The Odyssey (5/5 Stars)

There is a primal quality to this most ancient of tales. It speaks to a deep seated fear of the ancient traveler, that these things you have, your wife, your family, your property, your place in the community, can be taken away by usurpers behind your back as soon as you are far enough away to be unable to defend them. What makes men respect the possessions of a man called to war across the sea, where fate and/or chance can delay or prevent his return. Well, there is this most well known and oft-told story of a hero of the Trojan War, one Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who was lost for almost ten years after the Fall of Troy (gone from home home twenty years in total), but did indeed come back, stronger than ever, and with vengeance for all those who sought to take advantage of his absence.

The Odyssey is a long convoluted tale with a lot of different set pieces. I believe it would be exceedingly difficult to parse this ancient material, honor those elements that are famous, and keep a core through-line. Christopher Nolan’s masterful adaptation not only does this, but adds material that enhances and develops his themes, making the movie version of the story, in important ways, superior to the original text. This movie is not only easier to follow, it means more, because it knows better what the story is about than the original text (or it is at least clearer what Nolan wants the story to mean).

Everyone knows the various encounters that disrupt Odysseus’s return home, the island of the cyclops, the sirens, Charbydis and Scylla. In many tellings, these well-known set pieces overwhelm the scenes at home because, in Ithaca, there is no action, just subtle political intrigue. The strength of this movie comes from Nolan’s focus on first establishing the Ithaca subplot, developing it in an important and dramatic scene in the center of the movie (in the Land of the Dead), and then paying those scenes off in the climatic ending.

How Nolan does this is entirely his addition to the story. He adds two characters not in the original text. In the beginning they are teenage boys, subject to the Ithaca draft for the Trojan War. One, Antinious, draws the short straw, but since he is the only son of his family, Odysseus (Matt Damon) allows another boy, Sinon, to take his place. Antinious promises to Sinon to take care of his family while he is gone.

At the end of the Trojan War, Antinious (Robert Pattinson), we learn, has broken his vow to Sinon and not taken care of his family. Indeed, we find him squatting with a bunch of other suitors in the home of Odysseus, putting pressure on his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) to choose another husband. The situation is fraught with danger. Penelope intuits, I think correctly, that any man she chooses to be her husband would eventually see her son (Tom Holland) as a political threat and kill him. And she can’t just crown her son the king, because, not being of age, he again, would be a target for assassination. The best thing she can do is what she does here, proclaim her confidence in her lost husband’s survival and stall for time. Realistically, she can only do this until her son comes of age. Then her son will have to claim the throne and all hell will break loose.

Sinon (Elliot Page) dies at the beginning of the movie (i.e. the end of the Trojan War), but comes back onto the screen at the midway point in the Land of the Dead to warn Odysseus of the dangers at home. He speaks of Antinious' pledge to support his father and how, when he showed up in the Land of the Dead, his father was the first to greet him. Sinon provides Odysseus a token that Antinious will recognize as the promises he didn’t keep. This exchange is paid off handsomely in the final scenes. Again, there is nothing in the book that provides the character arcs of these two added figures. In the text, Odysseus doesn’t know any of the suitors by name. Nolan added Sinon and Antinious and they do much to hold together the frame of the movie while Odysseus goes on his many journeys between the flagposts.

It is also a testament to Nolan that he puts much effort into strengthening the weaker segments of the journey, as opposed to omitting them entirely or gliding over them, so that all scenes have their merit (a good idea in a 3-hour movie). A particularly good example is Odysseus' encounter with the land of the giant cannibals. The text is unsatisfying. Odysseus loses the majority of his men, and all of his ships but one, in the space of a few pages against a foe with no special characteristics. In the movie, these beings have been transformed into truly terrifying armor-plated giants that have mystifying control over the forest they dwell in. They look so cool, that this usually forgotten part of the story is being used for the movie poster. The scene is also a good example of Nolan’s use of practical effects as opposed to digital trickery. (It involves casting 7 foot tall actors as the giants, and using a 4 ft 11 inch stunt double for Matt Damon. An old Hollywood trick)

The world of 1000 B.C. was an unforgiving place, and within that unforgiving place was an even more unforgiving element, sea travel. One could see a person off on a sea voyage and not only have no idea if they would ever come back, but really have no idea of what actually befell them when or where. Once the boat passed the horizon literally anything could have happened to them. On the open sea/ocean, there are no witnesses. It is no surprise that in Shakespeare there is a consistent trope of shipwrecks and miraculous survivals. Since there was no way to tell if someone died in a shipwreck, there always existed some hope that they could come back someday. This primal hope of the return is as deep-seated as the fear of the traveller mentioned above.

The solution to this anxiety is to instill in society a “Golden Rule” culture, which extends hospitality to strangers. In turn, those strangers are to respect the house and possessions of those extending the hospitality. In The Odyssey, this is known as “Zeus’s Law” and it is mentioned frequently in the movie. Nolan adds one more thing that the writers of the Odyssey could not have possibly known. The story was born in a period of darkness, between the collapse of the Golden Age of Egypt and the Near East (of which Troy was a principal city) around 1100 B.C. and the revitalization of Ancient Greece, circa 600 B.C. One of the cited causes of this first dark age were invasions by “Sea Peoples”. (This phrase comes from contemporaneous Egyptian Heiroglyphs). Nolan makes a connection that the original Trojan Horse is a violation of Zeus’ law since it takes advantage of hospitality, and also makes a connection that the sack of Troy is an invasion by “Sea Peoples”. This is not ahistorical per se (the Mycenaeans did invade by ship) but it would certainly be a surprise to the Mycenaeans to be described as such. Nor would anyone in Ancient Greece conclude that the Trojan Horse was a harbinger and/or the cause of the dark times to come. Instead, they celebrated Odysseus’ cunning. Again, this is an addition by Nolan, but it is not unwelcome. Really the most satisfying element in this movie is Nolan’s ability to meld modern morals onto this ancient tale and still keep and earn its climatic ending, that most primal of cautionary tales. I bet this tale lasts another 1000 years.

Review: Brokeback Mountain (2005)

“I can tell you this, I probably won’t see Brokeback Mountain again. It’s too long and moves too slow and once you’ve seen a great landscape do you really get the same thrill watching it again.”

Max Travis, Brokeback Mountain 2005 Review

I was dismissive of Brokeback Mountain in early 2026. I saw it, not necessarily because it piqued my interest, but because it had been nominated for Best Picture. As an aspiring cineaste, I thought I should see all the movies nominated for Best Picture. My review lasted a few sentences, mentioned that the movie “got the details right” (it beats 39-year-old Max how 19-year-old Max could have known that), and then went on to say I would have rather they nominated “King Kong” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” for Best Picture.

I still think “King Kong” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” got snubbed, but my opinion of “Brokeback Mountain” has risen dramatically upon the second viewing, now twenty years later. It is in fact a very good movie, whose main themes become more recognizable and more appreciable the more life experience the viewer has.

I don’t think it occurred to me when watching this movie in early 2026, but the movie spans twenty years of time, I believe from 1963 to 1983. In 1963, two ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (played by Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), are hired to watch over a herd of sheep on Brokeback Mountain over the summer. By fits and starts and despite a heavy dose of denial, they become lovers. Then the summer ends too soon, and it seems that the romance ends there as well. Ennis Del Mar, already engaged to Alma (played by Michelle Williams), keeps the marriage date and soon thereafter sires two girls. These girls grow up. In the last scene, one of them, Alma Jr., (played by Kate Mara, about six years before I learned her name via House of Cards), is aged 19 and invites her estranged father to her wedding. He inquires as to whether her betrothed loves her, leaving unsaid his concern that her husband-to-be may be just like him, a closeted gay man who married and cheated on a woman he didn’t love.

The story of Brokeback Mountain is about what didn’t happen during those twenty years. These two men fell in love in 1963 and then spent twenty years not acting on it, or acting on it, but only halfway. They both get married and both commit adultery, heading off into the Wyoming wilderness a few times a year on “fishing trips”. There seem to be several opportunities to end the charade. Jack Twist, perhaps too reckless, brings up the possibility several times, and at one point, after Del Mar’s well-earned divorce, certainly believes that this time they will be together for real. Jack Twist is ready to divorce his wife as soon as Del Mar approves of the plan. But Del Mar doesn’t have it in him. He is too much of an ordinary man in the times he was living in.

Heath Ledger’s performance of Ennis Del Mar is very much a revelation. I didn’t quite get why it was so good until the second viewing. The character is very introverted, the little that he speaks seems to escape out of the side of his mouth. And then this character that changes very little, goes through twenty years of not changing enough. Ultimately he is a coward. Not an exceptional coward, mind you, just an ordinary one, up against societal forces that a normal person understandably cower from. A veritable parade of people try to get to him and it seems he would rather be alone than have to deal with the consequences of meeting them as himself.

I use the judgmental label of “coward” purposefully because I think the only way to understand this movie is to see it as a tragedy, one in which there are unfair societal forces sure, but also one in which the characters make bad decisions that detrimentally affect themselves and those around them. Because what Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist are doing is wrong. I’m not talking about the homosexuality. I’m talking about the adultery. This is more pronounced in one marriage than the other. Alma, a woman who loves her husband, is very much wronged by the actions of Del Mar. The other marriage, and this went way over my head on the first viewing, might be a marriage of convenience initiated by the other wife, Lureen Newsome (played by Anne Hathaway) who may have chosen Jack Twist because he was gay (the homosexuality is a lot more obvious with Twist then it is with Del Mar). That is, she may have chosen Jack Twist because she is a lesbian and intended to be through with the romance part of the marriage just as soon as she gave her parents a grandchild. Again, I didn’t pick up on this possibility at all during the first viewing. I half-expect that the first gay person I try out this theory will shake their head as if it was so painfully obvious.

I have notoriously bad gay-dar. This likely comes from being raised in a socially conservative area (Orange County, California) combined with a complete lack of bisexuality. I’ve heard homesexuality is not necessarily black and white, but a spectrum, and it would seem to me that I’m on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from homosexuality. I recall being weirded out by the brief love scenes in this movie twenty years ago. I was still uncomfortable watching them after twenty years, though I understand why the scene is important to the movie. But even a person devoid of homosexuality, and one who finds the physical idea of it frankly repulsive, will understand the historical prejudice against it has no place in our day and age. (The taboo is historically universal which infers, to me at least, a utility beyond mere prejudice. I think it is about public health. You prevent the spread of STDs by having marriage only between male and female virgins.) Modern medicine however obviates that concern, rendering the taboo pointless and ultimately harmful not only to the homosexuals but everyone around them. This movie makes plain the collateral damage, which is mainly borne by the spouses of closeted men. Here, we may consider Alma. She only has one life and Del Mar wasted a good decade of it.

There are very few movies in which the plot revolves around characters that are wasting everybody’s time. These are not exciting movies to watch. We want to see people take action in their lives. We want them to succeed, yes, but if that is not possible, we at least want to see them try. When a movie comes along in which even “trying” does not happen, it screws with the intuitive expectations of the audience. There is this kind of notorious story, first a novel, and then a movie, entitled “Remains of the Day.” The story, by a Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro, was written to deliberately convey the most wasted life possible. He chose to tell a story about an English Butler before and during World War II who runs the manor of an aristocratic with Nazi sympathies. This Japanese author felt that a life dedicated blindly to service was a waste both personally, and in this case, politically.  (It is a very Japanese detail that the author was interested in this theme but couldn’t look inward enough to actually make the story take place in Japan. The ability to do this, is one of reasons why Godzilla Minus One is such an extraordinary film.) One of the plot points is that this butler (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) has the opportunity to hire two Jewish refugees but chooses not to out of deference to his Lord's politics. About a decade later, he expresses relief when he learns that the two girls weren’t murdered. You just want to shake this guy. The movie is splendidly acted and expertly does what it sets out to do. But given that the goal is to tell a story of missed chances and frustration, I can’t say I can recommend it.

If movies about people who make the wrong choices are not exactly easy to watch, they can however be instructive. For a movie like “Brokeback Mountain”, it may serve as a cultural impetus to change. Or it can spur a change in one’s personal life. I once saw a movie called “Broadcast News”, which is a 1987 movie written and directed by James L. Brooks. It is ostensibly a love triangle romance between a television newscast producer (Holly Hunter at her most attractive), a smart, funny and serious reporter (Albert Brooks), and a charming but vapid news anchor (William Hurt). Albert Brooks should have the upper hand in this romantic tug-of-war except he isn’t really trying. Or at least not trying in good faith. He uses his intelligence and sarcasm to belittle his opposition but not get ahead himself. He criticises Holly Hunter for not choosing him, but doesn’t actually put himself out there to be chosen. There is a particular moment in the movie where Holly Hunter essentially gives him the go ahead to win her over and he responds with a fantastically cruel remark. In the end, he doesn’t get the girl not because he can’t (or as he thinks, she doesn’t understand how much better he is then the other guy) but because he wasn’t playing to win. He was playing as if he already lost and, I don’t know, trying to improve his standing in the eyes of history. You know, you only have one life, and it throws enough at you to make things hard enough. What these types of movies do is show you that you don’t have to make it harder on yourself.

Interstellar (4/5 Stars)

Whatever can happen, will happen.

Young Murphy Cooper (Mackenzie Foy) asks her father (Matthew McConaughey) why she was named after something bad. Her father replies that Murphy’s Law is not necessarily pessimistic. All it means is that (given enough time) anything that can happen will happen. The pessimistic side of this looks at chaotic unforgiving nature and all the ways it can and will disrupt the best plans of mice and men. But look at it in another light. For instance, if you believed that humans could adapt to anything, well then, given enough time our species should be able to solve any problem that the universe throws at it. Of course, the supposition that must be true is that human beings actually could someday evolve to be capable of anything, even going so far as to say master space and time. That is a wildly optimistic notion and it is surprising to come from writer Jonathan Nolan and director Christopher Nolan particularly since their non-Batman movies have been great explorations of self-delusion (memory in Memento, magic in The Prestige, dreams in Inception). But here it is, and it is a good thing the Nolan’s are in charge of this project because I’m not sure anybody else could have made it. It is perhaps the most expensive and epic intellectual exercise since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and only the Nolan’s have the box office clout to finance a movie like this. Try to see it in the theater because it is not going make any sense on a small screen.

The movie starts with humans on Earth confronted with the extinction of their species. It takes place about fifty years from now. Old Man Cooper (played by John Lithgow) talks of how when he was a kid it seemed like everyday something new would be invented. Imagine that, six billion people all wanting it all at the same time. But something happened in nature. There is this dust storm blight that kills vegetation. The only crop that can grow now is corn. The blight feeds on all the Nitrogen in the atmosphere and every year it creates more Nitrogen, which only makes the blight even stronger. Population has dropped. Technology has stuttered. Pretty soon humanity won’t even be able to grow corn and then everyone will die.

The last ditch effort of humanity is a secret NASA mission led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to send a spaceship through a wormhole that has just been discovered near Saturn to a distant galaxy where hopefully there is another planet that can sustain human life. Matthew McConaughey, a retired pilot, is chosen for the job. So is Professor Brand’s daughter, Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway), two other guys, and a couple of sentient robots named TARS and KASE. TARS has a humor setting in his A.I. and provides comic relief.

It is a very long journey and one of the most interesting conceits of this story is its portrayal of Einstein’s theory of relativity. One facet of this theory is that as one approaches the speed of light, the slower time goes for the mover. Another is that proximity to a black hole also slows down time for the mover. At one point in the movie a trip to a planet near a black hole that takes merely hours takes many years on Earth. And suddenly Murph Cooper is no longer played by the ten-year-old Mackenzie Foy but by the thirty-something Jessica Chastain. (It should be noted how remarkably similar Mackenzie and Jessica look like each other). I saw a great meme with a picture of Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar that harked back to his first movie, Dazed and Confused, where he uttered the memorable line, “You know what I like about high school girls. Each year I get older but they stay the same age.” Of course this meme changed it a little bit. Now it reads, “You know what I like about my children. Each year they get older, but I stay the same age.”

Then there is a cameo by a well-known actor that I hesitate the mention because none of the advertisment material apparently wanted me to know about before he shows up quite unexpectedly. It is a great turn by that unnamed person. Matthew McConaughey continues his bewildering streak of very good movies. The same can be said for Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. And of course, it looks very impressive, the Black Hole and Wormhole especially. 

I don’t think I can say anymore without ruining some of the surprises. It is worth seeing, that is all. 

Les Miserables (4/5 Stars)

This is that rare movie which deserves both a glowing review and a disappointing one. Greatness is in sight that is perhaps the most tragic part, but right next to some supercharged catharsis and magnificent melodies there are these superfluous plotlines and tedious tunes. I should be a big time producer giving blunt notes with a fat cigar and final cut. Okay people, this is what they should have done.

Let’s start with what is fantastic: First of all the story of Jean Val-Jean is pretty incredible. Hugh Jackman plays a man who was sentenced to nineteen years of forced labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephew. The man who is in charge of him is a steely man of the law named Javert, played by Russell Crowe. On the last day of his sentence, Javert presents Jean Val-Jean with a parole slip that Jean will be forced to carry with him his entire life forward. It is stigmatized piece of paper that announces Jean as a criminal to all who meet him and which condemns him to unemployment and shame from here on out. Then one day, a cold poor and lonely Jean finds himself on the doorstep of a church. The bishop there brings him inside and feeds and clothes him. In the middle of the night, Jean steals the churches silver. The police catch him soon after. Jean lies and says the bishop gave him the silver. The police bring Jean back to the bishop. One word from the bishop and Jean is imprisoned forever more. The bishop tells the police that he indeed gave the silver to Jean. After the police have left, the bishop indeed gives the silver to Jean but tells him that he must use it to become a better man.  And this Jean indeed does, donning a new name, breaking parole, and becoming perhaps the most truly Christian person in a pitiful and treacherous society of industrializing and urbanizing Parisian society circa 1815-1832. Javert searches for Jean the entire time, convinced that criminals do not change and obsessed with bringing him back to justice.

Then there is the story of Fantine, played by Anne Hathaway, a seamstress in Jean’s factory in 1820, cruelly fired for being a single mother (unbeknownst to Jean) and thrown out into the unforgiving streets. In order to pay two sleazy local tavern keepers, played by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter (two sublime three named actors who flawlessly fit into an inner city industrial revolution setting whether in Paris or London, see Sweeney Todd) to take care of her child, Cozette, she heads down to the docks selling first her hair, and then her teeth, and then lastly herself as a prostitute. Finally, she is victim to the Cholera epidemic sweeping the city of Paris.

Les Miserables is a musical and a completely sung through one at that. There is as little as actual talking as possible, although since the singing is live, it does not have the stilted nature that say Evita had. For the most part, the music is better too, at least in the first half of the movie. Jean Val-Jean does not have any great songs, but because his story is so strong, and because Hugh Jackman acts the hell out of the songs, and because the songs are so fast, the lack of any particularly great music does not slow up the movie. It is always a gripping and tremendously uplifting tale of redemption. Fantine’s story is utterly depressing with no way out, but it is saved by some great music, the most famous being the solo “I Dreamed a Dream.” That has got to be one of the saddest things I’ve ever witnessed. I literally became embarrassed to be part of a theater crowd and really wanted everyone else to leave. The tavern keepers provide some much needed comic relief with the catchy tune “Master of the House.” I’m telling you the first hour and a half of this movie really couldn’t have been better.

The movie inexplicably fails when the story jumps ten years to 1832, introduces a bunch of boring characters involved in a revolution that is never really explained, and the music becomes mediocre at best and yawn-inducing at worst.  

You know it really matters to be able to understand what exactly a really slow unmelodic song is all about. Otherwise you are sort of just waiting for it to end. We have a lot of people singing about a revolution but what is the revolution about? Who are they against and for what? I understood the conflict between Javert and Jean Val-Jean, but I have no idea what the barricades we’re all about. If it was against the monarchy, where is the monarch? If it was a class war between the poor and rich (which I think I remember from my high school class is what Engles and Marx thought it was about) than why is the main character a rich person, played by Eddie Redmayne, slumming it up with the revolutionaries. I remember a rather boring song sung by one of his compatriots that questions whether he is more interested in the revolution or some girl he saw from a distance and fell in love with (this being a grown-up Cozette with a woefully underwritten personality). I think that’s a great question. Where does this guy’s allegiance lie? Why am I watching him in a movie named Les Miserables?

This movie should have done one of three things: Cut at least half of Eddie Redmayne’s songs, make the songs he sings decent un-boring songs, or make the revolution actually about poor people fighting against oppression. You know I saw this same pussyfooting around the obvious in this summer’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” If you are going to walk up to the bell of socioeconomic conflict (i.e. class warfare) then be a man and ring it. Now I doubt you will find many Americans in the audience (me included) for that sort of thing but when it is left out, the conflict has no antagonist and becomes dreadfully boring. Let’s put up some barricades! Who are we fighting? I don’t know!

If I were in charge, I would have also used the melody for “I Dreamed a Dream” more than once. Really, there is no reason not to when the movie does not come up with anything better and yet insists on having very slow solo songs. It helps when the characters are forgettable and their problems are not interesting to have them sing a melody that is by itself worth hearing. There was this inexplicable love triangle between three undeveloped characters. The least known of them spends about five minutes of our time singing about being left out. Change that tune to the Dream one and it might have been a little more bearable to sit through as we wait for the story to cycle back to the interesting characters once again.

One more thing and try to take this as something other than homework. This story, Les Miserables, has gotten flak before for a benign reason. It is about the struggles of the very poor but its audience has been traditionally very rich. Long running lavish Broadway musicals that win lots of awards have much higher ticket prices than the average movie and going to the theater to see an unapologetically cry-inducing musical about poor people is, let’s be honest, a bit of an upper-crust thing to do. This movie is worth seeing, it is true, but go ahead and also see this year’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” another great movie about poor people that was actually made by poor people. Both have abject poverty. Both have disease and death. Both have traumatic events. Hell, both have bad teeth and prostitutes. But see them both. And then think about what you saw and ask yourself: why are they so very different?

The Dark Knight Rises (4/5 Stars)

Occupying Wall Street, if only

I would say that director Christopher Nolan’s greatest ambition with his Batman trilogy is to make the effort worth his time and talent. Here is a guy who has made some of the best and most original movies of the past ten years (Memento, The Prestige, Inception) and yet finds himself in between each of his better projects having to make yet another Batman picture. He made the first one because he was not yet a famous director. He made so much money that he was practically forced to complete a trilogy. Of course, in this day and age, trilogies are things of the past when more money can be wringed out of the type of fans that feel they are honor bound to “must see” every movie about a character (see Twilight, Harry Potter, Terminator, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman).  But with this movie I think we can be certain that Christopher has finally paid all of his Hollywood dues.  From here on out we should be able to enjoy his creative license unfettered by silly comic books

Comic books are silly. They are so silly that almost every trick a serious movie director can throw at an adaptation of one cannot completely overcome the unreality of it all. It takes a great director to come close though and Nolan employs some rather great tricks to get as far as he did.  

First, he has created a true never before scene spectacle by embracing IMAX and physical effects as opposed to 3D and CGI in his action sequences. There is a rawness and realism to physical effects that makes violence feel more visceral than computer generated effects. Compare the fight scenes in this movie with another comic book tent-pole this year, “The Avengers,” and you will see what I mean. There is an element of horror present in the way the main villain Bane, played by art house muscle-man Tom Hardy, goes around beating the shit out of people with his bare hands that is noticeably absent in “The Avengers.” You look at the way he kicks ass and go, “ouch.” It’s good stuff. (On another note, a serious detriment to the effectiveness of the action is the PG-13 rating. Bane twists and breaks a lot of necks in this movie, but these actions are only visually implied and always just off-screen.)  The IMAX is incredible and actually worth paying more money to see (as opposed to say anything but “Avatar’ in 3D). The cool thing is that Nolan is not just using IMAX for cityscapes and sunsets; he is using it for conversations and fistfights. And it isn’t for just a scene; half of the movie was filmed with IMAX cameras. There is more clarity, there is more detail, and it is far grander.

Second, Nolan actively tries to ignore elements of the comic book. Take for instance the character of Selina Kyle, played by Anne Hathaway. In the comic book she is a leather bound fanboy fantasy known more often as “Catwoman.” The name “Catwoman” is not uttered in this movie, nor does Selina Kyle spend her alter ego time in fetishistic leather carrying a whip. Nolan rightly chooses to drop these details and focus on the woman. In fact, he does this with Batman, played again by Christian Bale, as well. There is far more Bruce Wayne in this movie than his alter ego. And it works too. Usually it is the villain that spruces up a sequel because the hero is already established. Not here, Bruce Wayne is a more compelling character than the mysterious Bane. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Bane is never without this breathing contraption that covers his features and masks his emotions and motivations. You need to be able to see evil geniuses without their disguises in order to grasp the understanding needed to truly fear them. Masks are for flunkies like Darth Vader. Keep that in mind as you watch this movie.

Third, Nolan always contains an undercurrent of current political issues in the Batman movies. In the second movie, we had the Dark Knight providing vigilante justice against terrorism using techniques Dick Cheney would deem absolutely necessary. (It is a relief to see a movie tilt right in its politics every once in a while if only for originality’s sake.) In this movie, we have a strong current of class warfare. One of the early targets of Bane is the stock market where he takes several bankers as hostages. Then there is Selina Kyle, the cat burglar who steals from mansions and tells a vacuous billionaire, “There is a storm brewing, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Because when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” It would be an incredible and ballsy thing to do and pull off this type of conflict. Here you have Batman, whose alter ego is a billionaire playboy who inherited all his wealth and stature, and on the other side you have Bane, a man born with nothing in what is referred to as the worst jail on Earth. He escapes and builds his army of menial laborers and wayward forgotten youth underground in the sewers of Gotham city till one day he rises up to daylight and takes over the city. Unfortunately even though Bane professes that his many acts of terrorism are acts of class warfare against the greedy and ungrateful rich amongst us, it turns out it is just a cover for more humdrum motivation. Bane wants to simply destroy Gotham entirely. I know, I know. That disappointed me too. It’s a recycled nefarious plot that the movie freely admits is identical to the one in the first movie, “Batman Begins,” except this time the villain is going to try it with a nuclear bomb.

 There is a problem with that of course visually speaking. For those that remember “Batman Begins,” the Gotham in that movie looked and felt like a leaking shit-bucket, something that would actually make sense (using warped logic but still some logic) to wipe off the face of the Earth. You can’t say that of the city in which “The Dark Knight Rises” takes place. There has been a rather grand transformation of Gotham between the years, even more so considering the way the city looked like in “The Dark Knight.” I mean the first place looked fictional, the second place looked very much like Chicago, and this one is obviously Manhattan. The inconsistency is something that might make one wonder just where the hell is Gotham and why can’t the makers make up their mind about it. As far as I can tell, they changed the city to Manhattan in order to service a plot point. They needed a place with bridges to blow up. Again, the problem is that Manhattan nowadays looks unavoidably like a big pile of money. So a story about class warfare could certainly work, but a story about destroying a city because of its wretchedness wouldn’t. I will however give the movie credit in one important respect. It wasn’t the logistical nightmare that “The Dark Knight” was. Bane’s plans may be too grandiose to be plausible but they still followed the internal logic of the character as opposed to the meticulously thought out miracles of foresight the Joker, supposedly an agent of chaos, kept accomplishing.

Let me take a moment to explain what I mean by “too grandiose to be plausible,” because that phrase strikes to the heart of what the problem is with most comic book movies. Nowadays these movies are not simply content to be fun-filled frivolity. Nolan’s Batman trilogy is perhaps the best example. There is plenty of psychology, pathos, and Deep Meaning all over these movies. However the schemes of the villains are far too successful to make any sense given how simplistically they are accomplished or on the other hand how simplistically they are brought down. Because of this, the movie gains a feeling of unreality whenever say an entire police force armed only with handguns decides it would be good tactics to charge a line of tanks and machine guns at least fifty feet away from it in a narrow alley (and actually succeeds in doing so). This feeling of unreality tends to undercut all of the psychology, pathos, and Deep Meaning. There’s this great quote from Spiderman. It goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In respect to moviemaking, writers and directors have the power to pull heartstrings, change minds, and make us care deeply for the lives of fictional people. At the same time though, if they choose to commit the viewer to such catharsis, they also have the responsibility to not fill the rest of the movie with contrived bullshit. That means if you want to make me care about Michael Caine crying up a storm, I better not see action sequences that confound the laws of logic or physics or both later on in the movie. I really don’t think that is too much to ask. For the record, “The Dark Knight Rises,” for the most part does not have this problem. It just has it to the point where I cannot say it is a great movie. It isn’t. 

Alice in Wonderland (4/5 Stars) March 15, 2010

Gorgeous Overpriced Nonsense

It goes without saying that having Tim Burton adapt a version of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ is a fantastic idea. I was very excited when I first heard about it. Even more so when the first pictures of it came out with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Once I learned that he had managed to get a Jabberwock into the story (something that had not been done in any previous adaptation) my anticipation was truly piqued. Having said that the movie is sort of a let down. I say it is a let down because it completely betrays the tone, theme, and characters of Lewis Carroll. But only ‘sort of’ because Tim Burton outdoes himself with an incredibly detailed and fantastic vision of Wonderland. 

It goes without saying that Tim Burton should never try any story that is completely original (in fact besides Frankenweenie I don’t think he ever has.) The guy is just terrible at narrative cohesion and character development. This is perhaps why his best movies are adaptations of already complete stories like Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd while some of his not very good movies are adaptations of shorter stories that he unsuccessfully tries to elaborate a larger story on like Sleepy Hollow or invent an entirely new plot for like Planet of the Apes. This movie is of the former category. The original books are very episodic in nature and don’t easily translate into a movie already (saying this Walt Disney did an awesome job doing just that in the 1951 film). But this isn’t a straight adaptation. It is a sequel that takes place after the original books in which an adult Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole in an attempt to escape an awkward marriage proposal. Once in Wonderland she is confronted with a White Rabbit, a pair of not quite human twins named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, a Dodo, and a mouse. All of them can speak. They inform her that she is part of a prophecy that foretells the frabjous day when she will slay the Jabberwock. All of a sudden a bunch of armored red cards and a Bandersnatch rush out of the jungle and try to capture all of them. Apparently the Red Queen has been terrorizing the countryside for no particular reason. The White Queen can’t do anything about it because she’s like Ghandi. The Mad Hatter, well for his part, he’s completely insane. If you have trouble making sense of this then that’s probably because it doesn’t make any because like all nonsense it can’t.

The great thing about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (and the reason that it is one of my favorite books) is not its flights of fancy or imagination. It’s the brilliancy of its logic and wordplay. Here’s a pretty good example, which is not in the movie: 

‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
‘I’ve had nothing yet, ‘ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’
‘You mean you can’t take LESS,’ said the Hatter: ‘It’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.’

All good logical nonsense has three levels to it. The first is a flat statement of nonsense (Have more tea). The second is the reasoned response (I can’t take more). The third is the explanation of the earlier nonsense and the logical refutation of the reasoned response (take MORE than nothing). Carroll’s books are entirely full of this sort of thing. He is a brilliant wordsmith and probably impossible to have a normal conversation with. He has the ability to flip conversations onto their back and tickle them to death. The unifying theme in his book was always little Alice’s reaction to this nonsense. By nature she is an imaginative girl (Won’t read a book without pictures) who follows her curiosity without thinking (why not go down a rabbit hole? Curious and curiouser). But the new world she finds isn’t very kind to her. In fact, almost across the board everyone she meets is incredibly rude. Alice being good mannered tries to humor the odd creatures she meets but is bandied about with illogic and contemptuous behavior. The Red Queen tops them all by insisting on good manners while indecently shouting “Off With His Head!” at everyone. Finally Alice gets angry herself and ultimately rejects the nonsense and the dream (Who cares for you? You’re just a pack of cards!) This is not the embrace of imagination. It is quite the opposite. Alice’s arc is one of greater maturation. She is shedding childish silly things. It is fitting that Carroll was the tutor of the real Alice. The story is a perfect revenge of a schoolteacher. Take the uninterested daydreaming pupil and insert her into a world filled with even more childish, inattentive, rebellious, and ADD prone creatures. See how she likes it. 

At least that’s what I got out of it. Tim Burton gets the exact opposite. In his movie, all the characters were apparently friends of Alice when she was there the first time. What’s more Alice never objects to the silly things that go on around her in this world. In fact, the whole moral of the story is to exalt your imagination. Alice needs to embrace her muchness and think impossible thoughts. This is okay a moral as any but it really hurts Carroll’s much strived for logical nonsense. Without the reasonable objections the movie never gets past the first level of simple stated nonsense. The effect of this is a movie completely deprived of laughs and any logical explanation of the silliness. At one point Johnny Depp recites the first stanza of Carroll’s famous poem ‘Jabberwocky.’ It goes something like this:

Twas brillig and the slithy toves 
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves 
and the momewraths outgrabe.

Now since Alice doesn’t object or ask him what the hell he’s talking about, this stanza is never explained. If you haven’t read the book I feel sorry for you. I only truly appreciated it in the book after Humpty Dumpty explained all the portmanteaus contained within it. That stanza makes sense take my word for it.

So the story doesn’t make any sense, isn’t funny, and completely misinterprets the original masterpiece, why then am I giving it four stars. Well, because the movie is goddamn gorgeous that’s why. Say what you want about Burton’s storytelling skills but he is a consummate visual artist. Every setting, set decoration, and character in the movie has been lovingly crafted into his unique visionary style. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen is angelic. Mia Wasikowska, as Alice, looks fantastic in her suit of armor. Helena Bonham Carter and Crispin Glover make great rotten hearts. Johnny Depp looked…interesting? The White and Red Armies of chess pieces/cards are sights to behold. And the Jabberwock was everything I hoped it could be and more. None of the actors give very good performances because of the complete lack of motivation the characters have for anything they do, but hey they look great doing it. For the love of God, will somebody get Tim Burton a good screenwriter!

I must complain about one more thing, and that is the 3D ticket price and the vast hypocrisy that is behind. The ticket cost is now $16.50, four dollars more than the very high normal ticket price of $12.50. The extra four dollars are there to pay for the glasses. The theater will not let you bring in previously purchased glasses. You must buy them new every single time. At the end of the showing the theater has the audacity to ask us to “Go Green” and recycle the glasses, presumably so they can sell them once again for $4 to another unwitting customer. If the theater really cared a wit about the environment they would allow us to reuse the glasses ourselves. Then they wouldn’t have to make so many unnecessary copies of them. Go Green? Bullshit I say! Shame, movie industry, Shame!

Brokeback Mountain 02/03/06

Two guys take jobs as ranch hands, spend a whole summer, and fall in love. It should end there but the whole world is against them. The world eventually wins and this romance becomes a tragedy. Such is the case of Brokeback Mountain, which for good reasons has scored alot of recognition this awards season. Not just because it's about gay cowboys, and this is Hollywood. It's getting recognition because it is a real story that gets all of the details right. (As far as I can tell)
However is this movie better than all the others this year. Does it deserve the best picture? In my humble opinion no. I would compare this movie to other best picture winners like Dances with Wolves, and Out of Africa. Yes they are great movies, yes they deserve recognition, but whoever watches these anymore. I can tell you this, I probably won't see Brokeback Mountain again. It's too long and moves too slow and once you've seen a great landscpe do you really get the same thrill in watching it again. 
Not saying that this movie is bad, but there are better ones out there this year. Here are my top five movies I'm thinking of buying this year. I will definitely watch these movies more than once. 1. King Kong 2. Pride and Prejudice 3. Matchpoint 4. Walk the Line 5. The 40-year old Virgin. These are movies I would want to see nominated this year. 
Here are the movies that were nominated instead: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Crash, and Munich. (I have yet too see Crash). All good movies, but are they the best. There is a bias in the academy, I think, towards drama, and against comedy, adventure, and remakes. In my opinion it is just as hard to make a superior comedy than it is to make a superior drama. So in that course of logic, hopefully we would have a balance of those genres, but it seems that there are certain films that we feel obligated to nominate whether they really deserve it or not. This hurts twofold. It brings a film attention that doesn't deserve it, and much more harmful: it takes away attention from films that do deserve our praise. (i.e. Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, When Harry Met Sally..., Groundhog Day, There's Something about Mary) It really is a shame. Someday I hope that comedies and comedians get more credit. There's as much good in making people laugh as there is in making them cry.