Duplicity

Ray & Claire are spies that are tired of the game; they meet on a chance assignment and continue to pursue each other afterwards until they come up with an idea – the decide to get out of the government game and get into the corporate one – they are going to play a mega corporation and sell one of it’s secrets. All Claire and Ray have to do is find the right company and set up the con, all while trying to learn to trust each other because they’ve fallen in love.

Tony Gilroy quickly came onto my radar with Michael Clayton, and Duplicity is a spectacular follow-up to the Oscar nominated film. It is easy to make a complicated film, but it is hard to make a complicated film that actually makes complete sense and Duplicity makes sense. The film is smart, witty, quirky and utterly planned & effortless.

As I watched Duplicity I kept thinking that something in the film wasn’t clicking, that for all the complications and turns the plot was making that it just wasn’t what it should be. I should not have doubted Tony Gilroy. Everything that I thought was missing, everything that I hoped might be in the movie was in the movie – but it wasn’t revealed until the end. This is a movie that is going to rise higher in people’s esteem on repeated viewings. The last five or so minutes of the film not only give the film an entire other level, but the banter between Ray and Claire is some of the best in the film – while a bit more subtle the lines for me carried much the same importance as the last lines in Some Like It Hot. The ending of this film distinguish it from any heist movie that has come out in the past few decades.

Director & Writer: Tony Gilroy
Ray Koval: Clive Owen
Claire Stenwick: Julia Roberts
Howard Tully: Tom Wilkinson
Richard Garsik: Paul Giamatti
Duke: Denis O’Hare

Cassandra's Dream

I don’t think Cassandra’s Dream is a movie you watch and enjoy, but I got over that qualifier for a movie long before film school; there are quite a few movies that are more than worth seeing but you can’t say they were an enjoyable experience. Cassandra’s Dream is best described as a Greek tragedy or human morality tale, these characters are set on a self destructive path and keep pursuing it because they think there are no other options than simply plowing straight ahead.

In the film Ian & Terry are incredibly close brothers; Terry constantly gets in trouble with gambling and drinking but it otherwise happy with his life, where Ian is being forced into managing the family restaurant and is always dreaming of the bigger and better. However, when Terry becomes in debt over his head to loan sharks, and Ian meets an actress he wants to escape into the Hollywood life with both must ask their uncle for money; their uncle agrees to help them with anything as long as they need it because of their family bond but he also asks for a favor – he needs them to kill an ex-associate.

What I can really say about this movie is that it is well crafted and meticulously planned by Woody Allen; while you know all of his characters are headed for inevitable doom you still are able to connect with them empathetically and want Terry and Ian to be able to dig their way out of their mistakes. Cassandra’s Dream deals with not just the toll taking a life creates in these brothers, but the inner turmoil they experience from the moment they are asked to do it. Allen also does an excellent job juxtaposing the two brothers as each has an incredibly different reaction to the situation they are thrust into.

I am starting to feel that I have a personal preference towards Allen’s comedies, but I do think he makes really good dramas. His dramas tend to be just a bit too heavy for me.

Director & Writer: Woody Allen
Ian: Ewan McGregor
Terry: Colin Farrell
Uncle Howard: Tom Wilkinson

Valkyrie

Valkyrie Poster
Originally uploaded by AsceticMonk

What I am about to say will upset comic book geeks everywhere.

Bryan Singer needs to stop making comic book movies.

That’s right. I am calling Bryan Singer out to stop jumping on board with the likes of X-Men and Superman Returns and keep up with what he does best – movies about bad guys and characters in impossible situations – movies like The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie.

I have been waiting for Valkryie with baited breath for over a year because it is made by the team that made my favorite film The Usual Suspects - Singer and Christopher McQuarrie. However, the film was bounced around like a ping pong ball and rumors were flying about it to the point that I was fully prepared to hate the film, but I have a soft spot for Singer and had to give it the benefit of a doubt and so I saw it as soon as possible after Christmas was done.

To begin my review I feel that I need to begin with what the audience and the studio believes are the flaws of the film: the lack of the German language, Nazi’s as protagonists and Tom Cruise.

I was one of the many people that was upset that Valkyrie very obviously ignored the use of German in the film and instead gave all of the character American accents. In a day and age where we can make humans fly on broomsticks in a magical game called quidditch it seems fitting that a group of actors playing characters based on real Germans should at least fake an accent if they can’t fake the language. I will be the first to admit that I was wrong. I thought the lack of a German “feel” to the language was going to drive me insane as I watched the film – but it didn’t. In fact the way Singer manages to get around the use of the language points out how incredibly strange it would have been to watch the entire film with such familiar multi-national actors speaking a language not at all similar to their own, and for the sticklers German writing is all over the film and in the beginning of the film Tom Cruise actually does do a voice over in German and that slowly fades into English – the opening credits are even done in German and English.

The largest obstacle to the plot of the film and to the studio being able to market Valkyrie is the mere fact that all of the characters are Germans in World War II, all fighting for mother Germany. Almost everyone around the world has been universally brought up to believe that all German’s of that era were Nazi’s, evil to the core and Hitler’s minions. This subconscious thinking is inescapable to the studio, and yet something that must be faced because this story is real. You cannot substitute G.I.’s in place of Germans – this is a remarkable true story of a group of German soldiers and politicians who say Hitler for the evil he was and were bold and brave enough to try and do something to stop it. The other giant obstacle that studio faces in this film, and what Singer and McQuarrie faced is the fact that if you’ve been alive in the past handful of decades you know that Hitler lived until the end of the war and was only killed when he committed suicide – in other words the characters in Valkyrie are defeated and anyone paying attention to the concept of the film knows this going in. It is incredibly hard to make a film where you audience already knows the ending but somehow Singer and McQuarrie manage to still create tension and empathy where none should exist. That is a skill that cannot be taught and must be viewed by anyone who appreciates great efforts in filmmaking.

Finally, the last and what some might argue to be the biggest obstacle in Valkyrie’s path is Tom Cruise. While Cruise was once the biggest movie star in the world his ego and eccentricies got the better of his public image in the past five or so years and his star has gotten more and more tarnished. Luckily, Cruise has finally figured out that he needs to stop touting what no one wants to hear and start being the movie star we all used to love. He started this with Tropic Thunder and the buzz was so great around him for that film that the studio finally dared release Valkyrie at a time that would help it instead of hinder it.

Don’t let the image Cruise has created in the media recently get in the way of your opinion of the acting. Remember that this is the man nominated for Oscars for multiple films, and a man that should have won one for his performance in Magnolia - Cruise is capable of being more than you think he can be. In Valkyrie Cruise once again returns to dramatic acting and he is fabulous. While I do not think that Valkyrie is his best role it is an amazing, conflicted character that he plays and he plays it expertly. Stauffenberg was a man torn between his love for his country and the oath he swore to a man he hated and Cruise pulls that off in a way that makes you wish this German soldier had been able to succeed in a treasonous act.

While this review may have rambled on for far too long it still cannot express accurately how much I loved and was enthralled with Valkyrie. While I no longer hold hope that this movie will get the critical acclaim it deserves, I can hope that at least the film will reach DVD before too long and gain the large following it deserves. I hope that Singer and Cruise take a note from Valkyrie and each return to the roots of their careers and do what they do so well.

Director: Bryan Singer
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie & Nathan Alexander
Colonel Stauffenberg: Tom Cruise
Major-General Tresckow: Kenneth Branagh
General Olbricht: Bill Nighy
General Fromm: Tom Wilkinson
Nina von Stauffenberg: Carice van Houten
Major Remer: Thomas Kretschmann
Ludwig Beck: Terence Stamp
General Fellgiebel: Eddie Izzard
Dr. Goerdeler: Kevin McNally
Colonel Quirnheim: Christian Berkel
Hitler: David Bamber
Colonel Brandt: Tom Hollander

Henning von Tresckow: We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler's Germany.

RocknRolla

RocknRolla
Originally uploaded by divxplanet

I am a fan of Guy Ritchie. Snatch is one of my personal favorite movies and I think Mickey is just one of the best characters committed to celluloid in the past few decades. I have been in a Guy Ritchie funk since Snatch came out; sure he did Swept Away and Revolver but neither one of those films got much love…and Swept Away was just ripped apart by everyone. In short, Madonna killed Guy’s career. Those of us that have had that opinion about the Madonna/Guy marriage of course find it funny that Rocknrolla has come out at roughly the same time as the announcement of Guy and Madonna’s split. We’ve all been hoping that this split signals the return of Guy Ritchie to the cinema he does so well.

Rocknrolla is vaguely similar in concept to some of Guy Ritchie’s other films. It takes an odd assortment of characters all somehow involved in the criminal underground in Britain and their paths interconnect and try to pull them all down a ugly and dangerous spiral that will end in their deaths. In this outing One Two, Mumbles and Handsome Bob are the Wild Bunch a trio of moderately successful thugs. Stella is creative accountant to Uri who gives work to One Two under the nose of Uri who is trying to use Stella’s skills to get money to Lenny. Lenny is a blue-collar thug if you will who makes his dime off real estate scams and doesn’t see his way of doing things as old. Archie is Lenny’s enforcer who is trying to track down Lenny’s step son Johnny, a supposedly dead junkie/rocker managed by Mickey and Roman. There is really no way to truly sum up this film’s plot. But if you’ve seen a Ritchie film you can put the pieces together and figure out at least the style that the story will be told in.

While I enjoyed Rocknrolla it is by no means a typical Guy Ritchie film. All the elements are there, and you enjoy watching all the pieces get put in place and whacked back out of order. However, the prevailing feeling that I got out of this film is that Guy is stretching; it’s been eight years since Snatch came out and it feels like Guy is a little unsure of himself. This is not a bad thing however, the film is enjoyable, well done and something that no one except Guy Ritchie could do. It put me in a mood where I enjoyed the film and I know going out of it that Guy is coming back and his next movie is going to be even more like the Guy Ritchie I know and love.

One of the things I do love about Guy Ritchie’s films is that he takes at least one actor in every film that I love and makes them play a character that I couldn’t picture them in. In Snatch that is Brad Pitt and Mickey. In Rocknrolla that is Gerard Butler. I adore Butler and while One Two isn’t as out there of a character as Mickey I just didn’t quite see Butler as a fit in Ritchie’s world – I was wrong. Butler is fabulous.

Go support Guy Ritchie. He doesn’t really need the money, but I want him to keep making gangster movies because that is his genre.

Director & Writer: Guy Ritchie
One Two: Gerard Butler
Mumbles: Idris Elba
Handsome Bob: Tom Hardy
Johnny Quid: Toby Kebbell
Roman: Ludacris/Chris Bridges
Uri: Karel Roden
Councilor: Jimi Mistry
Stella: Thandie Newton
Mickey: Jeremy Piven
Archie: Mark Stong
Lenny: Tom Wilkinson

Archie: People ask the question... what's a RocknRolla? And I tell 'em - it's not about drugs, drums, and hospital drips, oh no. There's more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life - some the money, some the drugs, other the sex game, the glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he's different. Why? Because a real RocknRolla wants the f---ing lot.

Batman Begins

batman
Originally uploaded by Hot Rod Homepage

Growing up in my house it was a DC world, and Batman & Superman reigned supreme. I knew a lot about Batman, but was never a huge fan; I’m a Superman girl. Not that there’s anything wrong with Batman, I just couldn’t blend the Adam West, Tim Burton, & Joel Schumacher versions with the comic books I knew in my head. In 2005 that all changed when I found out that Christopher Nolan was taking over the flagging franchise with the superb casting of independent tour de force Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.

Batman is by nature a dark tale of a decaying city, and a calloused idealist who genuinely holds onto his life’s hope that he can aid in bringing his beloved city back to the people who dwell in it and away from the crime that corrupts it. He is a man devoid of super powers that pushes himself to become more than human, he wants to be the fear in the hearts of those that prey on the fearful; but more than that Batman is the great detective who uses his position as Bruce Wayne and talents as Batman to undermine and search out the corrupt whenever he can. Bruce Wayne is a hero that realizes he does not want to be Bruce Wayne any more, he is Batman but must keep the Bruce Wayne disguise on to protect his real identity.

This is an incredibly complex character who has been dragged through the mud over the years. I don’t need to say much about the Adam West version except “POW!”; Michael Keaton got the darkness but nothing else; Val Kilmer looked great in the suit; George Clooney looked great in the tuxes. On top of the people entrusted with the character over the years I was never a fan of Burton’s super dark and twisted out-of-reality version of Gotham and from the purple and green lighting thrown into the background of almost every shot it was obvious that Schumacher didn’t get the world either (I won’t even mention the atrocity of Batgirl becoming Alfred’s niece instead of Commissioner Gordon’s daughter).

But with the news that Christopher Nolan, David Goyer & Christian Bale were teaming on a new Batman movie that would ignore the previous films the geeks began to murmur. We had a hope that possibly this pairing would not only restore the Batman franchise to a watchable series, but perhaps take it a step closer to the comic book we remembered.

Casting news began to leak. There was Michael Cain as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox – we were excited. The story was going to harken back to Batman Year One about the origins of creating the character – we were excited. Ra’s Al Ghul & the Scarecrow where going to be the villains. We all began to doubt David Goyer’s prowess at writing a Batman script. How do you make two of the more marginal villains in the Batman pantheon the villains and explain them? Bruce Wayne’s love interest was going to be played by Katie Holmes – we all began to doubt. We were now on the edge of the geek precipice; we wanted to believe so bad that Batman Begins would be great, but we thought there were cracks in the plan. We were wrong.

Aside from the superb cast, and talent of Nolan the reason Batman Begins is (at least for now) the best adaptation of the character to date is the story. By using two lesser known villains in the Batman pantheon Goyer was able to concentrate on what was truly important: the transition of Bruce Wayne into Batman and the slow decay of Gotham that led to the corrupt void that it now is. For the first time Bruce Wayne’s parents were not just story devices, but characters and the audience could understand Bruce’s loss and how hard it must have been for Alfred to raise him; we saw the flawed young man he became that was so desperate to make a difference and didn’t know how and how this led him to become Batman. And this is how we finally understood how Ra’s Al Ghul was the perfect villain to be placed in this story line.

In this Batman Ra’s was not some idle villain known for the League of Shadows and his knack at immortality, but the man who put Bruce on the path to becoming Batman, and another person he trusted who would ultimately betray him and the first person who would test Batman in how close he would dance along the rules he so carefully set up to control his actions as Batman; namely would he kill to save the day.

We saw the beginning of the relationship between Batman and future Commissioner Jim Gordon begin to flourish. We saw Alfred fret over the damages Batman would do to Bruce Wayne and come to realize that the man and alter ego are a necessary thing. Wayne Enterprises was just as important to Bruce Wayne as it was to his family before him. We saw the world of Batman become real.

This Batman is dark, moody, and idealistic at the same time. He battles not just a major villain but the dark forces of an entire city – the average criminals, the crime lords, corrupt police, super villains in the making (Scarecrow), and super villains that have been in this world longer than Batman (Ra’s Al Ghul).

What makes Batman Begins most unique though is the logical progression that the filmmakers were able to place upon the world they created. This was best exemplified by the end of the movie; not only was it a nod to what the geeks were waiting for, but it exemplified the problems of a world with heroes that walk the line between vigilante and dutiful citizen. It is then that we geeks (and film scholars) knew beyond a doubt that the people behind this film understand Batman and would not let the franchise go astray any time soon.

At the end of the film newly promoted Jim Gordon installs the bat signal and uses it for the first time. Gordon begins a conversation with Batman about escalation: cops use semi-automatics, criminals get automatics, cops get Kevlar & the criminals get armor piercing rounds – and now Gotham has Batman. At this point he tells Batman that another costumed freak has been causing mayhem & killing people…and leaving his calling card, a joker. Batman gets his first true homegrown super villain and the person most widely considered to be his arch nemesis.

In the end there is not one element that made Batman Begins a successful adaptation of Batman, there were dozens of elements. This film shows such care and craftsmanship that there is no doubt that it was artfully constructed by everyone involved from those above the line like Nolan and Bale, to the very last grip and PA below the line. The strengths of Batman Begins make The Dark Knight one of the most anticipated films of this summer movie season.

Director: Christopher Nolan
Writer: David Goyle
Bruce Wayne/Batman: Christian Bale
Alfred: Michael Caine
Rachel Dawes: Katie Holmes
Henri Ducard: Liam Neeson
Jim Gordon: Gary Oldman
Dr. Crane/Scarecrow: Cillian Murphy
Carmine Falcone: Tom Wilkinson
Mr. Earle: Rutger Hauer
Ra’s Al Ghoul: Ken Wantanabe
Lucius Fox: Morgan Freeman

Bruce Wayne: [as Alfred opens the curtains] Bats are nocturnal.
Alfred Pennyworth: Bats might be, but even for billionaire playboys, three o'clock is pushing it. The price of leading a double life, I think. Your theatrics made an impression.
[shows the newspaper to Bruce]
Bruce Wayne: Theatricality and deception are powerful weapons, Alfred. It's a good start.
Alfred Pennyworth: If those are to be the first of many other injuries to come, it will be wise to find a suitable excuse. Polo, for instance.
Bruce Wayne: I'm not learning polo, Alfred.
Alfred Pennyworth: Strange injuries and non-existent social life, these things beg the question as to what exactly does Bruce Wayne do with his time and his money.
Bruce Wayne: And what does someone like me do?
Alfred Pennyworth: Drive sports cars, date movie stars, buy things that are not for sale... who knows, Master Wayne? You start pretending to have fun, you might even have a little by accident.