The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight. It’s hard for me to think of a film that does more right, while making me hate the title character.

The story is fairly simple, as far as comic book films go. Gotham’s police department is going after the Mob’s money, and Batman is helping them. The Joker goes to the Mob, and offers to help, while really just trying to get people to join his cause, which is just to cause chaos.

The acting is incredible, especially Heath Ledger as the Joker. More has been said about his performance than about any other character, probably, so I won’t go on for too long, but I’ll just say this. He feels real. Unlike most “supervillians”, he feels grounded in reality a lot more. His plan is chaos. Why? Fun. The Joker is wonderfully insane, in such a way that makes the audience like him, and sympathise with him. Heath Ledger played such a different Joker than we’d ever seen on film, and he was honestly quite scary. Every little motion, every flicker of a thought crossing his mind seemed real. There was never a bit where you thought “Haeath Ledger”, it was always “the Joker”. The rest of the cast is almost as good. Michael Caine, as always, great fun to watch. Morgan Freeman does a great job as Fox, Batman’s chief tech.

Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon is fantastic, really becoming the character. He is essentially, along with Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent, the audience’s point of view for the majority of the plot. Great acting from the both of them, especially after Harvey becomes Two-Face, and meet at the end of the film. Probably one of the best scenes in the film, were it not for Batman.

Oh, Batman. I never really liked Batman. He’s not a character, he’s an event. There are scenes in the film when characters are discussing politics and crime, all serious looking, and it could almost just be a film about cops, and then Batman walks in wearing his underpants on the outside, and starts growling at people. The whole concept is just a bit annoying to me. As I said, an event. Things start happening, plot is unfolding, and then Batman happens. Shows up, punches people, and then leaves the rest of the characters to figure out what to do next. Also, the whole idea of him is a bit wrong to me. He’s a wealthy businessman, who goes around at night beating up poor people, and it is invariably poor people who have been taken in by criminals, and basically brought up a different way from him, and so he beats them senseless. Turn the point of view around, and it’s a group of underdogs fighting “the Man”.

Anyways, Batman’s underpants troubles aside, the film is great. Really well shot, some great action, fantastic practical effects work, great music by Hans Zimmer, and great acting. Overall, I highly recommend it. Best entry in the Dark Knight saga.

V For Vendetta

Sorry, didn't realise the font had gone all weird, and made the text invisible. Fixed it.

So, V for Vendetta. I know what the internet thinks of this film, and, despite the fact that I love the Wachowski’s, I’d never seen it up till now, nor have I read the graphic novel. Now that I have seen it, I must ask, why the hell have I not watched it earlier?

Right, let’s get away from my (not having seen the film), and onto the review.

So, plot. Basically, we start in a modern 1984, where the United States has been ravaged by civil war, and England has suffered from a massive plague. There’s a terrorist named “V”, played by Hugo Weaving, who rescues Evey, played by Natalie Portman, from the secret police, and takes her to see his first “performance”. V then blows up the Old Bailey to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture in a truly epic scene that shows off the films excellent effects work and model miniatures. He then lets Evey get on with her life, for a day at least. He then shows up at her job at a TV station, where the government is playing a message saying the Old Bailey was demolished because of structural instability, and plays a message to the country telling them to rebel. The police storm the building, and try to arrest him. Evey helps him out, and gets knocked out for her trouble. V essentially kidnaps her, to keep her safe. From there on, it gets a bit more complicated, but I won’t spoil it.

The acting is excellent in this movie, especially with Hugo Weaving who, despite not actually being visible, manages to convey exactly what V is thinking in the scene through body language, and his voice is great as always, and it gives him a kind of threatening, authoritative feeling.

One of the interesting bits of casting is John Hurt as Chancellor Sutler, a Big Brother type figure. John Hurt is, of course, famous for playing Winston Smith in 1984.

The film has a very dark tone, and the color scheme used reflects that perfectly, with many scenes set in dark areas, tunnels, prison cells, underground rooms, with splashes of color. The effects are something I have a particular interest in, and they are excellent. Really damn nice. The two major effects scenes, the destructions of the Old Bailey and the Houses of Parliament, are beautiful. It’s obvious that they used model miniatures, and it works perfectly. It looks far more real than a pure CG scene, and shows just how much they learned during their amazing work in the final Matrix film. 

There’s also a great slow motion fight scene, highly reminiscent of the Matrix lobby scene. 

Alright, my overall review. Good movie. I would totally recommend it, though there are a couple of scenes that aren’t exactly consistent with the tone, like the scene where Stephen Fry’s character does a weird comedy sketch thing on his show. Oh, and the film has Stephen Fry, so watch it.

Children of Men

*Note: This is one of the reviews I posted on my old blog, and I'm now moving it to this one

Children of Men is a rather interesting film. If I had to compare it to something, I’d have to say Half-Life 2, and in more than one way.

In the film, humanity is essentially screwed. No human has been born for 20 years, and there is only one functioning government left, in the United Kingdom. This government is oppressive and Orwellian, imposing harsh immigration laws on immigrants. The main character, Theo, played by Clive Owen, is a former activist, who meets his estranged wife, Julian Taylor, who gives him a mission, to transport a fugitive named Kee to the ocean, where she can be picked up by a ship, operated by an organization, called Humanity First. Nobody even knows for sure if it exists, but they are the only ones looking for a way to allow humans to reproduce again.

After a series of events during which an important character gets killed, Kee reveals to Theo that she’s pregnant, the first woman in 20 years to do so. Because of this, Theo goes from a guy just doing the job he was promised money for, to actively taking care of Kee.

What follows is a series of betrayals, deaths, and incredibly intense action sequences. The film is shot in a documentary style, most of the time using a handheld camera style. This would be distracting in many films, but in this film, it works well, especially during the chaotic action scenes. The other interesting thing about the way the film was shot is its long shots. Several of the action scenes take place in one camera shot. Weirdly, I didn’t notice it most of the time. It was just really immersive. Now, we know these were done partially with post-production wizardry, but it’s still really impressive considering just how much was done live, on set. The longest of these is a 454 second shot near the end of the film, of a battle between rebels and the government forces. That’s 7 and a half minutes. Very cool.

Back to the story. One of the things that interested me, or at least that I found different, was that, unlike in the other dystopian film, V for Vendetta, we don’t really see the government. Sure, we see that they’re the villains, rounding up and deporting refugees, and torturing prisoners, but we don’t really see the government itself. V for Vendetta, and other dystopian films and books, generally show the viewers just how evil the government is, how they’re conspiring against the people, and so on, but here, they’re only mentioned, and we don’t have an actual target for our hate against the villains. In other films and other dystopian works, the government always has a figurehead, some “leader”, and here there’s nothing. Another example of this is 

[MAJOR SPOILERS] 

in the final battle, now that Kee’s baby has been born, and Theo is leading them out of the building under siege, EVERYONE stops shooting. Rebels, and soldiers. Theo, Kee, and the baby all just walk out, through the battle. Soldiers and rebels staring at her baby, in awe, showing that the government wasn’t really fully in control of them. As soon as they leave the building, though, the shooting instantly restarts, and the soldiers destroy the building quickly.

[/MAJOR SPOILERS]

There are other issues mentioned in the film, including environmental issues, free speech, and racism, but I don’t have too much space left, really.

The acting is pretty good in the film, but nothing really jumps out at me as all that impressive, except Michael Caine. Oh, Michael Caine. He plays a sort of hippie... stoner... political activist... thing, and he’s great. Funny, and clever, and intelligent, and real. I completely forgot it was him, and just thought of him as that character. Really great casting, because it goes completely against what I think of when I see Michael. Except maybe in The Man Who Would Be King.

So, overall, pretty damn good. I highly recommend watching it. Interesting, but not perfect. However, it’s not really a movie I’m going to watch more than a couple of times, like I did with V for Vendetta.

The Horror...

Note: After many issues with my old blog, I'm going to start moving my reviews here one by one.

I love war movies. Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Letters from Iwo Jima. These are all in my top 50 films of all time. I love them. This film made me think about why I like them.

Apocalypse Now is going to be a difficult film for me to review. If I had to classify the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film into a particular genre, I would probably say it was a horror film. In technical terms, the film is excellent. The cinematography and lighting are both beautiful and stunning. The music, though I wouldn’t listen to it outside the film, is perfect, fitting the scenes excellently. The editing is very good, which is amazing, as millions of feet of footage had to be edited, and it took almost two years to finish the post-production.

This film looks seriously gorgeous. 

The acting is perfect, as it is in most of Coppola’s films. He really knows how to pick the right actors (no, I haven't seen Godfather Part 3 yet, I don't know how bad it actually is). Martin Sheen as Willard is great, essentially acting as the audience's point of view in the film, as we see everything through his eyes. The filming was especially hard on him, as before the filming was completed, he had suffered a heart attack from working in the jungle for so long. Marlon Brando is... well, he’s Marlon Brando. Amazing, but not overly dramatic, especially in this film. Quiet, and almost overly thoughtful. When he showed up to the set, he was too fat, and he had not read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novella the film was inspired by, so the director had to work around these issues, and I honestly think the film is better for it. The rest of the cast is just as excellent, with Robert Duvall in particular standing out as the slightly insane Lieutenant Killgore, loudly ordering his men to surf on a beach while under fire, a huge change from his most famous role as the quiet Tom Hagen in the Godfather series.

Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz

Now, the story, arguably the film’s best part. Captain Willard receives a mission, to go and eliminate Col. Kurtz, who has apparently gone insane, and now commands a force of native soldiers in neutral Cambodia. Willard joins up with a squad of soldiers, Chief, Lance, Chef, and Clean, and heads off to find Kurtz. They are initially escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Killgore, who commands a squadron of attack helicopters. After an attack on a village run by the Viet Cong, Willard and his force head down the river, encountering Viet Cong soldiers, civilians, insane US soldiers, while their own sanity starts breaking down. A major turning point comes when they encounter a civilian boat, and start searching it, only to end up killing everyone, and finding out that the civilians weren't doing anything wrong. This shakes the whole crew badly, but they carry on. Eventually, they reach Kurtz, though not all survive the journey. Willard immediately becomes unsure about his mission when he meets Kurtz, who starts to explain his theories of war, and humanity.

Martin Sheen as Captain Willard

Kurtz is fascinating to watch, as he explains his ideas, and really makes the whole film strange. There are huge action scenes, where war is shown to be glamorous, but in the quiet scenes, where Kurtz talks to Willard, and explains the horrors of war, and this is where the film is at its best.

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me."

Overall, I would highly recommend this film, because it made me feel. I felt emotions I didn’t think a film could make me feel. Everything Willard felt, I felt. I may never watch it again, unlike the Godfather films, but I can proudly say I’ve done it once. Coppola’s films are usually a bit strange, in that I generally don’t like them the first time I see them, but each time I rewatch them, I love them more and more. This is a film I loved and hated the first time around, though I don’t know why I hated it. Perhaps it’s because I don’t really know if I can think about war movies the same way anymore.

Note: This is a strange review of the film, as for the first half, it was the first version, and for the second half of the film, I was watching the Redux version, as far as I know. I'm reviewing it as I saw it.