The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christian Bale

© Warner Bros Pictures

I've already written 1000 words on this picture, so I don't think I have it in me to craft anything resembling a complete essay with a narrative though-line. I do, however, have a lot more thoughts and reactions to the movie as a whole, which will now take the form of bullet points. This probably goes without saying but, just in case it doesn't, SPOILERS.

• I must be the only person alive who loves Hans Zimmer's score. I love the tribal beat of Bane's theme and the way it goes crashing up against Batman's bombastic horns. I love the sneaky switcheroo when you realize that Bane's theme is like Bane himself -- not at all who you (or even he) thought but something entirely different. Above all, I love that when Bane and Batman come head to head for the first time, there is no score whatsoever. Just bone crunching and breathless anticipation in one of the most knock-down, drag-out fights I have ever seen on screen.
  
• My best friend's already made remarks to the extent that she is over Christian Bale, but I think he's my mafia: just when I think I'm out, he pulls me back in. It's not just the streaks of grey hair, the hollows under his eyes, or the fact that he is visibly thinner and more fragile than previous incarnations that break my heart to realize that he may have "aged-out" of the role he defined for himself. It's the way his voice softens when he's speaking with Alfred about Rachel. There's not only sorrow in that voice but innocence, like Alfred is a time machine that brings Bruce back to a moment when he was truly himself. It's the way you can tell, even at first blush, that there's no way Bruce/Batman could ever be more interested in Miranda Tate (though Marion Cotillard has never been more luminous) than he is in the Cat/Selina Kyle. It's not just the challenge that thrills him but the possibility of finding a single human being who may also understand.
  
• Speaking of Anne Hathaway, could she be any more killer in this movie? Sure, her first scene with Bruce when she flips from ingenue to seductress to criminal and right on out that window is gangbusters, but so is the moment in that scene when she hikes her skirt from just under her knee to just over her knee so she can climb (no one would wear those tights or the shoes to cater a party). Her dancing body can go from purring to ready to pounce in nanoseconds, but it's never campy. Above all, she gets to go through Harvey Dent's arc in reverse -- from apathetic to finally having some skin in the game. It was never really a matter of which side she would chose. It was just a question of how long it would take her to get there.
  
• If it weren't for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think I would have fainted right out of my seat when Blake told Bruce he knew Bruce's secret identity 'cause he was also Batman (essentially). Mind you, it highlights the essential difference between them and further makes my point that you have to be a fuckin' weirdo to not become a cop or a prosecutor or the world's most dedicated lobbyist, but it also really smartly sets up the whole structures becoming shackles stuff and the way the movie lets you imagine that Blake just knew Bruce would leave him a little something special in his will. Of course, what I would really like to see is the "Becoming Batman" journal that would go along with it, full of handy tips like Lucius Fox's direct line, the best way to appear out of a shadow, and a guide to better growling.
  
• Actually, I'm also probably the only person who doesn't hate the Batman growl. On PCHH Glen Weldon posited that the movies could be a solid 10% better if it weren't for that growl, but whatever. He's got to disguise his voice somehow. Maybe he should have sunk some money into those Mission: Impossible voice patches.
  
• For that matter, I don't mind Tom Hardy's lilting based-on-an-Irish-Romani-'cause-he's-that-guy voice either. It took me right out of the movie the first time, I started to groove on it the second go 'round. It's just on border of being too silly, but, when you introduce a voice like that and follow it up with an impossibly menacing* hostile plane takeover, you start to see the character behind it. You see it in Bane's strut. You hear it in lines like, "What a lovely, lovely voice," followed immediately by mass murder and destruction. In fact, when you hear his voice for the first time, it's overwhelming loud - not just coming from behind you but in front of you and below you and in the seat next to you. Unnerving. 
  
• I don't really get Talia's point -- she hates her dad for disowning her protector but decided to follow through on his plan to destroy Gotham because his murder liberated her from her hate? That's pretty much what she said, I know, but I just don't understand. Why not enjoy the freedom to make your own decisions or reform the League of Shadows or use philanthropy to save the world like you've been pretending to anyway?
  
• To the nit-pickers who want to know how Bruce gets from the unspecified prison location and back to a secured Gotham in an unspecified amount of time, I say, "Did you not watch Batman Begins?" He spent seven years figuring out how to get from A to B without any money or notice. I'm sure he had it in the bag.
  
• How weird is it to see Batman in the daylight, though, right? It's a testament to both how broken the city is yet how accustomed they are to his presence that there are no double takes during that climactic showdown at City Hall. Gotham's just like Bruce in that regard -- they take Batman for granted.
  
• The song/video that inspired my article title.
  
  
  
  
• Besides the above, I think this is my favourite image that I came across in my research:
  

  

  Christopher Nolan

  © Warner Bros Pictures

A touch too long and a touch too reliant on Michael Caine's moist eyes to carry the emotional beats, but otherwise a near masterpiece. A-

 *I was going to say "badass" here but decided against it in part because I think the term is overused, in part because I don't want to associate any positive connotations of the term with the character, and in part because I heard a very convincing argument against the very character of Bane (in that he is a less product of storytelling needs and more of a need in the 80s and 90s for more "badasses" in comics).

Inception (2010)

Again, next to impossible to discuss without discussing the whole, so SPOILERS ABOUND.

Christopher Nolan has always been very, very good at layering his films, taking us through them as a characters experience them so that the twist, the reveal, whatever it might be, cuts the audience, too. It's clever without being stagy, giving the narrative thrust with little trickery. It's storytelling in the fullest possible way.

And Inception is filled to the brim with ideas and possibility. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) assembles a dream team of extractors -- an architect (Ellen Page), a point man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a forger (Tom Hardy), and a chemist (Dileep Rao) -- for a client (Ken Watanabe) who wants them not to steal an idea from his rival's (Cillian Murphy) mind but to plant one. "Can't be done," Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) insists. "The subject’s mind always knows the genesis of an idea."* Cobb knows otherwise. He's done it before. So it begins, a heist of Fischer's subconscious, getting him to carry them deep enough to make inception possible.

*I agree with Lucas on this one: "Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear."

The idea is brilliantly conceived, and there are set pieces, like a zero g fight in a hotel corridor, that that go like gangbusters, in part because CGI is eschewed for good old fashioned guys on wires. Yet for a movie about dreams, so much of it is too literal -- particularly some character names (Ariadne, Yusuf, Mal, though the last works better if you interpret it as "hurt" or "pain" instead of "evil") --, while it simultaneously lacks any sort of levity or surrealism outside of Arthur's humourously literal take on Escher's Ascending and Descending and its inherent paradox.** In fact, Arthur and occasionally Eames (Hardy) are the only ones who seem to be having any fun here, like the idea of creating new worlds and using them to unlock the mysteries of people's minds might be kind of cool. Everyone else is all dour, dour, look at my psychological problems (DiCaprio), please explain them to me (Page).

**Completely unrelated: in the last few weeks, I have also been amused by paradoxes, remembering first year when I didn't understand what they were, and a rez mate tried to tell me that they always involve time travel. Even when I had no clue, I still went, "I don't think that's right."

Which is why . . . alright, here's what I think: the entire Saito/Fischer rivalry is a set up for Cobb. It's his mind that they trying inception on as a radical form of therapy. A once brilliant architect so paralyzed by guilt that he lives in exile in the very place where he once wooed his wife, and along comes a job whose payoff is making all his legal trouble disappear. Part and parcel with this plan is an asexual neckerchief sporting cipher who needs regular doses of exposition to live and who's main concern isn't the heist at hand but Cobb's degrading mental state in it. Other characters get left behind in the dreamscapes they create; only Cobb can travel further toward limbo, a space who's architecture (a mash up of memory and imagination) he spent 50 years exploring. Even when he finds Saito, it's in a space that Arthur first created to trap him. Cobb has to go down to the bottom, to the place where he made his most significant mistake, in order to find a measure of forgiveness.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. The movie could only be operating on the level on which it is overtly operating (though I highly doubt it), and there is an extent to which, like The Prestige before it, the movie is a metaphor for filmmaking itself: all its oddities and eccentricities (like how characters invisibly travel from one location to the next while suspending their conversations until the camera joins them again at their destination) brought to the fore instead of hoping for suspension of disbelief. Regardless, whether you think the top keeps spinning at the end or you see it falter on the way to falling, the movie is excellent: genius editing (Oscar to Lee Smith), sumptuous set design, rich score from Hans Zimmer. It's one Cheese Man*** away from a masterpiece. A-

***I am telling you, it all comes back to Buffy.

The Short Take: Neglect 2009 - Part IV

Turns out it will soon be time to move to the couch. It is not yet time.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Went to see this movie out of movie-related boredom. Said everything I need to say about it here. D

District 9 (2009)

This is one of those movies I wish hadn't fallen through the cracks of my massive lack of reviewing because it was one of the best movies of 2009. It's powerful, well-acted, and completely different from what you thought it was: ballsy, political conscious, and graphically violent. A smart movie with the power to surprise? That is something. A-

Whip It (2009)

I always want to put an exclamation point at the end of the title, and that's pretty much the review right there. The movie is never more than its girl-power tagline, "Be Your Own Hero," but, as girl-power movies go, that's a pretty good thing to be. Drew Barrymore makes for an assured presence behind the camera. Now if someone could just explain to me what the legal difference is between 18 and 21 in Texas inasmuch as you apparently can't legally consent to participate in roller derby until you are 21, that would be great. Because I'm pretty sure you're a legal adult at 18, so one of the movie's big conflicts sort of deflated for that reason. But, you know, otherwise cute and you go, girl and all that. B

The Hangover (2009)

I was so sure I had already reviewed this one, but, since it's one of the most popular movies this year, I'm pretty sure you've already seen it. You don't need me to tell you that it's funny (particularly Mike Tyson and a discussion about renaming roofies), but not the funniest shit ever warranting a sequel and, like, a girl version and whatever the crap else. It's sort of an one-note thing to begin with, okay? B-

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Sadly, I told someone I had already reviewed this movie. That turned out not to be true. Sorry, Ames! I mentioned this exact scenario to my best friend, and she asked, "What would you say about it?" Well, I would say that it is inventive, particularly the two Ikea set pieces, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's dance number, and the reality divorcing from expectations. I would also say that it wears its devotion to The Catcher in the Rye a little too on its sleeve, that Tom (Gordon-Levitt) is a dough head, and that I would call Summer (Zooey Deschanel) a bitch, but that last remark wouldn't be fair. The movie prevents you from ever getting to know her in any meaningful way, so it's not right to blame Summer for that. Insight ultimately squandered on characters unworthy of it. B

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

I had to go see this movie as part of a bargain, and the other person turned to me when it was over to apologize. Seriously. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, are you hurting for money? Come over, and I will make you a sandwich next time. We'll figure something out. Bring Christopher Eccelston with you. D-

Now it's time to move to the couch.

"People don't realize this, but loneliness is underrated."

The only reason Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who uttered that line, doesn't appear on my Underrated List is time. If I had more time, each letter would have multiple entries. Even so, my A to Z guide to everything in movies you've been missing should have enough to pique your interest.

Pop Culture Round Up: February 28 - March 6

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I'm leaning toward negatively at the moment.

Aw, they want to forget their troubles!

Nothing this cool ever happens at my office.

Yes? Listen, I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm all for criticism, but why would lack thereof equal no book culture? It's not like the publishing industry, English majors, and book clubs have ceased to exist.

Is it me, or does Paul Rudd look hot in this photo?

Ha! I knew those Baby Einstein DVDs were a crock. Another good reason to steer clear.

Well, yeah. When else can you call your friends and yell "Holy shit!"?

Continued obsession: Tracking down Nazi art booty. Yeah, that's what I just said.

I'm not quite at this point yet with the show, but Sars is right about the way pretty every conversation goes lately.

Oh, how I want to see it.

There are about 500 million things you could read about Watchmen this week, but I'd recommend this one.

Reactions to this headline: Shock, disbelief, suspicion that the Fug Girls were lying to me. Reactions to photo: Mild anxiety, as Vampire Boy suddenly looks kind of like ex-co-worker that I occasionally run into in the streets.

I think I may be reaching the saturation point on my anti-obsession as I didn't immediately clamour for one of these. Mind you, if it were actually like she described, I would want one so bad.

I do kind of want this.

Truth: I've only read two of these. I don't recall lying about the rest, mind.

I know it's supposed to sound hard and discouraging, but I thought, "Cool job."

I'm down with this casting, but the job is preposterous. It's a stupid contrivance entirely to cause friction. They are old money, for pete's sake!

The casting of this movie is getting surreal, but I kind of think it could end up being awesome.

Trailer insanity:

Terminator: Salvation

500 Days of Summer

Wolverine

Public Enemies

The Limits of Control

The Short Take: 2008 Round Up

It's not 2008 anymore, I know, but I still have quite a few 2008 movies that I have yet to tell you about. It seems obvious at this point that they're not going to get full reviews. I still want to acknowledge them, though, so they get the paragraph treatment instead. Hurrah!

Blindness (2008)

Bearing in mind that Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo are pretty much always going to be good, this has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. A metaphor for the break down of communication in modern society, huh? How does that work, exactly? Let's go back to grade five and remember that a metaphor is a comparison not using like or as. So everyone loses their sight and only one seemingly ordinary woman (Moore) can still see but pretends to be blind in order to stay with her husband (Ruffalo). Okay . . . still waiting for someone to explain to me how the metaphor works. I'll give José Saramago the benefit of the doubt and guess that it works in the novel, but it doesn't come across in screenwriter Don McKellar and director Fernando Meirelles adaptation. Basically, this movie has an overlap of self-consciously arty crap (it's white blindness, so the theatre would occasionally fill with bright white light from the screen, which achieved nothing so much as taking the audience directly out of the film) and over attention to gritty details (people stopped using the washrooms and just used the hall, and not a single scene that involved walking down the hallway failed to include someone slipping in shit. I'd like to say points for continuity, but We. Get. It). We also got it when you stayed on the stray dog eating a dead person in the street for two minutes. Shut up, moive. D

Passchendaele (2008)

This movie had a lot going for it. The opening sequence was shocking. Then the movie zigged when you thought it would zag, taking you back to Alberta and focusing instead on an older officer (Paul Gross) wooing an emotionally unavailable younger nurse (Caroline Dhavernas). This part I liked. It was a little boring at times, but you could understand why he kept at it even as she pushed him away. But the movie's called Passchendaele, so you knew they had to get back to the front eventually. It was at this point, the third act, that the movie got bad. Out of nowhere, a small, well developed, character driven story became a sweeping war movie in the worst way. Now it was about CANADA, and CANADA deserves to have its story told. I'm not saying that that's not true; I'm saying that it didn't jive with what came before and was done in something of an embarrassing manner. Oh, well. I suppose writer-director-star Gross isn't perfect. C+

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

I'll just tell you how it is: I don't really get Kevin Smith. I don't dislike him or want him to come to any harm, but when I'm watching his movies, it's sort of a big meh. Part of it is that people just don't talk like that. Not in that Sorkin way where we wish we were all that erudite but in that "If I hear the words 'make love' or any derivation thereof one more time, I'm going to lose it" way. I don't believe that Zack would talk that way, and I wanted to stop such things from coming out of Seth Rogen's mouth. He's a good actor; they would sound ridiculous no matter what. And that's all it is, really: that two best friends would think making a porno is the best way to solve their financial crisis, that having sex could reveal deeper feelings, that it does, it's a workable premise. But then you throw all these other layers of shit (sometimes literal) on top of the thing, and it becomes shallow. There's humour there, but the fundamental lack of emotionality prevents the movie from ever being more than okay. B-

Changeling (2008)

Remember when Angelina Jolie got really skinny back in there? See this movie if you need a refresher. Not only does her collarbone practically cry out "feed me!", but all the veins in her hands stand out, giving her the effect of seeming fragile. Which is great when you are playing a character like Christine Collins. The trailer may give you the impression that this movie's about a lady looking for her lost son, but it's really about a lady learning to toughen up. She just also happens to be looking for her lost son. Jolie's great, but her out sized public persona prevents her from ever really disappearing into a role. It's hard to believe that she wouldn't start kicking some ass. John Malkovich is cast fantastically against type as Reverend Gustav Briegleb (I think you could get a solid short film out of him just saying that name), a firebrand so intent on taking down the corrupt police department that it's possible he only sees Christine as a means to an end. This, unfortunately, is all the nuance any character in the movie is allowed. Jeffrey Donovan, as the captain who gives Christine the wrong boy, gets all of fifteen seconds to register any doubt or remorse. No one else gets even that much. It gets the point where you want to tell the nice detective (Michael Kelly) to go easier on these kids. This just isn't it, Clint. C-

Australia (2008)

This not so much a movie as a child's fever dream of what an epic movie should be. It's bookended by a movie about the Stolen Generations, turns into a fish out of water love story about an Englishwoman (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a cattle farm in the outback and the Drover (Hugh Jackman) who helps her save the place from financial ruin, and then turns into a war drama. While there's plenty of material there, it's not convincingly much of any of these movies. Kidman's really got to stop doing whatever it is she's been doing to her face (woe is the day when I go back to The Others to discover that it was like that all along), Jackman's Jackman (he seems an affable, gregarious fellow, and you can pretty much take it or leave it with him), and they have some lovely friendship chemistry but not much else. And if I were Brandon Walters, he of that lovely mane, I would turn tail and run before I ever took on another Magic Aboriginal role like that again. A child who refers to his adoptive parents as Boss and Mrs. Boss? Where do we draw the line? For a man who has supposedly left his red curtain trilogy behind, Baz Luhrmann is awfully fixated on a literal swinging one. It's pretty, but there's not much else to this one. C

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: one of the problems rom-coms is the tendency to demonize the love interest the audience shouldn't want the lead to end up, and this problem tends to be ratcheted up when said love interest is a woman. So you can imagine my surprise writer and star Jason Segel remembered happy, funny times with his eponymous ex (Kristen Bell) and even allowed her valid points about the difficulties in their relationships (I'd balk at someone wearing the same sweatpants everyday for a week, too). When he starts to remember the downsides to their relationship (a montage of events where he stood back and held her purse, for one), it feels earned and as natural as it would in any break up. Everyone knows from the outset that he'll end up with the lovely Mila Kunis, but it's a pleasant surprise that Bell feels like a contender. At least until a couple of reveals undo all that nice work, but you'll forgive the movie it's only real misstep. It's still got hilarious turns from Russell Brand and Kenneth the Page, after all, and you totally would go see a Dracula puppet musical. A-

Made of Honor (2008)

I watched this as a double bill with Marshall, and, while it's the worse both by comparison and in point of fact, it's not as bad as you might think. It is what you think, a sex-reversed My Best Friend's Wedding, and the sex reversal guarantees an ending reversal as well. Because I stopped watching Grey's Anatomy several seasons back, I'm free to find Patrick Dempsey, all floppy hair and twinkling blue eyes, charming again (Fun fact: I started watching Grey's for Dempsey, kind of like how I started watching House for Robert Sean Leonard. There are a handful of early 90s movies that mean a lot to me, okay?). I like Michelle Monaghan as well, and they are pretty cute together. Nothing about this movie is fresh or interesting, but sometimes being middling isn't the worst thing in the world. C

Tell No One (2006)

It's all in the tagline: "8 years ago, Alex's wife was murdered. Today, she emailed him." This French thriller, adapted by writer-director Guillaume Canet from the novel by American Harlan Coben, is exactly as exciting as you find that premise. At the very least, it's mildly intriguing, right? François Cluzet goes on the hunt for the truth about his wife's murder, loosening the foundations of several people's lives in the process. Though neither the direction nor the writing are perfect (particularly egregious is the music video early on that disrupts the flow of the movie), Cluzet is fantastic as the still grieving widower, and Kristin Scott Thomas (perhaps practicing her French for I've loved you so long) is particularly welcome as his only supportive friend. Having never read the novel, I can't speak to the adaptation, but, as a movie, it's pretty good. B

Stop-Loss (2008)

While I'm certain that there's a story to be told about soldiers who get stop-lossed (that is, called back to duty just when they are set to be discharge based on the needs of the service) and Kimberly Pierce may even be the director to do it, Ryan Phillippe and Abbie Cornish aren't the actors for it. Cornish's attempts at an American accent and her man voice do nothing to alievate her lack of affect, and Phillippe's never been the most expressive actor (although he does seem the right type to solider). Perhaps subing out Phillippe for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who handles the film's most compelling plot with the aplomb we've come to expect, would have produced better results. Aside from her imperfect leads, Pierce's film tends toward the obvious, but it's also smart, patriotic, and occasionally quietly moving (the digital collages made by the soldiers themselves are perhaps the movie's pinnacle). B+

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

I probably wouldn't have seen this at all if we weren't already at the theatre and all in the mood to see another movie, but there you have it. What all the celebrity voices bring to the table I couldn't tell you (will a six year old even recognize Jolie, much less David Cross?), but it's fun and funny, necessary components for any worthwhile kids' flick, as well as beautiful to look at, smart, and just a little smart-mouthed. It's got a simple message (boiled down, you could call it "be yourself") that it handles with a fair amount of subtlety. In short, if your niece or nephew wants to rent it, you could do worse. A lot worse. A-

Drillbit Taylor (2008) could be one of those worse things. My hopes were briefly raised after my nephew put it on when I saw both Stephen Root and Danny R. McBride's names go by, but they petered out shortly thereafter. They scored their sole laugh from me in a cameo from Adam Baldwin that surely went over every head but my mother's. There's just something unfunny and downright creepy about a homeless man who tries to swill abused teens out of their money. It could be darkly funny, but the movie doesn't set that tone, and it's all downhill from there. C

Brick (2005)

It's RE-view, it's RE-view time!*

I know you might be like, dude, this movie came out a long time ago. You saw it a long time ago. Yes, those things are true. I also re-watched it for the first time in August. What's your point, I say. Months elapsed between when Zip sent me the DVD and when I sent it back. You know what? I don't owe you any explanations, but I'll give you one anyway.

See, I held on to it for so long for two reasons: 1) I love the movie and want to watch it repeatedly, and 2) I had to find time to listen to the commentary track. I'm not one for DVD extras most of the time (except theatrical trailers. You shouldn't be allowed to release your movie on DVD without a trailer), but the sheer volume of names listed on the commentary track made me think it might be worthwhile. Writer-director Rian Johnson, smart guy that he is, didn't bother with scene specific commentary. Sure, sometimes they explain an effect or a choice, but mostly he just chats with whoever it is (the costume or set designer, for example) about what it is that they did together to make the film. It's terrifically insightful and a lot more fun than the average running commentary track.

I was a little dismissive of Nathan Johnson's score in my initial review, although I can't imagine why. It's positively Wagnerian with the themes for each character, and I love that he made up his own instruments. He's a talent worth tracking.

I still think high school is a perfect setting for a noir, especially if you are looking to give the genre a reboot or at least to do something unique and have people take notice. I like that while Brendan is the hero, he isn't a hero, and I love that Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays it so close to the chest. I love that Brendan and Dode (Noah Segan) are motivated by the same thing, even though they can't see it that way. I love that the Brain (Matt O'Leary) looks up to Brendan, even though he shouldn't, and that Brendan knows this and doesn't want him to either. For a movie that has such specific and topsy-turvy dialogue, it's surprisingly subtle and ambiguous with its non-verbal cues between the players.

Mostly though, I wonder whatever possessed me to stick that minus there when I first graded this picture. My best guess is the strange costuming, particularly for Laura (Nora Zehetner). At one point, she appears to be wearing turkey feathers on the side of her head. In my second and third viewings, however, this started to make sense to me. High school girls really do wear the strangest things. It's all part of their struggle for identity, and Laura, with her merry-go-round of men and manipulation, would understand that better than most. A

* One day you will understand how "Business Time" may be one of the most perfect songs ever written, if only for its easy substitution quality. Pretty much any two syllable word will do, including but not limited to grocery, laundry, and Christmas. Try it today!

The Lookout (2007)

Outline: With mental difficulties following a car accident, once promising high school hockey star Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as the night janitor in a small town bank. He meets Gary (Matthew Goode) and Luvlee (Isla Fisher), who lure him into a heist of said bank.

Writer-director Scott Frank's directorial debut reminds me, for better or worse, of Memento. Leonard couldn't form new memories due to an injury, so he used repetition and conditioning to replace what he lost. Although not entirely the same, Chris has problems with his short term memory, using similar techniques to get him through the day. His memories from before the accident seem to be crystal clear, but afterwards, he has enough trouble with everyday tasks. His squeaky brakes are a constant reminder - he probably doesn't remember to get them checked, and no one has yet pointed out the problem to him.

There's a lot of details like that one packed into the script. A lot of work goes into setting up the difference between Chris's disability (for lack of a better term) and being dumb or absentminded. It would come across as dense, but Frank spaces out the clues nicely against the frigid Manitoba landscape (a stand-in for Kansas).

Rumour has it that this movie isn't well reviewed, and I can see why that might be. So much goes into making the first two acts messy and realistic that the tidy Hollywood ending feels disappointing. There are multiple points where we see Chris and the plot race right by reality, so he can apply the lessons he has been learning along the way. Even so, how can anyone notice these oversights while they are watching Gordon-Levitt? What he does on the screen goes beyond acting - I'm not even sure there are words for it. I read in an interview recently that he finds one psychological element at the centre of his characters and clings to it. I can agree to that, but what he does is so much more complex. It is nothing short of captivating: you can barely remember to breathe when you try to take in everything he is doing.

I think Goode heard the rumour that he's the new Hugh Grant and decided to go the other way. A close cut and an American accent later, Goode is nothing but slippery, wiry energy and menace. He doesn't have to play it as close to the vest with Chris, and that makes him all the more dangerous.

Can someone tell me if Fisher always talked with that baby voice or if it was for the character?

On the plus side, Jeff Daniels is a hoot as Chris' blind roommate. He should always be so loose.

If you take the time to look back on it critically, you can see where the cracks begin to show, where decisions were made to make the movie more exciting instead of more realistic. Nevertheless, it's awfully thrilling in the moment. Sometimes, that's enough. B+

Finally Figured it Out: A rumination on a certain possibly transgendered harbinger of Armageddon

Emily sent me this article from Slate's Summer Movie Week (an idea which excites me to no end). I immediately fired back that I already read the same thing in The Tyee two years ago.

I can't say I disagree with either one, which basically state, as Chris Rock did at the 2005 Oscars, "If you can't get Russell Crowe, just don't make your stupid epic." Don't get Brad Pitt or Colin Ferrel or, for the love of peace, Orlando Bloom. I'll give Clive Owen a pass because I don't blame him for that mild disaster, and I stand by my belief that Bloomers was at least serviceable as Paris, Eric Bana rocked the hizzouse as Hector, and Gerard Butler is a jack of all trades. It has something to do with a certain fleshy masculinity that allows these actors to transcend time and space.

It was also bizarre that the common link in these articles was Bloomers, as I had been thinking of him recently.* I was having yet another conversation with myself along the lines of, "Have I been him or her an unfairly bum rap?" See, I have been listening to Elton John's "My Father's Gun" a lot lately, which put me in mind of that scene in Elizabethtown where all his relatives are standing around trying to tell Drew what a great man his father was and how much they are going to miss him, and all Drew is doing is standing over his father's coffin, changing the angle of his head, and puzzling out what the look on his father's face is supposed to be. When he finally hits upon it, "whimsical," he sort of lets out this sigh of bittersweet relief. It's well done, to be honest. There's a lot in that movie that isn't nearly as well done (I could begin and end my whole case by asking why Claire was interested in Drew to begin with), but that part is nice.

And that's my problem with Bloomers. Most of the time he's just plain bad, all miscast and adolescent and scant, but sometimes, just sometimes, he's pretty good. So I thought back to when I liked him, if at all, and the answer was Pirates of the Caribbean. In a movie where I detest 2/3 of the stars, it's a wonder that I like it so much. Perhaps Depp is just so good that he rubs wonderfulness off on everyone else, but I think it's a little more than that. I think the problem with Bloomers is that, right now, he's Heath Ledger circa 2001.

Ledger just kind of appeared in 10 Things I Hate About You and magically elevated the movie from flash-in-the-pan to something more lasting. The other stars of that minor hit? David Krumholtz has got his TV show, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is carving out a nice indie scene It-Boy career, and the rest of them stagnated or disappeared outright. But, boy, were people all over Ledger. Soon he was Mel Gibson's tragically heroic son, and then - poof! - a leading man in his own right. Not just leading, in fact, since the whole poster was his face. And that movie went? Nowhere. Because it blew.

In the very same year, he also had a very affecting turn as Billy Bob Thornton's suicidal son, but he was in the movie for maybe twenty minutes, and everyone else was busy focusing on other things.

So Ledger's career goes down the crapper pretty much the instant it starts, and, to be honest with you, I thought that was the end of him. But then Ang Lee decided gay cowboys and New Yorker short stories would translate well to film, and the rest of that story is bound to go down in film history.

And that's the problem with Bloomers, too, I think. Or, rather, that's Bloomers' problem. He's doing this leading man stuff because people think he should be, but he shouldn't. He's just not leading man material. And maybe he could be, but right now he's young and inexperienced and it shows. And maybe, just maybe, if he sort of steps back and gives it time, he could stumble into his very own Brokeback.

Or he could blow even worse than he already does. Too early to tell.

But, yes, Slate and The Tyee, no one is Russell Crowe. Perhaps you should give another guy a chance before you get too caught up in your self-congratulatory criticism, though.

*Yes, for the record, I sit around thinking about movie stars and their careers. Piss off. You do it, too.

Brick (2005)

Premise: Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) receives a mysterious phone call from his ex, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), and he follows the trail to her body. With the help of The Brain (Matt O'Leary), he sets out to find her killer, getting mixed up with two femme fatales (Nora Zehetner and Meagan Good) and a handful of dealers on varying levels of the ladder.

Did I mention that it's set in a SoCal high school?

Truth be told, when it comes to topsy-turvy intrigue, melodrama, meta-referencing, off-the-wall pop culture references, indecipherable slang, and the strange interconnectedness of all things, high school is the perfect setting. As for a sleek noir thriller, well, that's where Rian Johnson (writer/director) gets bonus points for originality in his feature length debut.

I'd make some sort of Dashiell Hammett/Sam Spade comparison for our protagonist, but I've already read it in enough reviews to suspect it's in the press packet. Nonetheless, JGL makes good on his sensational turn in Mysterious Skin, providing another rich and deeply etched performance of the loneliest teenage boy, this time with more motivation and a more sinister streak.

Nathan Johnson's score threw me off my game at first (are those cowbells?), but it's quirky charms quickly grew on me.

That's another thing I'll say for Rian Johnson - unlike so many lesser films that populate cineplexs today, he didn't rely quirk to fill in the back story but did it through careful and subtle characterization and excellent shot choices. Score one for cinematographer Steve Yedlin as well.

And as for that final scene, watching his world silently implode, nothing short of brilliant. A-

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Premise: In the summer of 1981, two boys are molested by their little league coach (Bill Sage). Ten years later, Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) turns to hustling, while Brian (Brady Corbet) believes he was abducted by aliens. As Brian begins to remember Neil's presence in the abductions, he seeks Neil out for answers.

You know that feeling you get when you've had way too much to eat, and you know that your stomach's not happy about it because the food is sitting there like a stone?

That's how this movie feels, for hours and even days after you see it. It haunts the back of your mind, appearing in little quiet moments of your day-to-day to chill you to the bone.

And yet, in the midst of all this weightiness, Gregg Araki (writer-director) deposits the most unexpected joy: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (henceforth JGL). I've only seen him in a handful of comedic roles prior to my Wednesday trip to the Bytowne, so this one naturally took its toll on me.

On the other hand, I finally understand what critics mean when they call a performance a "revelation." This, my friends, is a revelation. JGL gives one of the most unrelenting, powerful, poignant, and harrowing performances I've ever seen. It weighs all the more heavily on me that he can do that at two years my senior, looking for all the world like disenchantment, false-bravado, and that "I'm too sexy" swagger will somehow erase his feelings of loneliness and utter banality.

As Neil's mom, it's easy to chalk Elizabeth Shue's performance up to simply filling out a necessary single mother requirement, but, at the last possible second, Shue lets on that perhaps she knows much, much more about her son and his life than she wants to believe is real.

Corbet works to make his character's delusions as ingrained as possible, and it's no wonder that meeting a fellow abductee Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub) finally awakens Brian to the startling truth. Rajskub and Araki give the audience just enough to hint to Sarah at a forced hysterectomy and to me that Avalyn's repeated "abductions" have more do to with her barely glimpsed "over-protective" father than anything else.

Allow me to almost completely ignore Wendy (Michelle Tranchtenberg) and Eric (Jeff Licon), Neil's hometown friends. Tranchtenberg did little besides annoy me with Dawn's simpering ways through three years of Buffy (although she did allow Xander to deliver one of the show's Best Monologues Ever) because I felt she was basically playing the same unblinking, "precocious" kid that Dakota Fanning annoys me with now (since when does some sort of strange disease that causes you to be unable to close your eyes signal precociousness, anyway? That crazy Osmet ruined things for me.) Dawn/Trachtenberg should have outgrown their wide-eyed ,whining ways by the time she was the oscillating age she was on Buffy, so I didn't really go in for it.

Wow, that was a long and completely off-topic rant. In any case, Trachtenberg doesn't do any of that here, so that's good, but she doesn't really do anything special either. And Licon looks like he's trying really hard to channel Wilson Cruz as Rickie Vasquez than anything else, but it never comes off as more than an impression.

Of course, none of these flaws seem to bother me all that much because I view each and every character as a sounding board for Neil and JGL's heart-wrenching and flawlessly executed performance.

I'm going to tell you something now because I care about you. Whenever I see a movie where a character, especially the protagonist, is a prostitute, I prepare myself for what I feel is the inevitable "bad john" scene. In this film it's particularly cruel and graphic, so I really felt I should be honest with you about that.

Because I couldn't sleep that night.

I suppose the real praise should go to Scott Heim for writing such a brutal novel on which to base this work. I understand that everything in it is based on people he knew and his experiences growing up in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Akari leaves you with lament, a feeling you can't seem to shake long after the particulars have faded from your memory. I'm in the same boat as Neil by the end, wondering how, and if it will ever, disappear. A