I Am Batman -- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

First things first: The Dark Knight Rises isn't as good as The Dark Knight. It contains fewer exciting setpieces and laugh lines, the middle part sags like udders on a cow, and not one soul electrifies the proceedings like Heath Ledger as the Joker. That said, lesser Nolan Batman is still Nolan Batman, and The Dark Knight Rises, for its flaws, clenches the crown of crown of 2012's best blockbuster, and I'm already making plans to see it again.

Reasonably non-spoiler plot synopsis: in the eight years that have passed since Harvey Dent died at the end of The Dark Knight, Gotham City enacted radical new laws that effectively cleaned the streets of organized crime. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has holed up in Wayne Manor as a recluse, despite the pressings of his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) to go outside every once in a while. Gotham slips back into the throes of chaos, though, when mercenary and all-around unpleasant guy Bane (Tom Hardy) shows up in town and commandeers a fusion reactor from Wayne Industries CEO Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and board chairman Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) with the intent to turn it into a nuclear bomb. At the urging of Gotham cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Wayne must take up his mantel as Batman and fight back against Bane, who holds the city hostage with his makeshift WMD, while also contending with master thief Selena Kyle (Anne Hathaway).

What follows is 164 minutes of grim desperation punctuated by brief character moments, exposition, and fleet scenes of action that are over far too quickly. If The Dark Knight wallowed in bleak nihilism, The Dark Knight Rises submerges itself, holds its breath, and has you hold the stopwatch. Carefree entertainment it isn't, and only a rousing climax in the last forty-five minutes and perfect ending (yeah, I said it) save it from being pure misanthropy.

Not to say it isn't fun in places. Batman's newest toy, a hovering battle vehicle that looks like a cross between a harrier and a Maine lobster, zips around lighting up baddies and obstacles, while the Batpod makes a welcome, heavily-armed return. Hathaway's Selena Kyle purrs and snarls sarcastically, and watching her play as a wild card among two opposing sides gave me much joy. Also, the climax I mentioned in the previous paragraph is one of the highlights of the trilogy, providing action-packed thrills and emotional closure for fans who have followed Nolan's Caped Crusader since 2005's Batman Begins.

In fact, The Dark Knight Rises ties in with the first film in several important ways, referencing events and supporting characters with frequency. It feels more like and extension of Batman Begins than a sequel to The Dark Knight, though with more continuity in the story (e.g. no random turns to zombie film-making). Though not my favorite film in the saga, I'm glad The Dark Knight Rises ties into both films so well, making them all an essential and tightly-packed trilogy.

Bale is the strongest he's ever been in any of the Batman films, exuding shades of fatigue, hurt, and mingled amusement unseen by Bruce Wayne thus far. Caine steps up and makes an even bigger emotional impression as Alfred, though he disappears far sooner than I would have liked. Oldman also sits out for an extended length and is given less to do, nodding and acting knowledgeable but always keeping us at arm's length. For my money, the newcomers all give the best performances: Gordon-Levitt's dogged, honest turn as John Blake holds down the fort while Batman is offscreen, Cotillard's enigmatic charm still carries volumes - even if her performance is, beat for beat, Mal from Inception - and Hardy's Bane more closely matches the comic book's take on the character--intelligent, powerful, and not to be trifled with under any circumstances. Also, Hathaway, but we already gushed about her.

Stepping up the apocalyptic stakes are composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who lend gravitas to the score by adding a Gothic-sounding choir to several choice moments. Though the chugging, one-note motif used for Bane never caught my ears the way past themes have, I appreciate the heightened stakes reflected in the score.

Regular Nolan editor Lee Smith, having hit his stride with Inception's cross-cutting uber-climax, scales his ambition back for The Dark Knight Rises, generally focusing on one scene at a time, though when he does get his plates spinning in time for the endgame, the result is a tense, epic-length juggling act between three different plots as they all come to a head. Not quite as dreamily-presented as past projects, but still exciting even during moments absent of action.

On his absolute best behavior is regular Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister, who photographs more and more varied settings than either of the previous films, and makes my favorite Pretty Cinematography shortcut (falling snow) look absolutely gobsmacking. Down in the dumps though The Dark Knight Rises may be, it never looks less than smashing.

The Dark Knight Rises isn't a watershed moment in cinema the way it's been built up to be, but it is absolutely good enough to wrap up one of the most acclaimed film series in the last decade or so. See it once to watch how it ends, then see it again to drink in the small details and widgets of a dense, rewarding auteur picture disguised as a summer tentpole.

I Am the Night -- The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight might be, minute for minute, the most depressing, unsettling film I own on home video, but I rarely notice unless I'm actively looking for it. Shocking for a film whose primary antagonist likes to express himself through wanton acts of violence and nihilism, and whose closing scene of child peril and emotional wreckage is some of the rawest footage I've seen in a major studio film intent on making money.

With all of the dark and moody trappings, why do I, heavy-handed purveyor of escapist feel-good cinema, enjoy The Dark Knight so much? Tonal balance, friend. For as bleak as it gets - and make no mistake, it becomes very dire in places - there are small splashes of comic relief, a tossed-off line or an unexpected bit of comic violence (one of the only times outside of a Tom and Jerry cartoon I praise comic violence), which lessens the tension and makes the rest of its bleakness much more palatable. Throw in several exciting setpieces, and it’s easy to forget how grim The Dark Knight becomes. Spoonful of sugar, and all that.

It’s hard to talk about The Dark Knight without making comparisons to Batman Begins (or vice versa, depending on the order you first saw them). I won’t labor heavily on them, but I do want to toss off a few reasons why I prefer The Dark Knight. Aside from its surer balance of tone, the action scenes feel bigger and more satisfying (the truck chase is one of my favorite bits of action in recent movies) and the more grounded Gotham City is easier for me to wrap my head around. The Dark Knight also functions as a stand-alone narrative, and though I like the bits in Batman Begins where Bruce Wayne iterates on the Batman persona, I’m always grateful in a super hero movie when I don’t have to sit through an origin story, especially one as well-known as Batman’s. Batman Begins also lacks a big bad, a problem The Dark Knight does not have by any stretch of imagination.

For all conversations about The Dark Knight eventually turn to the Joker. I’ve seen The Dark Knight around eight or so times since 2008, and each time Heath Ledger’s smacking, mincing, casually-psychotic performance as the Joker blows me right on my ass. Ledger disappears inside of the Joker, distorting his voice, hunching his shoulders, and acting like the most charismatic bastard ever capable of murdering civilians. His hair is mankey and his white makeup is frequently unkempt; he looks the part of a so-called “agent of chaos,” and his raggamuffin appearance makes it even more unsettling when he starts killing people. Alternately dangerous and horrifyingly funny (sometimes at once, like his magic trick), Joker is the biggest example of why The Dark Knight works as well as it does. Mark Hamill’s Joker is more fun as well as frequently threatening, but Ledger is one memorable mofo, and The Dark Knight would be a lesser film if he were absent.

Not that Christian Bale and co. have been slouching since the previous film. Granted, Bale doesn’t portray as many sides of Bruce Wayne as he does in Batman Begins, but his fake playboy persona is even funnier in his pushy, clueless mannerisms and his straight non-Batman Bruce feels more lived-in and natural. Oldman’s tension with Batman as Commissioner Gordon grows slowly over the course of The Dark Knight, and he’s given more to do and more chances to perform. Michael Caine’s Alfred and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox hold steady with typically great character work, and Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes in much bouncier, sassier tones. Nearing Heath Ledger’s level is Aaron Eckhart as fallen D.A. Harvey Dent, whose journey from Gotham’s white knight to the villain Two-Face is made more painful by Eckhart’s convincing turn as both a classy, nice guy and angry, vengeful killer with an Anton Chigurh-esque penchant for coin-tosses. If I had one minor complaint, it’s that Eric Roberts’ Sal Maroni fails to make me forget about Tom Wilkinson, but actors that are Tom Wilkinson are much rarer than those that aren’t, so I’m hardly bothered by the change-up.

Even more than Batman Begins, Hans Zimmer and James Howard Newton outdo themselves with the soundtrack for The Dark Knight. In addition to Batman's previous theme, which carries over from Batman Begins with no decrease in its heroic glory, the pair introduces Joker's... well, the word "theme" implies a piece of music that can be hummed, and there is no merrily whistling Zimmer's razorblade-on-piano wire motif from when The Joker is onscreen. Like the character himself, the low, scraping din is noncompliant with the rest of the surrounding score, and creates an unease that meshes perfectly with Joker's dangerous, unorthodox effect on Gotham City.

Added to cinematographer Wally Pfister's box of tools is the IMAX camera. Every establish shot and most of the important action setpieces appear with heightened clarity and a changed aspect ratio, and the result adds not only better picture quality, but also to the sense of scale and scope in The Dark Knight. The picture at times is HUGE, and give the movie a greater heft, especially during the scenes in Hong Kong and on the ending ferry when the aspect ratio keeps changing.

Editing keeps the kinetic, discontinuous style from Batman Begins, and now it, too, has new tricks. Ramping up the tension are three sequences that cross-cut between two or more separate, parallel conflicts, and watching each section tighten and build to a head gives The Dark Knight a more active, grander feel, though the emotional build-up watching so many conflicts causes The Dark Knight to feel every minute of its runtime, while Batman Begins flies on by. Still, the three-way conflicts all feel so active and busy with incident that The Dark Knight never overstays its welcome.

A quick word on the dialogue. I recognize that The Dark Knight contains more self-referential, self-consciously “profound” dialogue, and that I should, by merit of its own awareness of how “profound” it is, spit on every “He is the hero we deserve” turn of phrase it throws at me. Eff that. Like the editing and score, it adds to the heightened reality and grandiosity of The Dark Knight while never jumping ship of posturing. My favorite passage of dialogue, which took me more than a few viewings to first notice?

Dent: “You’ve known Rachel her whole life?”
Alfred: “Oh, not yet, sir.”

GUESS WHAT GUY YOU WILL HAVE BY THE END OF ACT II

The Dark Knight is the best film based on a comic book of all time, and one hell of an act for any summer tentpole to top (including, from what I’ve read so far, The Dark Knight Rises). Both exciting to the more lizard-like portions of my brain and imbued with heavy, thoughtful ideas, The Dark Knight operates as both blockbuster entertainment and art house reflection, and how many movies can claim that, ever?

I Am Vengeance -- Batman Begins (2005)

I want to get something out of the way before I start in earnest: Batman Begins is a film whose appeal, while not eluding me per se, is diminished compared to the gobs of unfettered praise and nice words it has been steeped in since 2005. I like it, and I enjoyed it more so than ever during my most recent viewing, but I don't think it's a film I'd casually pick to watch on a night off the way I would, say, The Dark Knight. For my tastes, it's humorless and lacks excitement, requiring a bit more investment to "get" anything out of it than my favorite films, which doesn't jive well with my escapism-based film-watching habits--consider this my acquiescence to being a total wuss.

Now that I've said my piece, we can talk about what Batman Begins does right, for it does an awful lot of things right. Made during a time when super hero films weren't known for their quality or depth, even in post-Spider-Man 2005, Batman Begins not only treats each member of its large and distinguished cast with respect, but also (and you'll excuse the implicit smacks of superiority I'm radiating) like actual movie characters. Actual movie characters from an actual good movie. Toss away the cape and cowl, and you have a character study about a man's search for identity after a childhood trauma, and the lengths he goes to find and maintain that identity. It's methodical, serious, and as concerned with probing character questions as it is with inventing new, explosive set pieces; here is a film where Batman first appears no less than an hour into its 140 minute runtime, and we don't mind at all.

First a bit of plot, because maybe you haven’t seen it in a few years. Batman Begins tells how Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy and Gotham’s “favorite son,” becomes a symbol for justice in an effort to save his home city from tearing itself apart by crime and corruption. Batman Begins can be broken into three delineable sections: Bruce Wayne’s travels and early childhood trauma, Bruce Wayne “builds” the Batman persona, and Batman’s shift from fighting organized crime to repelling the League of Shadows. The middle “learning” section is the most satisfying, showing Wayne iterating on crime fighting methods and learning as he goes. It’s also the most “realistic,” showing Batman taking on the mob before things go off the rails in the third act, but the tendency towards realism suits Batman Begins, more so than Cillian Murphy arbitrarily riding a horse, anyway.

One of the most fascinating things about Batman Begins is how it takes all of Batman's well-known gimmicks (bat costume, utility belt, creed not to kill people) and makes them all traceable parts of the character, and their presence in Batman Begins is not just justified but necessary. Bruce Wayne dresses as a bat not to obscure his identity, but because he wants to be an Idea in the minds of criminals as much as he wants to be a solution to Gotham's civic ails. Like I said earlier: respect. Show me all of the scenes of a hero sewing his super suit that you want, but I need to know why he puts it on in the first place, and Bruce Wayne decision to strap on a cape and cowl feels as natural as Rocky's decision to get in the ring with Apollo Creed.

Part of this credit must go to Christian Bale, who juggles no less than four personas of Bruce Wayne over the course of Batman Begins, all of them distinct and convincing. My favorite contrast is during the first forty five minutes, which crosscuts between hardened Bruce Wayne training with the League of Shadows and bitter twentysomething Bruce Wayne contemplating killing his parents’ murderer. Small moments of regret and pain are sprinkled liberally throughout Wayne’s time onscreen, helping add to Batman’s plausibility.

Bale is one of many strong performances by a distinguished cast of big names and bit parts. Reliable standbys like Michael Caine, Tom Wilkinson, and Morgan Freeman all paint their characters in large, comic book-y strokes (I love Wilkinson’s choice to play Falcone as a 1930’s mob boss), while Gary Oldman’s weary, idealistic portrayal of Gotham’s only honest cop helps ground Batman’s existence and necessity in Gotham. The best in show, though, goes to Cillian Murphy as Dr. Nathan Crane; strung-out, uptight, and always radiating the sensation that he might go for your neck at any moment--and that’s before he takes his glasses off. Murphy’s Crane is off-kilter, unsettling menace, and it’s a damn shame that Batman Begins disposes of him so early into its climax.

Batman Begins builds a solid thematic groundwork, arguably the hardest part of a comic book film, leaving the rest of its filmmaking bits to fall neatly into place. In particular, I am a fan of the editing, which eschews straight continuity for internal rhythm. Watch how the cuts interact with the the emotional beats and how each shot seems to start and stop during a moment of climax ("quitting while it's ahead," I called it in my head). Combined with the use of establish shots as action cuts (notice how the camera never stays stationary when shooting wide shots of locations), Nolan and editor Lee Smith give Batman Begins a momentum that makes its 140 minutes seem as fleet as a Bugs Bunny short.

I think I like the editing so much because of it works with the music. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's horn-and-cello theme used for Batman operates much like Christian Bale's Batman: subdued and somber with a touch of heroic bravado, with a small nod to Danny Elfman’s work on the previous Batman films without outright quoting from it.

I do have a few gripes, though. I've never cared for the way Gotham is portrayed in Batman Begins; its opulent high-rises living so close to the glorified shantytown of the Narrows strikes me as a bit too fantastical, and though its Urban Hellhole motif is a feature and not a bug, I find it repelling and not much fun to look at. Speaking of fantastical, I always wonder how the microwave weapon stolen by Ra's al Ghul is supposed to vaporize all nearby water while leaving nearby human beings (which, I gather, are anywhere from 50-65% water) unscathed. Lastly, I always get a bit twitchy during the last half-hour, mostly because the carefully constructed reality of Gotham is thrown out the window in favor of zombie-film sensibility.

Still, it’s the first film to nail why Batman picks up his uniform and fights crime, and it takes no emotional shortcuts getting there. Batman Begins is a film I appreciate more as a piece of craftsmanship than I do a transporting piece of fiction, but what fine craftsmanship it is.

Bella Swan and Thor's Excellent Adventure -- Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

As a rabid Disney-phile, I've been eying both of 2012's adaptiation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. February's Mirror, Mirror was a light, comic affair meant for families, but June has brought us Snow White and the Huntsman, an epic, badass tale for a generations raised on the Lord of the Rings films and currently steeped in HBO's Game of Thrones. Take heart, though, for Snow White and the Huntsman isn't nearly as derivative as the previous sentence implies, and for that reason, perhaps that reason alone, I actually took a liking to it.

Snow White and the Huntsman's narrative is one of much happenstance and small incident. Plot points occur in bits and spurts, and characters are introduced and then dropped with little introduction or explanation. The whole mess of the story boils down to this: the evil Queen Ravenna (Charlieze Theoron) wants Snow White's heart because it will give her immortality. She hires the Huntsman to retrieve Snow White, who has fled into the aptly-named Dark Forest, but the pair soon team up and evade the Queen's guard led by her brother Finn Sam Spruell). Snow White finds her way to a sympathetic Duke's castle with the help of up-to-eight dwarves, and there she learns that she is the only one who can defeat the Queen because, I dunno, she's the chosen one who can bring balance to The Force or something.

It's a bit of a mouthful, but most of it clips by reasonably quickly, with a few odd dips here and there. What strikes me is how Snow White and the Huntsman uses the Brothers Grimm fairy tale as a framework for a new story, rather than a series of self-consciously deliberate "twists" a la nearly every fairy tale rework since Edward Everett Horton started narrating them on Rocky and Bullwinkle. Queen Ravenna was burned before by men because of her beauty, and so she desires to be fairest so that she can stay powerful. The dwarves are a part of a larger race of miners who have long-since gone away, subsisting as thieves and victims of the Queen's rule. The apple, cleverly, is addressed in the film almost right away before being tucked into a place in the narrative where it acts as a surprise, rather than an inevitability.

I saw Snow White and the Huntsman with a friend for matinee price, which diminished my expectations enough to walk away reasonably entertained.

Story isn't a strong reason to see Snow White and the Huntsman, though. The real incentive is the incredible production design by Dominic Watkins. One part huge vistas and jaw-dropping wide shots of impossible moors and enormous mountains, one part drafty castles, muddy villages, and cold, shining steel. It somehow glamorizes the nasty, unpleasant bits of living in a time before central heating while still emphasizing how awesome it is to ride horseback and whack stuff with a sword. Ornate, impractical costume design meets grounded realism and exceptional world-building.

It's for this reason that Snow White and the Huntsman reminds me the most of Tron Legacy. It's a "pretty decent" movie with a suspect story and weak characters all propped up by awesome-looking visuals and kinetic action. Brother, when it connects, which it does more often than not, it's a grand slam.

Feel free to use that one in the advertisements, Universal.

The deliberate alterations made to the Snow White yarn are inspired, for the most part, like the humanoid mirror.

Acting is neatly divided in two. Steward and Hemsworth both play withdrawn, contemporary-ish fantasy types (Hemsworth at time seems to be reprising Thor with a Scottish brogue in lieu of a Mid-Atlantic accent), while Theoron and Spruell chew the scenery with great bulging eyes and foaming mouths. Theoron in particular reaches for great, operatic heights of expression in the most Tim Curry-esque fashion, and though it's embarrassing as it is effective, I can't pretend it doesn't create an impression. The dwarves, played by a game troupe of British heavy-hitters lead by Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, and Ray Winstone, adhere closely to the "dwarves are the comic relief" school of fantasy acting, and don't have much to do for well over half of the runtime, but are pleasant to watch in the usual ways one expects from classically trained English actors asked to pad the ranks with their mere screen presence ("The Hogwarts Faculty Role," I call it in my head).

As a side note, I have seen a few criticisms that Snow White and the Huntsman employs full-sized actors for the dwarves instead of, you know, actual dwarf actors. Regrettable, but I was amused by McShane and crew all the same, and besides, casting Peter Dinklage in a movie with as many bases for comparison to Game of Thrones might have been cutting it a little close.

They do their damndest, but the dwarves don't have much to work with between their truncated screen time and the fact that there are up-to-eight of them.

Snow White and the Huntsman eventually devolves into yet another series epic medieval battles so often on-hand since Peter Jackson showed everyone how it was done ten years ago, but on a pleasantly small scale. Rather than greedily staging the dual between armies of thousands, the ending conflict is comprised of maybe a few hundred soldiers between the two sides, and the lowered stakes actually helped me invest myself further in the proceedings. The unfortunately hectic editing sometimes gets in the way of gawping at the costumes and scenery, but I found myself resistant to the noise and bluster, and actually enjoyed the chaotic spectacle.

This is the best level on which to watch Snow White and the Huntsman: an exhibition in stylistic excess as applied to a fairly tale nearly everyone already knows. The narrative, on the other hand, doesn't offer much, though I did find it gratifying that Snow White drove so much of the plot in her own story. Snow White and the Huntsman is not without its flaws, but its visual appeal is so great that I already want to see it again. We'll see if I can keep the first burning long enough for it to release on Blu-ray.

You were so awesome. You were like Rin Tin Tin -- The Adventures of Tintin

Longtime readers of Diversion 2.0 (I feel like there must be at least three of you at this point) know my affinity for adventure media—films, video games, whatever; if it reminds me of a Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge comic book, chances are I’m going to like it an awful lot. It’s with this mindset that I bring up The Adventures of Tintin, a motion-capture film version of Belgian artist Hergé’s famous newspaper comic strips, which, to my understanding, are to European audiences what Uncle Scrooge is to me. Produced by Peter Jackson and helmed by Stephen Spielberg (a man who knows a thing or three about putting together an adventure film), Tintin is swashbuckling and satisfying popcorn cinema, and if it’s not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s at least as fun as Romancing the Stone.

The Adventures of Tintin is based on three volumes of Hergé’s work, and follows Tintin (Jaime Bell), a newspaper reporter with a penchant for finding hidden treasure, as he attempts to discover the secrets of a model ship with the figurehead of a unicorn. Along the way, he meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), a boozy, blustery seaman with at least three catchphrases to his name (“Blustering barnacles!”), and the slinky, sinister Mr. Sakharine (Daniel Craig). Tintin and Haddock’s travels take them from France, to Morocco, to the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, though, disappointingly, there’s not a single sequence involving an old parchment map or a traveling red line.

Tintin and Haddock manage to get both into and out of several scrapes along the course of the film.
Motion capture animation, made popular by films like The Polar Express and Disney’s A Christmas Carol, has received a healthy amount of flak from audiences, mostly for the off-putting, Uncanny Valley appearances of its characters. I was concerned that I would spend most of Tintin distracted by its animation style, but after I got over the initial shock of the characters’ realistic proportions and cartoon faces, I was amazed by how good the film looked, and how fluid the action was. Far from an unnecessary stylistic flourish, Tintin’s animation gives way to fantastic, larger-than-life stunts and setpieces, like a harrowing motorcycle chase through a Moroccan city in pursuit of a falcon, or a kinetic, rain-swept duel between two enormous ships.

And how wonderful the set pieces are! Far from simply shooting them and cutting together the footage, Spielberg takes the freedom brought by animation and uses it to swoop in and out of the background, following characters as they leap, slide and run through the environment, all without a single break in the action. If Tintin succeeds on any level (and it does on numerous ones, I should think), it’s in the movie’s heedless, joyous celebration of movement and spectacle.

During many of Tintin's setpieces, the camera darts in and out of the action, which I rather enjoyed.
Tintin’s acting performances are solid throughout. I’m unfamiliar with Jaime Bell’s work, but I enjoyed his portrayal of the titular character, doing his best to power through the character’s inherent hollow writing. Craig is wonderful as the menacing Sakharine, to the point that I didn’t even know it was Craig until I watched the credits. The real show-stopper, though, is Serkis, who puts his motion capture experience from Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes to good use, imbuing Captain Haddock with boisterous energy and personality, not to mention a ruddy good Scottish brogue. Helping round out Tintin’s audio package is a rousing score from composer John Williams, who uses his old-fashioned matinee sensibilities to great effect, while sprinkling in Middle Eastern motifs and playful jazz-era sounds reminiscent of his work in Catch Me If You Can.

For all its does right, though, Tintin doesn’t escape without a few blemishes. As I mentioned earlier, Tintin as a character has few distinguishing qualities, and while I get that he’s meant to be an audience cypher, he still feels quite dull onscreen. As a result, many of the character development scenes fall flat, especially early in the movie before the introduction of Captain Haddock. Also, while I was able to push past Tintin’s use of motion capture, I realize that some might still be weirded out by overall aesthetic of the characters, though I will say that Tintin looks miles ahead of other motion capture films I’ve seen.

Many characters sport bulbous noses and other exaggerated facial features, which clash a bit with their smooth, normal-looking movements.
Then there’s the matter of Captain Haddock, a character whose primary trait, apart from being a sea captain and a Scot, is his rampant alcoholism. Usually, it’s played to comic relief, such as when Tintin elaborately steals a key from a quarter of sleeping sailors, only to find out the key unlocks the ship’s liquor cabinet; or when Haddock’s foul, fermented breath is able to keep an airplane running midflight. At other times, Tintin gives Haddock grief about his constant drinking, in a darker, Rather Serious manner, making Haddock’s later scenes of comic drinking all the more surreal. Tintin’s treatment of Haddock’s alcoholism, ironically, is like that of a drunkard, weaving back and forth between hilarity and pathos. W.C. Fields, this film ain’t.

Still, for the couple knocks against it I have, I still enjoyed the heck out of Tintin. Even without having read a Tintin comic book, the movie still drove home a sense of adventure and excitement like few other films from recent years. The movie ends with the promise of a sequel, and I’ll be hotly anticipating Tintin’s further adventures.

Last but not beast -- Beastly (2011)

Squarely aimed to appeal to Twilight fans looking for more Paranormal Teen Romance, Beastly is a modern retelling of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s “Beauty and the Beast” set in a posh New York prep school. While the idea of taking a classic fairy tale that has already received a pretty definitive update and melding it with pretty girls wanting sullen boys seems colossally wrongheaded, Beastly honestly isn’t as bad as it could be. That’s not to say that it’s not absolutely gosh-awful, because it is, but it’s gosh awful in exactly the right ways and wraps in a wonderfully slight 86 minutes, making for a delightfully gaudy and trashy slice of “teen” entertainment, as perceived entirely by marketing.

Beastly, as its title suggests, follows the story of the Beast, played by Kyle Kingston (Alex Pettyfer), an obscenely wealthy and vain son of a famous, parentally-distant newscaster (Beastly’s angle is to blame Kyle’s jerkwad nature on his daddy issues, which it works tirelessly in the first half of the movie before dropping entirely in the second). Kyle wins the presidency of some thinly-described school club, and celebrates by publicly humiliating the piercing- and tattoo-laden school “witch,” Kendra (Mary Kate Olsen. Yes, that Mary Kate Olsen), for being a pug-fugly heifer-face, or something to that effect. Kendra responds by turning the pretty boy Kyle into an equally piercing- and tattoo-laden creature of so-called ugliness, though by allowing him to keep his washboard physique and slender build, Kendra effectively makes Kyle a Suicide Boy.

Billboard Dad, this ain't.

Of course, Kyle and his father will have nothing to do with his new, alternative look, and he’s given a private condo overlooking the Hudson, so that he may be spared the humiliation of being seen by other, equally-shallow classmates. In fact, the only person who showed Kyle any non-fake affection before his transformation is the humble, down-to-earth Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), who attends the prep school on scholarship, tipping the audience off that, because she’s not of privilege, she’s an actually decent human being. Kyle seeks Lindy out and saves her from a murderous drug dealer, letting her stay under his roof until the whole thing blows over. At first, Lindy doesn’t take to him, and balks at his attempts to buy her affection with increasingly-expensive gifts, but as he opens his heart to her, she begins to see his kinder and gentler side, and then it’s all over but the crying (which a friend of mine actually did during our most recent viewing).

You may have noticed my many oblique references to the many material goods featured in the movie. This is because Beastly is, first and foremost, lifestyle porn. I was honestly blown away by the constant name-dropping of expensive brands like Dolce & Gabbona, Prada, and more, as well as the pie-in-the-sky wealth on prominent display by nearly every character, including and up to Kyle’s sky loft condo, which must cost more in one month than I make in one year.

Love conquers all, especially if you're a bad boy with Jay-Z levels of expendable income.

The second thing Beastly is, or wants to be, is a movie about the Teen Experience; it valiantly attempts to punch up its workaday screenplay with modern, “hip” flourishes, and could not sound more forced if Diablo Cody stuck her head in midway through and began rambling on about Sonic Youth and her hamburger phone. Characters—grown characters—arbitrarily start speaking in “teen”-sounding neologisms (describing someone as “tool-y), and several important, plot-related shots are predicated on text messages, darting across the screen in a see-through montage promising dramatic heft (“Can’t be there 2nite. :(” The heart reels).

Combining white privilege, American teenagers, angsty romance, and wrapping it in a fairy tale guise sounds like the most surefire recipe for disaster that Man could possibly invent, but for some twisted, indefensible reason, it kinda worked for me. The over-the-top wealth and gratuitous “teen” vernacular works well with the fairy tale story, helping solidify the notion that the whole movie is a folk tale, but a modern one. Beastly doesn’t feel anymore “real” than Beauty and the Beast must have sounded to its original audience, but its heightened, exaggerated telling works well for the story, in the same way a pet-stained rug can, in the right venue, straight-facedly be presented as modern art.

In the weirdest, peanut-butter-and-sardines way, Beastly kinda, sorta works, though having a few drinks before viewing can't hurt.

In terms of the acting, there’s nothing abrasively “bad” about Beastly, though I’m certain there’s little that can be truthfully described as “good.” Both Pettyfur and Hudgens bring little insight and depth to their characters (beauty isn’t the only thing skin-deep), but their aggressively bland performances truly, honestly contribute to the above fairy tale stylization. More active and altogether interesting are Kyle’s blind tutor Will (Neil Patrick Harris) and live-in maid Zola (Lisa Gay Hamilton), who both act as cyphers for Lumiere and Mrs. Potts from the Disney version, respectively. Since both actors realize that most of the audience will not care one iota for their collective existence, they give comically broad performances that don’t necessarily gel well with everyone else in the movie, but still entertain nonetheless.

For reasons my brain will never, ever feel good about, I actually enjoyed Beastly, in a sort of avante garde, tongue-in-cheek way. I will never own it on DVD, and my enjoyment and recommendation comes with a big ol’ asterisk, but if seen for what it is (or, perhaps, what it isn’t), Beastly is a satisfying, amusing exercise in the realm of so-bad-it’s-hilarious filmmaking.

Now groove, sucka! -- Sucker Punch (2011)

In Sucker Punch, the main protagonist suffers from a dissociative identity, in one moment occupying the persona of a 1920s bordello girl, and in another, becoming a badass super soldier garbed in fetish-y schoolgirl gear. How interesting, then, that the movie also suffers from a dissociative identity, unable to decide if it wants to be a look into the struggles of an oppressed young woman rebelling against the system, or an elaborate effort to see how much stereotypical nerd-wank director Zack Snyder can cram into the space 110 minutes, which is easily twenty minutes longer than it should be.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. For Sucker Punch certainly isn’t the worst film I’ve seen this year, and, at a stretch, “works” the way I think it intends to. When all is said and done, though, Sucker Punch simply doesn’t satisfy me, and what should be a fantastic piece of escapism instead glides past my interest like a sparrow into a closed window.

The main plot of Sucker Punch concerns Babydoll (Emily Browning), a young woman put in a mental institution after the death of her mother by her slimy, sleazy stepfather (Gerard Plunkett). Stepdad bribes an orderly (Oscar Isaac) to have her lobotomized in five days’ time; that the orderly is only too happy to oblige is because, I dunno, video games didn’t exist in the 1950s and he needs a break in the monotony every once in a while.

After a yet more exposition, the setting changes, revealing that the mental institution is, in fact, a 1920s bordello, and Babydoll is the new arrival. Babydoll is told that she is to work in the bordello, dancing until the High Roller (Jon Hamm) comes for her in five days’ time. After a set of lessons, Babydoll discovers that her dancing is so wildly captivating, it locks everyone watching into a trance, and she soon uses her newfound abilities to concoct plans of escape. Helping her along the way are overprotective Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), tomboyish Rocket (Jenna Malone), sweetheart-type Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and introverted Amber (Jamie Chung).

They're like the Spice Girls, but with more heavy artillery. And misogyny.

What makes Sucker Punch unique, and what comprises its entire hook, are Babydoll’s dances themselves, which are not actually shown to the audience, but are instead interpreted as a series of elaborate fantasies involving World War I trenches, bipedal mechs, towering castles, zeppelins, zombies, Vulcan cannon-wielding samurai. It’s an impressive cocktail of otaku imagery, and the film’s biggest draw.

On paper, Sucker Punch looks like a breezy, breathless mash-up of everything Zack Snyder thought was cool when he was twelve—an empty-headed thrill ride meant to blow away the audience with its eclectic universe and bombastic action. In execution, though, it buckles under the weight of its own mythos, laboring far too long on affairs in the bordello, and generally acting as though the audience did not attend for the express purpose of watching a fishnet stocking-clad B-52 pilot shoot a dragon in the face with a small-arms handgun.

Seriously, for a movie that sells itself as a fantastical voyage into a patchwork quilt of fan service, it spends a healthy chunk of time (too much, in fact) on the plight of Babydoll and her four cohorts. Ironically, even with the extended character moments, the film’s treatment of Babydoll and co. never becomes meaty enough to become emotionally invested in; each girl has only one or two personality traits, and are difficult to distinguish between after a spell, leaving me to differentiate between them by their different hair styles.

None of the central cast makes much of an impression, creating confusion when they become buried under a mountain of CGI.

Hell, even the much-vaunted fantasy sequences are hard to get worked-up about after the novelty is worn out, due to its lifeless execution. Tearing through a wave of Helgastian soldier with the help of steam punk gadgetry and Modern Warfare-style guns-with-scopes should be damn invigorating, but instead feels tired, drifting from one shot of mind-bending action to another in the sleepiest was possible. Without the ability to sell themselves as fun or entertaining, the movie’s bread and butter—its set pieces—end up feeling like so much cinematic masturbation.

Which is a shame, because the action and scenarios are all outstanding ideas. Perhaps it’s because I, like Snyder, was also once a twelve-year-old boy, and can appreciate how Awesome is the notion of throwing together so many disparate elements of nerdy iconography. And while I feel like the fantasies could have been more exciting, Snyder does a good job of keeping the action clear, refraining from the jump-cuts and shaky-cam that many contemporary action flicks use as a crutch.



The film's over-the-top, nonsensical style is commendable, whenever it isn't suffering from its milquetoast action.

I also can’t fault Snyder for what he wanted to accomplish with the bordello bits, either. Wall-to-wall CG shots of pretty girls using martial arts and heavy firearms could get pretty tedious, pretty fast, and I dig the literal notion of creating a fantasy in order to cope with a difficult situation, but most of the chatter about escape and the High Roller drag the movie down like so many pounds of cinder blocks. Ultimately, Sucker Punch turns into one big game of Why So Serious, plodding where it should be springing, and effectively sucking the joy out of what should be a bats@%# crazy good time.

In truth, perhaps that’s the reason why I’m most frustrated by Sucker Punch. This is a movie I should be hard-wired to like, but its desire to be both a dour character study and phantasmagorical action flick bogs it down. Perhaps it’s worth renting in order to experience the film’s many flights of fancy, but don’t be surprised if you start inventing coping-fantasies yourself.

Our Feature Presentation (25/50) -- Tangled (2010)

Of the over 50 films part of the Disney Animated Features canon, Tangled led me on the biggest emotional rollercoaster. I first caught wind of the project back in 2009, when it was titled Rapunzel, and, indeed, there was a Rapunzel teaser trailer that made its way onto the Blu-ray release of The Princess and the Frog. What happened from there, no one can truly know, but here’s what conventional speculation and Wikipedia tell us: The Princess and the Frog was a mild box office success, rather than the titanic megahit it was supposed to be, and Disney execs got a bit gun shy. The Princess and the Frog was marketed as a back-to-roots labor of love, similar to projects released in the 90’s; since that didn’t seem to work, Disney decided to give audiences a new vision of its Rapunzel project. From this bit of decision-making came one of the worst promotional campaigns I’ve seen in film, now titled Tangled, with trailers that made the movie out to be a hip, snarky take on the classic fairy tale, a la Shrek.

My antipathy for Shrek doesn’t run as deep as some in the blogosphere, but if there’s one thing that absolutely does not belong in a Disney project, it’s snarky, hipper-than-thou “attitude.” Granted, it’s not like Disney hasn’t attempted hipness, but the Disney Animated Features brand has lived and died by its sincerity, and even its most irreverent projects have had a strong emotional core. Fortunately, Tangled, turned out to be one of the most sincere projects seen from Disney in quite some time, with strong characters, a good story, and the sense never to posture as “above” the material.

Old-fashioned, yet still fresh, Tangled is an absolute goodie.

Tangled begins with a narration, where we learn about a centuries-old witch named Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) and magical flower that keeps her young. The local queen is expecting a child, though, and needs the flower to deliver the baby (in lieu of Rampion, I suppose), so the flower is found and given to her, and she safely delivers a happy baby girl. Gothel, however, steals the child, whose hair now possesses the flower’s healing power, and raises her in an old, obscure tower. Brokenhearted, the king and queen begin a tradition of releasing a series of paper lanterns every year on the missing princess’s birthday, as a way to remember her, and to find her if possible.

Cut to eighteen years later. Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is now a beautiful young lady, content with living in her tower, but for one thing: more than anything, she wants to see the lights that appear in the sky on her birthday. This would require leaving the tower, which, to Gothel, is completely out of the question. After a large row that ends in Gothel angrily telling Rapunzel that she can never, ever leave the tower, Rapunzel appears defeated in her desire to see the lights in person.

Ah, but enter Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), a crafty thief who has just stolen a crown belonging to the lost princess. After ditching his accomplices, the Stabbington brothers (Ron Perlman, Armie Hammer-style), Flynn hides himself in a non-descript tower… where he is promptly knocked over the head and captured by Rapunzel. Rapunzel offers Flynn a deal: if he will take her to see the lights, she will give him the crown. What follows is a bit of a road movie, where Rapunzel and Flynn learn about themselves, and grow closer together.

 

Prototypical Disney tropes and quippy dialogue meet in the best way possible, kinda like Rapunzel and Flynn in this scene.

I mentioned in my The Princess and the Frog write-up that Princess had an old-but-new approach to Disney filmmaking, a self-conscious throwback to the pictures of the Disney Renaissance, peppered with newer narrative ideas and details. Tangled, by contrast, has a new-but-old take on its conventions as a Disney feature; while it’s built with new-fangled, gorgeous CGI and 3D effects, it’s made with a much more traditional (and, frankly, much more Disney-esque) story progression, cast of characters, song style, the whole nine. I think it’s this sheer, unadulterated Disney-ness that gave Tangled such success; Tangled is the second-highest grossing Disney feature in the United States (after The Lion King and Aladdin), and gets the jollies of more people I personally know than any other Disney film of the past ten years (though The Emperor’s New Groove comes close).

And yet, for a movie so unabashedly sincere, Tangled is incredibly funny in a completely 2011 way. Small, slick lines creep their way into the dialogue (“Frankly, I’m too scared to ask about the ‘frog.’” “‘Chameleon.’” “Nuance.”), and it has a penchant for quotable deadpans like few other films in the Disney canon (“You should know that this is the strangest thing I’ve ever done!”). Tangled never tries to be above its fairy tale material, though, and gracefully treads the line between clever and smirking (as opposed to many of its contemporaries, which go for out-and-out troll face).

Good lines about in Tangled. 
"Oh mama, I have got to get me one of these."

Helping to sell the humor is Tangled’s cast of well-rounded, enjoyable characters. Rapunzel operates straight out of the Ariel school of strong female protagonists, but she’s given the chance to develop her character more often than not; I love her little “Eeep”s, and the scene where she rebounds between ecstatic and remorseful (“Best day ever! … I am a terrible human being.”) is one of my favorites. Flynn is a suave, Han Solo-esque rogue who isn’t quite all that he seems (original as sun in the desert, I know, but it works for him), and Levi gives an extra “aw, shucks” charm to him. Mother Gothel is a powerful diva of a villain, equal parts dangerous and drama queen; I also love her faux-motherly relationship with Rapunzel, and she manipulates her through guilt without Rapunzel’s knowing. Even the by-now-requisite animal sidekicks manage to stand out, using silent comedy to the best possible effect. Pascal, the chameleon, uses small, specific movements to sell his character’s humor, which Maximus, the horse, performs in huge, broad strokes—in a way, it’s almost like having Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the same movie.

Speaking of non-vocal parts, I want to use this paragraph specifically to talk about Rapunzel’s parents, the king and queen. Both the king and queen are rarely seen in in Tangled, but they have one of my favorite scenes in the movie—it’s near the two-thirds mark, just before the first lantern is about to be released to the kingdom. The queen (whose resemblance to Rapunzel is remarkable) comes to fetch her husband. She fastens his cloak, meeting his eyes with a weak, sad smile, and we see a single tear fall from his cheek. Though the filmmakers do nothing to explicitly spell it out, we are able to glean exactly what is going through the king and queen’s mind: that what has been alluded to as a yearly festival is, in fact, a painful and vivid reminder of how, eighteen years ago, their only daughter was taken from them, and that time has done nothing to dull their hurt. Dear readers, it lasts all of twenty seconds, and it is HEARTBREAKING.

Their screen time is very brief, but the king and queen both create a lasting impression, at least for me.

Moving on. The animation in Tangled is absolutely gorgeous. In particular, the film makes delicious use of color, particularly the deep greens of the forest and royal purples of the kingdom. There are also a multitude of small details that help give the world its place, things like the textures on Rapunzel’s wall and Pascal’s scales, the small floating particles in the water, and the individually detailed hairs on Rapunzel’s head (they even get disheveled during a scene of conflict). Character animation is stellar as well; everyone looks soft, and different from other CG animated pictures. Lastly, Tangled makes perhaps the best use of 3D I’ve seen in any movie, and though I don’t feel like I’m less involved when I watch it at home on 2D, I sure wouldn’t mind paying to see it in 3D again.

Tangled also happens to be an excellent-sounding film. I consider myself a small Alan Menkin fanboy, and his score for Tangled is exceptional, especially the way he uses the score to punctuate gags and action moments. The songs aren’t stone-cold classics, but are more than pleasant, and while I don’t expect to find someone on the street humming “I’ve Got A Dream,” I could certainly understand if they wanted to.

I was pretty terrified when Tangled came out, but since then, it’s not only assuaged my doubts, but also has moved on to become one of my absolute favorite Disney films; not bad for a movie that just came out less than a year ago. Excellent characters and humor, fun songs, and a story that is all-but-guaranteed to leave a warm, gooey feeling inside the viewer, Tangled comes highly recommended, and is an absolute must-see for folks who are worried that Disney has lost its touch.

Top Three Songs

1. “Mother Knows Best (Reprise)”
2. “When Will My Life Begin”
3. “I’ve Got a Dream”

Favorite Scene

• Rapunzel first leaves the tower

Favorite Character

• Pascal

The Jar Jar

• Old Man

How I Watched It

With all of the prosal love and kisses I gave Tangled, you’d better believe I snagged this one the first day it was available. Tangled comes in three flavors: a single-disc DVD, a double-disc Blu-ray plus DVD, and a four-disc 3D Blu-ray that comes with the 2D version, a DVD copy, and a digital copy. My Samsung is not 3D-compatible, so I was more than happy to save ten dollars and buy the double-disc edition.

As expected, Tangled looks bloody fantastic in high definition. Colors are bright and saturated, and the small details I mentioned earlier are easy to spot with the enhanced resolution. I couldn’t use the surround sound with my review, but I have no reason to believe it would be anything less than at-least-pretty-good.

For a film that just came out last year, there is a surprising lack of bonus features. Included are several surprisingly-lengthy deleted scenes, a few alternate openings to the movie, and a small making of featurette, “Untangled: The Making of a Fairy Tale.” The featurette is hosted by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, and is all of twelve minutes long, and though it does have a few interesting bits, it’s too kid-centric and EPK-happy to be of much educational use to anyone.

To be honest, I’m a bit bummed by this release’s supplemental extras. Perhaps it would make more sense if Tangled had flopped at the box office, or if it was made a while ago, but Tangled was the 10th highest-grossing film of 2010, and the third-highest-grossing Disney film domestically. I suppose they figure the kids wouldn’t watch them anyway (they’re probably right), but I would love for more info about Tangled, especially since it has such a long and complicated development history.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Movie Challenge -- Day 30

Day 30 – Another Favorite that’s not your Favorite Movie

It’s been a long time coming (about a week longer than it should have, by my count), but we’ve finally arrived at the end of the Diversion 2.0 Thirty-Day Movie Challenge. We’ve covered great films, and we’ve covered crap films, and today we’re leaving off with another one of the goodies. Stay tuned, though, for I have a feeling we just might have another series in the works (foreshadowing!). In the meantime, enjoy the final entry in the Diversion 2.0 Thirty-Day Movie Challenge.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is my favorite of the Potter movies, which makes sense, because it’s based on my favorite of the Potter books. It’s also (for my money) the best per-capita adaptation of any of the books; the most essentials moments of the book have been transferred over (with extra, redundant moments cut for running time), and the movie (get this) actually works well as a film and not just as an adaptation of a quadrillion-selling book series.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth installment of the popular book/film franchise, and tells of Harry’s sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry (Daniel Radcliff) starts to learn more about his mortal enemy, Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes), under the tutelage of headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). In addition, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) has been sneaking about the castle in a more unpleasant and suspicious way than usual. Harry must discover all he can about Lord Voldermort, and find out about Malfoy’s plan before it’s too late.

Unlike the previous film, Half-Blood Prince retains several of the book's more light-hearted moments.

Half-Blood Prince continues what worked well for the previous five Potter films: coherent, beautiful art direction and production design, imaginative and, at times, wow-bagging special effects, and excellent casting from a stable of triple-A British talent (Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltraine, Jim Broadbent, Warwick Davis, and on, and on, and on…). Radcliff, Grint, Watson, and Felton have grown into their roles splendidly, and the film gives them all ample opportunities to stretch out and explore their characters. The Potter films really started to visually take off around the third movie, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Half-Blood Prince retains its lovely aesthetic, while adding a heaping helping of colors whenever the mood is appropriate.

What Half-Blood Prince adds, especially in comparison to Order of the Phoenix, is a coherent script. A script that not only shuttles the movie from set-piece to set-piece with minimal effort, but is alarmingly funny; characters share more banter moments, quotable lines, and buggering words in this movie than perhaps the previous three put together. The result is that Half-Blood Prince feels more like a regular movie than almost any other in the franchise, which, to me, felt like a series of connected images and moments than anything coherent; they seemed pretty bloody difficult for me to follow, at least.

Exciting, funny, and incredibly imaginative, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is what all special effects-driven tentpoles should aspire to be, and one of my absolute favorite movies.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Movie Challenge -- Day 29

Day 29 – The Last Movie You Watched

We’ve covered a good deal of movies over the last twenty-eight days, with numerous genres and associated memories. Those entries were selective, but this one is not: what was the most recent movie that you (read “I”) watched, no faking allowed? The last movie I saw in theaters was Captain America: The First Avenger, but I’ve watched a few Blu-rays since then, so I’ll opt for one of those instead.

Inception (2010)

Like many nerdy folk last year, I was interested in checking out the hype surrounding Christopher Nolan’s post-Dark Knight Big Deal Project. Inception was supposed to turn the world upside-down, and tweak your brain from hell to breakfast with its deep treatise on dream philosophy and oodles of mind-bending visual effects. What we got instead was a really damn good caper movie, akin to Ocean’s Eleven, but with The Mirage swapped out for The Animus. It wasn’t, contrary to what was promised on teh interwebz, cinema’s second-coming of Christ, but that didn’t bug me too much, because I first saw it on Blu-ray, at a comfortable distance from all of the promises and expectations surrounding it. I love heist movies, and Inception is one hell of a heist movie.

The plot is surprisingly straight-forward: in order to get home to his estranged family, Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DeCaprio) must pull One Last Job for businessman Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe). Cobb wastes no time in assembling a team for the job, including pointman and researcher Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), grifter Eames (Tom Hardy), driver Yusef (Dileep Rao), and audience-proxy Ariadne (Ellen Paige).

Or, at least, these would be their roles in a traditional caper picture. Cobb specializes in a very unique sort of breaking and entering: he enters peoples’ dreams while they sleep and steal their corporate secrets. Mr. Saito’s job is for Cobb to break into the thoughts of one of his business rivals and plant a thought, rather than filch one. Desperately tricky, but not impossible, and the rest of the film is spent planning the job and then pulling it off.

For all out its touted mind-screwery, Inception is a straight, if well-executed, heist pic.

Most of what I love about Inception comes from what I love about heist pictures in general. First, we are introduced to whatever it is we’re supposed to rob, which is invariably a behemoth of impenetrable security. Then, we’re introduced to the players, one at a time, so as to show off their individual prowess at whatever they’re skilled with. Last, we’re given the job itself, where our team of misfits work together in concert to pull off the caper. Inception takes this structure and sets it against a richly-imagined sci-fi backdrop, but most of the classic heist elements are here, and I’m ever-so-grateful for them.

Where Inception gets its own unique flavor is in its imagination of how dreams work. Nolan does a great job of introducing rules, explaining them, and then altering them in short succession, and it’s fun to hear about the fiction and watch it being bent before our eyes. It’s not as philosophical or deep as the hype may have lead on, but it is well-realized, and I appreciate how Nolan pushes the boundaries of his own concepts.

But, yeah, definitely still some mind-screwery going on here.

A few more things. Nolan has been criticized in some circles for his scripts’ ham-handed usage of irony and foreshadowing, but perhaps he doesn’t do it as smugly as he could, because I like the pulpy, “obvious call-back” nature that some of the lines possess (“You’re waiting for a train…”; “An old man, filled with bitterness and regret;” or, my most recent favorite from The Dark Knight: “You’ve known Rachael her whole life?” “Oh, not yet, sir.” GUESS WHAT YOU BLOODY WILL HAVE BY THE END OF ACT II!!!). Also, I’ve gone quite a ways without discussing Cobb’s struggle with his personal demons, which is a major plot point and affects the film in no small way. The simple truth is that I don’t really care that much for it, or at least as much as I like watching him and his team execute their plan as a well-oiled machine. Lastly, I do enjoy Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-nominated score, even if it does largely consist of BRRAAAAHHHHHMMMM. BRRAAAAHHHHHMMMM, or variations of that motif.

My favorite part about Inception? I got it for a steal! The Blu-ray was like $14 on Amazon a couple months ago, and I plundered the s@$# out of it, along with a copy of Top Gun that I bought with it, as an excuse to use Super Saver Shipping. Inception is a fine, imaginative heist movie, and its solid performances, robust imagination, and stellar execution make it one of my favorite films of last year.

Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Movie Challenge -- Day 28

Day 28 – A Movie With a Celebrity Crush

Until recently, I didn’t play the Celebrity Crush game. In middle and high school, my dude friends had many-a poster of Carmen Electra or Demi Moore on their walls, while my chick friends adorned their lockers with pictures of Josh Hartnett and Justin Timberlake; in both cases, I substituted for fold-out posters I received in issues of Nintendo Power. Now, I’ve decided to indulge myself a little, and pay slightly more attention to projects from certain actresses. Today’s entry is one such film.

Juno (2007)

During Day 15, I went into a mini-rant about the modern Indie Film, and how I don’t care for the cleverer-than-thou, pretentious tones hanging in so many of them. So why the hell did I see Juno?! This film is exactly what I’m talking about when I point at what twerks me off about the whole genre: “different” (but not that different) story structure; sensitive, shy guy acting performances; “hip” and “clever” dialogue vernacular; SHIT soundtrack made up entirely of Neko Case-soundalikes. Yet I went and saw it anyway, and went to a good deal of trouble, too; my dad and I timed it so that we could theater-hop into National Treasure: Book of Dreams to see the Goofy short in front of that movie, then make our way to see Juno immediately after. Why, oh why, did I make such an effort to see a movie that, conceptually, should cause me to hurl myself off of the balcony, if only to end the smugness?

The first reason was Roger Ebert. The second was Ellen Paige.

Juno is the story of our eponymous character, a sixteen-year-old with a hamburger phone and a penchant for Sunny D. Juno wants to try sex, because, well, why not, and ends up getting pregnant in the process. She considers going to an abortion clinic, but decides against it, and makes plans with her parents (Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons) and her baby-daddy (Michael Cera) to keep it. The plot takes her to Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a married couple looking to adopt, and the movie is a character study about how they all interact together.

Contrary to my diatribe-filled first paragraph, I actually didn’t mind Juno so much. Granted, the soundtrack had me casting around to see what sort of theater-floor refuse I could jam into my ears, and I did eventually tire of Juno’s notoriously clever-for-clever’s-sake quips, but the acting was solid across the board (Garner and Simmons in particular), and I thought the story was sweet and likeable. But if Roger Ebert’s four-star review didn’t carry me through the movie, Paige certainly did.

Though very, very "indie," I liked Juno, at least enough to be disappointed when it lost to No Country For Old Men in the 2007 Oscars.

Paige’s Juno is the Kind Of Girl that Boys Like Me tend to gravitate towards: independent, strong women who probably don’t ultimately need male companionship, but like it all-the-same. Paige herself has a kind of offbeat cool about her, and she seems like someone I would want to chill out and listen to music with (but not Neko Case!). Rather than a pie-in-the-sky hottie like Megan Fox or Jessica Alba, Ellen Paige is a down-to-earth, regular girl, and I find that rather attractive.

There are other starlets who are more physically attractive, but Ellen Paige has the most appealing personality out of my celebrity crushes, an attraction point that runs much deeper for me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to comb my bangs into my eyes and play some Fall Out Boy on Rock Band.