Film: Batman Begins

But is it any good? Enjoyable and sets up what could be a very good sequel/series, but also a little annoying because it could easily have been better in a few key areas. 7.5/10

I am a little conflicted about Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan has a deserved reputation as a very good filmmaker (and a maker of very good films). I also think that he “gets” Batman, the character, and that he creates a terrific mood in the film. On the other hand, Nolan falls prey to the raid-cut-shaky-camerawork that I hate hate hate, the plot of the film is rather poor, and the one gaping hole in the Batman character is the dubious distinction he draws between killing people and not saving people from a situation that he has wilfully put them in.

On the whole, I feel inclined to be generous in my assessment. For me, Batman is possibly the most interesting of well-known comic book characters (along with Spider-Man, and possibly the X-Men ensemble – so no surprise that when handled by people who “get” them, these three have led to the best superhero movies of recent years), and so it is good to see him revitalised for the big screen. On the whole, Nolan understands what drives him – he wants to make Gotham better, so that what happened to him will not happen again. This is not quite the same as revenge – just as well, as Bruce Wayne gets some closure here with the capture of his parents’ killer. Christian Bale is excellent, as he understands that he has to play three roles – the central character and his two acts, Batman and billionaire playboy. He is surrounded by an impeccable cast, with the possible exception of Katie Holmes, who has a rather weak role to start with. It leads to a couple of nice moments, one where she sees Bruce playing the playboy role and realising what he is giving up in his crusade, and one at the end which could have been awful but thankfully avoids the Hollywood ending. But she doesn’t have to be a rather unconvincing district attorney, and a lot of that role could be given to a more plausible character, or indeed to the slightly underdeveloped cop Jim Gordon. (The concept for this “prequel” film is loosely based on Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, and re-reading that recently I was struck by how much it is Gordon’s story, and how much you would have to add to the story to make it a satisfactory stand-alone film.)

Cillian Murphy is great fun as secondary villain the Scarecrow, a good choice that fits well with the film’s theme of overcoming your fears. (Bruce chooses the emblem of the bat partly to overcome his own childhood trauma with bats and the past weakness that he believes caused his parents’ deaths, which just about stays the right side of contrived.) Liam Neeson is good as his main adversary, although Ken Watanabe is wasted in a cameo and the now-mandatory everything-you-know-is-wrong twist (see also Mr & Mrs Smith) is completely unnecessary, adding nothing to the film. What is disappointing is that Neeson has a completely crazy plan, rather than something a little simpler that could have provided a nice contrast to Batman’s own; you can’t run an “ends justify the means” argument if the means seem completely outlandish and unlikely to meet the desired ends.

The final major complaints are the reliance on a ridiculous contraption for the villains’ plot – a machine that vaporises water from a good distance, apparently no directional, yet has no effect on people right next to it, even though humans are 80% water – and the action scenes. Both fight scenes and the obligatory car chase are nothing but flash cuts that are virtually incomprehensible (I saw this on an Imax screen, which made this even worse). Why?

But I freely concede that I set my expectations high for a combination of Nolan and Batman, and he got close. Mostly this film makes me think that a sequel with the same director and cast could be very good - a better plot and less need to set up the characters would have real potential. If they can film the action scenes properly.

Film: Mr & Mrs Smith

Mr & Mrs Smith has a fun premise: a husband and wife are, unbeknownst to each other, assassins, and each is hired to kill the other. Or, at least, that's the word on the street. The film is most fun for the short period that this premise holds, but there's a ridiculous twist (because there has to be a twist) and it's really all just a metaphor for a relationship in trouble - but look, they have more in common than they thought, and once they discover that...

But is it any good? Passable entertainment, amusing in places.

Despite rumours of on-set problems, Doug Liman is a capable director, though I question his decision to give a minor role to Adam Brody (Liman exec produces The OC). Pitt and Jolie generally seem to be enjoying themselves. But the real problems are with the plot. The film doesn't have an ending (seriously, it treats its own plot so lightly that it simply does not bother to resolve it, or even hint as to how it may have been resolved off-camera). I suspect that rather a lot of footage ended up on the cutting room floor - it is probably too long at 2 hours, anyway - but what really irks me is the twist, which I will discuss in spoilertext (highlight to read - unless I change the background colour of the blog at some point, in which case you'll be spoiled. Sorry, but style is more important, and substantial, than this plot):

There is any number of ways of setting up the basic premise quite by accident. Unfortunately, this film feels the need to have a "big reveal", presumably just because every other film has one these days, and it's nonsensical. It transpires that the two agencies the Smiths work for have just - after 4 (or 5) years discovered that they are married, cannot tolerate this, and decide to get together to bump them off. Which they do by sending Brody out to be assassinated by both Smiths simultaneously, apparently hoping that they will both kill each other in the process, leaving Brody alive. There is simply no need for this ridiculous "reveal" and I blame M. Night Shyamalan.
Bah. Spoilers end.

Film review: The Consequences of Love

Titta spends his days sitting in a hotel bar. Once a week, he receives a large suitcase full of money. There seems little else to his life, until he responds (or overreacts) to the attention of barmaid Sofia.

Not far from the end of this film, I was looking forward to extolling its virtues. Chief among them is that writer/director Paolo Sorrentino is thoroughly in control of his film; every scene is precisely shot, every brief flashback feels important, every part feels well-cast. He also laces the film with dry wit and is well-supported by good sub-titles for the Enlgish audience. I also appreciated the ambiguities, and a director who didn't feel compelled to hit the viewer over the head with motivations. I was confident that enough would be revealed in the end.

My problem was that the end of the film fell flat; it feels as if a piece of the puzzle is missing. What happens is clear enough* and most of the "why" is there, it's just that the "why" is rather under-whelming. There are enough cryptic signs that I could be missing something that a second viewing would reveal, and indeed Peter Bradshaw writes a sterling appreciation of the film that very much made me want to see it. I didn't get any real sense of Sofia's motives, or that Titta is repeating past mistakes or, really, why he makes the decision that he ultimately makes. So I nearly really enjoyed this film, but in the end I was disappointed. Shame, ebcause it was so damn stylish.

* With a couple of semi-important exceptions (SPOILERS):
1) Does Sofia's bizarrely under-motivated (a la North by Northwest) accident when she is on her way to meet Titta, or has she already decided not to? The order of scenes would suggest the latter, but then why show it at all?
2) Is that Sofia in the mall with the mustachioed man from the beginning of the film, or just someone else with the same coat that Titta mistakes for Sofia?