Tag: Michael Caine

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

As if this one needs an introduction. We’d hoped to see it at the IMAX as I saw the first two episodes there. Unfortunately, you have to book at least a day in advance at the Glasgow one due to their steam-powered booking system (assuming you can even find it on their web site). Also, simply due to popularity, the film is booked out for every evening performance until the middle of this week – and with Littler Miss working her way down the birth canal slower than a barge through treacle, we can’t risk blowing the cash on something we may not be able to get to. So, off to Parkhead we went. Oh, and with no concerns about trying to find a 2D showing as there was no crappy, revenue-driven urge to produce a 3D version of the film. Thank you director Christopher Nolan for putting your foot down about that one.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. The film follows on very closely from the end of The Dark Knight, with prisoners incarcerated as a result of the Harvey Dent Act. Gotham is free of organised crime and, as a result, the mysterious Batman has disappeared. However, this is Gotham. And this is a trilogy. So something has to happen.

Cue villain-of-the-moment Bane, born of darkness and out to destroy Batman – and Gotham City while he’s at it. It’s difficult to go too much further without giving anything much away so I’ll leave it at that and focus on the overall quality of the film. Before you see it, though, this excellent article on ScreenRant is worth a read. It’s pretty much spoiler-free!

There’s no denying the acting pedigree of the cast. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine return as Fox and Alfred respectively. Two of the most respected actors of their generation, and deservedly so. Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, takes on a major part of the story. As well as an ensemble cast, it’s a multi-faceted story which ensures these people aren’t just background to Christian Bale‘s hoarse whispering Batman and Tom Hardy‘s muffle-voiced Bane.

Ah, yes. Bane. Huge, scary but often hard to understand. On the whole, I got most of what he said but there were some lines I just didn’t catch. In fairness, Batman was just as unintelligible one a small handful of instances.

The film runs for a long time – 2hrs 45 mins, in fact. Be prepared for a long sit and don’t expect a thrill a minute or a bucket of laughs between the action sequences. Dark Knight Rises is a dark film – very dark. Unrelenting in places. It could be worse. Some of the death scenes are cut away from rather abruptly which is probably what’s earned it the 12A rating in the UK rather than a 15.

The action and effects are, as expected, fantastic. They’re not as “big” as those in, say, Avengers Assemble, but they’re more gritty. Having said that, I found the fight sequences lacking a little something, perhaps because the two main proponents (Bane and Batman) are so heavily padded. Anne Hathaway‘s Selina Kyle (she’s not referred to as Catwoman at all during the film) are actually slightly better to watch and not just because she fills a leather outfit so well.

Expectations are bound to be high for this film and mainly as the last film was, simply put, absolutely outstanding. However, you’re never going to get that chemistry again. In fairness, all three films in the trilogy have aimed to be different as well and bearing that in mind, Dark Knight Rises is successful. It’s not like the other two, it is an intellectual level apart from other superhero films and it’s very much a wonderful piece of work.

However, it’s also not as good as I was hoping. Some of the dialogue just clunked for me and I think I was expecting more of the action scenes. I do think I’d have enjoyed it more visually if we’d caught it at the IMAX, but that’s only the visuals. The pace would still have been slow and Dark Knight would still be kicking it for overall quality.

It’s good. In fact, it’s very good. But it’s not the utterly amazing classic it’s been built up to be. It’s really only let down by its own hype and the expectations put upon it by the second episode in the series.

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Cars 2

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsOnce again I’m glad to say that I avoided the dreaded enforced 3D by going to see a kids’ film. It may have enhanced about 30 seconds of the film, but hardly worth the discomfort of watching the remainder through those stupid bloody sunglasses.

Cars 2

“Tow Mater, average intelligence.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Mader gets mixed up in the spy world as Lightning McQueen undertakes a World Grand Prix.

See if it you like: PIXAR films – it’s a classic example

As usual, we missed the start of the film. This seems to be an annoyingly regular feature of going with the kids, but it’s never their fault. This time it was flipping roadworks with no diversion signs. Thanks, Glasgow Council. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, we only missed a couple of minutes and the beginning of the film takes us right into the spy aspect of the movie. It was brilliant – deserving of an Bond movie and introducing Finn McMissile (Michael Caine), a character originally planned to be just a passing joke in the first film. Instead they held back on the scene he was meant to be in and made him a major character in this one.

We’re swiftly reintroduced to the two leads from last time around, a plot is formed around them touring the world and off we go.

The scenery and imagination used to come up with it is nothing short of amazing. The lifts in the party room before the first race are huge pistons, the Italian Riviera has car-based shapes carved into the hillsides, even the models of cars used for the incidental characters have been carefully planned out to be just right. And that’s even before you spot all the little in-jokes in the background, such as the banners advertising “Lassetyres” (the film’s director is John Lasseter).

I can’t fault the voice acting, either, but with the cast used that’s not a surprise. I mean Michael flipping Caine? Awesome. Owen Wilson and Larry The Cable Guy (seriously – who the hell would work under that pseudonym?) reprise their roles well from the original while Caine is joined by the likes of Emily Mortimer (a sexier voice you will never hear from an automobile), Eddie Izzard and John Turturro.

There is a downside, though. The film has a great story. And a good plot. But to move this forward, there’s a fair bit of dialogue and this means quite a number of fairly static scenes. As an upshot, younger kids might get a little bored as they just want to see the fast-paced action scenes and vehicles hurting themselves. Certainly, Little Mister did. He spent a good while moving up and down the rows. He wasn’t alone, either, with a couple of children near us literally running around the theatre at points. The adults in the audience, however, seemed engrossed.

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Film Wednesday

Taking Woodstock
Taking Woodstock

I managed to get an afternoon off work due to the school going on fire and everyone being given the rest of the day off. Taking this as a sign from some random deity that I was being overworked (despite it being a day when I had no lessons all afternoon anyway), I took the opportunity to head into town and see a film or two.

Harry Brown

The timings worked out well for me to walk right into Harry Brown which certainly lived up to the trailer. This is one of the best films I’ve seen this year and proves that Michael Caine is every bit the actor he ever was.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Harry (Caine) is a pensioner living on a really dodgy housing estate. One of his OAP friends is killed by scum on the streets, the police aren’t helping and Harry used to be in the army…

The opening scene, filmed as if by a scrote on a moped, is both harsh and harrowing. It sets the tone for this dark film perfectly. There is tension throughout, uniformly superb performances and great direction. You really want to reach into the screen and batter the chavs – kudos to the actors playing them.

For a film to fill you with revulsion in the way this does is testament to all those who worked on it. The only bad thing about it is that it’s too realistic – not a fault of the film itself, but of life in Britain these days. There is simply nothing in it that couldn’t (perhaps even doesn’t) happen in this sad state we call real life.

Yes, that’s a depressing review but that’s how the film makes you feel. But that’s the point. It makes you feel.

Harry Brown is so gritty you could use it to make the entire length of the M1 safe to drive along during the frostiest of winters. It’s harsh, hard-hitting, taught… and British.

So I guess we do have something to be proud of in this country after all.

Taking Woodstock

Off the other end of the scale we have Taking Woodstock directed by Ang Lee who’s most recently famous for gay shepherd chick-flick Brokeback Mountain that I avoided like the plague after sitting through the first 15 minutes in Phuket.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a Jewish boy, Jake (Henry Goodnam), sees a chance to get a concert going on land near his parents’ motel to drum up trade for the summer. Things get ever so slightly out of hand…

Apparently if you remember Woodstock then you weren’t there, but there’s enough documentation around it to allow Lee to make a pretty good “this is how it happened… maybe” film. The film is “based on” some stuff or other and how true it all is is anybody’s guess. However, what’s important is that it makes both a good story and a good film.

Imelda Staunton is fantastic as the Russian Jewish mother who seems to hate the entire world and is probably the best character in the film. Seeing as there are Jewish people in the film, they are legally obliged to find a part for Eugene Levy and he pretty much plays Eugene Levy. Enigmatic at first, then turns out to have some smarts after all.

It’s a great film to look at and has its feelgood moments. One thing it’s lacking, though, are downers. What little hiccups appear through the film – townsfolk rebelling, teen nazis trying to cause trouble, mafia protection trying to muscle in, council officials with health violations – all are dealt with so swiftly that it just seems pointless including them in the plot.

What could have been a film about an event, and as such ended up being more of a documentary, ends up focussing on the characters and this makes it much better. We see most of it through Jake’s eyes which makes it all the more interesting as the whole thing is astounding to him.

I particularly liked the little bits in the background and short sequences which are based on classic footage and images of the event. Top of these has to be the three nuns finally agreeing to raise their fingers in “peace” signs. It’s right in mid-background of one scene.

Oh, and there are boobies. And other bits. Which is a bonus.

One thing, though – does Ang Lee really have a thing for guys kissing? Seriously, don’t let him do a kids’ movie.

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Seen Get Carter?

Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971).

The original Get Carter with Michael Caine, that is. Not the (apparently) awful Stallone remake? Or failing that, have you lived anywhere on Tyneside in the last thirty or so years? If you can answer “yes” to either, then you’re likely aware of the god-awful eyesore that is the Gateshead multi-storey car park.

Well, the good news is that it’s finally getting pulled down this year. The local council have put special lighting on it in an attempt to make it look better in it’s final few months, but as far as I can tell it’s just a huge lump of now-colourful concrete.

I do remember as a kid that we used to park there when we went to Tesco and Shopping City. I always wondered why the stairwell on the top two floors had iron railings to stop people falling or jumping out. As if you’d be fine propelling yourself off the ledge of the other ten-or-so storeys. It’s now Tesco who’re paying for the demolition so they can build a new hypermarket there, with a cinema and so on. Gateshead needs a brush up – it has since I was a kid. If I recall, one of the problems with demolishing the car park was the number of shops underneath it which would have to be relocated. I’m wondering if that’s happened, or if Tesco’s just bought them all out.

Either way, I hope the facelift the town gets is worth all this hassle. Sometimes history has to go – because it’s too damn ugly. Now, will someone kindly start working on getting rid of the similarly monstrous concrete car park on the other side of the Tyne Bridge?

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