The Dark Knight Rises

Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway
Release Date: July 20, 2012
Length: 2 hours 45 minutes

           In January of 2008, Hollywood lost one of it’s unknowingly finest actors, the infamous, lovable Heath Ledger and in July of 2008, we got to see that actor rise too late to the crop of Hollywood’s finest with his unbeatable performance as the sadistic Joker. As much as the world was enamored by his performance when the credits rolled, we were equally anxious to know how it would be humanly possible to make another film with the loss of Ledger in the air. There needed to be another one, though. The franchise and clever work Nolan had put into the legendary name of Batman was too good to only have two films. We wanted more. However, Nolan was timid on returning to Batman as well, when the Joker was literally left hanging there at the end of The Dark Knight. With great focus though, Nolan along with his brother, Jonathan Nolan (co-writer of The Dark Knight) and David. S. Goyer (co-writer of Batman Begins) went to the drawing board and came up with the story that would drive the concluding piece of Bruce Wayne’s tale. And what an amazing story they created.

It’s been eight years since Batman nobly took the blame for the death of Harvey Dent and went into hiding. Although Dent turned evil when he lost his love and half his face, Wayne knew Gotham still had to view him as a hero otherwise the people of Gotham could never believe in good again. We are re-introduced to the frail crippled Bruce Wayne who has been a recluse for the last eight years, when an intriguing waitress steals his mother’s pearls and fingerprints from his safe, during a party thrown at Wayne’s mansion. The waitress is really the witty, apathetic Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a thief who works for a corrupt businessman and rival of Bruce Wayne, Roland Daggett and enjoys donning a cat suit to acquire things she wants.  Daggett happens to work with the incredulous and feared new terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy). Bane is an untouchable man of muscle with a contrasting voice like Sean Connery’s. He is rumored to have trained with Raz-Al-Gul, Wayne’s trainer, who is the head of the league of shadows. Bane was however kicked out of the insoluble league for being too radical and now has his sights set to destroy the corrupt Gotham. With Bane’s underground army building, Wayne is pulled out of retirement to put back on his mask. First he needs some support from his more than loving butler Alfred (Michael Caine), a visit to Wayne Enterprises head Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) for some new toys, and if he’s lucky some underground information from Ms. Kyle.

In addition to the characters mentioned above, Gary Oldman reprises his role as Gotham’s commissioner James Gordon, who has kept criminals off the streets up until now. Marion Cotillard plays a member of Wayne Enterprises who insists on Wayne continuing his father’s philanthropic efforts and Joseph-Gordon Levitt plays a hothead rookie cop who is Batman’s strongest supporter. As usual with Nolan’s films, no character or piece of dialogue is put to waste. Each person is there for a reason and the Nolan brothers know how to weave them all together through various believable interactions that connect each story. With this many characters in a film, you are almost guaranteed to become confused but the Nolans just use them to perfect a complex but completely fluid and realistic script. The best part to embellish about the Batman story is the realism. There’s no magic, no crazy unimaginable powers, but a real world that we can relate to, but that can still surprise us. Gotham represents that perfectly as a city that we could easily be citizens of despite its fictional nature. Something else that is expertly utilized in this film is humor. Nolan carefully places funny moments, especially with the role of Catwoman to his advantage, while still keeping the mood of severity and intensity very high.

The number one point that people use when arguing nothing will top The Dark Knight is of course Heath Ledger’s Oscar winning Joker which has been forever instilled in our memories. However, that was certainly not the only trait about The Dark Knight that astonished us. No matter what Christopher Nolan does, we are always won over. Films like Memento, The Prestige and Batman Begins all thrived without Ledger, and The Dark Knight Rises can be added to that list of celebrated works of cinema because one important skillful trait of Nolan’s as a director is that he knows how to cast. Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle is arguably the best female performance in Batman history, comic book history, action movie history – you name it. Hathaway, who amazed audiences with her role as a recovering addict in Rachel Getting Married, still continues to grow and diversify herself as an actress, most expectantly with Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, out this Christmas. She is the real highlight of The Dark Knight Rises. Tom Hardy makes a close second as the captivating Bane, someone as equally petrifying as the Joker, but this time both physically and mentally. Finally, Christian Bale continues to beautifully carry this grand story as Wayne and easily adds more weight and realism to the character than any other actor has before.

A Batman film, or an action film in general has simply never been as stunning. Nolan, who is as equally dexterous with visual effects as he is with storytelling, abstained from using 3D and CGI, but instead used IMAX to give each shot a huge visual capacity. The lighting is also heavily affective showing the dreary and cold city once Bane has taken over.

To put it simply, Christopher Nolan is one of the greatest directors of all time, right up there with Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski because he did not reboot the Batman series. He reinvented it with quality filmmaking. He inspires emerging filmmakers because he is able to combine his abstract creativity in his writing with a commercial franchise like Batman that we are complete suckers for. There’s nothing wrong with seeing a fun action movie, especially when it has a clever script and good actors, such as The Hunger Games, or The Avengers. Nonetheless, I have never walked out of an action movie – let alone a comic book movie - being so dumbfounded by the amount of thought put into each aspect of it and the amount of thoughts I’m left thinking when the credits roll.

In the aftermath of the horrific massacre that occurred during the screening of this film in Aurora, Colorado, it’s more than likely that people might shun away from The Dark Knight Rises. However, a savage with a gun shouldn’t scare people away from the best film of the year yet. The Dark Knight Rises is enjoyable, gorgeous, thought provoking and most importantly, a well-crafted finale to the most memorable and exciting trilogy of all time that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Director: Marc Webb
Writers: James Vanderbilt, Steve Kloves, Alvin Sargent
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone
Release Date: July 3, 2012
Length: 2 hours 16 minutes

After the critical failure of Spider-Man 3 in 2007, Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced that instead of doing another sequel with Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi, they were going to reboot the franchise with a fresh new face. Was it absolutely necessary to reboot a world famous series last touched only five years ago, strictly for money purposes? No. Does that mean our annoyance with their decision will stop us from enjoying the results? Absolutely not. Marc Webb, best known for directing the celebrated romcom (500) Days of Summer takes on the weighty role of directing The Amazing Spider-Man, which stars possibly the cutest couple ever seen on screen together, Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield.

This film has virtually the same plot set up as the original only we’re switching a green goblin for a lizard, a redhead for a blonde and a museum for a science lab where Peter is first bitten. The rest of the differences come through in Garfield’s interpretation of the role and the tone of the movie. At a high school in Queens, Peter Parker is once again a socially awkward seventeen year old that spends all his time taking pictures, creating inventions and fantasizing about being with the charming Gwen Stacy. After standing up to a bully at school, Peter is applauded by Gwen, who seems to always look like a 50s poster child wearing short skirts that meet her ridiculously high knee socks. And one more thing, Peter will always wonder about his father and mother, who were forced to leave him when he was a kid with his overprotective but loving Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen).

When Peter finds his father’s scientific files hidden in the seams of an old briefcase, he immediately becomes curious about the man framed with his father in the photo, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans). Against his Uncle’s disapproval, Peter travels to Oscorp, a huge scientific laboratory building in Midtown Manhattan, where Gwen coincidentally works as an intern, now letting her white laboratory coat fall over her knee socks. At Oscorp, Peter provides Connors a formula to fix his proposed remedy to grow limbs back, such as Connors’ half-arm. When Connors becomes a bit too obsessed with his goal to prove his solution, New York might need a real hero to protect them, despite the chagrin of NYPD head Captain Stacy (Dennis Leary), Gwen’s father.

With the last film so fresh in our minds, there is no possible way we can’t make comparisons and in fact, we should. There must be something extraordinarily special with what the supposedly “amazing” Spiderman has to offer to have it be made so soon after the last series. That special trait is simply that this version is a non-stop thrill ride, however with a lot of fun comes a lot of cheese and a slight lack of severity. Marc Webb certainly knows how to make a fun, never slow, and always exciting comic book movie, which shows through in the cheesiest most obvious uses of 3D. When Spiderman is swinging into our faces from building to building and web literally is shot into the audience, we can tell they are obvious gags but it flows perfectly with the exciting tone of the movie. Also, opposed to a subtle use of 3D without any gags, a blatant, grabbing use of 3D can remind you why you paid three extra bucks in the first place.

Webb makes this different by not only bringing the geek out of the script and comic book story, but embellishing it with humor and a whole new vision of the character done with Garfield. Garfield, who got his claim to fame with a memorable performance in David Fincher’s The Social Network, gives us a layered, way geekier and much more interesting Parker than we saw five years ago. With all do respect to Maguire, Garfield simply had to go further into the character in order to separate himself, and he successfully does so. His intriguing relatable portrayal of Parker makes the movie, along with his unbeatable chemistry with real life girlfriend Emma Stone, the most lovable girl in Hollywood. The on-screen relationship between the two teenagers is much sweeter and lighter than the intense romance between Maguire and Dunst that we got previously.

The only hindrance to this refreshingly light and fun atmosphere of The Amazing Spider-Man is that when the plot takes a heavy turn, it’s hard to take it seriously. Since the original films were much darker, similar to Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, you can immediately detect the sense of gravity missing from Webb’s adaptation, despite the skillful acting of the cast. However, there thankfully aren’t too many heavy scenes, and with the adorable romance, highly entertaining action, and strength of Garfield’s performance, Spiderman was worth a second try.