Is This Reality?: "Wendy and Lucy"

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 16, 2008

Wendy and Lucy is a "small" movie. It's small in size (80 minutes with credits) and it's small on story - there's just Wendy (a girl), Lucy (her dog), and a handful of other nameless characters who occasionally appear. Wendy is "passing through" rural Oregon and headed to Alaska, and the movie documents a rough couple of days along the way. But there is no backstory or explanation for the journey, the story is too "small" for that.

What we get instead is an apathetic heroine who doesn't seem desperate so much as indifferent. When a security guard pontificates that in society, "everything's fixed" against people, Wendy replies, "that's why I'm going to Alaska," and that is as close as we get to her intentions. She phones her sister's husband, tells him simply, "I'm in Oregon," (her roots are in Indiana), which he casually accepts. Her sister comes onto the phone, says shrilly, "We can't give you anything, we're strapped," when Wendy adds that her car has broken down, the sister replies skeptically, "What can we do?" This sounds more dramatic than it is, from the way they are speaking, they might as well be discussing the weather. A moment later, Wendy's sister has already become disinterested and gotten off the phone, and Wendy tells the husband, "It sounds like you're busy, I'll talk to you later," which he accepts and they hang up.

Movies "small" in budget tend to be big on "reality," using their relatively low-tech circumstances to their advantage when creating gritty, "natural" films. But "Wendy and Lucy" feels comatose, somehow less dramatic than real life. It isn't helped by the amateur actors playing some of the supporting roles, all of whom deliver their lines with blase non-energy.

Finally, close to the end of the movie, there is a scary moment that causes Wendy to have a meltdown. The moment is shocking because we are jolted into feeling emotion again...and maybe that has been the movie's intention all along. For the first time, Wendy seems to grasp the reality of her situation, which "brings her back to earth." But, it is too late for the audience to be invested in her hardships. The movie feels like watching the aftermath of a car crash from your bedroom window...you recognize the drama, but are personally removed from the outcome.

All of which leads to one conclusion. It's a struggle for me to say it because of how cliche it sounds, and because it alludes to the misconception that all movies have to make you "feel" all kinds of things...the more the better. But in this case, the conclusion holds true: Wendy and Lucy is small on heart.

In Opposition of the Chinatown "Bust"

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 13, 2008




Charles Lindbergh once said, "I'll always pick the side of the argument with a pun in the title." And he was right.










Above: Charles Lindbergh. Not to be mistaken for Tony, who has the same goggles.

Obsession in "Che"

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 13, 2008

For better or worse, Che isn't interested in either glorifying or demonizing Che Guevara (which some might classify as giving him a pass). It makes no effort to get inside Che's thoughts or motivations. For the most part, he doesn't even seem human. Even though we see his first several interactions with his future wife, there is no hint of romance or even the consideration that Che sees her as anything other than a "comrade." Che is an object of singular focus and, coincidentally, so is Che.

Benecio Del Toro at a premiere of Che: Part 1 (aka The Argentine; Che: El Argentino)

There isn't much narrative arc to Che, some critics have called it "boring" or "monotonous." There isn't much variation either, just a lot of training sequences and ambushes in the jungle (with one B&W sequence of Che in New York City mercifully showing up from time to time in Part One). There are emotions, but only a few: frightened locals, angry government regimes, and, mostly, the soldiers who are either heroic or cowards. At one point while being interviewed in New York, Che tells the interviewer that the most important quality for a revolutionary to have is "love," and the word hits you hard because you realize that's exactly what this movie has been missing.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Che's personal trait that fascinates director Steven Soderbergh (below) is the same trait which guides the movie: unwavering, detail-oriented obsession, and if you wanted something else...well, too bad. Soderbergh (who serves as his own cinematographer) has shot a beautiful movie which revels in the monotonous, slowly ticking off the days even when new developments are few and far between. All of this gives Benecio del Toro plenty of time to scowl, pace, bark orders, and train, always train, in preparation for revolution. Part One focuses on the Cuban revolution, and more than two hours later, just as the first signs of victory appear, it ends. Part Two doesn't resume until eight years later when Che has arrived in Bolivia, and then that part concentrates on the (very similar) attempt to bring about revolution there. Like Che himself, the movie lives for the revolution, and isn't interested in the extraneous...or the consequences (the splendors or ills of victory). This movie is about the journey, a journey in which one has to, in Che's words, "live like you've already died." The film's MO in one sentence might be, "Rome wasn't built in a day."

Che is not for all tastes, and it makes little effort to convert the skeptics. If you criticize movies for "being too slow" or "not being about anything," this is not for you. But, if you are going to see this movie, see it in the theaters. See both parts at once (and see it during the roadshow, so you only have to pay one admission). This movie demands nothing less than your full attention, and the spell will be broken on DVD.

Personally, I found the experience worth it, it's a great showcase for Soderbergh and del Toro's respective talents and the roadshow environment (the two parts played together, with an intermission in between) is rare and exciting. But it's likely to elicit different reactions from every audience member, depending on who you are, you'll consider that a weakness or a strength.

Drama Done Right: Doubt and Milk

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 12, 2008

NO SPOILERS

Part of a continuing series of previously neglected thoughts on movies that are out or about to come out... America, it's your birthday.

Late December can be a time when theaters drown in prestigious, starry-eyed bloat. The running times lengthen and the stories get more serious (Holocaust! Terminally ill! Neglected genius!) but nothing is really gained as far as we, the viewers, are concerned. Movies are manufactured with getting Oscars in mind and the results on screen are pretty, but empty (like Rob's dream girl). Based on the reviews it's been getting, "The Reader" seems to be an early 2008 example of this phenomenon. Color me uninterested.

But really, this has been a long way of saying Doubt and Milk are both immensely satisfying Hollywood dramas, driven by ideas and images, not just big name stars or "safe" story formulas. This is Oscarbait at it's finest, which is to say it's not really Oscarbait at all.

In Milk, Sean Penn (seen right) gives the performance of the year (a premature statement considering there are probably thousands of movies I haven't seen this year, but award-hyperbole is as common this time of year as eggnog). I was very skeptical going into Milk because nothing raises my suspicions like "biopics," and only when the New York Film Critics named Milk Best Picture did I decide it was worth my time. One of the most tiring elements of biopics is the syndrome of "stars-getting-serious," which involves a movie star dressing down, doing drugs, singing songs, and getting lots of close-ups. It's an immense relief that Penn doesn't act in this movie so much as live in it, just like Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, he is surrounded by a huge world of a movie, and he manages to stand out through sheer character-wattage (and therefore there are no super close-up reaction shots or break-down-crying-alone scenes or anything else of that ilk).

This is not a biopic. We don't start at Milk's birth and follow him through his misunderstood childhood and early life, etc. etc. etc. We don't cut back and forth all over his life or waste time introducing characters to perform psychiatric analysis (so, unlike biopics, no one ever says "You're not like everybody else, you're special," or "Gosh, you could be great some day!"). This is MILK, the man, the symbol, the movement, this is a Greek tragedy. Early on Harvey Milk explains his love of opera to a skeptic, saying "Listen, can't you hear all the emotion?" and opera becomes a bit of a motif throughout the movie (most notably at the end).

Gus van Sant (left) and Sean Penn (right) on the set of Milk

After exercises in minimalism (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park), Milk is Gus van Sant's opera: full of splendid color, smart performances, and most importantly, brilliant scenes that keep the story speeding at a perfect pace. Like the man himself, Milk gets a lot accomplished in a reasonably short period of time (128 minutes is nothing for most biopics) and the credit lies with both screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who, improbably, has earned his full-screen credit in the trailer) and van Sant who has left the Hollywood formula days of Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting (sure, it's a decent movie, but unspectacular) behind and planted his name firmly on the A-List (or my A-List anyway). I went in expecting to be underwhelmed, expecting to be led along all the predictable plot points, to be told explicitly why I should should care. I came out enthralled and thirsting for more.

Doubt isn't the epic that Milk is, but it's not trying to be. Its source material isn't a man's life, but a Broadway play which unfolds entirely on the campus of a Catholic school and church. I can't remember the last Hollywood movie to be at once this contained and this satisfying, the best comparison I can think of is Chop Shop, which also utilizes only one location and crafts an engaging narrative without much really "happening." Like the title suggests, Doubt is a movie about human uncertainty, and the fact that the main characters are nuns in a faith steeped in rules and tradition makes their inertia even greater.

It is left to the cast to bring the drama to life, and Merryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman (seen below) do just that. I was pretty much alone last year when I thought Hoffman gave one of the year's best performances in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, my guess is his comparably brilliant work here in another small, adult drama will also go ignored.

Let's hope he doesn't trade these roles in entirely for showier stuff like Charlie Wilson's War. I'd read disparaging reviews of Streep, mainly comparing her with the play's original actress on Broadway. I can't speak to that, but her role is certainly the hardest to pull off--it must be broad, but not parody. In my opinion, she just about nails it, and considering the Actress races are always less crowded than Actor, she's probably deserving of yet another Oscar nomination. Finally, Adams is solid as the innocent caught between the two titans, even if she sticks around just long enough to introduce the audience to the conflict before becoming useless and practically disappearing.

Most of the rest of the cast is kids, and if the youths can't keep up with their thespian elders...well, picking at weak spots seems needless with a movie this satisfying. It's even more time efficient than Milk (just about 100 minutes) and if it lacks the overt MESSAGE we can typically count on finding in "Oscar dramas," well, that's because with "doubt" and in Doubt, nothing is that simple.

The Unfortunate Case of "Benjamin Button"

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 11, 2008

Spoilers within (no ending ruined or anything...just reveals from the first hour or so)...

The talent attached was too tantalizing. Arguably Hollywood's best director (David Fincher), biggest movie star (Brad Pitt), best actress (Cate Blanchett), and most reliable screenwriter (Eric Roth) making a movie based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, all wrapped in a huge budget (over $150 million) spent on state of the art CGI effects.

For exactly 1 act, it works.

The first act of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might be the most "magical" Hollywood filmmaking this year, with great performances, beautiful cinematography, and breathtaking scenes. Benjamin's world is slowly, painstakingly constructed with all of the attention to detail found in Fincher's past movies like Se7en and Zodiac. The unconventional premise of a child being born with the body of an old man and physically aging backwards could have led to narrative-slowing scenes of exposition, but Fincher and Roth don't get bogged down in the details, letting the on-screen events speak for themselves.

All the movie's best characters appear in the first third...characters brought marvelously to life - like the ship captain who fancies himself as an artist or the wife of the British spy who attempted to swim across the English Channel or the old man who has been struck by lightening 7 times. By the end of the movie, these characters have all disappeared, or been fed on-the-nose monologues explicitly stating what their characters represent. But there's something "magical" (no other word conveys the feeling as well) about these people when they are allowed to be unhinged...to just "be" and Benjamin, like the audience, is content to explore them and their eccentricities.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when the movie takes a severe turn for the worse. It probably comes about 50 minutes in, and Daisy is all grown up. She is out with Benjamin alone, for the first time they are both adults. They clearly love each other, but he has been at sea and she's been in New York. Finally, they're together.

She seduces him, eventually being straight-forward and telling him she wants to sleep with him. He demurs, but we don't know why. Benjamin's voice over is a guiding light throughout the movie, but it is surprisingly absent here. He says "no," the scene is over, the audience is expected to move on, but the first false note has been sounded. Him saying "no" feels like nothing more than a plot device to keep them apart. What follows is even more dismaying. Suddenly, Benjamin's voice over is like a crutch, briskly traversing long periods of time, shown in fast montage. The movie cuts more to Daisy in the present, introducing a needless subplot between her and her daughter. WHY do movies continue to be constructed around the person telling a story on their deathbed? Does anyone not react adversely to that cliche at this point?

But faster than you can ponder this conundrum, we continue to

blur through Benjamin's history, with none of the precise timing found in the first third. Fincher and Roth seem incapable of creating a convincing romance, so they are content to just "tell" the audience what is happening instead of allowing the scenes to develop and "show." The last straw is when Benjamin reaches his "40's" and "30's" (in reverse) and Pitt's jaw-dropping good looks become a distraction. The audience was laughing (not in a good way) at how gorgeous he is.

By the end, the magic of the first third has completely worn off, causing one of the most frustrating movie experiences I've ever had. The talent attached was too tantalizing, but the groupings weren't quite right...and Button falls short of expectations.

How I know your retarded

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 7, 2008

The most obnoxious, stupidest faction of people in the world is the one that writes "you're" as "your" online. These are two completely different words that happen to sound similar like "write" and "right" or "no" and "know." Every time I see "Your awesome!" on Facebook (which is unfortunately very regularly because everyone knows I'm awesome), 1% of me dies. Well, I'm operating at 13% right now and I beg you to stop this practice. Realize that substituting "your" for "you're" means you are and forever will be an idiot. Thanks.

-The Management

The Oscars '08: The Trouble Begins

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 20, 2008

This much we (I) know. Slumdog Millionaire is garbage. Today, prominent Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells wrote that he gets the feeling Millionaire is the current favorite for the Best Picture Oscar (he meant in a very gut feeling, not-saying-this-is-the-way-it-will-turn-out kind of way). But the fact that it is crap, and the fact that I have been reasonably happy with the last two winners (No Country and The Departed) leads me to believe something else will win. However, NO upcoming movies are exciting me.

I'll already think 2008 was a banner year even if the last month doesn't produce any classics. Reprise, Mister Lonely, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Be Kind, Rewind, Chop Shop, A Christmas Tale, Flight of the Red Balloon, and Speed Racer are all movies that in my world are exceptionally worthy "Best Picture" recipients. If anything, it is these movies' high quality that makes the actual Oscar seem important...it has to be something at least reasonably representative of the strong 2008.

The Dark Knight continues to get mentioned as a possible Best Picture nominee. I wasn't as blown away with it as a lot of people, but it's definitely a worthy choice. It's epic enough that it isn't "just a comic book movie," and it pulls off its "epicness" more respectfully than even some past Best Picture winners.

But what else lies on the horizon?

-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The full gist of Wells' post was the advanced word he's gotten on Button is "meh," which makes him think it's no longer the favorite. Obviously, that is way-in-advance word and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, even among people who like it, comparisons to Forest Gump and exclamations about how much they cried seem to dot their praises. I'm worried Fincher, Eric Roth, and Co. overdid it in their effort to make a crowd pleaser and laid on the schmaltz a little too thick. I think everybody involved (Fincher, Roth, Pitt, Blanchett, etc.) are individually great, and that makes Button exciting to think about, but which of those people is going to put the breaks on if things were getting too Gumpy? Fincher doesn't seem to care too much about story, and Roth obviously wrote Gump, so we know he can go there (compare Gump to The Insider or The Good Shepherd, great restrained stories). I'm keeping my expectations low, but this could still turn out to be a masterpiece.

-Milk like the "seen: I bet Penn's really good. But this just looks-it-before" biopic. Meh. (see Penn below)


-Frost/Nixon: This is definitely a "seen-it-before." Ron Howard won't drop the ball, the performances will be good, but the chances of this movie surprising or exciting me in any way are 0. And yes, I can be certain of that without seeing it.

-Revolutionary Road: All along, this has seemed like a "more-than-they-can-chew" project for Mendes and Co., I feel like there are probably too many great things in that huge novel and the movie will end up just struggling to connect all the dots. But like Button, I'm cautiously optimistic just because of the amount of talent involved.

-Australia: I loved Moulin Rouge! This don't look like no Moulin Rouge!, unfortunately. It looks more like Baz's other two movies, which I've never had the slightest desire to see.

-Gran Torino: No. Just no. I don't see Eastwood surprising anyone anymore. This will be just OK.

-The Reader: "The Reader"? Not even TNT would approve that title. Oh wait, Stephen Daldry, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes? Sounds stuffy.

-The Wrestler: By all accounts it's great, but Arnofsky has never done it for me. That said, what's it competing against so far? I'm ready to embrace this movie if it's half as good as people say.

-Doubt: Another one I'm counting on at this point. A playwright adapting his own hit play with a great cast sounds dependable to me.




Che: My most anticipated of any of these, but it's huge length means the Academy would never go near it even if it was getting unanimous praise.








So what does this mean for us? Doubt, The Wrestler, Button, and Revolutionary Road seem like the four movies that could turn out great AND end up being nominated for Best Picture. Throw The Dark Knight in there and I'll definitely be happy. More realistically, two out of those four end up being good enough to deserve it and hopefully they're nominated and I have horses to root for.

Just please no Slumdog Millionaire.

Burn After Reading

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

SPOILERS AHEAD...

Most of the events that transpire in Burn After Reading are the result of a blackmail attempt involving a CD-R that basically contains Osborne Cox's (John Malkovich) whole life on it, from his financial records to his memoir. And the irony is, the disc is worth nothing.

Burn After Reading won't be popular with everyone, probably because if you copied all the good attributes from all the characters onto one CD, there'd still be a lot of empty space left. It's not that they're "bad" people, they're just unfulfilled. Cox has buried in his problems in booze, but everyone else is taking a stab at self-improvement. Cox's wife (Tilda Swinton) is planning for divorce, Harry (George Clooney) is engaged in several affairs, and most significantly, Linda (Francis McDormand) has simultaneously entered the online dating world and outlined several plastic surgery procedures that will significantly improve her appearance.

Their environment is loaded with allusions to sex, and for all their sleeping with one another, no one's particularly satisfied in that department. The gym where Linda works is called "Hardbodies" and she pines for a "Hollywood" body, while pop culture blatantly taunts regular folks' chances for sexual fulfillment: the popular date movie is called "Coming Up Daisy" (get it?) and features two movie stars with beaming, perfect smiles on the poster; Harry's wife has a tryst with Dermot Mulroney in a dressing room as the TV shows an impeccably cheerful chef vigorously mixing a salad. Even "Cox" (another Coens joke) isn't immune from this sexualized atmosphere, follows along half-heartedly with a workout TV show starring three seriously toned bodybuilders.

Unfortunately, Harry's situation is more representative of the characters' sex lives: he hasn't "discharged his weapon" in twenty years and has resorted to frequent jogging and building a sex chair intended to pleasure his lovers as his methods for release. Still, characters swap in and out of bed with each other, as if they think their next lover will be "the one." The Coens make it pretty obvious what they think of this approach: Linda delivers multiple ludicrous speeches about the merits of "staying positive," which drew some of the biggest laughs.

Ultimately, the CIA is the only organization capable of providing any perspective on the worth of these people's lives, and they do by completely dismissing their importance despite multiple fatalities. You can't help but agree with the decision about these people's worthlessness, but the movie's achievement is you still enjoyed watching them.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 18, 2008

I would put it #2 for best movies of the year thus far. The 7 really great movies this year are (in order):

Reprise

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Be Kind Rewind

Mister Lonely

Chop Shop

Flight of the Red Balloon

Speed Racer

Those would be followed by Encounters at the End of the World, The Dark Knight, Cloverfield, In Bruges.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona felt the closest to Annie Hall of any of the Woody movies I've ever seen (there are a lot I haven't seen). That doesn't mean I necessarily think it's his second best ever, but movies like Manhattan and Hannah and her Sisters (i.e. the relationship dramadies I think Annie hall is most often compared to) don't have the same balance of charm and fantasy that makes Annie Hall so great and it was really surprising to find it here, even though VCB isn't nearly as great a movie. It's very fun and engaging, and yet there's this really potent edge to the relationships lying underneath the surface. There are laughs here, just like Woody Allen comedies, and there are the same 'true' relationship moments that can be found in Annie Hall, and a lot of people would say 'Hannah' and Manhattan as well. So it really felt like a return to form by the Woodster, plus it's full of great performances and Barcelona art.

Maybe an indicator of whether you like the movie is how you feel about the title. One review I read said the title was the first indication that Woody has gotten lazy, and he thought the movie reflected that. I think 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' is a clever title in the same vein of Old Woody (if that's lazy, what are: "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," "Hannah and her Sisters," "Broadway Danny Rose," "Zelig," etc.?) and the movie reflects that, it's a throwback to Woody's Golden Age.

The Olympics and Why No One Cares

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 12, 2008

Rob, this is a follow-up to our earlier conversation...I consider it the icing on the cake.

Not only is Phelps 3 for 3 on gold medals, he's 3 for 3 on world records. Are you kidding me? Olympic sports are in the category with tennis, golf, etc....marginal sports where the technology is outpacing fan interest.

In fact, maybe that's a reason the most popular sports (baseball, basketball, football) are so great: even advancements in their equipment haven't skewed the game (obviously that's what's so threatening about steroids). While guys may hit more HR than they did fifty years ago, there is still a feeling of the ebb and flow of history and that's a crucial part of baseball. The Olympics have kicked it into high gear so fast that there is no sense of connection to earlier eras and that's how you end up with Phelps re-writing the record books.

Mad Men

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 31, 2008

I'm out. After six and a half episodes, there's nothing keeping me watching. It's well made, but I just can't get excited about it. And so, the world moves on without me.

Fight Scenes

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 28, 2008

Slate has a great slideshow about the progress of the fight scene. It takes ten scenes from the history of cinema, starting with The Big Country (1958) and ending with Eastern Promises (2007). The gist is that fight scenes are becoming increasingly fast paced and hyper-edited at the expense of spacial clarity and cinematic tradition.

However, I for one vastly prefer some of the more recent scenes to the more traditional examples. The Big Country clip seems like a joke, the few edits feel arbitrary and the wide shots make the action appear insignificant. And I've never been a fan of Oldboy which is too obviously artificial and never really engages me in the action. Meanwhile, The Bourne Ultimatum and Natural Born Killers clips completely enthrall me and are exciting to watch even without the context of the story. That makes me think the progression isn't a bad thing and I wonder if some people's objections to the fight scenes in movies like Batman Begins are the result of a generational difference.

Based on those ten clips, I would say the most important element in a good fight scene is to create a sense of urgency in the viewer and make sure the fight scene is consistently moving (unlike Return of the Dragon or The Big Country, where you are literally seeing the same punch/counterpunch routine as if the fighters are running in place). The Bourne Ultimatum continually raises the stakes faster than you can even keep up with what is going on, and that challenge to the viewer is what keeps it interesting.

A comparison is made to the heavy editing of musicals today (Moulin Rouge!, Chicago) and how the old Fred Astaire movies of yesteryear relied much more on action within the frame and not so many cuts. I would say that movies used to be confined by the amount of editing and number of angles they could get as a result of technical limitations, and that movies used to be much more about spectacle...you could watch Astaire dance in a single shot and be impressed merely by his ability. But these days we are probably quicker to disbelieve what we see...CGI and special effects are so good that we assume what we're seeing is a lie. So maybe fast editing is just a way of staying ahead of our doubts and thereby perpetuating the illusion.

Step Brothers

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 25, 2008

The more I think about it, the more I think Step Brothers could have been a really good movie if Will Ferrell's crew wasn't so in love with their own shtick and didn't rely so heavily on over-the-top improvisation. The plot involving Ferrell's younger brother (and the younger brother's family) hint at a comedy that's just as funny and weird (they can keep the singing in the car scene) but a little more subversive and directly taking on issues of "growing up" and family politics. Things like John C. Reilly having an affair with the brother's wife don't go anywhere in the current movie, but imagine Step Brothers if it was Will Ferrell meets The Squid and the Whale. All the more "esoteric" visual humor worked for me: the synchronized sleepwalking, the dream sequences at the end, all the inventive clever things that you wouldn't immediately imagine when someone told you it was a movie about grown up stepbrothers. If you throw in a few more things like that and take out the "Will Ferrell says something outrageous that doesn't make sense" bits, you have a seriously trippy movie. I think Ferrell, Reilly, and Adam McKay are so funny that they can take a premise way over the top and I still like it. But if they tried for something other than belly laughs every five seconds, it could be more satisfying, and at least more interesting.

The Dark Knight, Take 1

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 17, 2008

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

Regardless of whether anyone likes or dislikes The Dark Knight, it is inarguably the first "comic book movie" that really exceeds that categorization....you never feel like you're watching a superhero movie. That wasn't true with Batman Begins, and I think what's so arresting about this movie is even though everyone knew Christopher Nolan wanted to make this one darker, and everyone knew Heath Ledger had gone a little crazy playing the Joker, I don't think anyone was expecting this. This movie is going to be a huge box office hit, and it's going to be incredible because millions of viewers are going to be forced to reckon with something more than what they bargained for.

While I was watching, I couldn't help but wonder if No Country for Old Men stole a little bit of The Dark Knight's thunder. Both movies go to great lengths to keep you as in the dark as possible about their serial killers' motives. What's so creepy about Anton Chigurh and the Joker is they both seem unstoppable...the audience isn't given any explanation or weakness to make the killer seems vulnerable. The Joker also shares Anton's mythical quality. There were many times during the movie where I thought Batman and the Joker's gadgetry and ability to think six moves ahead was getting a little ridiculous...but I think that's sort of the point. "Batman" isn't human (although Bruce Wayne is) and "the Joker" doesn't really seem human either. They're Gotham's cultural composites, they represent the different forces at work within that society. This is why the Joker can tell different stories about how he got his scars, and still tell Harvey Dent later that he never lies...in a way, they're probably all true.

Another significant comparison is just like we don't see Josh Brolin's character die in No Country, we're denied the big payoff with the Joker. I assume that when he's hanging upside down in front of the SWAT team, he is about to be killed. But Nolan cuts to a different scene before we actually see him dead. I think this could serve two purposes: the first is it reinforces the idea that the Joker can't really be killed ("his spirit will live on"). The second purpose is it catches us when we're bloodthirsty, it denies us our desire for the kind of "justice" Two-Face seeks out. When we don't see the Joker killed, we're disappointed, because like the Joker says we assume that's "all a part of the plan."

I didn't "love" the movie, I don't know if it's a movie you can love. It can't help but stagger under its own weight when it has so many things going on. I don't think Harvey Dent is ever really fleshed out in this movie (why was he called Two-Face?...and the Joker could not have assumed that Dent would turn bad at the end, I still don't relieve believe it), and Rachel seems like a completely different person in this one (not just because it's a different actress) which makes it harder to buy the chemistry between her and Bruce (multiple people said they were glad she was dead after the screening I went to). The fact that Gordon basically has to spell out how the Joker "won" at the end shows how deeply the movie has twisted itself inside its own logic. Heath Ledger is the glue that keeps it all together, the way he staggers in and out of focus, it seemed like even the cameraman didn't know what he was going to do next. And most of all I appreciate that Nolan and Co. didn't just make the sequel a continuation of the first movie in plot or tone, and tried for something greater instead.