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Film Review

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises

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Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises faced a tricky maneuver: providing a follow up to the earth shattering, delirious success that was 2008’s The Dark Knight. The film was never going to be as good as or better than that lightning in a bottle stroke of genius. However, the film we did get is one epic, operatic sonic boom of a Batman film, and if there’s one area where it does in fact outdo The Dark Knight, it’s in scope. The action set pieces here have an earth shattering, monumental quality to them, mainly thanks to Tom Hardy’s Bane, a full on monster who brings biblical destruction to Gotham City with some calculated, maximum impact attacks that almost blow the speakers of any system they’re shown on. Despite the apocalyptic blitzkrieg, Nolan loses none of that precious philosophy that has made this franchise glow so far, the sharp-as-a-tack dialogue and moral complexities of existing in a world of vigilantes and terrorists. It’s been eight years in Gotham since Batman took down the Joker and, somewhat controversially, the fallen angel that was Harvey Dent. Bruce Wayne has become a crippled recluse while the city more or less flourishes quietly, but there’s nothing that’ll roust a burg out of tranquil slumber like the arrival of a seven foot tall, highly trained psychopath bent on chaos. In a vertigo inducing opener set atop the clouds, Bane triumphantly crashes a CIA aircraft and makes off with its cargo, a mere taste of his brutality to come. Bruce is forced out of hiding to do battle with him, and before you know it they’re all thundering around Gotham’s tunnels and edifices, pursued by hordes of snarky GCPD, who no doubt have missed this kind of action for a near decade. The new commissioner (Matthew Modine) is a hotheaded nimrod, while Gordon (Gary Oldman, the gravitas is real with this guy) still hurts from the tragedy years before. Anne Hathaway throws a wicked curveball of a performance as Selina ‘Catwoman’ Kyle, and although no one will ever, *ever* top Michelle Pfeiffer’s brilliantly kinky turn years before, she’s a deadly force to be reckoned with both for Bruce and the criminal factions vying for power. Hathaway seems like a sanitized choice for the cat, but she’s deft, sexy, formidable, competent and looks damn good in that outfit careening around on Bruce’s batbike. Marion Cotillard is great as the mysterious Miranda Tate who may be more dangerous than she seems, a shtick which Cotillard unnervingly perfected first in Inception. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are top notch as Alfred and Lucius once again, Ben Mendelsohn plays up a sleazy business rival for Bruce, Juno Temple is cute as Selina’s off again, on again lover, Joseph Gordon Levitt’s intrepid detective gets a whole lot of plot momentum and crazy good dialogue, and the jaw dropping lineup of supporting work includes Brett Cullen, Burn Gorman, Desmond Harrington, Chris Ellis, Robert Wisdom, Tomas Arana, Aiden Gillen, Brent Briscoe, William Devane, Nestor Carbonell, Reggie Lee, Wade Williams, Christopher Judge, a brief reprisal from Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy as that pesky Scarecrow, the only villain who appears in all three films. The story goes to places the other two films never ascended to, and if the Joker thought his antics aspired to anarchy, he’d do flips when Bane literally starts blowing up the city on a massive scale, an extended sequence that’s delirious in it’s armageddon worthy panic. On a more personal scale, Batman deals with being broken, the cost he must pay to ultimately save his city, and the unknowable matter of when to cash out as a superhero, or forever give up your soul to a fight that has neither end nor reason. My only issue with the story is how a certain third act revelation pretty much neuters Bane’s character arc and renders his whole fearsome nature somewhat too human and redundant when all is said and done, it’s a narrative decision Nolan should examine closely for his own sake, and avoid such an impotent cop-out when writing his next arch villain. The cinematography is aces, the cgi blending seamless, Hans Zimmer’s score gives us the classic thunderstorm passages we’ve come to love while adding a rhythmic chanting for further depth and flavour. There’s not much that can be said that’s negative about the film, it’s one hell of an achievement and doesn’t let up until the Big Bang of an ending provides release for the franchise and every character in it, an expository epilogue in which loose ends are tied, and some semblance of peace is found. A near perfect third act to the trilogy, and a superhero flick for the ages.

-Nate Hill

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Film Review

Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody 

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Ever see a film that you actually can’t really, properly describe to someone? You often hear “it’s hard to describe”, but you know those ones where you really do find yourself short of a five second cocktail party summary, left with nothing to compare it to and no way to impart the contents in quick, succinct jargon? Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody is exactly that type of film, an experience so dense, disorienting and thought provoking that one needs at least a few months after the initial viewing alone to ruminate, mull it over and meditate on what was seen before even a word of analysis is offered. On surface level it’s about a man named Nemo Nobody, played by Jared Leto in a jaw dropping, multifaceted encore of a performance. Nemo is over a hundred years old, the last mortal on an earth of now immortal humans, and he recounts his life, or many lives, rather, to a journalist. That’s the diving board that vaults into an intricate narrative full of love, grief, joy, tragedy and the peculiarities of being human. We see Nemo at hundreds of junctures of his life, penultimate crossroads where he could make either choice, but if he makes neither of them, can then see both outcomes, how they carry forward his trajectory into the future towards more crossroads, more lives, more decisions, like the infinitely branching tributaries of an ever flowing river. How would one make a film like this work onscreen, you ask? Well, not easily. The thing runs almost three hours and often gets a little caught up in itself, especially in the midsection, but it’s sheer ambition and uniquely structured storytelling carry it on wings of light, spanning through a hundred years and countless events that Nemo sees passing. He has three loves, or at least three the film focuses on: luminous Ana, played by an excellent Juno Temple and then Diane Kruger as she gets older, mentally unstable Elise (Sarah Polley) and Jean (Linh Dan Pham), all of whom help shape him or have key parts to play along the branches of his tree of life. There’s a lynchpin event from his youth upon which it all hinges though; faced with the decision to move away with his mother (Natasha Little) as her train leaves, or stay behind with his father (Rhys Ifans), the boy begins to run, but also looks back. This nano-moment is the key to eternity here, the introspective Big Bang that gives way to our story. At times the film lags, and the slack could have been pulled tighter during the development of the three relationships, but the first and third acts that bookend the whole thing move along like the forces unseen around us, using cinematic tools to compose a symphony of motion, music, scientific pondering and emotional resonance. No other film is like this one, and my attempts to describe it above still just don’t even scratch the surface of the dreams found within its runtime. There’s only a few other ones out there that have aspirations as cosmic as this one, and most, including this, have made it into my personal canon of favourites. Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, The Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas and Terence Malick’s Tree Of Life are such films, and Mr. Nobody now sits at their table. 

-Nate Hill

Film Review

Sebastian Silva’s Magic Magic

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Sebastián Silva’s Magic Magic is a terminally bizarre little experimental film that simultaneously fascinates and prompts the viewer to wonder why it was ever made in the first place. Starring a posse of young, uber famous Hollywood talent that usually draw crowds in numbers, Magic somehow managed to slip under the limbo bar and avoid everyone’s radar undetected, no doubt a result of any marketing being smothered by a studio who wouldn’t have been able to sell the thing as it was presented to them. Jarring, aloof, persistently weird and frankly all over the place, it’s worth a look just for the sheer novelty, I suppose. A trip to Chile turns into some kind of nightmare for a group of youngsters played by Juno Temple, Catalina Sandino Morena, Emily Browning and an apparently mentally challenged Michael Cera, when one of them starts to display unpredictably odd behaviour, feverish delusions and violent outbursts that would give Father Lancaster Merrin the willies. Temple, an actress who admirably always takes risks, goes full on whackadoo here as the disturbed girl, plagued by restless mental instability caused by who knows what, subjecting her friends to her unsettling monkeyshines. Cera’s performance is so odd and tonally oblong it’s like he’s in a school play and his lines have been dubbed over by someone who’s first language is not English, I honestly don’t know what he was going for, while Browning does her pale and sultry thing dimly in the background. Is Juno just off her rocker? Are there invisible spirits at work that have latched onto her? Did the filmmakers even know when they made this? My guess is no, and sometimes that can work, but you have to present a final product that at least flows through it’s ambiguous arc naturally, and this one just feels off where it should draw us in. Neat camera work, Temple is engaging as she always is and makes a vivid, if ultimately perplexing impression, but overall it’s an unlit tunnel of a film that we emerge from and go “huh?”, and not in a good way.

-Nate Hill

Film Review

William Friedkin’s Killer Joe: A Review by Nate Hill

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William Friedkin’s Killer Joe. What, oh what can I say. Upon finishing it, my friend and I shared a single silent moment of heightened horror, looked at each other and chimed “What the fuck?!” in unison. Now, I don’t want our aghast reaction to deter you from seeing this wickedly funny black comedy, because it’s really something you’ve never seen before. Just bring a stomach strong enough to handle dark, depraved scenes and a whole lot of greasy fried chicken that’s put places where it definitely doesn’t belong. Matthew McConaughey is unhinged and off the hook as ‘Killer Joe’ Cooper, one of his best characters in years up until that point. Joe is a very, very bad dude, a Texas police detective who moonlights as a contract killer and is just a lunatic whenever he’s on either shift. Emile Hirsch plays an irresponsible young lad (a character trait that’s commonplace with the folks in this film, and something of an understatement) who is several thousand dollars in debt to a charmer of a loan shark (Marc Macauley). Joe offers to help when Hirsch comes up with the brilliant plan of murdering his skank of a mom (Gina Gershon in full on sleazy slut mode). The ‘plan’ backfires in so many different ways that it stalls what you think is the plot, becoming an increasingly perverted series of events that culminate in the single weirdest blow job I’ve ever seen put to film. Joe has eyes for Hirsch’s underage sister (Juno Temple, excellent as always), and worms his way into her life, as well as her bed. He claims her as collateral, and hovers over the family like some diseased arm of the law. Thomas Haden Church is hilarious as Hirsch’s ne’er do well country bumpkin of a father. Poor Gershon gets it the worst from Joe, in scenes that wander off the edges of the WTF map into John Waters territory. I was surprised to learn that this was a Friedkin film, but the man seems to be the king of genre hopping these days, and it’s always key to be adaptable in your work. A deep fried, thoroughly disgusting twilight zone episode of a flick that’ll give the gag reflex a good workout and keep your jaw rooted to the floor during its final sequence.

Film Review

REED MORANO’S MEADOWLAND — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

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Credit must be given to director Reed Morano with her feature film debut Meadowland – she’s taken incredibly dark and troubling material and turned it into an inherently compelling, extremely raw, and often times painful cinematic experience, one that’s wholly engrossing, but that will test the strength of most viewers. Given that the film is essentially a study of hopeless denial and deeply repressed anger during the aftermath of a child’s disappearance, this demanding (and draining) piece of work isn’t going to be for everyone. But for those of us interested in thought provoking, intensely modulated dramas that ask questions about ourselves as individuals, then this will be the perfect antidote to whatever CGI laden blockbuster is currently littering moving screens. Morano, an accomplished cinematographer on such films as The Skeleton Twins, Frozen River, and Kill Your Darlings, gets in close to her characters with her intimate cinematography, which is almost all hand-held, yet shot in 2.35:1 widescreen with an emphasis on off-kilter angles, extreme close-ups, and side of the head framing that evokes the introspective beats of a Michael Mann film.

Centering on a husband and wife (an excellent Luke Wilson playing a NYC cop and a never better Olivia Wilde as an inner city teacher) exactly one year after their son was abducted at a gas station, the film sticks very close to its two central performers, allowing peripheral characters to shake up the proceedings; the estimable supporting cast includes a recently busy Kevin Corrigan (funny and effective in this year’s romantic dramedy Results), Giovanni Ribisi (love seeing him!), John Leguizamo (always solid and edgy), Elisabeth Moss (quick but effective), and Juno Temple (always spunky and sexy). But the film belongs to Wilde and Wilson, who both cut all-too-convincing portraits of parents pushed to their emotional edge, with Wilde going especially deep all throughout this nervy, focused story of loss and potential acceptance. The final moments, from a directorial standpoint, are very bold, as it’s clear that Morano wants the audience to think for themselves and realistically accept the facts that have been presented for us.

There’s nothing “easy” about Meadowland, and in that sense, this film will likely challenge those who are looking for simple, digestible storytelling, which this is anything but. Meadowland aims to explore the awkward moments between friends and family members after a traumatic incident; nobody knows quite what to say, what the boundaries are in any given situation, or how the directly affected individuals are truly feeling inside. The thoughtful script by Chris Rossi might rely on some familiar storytelling tropes (support groups, personally-inflicted pain, children with learning disabilities) but it all feels organic to the environment and sadly, all too believable, considering that these are real struggles that people face every day. Not a film for the overly sensitive or for those who need their art spelled out for them, Morano has crafted a hard-hitting piece of cinema that has emotional resonance as well as arresting visual style. Available on Itunes and screening in limited release in theaters.

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