one passionate struggle, whether external or, more crucially, internal, for Clark Kent to overcome, which partly explains Kent’s bland on-screen personality. This problem can, in turn, be credited to how poorly structured the whole film is, or, more specifically, how often the point of view does not belong to Kent. We follow Jor-El (Russell Crowe), Kent’s father, for the first 15-20 minutes of the film, as he shoots his way through generic sci-fi baddies in order to send his newly born son into space before Krypton, their home planet, implodes. Snyder pads what should have been a quick prologue with aerial dogfights and acrobatic flights that unmistakably resemble scenes from Star Wars III and Avatar, respectively. The whole slog could stand as its own act, one where the film’s protagonist (at least in his grown, communicative state) has yet to be introduced.

Soon after, we see Kent as a buff, superhuman miracle worker drifting across America, and just as scenes start to drop hints as to what makes him tick, out of left field comes the love interest, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lois Lane (Amy Adams). We follow her around for a bit, as she investigates Kent’s shirtless heroism for obviously, strictly professional reasons. One could say, “Hey, by diverting attention to Lois Lane alone, the filmmakers prop her up as an independent, feminized lead capable of her own brand of heroism.” Reading into comic book gender politics never ends well, so, to that end, it is worth noting that any hopes for a strong, (post)modern Lois Lane might as well be checked at the door. Her introductory scenes only serve to further distract from the de facto protagonist, Clark Kent, and each following scene affords her fewer lines than the last, to the point where her sole purpose is to trot (and “trot” is the right word, as the sound mixer makes sure the clacky-clack of her heels can be heard over the surrounding bedlam) onto the battlefield and embrace Kent’s battle-worn bod.

Perhaps that’s all for the best, because as Man of Steel devolves into gratuitous slam-bang action scenes, the few times Lane or Kent open their mouths remind us why they shouldn’t. “You know they say it’s all downhill after the first kiss,” Lane (actually) says, to which Kent responds, “I think that’s true only about kissing humans.” A few winners from General Zod: “Release the World Engine!” “I was bred to be a warrior. Where did you train? A farm?” and, my favorite, “There’s only one way this ends, Kal: Either you die, or I do.” The dialogue is so bad that you begin to question the abilities of these proven, gifted actors. But it’s so much easier to blame Zack Snyder and be done with it.

Those lines only sample the festival of clichés that is Man of Steel, and Snyder one-ups Goyer’s clunky screenplay by transplanting shots and images from a drove of recent successful films. Beyond Avatar and Star Wars (and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek), Snyder rips off Spider-Man 2 (see the clawed, Doc Ock tentacles chasing Superman through Metropolis), Thor (the nondescript, Midwestern Main Street where Superman fights Faora-Ul, resembling where Thor battles the Destroyer), Independence Day/2012/any Roland Emmerich film (crumbling skyscrapers, of which the new Star Trek and Iron Man also stand guilty) and Transformers 1-3 (the last third, particularly whenever more than one flaming/explosive projectile bombards the same shot). For a change of taste, there’s even an unearned Terrence Malickian montage of a nine-year-old, caped Kent frolicking before a wheat field, where the soundtrack drops to silence and Snyder expects us to absorb this awkward moment as something profound and nostalgic. I will admit I dug the Apocalypse Now shout-out, where aircrafts soar before a massive, blood orange Kryptonian sun, but for the rest, Snyder approaches something more like plagiarism.

This all may sound like miniscule nitpicking, but let’s put this into context: New Hollywood directors — Scorsese, Altman, Friedkin, et al — often paid homage or “tipped the hat” to prior films and cinematic styles. One of the greatest examples is the stairwell scene in The Untouchables, where Brian De Palma recreated the baby carriage’s dramatic descent in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin for a Prohibition setting. That 1987 film starred Kevin Costner — who I have neglected to mention brings the only real gravitas to Man of Steel as Kent’s adopted father — and De Palma maneuvered Costner through the scene, as he simultaneously shoots gangsters and tries to save that falling baby. There was no character like Costner in Battleship Potemkin, so De Palma both 1) paid tribute to the Soviet cinematic great and 2) updated his scene to fit a different tone, era, story, etc. What Snyder has done in Man of Steel does not abide by such parameters of respect, knowledge or innovation. His is a style of “Oh, that worked there, so let’s put it here.” Man of Steel cannibalizes not the classics from film school but the record-setting blockbusters still filling studio ledgers. It is an unsustainable mindset motivated by profit and removed from the forces that met to make Christopher Reeve a star.

Final Verdict:

1 Star Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Skyfall Review

Skyfall
Directed by Sam Mendes
Released in 2012

The first image we see in Skyfall is an out-of-focus silhouette at the end of a narrow hallway. We know this is James Bond, for obvious reasons — who else could it be? — yet we cannot be sure. The scale of the shot matches the trademark “gun barrel” sequence that has opened almost all other Bond films. Instead of obscuring Bond in shadow, as in the early films, or bathing him in bright light, as in the more recent ones, Skyfall does both. Backlit by the sunny window and masked by the dark hallway, Bond just stands there in a distorted haze. This teasing shot captures Skyfall in micro: an immaculately photographed film that places Bond between past and future, paying tribute to his history while forming a distinctly new identity.

Movies today obsess over being the next big thing so much that they overlook the pleasures of fusing multiple, smaller things. Skyfall is not a “high concept” film, in that it cannot be summed up in a one-sentence pitch. Casino Royale, the first in the so-called franchise reboot with Daniel Craig, aggressively distanced itself from its legacy — “Vodka martini.” “Shaken or stirred?” “Do I look like I give a damn?” — while the last film, Quantum of Solace, posited Bond as an action hero when, as Roger Ebert puts it, “he is an attitude.” That attitude returns, with Bond once again bedding beautiful women (Bérénice Lim Marlohe) and taking time to adjust the sleeve of his suit after jumping onto a collapsing train. But director Sam Mendes and screenwriters John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade shroud Bond in a layer of doubt and mystery that the recent films have flirted with yet never fully developed.

In action films, there are few ways to trigger an existential crisis both profound and palatable, but killing off the main character 15 minutes in must be one. After a reliably thrilling pursuit through the linen shops and fruit markets of Istanbul, M (Judi Dench), the head of British intelligence agency MI6, orders field agent Eve (Naomie Harris) to “take the bloody shot,” with both Bond and a bad guy in the crosshairs. The bullet hits Bond, who falls off a moving train and plummets into a raging waterfall a good 100 feet below. This scene transitions into Adele’s title song, with visuals dominated less by the usual naked lady outlines and more by Gothic, visceral and M.C. Escher fractal imagery. There is one animation where Bond shoots mirrors surrounding him, suggesting a split in identity or some Freudian metaphor primed for over-analyzing. It all sets the tone for the “resurrection” motif that runs through the film; both Bond and M must confront their age and failings in order to reconcile them with their duties.

Bond — who doesn’t really die, in case you’re worrying — and M face a conflict that is, in more ways than one, the fault of their own actions, particularly M’s. A hard drive containing the files of cover MI6 agents falls into the hands of the baddie (Ola Rapace) Bond fights in the opening sequence. Since he gets away, his boss, Silva (Javier Bardem), now has the power to slander the image of MI6 and enact vengeance on M, who he believes betrayed him in the past. The compelling part is that M did, indeed, fail him, which places her cold-blooded determination to get the job done — “Take the bloody shot!” — on shaky moral ground. Dench has been the series steady since 1995’sGoldeneye and Skyfall affords the Dame her meatiest role yet. Only Bond surpasses M in screen time, and she rivals in lines spoken. M treats Bond like a son, with all the impatience a mother would have for such cheek, and the script has fun with their relationship, inverting romantic staples like “Why didn’t you call?” to mix arch authority with maternal concern.

Even Silva has some strange “mommy” thing with M, though his obsession with killing her belongs more in the house of Atreus than any working relationship. Javier Bardem balances the camp of the Blofelds and Goldfingers before him with the composed anarchy of Heath Ledger’s Joker. Silva takes more than a few cues from The Dark Knight: Always one step ahead, he compares himself to a “rat” (remember The Joker’s dog analogy?) and fascinates us with a mix of humor, sadism and disfigurement (and I’m not referring to the wig). Of course, Bardem owns the part. What starts as a superficial display of strength — pay attention to how he rolls his eyes and forces a laugh — stiffens to homoerotic queasiness before unraveling to full-out animalism. This is the best Bond villain in decades and the best movie antagonist since Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds.

Skyfall may be the first “auteur” Bond film, and I’m not referring to the work of director Sam Mendes. The soul of this film is indebted to cinematographer Roger Deakins, Hollywood’s greatest living cameraman, known for his collaborations with Mendes and the Coen Brothers (Barton Fink through True Grit). Deakins enhances the globetrotting adventure typical of a Bond film by imbuing each locale with a distinct color and lens technique. The Chinese port city of Macau glows yellow against inky black skies, balancing fantasy with sharp acutance. Harsh sunlight saturates the ransacked island colony where Bond first meets Silva. The fog of the Scottish Highlands extends into oblivion through careful manipulation of natural light reminiscent of Days of Heaven (a nod to The Third Man in a sewer chase and Apocalypse Now during a helicopter attack). Skyfall’s most stunning set piece is in Shanghai, which apparently radiates blue everywhere — tunnels, road signs, computer screens, escalators, you name it. The metropolis looks like the futuristic nightclubs in the Mass Effect video games. It serves well for a noir-esque action scene in a skyscraper, where shadows cloak Bond as he sneaks through glass doors to take out an assassin. The hand-to-hand brawl is pitch-black, save for a few muzzle flashes from the assassin’s rifle. Even with such theatrical presentation, the sparse use of light and exacting audio pack a punch. Deakins heightens the exoticism intrinsic to the series by transporting Bond not only to different cities but singular worlds.

Skyfall reminds us how old Bond is — surely a meta-commentary during the franchise’s 50-year anniversary. James Bond’s redemption in this film doubles as a resurrection of the character’s vitality for our age. Skyfall takes on new with old (Albert Finney plays a figure from Bond’s childhood), old with new (youthful Ben Whishaw brings the MI6 Quartermaster “Q” to the 21st century) and composite with middle-aged (Ralph Fiennes as the male complement to Dench’s M). But as Q reminds Bond at their first meeting inside the National Gallery, “Age is no guarantee of efficiency.” For those unfamiliar with names like “Bernard Lee” and “Desmond Llewelyn,” Skyfall remains a uniquely modern film, approaching a story that began in the Cold War with relativist sensibility and production values both visionary and state-of-the-art. And for those of us who consider the Bond canon one with our own, let us collectively weep at the sight of 007 driving his Aston Martin DB5 across the Scottish countryside as the soundtrack strums “duh dadada duh da da da duh dadada duh da da da …”

Final Verdict:

4.5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Nolan in the Deep

Courtesy of Santi Slade

“I don’t think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.”

That is a quote from actor Tom Noonan, who courageous moviegoers will remember as the mysterious doppelganger in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. He expresses a sentiment so clear and true that I wonder why I did not assemble those exact words in that exact order by myself. Personal failings notwithstanding, the idea that we watch film to connect within ourselves rather than merely ‘escape’ via fleeting distractions fits with my fondest memories of the medium. So, why have movies been so distracting lately?

Tired platitudes blame directors Michael Bay (Transformers), Roland Emmerich (2012) or actor Nicolas Cage, who has about trademarked a style of acting/shouting in eternal meltdown. While I will personally defend Cage’s talents against his detractors, right now I charge a filmmaker who I also hold in high regard: Christopher Nolan. Our greatest living director; the man who turned superhero movies serious; the legend who dreamed of Inception? Oh, yes.

It would be borderline libel to denounce Nolan as ‘talentless,’ a ‘hack’ or a ‘talentless hack.’ He is a crafty director who challenges the audience’s expectations of linear storytelling and soundstage action scenes — see Memento for the former and Inception’s jaw-dropping revolving hallway sequence for the latter. I am quite a fan of those works, as well as ofInsomnia and the modern classic The Dark Knight. As Larry David would say, he’s “pretty, pretty … prettay good!” But there is a signature touch of his that represents a nagging trend in filmmaking of recent years, and that is his crippling obsession with minutiae, both in plot and style.

Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) rolls some eyes with his painstakingly crafted, colored and positioned props and sets. Stanley Kubrick (The Shining) drove his producers and actors mad as a notorious perfectionist. Yet the films of these two directors utilize their creator’s obsession as either a background detail or an essential key in unlocking their themes and secrets. For Nolan, he seems to be afraid of letting images speak for themselves. To secure audience comprehension, he adds flourishes that feel extraneous, like an auteur struggling to leave his mark and thus tacking on a Post-It note.

In The Dark Knight Rises, which collects the worst of Nolan’s tendencies, we are introduced to Bruce Wayne after eight years of isolation with a tabloid’s worth of gossip. At a party on the grounds of Wayne Manor, the Gotham City Mayor notes Wayne’s absence, policemen remark how Wayne has not been seen for years, maids chatter about how “disfigured” the unseen Wayne has become and adversary John Daggett jokes that Wayne is some Howard Hughes-esque recluse, “peeing into Mason jars.” This repetitive exposition is an example of ‘tell’ over ‘show,’ where we do not feel a grain of the solitude Wayne suffered but simply hear how bad it must have been from (mostly) unknown talking heads. Nolan loves to parallel cut between several proximate locations in order to string together a bustling setting, but he forfeits any moments of silence or contemplation in his depiction (see film theorist David Bordwell’s recent essay, “Nolan vs. Nolan,” for an in-depth analysis of the director’s overactive editing style).

Plot is clearly Nolan’s focus and his number one goal to communicate. Why, then, do his stories end up so twisted and full of holes? Allow me to clarify: I believe plot holes are one of the weakest arguments you can impose against a movie. Plot holes may not be apparent on a cursory viewing, and thus spotting them gives a viewer the impression that they are closely analyzing the film and engaging in nuanced ‘film criticism,’ as scholars call it. However, this approach can be likened to disassembling a movie’s SparkNotes, divorcing themes, composition and intent from a film and instead studying often-irrelevant inconsistencies in a film’s universe.

Unfortunately, Nolan perpetuates this increasingly mainstream method of pseudo-analysis by tying theme and plot so strongly and, at least in the case of The Dark Knight Rises, so sloppily. To those who have seen that movie, you are aware of that already infamous plot twist at the end (accompanied by a literal twist of a knife, to jog your memory). It razes most of the film’s fiction up to that point, leaving dozens of ruinous and unfathomable assumptions in its wake. The inclusion of the twist was likely out of necessity to spice up the final act. Roger Ebert coined the phrase, “Keyser Soze syndrome,” in observation of the trend following The Usual Suspects’ release when a film drastically alters its reality in the final act. See Fight Club, The Sixth Sense and Nolan’s own Memento for the fad’s winning protégés.

Perhaps Nolan’s greatest weakness is his inability to give into the mystery of his subjects. Inception spends nearly an hour explaining the logic of dreamworlds to the viewer, along with throwing out a handful of inconsistent “dream within dreams” time scale ratios. Think how much more unpredictable and, according to both psychologists and personal experience, realistic a lack of rules would have been. The Dark Knight actually carries a soul — the silent shot of The Joker with his face out of a police car window, basking in chaos shakes your bones. But Two-Face’s circuitous speech at the climax divulges the Hollywood tendency for too much closure. And as for The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan told Rolling Stone magazine in July that it was not “political.” The plot’s prominent populist uprising — with insurgents brandishing Soviet AK-47s — precludes this notion, regardless of his stated clarification.

Saying all this, I still love much in Christopher Nolan’s work and would be lying to say I was not counting the days until his next feature. He is in the unique position to reach a sizable fraction of the world’s population, not only to entertain, but to inspire, comment and provoke. He could even doodle with an experimental film and people would see it. I want to leave his movies pondering big questions, and not just whether or not that damn spinning top fell.

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

The Dark Knight Rises Review

The Dark Knight Rises
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Released in 2012

A record 70 minutes of footage from The Dark Knight Rises was shot using IMAX cameras. IMAX theaters stand about five stories tall and used to only screen movies about mountains and sea turtles. Since Christopher Nolan’s Batman predecessor The Dark Knight pioneered Hollywood’s use of these cameras with 30 minutes of IMAX in 2008, these giant theaters now rattle with loud bouts of action. Because IMAX cameras emit loud buzzes or whirs or whatever sound they make while operating, actors must dub over their lines in post-production. Layering heavy, percussive score over the soundtrack sounds like the other solution, at least the one these audio mixers devised.

I list these facts and observations because, for all the moments The Dark Knight Rises fills the screen and sonic space with intricate, thundering shoot-outs and fistfights, the more apparent it becomes that noise rules over silence, brawn over wisdom and text over subtext. Naturally — but not effortlessly — the last entry in Batman’s War on Terror trilogy boasts immaculate production familiar to Nolan’s prior masterworks like Memento and Inception. Many talented Nolan collaborators return, such as cinematographer Wally Pfister, production designer Nathan Crowley and editor Lee Smith. The two hour, 45 minute film keeps pace but its energy does not sustain from fresh set pieces or inspired ideas as much as a maximalist take on terrorism that oversteps The Dark Knight’s tasteful balance.

Before the obligatory plot outline, I must mention one exception to that thesis above. Batman’s foil, Bane (Tom Hardy), makes a spectacular entrance. We meet Bane hooded and handcuffed on a CIA plane. When help arrives, he not only escapes but destroys the aircraft and all in it. His soldiers rappel from a bomber above, tearing apart the plane with wires and aerodynamics, and descend into the vertical fuselage to retrieve Bane and a nuclear scientist (guess what the scientist will do). As per his style, Nolan inserts a bizarre detail in the middle of the action — transfusing the scientist’s blood into a lookalike corpse — that, while biologically and forensically infeasible, leaves a brutal signature. This prologue was screened before IMAX showings of last year’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and stands alone, then and now, as a thrilling and appropriately terrifying assemblage of creative stunt work and computer effects.

From here, the plot picks up eight years after Batman took the blame for Harvey Dent’s murders in collusion with Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), who continues to perpetuate the lie despite a clawing conscience. Meanwhile, Batman’s alter ego, the once-billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), holes up in Wayne Manor like a Howard Hughes recluse, hobbling around with a cane, atrophying legs and dwindling financial assets. He entrusts Wayne Enterprises to alternative energy innovator Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and dons the cape once again beside Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), called “Catwoman” in the comics but not in the film. Being women, the two serve as love interests to Bruce Wayne/Batman. I would accept the inclusion of romance if there was any.

That is not to say that Selina Kyle does not belong in the film, as Hathaway brings out the mischief of a character that moves the plot forward from an intriguing vantage point. The other worthy addition is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Officer Blake, an idealistic detective whose investigations on the streets correctly predict Gotham City’s impending attack. Batman could have filled that role, but the following list of characters stood in the way: scheming suit John Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn), his slimy assistant Stryver (Burn Gorman) and spineless Deputy Commissioner Foley (Matthew Modine). Others simply waste time like Selina’s accomplice Holly (Juno Temple), who puts Batman in pursuit of the “clean slate” program, a MacGuffin that only leads to significant plot holes. I felt nothing for any of these characters, except disdain for the aforementioned Miranda Tate and not the deliberate kind. Every one of them could have been coalesced with another or deleted outright, only granting more time to those we already care about. No one would complain to see more of the old man trifecta of Gordon, Wayne engineer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Bruce’s butler Alfred (Michael Caine, who multiplies the numerator of blubbery acting per second on screen).

By virtue of screen time, Bane matters more than all of these supporting and minor parts. By all other indicators, he matters very little. When the movie ends, his irrelevance to the overarching plot and lack of standout moments stick out. With that gnarly mask draining all emotion — Nolan could have at least shot close-ups of his eyes, the only human element on his face — and his faux-genteel Vocoder speak, Bane incites populist rage in the denizens of Gotham. His soldiers — how many are there, who are they, what is their motivation? — assault the stock exchange, demolish the bridges and imprison the police officers, leaving the rich penniless or dead and this anarchic city-state under mob rule. The hand of the people hovers over the trigger of a nuclear bomb, set to blow if any interfere. That is what Bane tells the people, at least.

Echoes of “We are the 99-percent” are felt, if not heard. The obvious interpretation is that Christopher Nolan and co-writers David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan are critiquing the “class warfare” of Occupy Wall Street. Yet the hostility to the revolutionaries also extends to the fat cats themselves, as Deputy Foley rolls his eyes at a panicked stockbroker and tells him, “I’m not risking my men for your money.” When viewed from afar, the financial grandstanding so prominent for the film’s first two-thirds reduces to complete nonsense. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plot twist at the end trivializes Bane’s ideology and sweeps the motives of the entire attack under the rug. With the bomb’s countdown ticking away, big ideas flatten under the crunch of the final battle.

Under threat, the innocent hide in their homes or join the outlaws to loot the streets. On the other hand, the trapped police officers band together to dismantle the opposition. There is an underlying, and I believe unintentional, cynicism in having only those who formally swear to protect their city actually do anything to save it. For a director so eager to employ sensitive imagery of the terrorism we know — urban destruction, dead cops — does Nolan forget the good we see in the masses? The outpouring of grief and determination to pick a stranger up after evil attacks stands resilient. You need not look farther back than a week to the tragedy associated with this very film.

Nolan hammers this false depiction of terrorism for most of the film’s duration. The middle act in particular suffers through overbearing sinister acts without any break for humor or hope. Pfister’s cinematography beautifully captures this carnage, but Gotham’s snow-swept, smoldering streets look like Warsaw Ghetto filtered through 9/11 more because they can than because they have something to say. The Dark Knight built comic relief into the madness itself, with Joker as both the chaos and the jester. I don’t think Bane has cracked a joke in his life, and there are times when you would think none of these characters have.

Audiences love this movie; at press time, user votes have placed this Batman at number nine on IMDB’s greatest movie list, one behind The Dark Knight. The ranking will eventually settle downwards and the site’s polling is notoriously skewed young, male and partial to comic book adaptations. Nolan sure knows how to end a movie, as the suitably epic closing hits all the right notes to send fans hollering. While I may not join in, I do admire the simple and profound core storyline — that of the Dark Knight rising. Often the clutter of Gotham’s revolution engulfs the film’s most important narrative. Both Bruce Wayne and Batman are reborn as “more than just a man,” approaching a Christ-like symbol of incorruptible strength. Bruce must climb out of hell — in this case, a deep, open pit used as a stone prison — to vanquish the demon born in it.

There is a beauty in The Dark Knight Rises struggling for recognition. When Batman returns from exile, there is a striking shot of him walking through the streets toward Bane (picture above and to the left). The police officers in Batman’s way drift to the sides, as does a cloud of mist that no longer obscures his body. The cameramen and lighting technicians must have toiled for that shot. What accompanies this potent image? Composer Han Zimmer’s relentless timpanis and a quick cut to Bane pummeling a random nobody. Imagine if the editors slowed down the action, extended the shot and silenced the soundtrack save for Batman’s footsteps and a few pretty choral or string measures. Enough time to ponder that no matter what happens, good has risen and evil will lose. After all, there is no such thing as a subtle approach when projected on a five-story IMAX screen.

Final Verdict:

2.5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

How to Make a Billion Dollars

Courtesy of Santi Slade

While the weather may have its own agenda, summer is almost here — four days away, in fact. No, not because classes end then. And not Slope Day, either, though with all the alcohol and sweat it might as well feel like it.

No, this Friday, May 4, The Avengers will open in theaters across the country, unofficially inaugurating the start of the summer movie season. Marvel is hoping you and I are excited about this movie; in 2010, summer “began” May 7, with Iron Man 2, and last year on May 6, with Thor (at this rate, in 60 years, Hologram Nick Fury vs. The Royale With Cheese will kick off summer on February 19, 2072).

Lots of money is on the table for this one. Consider how each summer for the past four years has featured big-screen advertisements for this very film. They all did well (the weakest was The Incredible Hulk, which earned $263 million worldwide), but so far all of these films have eluded that coveted $1 billion landmark. Disney — who put $4 billion down for its acquisition of Marvel Comics and all its associated properties — does not want to lose any more dough on its films, especially with the colossal failure of John Carter earlier this year.

Will The Avengers cross the totally arbitrary $1 billion worldwide gross threshold, which only 11 other films have passed to date? It seems likely to considering that seven of those billion dollar babies were released in the past four years, with three films alone released last year. The trailer depicts actors we love (veterans Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr., along with rising stars Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth), an actress men love to ogle (Scarlett Johansson, conveniently wearing a skintight costume) and explosions in a metropolitan setting. (Has anyone else noticed how our discomfiting fetish with city destruction has only accelerated post-9/11? Look at every Transformers or Roland Emmerich film we watch). Oh, and the movie is good too, with upwards of 96-percent approval on Rotten Tomatoes. But we are speaking about the bottom line here, so silly things like whether a movie you pay $12 for is “good” or not are kept at the door.

After this weekend, in which The Avengers will undoubtedly deliver a huge turnout upwards of $120-140 million, the box office curve will naturally slope downwards. Last year’s Harry Potter reached $1 billion in 19 days. No matter how much comic book geeks obsess over Hawkeye’s long-awaited inclusion or Captain America’s abdominals, there’s no beating Dumbledore’s Army. It was this similar, though skewed younger, demographic that launched The Hunger Games into stratospheric financial success, with the third best opening weekend of all time at $155 million, the number to beat this summer. But even Games has a long ways to go to hit a billion clams, as the $600 million it has made to date worldwide, after 38 days in theaters (which still slays the rest of the year, by the way), reveals its weak sustainability. Think about how the waves of pre-teens (I will not use the “twe-” word) saw the movie: They screamed at their moms about Katniss and Peeta enough to get them willing to drive to the theater or even hooked themselves. But then it’s back to work and back to school.

So, Marvel’s biggest yet will likely not pull in the explosive first weekend but looks more set to survive. How about the rest of the summer? Expect good showings from Men in Black III (the first real impediment to Avengers, three weeks after), Brave (Pixar’s newest won’t mine the lucrative merchandising goldmine like Cars or Toy Story, but should boast a creative return to form a la Wall-E) and Prometheus (an R rating may hold it back from a few but not from the droves of adults looking for a mature option).

I expect The Bourne Legacy to underperform, because while the original films defied expectations, many still do not know leading man Jeremy Renner and the studios are dumping it off at August, which usually signals hesitance. The Amazing Spider-Man does not have to apologize for the franchise’s awful third movie, for that still accrued nearly $900 million worldwide, and it will fare better than many think (say, $80 million opening, $650 million worldwide finish). Same goes for Ice Age: Continental Drift, which will likely pull in unimpressive domestic sales but skyrocket in the increasingly critical foreign markets. There’s something about animation and mysterious megafauna that turns on those across the pond(s). Ask Kung Fu Panda.

It’s the easy answer, but put your money on The Dark Knight Rises as king of the summer. Its predecessor hit a billion with over 50-percent of its total gross in domestic box office, the only case in the billion dollar movie club. While this film may not have the Heath Ledger scuttlebutt to energize its P.R., its varied cast (read: women) and intriguing art direction (read closer: women in tights) will entice more foreign crowds this time around. If the trailers play up its conclusiveness of the Nolan saga (so they say) and Bane’s bizarre physical presence while hiding the silly American football scenes, Batman can soar all the way to Tokyo … again.

My columns are usually about big ideas and my struggle to comprehend and reconcile them with my daily life. This entry is rather anti-intellectual, not about big ideas but rather big numbers. And when the summer ends and all my above predictions prove wrong, enough time will have passed so that you forget I ever made them. I think this Cornell education might be actually starting to pay off.


This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Inception Review

Inception:
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Released in 2010



Your day is going well. Shockingly great, even. That band you wanted to see, you know the one whose closest show was located three hours away, has just revealed a new date in the town adjacent to yours. Why anyone would play in Closter, New Jersey, is besides the point, because they also resurrected Jimi Hendrix from the dead and he will be jamming at this show as well! The opener is Radiohead. Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe have speaking engagements on top of that. Wait. You begin to question the origins of this situation. You do not remember necessarily how you were confronted with this joyous news, only that it seemingly came to be. The patterned, hardwood floor snaps to black nothingness. As your eyes fly open, only to find yourself lying on your disheveled bed with its tousled sheets, disappointment pours over you as you realize it was merely a dream, a fantastical figment of your subconscious. This was a pleasant dream, but there were undoubtedly some dark secrets hidden deep within. The line between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly blurred, leaving us wary of where, or who, we really are. Such is precisely the concept of Inception, Christopher Nolan's latest mindbending thriller with huge setpieces and an even larger imagination. 


It is not easy to condense Inception's storyline to a mere few paragraphs, as well as leaving out any spoilers, so it is best just to provide the bare synopsis.  Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a master at a very specialized form of espionage:  entering the subconscious of those his employer specifies, and then stealing critical, secret thoughts. Cobb is estranged from his children and his mysterious wife, Mal, whose fate is left in the balance until the end of the film. He is given a chance to reunite with his children if he accepts the job the wealthy Japanese magnate Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him. Fittingly, the task is near-impossible. Known as "inception," it is the process of implementing new thoughts into a person's subconscious, as to make it seem that the subject thought of them himself. The subject is Robert Fischer Jr., played by Cillian Murphy, who is the son of an ill energy tycoon and Saito's main competitor. The job, and its rewards, seem straightforward enough for everyone to agree. Obviously, as in any dream, nothing every works that easily.

The film opens with a spectacular action sequence, which this film is full of, as Cobb and his partner, Arthur, a suave Joseph Gordon-Levitt, invade the mind of Saito in order to extract an important piece of data. The "rules" of subconscious engagement start to materialize. For instance, the sleeping Cobb is kicked into a bathtub, while the Cobb in the dream is surrounded by a world that suddenly fills with water. The opening hour or so focuses on exposition, which may seem to be a slogging introduction to some, but I equated it to a tutorial for a video game. Before you can master an action game, you must learn the basics. Same goes with this original, very different take on the human dreamscape. The film introduces the rules of this unique form of combat, such the need for an architect, or someone who builds a complex dreamworld in order for the subject to have difficulty realizing that this world is a foreign creation. Other neat ideas include the fact that the "dream invaders," let us call them, experience pain inflicted in the dream upon their true, grounded self, though a death will simply wake them up (the exceptions to this rule prove interesting). The different levels of a dream (yes, they dream within dreams, and continually stack them), are given different standards by which time is measured, though pounding music with a defined cadence will apparently resonate equally.  A recurring motif that plays a critical role in the movie is the totems that these agents use to ensure them that they are back in the real world. Arthur has a red die, while Cobb has a silver spinning top. This mechanic is an original way to explain the realities, or lack thereof, of the dreamworld. 

It is not often for a movie to have such an intriguing premise, yet deliver on nearly all counts. Inception does this, and, while it is not completely flawless, it is the most refreshing, intelligent sci-fi film since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I found myself grinning and shaking my head in disbelief when plot strands would tie together so well, or just at the genius behind many of the mechanics. The interesting thing is, this film spells out so many rules and details about the laws the world occupies that it makes the viewer believe they conquered all the small storytelling nuances. Of course, by the ending (and what an ending it is), as one analyzes the bigger picture, many questions are left unanswered. Some are left up to your own interpretation, while the established fiction can answer the rest. Naturally, the whole process of subconscious extraction is never fully explained, which is perfectly fine. A suitcase filled with cryptic lights and circular dials holds a number of tubes that, presumably, are inserted intravenously into each dreamer, who then are left unconscious and free to bob around without much resistance. Explaining the science behind the whole process is about as necessary as revealing the true nature of the Force in Star Wars (and don't you dare bring up midi-chlorians). 


A number of different influences run throughout this film. An obvious pick is The Matrix, where the worlds are built upon unreal creations of people's minds as well. A liberal use of slow motion is shared between the two films, though it is integral to the storytelling of Inception in a sense. There is also, somewhat shockingly, an "Architect" in both, though the roles are reversed. The Architect in The Matrix seemingly knows all the answers, while Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect in Inception, is the audience surrogate, new to the practices of these agents and as initially bewildered as the viewer to the process. The heist and spy nature of the film can be traced to Ocean's Eleven or James Bond (the ski sequence is an obvious throwback to Spy Who Loved Me), both involving a wide range of diverse, wisecracking characters. Traces of Blade Runner can be felt, as the uncertain nature of certain characters hangs in the balance. And of course, Christopher Nolan's greatest film (which may still hold the title, though only time will tell), Memento, is the lifeblood for the script itself. It is worth noting that Memento, which chronicles its events backwards, is dwarfed in complexity by this film and its limitless intricacies. 

In the same way as The Matrix, this film is paving new ground in its special effects. Every visual trick is incredible, such as when Paris folds in on itself and Cobb and Ariadne nonchalantly walk vertically, upside-down, and every which way on the circuitous grid. However, Nolan does not garner all the respect just for the computer wizardry he accomplishes but for his steadfast commitment to live-action effects, with limited digital tampering. A freight train storming through the city streets is something that could only occur in a dream, yet the scene was actually filmed on a expansive stage, not on high-processing computers.  The most stunning feat is the zero-gravity hotel scene, in which Arthur fights and flies through long, spinning corridors. This is not the first time that actors have ran, or danced, on spinning setpieces; Fred Astaire dazzled audiences in 1951 with his Royal Wedding ceiling dance. However, nothing of this scale has been done before, and the added fact that the actors are floating the rest of the time is simply stunning. I should give a shoutout to the sound design as well, which, like any Nolan film, is impeccable. Notice the crisp "clank" sound when the taxi runs over an assault rifle on the ground, or the cacophonous shattering of glass. Hans Zimmer's pounding score is sometimes overwhelming, but it fits the epic feel with heavy brass and bass. In the end though, it is the visual feats of wonder that resonate. Neo's first bullet time scene, or Terminator 2's mix of computer and physical effects were revolutionary for their time, and this is the modern equivalent.

No amount of special effects can counter a bad script (ask a bare, DVD version of Avatar) or flat acting, but Inception encounters no such problems. The screenplay, penned by a likely exhausted Christopher Nolan, is imaginative and rife with emotional conflict. That's not to say that it is without fault (a few events at the end could qualify as deus ex machina), but few screenplays have dared to venture in such risky, complex territory as this one, while simultaneously aiming for huge audiences. While it is the mind of Fischer that the specialists invade, the story ultimately belongs to Cobb. DiCaprio impresses once again with a demanding role that calls for action hero antics on top of perpetual psychological dilemma. His character is deeply flawed, as his relationship with his wife can attest. The memories he holds of his wife are of questionable authenticity, and once the answers are provided by the conclusion, the ending proves even deeper than initially expected. Many parallels can be drawn between the mind-centric roles of this film and Shutter Island, another Leo DiCaprio vehicle, but it is safe to say that he has been in two of the best films of the year and supports them with ease. 


The rest of the cast is varied but no less impressive. The youthful Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who balanced elation and melancholy perfectly in (500) Days of Summer, is an ideal partner to DiCaprio. He plays the sane(r) man to Cobb's rapidly spiraling mind, and this is the first blockbuster for the young man that will surely launch a career of many more successful films. He exchanges entertaining banter with Eames, played by Tom Hardy, the typical British bloke. The two provide most of the comic relief in the film, which is not terribly often, but humorous when it appears. Ellen Page, who narrowly missed an Oscar for Juno, excels in her role that begins in perplexed naivety to end as the only one besides his wife to truly understand Cobb's psyche.  Her genius draws her to Cobb's attention through Miles, played by Michael Caine, who stops by for only five minutes total. He apparently is one of the main minds behind this "subconscious security" process, so when he sits behind a desk in a 19th century lecture ampitheater, it does not really meld with his character's reputation. Still, there is no harm in Michael Caine, and I would have welcomed more screentime. Avatar's Dileep Rao is the chemist behind the operation, supplying the sedatives for the subjects. It is strange, however, that these complex chemicals are simply stored in some dusty old store, which seems a bit off the mark. Nonetheless, Cillian Murphy plays his extremely critical role with an apt blend of wealthy elitism and frightened disorientation. A larger Tom Berenger, somewhat similar in complexion to Mickey Rourke nowadays, is the righthand man to the Fischer family, and proves to be a key point in successful inception. A scene when Eames, who is a "forger," alters his appearance to become a physical manifestation of Berenger's character is clever as the sparse editing makes the effect seem lifelike. 

Letters From Iwo Jima's Ken Watanabe, one of the greatest English-speaking Japanese actors in Hollywood, is excellent as the wealthy, occasionally quite humorous catalyst to the whole operation.  He not only assigns the operation but proves to be a vital figure in the mental unraveling of Cobb. The chief figure in Cobb's life, however, is undoubtedly his wife, Mal, played by the beautiful Marion Cotillard. Her performance is never consistent because Cobb's projection of her constantly vacillates to fit his mental state. Cotillard, who won an Oscar for La Vie en Rose two years ago, nails the emotional nuances of this complex role no matter the situation. She can be frightening, romantic, philosophical, or just smooth like the best Bond girls. Cotillard has not had a bad role in her career, and the transition to blockbuster films has not mitigated her talent at all. If anything, she is getting better with each new movie. 


As much as I would like to call Inception perfect and close shop with that, it is not. No film is really, but there are a few qualms I should note. Mulholland Drive this is not, and while that will please most viewers who do not want to be savagely assaulted by perverse images and jagged storylines, it is almost too straightforward for a dream world. Dream logic is, well, devoid of any real logic, so the ease at which the agents move around the world and control themselves does not really align itself with the true science of dreams. The one problem that was notably apparent, however, was the bland nature of the dream worlds. As my opening paragraph attests to, dreams are supposed to be discordant, senseless and fantastical scenes that center around an impossible notion or ideal setting. Instead, the settings of these dreams are just city streets, hotels, and snowy fortresses without any conflict. The straightforward nature of these dreams is the only way a mainstream audience would be able to digest them, and there is already enough abstract content to deal with, so I understand where Nolan is coming from with these alterations. These minuscule flaws have little to no impact on the final product, but I feel obliged to express my thoughts. 

Inception is a rare beast. The visual effects are astonishing and unlike anything you have ever seen before. Better yet, its wholly original and brilliant story qualifies every action scene as intrinsic to the progression of the plot, and not merely pedestrian eye fodder. Christopher Nolan may be the greatest filmmaker of the new millennium, as he combines the old, traditional ways of making classic films - huge soundstages, stuntmen, and, most important, a limitless imagination - with the technology of today, and, never leaning too heavily on either, crafts a product that is irresistible to every form of audience. In Inception, your dreams are never safe. But this film proves that the Hollywood dream is alive and strong.


Final Verdict:
4.5 Stars Out of 5