Review: The Dark Knight Rises

So the time has finally come for the last chapter in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. Is it a satisfying conclusion to 2 of the best comic book films to date? Or does it end the story like so many other trilogies (i.e. Raimi's Spider-man and the X-films) with a whimper rather than a bang? Read on faithful...er...readers for a spoiler-free review.

The Story:
The movie takes place 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent is remembered as a hero while Batman has disappeared, previously labeled the murderer of Dent. Bruce Wayne, too, has become a recluse, drawing comparisons to Howard Hughes. Gotham City, meanwhile, has been experiencing a long period of peace. But of course, it wouldn't be much of a film if it was all peace and flowers, and just like with Michael Corleone in Godfather III, just when Bruce Wayne thought that he was out, he was pulled back in. This time evil comes in the form of Bane, a muscular and intelligent psychopath who speaks with a strange voice, as if Sean Connery were doing some take on an Eastern European accent filtered through Darth Vader's mask. Bane and his crew of mercenaries/terrorists have come to take over Gotham and getting the help of the lower class to rebel against the upper class. It's all very basic Karl Marx. Can Bruce Wayne don the cape and cowl one more time and take down Bane, even with the help of the Catwoman, Commissioner Gordon, and a hotheaded beat cop?

What Worked:

1. Christian Bale - I've always loved Bale in the role and he really brings it in this movie. This Wayne is much more broken (literally and figuratively) than the one in the previous movies. He has been out of the game for so long. He has made great sacrifices and it has taken its toll on him. Also, I like that he kind of toned down his Batman voice so it's much more like a whisper/Clint Eastwood voice rather than the odd growl that he used in the past.
2. Anne Hathaway - I admit that I was skeptical of her casting for the role of Catwoman, er...Selina Kyle. I feared she wouldn't sultry enough. Thankfully she is sultry when she needs to be but also very intelligent and sophisticated. Basically, I believe that she is a very intelligent cat-burglar/grifter who can talk or flirt her way out of anything. And she doesn't look too bad in a full bodysuit.
3. Tom Hardy - I've liked Hardy since I saw him in Star Trek: Nemesis. His performance as Bane was incredible without being completely over-the-top or competing with Ledger's Joker. While his Bane is nowhere near as large or muscular as he is in the comics, he carries himself as if he was. He seems larger than life and you never really quite know if he is going to punch you, wrap his arms around you, or snap your neck. He is very cold and calculated. It says a lot when you can communicate so much without ever actually seeing the lower half of the face.

What Didn't Work:

1. The Pacing - This was a very slow movie. And not in a good way, like The Godfather is slow. Or like The Shawshank Redemption is slow. Sometimes it felt like scenes would drag on while others would cut away before you actually felt closure in the scene. Even the action scenes seemed slowly paced. I haven't often been bored by car chases or fight scenes, but it happened in this film a couple times. Which is sad since I enjoyed the major car chase in The Dark Knight very much. Unfortunately most of the major action scenes in this film felt kind of generic which slowed down the pace of the movie.
2. The Direction - I love the work of Christopher Nolan. He has this very intellectual style of filmmaking, very impersonal, which I think worked for his last 2 Batman movies as well as for films like Memento and The Prestige. His movies always strike me more as cerebral rather than sentimental. I simply don't think it works in a film that deals with such themes as personal sacrifice, regret, and vengeance, all very emotional themes. Because of this, despite Bale's great performance, sometimes it was hard to connect to the emotions in the film. The same was true in The Dark Knight actually. I didn't really buy that Rachel was the love of Bruce's life.
3. The "Bat Family" - My fears from the comics came true in this film, particularly that sometimes in the Batbooks of the past 15 years or so, Batman will take a backseat to his Bat Family, i.e. Robin, Nightwing, Huntress, Batgirl, Azreal, Gordon. There just wasn't that much Batman in this movie. There was certainly a lot of Bruce Wayne, which I appreciated, but Batman often took a backseat to a lot of the other characters. Is it really too much to ask to have more Batman in a Batman movie?

In Conclusion:

I was slightly disappointed in The Dark Knight Rises but that may be because The Dark Knight set such high expectations. I thought the performances were all great and I liked the overall plot of the film. I just felt that it wasn't all that focused and some directorial choices, particularly with pacing, really hurt the final product. Is it as bad as Spider-man 3 or X3? Certainly not. It is lightyears ahead of those godawful excuses for movies. It's more in line with Return of the Jedi. Certainly a good movie but not nearly as good as the one that preceded it. Still, anyone who is a fan of the first two must see this movie, if for nothing else than to finish the story that Nolan started. Also, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed The Amazing Spider-man which I was supposed to review on the 4th of July but refrained as my family suffered a tragic loss. I will probably write up a review of that anyway later on.

Apologies and a Review

Has it really been over a year? I have absolutely been remiss and I apologize. A lot of things have happened since I last posted. We moved into the house. We've had our first year under our belt. And we're expecting our first child this month. It has really been that long. Crazy.

Casper and I put the podcast on semi-permanent hiatus. We will be retooling the site and establishing a new identity. While we are still in love with the Level Up concept, we feel it is ready for a new fresh take. Thus we have come up with Secondhand Gents. In addition to the stuff we've done in the past, we have also starting "leveling up" our wardrobe with budget buys and thrift store finds. Check out our tumblr at secondhandgents.tumblr.com.

So on to the review. I saw Magic Mike today. Odd choice for a movie I know seeing as it seems geared towards a female audience (it's a movie about male strippers) and I really don't like Channing Tatum all that much. But I do love Steven Soderbergh. If he could get me to love Julia Roberts in Ocean's Eleven, maybe he could do the same in Magic Mike.

The movie is basically the male version of Showgirls, only with a bit less cattiness and a lot less camp. It's the old formula of "young ingenue is taken under the wing of the big star". Not the most original of concepts but I haven't really seen it explored with men. I've seen it plenty of times with women, like in All About Eve to the aforementioned Showgirls.

What worked:

1. Cinematography - I love Soderbergh's errr...Peter Andrews' camera work. It's quirky. Off-beat. Definitely not slick. Odd angles and a lot of natural light. I love it.
2. Choreography - Come on. It's a movie about male dancers. The dancing better be up to snuff and for the most part, it is. And Tatum definitely shows off his moves, learned from his own years of being a stripper. 
3. Matthew McConaughey - steals every scene he's in. He has that lethal combination of ignorance and arrogance with a good helping of ambition. He is the funniest part of the movie, an entrepreneur living in his own delusion.

What didn't work:

1. Alex Pettyfer - was a bit too bland in my opinion. Yes, he's supposed to be the aimless guy who gets in over his head but he seems pretty one note through the whole movie. He was also hindered by the script in that he didn't really have much character development. I would have liked to see him go through an arc similar to Dirk Diggler's in Boogie Nights.
2. The script - the movie meandered quite a bit too much for my liking. I loved that it never really got into melodrama. But it also didn't really get into the characters. For the most part, they were all superficial ciphers. 
3. The tone - the movie starts off very comedic but it get's pretty heavy about halfway through. I actually like the drama in the movie but I do feel that it was uneven. It's funny. The part of the movie that makes it so much better than Showgirls in my opinion (the fact that it's not campy) may also be it's biggest downfall. It's not funny enough to be a comedy and it's not serious enough to be a drama. It tries to be both without really being successful at either.

Overall, I liked the movie. Sure, it wasn't the greatest movie ever made. I think it was a good beginning for a movie. I think it could probably have been 30 minutes to an hour longer and you could really get into the nitty gritty of the characters. Develop some better conflict. Have a better sense of resolution. But let's be honest. The majority of people who are going to see Magic Mike aren't interested in character development. They're looking for scantly clad men gyrating their hips. And this movie has it in spades.