While I wouldn't exactly call Seth MacFarlane's live-action debut Ted (2012) a pleasant surprise, it was still slightly better than I expected. It took a relatively original idea, built it around the story of a man who refused to grow up, and delivered a few laughs along the way. The film's box-office success cemented the need for a sequel, and the original idea was to have Ted (voiced by McFarlane in a thick Boston accent) and best friend John (Mark Wahlberg) road trip across America with a van full of weed. But when they realised this was the story of We're the Millers (2013), the plan had to change.
Instead of the road trip we are given a half-baked and borderline offensive civil rights allegory, which never settles on how and when it should get to the point. With John now divorced from Mila Kunis's character from the first movie, he cannot help but feel lonely as he watches his friend Ted marry his girlfriend Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). Soon into the marriage, they are bickering like an old couple, and decide that the only way to repair things is to have a baby. However, due to the fact that Ted lacks reproductive organs, they opt for a sperm donor. With Sam J. Jones running low and a failed attempt to steal NFL star Tom Brady's seemingly sacred juice, along with the discovery that Tami-Lynn's years of drug abuse have left her infertile, they choose instead to adopt.
It is at this point that Ted is flagged by the government having previously ducking under their radar. Declared an item of property as opposed to an actual person, Ted has his marriage annulled, loses his job, and has every legal right he thought he once had taken from him. Seeking legal aid, Ted and John turn to rookie lawyer Samantha L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried), a fellow pot-head who agrees to work the case pro bono. Meanwhile, Ted's nemesis Donny (Giovanni Ribisi), now working as a janitor for Ted's manufacturer Hasbro, looks to exploit this opening the law and convinces his boss Tom Jessup (John Carroll Lynch) to let him steal Ted back in order to open him up and see how he works, with the hope of making a fortune in allowing every child to own their own Ted.
The main problem with Ted 2 is that the comedy just seems off. Often seeking to simply out-gross anything that came before like the wave of comedies that hit the big screen in the wake of There's Something About Mary's success in the late 90's and early 2000's, the film is also peppered with pop-culture references with the running joke that Samantha L. Jackson doesn't even know who Samuel L. Jackson is. Conversations are often so vulgar that it's difficult to feel sympathy for Ted, who is voiced without any trace of charm or cuteness by MacFarlane. At almost two hours, it also drags, dipping in and out of the main plot thread without any care for narrative flow. I did laugh during Ted 2 - a cameo from Jay Leno and a Jurassic Park nod in particular - but this is a messy, often outright unfunny experience.
Tom Wolfe's sprawling novel about the aftershocks of a hit-and-run in 1980's New York set out to capture the corruption and self-promotion that seemed to dominate the decade, with every power player in the city, and every hanger-on trying to achieve personal triumph, latching on to the media and cultural frenzy to benefit their own personal agenda. It's a remarkable novel; bleakly hilarious but meticulously detailed. A movie adaptation was always going to be dangerous territory, and Brian De Palma's resulting film, that flopped both critically and commercially, is a confused mess. The complete failure of the film may be somewhat cruel and not wholly deserved, but De Palma goes for all-out comedy, failing to grasp Wolfe's subtle satire completely.
Tom Hanks plays self-styled 'master of the universe' Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street broker who enjoys every material comfort that life can offer, living in his huge apartment with his ditsy wife Judy (Kim Cattrall). During an eventful night with his mistress Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith), they take a wrong turn while heading back to her apartment and end up in South Bronx. Sherman gets out of the car to clear the road when he is approach by two black youths, and a misunderstanding leads to Ruskin accidentally running one of them over. They flee the scene, but once the story of a rich white man almost killing a poor black kid breaks, the likes of Reverend Bacon (John Hancock), a Harlem religious and political leader, Jewish district attorney Abe Weiss (F. Murray Abraham) and hard-drinking journalist Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis) rear their heads to twist the ongoing shit-storm to their own benefit.
Despite some nice tracking shots and sets that really do capture the tacky glamour of the 80's, the movie's biggest downfall is the casting. The two leads, Hanks and Willis, are woefully miscast. McCoy is a loathsome character, a WASP-ish high-roller in an increasingly capitalist country, but Hanks is one of the most likeable actors around. He looks visibly uncomfortable in a thinly-written role, and only takes control of his character in a scene in which he clears his apartment by unloading a shotgun played mainly for laughs, which at this stage of his career was Hanks's shtick. Fallow in the novel is a manipulative con-man, twisting the unravelling story through his newspaper in order to keep his job and make a nice paycheck along the way. But De Palma only seems to have picked up on his heavy drinking, meaning that Willis swings a bottle around and narrates the story, playing the role of spoon-feeder without playing an active role in story or convincing as someone who could get to his position.
But then again, De Palma's movie doesn't exist in the real world. Arguably, the ensemble of characters in Wolfe's novel were caricatures, but they were well-rounded characters, and being inside their heads meant that we could understand their motives, something the movie entirely ignores. So we get the likes of Bacon, Weiss, lawyer Tom Killian (Kevin Dunn) and Assistant District Attorney Kramer (Saul Rubinek), all key players in the novel, reduced to scowling or bumbling onlookers, while McCoy squirms for our amusement and Fallow tells us what we're supposed to be thinking. Occasionally its an all-out pantomime, which would be forgiveable it was funny or insightful. Yet when Wolfe calls for pantomime at the climax, the movie delivers a ridiculous speech spoken by Judge White (Morgan Freeman), informing us that decency is what your grandmother taught you.
For anyone who spent a lot of their childhood banging lumps of plastic together, creating outlandish plots and dialogue for them to act out, and pretending that all that lurked beyond the edges of the bed is a sea of molten lava, then you'll get The Lego Movie. It's hyperactive, fit-inducingly-colourful, and very, very funny, but it's the message behind the movie that makes it so wonderful. It tells a silly prophetic story about a simple construction worker thought to be 'the Special' - a plot deliberately made to sound like it's the product of an imaginative child - but his world of instructions manuals, mass consumerism, moronic pop songs and diabolical sitcoms is our world: the adult world. The Lego Movie makes you want to find your inner child again, and go back to those days where you could transport yourself to another world in your bedroom by using your own brain.
Emmet (Chris Pratt) is a naive and simple everyman, routinely watching popular sitcom "Where Are My Pants?", singing along to "Everything is Awesome!", and using an instruction manual for every aspect of his life. Left behind on a construction site one night, he comes across the mysterious Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), who seems to be searching for something. After accidentally spooking her, he investigates himself, and comes across the 'Piece of Resistance', a glowing object that gives him visions and knocks him unconscious when he touches it. When he awakens, he's being interrogated by Bad Cop (Liam Neeson), and finds the Piece has attached itself to his back. Believing him to be 'the Special' from a prophecy, Wyldstyle rescues Emmet and takes him to the Gandalf-alike Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), who teaches Emmet the way to becoming a master builder.
What could have been a mindless 90-minute advertisement for a global product, The Lego Movie dodges the bullet by actually attacking mass-consumerism, placing the importance on creativity and individuality. The big bad buy is Lord Business (Will Ferrell), a helmet-wearing, caped corporate devil who wishes to control everyone by gluing them in place with 'the Krakle' (a mispronunciation of Krazy Glue), oppressing the freedom to travel between Lego worlds (including The Old West, Middle-Zealand and Cloud Cuckoo Land). This is also a stab at collectors, those strange types who like to keep their toys in boxes and display them, rather than getting them out and using them for what they were designed for. Toys may have become ornaments, ways to make easy money on eBay.
It could be argued that such satire has no place in a kids movie. But these are the same kids who now have their own iPhones, bombarded with in-game advertisements and growing up in a world of reality TV, with programmes consistently celebrating wealth, stupidity and branding. Wyldstyle, concerned that Emmet may have never had an original thought in his entire life, asks him what his favourite restaurant is. "Any chain restaurant!" he gleefully replies. This is the man who is supposed to save the world, the greatest master builder to have ever lived, only to be a master builder, you need to have an imagination to create something amazing out of nothing. The best that Emmet has come up at this point is a two-level couch. It maybe useless, illogical and absolutely pointless, but it's something.
But The Lego Movie isn't all metaphors, it's also beautifully animated (it occasionally replicates stop-motion, as if the movie is actually made of Lego bricks, although it is entirely CGI), exceptionally witty, and features an outstanding vocal cast, who make up an entourage of Lego characters based on other mediums. We have Batman (Will Arnett) as Wyldstyle's arrogant yet loveable boyfriend, and the likes of Han Solo, C-3PO, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Michelangelo the Renaissance artist and Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. It's an absolute joy, as if looking into a child's toy box to find a bunch of random and unconnected figures from years of collecting. And that sums up the film - like looking into the past and realising that that same person, who could lose hours putting on silly voices and concocting ridiculous stories, is still in there somewhere.
After his calamitous experience working on his début film Alien 3 (1992), David Fincher took on a small genre picture that, little did he know, would revitalise his career and become one of the greatest films of the 1990's. Se7en appears to begin as your typical detective neo-noir, with the cynical veteran and the naive rookie taking on an elusive serial killer seemed hell-bent on turning the sin against the sinner. But, set in an unnamed and permanently drizzly American city, Se7en is a meditation on evil and a pessimist's depiction on the modern world, climaxing in one of the bravest and most memorable endings in Hollywood history.
Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is on the verge of retirement, where he plans to leave his inner-city life behind him after years of fighting on the side of good. His replacement is the brash Detective Mills (Brad Pitt), an optimistic young recruit eager to learn, who Somerset takes under his wing. Their first homicide investigation involves an obese man who has been fed at gunpoint to the point of causing his stomach to rupture. With Somerset ready to leave the force, Mills takes on his first solo case in the murder of a rich attorney, a man forced to cut a pound of flesh from his own body. The murder scene has the words 'greed' written in blood. Somerset eventually finds the word 'gluttony' etched in grease in the apartment of the first victim, and he becomes convinced the murders are connected, and that the killer is murdering under the guidance of the seven deadly sins.
The genius of Se7en is rooted in the way the movie keeps the audience as clueless as the detectives. Normally in genre pictures such as this, we either know who the killer is and eagerly wait for the investigators to put the pieces together, or we have a line-up of suspects and red herrings to decide from. Here, apart from brief glimpses during a thrilling chase scene, we are devoid of clues. The killer is always one step ahead of Somerset and Mills, alluding to the idea that the mysterious 'John Doe' is indeed having his work guided by a higher power. Of course, he is not, he is merely a man, but this helps gives Se7en dramatic weight, rather than it becoming a nihilistic exercise in cruelty.
When, three-quarters of the movie in, the killer hands himself in, the movie becomes a masterclass in writing, slowly building into one of the greatest climaxes in film. Somerset, a decent man who has devoted his life to the side of good but has had the fight slowly drained out of him, meets his nemesis in John Doe (Kevin Spacey). But as they talk, Doe's reasoning becomes clear and, shockingly, almost sympathetic. "Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore, you have to hit them with a sledgehammer," he says. It's about a world gone to shit, a view shared by Mills' wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), who talks to Somerset in a diner about allowing a baby to be born into the world after discovering she is pregnant. Cerebral and gothic, Se7en transcends the genre on so many levels thanks to some bleak yet stylish direction by Fincher, and it still manages to astound after almost 20 years of repeat viewings.
After a four-year wait, Christopher Nolan's epic Batman trilogy comes to a close to be inevitably branded the greatest superhero trilogy ever made. Even with the films growing increasingly darker and less traditional in the blockbuster sense, Warner Bros. gave Nolan free reign following the huge success of The Dark Knight (2008), both critically and commercially, and he has truly delivered once again with this shockingly intense and often quite unpleasant action-drama. This is a superhero film with no superhero, and a Batman film without Batman for very long periods. Unconventional in every sense, it often feels like it shares the epic scope of TV series The Wire, threading together multiple plots and sub-plots to form a vast story of a city in turmoil, and a man pushing himself to the limits of his capability.
Picking up eight years after The Dark Knight, Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) honours the legacy of Harvey Dent, torn at holding the truth of Dent's insanity and demise from the optimistic citizens. Gotham City's streets are almost completely free of crime, with the exiled Batman (Christian Bale) still public enemy number one following his decision to take the blame for Dent's crimes. As a result of this, Bruce Wayne is living a reclusive life behind the walls of his empty mansion, crippled due to his years as Batman. Arriving in Gotham is missionary Bane (Tom Hardy), a hulking terrorist intent on bringing down the city's stock exchange and punishing the rich for their social crimes. Wayne decides to don the suit once again, and learns about Bane through cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), only to find that he is more than Batman's match both physically and mentally.
Like the first sequel, it's difficult to sum up the film's labyrinth plot. I haven't even mentioned two of the film's new characters or covered anything relating to their story arcs which truly sums up the complexity and depth to Nolan's story. Wayne Enterprises is invested in a clean energy project, headed by Miranda (Marion Cotillard), who have developed a machine that could harness fusion power, which with modification, could be used as a nuclear weapon. Naturally, Bane sees this as the perfect thing to steal in order to bring destruction to Gotham. And with Gordon hospitalised by Bane, rookie cop Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young man who idolises Batman and knows the truth of his identity, is promoted to detective in order to investigate Bane's intentions and his link to Wayne Enterprises board member Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn).
If all this sounds confusing, then it kinda is. The first forty minutes or so is slow-moving, and is busy jumping between characters new and old, and setting up many sub-plots. It is admittedly a lot to take in, and Nolan doesn't quite have as full a grasp of the narrative as he had with the first two movies. Thankfully, when Bane is introduced and things start to kick off, it is quite difficult to care too much. This is, after all, fifteen minutes shy of three hours long, so there's plenty of time to pack the film. And Bane proves a hugely effective new villain, and although he would always suffer in comparison to Heath Ledger's Joker, Tom Hardy's creation is a formidable monster.
To give Batman his ultimate test, Nolan has given Bane the physically of a gorilla and the voice of a muffled Sean Connery. If that doesn't sound exactly scary, well, he is. His first meeting with Batman leads to the most brutal and ugliest fight ever created. There is nothing remotely elegant about Bane, he uses fists, knees, elbows and his forehead to batter his opponents to a bloody pulp, without showing a flicker of remorse or even acknowledgement. There have been criticisms stating that Bane is difficult to understand under his metallic mask, but although it is quite strange at first, his voice is hugely effective, rattling the cinema's speakers to the point where I actually felt uncomfortable watching him. He is not as layered or quite as memorable as the Joker, but his presence is undeniable, and Hardy deserves every accolade he gets.
This is by far the most emotional of the trilogy, with Wayne facing almost certain death coming up against Bane. Bale gives his finest performance as Wayne, and his scenes with loyal butler Alfred (Michael Caine), who wants nothing more than to see Wayne lead a normal, happy life, prove profoundly moving, with Caine giving a sensational performance. It is Selina Kyle who ultimately brings Wayne out of his nest, and it was her character that gave me the most concerns going into this film. My fears were, sadly, justified, as Kyle proves to be character giving the cheesy one-liners and ends up being a distraction and a slight contradiction to Nolan's dark, grounded Batman universe. Hathaway is brilliant in the role, proving as sexy and as sly as you want Catwoman to be, but it is ultimately the character that annoys.
But in the end, the flaws become a minor blip in what is ultimately a sensational climax to a truly great trilogy. This is not a fun film, and although it is packed with action scenes as exciting and absorbing as anything I've ever seen (the massive climax is mind-blowing), I found it quite psychologically tormenting. This is a superhero movie where police officer's are massacred, a character's skull is crushed with bare hands, and the film's hero is given one of the most severe beatings in recent memory. As good as I could have ever hoped the film to be in the wake of its admittedly superior predecessor, and a finale that will cement Christopher Nolan's vision as one of the greatest creations in big-budget film-making, and a historic stepping stone for the future of blockbusters.
After the little teaser at the end of Batman Begins (2005) which saw Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) show Batman (Christian Bale) a Joker card, signalling a new criminal in town, Christopher Nolan faced the task of bringing one of the most colourful and charismatic, and downright evil and psychopathic, villains in comic-book history to the screen. The role would always be Jack Nicholson's, who brought an eccentric performance in Tim Burton's original Batman (1989), but Nolan had a different take in mind. He was to go back to the roots of the Joker to find what really made him tick. Then he cast Heath Ledger, and the rest was history.
After Batman set out to inspire others to rise up against crime in the first film, Gotham City has a new 'white knight' in the shape of new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) who faces the challenge of taking down mob kingpin Maroni (Eric Roberts). Chinese accountant Lau (Chin Han) informs Maroni and his crew he has hidden the money they have been laundering through his banks as Dent and Lt. Gordon come down on them. Fleeing to China, Batman uses unorthodox means to bring him to back for questioning. Meanwhile, the psychotic Joker (Ledger), who has been stealing the mobs money, convinces them to employ him to kill Batman, and sets about causing anarchy across the city, promising to kill someone every day until Batman reveals his true identity.
Summing up the film's plot in a few sentences does not do The Dark Knight justice. Nolan has not made a superhero film here, instead he has created a colossal crime story that has more in common with Michael Mann's Heat (1995) than anything produced by Marvel in recent years. It's quite astonishing how he has managed to pack so much plot and incident into its 140 minute running time without ever losing focus, and keeping the film packed with exceptional set-pieces. If Begins felt slightly amateurish at times in terms of action cinema, Nolan has strutted into this film and given us clear and crisp scenes of bone-crunching fighting, as Batman carves his way through henchmen.
Yet the film will always be remembered for one thing, and that is Heath Ledger's Joker. His casting raised eyebrows at the time, wondering if the fuzzy-haired pretty boy from teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) could take the mantle from Jack Nicholson and bring such a wild character into Nolan's grounded Batman universe. He answered his critics with aplomb, creating a now iconic character that will remain possibly the greatest villain ever created in cinema. His red smile has been replaced by large swollen scars, his green hair is greasy and badly maintained, his make-up patched with sweat, and his clothes tatty. "Gotham City deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm gonna give it to them," he says as he sets alight a stack of cash almost double his height. This is a Joker that cares about nothing but anarchy, having no ultimate purpose or goal.
Although the Joker steals the show, this is still Batman's film, with Nolan this time drawing on the similarities between the two characters. They are both freaks and outcasts, as the Joker points out, yet where Batman is fighting a seemingly ill-fated battle against a Gotham that has descended into chaos, the Joker embraces his place in the world as an outsider. In one exceptional scene, Batman interrogates him in a police cell, losing his code and battering the truth out of the Joker. Although Bale's ridiculous gravel-voiced Dark Knight will be parodied, Bale is again outstanding, switching between Patrick Bateman-esque arrogance as he puts on his playboy mask, and the tortured soul, watching his love Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes) fall in love with Harvey Dent as he sacrifices himself for the sake of the city.
The supporting cast are solid and reliable as ever, with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman bringing some real weight to the film. Aaron Eckhart, an actor I've felt has gone unappreciated for years after seeing him in the excellent In The Company of Men (1997), is a revelation as Dent. He is a man the city put their hopes into and is determined to make a difference, but the Joker's mayhem tests his sanity and his sense of justice, turning him into the twisted Two-Face (a role made ridiculous by Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever (1995)).
I watched this again for what must be the sixth time, and the first time I've seen it for some time, and was possibly blown away even more than any other viewing. Perhaps this time I was able to grasp the sheer scope and vision of Nolan's world, with he and his brother's screenplay being just as sharp as anything else that year, and the action scenes (which employ minimal CGI) simply explosive. But it is Ledger, ultimately, that will linger in the mind long after the credits roll, from his disappearing pencil magic trick, to his final monologue, his performance is beyond words, and wholly deserved his posthumous Academy Award. I highly doubt The Dark Knight Rises (2012) will surpass this film, but how could it? This is, after all, the greatest superhero film ever made, and I would assume will ever be.
Back in 1997, when the Batman franchise was given a thorough anal-raping and given cinema AIDS by director Joel Schumacher with the preposterous Batman & Robin, fans and audiences alike were left wondering if there was any hope left for one of the darkest and most complex 'superhero' characters in the comic-book world. Come 2005, up to this point, British director Christopher Nolan was still a relative maverick, having made indie breakthrough Following (1998), the mind-bending critical hit Memento (2000), and the solid re-make Insomnia (2002). Few realised that they were about to witness a re-defining of not only comic book adaptations, but blockbusters themselves.
We first meet Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a Bhutanese prison, where he is approached by the mysterious Ducard (Liam Neeson) who offers him a chance to learn to fight with the League of Shadows, a generations-old group that punishes criminality with an iron fist. As he trains, we learn about Wayne's childhood, where after falling into a well and developing a phobia of bats, witnesses his parents' murder. Returning to a Gotham believing him dead and in a state of utter tutmoil, he turns to faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and Wayne Enterprises' weapons developer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to turn him into a vigilante crime-fighter and a symbol of a stance against crime. He finds his childhood friend Rachel (Katie Holmes), the assistant district attorney, caught up in a scheme ran by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) to get mob boss Falcone's (Tom Wilkinson) thugs off with insanity pleas.
Tim Burton's once-definitive Batman (1989) made the mistake of having the film's villain The Joker engulf the majority of the film, keeping Michael Keaton's Batman almost in the background. Nolan knows that this is Batman's story, and wisely keeps the focus on Bale's anger-fuelled, guilt-ridden, and honourable leading character. In the hands of Nolan, Batman's origins are given the complexity it deserves, shifting back and forward in time to reveal more pieces to his jigsaw. This is no wise-cracking, tights-wearing Batman; when we meet him, he is giving a bunch of prison thugs a thorough beating, snapped legs and all. With the hugely talented Bale in the role, his character is given the weight it deserves - this is Nolan's world, and it is violent, real, and usually pissing down with rain.
As the norm since this film's release, Nolan has managed to gather a hugely-talented ensemble cast (and mainly British). While there is no obligatory main villain that may be a problem in anybody's else's hands, Nolan has instead given us a criminal ring for Batman to fight, from Wilkinson's ruthless crime boss, to Murphy's genuinely unsettling Scarecrow, who likes to fire his hallucinogenic poison in his victims' faces before donning his 'mask' (leading some some fine trippy moments). There is also Ra's Al-Ghul (Ken Watanabe), who plans to destroy Gotham along with Neeson's Ducard by infecting Gotham's water supply. With Gary Oldman's cop Jim Gordon, and Holmes' Rachel Dawes also in the mix, it may seem dangerously over-supplied with characters, but Nolan knows fully well how to handle such a large cast, tying their stories together with fine precision.
Having seen The Dark Knight (2008) and eagerly anticipating The Dark Knight Rises (2012), this admittedly pales in comparison, being that The Dark Knight was a phenomenal leap forward in big-budget film-making and an iconic film that will no doubt be remembered as one of the best of its decade. Also, the action scenes here are quickly-edited and shaky to the point where it is hard to tell what is happening, but Nolan would step up in confidence with the film's sequel and the proceeding Inception (2010). But as superhero origin stories go, this is probably second only to Superman (1978), and a welcome kick up the arse for one of the most enticing comic-book heroes in existence.
Instead of the road trip we are given a half-baked and borderline offensive civil rights allegory, which never settles on how and when it should get to the point. With John now divorced from Mila Kunis's character from the first movie, he cannot help but feel lonely as he watches his friend Ted marry his girlfriend Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). Soon into the marriage, they are bickering like an old couple, and decide that the only way to repair things is to have a baby. However, due to the fact that Ted lacks reproductive organs, they opt for a sperm donor. With Sam J. Jones running low and a failed attempt to steal NFL star Tom Brady's seemingly sacred juice, along with the discovery that Tami-Lynn's years of drug abuse have left her infertile, they choose instead to adopt.
