Written by David on 14 May 2012
‘Dark Shadows’ suffers from extreme identity crisis, veering in tone between madcap comedy, suburban soap opera with occasional, unexpected leaps into a particularly unsavoury brand of horror. Seth Grahame-Smith’s screenplay is less a template for a successful motion picture and more a slop bucket of half-baked subplots held together by no discernable theme or easily categorisable genre. Grahame-Smith may have mangled the story, but it’s ultimately Tim Burton who must take responsibility for failing to find a tone to stick to. Not since the messily charming ‘Mars Attacks’ has he directed such an inconsistent film, the long bumpy runtime not so much suffering from incoherence, as an abundance of ideas that never fully take shape. The resulting movie feels as though it might’ve originally ran twice the length, giving the opportunity for each individual strand to fully develop in Burton’s immaculately designed world. As always with this director, ‘Dark Shadows’ is a visual triumph, with rich, textured landscapes and pretty set design trumping the somewhat substandard drama. The photography is impressive, but I’d question why Warner Bros released $150 million for Burton to play with when less than half that figure would’ve been sufficient. I suspect their profligacy will be punished at the box office.
‘Dark Shadows’ fails to lift Burton out of the slump he fell into as of that first dinner date with Bonham Carter, though simply for being scrappily amusing rather than actively offensive (Sweeney Todd & Alice in Wonderland – urgh), it marks, potentially, the beginnings of a turning point. With a better script, a fresh set of collaborators and a sharper handling of the tone, I still hold out hope Burton RIP 1985-1999 can be vampirically resurrected.
2.5/5
Tags: Dark Shadows
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Written by David on 30 April 2012
A home set-up, however personalised, however sophisticated, can never top the thrill of hearing – of feeling – an audience react. A packed cinema is like a packed concert hall, the ebb and flow of the collective. An experience shared. There’s nothing like it.
The Avengers is a great audience film. There’ve been inconsistencies in quality between the various Marvel origin stories, Iron Man still probably playing the best as an all-rounder, but where Whedon succeeds is in capitalising on the strongest elements of each standalone film and bringing them to the forefront of his crossover. For the flaws of Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor (the latter of which I loved in spite of itself), Marvel always triumphed on the casting front. Captain America, in particular, featured the perfect actor struggling with, sometimes, less than satisfactory material. Whedon, thankfully, doesn’t let these guys down.
Snappy one-liners, amusing set-ups and decent visual gags can elevate any blockbuster, but tied with a string of bombastic, hugely enjoyable action sequences…the thing couldn’t play any better to that crowd. Not unlike his masterful Cabin in the Woods script, Whedon infuses beat after beat with pitch perfect comedic dialogue and self-referential mockery. My favourite thing about Thor, for all its fluffing of the Portman romance, was that Branagh hit the sweet-spot of self-awareness whilst never losing sight of the drama. The Avengers is gifted with the same quality, able to be both spectacularly silly and grippingly dramatic often in the same moment. As Sam Raimi’s tremendous first two Spider-Man adventures proved, it’s in those moments that the ‘comicbook’ movie hits its stride, its unparalleled dominance of worldwide box office over the past decade suddenly becoming clear in a sparkling, spandex-clad flash of light.
4/5
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Written by David on 16 April 2012
I like meta-commentary as much as the next man, starting with the one-two punch of ‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare’ and ‘Scream 1+2′, which blew my socks off as a kid, then more recently the enjoyable ‘The Rise of Leslie Vernon’ and ‘Tucker & Dale vs. Evil’. Horror fucking loves being self-referential.
This film, not unlike the first two ‘Scream’s, doesn’t just dissect the tropes but succeeds simply by adhering to those most basic of generic conventions. Whereas the Craven efforts work well as superficial postmodernist stabs, ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ goes further – so audacious in its ambitions it reminded me more of Charlie Kaufman’s bafflingly brilliant ‘Synecdoche, New York’ than any comparable horror entry. Unlike Kaufman’s film though, ‘Cabin’, as stated, is masterful not just as a meta-textual genre dice-up but as the ultimate, indulgently splatty spook-fest. Director Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon aim higher than mere exploration of horror mechanics, with their wacky final half-hour stepping beyond the confines of the screen to probe deeply into the wants, desires and fears of its audience. What bloodlust in all of us does this nightmare satisfy? Which group is surrogate for we, the observer? What is the ultimate purpose of the genre and what fears does it quell?
As Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian professes in his review, though the heart lies with the classical, unreconstructed horror (so wonderfully represented by this springs ‘Woman in Black’ adaptation), ‘Cabin’ does a hell of a job exploring and scrutnising the genre. Simply by posing the big questions about why we watch these damn things, it secures its place in the pantheon of great post-post-post (?) modern horror films. It’s smart, bold and a breath of fresh air amongst the sub-standard dross pumped out by the likes of Platinum Dunes and other criminally negligent production houses.
I’d totally watch it again. Right now.
5/5
Tags: The Cabin in the Woods
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Written by David on 10 April 2012
There’s a scene about halfway through ‘Battleship’ where an alien infantryman is examining a horse. The horse actor looks slightly embarrassed to be there.
Peter Berg’s debut film ‘Very Bad Things’ easily remains my favourite of his unusual body of work. There’s a dark, somewhat vicious humour cutting through that film totally at odds with the studio-sanitised flatness that categorised the likes of 2008′s ‘Hancock’. The original ‘Tonight, He Comes’ spec draft that’d later become ‘Hancock’ promised a sly, decidedly un-PC affair whose promise the final product could never deliver on. Perhaps it was that strange, twisted script that first appealed to Berg’s true sensibilities, not the soulless mess that’d somehow find its way to commercial success at the end of the production line.
The ‘Hollywood Blockbuster’ is in a sorry state if the sole aspiration of the industries most expensive efforts is to ape and replicate Michael Bay’s frighteningly popular ‘Transformers’ series. ‘Battleship’ for much of its runtime plays Bay-lite; incomprehensible, bafflingly noisy with almost total disregard for logic, human life and personal property. Things randomly explode, characters engage in selflessly heroic acts, torpedoes fly, alien guns fire, Liam Neeson shouts stuff – all surrounded and smothered by a thick layer of jingoistic Navy-loving sugar. It’s absolute nonsense, silly beyond belief, spectacular only so far as its budget stretches and never ceases to remind us why Universal held back tonight’s screening until the evening prior to UK release. So little confidence did they have of a positive critical response they must’ve feared showing it to the press prior to the 10th. Smart move.
…but then there’s Berg’s dark humour…
Maybe I’m imagining it. Perhaps it’s the last dying hope of a man forced into a life-changingly traumatic experience, but somewhere, deep inside, I’m sure I sensed that sly humour at play under ‘Battleship’s surface. There’re moments so spectacularly stupid, so stupendously dumb – only a mind as sharp as Berg’s could conjure such crazed magic. I dare anyone to face the scene where a crew of veterans ride the retired USS Missouri into battle without bursting into unstoppable spasms of laughter. My audience certainly enjoyed it, ripples stretching back through the London cinema until the crowd was shaking with delight. Throw in a bit of straight-faced line delivery and a whole script of dodgy dialogue and I think nearly everyone had a good time. Or maybe we’re just rationalising our collective madness? Drugs in the free drinks? Berg you sneaky bastard!
2.5/5
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Written by David on 03 April 2012
I’m not sure I can recall the last time I’ve been so totally shaken by the ending of a film. Ben Wheatley does a fine job of steadily driving up the tension over the preceding seventy-five minutes, but as ‘Kill List’ slid elegantly into those final scenes I was left gaping with the sheer shock and distress that accompanies such an unexpected change of direction.
Wheatley’s thriller could easily have continued along the expected path laid out by the set-up. The groundwork for that ending is in place from the beginning, the hints more apparent on retrospect, but his spotlight for the first half is so focused on character building and strained family relationship that the late gearshift into full-blown occult horror shocks like a hand-grenade to the face.
There’ve been many classics name-checked when talking about ‘Kill List’, but it’s only after sitting through the whole gruelling experience that the comparisons make much sense. Coming to the end credits, I was reminded of the feeling that first time the terrifying revelations at the end of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ became apparent, or (more directly) the hopelessness and despair of Edward Woodward’s screams as ‘The Wicker Man’ burns.
‘Kill List’ is urgent, powerful British cinema at it’s least transparently manipulative and most harrowing. It’s as good a horror film as I’ve seen in the last ten years.
5/5
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Written by David on 02 April 2012
Jonathan Liebesman’s rarely coherent sequel is very much a retread of the first film, tossing an assortment of different monsters into the cinematic blender then periodically throwing them at us for 100 minutes. Most, if not all, are rendered with decent CG. Design work is passable, though the sheer frequency of the monster bombardment gives little time to appreciate the nuances of any individual beastie.
I don’t quite know what to make of Warner Bros’ ‘Titans’ franchise. On one hand there’s something appealing about the random jumble of Greek myths launched at the screen, on the other I simply can’t bring myself to support such a reckless, disjointed exercise in monster-fighting randomness. There’s more dramatic weight in an episode of ‘Pingu’.
Sam Worthington, as ever, fails to find any humour in the situation and spends most of the running time working his way through an increasingly limited repertoire of frowns and grimaces. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes seem to be having much more beardy pay-cheque fun in their silly Zeus/Hades outfits. When shooting these movies, Neeson always brings the sort of eye twinkling energy possessed only of a man knowing he’s tied into a multi-million-pound three-film contract. Lucky bastard.
2.5/5
Tags: Wrath of the Titans
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Written by David on 29 March 2012
DC: A horrible point has been reached where they’re remaking nineties films. This is my territory! They’re encroaching on my fucking childhood playground! I saw the pain of the guys a few years older as they worked through the eighties, now I’m feeling the pain as they sneak into our decade. Paul Verhoeven is under attack from all sides. Robocop out next summer, Starship Troopers at the script stage, Total Recall out this summer. The triumvirate of Verhoeven action classics all being remade. It’s upsetting because there’s no way they can capture what he did with those films. They’re so much of their time. There’s a particular context to being made by that one guy, the time, the way they were made that you can’t recapture…nor should you try. I mean, Total Recall isn’t just a great Paul Verhoeven film but one of the quintessential Arnold Schwarzenegger films from the height of his stardom. They shouldn’t be messing around with it. It’s sacred ground.
LA: With Total Recall too it seems to be almost unanimously liked. It goes beyond cheesy fun, though it of course works on that level, it’s a legitimately good movie. That’s point one, secondly Len Wiseman is directing it whose best-known film to date is Die Hard 4: Pointless.
DC: Wiseman’s a terrible choice for director. He’s never made a good film. The idea of a Total Recall remake angers a great deal. The casting might be the only thing that’s preventing me from completely ignoring it. Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Nighy…they’ve put together a good bunch of actors, though Farrell remains a character actor suffering from moviestar confusion. This is his second consecutively unnecessary remake after butchering Fright Night last year. He needs a new agent.
LA: Is Nighy playing Cohagen?
DC: I think he’s Kuato. If you were fantasy casting you could do a lot worse.
LA: Yeah, I mean it could be Keanu Reeves or something.
DC: I don’t know how much money they’ve spent on it.
LA: It’s another $200+ million. Another one.
DC: They’re idiots. They’re fucking idiots. Find me an example of a Colin Farrell movie that’s ever pulled in the sort of numbers to make that a good business decision? They’re opening the same day as The Bourne Legacy in the US, with The Expendables II a week or so later. Batman will still be bobbling around. They’ll be absolutely crushed. Idiots.
LA: Yeah.
DC: $200 million!!! Do they honestly think it’ll pull in half a billion, six hundred to profit on original release? They’re mad! Those trailers are going to have to show off an incredibly spectacular sci-fi action epic to start drawing those sorts of crowds. It’ll have to look memorising. Eitherway, nothing will stop my objection to their hijacking of the Total Recall title, premise and brand for their film. I dislike that the character shares a name with Schwarzenegger’s. It’s never going to capture the twisted, ultra-violent, freakishly satirical vision of Verhoeven.
LA: They don’t even go to Mars.
DC: You can’t just chop out a location to justify its existence. Just make a different film! Let’s remake Jurassic Park and chop off the island part.
LA: The lack of Mars immediately puts me off. That’s such a huge, weird thing to cut out.
DC: Their justification for it was stranger still. We’re cutting Mars so a remake is fine. Mad logic.
LA: I’ve brought up its wikipedia page. James Vanderbilt’s name is there again. Mark Bomback is there.
DC: Bomback? Die Hard 4 and stuff.
LA: Yeah. Kurt Wimmer.
DC: Shit. It’s doomed.
LA: His last movie was Law Abiding Citizen, which I absolutely detested.
DC: So apart from Vanderbilt’s Zodiac work, we have the worst set of credited writers known to man. Shit director. Shit writers. The thing I don’t get about Total Recall is the scale. There’s obviously been a trend of remaking smaller 80s films and some of the big horror characters, but nothing of the size of Total Recall. This film only came out twenty years ago and it was enormous. A giant hit. It’s not some failed, forgotten nothing that has a premise intriguing enough to be expanded; it’s a big, culturally influential film. It still does good business on video, it still airs on TV all the time, and it’s one of Arnold’s biggies. It’s upsetting they’d touch it.
LA: It’s like Platinum Dunes coming out and trying to remake The Exorcist or The Shining or something. It’s almost hallowed ground. You don’t touch it.
DC: I don’t want to sound like I’m deifying Total Recall, but it’s a really significant career lynchpin for Arnold and one of his most enduring successes. It’s one of his best. It’s one of Verhoeven’s best.
LA: I think at the time of release it was the most expensive film of all time. The irony being that the very next year Arnie was in Terminator 2, which overtook Total Recall as the most expensive. Its reputation precedes it. You mention the name Total Recall and people will tell you how much they love it.
DC: Someone will immediately say “get your ass to mars” and start raving about the eye popping. Without anywhere near the same sense of humour as the Arnold version, you’ll have Farrell taking it too seriously, you’ll have a bit of effects-heavy action, but you won’t have anywhere near the same fun or exuberance as the original. Schwarzenegger’s films are so silly, so enjoyable…they exist to entertain, and with Verhoeven’s edge Total Recall is really something even more than that. It’s especially irksome that they’re doing this right now whilst all these people are still working. It’s not like Total Recall came out in like 1960. It’s not like the potential Nicolas Winding Refn Logan’s Run, where forty years will have elapsed by the time it’s eventually made, and you can trust the talent not to fuck it up.
LA: Logan’s Run is nowhere near as big as Total Recall either. This generation only really know Michael York from Austin fucking Powers. Total Recall is frightening because it’s moving in on too recent history.
DC: It’s being punished for not taking the sequel path. Because it’s a standalone film, these assholes think its fair game to strip bare. Terminator has viability as an ongoing franchise, so a fifth instalment is much more likely than a remake. Total Recall, for the good grace of avoiding sequels, is punished with a fucking remake. With John Cho! I bet Kuato won’t even be a gooey puppet this time.
LA: They won’t be able to say “get your ass to Mars”. This and The Amazing Spider-Man personify what I find most depressing about Hollywood.
DC: Bereft of originality?
LA: The early nineties might be twenty years ago now, but it’s still very, very close in people’s memories. Where does it stop? Pulp Fiction remake? The Shawshank Redemption remake? You’re getting into territory where they’re pinching off every brand around. Reboots, remakes…is originality really so difficult?
DC: I’m not happy about The Amazing Spider-Man, but I at least have some acknowledgment and some respect that there’s a rights issue regarding the character that has to be retained, hence the existence of a new project. I wish it was with Raimi, but so be it. I don’t see why Total Recall is a pressing concern. It’s a waste of money. They will lose money! The scheduling is insane. Bourne, Expendables, a Ben Stiller movie later in the month. Pixar will still be in the cinema. Batman. So much competition, where’s it going to find $600 million? I’ve been wrong before with stuff like this, I called Sherlock Holmes over Avatar at Christmas 2009, but I just don’t see it. Wiseman is a bad director who has made exclusively bad films. Reasoning for the remake is poor.
LA: McG with Terminator: Salvation. He almost had me convinced with his bullshit talk. These really bad directors, they can talk themselves up. You can’t trust the ramblings of a director you know isn’t any good.
DC: McG disarmed me too. He seems a nice guy, so enthusiastic and gregarious. The guy directing the next Die Hard, Irish guy called John Moore; he’s a bit like that. Paul WS Anderson is like that. It’s annoying because you feel guilty as hell for hating their films so much. They’re so fucking affable that it’s physically painful having to watch how little ability they have. You really want them to be capable of expressing that enthusiasm better behind the camera. McG tried so hard with his Terminator to get the fan community on board. It was a real shame when the film was exactly what you originally expected. McG went too far in trying to compensate for his own issues as a filmmaker, in the process making something that’s too dour without enough energy or spark. It’s disappointing that he wasn’t able to pull it together; I was rooting for him, especially after all the enthusiasm. I’m not saying a post-apocalyptic action movie should be too frothy, but the balance was never right. I find the Len Wiseman’s and Brett Ratner’s more annoying. Big shitty egos and minimal talent. Wiseman’s a bit of a dick. Say what you will about Terminator: Salvation, at least it’s a proper film. Die Hard 4 has Kevin Smith and Yippee ki-yay mother GUNSHOT.
LA: Get your ass to *insert GUNSHOT*
Thanks again to Luke Allen of MovieFarm. We didn’t get into ‘Cabin in the Woods’, the new ‘American Pie’ film, Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘The Dictator’, Wes Anderson’s ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, the musical ‘Rock of Ages’, ‘The Raid’, ‘Expendables 2’, ‘Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter’, any of the animated stuff including another ‘Ice Age’, that Dr.Seuss adaptation, Pixar’s ‘Brave’ or the Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ which, quite frighteningly, seems to include Richard Ayoade as a lead. I’ll see as many of them as I can over the next six months!
Tags: Total Recall
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Written by David on 28 March 2012
DC: The Bourne series miraculously increased in quality as it progressed. The question now is whether this spin-off, sidequel, sequel…whatever you want to call it, this Matt Damonless Bourne, can it continue the trend set by the first three films and improve on Ultimatum?
LA: My fathers read all the Bourne books up until the most recent one, The Bourne Deception, which is like book nine or something.
DC: Robert Ludlum isn’t involved anymore?
LA: He died like ten years ago.
DC: A new novelist?
LA: This guy Eric Van Lustbader has been writing them for a few years. My father says even the first three are only loosely based on the Ludlum books, so this new one’s probably just nicked the title. It’s only calling itself The Bourne Legacy by default because that’s the fourth book and this is the fourth film. I haven’t read it, but I guarantee it’ll have shit all to do with the book.
DC: It’s just a name isn’t it? It’s appropriate for a Damonless sequel. The Bourne Legacy. The Legacy of the character as a new lead takes up the slack, Bourne sniffing around somewhere off screen waiting to be brought back at a later point. He may not be a screen presence, but he’s sure as hell talked about, certainly as far as the first marketing stuff is concerned. I think it looks good. The trailer had energy.
LA: Tony Gilroy is responsible for writing the first three movies, then went off and directed Michael Clayton which I think is criminally underrated. It got much better reviews in the US. I sat there thinking it was fucking brilliant.
DC: It got poorly treated over here? Who slated it?
LA: It wasn’t that it was slated, it just got average reviews. Threes out of five and so on. In the US it got outstanding reviews. I was surprised it was nominated for Best Picture as at first I wasn’t really aware how well it’d gone down in the States.
DC: It’s fantastic. Tilda Swinton, so good. She won the Oscar, right?
LA: Yeah, she’s a total cunt in that film and she does it so well. I never saw his next film Duplicity.
DC: I caught it on a flight. It was rubbish.
LA: The original Bourne Trilogy hit its apex in terms of the plotting with the second film. The second film’s quite complex unlike Ultimatum, which not to its detriment, is all payoff and relentless action. You know Gilroy can do a smart, competent adult thriller. Michael Clayton’s a thriller made by adults, for adults without pandering. You know he’s a guy that can take that and apply it to a formulaic spy action film like a third Bourne sequel.
DC: They wouldn’t do justice to the franchise by just cobbling out a fourth instalment without Damon. This whole thing looks like they’re taking the utmost care and trying to make something worthwhile. The returning cast members like David Strathairn, Joan Allen and Albert Finney are reliable, and Jeremy Renner is a safe replacement for Damon. To dump in Rachel Weisz and Ed Norton on top, you know there are no half measures here. This isn’t some straight-to-DVD knockoff. They really want to continue the franchise, at least using Renner as a stopgap until Damon’s ready to return.
LA: I like that Renner isn’t playing Jason Bourne. They haven’t just recast in the way the Bond films do. He’s playing a completely different character that just happens to have been bred from the same programme that Bourne was part of. In the mythology, we’ve seen other spies, Clive Owen in the first film, Karl Urban, the dude from Domino. There’s the kungfu fight Damon has with a black guy. We know there are other spies out there that’ve been part of the same programme.
DC: It’s much like, to use a strange comparison, the Fast and the Furious franchise. In the third film the principal cast dropped out and they relocated to Tokyo. Vin made a tiny cameo at the end and they continued the series into four, five and beyond with a mixed cast. Three didn’t abandon the continuity of the first two films, nor was it ignored when four came along. Maybe Matt Damon will pop up in this. Maybe the next film will feature both him and Renner. There’s a whole universe.
LA: I hope it doesn’t just feel like a retread of the first film with a different actor. I hope it plays as a real extension of the world and doesn’t steal too many ideas from the first trilogy. In three films we only really scratched the surface of this programme. They ground these people down until they basically became machines. Little nuances like Clive Owen’s headaches. We still don’t know an awful lot about the programme and how it functions, we just know it gets these people and trains them into ultimate killers. I’d quite like to see that expanded.
DC: The Bourne universe as set out in the first trilogy is too good and too interesting to stall with Damon’s departure. I don’t object to them exploring it further. If Damon returns or not, it doesn’t strike me as a wasted journey. Robert Elswit is lighting the thing for Christ sake! That’s a sign of quality! I think he worked on Mission Impossible last year. If this is as spectacular a fourth film as that was, we won’t have any problems.
LA: It’s a risky direction, potentially could feel a redundant one to a lot of people, but the people involved are extremely talented and Renner, he may be in his forties, but after The Hurt Locker his career is exploding. He’s everywhere. He’s even in The Avengers.
DC: He’s got this ridiculous year with Mission Impossible at Christmas, The Avengers in April and Bourne in August. I’d criticise him a little for choosing three parts that have no small degree of similarity. Too much spying. Too many government agencies. I’d hope he has enough range to carve out some differences between those three parts.
LA: He’s gone from being the bad guy in a movie as pedestrian as SWAT, to being a name and face that people recognise as a mark of quality. I trust him to make it work. He’s become an action star! He was nominated for The Hurt Locker, it was his film really, a terrific one to get noticed with. He’s been around for ages, but to give him a blockbuster franchise he has to carry alone, finally given the lead after so much support…it’ll be interesting to see him stepping into Damon’s shoes.
Thanks again to Luke Allen of MovieFarm. See you tomorrow to chat about our final film…Total Recall!
Tags: The Bourne Legacy
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Written by David on 27 March 2012
LA: Possibly the most anticipated film of the year.
DC: I’m a little surprised how long it’s been since the previous movie. 4-years is a year out of kilter for a current franchise. It’d usually be out after three. I guess Nolan’s shot films between each new instalment though. He hasn’t raced through at two year intervals like Bay with Transformers. Batman Begins came out in 2005, we waited three years for the sequel, then four years for this one.
LA: I like this about Nolan’s career. He makes something like Batman Begins, his biggest movie by far at the time, but before rushing into a sequel he steps back and makes another quiet, interesting thriller like The Prestige that has, at face value, more in common with his first three films. After he’s made a billion dollars with The Dark Knight, Warner Bros offer him a $150 million to make whatever the hell he wants and he pops up with a puzzle-box like Inception. At the same time, Warner’s did a similar thing with Zack Snyder and threw money at his Sucker Punch film. Superficially, not dissimilar ideas, both exploring the idea of escaping into a dream world, but these two guys – effectively the two big frontrunners for Warner Bros at the time – and their output is operating at polar opposites of the spectrum in terms of quality and restraint.
DC: Sucker Punch is a disaster. Every element of the production fails. The damage done to individual careers, the financial loss, the offensively poor quality of the film. It’s cataclysmic. It’s a failure in the truest sense of the word. A bomb.
LA: You give your two biggest directors of the time a giant pot of money and complete creative freedom to do whatever the hell they want. It’s funny that Christopher Nolan is now effectively helping Zack Snyder get his career back on track from a position of total superiority in terms of reputation and financial clout.
DC: Nolan as a producer hiring Snyder for the Superman job?
LA: Yeah. You make a hit like The Dark Knight and then roll straight into a film as financially successful and critically lauded as Inception, and you’re basically king of the world so far as the studios are concerned. They’ve given him $250 million to make The Dark Knight Rises.
DC: It cost that much?
LA: It does indeed.
DC: Wow, so that might be the most expensive of the bunch. Excluding John Carter.
LA: You know he’s not going to squander that money though. It’s a sure thing.
DC: There’re quite a few beasts this summer. Big price tags. The difference I guess is that Nolan won’t have had a day of flab on the shoot of his film. It’ll be on time, on budget and the movie will be very profitable. Tight, controlled, came in on date. He’s not just pissing money down the drain like the Battleship guys or Stanton’s John Carter film.
LA: Christopher Nolan, his entire career, he’s brought every film in on time, on budget. Something like The Dark Knight Rises might even have a few quid spare.
DC: He’s efficient. There’s no ego. That was Snyder’s problem and it exploded in his face. Enormous damage to his reputation, and the current perception of his previous work. The community would look back much more fondly on 300 and Watchmen had Sucker Punch not imploded. His abilities will be evaluated again when his Superman film comes out next year. I hope he’s exorcised some of the demons that were plaguing him on Sucker Punch. That whole film is like a two-hour art installation where he smacked about and indulged in his worst and shittiest habits. Now it’s time to get on with some real work. His Superman could be great.
LA: It’s been filming for fucking ages.
DC: They started in like August 2011. It isn’t out until bloody June 2013! I thought Men in Black III started filming early, with a Winter 2010 through to May 2012 release. That Superman shoot is absolutely crazy! It’s a monster. I wish them the best of luck. I hate to say it, but that’s a series that genuinely does need to start afresh after the failure of Bryan Singer’s effort. Scrap that film and begin again. I have faith!
LA: We saw The Dark Knight together in IMAX in 2008.
DC: With a black guy? A black guy was there.
LA: I’d never seen a movie in IMAX before that, so I was really impressed by the scope. Almost a third of The Dark Knight Rises is in IMAX format. 55 minutes or something stupid like that. Have you seen the opening?
DC: A dodgy internet version with terrible sound.
LA: I saw it with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
DC: Was it good?
LA: Stunning, absolutely stunning. The 35mm stuff will be cropped down on the IMAX screen, but the full 70mm scenes will look just amazing.
DC: Wally Pfister’s a great DOP. I heard he’s directing a movie soon.
LA: Really?
DC: Yeah, next year. I don’t know anything else about it. Moneyball was pretty. He shot that.
LA: Really? I didn’t see it.
DC: He rarely works away from Nolan, but Moneyball looked fantastic.
LA: Pfister was saying when he was filming The Dark Knight, they were conscious of the fact they’d be showing the IMAX footage on a lot of normal screens, they wasted a lot of stuff at the top and bottom of the shot. You don’t notice that at all when watching footage from The Dark Knight Rises. There doesn’t seem to be anything wasted. In terms of content, there’s a similarity with the prologue of The Dark Knight. Both introduce a new antagonist, but you’re not reminded of Heath Ledger’s Joker for a second. It makes you realise how much of an intimidating character Bane is. He couldn’t be any more different than the version featured in Batman and Robin.
DC: I absolutely trust Chris Nolan, and I’m sure I’ll be corrected on all counts, but I have a few niggling issues with the film that’re winding me up at the moment. To start with, I don’t like the title at all.
LA: The title is rubbish.
DC: I don’t know who authorised it. Did Nolan choose it? They need someone to shout in their face and let them know what a poor decision they’ve made. The fan community is almost subdued in shock and unwilling to kick up a fuss. It’s awful. A real shame as The Dark Knight is a brilliant, brilliant title for a Batman film.
LA: The fucking ‘Caped Crusader’ would have been a better title than The Dark Knight Rises.
DC: The Dark Knight Rises is too wordy. Batman colon something. Batman Rises?
LA: Batman’s colon? That’s definitely worrying.
DC: Secondly, none of the material I’ve seen beyond the dodgy youtube prologue, which I’m sure was spectacular in IMAX, has impressed me. The two short trailers haven’t impressed me. Part of me thinks it’s just a case of exposure, and as the marketing rolls on it’ll give a better impression as to the scale and size of the thing. Nothing about Tom Hardy’s character impresses me at this stage. I’m sure I’ll be wrong come July 20th. Anne Hathaway, I don’t necessarily object to the casting as much as some people, but I don’t like the costume much. It’s the goodwill built up around the franchise and built up around Chris Nolan that gives me reason to think it’ll be good. On this material alone, I’m not feeling it. Compared to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, I thought the material put together for those two films was spectacular. By this time of year in 2005 and 2008 I was beyond excited. Photos, posters, trailers. Everything was fantastic. I saw both films four times. I haven’t got that feeling yet with this one. I’m waiting for that explosive trailer that pushes me over the edge. Compared to Prometheus, where each piece the studio drops is incrementally building this enormous hype, The Dark Knight Rises team aren’t doing their job well enough yet. Perhaps it’ll kick off in April?
LA: The only part of the teaser that intrigued me was the football field blowing up, but even that stuff looked very CGI.
DC: Not a good money-shot. Something missing.
LA: Look at it this way. Even after a great performance in Brokeback Mountain, when they cast Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, I was sceptical.
DC: I can proudly and smugly say I defended the Ledger casting from the beginning. Nolan had cast his first few films impeccably, and Ledger had been brilliant in everything. I didn’t doubt they knew what they were doing. I was sure Ledger would give an interpretation of that character every bit as memorable as Nicholson or Mark Hamill, and I was pleased that the team didn’t let me down. I’m sure the cast of The Dark Knight Rises won’t disappoint either, but they haven’t given me a taster of it yet. They’ve yet to show anything from Hardy or Hathaway that can touch the materials being released at this stage showing off Ledger’s work. The campaign needs to get its act together. They need to have people like me waking up in cold sweats by summer.
LA: I’m interested in how Catwoman is played. It’s the thing I liked most about Batman Returns. I like the Batman/Catwoman dynamic. She shouldn’t be an antagonist. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, but she’s not a villain like The Joker is. She’s not afraid to kill. She’s a Batman gone rogue.
DC: Self-serving. None of the resources, twice the balls?
LA: Yeah. My two favourite Batman graphic novels are The Long Halloween and The Dark Victory. Batman and Catwoman are sexually attracted to each other, but Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle don’t know of their secret identities. That dynamic appeals to me. I know there’s a concern about there being too many villains, but I’m not worried as long as they use Catwoman properly.
DC: I’m amused that Nolan seems to have cast the entire same troupe from Inception. I know it was a massive hit, but it’s getting ridiculous! Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy. All you need now is for DiCaprio to stroll in.
LA: I think it’s one of these cases where I’m extremely intrigued where the story is going to go. I had so much speculation about The Dark Knight, and it was nothing like I’d expected.
DC: One thing that worries me, and I know it’s negative thinking, but Nolan is due…
LA: …a bad movie.
DC: A bad movie. It happens to everyone in the end. He’s had an unusually good run. At some point it always collapses. It happens to everyone. There’d be something strangely fitting about it being a project as high profile as this one. Eventually there’s going to be something that doesn’t quite hit the mark. People like you and I have this total expectation that it’ll be great. If it’s just okay, just pretty good, we’ll be devastated. Superhero films don’t have a great history of trilogy cappers. The third film is always a disappointment. If he turns in a great movie he’ll be the exception. People are expecting something as good, if not better than The Dark Knight. That’s a tall order. It hasn’t been done before.
LA: It’s not just superhero movies, there’re very few threequels that are as good as the first two.
DC: Let’s hope he has it in him!
Thanks again to Luke Allen of MovieFarm. See you tomorrow to chat about The Bourne Legacy!
Tags: The Dark Knight Rises
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Written by David on 26 March 2012
It would be a terrible cliché to say ‘The Hunger Games’ is “smarter than the average blockbuster”, and perhaps such a statement says more about the dire state of the industry than any grand achievement on part of Gary Ross’ film. By the standards of its peers though, this adaptation at least approaches big, lofty ideas with some semblance of intelligence. That’s a rare thing in a genuine pop-culture phenomenon like ‘The Hunger Games’ series. Sure it’s derivative, (‘Rollerball’, ‘Battle Royale’ spring to mind) but I’d challenge anyone to pick out a handful of male-centric genre films that don’t wear their own influences so unashamedly. Ross draws together the disparate parts better than both those movies, crafting a cohesive, layered film universe in which to tell Suzanne Collins’ story.
Buried under some unremarkable YA prose, I found Collins’ novel rich in thematic intent, her likeable, well-developed characters and soaring ambitions more than making up for the weaknesses in the actual sentence-to-sentence writing. The Lionsgate movie team are fortunate; the imperfections of the novel aren’t damaging to their adaptation, yet the strengths eminently transferable. Ross and Jennifer Lawrence drag the compelling Katniss Everdeen character onto the screen fully intact and ready to become the next genuine cinematic icon. An actress as good as Lawrence makes it look easy.
So far as the design work is concerned, not since ‘Demolition Man’ or ‘The Fifth Element’ have I seen such a gleefully bonkers vision of future fashion trends. I know Ross wants a stark contrast between the impoverished District 12 and the glossy, shiny Capitol, but it takes real balls to let your design team go this wild with the ‘look’. You run the constant risk of being stuck with one of your key locations looking fucking ridiculous for a whole trilogy of films. They just about pull it off, though Stanley Tucci’s hairstyle tested my patience more than once…
4/5
Tags: The Hunger Games
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