Category: Cinema

Munich, Mission, Muties.

In recent casting news, Geoffrey Rush joins Spielberg’s Vengeance (with Eric Bana and Daniel Craig), Laurence Fishburne boards MI:3, and Alan Cumming announces he won’t be back as Nightcrawler for X3. Well, good to hear at least the blue fuzzy elf will miss the Ratneresque carnage Fox is about to perpetrate on the X-Franchise.

Bats in the Cradle.


This just in from the Gotham Gazette: Much of the city’s criminal element are packing off for Metropolis to try their luck with Supes…cause, well, this “Bat Man” fellow is just plain terrifying. Yes, y’all, I’m happy to report that, while Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins has some minor problems — each character gets a few clunky lines and the final action sequence isn’t all that memorable — this is the Batman movie that fans of the Dark Knight have been waiting for. There’s no Schumacher statuary in this Gotham City, and nary a Burtonesque Batdance to be had. Nope, this is just straight-up Frank Miller-style Batman, scaring the bejeezus out of the underworld in his inimitable fashion. [Spoilers to follow.]

Going in, I was mostly afraid that all the ninja training and Liam Neeson speaking in Qui-Gonisms that marked the trailers was going to take up half the film. But, to its credit, Batman Begins moves at a surprisingly brisk clip, interspersing Bruce Wayne’s travels in the Orient (as we begin, he’s doing hard time in a Eastern prison) with flashbacks of various fateful moments in his early life. Bale and Neeson in particular are encumbered by some potentially ponderous dialogue here — fear is the mindkiller type stuff — but they do well with it (as does Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson…everybody, really, even Katie Holmes.)

And, when Wayne gets back to Gotham, the film really takes flight. If the message boards are any indication, some of the fanboy nation are ticked that you never get a really good look at Bats in any of the fight sequences — he’s always flitting from shadow to shadow or bringing a beat-down from above. But I for one loved it…as seen from common-thug-level, this incarnation of Batman is — finally — downright scary. (And, speaking of scary, the Scarecrow has a devilishly creepy introduction here.) Whatsmore, Nolan and screenwriter David Goyer wisely play up the “Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy” angle too, which is as important a subterfuge as Clark Kent’s bumbling around the Daily Planet.

Problems? Like I said, yeah, a few. The Batmobile chase scene is a bit gratuitous, and the final action extravaganza isn’t all that involving. (Also, as one astute AICN reader pointed out, the microwave emitter scenario should have had a much more disastrous effect on the “bags of mostly water” surrounding it.) I’d have liked to see even more of the Fear-vision (particularly as that whole sequence reminded of me of Swamp Thing’s visit to Gotham in the Alan Moore years.) It seems like calling in the “back-up” would likely give away the location of the Batcave. Taking out Wayne Manor was a bit extreme. And, to my mind, Batman never really needs a love interest, aside from Catwoman, Poison Ivy, or the like.

But these are all quibbles. In the big picture, Batman Begins is a rousing success, and I want to see Batman Continues next-to-immediately…particularly after that you-know-what at the end. (!) After all, even with the considerable star power on display here, Gotham’s still one card short of a full deck…

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall.

Worlds of wonder abound in the trailer bin today, including our first real look at Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (looks a bit Munchausen-y…and I hope I can get used to Matt Damon’s accent) and this trippy voyage into Neil Gaiman’s Mirrormask. And, speaking of Gaiman, his and Robert Zemeckis’ forthcoming version of Beowulf has a cast: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson, and Robin Wright Penn.

Love is a Battlefield.

Ok, I know that I shouldn’t have been expecting much more than some eye candy, a few decent action sequences and two hours of air conditioning. But, I’ll admit, I was disappointed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith — Director Doug Liman did a great job with The Bourne Identity a few years ago, and I generally root for both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But, while Pitt is as aw-shucks amiable as usual (his stint in Troy aside) and Jolie is, as always, very easy on the eyes, there just isn’t much here. Sure, marriage as war is a metaphor that’s been mined pretty thoroughly over the years…but one can usually still find choicer nuggets than the ones making up this flick. In short, the script is half-baked and the action is overdone.

Beginning with a marriage counselor interview intercut with the credit sequence (it plays a bit like the opening to The Incredibles) followed by a meet-cute in Colombia “five or six years earlier,” Smith seems intriguing enough at first glance…sort of an actioner by way of a Steven Soderbergh film. But the movie then takes way too long establishing its central conceit — we’re a good forty minutes in before the spy vs. spy angle is worked out — particularly given that Pitt and Jolie seem so woefully out of place in the burbs.

That being said, the early going is probably the film’s better half. Once the two start going after each other, and particularly after the big marital mano-a-mano, the movie takes several increasingly graceless lapses into absurdity. Most of the big action setpieces, particularly the finale in a department store, not only don’t make any narrative sense but have zero danger to them. (Really, what was the point of setting up these two as crack shots at the Coney Island fairground, if they continually miss each other from point-blank range? These Agents Smith are even more bullet-proof than Hugo Weaving in The Matrix.)

Action aside, the script also takes a turn for the hammy as Mr. & Mrs. Smith progresses. The more Pitt and Jolie begin to discover about each other, the less and less they sound like a married couple. And, after awhile, the movie’s ingratiating penchant of doing just about anything for a laugh, from funny faces to cat sound effects to Air Supply and “The Girl from Ipanema,” gets kinda tiresome. (Particularly egregious in this regard is every scene with Vince Vaughn, where the same “living at home with mom” joke is made over and over again.) By the time The OC‘s Adam Brody flaunts his Fight Club T-shirt while getting grilled by Pitt, I had had enough already. What can I say? I really thought Mr. & Mrs. Smith was gonna work out, but eventually, the thrill was gone.

Time out of Mind.

What would you do if you had a time machine, albeit one that only lets you travel backward for as long as you’re willing to sit in a souped-up cardboard box? Well, chances are a lot of us may end up taking a page from Abe and Aaron, the two well-dressed, Wired-subscribing, jargon-spouting, and thoroughly scientifical protagonists of Primer. Find a way to impress your friends, make a quick buck on the stock market, that type of thing. But, frankly, figuring out what to do is the least of your problems, because pretty soon you might have other ideas, in which case you’ll get in the way, and then you’ll have to be taken care of.

Confused? Not as confused as you’ll be after leaving this intriguing and perplexing sci-fi flick. Written, directed, produced and acted in by Shane Carruth on a purported budget of $7000, Primer flaunts its incomprehensibility from the get-go, as Abe and Aaron speak in technobabble riddles while cannibalizing their home appliances to construct a strange device in the latter’s garage. Soon enough, they discover their bizarre gravity-defying invention can run without batteries for a time and has a strange side-effect on weebles, one that might have some interesting and remunerative real-world applications…

And then things get really confusing, as multiple Abes and Aarons begin living out the same time period, often working at cross-purposes to each other. Seriously, with the possible exception of the MIT guys who threw the time travel conference, I don’t think anybody’s going to be able to piece together exactly what happens in this movie the first time through. But, the general inscrutability of it all is part of the atmosphere. We never really understand what’s going on, and I could see some folks getting frustrated with this film — usually, incomprehensibility is not a strong suit in movies. Still, for some reason, Primer works as a heady sci-fi tone poem about the cryptic (and dire) consequences of mucking about with the timestream. Mostly unfathomable, sure, but if you’re a fan of the genre, it’s definitely worth catching sometime…perhaps yesterday.

America Begins.

So that’s how Bruce Wayne made his money…Christian Bale shows up as John Rolfe in the new trailer for Terence Malick’s The New World, also starring Colin Farrell (as John Smith), newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher (as Pocahontas), Christopher Plummer, Wes Studi, Noah Taylor, and David Thewlis.