Batman Begins: The Thread

Oh, I thought he was good too. The only thing is, he was cute enough that part of me kept kept rooting for him to get away with it. They needed someone slightly creepier looking.

partly wanting the him to get away with it is what makes a good villain. that was why Gladiator sucked, the dude was just a whiny little bitch

i've been folllowing c. murphy since he was nothing. i really hope he doesn't suck in this

Oops, sorry Nicole!

that must be an homage to Kim Basinger's nipple pokies in Burton's Batman, which were quite loudly pointed out to me (though I was quite aware of them, having just turned 12 in June, 1989) by my uncle.

i like burton's batman movies ok, though burton has made a bunch of better movies, to be sure.

bale shirtless. rowr.

michael caine. the only actor in the movie who rose above the plot-point dialogue. mentally cheered whenever he was on-screen.

cinematography. beautiful in places. the drop-off scene in the warehouse where the thugs are all like "oh no, someone's in here" and they're walking around slowly and shooting into random corners -- there's this one bit where the camera catches a whiff of smoke coming up from the guy's semi-automatic, and i was like "woah."

one small bit near the end where gordon's driving the Mach 3 Turbo-mobile -- he runs over some cars and there's this great reaction shot of him wincing and whispering "sorry," which is awesome because these types of scenes always cut to the hero looking stoic or whatever, but that line just made Oldman's character and the whole situation about 1,000 times more human, at least for a minute or so.

nay:

neeson and ninjas and the whole league of shadows thing. i don't know, it just seemed impossible to treat seriously in any way. neeson's much too human-sized to fit the cartoon of an immortal freemason-type committing genocide every hundred years or so. he's a great actor (see: kinsey), not a great piece of contrived plot machinery.

katie holmes. see david edelstein's review for a totally OTM take on her.

Overarching Themes: vigilante justice vs. due process. does this seem like a relic to anyone else? like a strange meme that defined a couple of U.S.-centric decades last century and allowed so much shit to go down? i.e., the macho stories we tell about ourselves to allow us to have our 'justice' cake and eat our 'benevolent' image too. very war-in-iraq, fox-news-esque. this was really repellant to me in the movie. seems so stupid and beside the point. do i need to loosen up here? probably.

the action scenes. just totally uninspired, incoherent, way too much close-up.

overall, a big disappointment, mainly because i had high hopes. memento and insomnia were incredible, but this felt like it was made by committee = what the hell happened nolan? i mean, it's probably not near as bad as half the movies coming out this summer, but don't expect something inspiring. spend your $10 on a cd or something, save this one for netflix or any situation where you can watch a movie for cheap, at home, with booze and friends and such.

I suppose it did but -- not that this is required, obviously -- at the same time it wasn't per se unique. (See the Pinter-scripted Betrayal from the early eighties as one example; doubtless others exist.) I suppose the other tag was meant to be the identity of the killer, which alas I guessed five seconds after I first read something about the film years back, so that reduced it back to the conceit. In some respects I'm actually really looking forward to this film precisely because it might be the first Nolan film I full on enjoy.

The rooftop chase is 'third person', and hence almost lyrical--if your lyrics were emoted while on speed.

Regarding Holmes--good agent.

neeson and ninjas and the whole league of shadows thing. i don't know, it just seemed impossible to treat seriously in any way. neeson's much too human-sized to fit the cartoon of an immortal freemason-type committing genocide every hundred years or so.

oh come on! you cant go wrong with ninjas.

I enjoyed it. Thought it looked GREAT and hurrah! for subtle CGI whenever it was used. Could've done without the requisite loud car chase smasheroo and the stupid oneliners (plus, the "I'm Batman" line is old and tired by now. Guess I don't like my Batman jokey). Ending wasn't as suspenseful as I think they planned it to be - just loud and choppy. But I loved Scarecrow -- scariest villain in a movie in a loooong time (bats coming out his mouth?!? Whoah.) --- and overall thought the thing was just really well put together.

P>S> Why does Katie Holmes' face look like it's melting at the sides?

Biggest problem I don't think has been mentioned yet but it's a disjointed film in ways, one that hangs together and then doesn't, almost a crazy-quilt. More on that tomorrow, I'll type up something for FT I think. Still, though, worth it and well worth seeing on an IMAX screen. Might see it again in the theaters but...we'll see. Have to think about it. Definitely will get the DVD eventually though.

Cast a Schumacher-directed _Batman Begins_

Haha the scarecrow was all 'the Bat-MAN', stole the fucking show

* It's a film with too many ideas/approaches rather than too little, and better the former option than the latter. It has to maintain a careful balancing act which it doesn't quite succeed it but comes very very close to with. Packing in everything from classic urban/conspiracy theory paranoia (modern variants beginning with the 'mysteries' genre in popular fiction in the nineteenth century in Europe) to working schlub woes is a noble attempt, actually, the more so because it demands shifts in tone that flow well in order to work. As such the film occasionally falls down, feels clunky, steps out of its flow, though not so much as to damage. It did stop me up a few times as it goes, though, partially because there *were* scenes when such transitions were handled with aplomb (think Wayne having to dismiss the party guests when he has just found out the true (?) identity of Ducard) if not perfect grace. But I never felt completely taken out of the film even when I could sense some parts and exchanges I could almost literally look past or slightly ignore. Importantly, whether in terms of language or motivation or even just general depiction, Ebert's call on the film -- "The movie is not realistic, because how could it be, but it acts as if it is" -- nails it. Much like, say, Peter Jackson's interpretation of Lord of the Rings where a guiding principle was to avoid irony completely, here the same principle clearly works. Much of what is in the plot, and even the specifics of the script, could have been purest camp if played/directed differently. Here Nolan and crew took the chance like Jackson et al that if they filmed it and played it straight it would work more often than not. So Christian Bale's "I AM DOOM" Batman voice *almost* could fail but holds through well and in fact arguably works even more effectively as the film goes, as we get used to it more. With that as an effective anchor, the rest follows.

* Hands down best overall performance -- Oldman. Nothing against Bale at all, in fact, because I think he did a fine, fine job, but Oldman was, just, the best balance between the hyperreality of the setting and story and a regular Joe, and played it as such, and never stepped out of it. That Oldman knows how to nail an American accent was clear years ago, he's done many inspired performances since with many different varieties of same. That he could *perfectly* disappear into the role -- reminiscent of Miller's Gordon in his Batman: Year One without being an exact equivalent -- was inspiring, in a way. He was easily the best character I could enjoy seeing a separate movie about, an alternate approach where it's Gordon's story with Batman to the side. Part of it was the deft hints at there being more to say -- the brief observation of his family at home, the sense of his frustrations and disappointments over the years -- but part of it was him feeling very lived in, very there. It was almost too good at parts, if that makes sense -- where Katie Holmes was just bluntly functional at best (I honestly think the tone of her voice was the worst part, something too...I dunno, light, breezy even?), Oldman's Gordon could have been something near to a documentary performance. And as noticed above, that brief 'Sorry!' almost says it all.

* As for the rest, good ensemble cast with some standouts and some thankless parts. Caine basically played Alfred-as-Caine but the humour was definitely a good outlet without making his role comic -- his combination of frustration/anger/sarcasm/being 'proper' when delivering the push-up line as the Wayne manor burns was emblematic, as was the one time when his sudden burst of anger towards Wayne gave just enough hinting of depth without being a forced "Look! See! Depth!" moment. I liked Freeman's easygoing nature but the role was plug and play, more's the pity. Hauer having gone from being Roy Batty twenty five years ago to being a proto Dr. Tyrell now was kinda funny if you look at it that way (and I do). Holmes, as mentioned...well, anyway. Did a poor job handling The Big Issue Speeches, but then again she was stuck with them -- as was...

* Neeson, who essentially played a Dark Side of the Force Quigon Jinn. Now don't get me wrong, he did a fine job of it, though as friend Tom told me afterwards, "He has to watch out or he'll be typecast as Mr. Miyagi from here on in" (and for all I know he was that in Kingdom of Heaven). And as I mentioned, the whole trick lies in playing it straight, which he did -- I could be wrong, I don't think he smiled once in the film, which was true to the character as set up in this interpretation, a pitiless man with an overarching mission. But as an opponent for Bale things fell apart a touch when the two of them were facing off verbally towards the end -- given that the actual knock-down drag-out final fight was a mash and mush of quick edits that frankly I found hard to follow, the confrontation in Wayne Manor needed to work more than it did, especially since the twinges of ambiguity worked much more effectively at the start of the film during the training than at the end. That the film allowed Bale space to explore the ambiguity more during its length is to its credit, that it fell off too swiftly towards the end isn't. In the end, the last two-line exchange between the two on the train before Batman escapes works better and says more about the two characters than the Manor sequence as a whole.

* Meanwhile, Murphy was *very* nice as Scarecrow, the more so because he played him as a character who wasn't necessarily invested in being Scarecrow all the time, or rather that he didn't need to become Scarecrow to be unsettling, evil-doing, etc. The spookout sequences with Batman and Falcone were brutally effective (though the bad 'lighten up' joke with Batman shouldn't have been there) but the absolute most scary part was Crane introducing Holmes's character to the poison prep room and calmly, casually talking about what happens next. Followed as it was by her panicked bolt away (and how that was edited), the scenes worked *very* well. I would like to see him come back if they can make the character all the more damaged from the results of this film, building on it rather than just simply more of the same.

* And speaking of scary. Y4ncey called it and while I don't think it was truly *always* creepout central it got closer than not. Where I think the action scenes could be flawed they were at their best when suggesting uncontrollable chaos and fear, thus the panicked men at the drug dropoff being taken out in a group. But it was the building up to that point which made it work, the sense that something was picking them off one by one. It immediately reminded me of Alien, an impression further heightened by the way Batman would grab victims at points to suddenly haul them up in the sky, unexpected, terrifying -- think of Harry Dean Stanton suddenly hauled up into the shuttle bay by the still not full seen/apprenhended alien itself. Another film referenced, at least semi-consciously, was probably The Silence of the Lambs -- anything at least partially set in an asylum might well have to deal with that nowadays, but the sense of different layers and atmospheres in the asylum, as well as the spreadeagled (but not eviscerated) Falcone on the searchlight, called the comparison to mind. There were other steals and references but always fairly deftly done, no complaints there at all -- when it works, it works well.

* Random thoughts since I actually do have to work a bit here -- the music wasn't that bad, but didn't stand out, it was appropriate, for better or for worse; the Iceland-based shots for the training at the beginning were indeed really something, very good atmosphere, as well as excellent set design for the monastery itself; similarly using Chicago as the base for the city itself was a nice variant on using NYC, say -- favorite shot might actually be the early morning one where Batman stands calmly on an outcrop of building while the camera swoops around to silhouette him against the rising sun; the Batmobile made me think of the Dark Knight Returns tank in miniature -- and why not?; a couple of instances aside, the humor throughout seemed to be handled just fine so I'm not too sure about the complaints there; the actual death of Wayne's parents was I thought kinda weak (and the whole stethoscope thing and all that...eh, whatever); absolutely LOVED how there were no credits at all until the very end, not even the film title; sound and visual design top notch.

And there ya go. For now!