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All words posted on this blog are the sole property of Michael Duffy (except where noted). Images are collected from the web and are shared herein to illustrate film reviews and opinions. If you are the owner of an image and do not wish to see it used for these purposes, please email me and I will remove it. |
Friday, July 29, 2005
On Deadly Ground ... and ... Eros  Yes, I'll admit this is quite a strange pairing -- but this is how my mind has been running lately, gotta love the trash and the art! Caught this Steven Seagal movie on TV here a week ago. What a crock, but deserves a quick note as one of the last, desperate attempts at 80s (although by this time it was already 1994) tough-guy nihilism and mysogyny. This concerns Seagal as a half-Native oil company "enforcer" (or at least that's how I took it) who eventually realizes that the company he is working for is part of some very dodgy dealings and corporate pollution in the Alaskan mountains. Michael Caine, playing the nasty corporate oil magnate, seems like he's covered in oil himself, or at least in plastic from head to toe (including his jet-black hairpiece), and R. Lee Ermey (he of Full Metal Jacket, sargeant!) shows up as a bounty hunter. Joan Chen is along for the ride ... what the hell happened to her? Actually, after having looked up her career I realize nothing truly great ever did... She completed a successful craptastic (or would that just be crap?) triumverate by starring with Christopher Lambert, Seagal, and Sylvester Stallone in some of their worst-ever projects, in the span of just two years! This movie has a climactic blow-em-all-up scene that had me in tears of laughter, with Seagal and Chen about to make their epic run, Seagal once again uses his "possesive pointy-finger" technique, and tells Chen, "Whatever you do, just don't look back! Don't look back!" Ahh, I was enjoying this one for days afterward... The choice moment between her and Seagal comes when they both are on the run in the mountains, and get on some horses. "Can you ride?" Seagal asks. "Of course, I'm Native American" Chen replies. The score by Conan man Basil Poledouris reaches new heights of craptacular-ness, and the mix n' match of mystical mumbo-jumbo and hard-core vengeance makes one almost run for the hills. True fact: Seagal directed this thing! And it includes a somewhat sober, longer than usual and just ever-so-slightly positive environmental message at the film's end, by Seagal himself, "in character".   On the other hand, having just caught Eros, an anthology film about the erotic nature of romance, I am once again astounded and inspired by the artfulness displayed by filmmakers such as Wong Kar-Wai and yes, Steven Soderbergh -- however Michaelangelo Antonioni's chapter here leaves much to be desired (and is rather easier to simply call "crap"). Director Wong Kar-Wai (pictured above) once again proves that he knows more about love and soul-searching than most of us, and that he conveys the kind of epic drama of our lives and loves in a story that only lasts one-half hour is, in my opinion, extraordinary. Kar-Wai has now done three films in a row based in 1960s Hong Kong, yet he continues to have new things to say about love in any period of life. Gong Li shines here. A somewhat neglected actress in the latter half of the 1990s, after gaining much recognition for her roles in early Zhang Yimou films, Li here seems to be on a comeback in both presence and posture. After filling a small but important role in last year's 2046 (also by Kar-Wai), Gong Li will next be seen in a pivotal role in Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha, long in-development with Steven Spielberg, who eventually abandoned the project. Also appearing in Miami Vice and Young Hannibal (gosh I hope that's not the title), 2006 should prove an exciting year for Gong Li. Still, teaming up with Ken Watanabe, Zhang Ziyi, and Michelle Yeoh in Geisha will provide great exposure to audiences in the west for these formidable east asian talents (but that also doesn't change the strange fact that in Geisha, most of these are Chinese or Hong Kong actors playing Japanese roles...). "The Hand", Kar-Wai's film segment in Eros, also stars Chang Chen (of Crouching Tiger and 2046) as an emotionally tortured tailor, who crafts clothes for Gong Li's character for years while undeniably falling in love with her. It's a wonderful piece of work that deserves to be seen more widely than this film's distribution has seemingly allowed. Soderbergh's segment, "Equilibrium", is also quite good, starring Robert Downey, Jr. (still one of our best living actors I'd say) as a 1950s advertising man who's having strange erotic dreams. He's telling his story to psychologist Alan Arkin, who, in a wonderful performance, nearly steals the short film from Downey. There are twists and great physical comedy here, but it'll probably be most fulfilling for fans of these two gifted actors. The less said about Antonioni's segment, the better. It's sad to see that the director behind such important pictures like Blow-Up has succombed to this souless, sub-Hal Hartley dribble about a fading marriage. The scenery of Italy is nice, but there's little else to recommend this. Eros is still very much worth searching out, however, for fans of great love and loss, and those whose hearts can understand just as much humor as pathos. Friday, July 01, 2005
Year of the Bat A Current Assessment of the Bat-franchise Batman Begins The artwork you are seeing above was commissioned based on the "look" of the character from the new Warner Bros. film, and has been used for various film-related product releases. Whether or not this means anything to you, the fact is that the Batman character, published in comic books for over 50 years by DC Comics, remains one of Warner Bros. pictures' (owner of DC Comics) greatest financial "assets". In other words, The Bat brings in major money for the studio. Since the first "serious" Batman film broke box-office records in 1989, Warner Bros. has flooded the market with innumerable Bat-themed products, everything from toothpaste to toys to animated series. Batman Begins is meant to chart the origins of this longstanding character, who, through perseverance and tenacity, has managed to survive a half a century despite numerous creative upheavals, silly interpretations and financial failures (in comics, film and tv). I thought the best way to tackle this "review" of the new film might be to illuminate some of the many different media "variations" of Batman that are on the market right now (or that have been in the last decade or so), in the hopes that one might better understand why Batman Begins begs the question: who is Batman, really? The answer is much more complicated than you might think. First, the reason I am writing here is the focal point of this current "Year of the Bat", the rough name that could be given to Warner Bros. marketing blitz of associated products and DVDs which will this year accompany the release of the new movie Batman Begins. This is a problematic film, however, not least so because of general audience confusion over exactly what they believe Batman to be...  Batman Begins is intended as a re-start of the Warner Bros. Bat-franchise -- a re-boot, if you will, of existing continuity and characterizations. Think of it as if you were re-booting or re-freshing your computer, deleting all the messy "links" and needless materials, and re-starting only with the basic programs and files needed. Many comic books have gone through this kind of transformation in the past few decades, both at DC and Marvel (DC's main competitor), wherein existing chracters' history is, in effect, written away with the intention of starting with a clean slate. Warner Bros. had a distinct problem on their hands when they were sorting through various approaches to a new Batman film during the past eight years. Though the original intention had been to proceed with "Batman Triumphant", director Joel Schumacher's next mooted title for the fifth installment of the 1980s/90s film series, once Batman and Robin (1997) arrived in theaters and general audience and critical reaction factored well below expectations, the studio saw the need to re-furbish the franchise, or rather, "go another way." Various approaches were attempted, then aborted, everything from a futuristic concept (an adaptation of the short-lived 1990s animated series Batman Beyond) to a Batman vs. Superman film (in discussions as late as 2002). Talking about these various aspects of the film franchise is problematic in itself, because in approaching Batman Begins, these are all concepts that the filmmaking team strove to detach themselves from. At the very least, they put forth through numerous press interviews that Batman's origin story "had never been told before" in detail. The film's director, writer, and actors positioned themselves on a separate plane from the previous films in the series, and emphasized that, while they might have "admired" certain aspects of Tim Burton's first two films, they felt that they were telling a story that "needed" to be told, and that in fact Begins would have no relation to any previous film versions of the character. Begins director Christopher Nolan had previously helmed the much talked about (but not by me) Memento, the rather ironically titled Insomnia (an American remake of a superior Norwegian film) and curious indie Following. He was without a doubt an interesting choice to take on the Batman franchise, and he enlisted David Goyer, writer and producer of the Blade franchise (and co-writer of Dark City) to help him craft the story. Though the pair claim that there were no real "mandates" from the studio with regards to the film's major thematic layout, other than it being "romantic" and "different", it's easy to see that even the studio itself realized it had taken the camp too far during the last film, and wanted a movie that would re-plant the seeds for a new, successful franchise. But is Batman Begins truly a "separate entity"? Moreover, how can it ever be? As we see, in Begins, which opens with a flashback to Bruce Wayne's childhood traumatic moment of falling into a well that leads to a cave full of bats beneath Wayne Manor, the film intends itself on the surface to be the "definitive" and "true" detailing of the dark knight's origins. There's a serious and somber honesty and intensity to the film and its approach to its characters that, at times, threatens to throw the movie just over the edge into silliness. The moments focusing one Bruce Wayne's childhood are the best, and most heart-affecting. Linus Roache, a gifted actor who also had a scene-stealing role in the otherwise critically derided The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), here plays Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father, for a few scenes, and his small moments are tremendously affecting. As father rescues son from the well, his "Why do we fall, Bruce?" becomes one of the central recurring themes in the film. The simple but affective answer, "So we can learn to pick ourselves up again" is touching in its simplicity, if rather trite when compared to the complex characterization which the Wayne/Batman figure is known for in the comics. Though Begins is meant to literally "re-start" the film franchise, the studio seems wary of abandoning the central ideas and concepts of Batman and the previous films completely. Despite being an "origin" story, the narrative is structured in such a way as to position Bruce Wayne as an "exile" returning to Gotham City. Numerous references are made thematically and through dialogue to the previous franchise's established ideas. Wayne's re-emergence in Gotham is greeted with surprise, but no real shock (even though his own company has had Wayne declared "legally dead"). Alfred greets Bruce on an airfield in Asia with a wry, "Mr. Wayne, you've been gone a long time." This clip was used in many of the promotional trailers for the film, in effect "announcing" that Batman was "returning" to cinema screens. In the first hour or so of the film, we are given Bruce Wayne's defining moments in childhood, the death of his parents at gunpoint by a mugger named Joe Chill (no, he does not later become the Joker), his college years as he returns to confront his parents' killer, and his years spent somewhere in Asia losing, and finally, finding himself with the help of Ra's Al Ghul (an underused Ken Watanabe), his "voicepiece" Ducard, and their "League of Shadows". Again, it's the quietest moments which are the best here, as Ducard educates Wayne on all manner of meditation, fighting and "fear", how to confront your own and use it against your enemy. Ducard (played with complete commitment by Liam Neeson) tells Wayne one night out in the wilderness that he has "not always lived up here in the mountains", and that he, too, once lost someone he loved dearly. Here we see the parallels form between Wayne and Ducard, and it is how we can later understand the the subtle differences between choosing one kind of vengeance over another.  As Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City, which, since his departure some seven years ago, has become corrupt "at all levels of government", he sees the need to "use fear against those who prey on the fearful", and enlists the aid of sidelined Wayne Enterprises employee Lucious Fox (a lively Morgan Freeman) to school him on various non-commissioned battle gear that the company had originally developed for use by the military. These are nice moments, grossly missing from the previous films, which give plausible explanations on just how a man could utilize his resources to achieve his somewhat unorthodox goals. Throughout Bruce's development, his longstanding butler, and surrogate father figure, Alfred (played with heart by Michael Caine), guides him on his path to becoming something ...else. Once Wayne dons the "cape and cowl" and becomes Batman, the film takes on an even greater pace, exploring his first adventures in the "Narrows", a downtrodden section of Gotham City which resembles a mix of Hong Kong's Kowloon district, and the gothically-tinged world of The Crow (1994) -- which many people thought was what the original Batman film "should have looked like". In his first few evenings out on the town, he encounters Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. "The Scarecrow", who spends his days as a doctor at Arkham Asylum and his nights terrorizing assistant D.A.'s like Rachel Dawes (a barely tolerable Katie Holmes, out of her league here). Crane is given this name due to his regular donning of a scarecrow-type mask, which enhances the hallucinogenic effects on his victims after he sprays them with such "weaponized hallucinogens" he's developed in tandem with a mysterious third party.  Soon the Batman, after making first impressions, enlists the help of rising detective James Gordon (a game and always enjoyable Oldman), in determining the true nature of the conspiratorial forces facing the city. One of the good strengths of Begins is that the character of Gordon becomes much more central in Wayne's tumultuous double life; indeed Gordon, in a touching moment, comforts Wayne immediately following his parents' death. Gordon in this film is the one honest cop in a sea of corruption, and as a good friend of mine recently noted, "I'd like to see a movie just about that guy." It's great to see Oldman playing against type lately, as a good, honest presence. In both this film and his wonderful mysterious role in last year's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Oldman has proved that he can pull just as much dramatic weight out of a heroic character as an evil or insane one.  Though his role is fairly small in Begins, it will likely grow should there be a sequel (Chris Cooper reportedly turned down the role due to its lack of dramatic weight, but I think Oldman, who I'd rather see in this part anyway, saw the future potential). The filmmakers' approach to Gordon briefly reflects the character's establishment in the seminal graphic novel, Batman: Year One. Moments such as these, though not specifically "accurate" to their comic origins, further serve to thicken the film's relationship to the comics its based on. Almost to a fault, characters in Begins regularly refer to Batman as "The Batman", in a way they never have in the films before...(although Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle character did ask the question in 1992's Batman Returns, muttering something like: "Wow, The Batman...or is it just, Batman... Your choice, of course...") Wayne later encounters Ra's Al Ghul again, in a different guise, and the very foundations of his father's legacy begin to crumble around him, as he desperately searches for a way to stop the city from imploding. To say more would spoil the adventure for those who have not seen the film (or who will eventually do so on DVD), but my true concerns here lie with the nature of Batman Begins as a cultural and marketable object -- and how that plays into both its content and its relatively cool box office reception. For in Batman Begins, there are clear references to previous Bat-films, whether consciously chosen or not. Though Christian Bale chooses to adopt a mostly similar gruff, muted tone when he is operating as Batman, the choice of "voice" is really not all that different from what Michael Keaton attempted to do throughout most of his two Batman films. There are a few nice scenes where Bale actually shows some threat as Bats, but mostly his performance in costume is as stilted and low-key as Keaton's -- although unlike Keaton's performance, I feel many of Bale's moments veer just on the edge of ludicrous pompousness within the "realistic" world the filmmakers have established. There's also a serious lack of charm here. While Burton filled his fantasy Bat-universe with dark humor and sadistic undertones that, if not appealing to everyone, at least reflected the world they had been established in, Begins lacks a geographical center -- the movie was filmed primarily in London studios, Chicago streets and Iceland. You never quite get a feel for how locations relate to each other, because the emotional tone of the film only reflects Bruce's sensibility, and his alone -- surely even in a largely "corrupt" Gotham City, there are some happy people? "The Tumbler", what will later be known as "The Batmobile", is equally rather machinistic and hard-core for the sake of being tough and different, rather than being "realistic"... Yet there are still many similarities to what has come before. Another strangely familiar element is the costume, which aesthetically really isn't all that different from Val Kilmer's main outfit in Batman Forever (1995). There are even some rapid "suiting up" shots in Batman Begins that bring flashes of memory of director Schumacher's much less desirable take on the character. Thematically and through dialogue, Bale here again, like Keaton, has an "I'm Batman" moment, and it's played in a fairly similar context as the moment in Burton's 1989 film. Also, there's a strange homage to the 1960s Batman television series in the notes that Bruce Wayne must press on an old piano to enter the elevator down to his real "bat cave." Moments like these, layered with a score by James Newton-Howard and Hans Zimmer which ever so tastefully conveys Batman's heart and soul, but also his campness, are fairly regular in Begins, despite the filmmakers' claims that this movie was meant to start completely anew. This is the trouble with re-introducing a franchise character into features, after eight years away and considerable success in other media outlets. Some people claim this film was under-marketed. Other members of the general public seem to come out of the movie thinking that the conlusion of this narrative, with its teasing reference to the emergence of a popular villain, leads seamlessly into Burton's 89 Batman. Still other press write-ups have claimed that this film is a "prequel." What is the answer?  Batman Begins is really all of these and none of these at the same time. In a way, it's hard to blame Warner Bros. for any marketing failures in this new Batman adventure, for really, how else could they have sold it to the public? Minimalist poster designs featuring iconic images of the Batman were really the only way to go (such as the design above, which is a visual knod to the 1940s vision of the character). Including any phrases such as "every story has a beginning" would only serve to further confuse audiences into thinking that this film directly connects itself to the previous entries. I've noticed numerous mis-writes in publications, and by friends and colleagues, who mistakenly call Batman Begins by another name -- that of Burton's second film, Batman Returns. Many audiences still have memories of the 1990s franchise (whether good or bad), and not only see this film as a "return" to the same franchise, but are also justifiably wary of yet another film, and another actor -- a commercially unknown one at that -- taking on the mantle of the Bat. There are also some tricky moral ambiguities present in the Begins' narrative. When Bruce is asked by Ducard and Ra's Al Ghul to kill a local criminal as a final test of his abilities in the League of Shadows, he refuses and escapes by setting the dojo on fire and literally fighting his way out. Interestingly, he chooses to save Ducard (Neeson) rather than the petty criminal whose life he has just refused to take, and is blown out of the burning building as the audience assumes everyone else inside has bitten the dust. Later, in a climactic moment, Batman tells an enemy, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." One of the central ideals of what makes Batman different from any other vigilante is that he does not kill. Begins' ambiguities in these areas, as well as a violent car chase in which Batman's Tumbler topples numerous police cars in an effort to escape capture and save the life of one person precious to him, further shade the moralities of the central character. However, there are some plot points that do bode well for the future of this new Bat-film series, should it continue. One of the most intriguing and smart elements of the Begins is the way in which it establishes a "heightened reality", wherein the "escalation" of Batman as a mysterious "creature of the night" unbeholden to the police's jurisdiction could actually encourage and attract multiple types of disturbed and psychotic persons to Gotham. In Gordon's talk with Batman in the final minutes of the movie, upon the police department rooftop where he has intuitively just fashioned a way to shine a "Bat-signal" out of a spotlight, Gordon alludes to this idea of "escalation", and the danger that if "you wear kevlar, they buy armor-piercing bullets..." At once threatening and exciting, this is the moment where we realize that Batman's very beginning may cause more problems for his defense of Gotham than even he realizes. It establishes a world where the stranger and more disturbing of Batman's nemeses can conceivably introduce themselves... Batman Begins had stellar reviews in most territories, but achieved less-than stellar results on its opening weekend (or at least, less than most people were predicting). The fact that its three-day weekend total was outgrossed by the much more critically questionable Mr. & Mrs. Smith one week earlier has not gone unnoticed. There is a massive box-office slump in the United States this year, likely due to major increases in downloading, families preferring to stay home and enjoy DVDs, and general audience apathy at the "quality" of Hollywood films these days. This is surely a factor, but with War of the Worlds grossing some $35 million on its opening day alone, is it possible that Begins arrived a bit too soon for most audiences? In fact, some of my favorite images from Batman Begins are indeed those that don't seem to have made it into the final version of the film -- like this one:  I know what you're thinking -- what do I really think? Well, I liked it, but then again I didn't... While at moments I found myself gripped by some of Begins' performaces and plot trappings, I must confess that there are an equal number of moments in the film which either felt silly, or rather cold to me, as if telling the story in this visual mood and manner was more important than actually conveying it in a heartfelt way. Oddly enough, I feel that the film's score is one of its surest emotional throughlines. In the continuous percussionary trumpets in the main musical themes of the film, we feel Batman/Wayne's relentless need to restore both his city and his own destiny. It's some stirring scoring that very rarely goes over-the-top or underneath the radar; it's rather like the character himself -- always hovering there, even though you may not notice him. The sound-mixing itself, however, is slightly less impressive -- I've seen the movie twice now and I still have trouble deciphering every piece of dialogue in certain loud sequences. In terms of pacing, the film does move, though; it definitely doesn't feel like the two-and-a-quarter hours that is actually is. In terms of how it actually portrays Batman and other characters from the comics, its strong and confident, appealingly true to its source material in many ways, but just as unfaithful in numerous others. In fact, I'd argue that Begins actually has just as much of a confusing relationship to its source material as any of the other films did (it surely has just as many punny one-liners, if not more). Sure, this may be a movie that the Batman fanboys love, but will anyone else be emotionally invested in watching this ten, or even five years down the line? Will its drama and characters last, or will its luster fold, like Schumacher's films, and moments of Burton's first two chapters, into the pop cultural myst? I'm not sure... Coming up next, I'll introduce you to some of the finer reasons to get interested in the Batman this year -- and interestingly, most of them have more to do with animation than live-action... |