Dark City (1998)

Directed by:  Alex Proyas (The Crow has long been one of my favourite movies, to the point where I dressed up as The Crow a couple times for Hallowe’en)

Written by: Proyas, David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs

Starring: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Richard O’Brien, Melissa George and David Wenham.

What it’s about: a man, having awoken with no memories of himself, seeks to uncover the mystery behind himself and the ever-changing city he lives in

Alternate B-Movie Title: The Strangers Come When You Sleep

Movie Mash Up: The Matrix + The 13th Floor + Memento + Metropolis

What I liked: so much of this movie.  Even re-watching it years later, I still take new things away from it.  It’s a murder mystery, but not at all.  It’s an amnesia story, but not at all.  The acting is great, very noir-inspired.  The movie is gorgeous.  Melissa George is mostly naked in it.  It’s menacing, and has a great ending that delivers a twist/answer that doesn’t feel like a cheat at all.

What I disliked: watching so much “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” recently had me convinced throughout the entire movie that Armin Shimerman was the actor playing Mr. Hand.  Turns out it was Richard O’Brien, and I disliked that.  Other than that, the movie is excellent across the board.

Would I recommend it to anyone?: Yes, it’s a great story, even better than The Matrix (which was released the following year), and criminally overlooked.  It’s a bit scary, and has a wonderful, satisfying ending.

Rating: 5 / 5

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

I don’t even know how to go about starting this review.  Having just watched it, I feel both emotionally and mentally exhausted while at the same time thrilled and ecstatic over what I’ve just borne witness to.  The Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy is one of the greatest accomplishments in cinema history, not just for a comic book movie, because as I stated in my Avengers review, the Nolan Batman movies are above just being classified as comic book movies.  Despite attempting to avoid any and all spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises, I had read a Cracked article last year that had mentally prepared me for anything Nolan might have in store for us.  At least I thought it had.

When we last left Batman (Christian Bale) at the end of The Dark Knight, he had told Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) to lay the blame for Harvey Dent’s death at the hands of Batman, thus giving Dent a martyr-like status in the eyes of the citizens of Gotham City.  Between Dark Knight and this film, eight years have passed and Gordon has used The Dent Act to clean up Gotham with his police forces, as Batman retired to his secret identity of Bruce Wayne rather than be hunted.  Wayne has become a recluse, appearing to only communicate with his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) in regards to affairs of the outside world.  When an attractive cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) makes off with a Wayne family heirloom, something is awakened in Bruce and he begins to come alive again.  All the while, a cerebral and brutal villain by the name of Bane (Tom Hardy) concocts a plan to bring the city of Gotham to its knees.  Then there’s also Officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a hotheaded young man who comes to the attention of both Wayne and Gordon.

That’s as vague as I can get without giving away any surprises in the plot, but also identifying the major players.  As with many Nolan films, he brings back a lot of familiar faces in his casting, and just take a look at all the tags if you want to see identifiable names jump out at you.  A couple of them are minor spoilers, but not really surprises at all.  While I’m writing this review, I’m taking time to read the Wiki entry for Dark Knight Rises and it says numerous times that Nolan was unsure about coming back for a third film.  Nolan might just be a great actor himself, because there are certain aspects of the story that would suggest just the opposite: that Nolan had been planning the entire Trilogy from the very first film.

There are few movie trilogies that I have given perfect marks to all of the installments.  The Toy Story Trilogy is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and now even that is going to fall by the wayside since apparently Toy Story 4 has been announced to be in production.  The Batman Trilogy is exactly that.  Nolan won’t come back to make a fourth film, neither will Bale, neither will any of the principles.  Even the way Rises ends should not fill people with hope for that to happen.

Everything in Rises is excellent in my eyes.  From the casting, the acting, the set pieces, the direction, the writing (minus a couple little things that I won’t go into here, and may just be inconsequential in future re-watchings), the action, all breathtakingly great.  During the opening sequence I was legitimately catching my breath, wondering if my nerves could handle the end of this storied franchise.  The sheer menace that Bane brings with him is astonishingly well-executed, and Hardy doesn’t let the mask control his acting.  Hathaway is probably the best Catwoman/Selina Kyle ever, because she’s not used as just a vehicle for puns.  Bale and his familiar cast mates deliver exactly what they did in the first two films, sheer awesomeness.

Better film critics than me will write more detailed reviews than I did, because mine just seems to be what ultimately can only be construed as nothing more than a Thank You note to Christopher Nolan and the team he put together for these three films.

5 / 5

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

When I first saw commercials for this movie, I didn’t believe that it could actually exist.  Yes, the first Ghost Rider movie made over $228 million at the box office, but it wasn’t really screaming for a sequel, which of course in today’s Hollywood means yes, greenlight the shit out of that.  Story idea?  WHO CARES just start filming.  It didn’t help that it was directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (obnoxiously credited as Neveldine/Taylor), and that I hated the hell out of Crank and Gamer, two of their previous movies.  And yes, thank your gods, Nicolas Cage is back as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider.

The first Ghost Rider film was not a good movie, in fact, I rated it a 2, but I didn’t hate it.  It was what it was, and the most surprising thing of all was that it didn’t suck completely.  Like Punisher: War Zone, this film was released under the Marvel Knights banner, which means it sorta doesn’t take place in the same Marvel Cinematic Universe as The Avengers and certainly not the same world as Spider-Man because those rights are owned by different companies or some legalese bullshit.  Anyways, the whole premise of the movie is that Blaze is trying to save some kid named Danny (Fergus Riordan) (and of course he’s named Danny, that’s what one of the incarnations of Ghost Rider was named in the comics universe) whose mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), made a deal with the Devil, Roarke (Ciarán Hinds), to spare her life, in exchange for her future son’s life, or soul or whatever.  The premise is not mining new territory.

There’s one new aspect of Ghost Rider that I enjoyed in the film, and that was the redesign of the flaming skull, as instead of a clean, skinless skull constantly on fire, the new skull appears to be constantly burning, the skull coated in ash and soot.  Much more striking and effective than the original design.  However, now Ghost Rider has this stupid power where everything he jumps on becomes enflamed (I may have just made up that word), like a goddamn crane all bursting with Hellfire and brimstone and the like.  This has terribly stupid implications, because that now means if Ghost Rider starts driving a boat, well that boat will have flames coming out of it and it’s just so dumb stop, please stop.

There are numerous other head-shakingly bad plot holes throughout the movie (like how come the never-named Blackout (Johnny Whitworth) whose power is DECAY and rots everything by touching it can drive an ambulance without anything happening to it?), and Nicolas Cage tends to be acting like he’s going through heroin withdrawals throughout the entire movie, and it’s laughably bad.  Yet, I still didn’t hate it.  I should have every right to hate it, but it was exactly what I thought it was going to be, and that was Not Very Good at All.

1.5 / 5

The Dark Knight (2008)

With The Dark Knight Rises releasing in less than two months, I figured the best way to get more hits would be to actually have a Dark Knight review up, and my old one went into far greater detail than a new one of mine would, so here it is:

The Dark Knight begins around six months after the events in Batman Begins, with Batman (Christian Bale) finally taking care of most of the criminal trash from Begins.  There’s a new District Attorney in town by the name of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), and he’s being proclaimed as Gotham City’s white knight, bound and determined to clean up the police force and the streets.  The newest terror enveloping the city comes in the form of a killer clown, a rampaging murderous criminal that pisses off the established mafia as much as he terrifies the citizenry.  The Joker (Heath Ledger) has been waging a humanistic war on the morality of Batman’s vigilantism, while further plunging the city into a desperate state of decay.  Or I could just describe it as “Batman.  The Joker.  Two-Face.  It’s not Batman Forever.” and that should be enough to give even the most jaded fanboy a shiver of anticipation.

What director Christopher Nolan crafts in two and a half hours is, in a word, breathtaking.  He gives us amazing action sequences and thoughtful meditations on what makes a hero a hero.  Some of those meditations might actually be too thoughtful for the megaplex crowd, since most comic book blockbusters aren’t really known for being too cerebral.  As well, it’s not the most colourful of movies, and while I appreciate the dark look and tones of the film, it makes for some confusing and occasionally muddled fight scenes (thankfully viewing it on Blu-Ray cleans it all up).

Christian Bale continues to be able to deliver two separate and believable performances as both Batman and his secret identity, millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne.  Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over the part of Rachel Dawes that Katie Holmes previously portrayed, and well, it’s essentially a damsel-in-distress role, what with Rachel becoming the girlfriend of Harvey Dent and the transformation of Dent into Two-Face looming over the whole relationship.  I really hope no one is spoiled by the fact that Harvey Dent actually turns into Two-Face, and oh by the way, Aaron Eckhart deserves some high praise as well for the grey areas he put into his portrayal of Dent / Two-Face.  He’s transformed but he doesn’t suddenly become insane, just righteously pissed off.

Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox are two supporting players you never have to worry about and they performed admirably well, hitting all the right notes for their father figure character types.  Speaking of father figures, Gary Oldman is even more perfect as Jim Gordon than he was in Begins, and I don’t think enough things are being said about his performance since most of the audience only wants to see the freak show.

If you’re wondering whether or not the advance billing for Heath Ledger’s performance lives up to the product on the screen, well no matter how amazing you thought it may be, it will most likely surpass those levels.  Ledger’s fearless portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime is one of the most nerve-twitching, eye-catching, depraved and darkly hilarious acting displays in recent memory.  The previous year had Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, and even Chigurh would be a little off-put by Ledger’s Joker.  There is little doubt in my mind that come next March, Heath Ledger will be awarded a posthumous Oscar for his part in The Dark Knight (and of course he was).

I’ve tried not to get myself all excited for movies these days, as too many disappointments have dampened many of my old fanboy tendencies.  The Dark Knight was the one exception, and I have to say that it lived up to the hype.  As an old school comic book fan and as a movie czar, I can appreciate it on both levels.  Christopher Nolan could spend the rest of his career making Batman movies and I doubt that I’d ever be disappointed by them.

5 / 5