Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Jeepers, Batman! This review is full of SPOILERS! Let's get started!

Oh, Nolan, really? We waited so long, and, really? The Dark Knight was called groundbreaking for a reason. It was not a superhero movie. It was a crime drama that happened to feature superheroes. Like it or not, it was plausible, and that's what made it so fascinating. You could actually believe that someone like the Joker would exist, and it would take someone like Batman to stop him.

Whereas this final installment in Nolan's Bat-trilogy..... is silly. That may sound like sacrelige, but it's the truth. And under ordinary circumstances, that would be fine. Superhero movies are supposed to be silly. This summer's other major blockbuster, The Avengers, was splendidly, gloriously silly, and I enjoyed every minute of it. But alas, unlike that film, this was not a silly movie enjoying itself, this was a silly movie taking itself very, very seriously.

Following a rather weak duel of airborne spies, leading to the reveal that yes, our villain this film is a bulked-up dude with a gas mask and a growly Sean Connery voice, we open at stately Wayne Manor, for the eighth annual Harvey Dent Day banquet, sponsored by Bruce Wayne, who has become a Howard Hughes-esque recluse following his hanging up the cape for good. Now, dear readers, I want you to take a good look at that last sentence and just try not to giggle. Thankfully, this scene also introduces one of the films saving graces- Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman.

Many expressed doubt when Hathaway's casting was announced, wondering if she would attempt to channel Michelle Pfeiffer's beloved, unstable Catwoman from the Burton films. Well, she doesn't. She goes back a little farther into Bat-history, and channels the sly cat burglar played by the wonderful Eartha Kitt on the Adam West show, with a splash of champagne socialism as a chaser, and it is awesome. Next to Christian Bale's oddly sluggish Bruce Wayne, Hathaway sparkles. She and Michael Caine, who is always wonderful as an emotionally-charged Alfred, seem to be the only ones who put their hearts into this film- odd, as Caine is famously on the record as saying he is in the industry purely for the money.

Anyways, the Evil Plan That Must Be Stopped in this film involves Bane trying to- let me get this straight- discredit Bruce Wayne and then steal his special clean energy machine so that he can convert it into a nuclear weapon, hold Gotham hostage, plunge it into popular anarchy, and eventually blow it up, as per the wishes of Liam Neeson from the first movie. Um, okay then. With silly last-minute plot twists courtesy of Marion Cotillard, the Wayne Industries board member who climbed out of the woodwork! Oy vey.

The plot holes start seeping in at this point. For instance, Bane had already kidnapped a nuclear scientist; wouldn't it be simpler to just build a bomb of his own than go through the trouble of stealing Bruce Wayne's energy machine to turn it into a bomb? And Bruce and Selina are well aware of each other's secret identities; why does Bruce persist in using that ridiculous growly-bear voice?

This is not to say the film is terrible, or even necessarily bad; in its place it's a distinctly entertaining popcorn movie whose pleasures include not only Alfred and Catwoman but some very exciting special effects (a bat-signaled flaming bridge comes to mind), and cameo from Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow that had all us fangirls cheering, and a fun little character played by Nolan favorite Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Just ignore the half-assed quasi-economic philosophizing, Gordon-Levitt's secret identity at the very end, and a laughably ugly Bat-statue unveiled in one of the final scenes. But really, the trouble with this movie is that it could have been so much better if it didn't think it was great.

Book Review: Too Far

This book is creepy.

There, I said it. And no, I don't mean "this book is eerie," like an Edgar Allen Poe story. That would have been just fine. Nor do I mean, "this book is scary" a la Silence of the Lambs or Devil in the White City. I enjoyed both of those quite a bit. No, I mean this book is creepy, creepy like that guy on the subway who isn't actually doing anything wrong, but he keeps staring at you and not saying anything and you're relieved when you reach your stop and can get away from him. That is what this book is like, and the CD it came with isn't much better.

Before I go on, let me backtrack a bit. A while back, a hipster-looking guy was sighted on my college campus with a massive cardboard box filled with shiny new hardback books bundled with CDs. He claimed they were free, that the book was called Too Far by a Mr. Rich Shapero, that they were part of an artist's promotional project, and would I please take one away? Please?

Well, the cover was pretty, I felt a little sorry for the hipster, and hey, who am I to turn down free books and music? After confirming that this was not merely a sneakier attempt to convert me by the crazy preachers who sometimes show up on campus ranting about heathens (I did not want to open this thing up and find it was dedicated to Pat Robertson), I agreed to take one off his hands and went on my merry way.

Well, well, well. Little did I know what I was in for. The book starts with an innocuous if trite premise: six-year-old Robbie is living in the wilds of Alaska with his two parents and their floundering marriage when he meets Fristeen (yeah, I know), also six, who lives with her drug-addled mother down the road. The two form an immediate, intense bond, and spend the summer exploring the woods, making up stories, and having thrilling adventures. Sounds harmless enough, right? Maybe kind of sweet, in a Bridge to Terabithia sort of way.

Alas, that's where you're wrong. The children have misadventures, yes, and also talk and think like they're stoners in their twenties, run around naked, at one point actually get a hold of hash brownies and get high (yeah, I know), spy on random people copulating in the forest (whose identities will be an eleventh-hour plot point), invent their own trippy religion, befriend a taxidermy moose head, and contemplate what, as the story progresses, sounds horrifically like a suicide pact.

The inside cover stipulates that this charming tale is a "parable," presumably to ward off most sane peoples' distress and disgust at reading about a sexually charged relationship between six-year-olds, with a side of druggy overtones. For heaven's sake, Mr. Shapero, would it have been so hard to make them even a few years older, to make the forest deities who keep showing up to spout meaningless pseudo-philosophy sound a little less like acid hallucinations?

Weirdly enough, there actually is a sympathetic character with a coherent subplot buried in here, in the form of Robbie's mother, a normal woman watching her idealism and marriage fade in the wake of her husband's selfishness, but both Robbie and the author display an astonishing contempt for her, so that hardly matters.

But then, as I later found out, Mr. Shapero, a wealthy venture capitalist laboring under the delusion that he's a great artist, has been up to these tricks before. Odd as this book was, it apparently pales in comparison to his earlier work, Wild Animus, a book with reviews so bad I almost want to read it now, about a canonically drug-addled man running around dressed like a mountain goat to the annoyance of his overly passive girlfriend in the name of spiritual enlightenment. That was also self-published and distributed with matching CDs by hipsters (for the curious, the Too Far CD, called Dawn Remembers, sounds like the random guitar strummings of really stoned people, occasionally blended with some old-fashioned haunted house organ music). It seems Mr. Shapero genuinely believes he has a great artistic message for the world, and is willing to spend an amazing amount of time and money trying to convince others of this. It's actually rather sad, when you think about it.

So if you see a hipster in a college town near you, and he politely doffs his beanie and offers you free stuff, take care, dear readers, or you may find yourself going . . . Too Far.

Book Review: Sisterhood Everlasting (Bad title, nice book)

I hate this book. I hate it I hate it I hate it. I read it four times and it made me cry and think about my childhood- erm, I mean, I hate it!

I have always had a soft space in my heart for the Sisters of the Traveling Pants. Like them, I am a Bethesda girl from birth. I too have a hard time finding jeans that fit just right. I love sour gummy worms, and a voodoo ritual involving them sounds wonderful to me. Heck, I read these books while hanging around in locations mentioned in the books themselves- how could I not love them? So when I heard that Ann Brashares had come out with a "ten years later" sequel, the saccharinely titled Sisterhood Everlasting, of course I jumped on it.

Now let me just say that I am not a fan of the movies based on these books. While the first one did capture some of the right spirit, they unforgivably took characters who were careful deconstructions of archetypes, and just made them into the archetypes themselves (especially Lena). Easy, but cheap and sloppy.

Now for the uninitiated, the books followed the adventures of four teenage best friends who had known each other since their mothers met at pregnant-lady aerobics (this is a silly plot construct, but pregnant-lady aerobics is the sort of thing that actually happens in Bethesda, so I let it slide). There's Carmen: the author's apparent pet, who occasionally strays into "fiery Latina" land, but is also overly analytical and funny and self-aware. There's Bridget: my least favorite, a sporty, glamorous blonde jock, but also someone who has kept herself moving near- constantly as a distraction since her mother's suicide when she was a child. There's Lena: Beautiful and a talented artist (and turned into a simpering cliche by Alexis Bledel in the movie), but also cripplingly shy to the point of being borderline misanthropic. And there's Tibby, my favorite: filmmaker, self-described "phony rebel", Mistress of Snark and really quite brave seeing as how Brashares always saddles her with something wrenching to deal with.

Our novel opens with our girls scattered to the four winds (four winds . . . four girls . . . see what I did there?). To make things simpler, I'll go girl-by-girl for each of their plots.

Carmen: For heaven's sake, we know you're the favorite! She does have a lovely bit of narration here and there, but feels like such a blatant author avatar and the girl-finds-glamorous-life-but-loses-herself thing is so tired (not to speak of the somewhat twitchy implications that she can only be happy in a relationship with someone who is Hispanic like her). She makes me sigh in annoyance at a waste of a character with potential (especially in the third book) in favor of self indulgence.

Lena: I just like this character. She does dumb things, but they are the sort of dumb things I might do, and I root for her. I like that, perhaps alone in YA Novel-land, she is someone who deals not with don't-let-the-cute-boy-see-me-looking-at-him social awkwardness, but a true introvert personality- she has friends and relationships and loves them, but her joy comes from quieter places. Thus, when she faces confrontation, it's not about "coming out of your shell" but about mustering the courage to act wildly out of character when it's needed. Her story is a slightly sappy romance, but she worked so hard at it, I had to smile.

Bridget: This character, by virtue of inherent blond athleticism, annoys me. I loved her plot in the second book, and I can sympathize with the "keep moving" approach to distress, but her plot drove me up the wall. In the first book, high on self-confidence but inwardly reeling from her mother's suicide, she impulsively slept with a camp counselor WHO WADS NOT SUPPOSED TO TURN OUT TO BE HER TRUE LOVE WHO SHE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER WITH AGHHHHHH. That is all.

Tibby: . . . . . I don't wanna talk about it. *sniff*

Suffice it to say, if you read these books, you'll love this one. The same things will frustrate you and make you smile and make you cry, you'll still wish you had a magic-pants sisterhood, and whatever else, it will feel good to be back.

A Special Announcement

Ladies and gentlemen, this was going to be my Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 review, but it's not. In fact, there will be no review. I'm sorry, I tried, I just . . . can't. I'm a hard-core nerdy fangirl about these, and while I have my pure and objective thoughts on the film (the final battle was too drawn out, hooray for Neville/Luna shipping, the dragon was bloody awesome), but, you see, these thoughts are all trumped by the fact that an era has ended, I cried like a baby, and here's hoping this Pottermore business will help to stave off post-Potter depression.

Tune in next week for my Summer TV special where I talk about knights, vampires, and all manner of werewolves!

Movie Review: Midnight in Paris

They did it again, damnit! This has happened before, where a fantasy of mine that I made up in my own head goes rogue, makes a break for it, and starts posing as a film. Take Chocolat, for instance: our protagonist runs around her chocolate shop in the South of France wearing cute A-line dresses and being romanced by Johnny Depp? Really? And you're sure you haven't been in the more self-indulgent corners of my head recently?

Well, despite the fact that the protagonist is Owen Wilson, and therefore cannot run around in cute A-line dresses being romanced by Johnny Depp without things getting awkward, Woody Allen's latest offering, Midnight In Paris, is up to very similar tricks.

After a sigh-inducing opening montage of the City of Light, we cut to our protagonist, Gil (Wilson, as much a likable everyman as ever), a Hollywood screenwriter with dreams of writing great literature, on holiday in Paris with his fiance and her parents. They also bump into a couple who are friends of his fiance's. Between the deliciously bad chemistry between Gil and the fiance, and the pretensions of her friend (who is played brilliantly by Michael Sheen and presumably has a name in there somewhere, but is known, in and out of universe, almost solely as "the pedantic man"), these scenes are some of the funniest in the film, and that's saying something.

However, the romantic Gil soon grows tired of these antics, lost in his daydreams and yearning for the great days of Paris in the 1920s. He splits up from our merry gang, and while wandering the streets of Paris, is approached by a beautiful old car, beckoned in by a group of colorful revelers, and is transported to . . . Paris in the 1920s!

Needless to say, here is where both our protagonist and your humble reviewer begin to massively geek out. It becomes a sort of game, spot-the-absurdly-influential-artist-or-literary-figure, but highlights include Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, who critiques Gil's manuscript, Ernest Hemingway, who speaks primarily in hilarious monologues about courage and passion and death, Salvador Dali, whose moustache is less wacky than expected but whose dialogue more than makes up for it, and Pablo Picasso, who introduces our hero to his lovely latest model, an aspiring costume designer who yearns for La Belle Epoque. A very minor gripe, but must the lovely young Frenchwoman always be Marion Cotillard?

The plot zigzags between Gil's days with his fiance and company, and his nights carousing with the Lost Generation, and in a rare but welcome change, both locations and plotlines are equally enjoyable. The dialogue is perfect, and was clearly so much fun to write that at certain lines ("Adriana, these people don't have any antibiotics.") you can almost hear Woody Allen chuckling. I won't give away the twist at the ending, because it's such a fun surprise, but things resolve in a way that feels fresh, charming, and unexpectedly sweet and optimistic.

I would talk a little about the physical look of the film, but that would largely consist of me going OMG PARIS IS SO PRETTY, TWENTIES COSTUMES, SET PIECES, LOVELY CINEMATOGRAPHY ME WANT, ME WANT!!!!!! so I won't do that.

Admittedly, as a francophile/literary nerd who obsesses over bygone eras, I transcend "target market" so far as to have a bullseye painted on my forehead, so I am a bit biased. If this sort of thing is, well, not your sort of thing, or if you have a craving for a giant-robot movie or something, then don't see it. But as for my opinion: yes. Just . . . yes.

Movie Review: X-Men: First Class

As always, spoilers galore! Now let's get started:

Ah, X-Men. Everyone's favorite multi-colored, pick-your-favorite-team-member, ham-fisted-metaphor-toting superhero team. They've spawned countless films, including the most recent, an in-depth tribute to Wolverine that was maybe the silliest thing I've ever seen in a movie theater (and I've seen Twilight fans), but was nevertheless enjoyable, mostly for eye candy value.

But you already knew all that, didn't you? Or maybe you didn't. For this movie, you don't actually need to. Point is, X-Men: First Class is where things get weird for the franchise, and I for one love it.

The film is a prequel, chronicling the adventures of the older generation of X's in the sixties, leading up to the founding of our beloved School for Gifted Youngsters. The first half or so is composed of several different plotlines, which eventually meet in the middle. Things get off to a breathlessly gruesome start with a wrenching opening in a concentration camp, where a young boy named Erik is being ripped away from his parents, and in his anguish bends and distorts a metal gate. It's not only an impressive visual affect, but an oddly moving scene for a superhero movie, a trend that will be continued throughout the film. That is maybe the best surprise in a film where there are many: the cast decided to actually act, and it is splendid.

We cut to a giant mansion in, allegedly, Westchester, New York. I say "allegedly" because the small boy creeping through his mansion in the middle of the night has an upper-crust British accent, which he will hold on to in his older incarnations in the rest of the film. Now, I'm going into this because it is one of the few things that really bother me in this film: I have been to Westchester. People there don't have British accents. Giant mansions, yes, but they still talk like Americans because they are still, you know, in America.

But I digress. Our young lad creeps into his kitchen to discover, to his delight, a girl with unusual skin and a knack for camouflage, whom he, with a little help from his telepathy, takes in as his adopted sister. By now, as those previously involved with the franchise may have guessed, we have met our three chief mutants, Erik, Charles, and Raven, later known as Magneto, Professor X, and Mystique.

We follow these three around as they age, Charles (James MacAvoy) studying and being a minor lothario at Oxford with Raven by his side, and Erik (Michael Fassbender) going on a revenge quest against the Nazis who killed his mother and performed hideous experiments on him to harness his powers, indulging in some of the finest Nazi-killin' this side of Inglorious Basterds along the way.

-ATTENTION-

We interrupt this review to bring you some brief fangirling. I know that what with the accent and the arrogance-masking-pacifism and the being played by James MacAvoy, Professor X is intended to be the one who makes us fangirls swoon. But, alas, not that he isn't nice and all (and how bizarre to see him with hair and the use of his legs!), my affections lie elsewhere. This incarnation of Magneto is HOT! The eyes! The revenge motive! The voice! The inner torment! The arms! If I were back in my days as an eager fanfiction guttersnipe, well, I could think of some things my OC could do to him. And I know I'm not the only one thinking it. That is all.

-MOMENT OVER-

Although while we're on that topic, traditional British fangirl bait Nicholas Hoult does a lovely job holding down a shy smile and an American accent as the adorkable Beast. His interactions with Mystique (who, despite a lame catchphrase, turns in a beautiful performance, making her character a believable and multi-dimensional human girl, blue or not) give the film some of its most human moments, and are a nice contrast from the silly awesomeness of flying submarines and CIA plotting.

Speaking of which, the main "plot" of this movie (I use quotation marks because really, the whole point of this thing is to see how the crew became what they are, isn't it?) is a silly mess involving JFK, the CIA, Russians, January Jones as femme fatale Emma Frost, and Kevin Bacon as her boss, a quasi-immortal semi-Nazi Master of Eeeevil.

Much more important, though, are scenes like when Charles and Erik go mutant-recruiting (and stumble upon an awesome cameo), or when the gang pick their "mutant names". Because those, along with the massive set piece at the end, are what we came for. This isn't a great story, by any means- but it is a fun, funny, clever, occasionally touching, absolutely enjoyable ride.

Movie Review: Water for Elephants

Look! A movie review! See, I *am* serious about this blog business after all! Anyways:

Oh, by the way, SPOILERS ABOUND, as they will in all my reviews.

I went into this movie of two minds. On the one hand: a Lovey Dovey Love Story with Robert "Sparkles" Pattinson and Renee "Bizarre Chin" Zellwegger? Ew. On the other hand: Christoph Waltz the Mad Ringmaster? Actual animals instead of CGI? Thirties costumes? Um, yes please.

So our story begins with an old man at a circus reminiscing about the dramatic ol' days, and we cut to flashback. Now let me just say right off the bat that even in flashback this film is friggin' gorgeous. Everything is shot beautifully, and the sets and costumes are exquisite. Seriously, this is just a great movie to look at.

But back to our plot: our hero, young Jacob (Pattinson) is informed of his parent's deaths midway through his vet school final by the possibly the least considerate school officials of all time. Understandably shaken, he runs out of the exam room, only to learn his parents had also lost all their money in the recent Depression. With nowhere to go, Jacob hops a train which, lo and behold, is the Benzini Brothers' circus train. After a brief scuffle, he is taken on as the show's vet by the owner/ringmaster August (Waltz), and is drawn to August's wife, the lovely Marlena (Zellwegger). Needless to say, antics ensue.

Now, the plot is silly (with certain elements, such as Marlena's backstory, changed from the book to make them even sillier), but this is a circus movie, so that is to be expected. The side characters are amusing and interesting, and the animals are great. As mentioned, the visuals are lovely. The concern lies with our power trio.

First, Pattinson: I'll hand it to ol' Sparkles, he tries. I know emoting is hard for him, but he gives an honest effort, looks kinda cute, and it's not his fault he has far more chemistry with the elephant than with his love interest (more on that later). His character can be frustratingly naive (such as when he wanders around the circus without so much as a hat when he knows he is there to do something that will annoy the man who already wants to kill him) but that's the nature of the script. A fine, if bland, job.

Second, Waltz: This man is quite simply fun to watch. In another villain role after his unforgettable Nazi in Inglorious Basterds, he is all over the place as the rather complex, schizophrenic August, at turns charming, scary, and sad. Also, he tries a bit of an American accent, which is pretty cool. Along with the elephant, he's the best thing here. Which brings us to . . .

Third, Zellwegger: Ugh. I'm sorry, but I do not like this character. She strings Jacob along while trying to pacify August, like Jacob she Fails Stealthiness Forever, her chin is weird, and worst of all she is part of a Shallow Love Story.

You know the type- two attractive people fall in love for no discernible reason. In this case, she appears to be using Jacob as a way out of a difficult situation, while he loves her because . . . she's pretty and she's there? Are men really that shallow? I'm sorry, movie, I just don't buy it. Especially since our two mains have the least chemistry this side of Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley in Pirates.

Anyways, the movie wraps up in an ending that many found predictable, but that frankly surprised my group. SPOILER ALERT: after August is killed in a circus stampede, Jacob and Marlena ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. Frankly, those of us who hadn't read the book were expecting a tragedy, preferably involving Marlena being eaten by leopards. If you're interested, here are our two alternate endings:

1. Marlena is killed in the stampede. Jacob goes on to lead a happy and full life, eventually aging into Old Man at Circus, but never forgets his first love and that one summer with the circus.

2. During the stampede scene, we cut back to the old man. Speaking of Jacob and Marlena he says, "Such a lovely young couple, what a pity I killed them." In a twist ending, he is not Pattinson, but Waltz, possibly after getting psychiatric help, reforming, and regretting that one cruel summer with the circus.

Which is you favorite? Anyways, this was a fine movie and I enjoyed it, but it could have been so much more.