Alien Resurrection

I’d only seen half of Alien Resurrection before buying the Quadrilogy, and it certainly wasn’t one of my reasons for doing so. What I had seen was fairly silly and spectacularly gory, even compared to the other instalments, and I’d heard nothing but bad things. But I checked it out over the weekend out of curiosity, if only so I’d know the context of another fascinating doco from this set.

Resurrection is pretty damn bad. Although it features numerous aliens and a more colourful supporting cast, this doesn’t compensate for failing, as Alien 3 did, to engage with the franchise’s core plot and ideas. Resurrection takes things in a completely different and ultimately silly direction. Granted, it had the unenviable task of bringing Ripley back from the dead, which inevitably affects the course and tone of the film, but Resurrection ultimately has nothing to say. Its major innovation is to bring Ripley and the aliens closer together following the cloning process, but to what end? Sure, after three films it would be tough to know what to do with the character, but when this reconciliation results in an alien-human hybrid that looks like a refugee from Pumpkinhead and is born to a cocooned Brad Dourif cooing “what a beautiful baby”, it’s sullied somewhat.

Resurrection sadly strays so far from the goals and sensibilities of the first two films – even more than the third – that its validity within the series is virtually nil. Sure, these films can function as superior sci-fi thrillers, but when the first two did such comprehensive jobs with this creature and ethos, an underlying engagement with character and theme is necessary in order to justify the existence of another go-around. Resurrection features scant characterisation, with the only hint of a meaningful relationship (between Ripley and Winona Ryder’s android Call) barely explored. The theme of a manipulative institution emerges again, but this one isn’t the Company of the first three films now that 200 years have passed, thus preventing any conclusive engagement with the plotline. It could be done thematically instead of literally via a confrontation with the arrogance of humanity that this new institution embodies, but Resurrection fails to do even that since the aliens kill everyone off before she would even have a chance.

The fault partly lies in Joss Whedon’s script, although he has since disowned the film having loathed how director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) interpreted his work (he has said, perhaps too simplistically, that “it was mostly a matter of [them] doing everything wrong”). Perhaps the earlier drafts were stronger; Whedon wanted to give the film a purpose by finally bringing us, and the aliens, to Earth, but its presence in the script was whittled away by executives down to the unsatisfying ending where Ripley and the survivors breach the atmosphere… and then the credits roll. This would be appropriate if Earth had been established thus far as a redemptive or at least hopeful destination for Ripley, where she could finally find some peace, or perhaps justice. But instead, Earth is merely referred to as “a shithole”, and no confrontation takes place on it to at least offer us a new perspective on the aliens through the response of a residential community. The only semblance of a new angle is the Newborn, a laughably bad creation who serves very little function in the story other than as a new alien adversary. After establishing Ripley’s difficulties adjusting to a resurrected existence and her new alien side, the climax merely involves eliminating all alien threats before reaching Earth. Ripley and the others are afterthoughts.

Darius Khondji’s signature cinematography for Jeunet offers some treats though, with his standard extreme close-ups and other claustrophobic techniques, and his shooting of the underwater sequence, where the characters are pursued by aliens while trying to reach air, is thrilling and by far the best set piece in the film. The art direction is again terrific, and Jeunet sensibly looked to Ridley Scott’s original for inspiration. But it’s when comparing this film to that achievement that its shortcomings are evident. The series has degraded from the terrifying majesty of that initial instalment, with Resurrection failing to offer a new interpretation that also successfully integrates with the Alien concept, which would justify such a divergence.

We’ve yet to see a great third Alien film, but the time has almost certainly passed – it would be a matter of returning to a dried-up well. Hollywood certainly has no problem with that at the moment, of course, and the announcement that production has begun on Alien vs Predator 2 demonstrates how exactly Fox will be treating this franchise. If we had to have something though, I’m sure we’d all appreciate a sincere Alien film rather than such cash-ins. At least we had a couple of great ones, and a couple of well-intentioned stabs at the mythology.  

Thank You for Smoking

There haven’t been too many films made about Big Tobacco apart from Michael Mann’s superb The Insider in 1999, which focused more on the ideological struggles of two men rather than the industry as a complex entity. With Syriana having tackled Big Oil as a sprawling influence and the upcoming Fast Food Nation lambasting that expansive industry with sincerity, it’s surprising that the first film to look at Big Tobacco on a broader canvass is a comedy: Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking.

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is a lobbyist for a major tobacco company, spinning the company and smoking in general as being a maligned practice via every possible media and political outlet. He initially seems amoral and unconcerned with the genuine ramifications of smoking, instead relishing the thrill of arguing on behalf of a hated institution. But his relationship with his 12-year-old son complicates matters: he wants to remain a role model, even when Joey wants to accompany him on trips to a similarly morally flexible Hollywood agent (Rob Lowe) and the inspiration for the Marlboro Man (Sam Elliott), now disgruntled at Big Tobacco’s manipulation of him. Plus, Nick must contend with a vehement anti-smoking senator (William H. Macy) and a journalist (Katie Holmes) looking to profile him despite her ever-so-slightly suspicious seduction of him during an interview.

Thank You for Smoking needs to be commended for having the balls to make a comedy about a pretty dark subject – Nick and others throw the statistics of tobacco usage and related deaths around frequently, but there are few moments of genuine pathos in the film. The comedy is either very subtle or very black, and the actors carry it off tremendously. After some fairly dull roles, Aaron Eckhart scores as Nick Naylor, revealing his flexibility and even slapstick potential, all while anchoring the film with ease. The supporting cast, including Maria Bello, Robert Duvall, and J.K. Simmons are as good as you’d expect (although Duvall is sadly wasted, especially since he’s barely on screen these days). Reitman did well to attract such a major cast for his first feature, and for delivering a more topical, funny, and entertaining film than his father Ivan (Ghostbusters, Twins) has in years.

Where the film falls short is in failing to assert a unique style, choosing a flashy range of on-screen captions, freeze-frames and others that have been used many times before by Guy Ritchie and others, but here aren’t deployed in an innovative way. A more sedate style allowing the distinctive script and performances to carry the weight may have worked better, because Reitman is aping rather than creating.

But the film is still notable for that courage, not just for addressing this subject matter but also for avoiding an indictment of Big Tobacco. While such an inquisition would theoretically be welcome in cinema, its corruption and manipulation is well enough known to its opponents that a film would have difficulty offering anything new. Instead the film takes the interesting stand of defending everyone’s right to choose, even if the decision is detrimental to one’s health. After all, the facts are out there in abundance, but cigarettes aren’t going anywhere. There are plenty of smokers who assert and defend their right to choose, and Thank You for Smoking celebrates that, but without any kind of support for Big Tobacco. It’s an intriguing position, and what makes this comedy so thought-provoking. 

Jericho - Pilot

Last year the networks’ Lost emulators seized its science fiction elements and foregrounded them more overtly than Lost ever has, largely forsaking the genre-hopping and character-based drama that makes Lost what it is. Surface, Threshold, and Invasion were all off the air by the end of the season.

This season, Lost emulation continues, but now with ensemble casts brought together by an external mystery or threat. The Nine follows the aftermath of a bank robbery that brings nine random people together, featuring regular flashbacks to the event itself as its cause and ties to the main characters is slowly revealed. JJ Abrams’s Six Degrees also centres on random people brought together. And Jericho features a small-town ensemble united in the face of a nearby nuclear explosion, with more around the country. Whether all of any of these shows last the season will be an interesting question, given that these shows are arguably closer to what has made Lost a success than any previous attempts.

Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) is returning to Jericho, Kansas, for the first time in five years to sort out his inheritance so he can start to make something of his life. He’s estranged from his dad (Gerald McRaney) and won’t tell people where he’s been or what he’s been up to, fobbing them off with contradicting stories. As he’s leaving, a mushroom cloud appears on the horizons (a wonderfully eerie shot) and Jake hits a car. Injured, he rescues a school bus while his father, also the town mayor, tries to restore order among the panicked residents. Amidst the furore is Hawkins (Lennie James), a new resident with unusual expertise who’s surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

Jericho’s premise is simple and highly effective. Not only can we observe the impact of an indisputable but inexplicable nearby threat on a small community, but the cause and magnitude of the event fuels the mystery. So Jericho has everything going for it in principle, but in execution this pilot is sorely lacking. The pacing is far too rapid (the pilot is apparently a mere 38 minutes without ads), which is startling given that not much happens, at least in terms of establishing the show’s long-term parameters. The school bus rescue won’t feature in later plots, and the community unrest is all too predictable. I’ll try not to make too many unfair comparisons to Lost (which did enjoy a feature-length pilot), but there are no quiet, deliberate moments, such as Kate sewing up Jack’s wound, that give us a moment to breathe with these characters. Jericho tries to make up for its lack of time with the townspeople and their relationships by having everyone hug – a LOT – to clearly tell us that these people LIKE EACH OTHER, OKAY? But we don’t feel it.

The hugs may also be trying to compensate for how bland these characters are. Granted, Jericho’s setting doesn’t allow for much ethnic diversity to give audiences a little spice, but there are no quirks that emerge to differentiate and endear, or any characteristics at all really (Jericho’s idea of idiosyncrasy is a kook who thinks we’re being invaded by aliens – innovative!). There is fuel for future characterisation in Jake’s past, his relationships with his father and brother, and the enigmatic Hawkins. The now-orphaned outsider kid also has potential, and the phone message from his mother in Atlanta – cut off by a likely nuclear detonation – is one of the pilot’s few ‘awesome!’ moments. But there ain’t too many, sadly.

They’re not helped by the performances. After a nice turn in the little-seen Miracles, Skeet Ulrich is spectacularly dull here, but then he isn’t given much to do apart from save the kiddies. Sparks of naturalism and passion fleetingly emerge in his scenes, but he then seems to repress them with that vacant gaze and line delivery. Love interest Ashley Scott is the definition of ‘does the job’, but unlike Lost’s Evangeline Lilly, her stoicism doesn’t hint at soulful depths. Lennie James is pretty good, as is Gerald McRaney, but anything that makes the towering McRaney even a bit dull is a tad dicey.

There are, of course, more episodes for the show to prove itself, but these days, the great shows did start with genuinely good pilots. Running through some of the greats of late, only Veronica Mars’s pilot comes to mind as seeming like it could go either way. Not to be unfair again, but watching Studio 60 after Jericho made its conservative, conventional storytelling and style much more apparent in retrospect. We’ve just been so spoiled by TV drama lately that serviceable, ‘does the job’ stuff doesn’t really cut it any more. We’ll have to wait and see. At the very least, Jericho and its mysteries will be a fun guilty pleasure, and it could blossom into a solid show. I’ll be checking it out for a few weeks yet, as that premise is too good to dismiss straight away.

Why you need to care about The Wire, the most important show on TV

The following article was submitted to Popmatters, accepted for publication, and edited by their staff, but they decided to go with a couple of other pieces on the show. Since this is a persuasive piece to encourage new audiences, it's unlikely that it serves much purpose for Popmatters now that the season is three weeks in and the show has been renewed. But I'm pretty pleased with it and thought I'd put it up here, especially since the film and TV editor did remarkable work on it. I can't claim credit for the efficiency and economy of this essay - he hacked and slashed mercilessly and I don't object to a single change. Hope it piques some interest.



Long having languished in the shadow of The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, HBO’s The Wire has suddenly seized the attention of the media. Newspapers are lapping it up—even Stephen King has written a column on it for Entertainment Weekly. No drama has deserved its also-ran status less. Critics have been virtually unanimous about The Wire’s quality since it began, but few viewers have actually watched it. That needs to change.

If you didn’t know better, you may lump The Wire in with the many regular police dramas cluttering TV airwaves. You might expect the endless police procedurals of a CSI, with only HBO’s lack of censorship to distinguish it. But The Wire’s cops-and-crime agenda is only one facet of creator David Simon’s goal of comprehensively portraying the plight of the American city, using Baltimore, Maryland as a representative example. While cops do indeed investigate criminals, the similarities to network crime shows end there. Just as Six Feet Under wasn’t just a family drama and Deadwood wasn’t just a Western, The Wire is a world away from network crime fare, not just through its rejection of weekly formula, but because its concerns are wide-ranging and willfully unglamorous. As an indictment of American society it is more consistent and encompassing than The Sopranos and as a crime drama infinitely denser in characterization, wit, and dramatic pay-off than any police procedural in TV history.

The show doesn’t restrict itself to crime, aspiring to be a comprehensive exploration of urban institutional failure. We are certainly not meant to guess whodunit, to revel in the mystery that crime fiction provides. There is certainly no catharsis of a case solved, as we see week-to-week in Law and Order. Instead, each season of The Wire investigates a different urban theme. For the first three seasons, the show has followed the Barksdale drug ring, an operation run from Baltimore housing projects. In the first season, a ramshackle police unit is assembled to investigate their deeply rooted enterprise after having long been ignored by apathetic police administrators. The second season shifted gears and focused instead on the decline of Baltimore’s ports, its workers, and the compromises the American working class as a whole has been forced to make. The third season returned the Barksdale case to prominence and introduced City Hall machinations and ambitious councilman, Tommy Carcetti (Aiden Gillen). The fourth season will track the job change of Prez (Jim True-Frost), a detective in the first three seasons, who has become a teacher trying to make a difference in students’ lives, even though statistics—and the kids themselves—say they’re fated to become embroiled in the drug world. (This mimics co-writer Ed Burns’s real-life career path in Baltimore, where he was both a detective and a high school teacher.) The fifth season (just announced surprisingly early) will present a sustained analysis of the media’s culpability in urban destruction.

This might sound like heavy going for a TV drama. But Simon rarely foregrounds his theses, instead letting events he chooses to dramatize speak for themselves. Nor is The Wire insidiously righteous either, never advocating specific solutions. As Simon admits, the show is just profoundly angry about how the American city has slid into spectacular dysfunction, and to mirror this, the world of The Wire is as morally murky as any you can find on television, constructing this ambivalent environment without resorting to cop-show clichés. The Wire works to present its characters non-judgmentally, giving criminals equal screen time and depth of characterization as cops.

If stereotypical bent cops and sociopathic criminals aren’t the focus, it’s because The Wire is not an attack on individuals. Nearly every character has moments of kindness and determination. As Simon has explained, “We are bored with good and evil. We renounce the theme.” Instead of aberrant psychology, the show explores how the urban world makes people what they are, and how governments, through their labyrinth of bodies and jurisdictions, have failed the people they serve, on both sides of the law. In an America consumed by media-stoked fears of international terrorists, The Wire (which began in 2002) consciously returns the focus to the indisputably real but glossed-over crisis on the home front, showing how immediate domestic problems are so urgent in cities like Baltimore that the larger spectre of terrorism is subordinated.

Rather than shoot for gritty finesse, like pioneering shows Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, The Wire draws on past innovations to its advantage, focusing its desire for originality on plot, character and theme. The Wire asks viewers to look past visual flourishes and be entranced by pure drama. Eschewing visual tricks allows the show to aim for an almost timeless feel, which in turn suggests how the problems of American cities like Baltimore may not be short-lived crises, but an entrenched problem that not only has lasted for years but will be with us for decades to come.

This all may make watching The Wire sound like homework, and granted, it’s not something you’d flick on straight after a stressful day at work. As Simon admits, “Americans regard their television sets as a means of relaxation rather than a means of provocation.” But it’s not turgid. You can see Simon struggling against preconceptions about TV and trying to demonstrate how television can make domestic issues more accessible. Once you give the show a couple of episodes to get you into its unique groove, it becomes a breeze to watch. Though you will certainly miss some narrative details the first time, that doesn’t sabotage the experience. They just make the DVDs a worthwhile investment.

But by sitting down with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and taking in an hour of The Wire’s drama, do we degrade the plight of families in cities like Baltimore for purposes of entertainment? Actor Sonja Sohn, who plays Shakima Greggs on the show, voiced this concern soon after the first season, relating her difficulty reconciling her own troubled urban background with the fiction that she contributes to: “This stuff needs to be divulged, but it still ends up being entertainment, and that bothers me.”

It’s a troubling question, but one cannot watch The Wire voyeuristically. It’s too introspective, too multifaceted to be light entertainment. The joy of the show comes from embracing its narrative and characterization in equal measure with its social conscience. And besides, there is a distinction between mere entertainment and art. Not to deride entertainment, but art provokes a separate instinctive reaction. As playwright Amiri Baraka defines it, art is that which makes us proud to be human. This highlights the fascinating contradiction within The Wire. The show’s mission to highlight how the governmental institutions we have created have eroded into a negligent mess hardly makes us proud of our accomplishments. However, once we take that plunge into despair with The Wire, its determination and compassion rescue us. We get a glimpse into how individuals can react against bureaucratic injustice, and it’s thrilling to watch. This challenging of prescribed moral boundaries elevates the show into the realm of art, and that achievement itself gives us hope. And could there be a better way to spend your Sunday night than that?

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - Pilot

No show has been more hyped by critics this year than Aaron Sorkin’s return to television, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. It’s a pleasure to report that the hype was justified. Studio 60 is Sorkin’s eloquent tirade against the degradation of American popular culture and the erosion of free speech that the Bush era has fostered, all within the veneer of a glamourous behind-the-scenes exposé.

Sorkin was, of course, the creator of The West Wing, but only worked on the show for four seasons before the network ousted him and his creative partner Thomas Schlamme, the show’s key director. The show continued for another three seasons under the guidance of John Wells, but since Sorkin had written every episode, the show was largely seen as withering away. The reasons for Sorkin’s firing were never confirmed, but the late delivery of scripts and episodes and Sorkin’s own struggle with drug addiction are acknowledged as the major factors. However, since Sorkin WAS The West Wing, the network’s decision reeked of placing commerce over art, which has become a central preoccupation of Studio 60.

The pilot opens with the filming of the latest Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a weekly comedy variety show in the vein of Saturday Night Live. A Federal Communications Commission rep is telling executive producer Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch) that a sketch must be pulled due to content that may offend religious groups. Mendell is furious, but acquiesces. During the opening sketch, a clichéd pastiche of Bush, Mendell walks on stage and begins taking the network and the FCC to task for their hijacking of America’s most influential medium, for their defanging of those with something to say and their constant kowtowing to perceived standards of morality, rabid religious groups, and the lowest common demominator. His colleagues keep him on air for a minute until they are forced to cut to a commercial.

It’s a dynamite opening that makes Sorkin’s intentions abundantly clear: television has gone to the dogs and enough is enough. But the finger is being pointed at NBC as much as anyone, and here it is anchoring their Monday night lineup. But more on that in a moment.

The network goes into damage control that night, and the new president, the enigmatically genial Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet), convinces her boss to take a radical step: rehire the former showrunners of Studio 60 that he essentially fired four years before, who have since gone on to great filmmaking success. We meet Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) and Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) at a Writer’s Guild awards night, where Matt is so strung out on painkillers from back surgery that he barely registers his win for Best Original Screenplay. Word then reaches Danny of the network’s intentions, and Jordan reveals that she knows that Danny cannot direct another film due to failing an insurance company drug test. Unable to direct Matt’s new script for another 18 months, the pair take the job. However, they clearly agree with Mendell’s outburst and view the show’s recent years with similar scorn. But so does Jordan, who will let them run the banned sketch the following week. The new era begins.

The parallels to Sorkin and Schlamme’s experiences on The West Wing are clear, creating a venomous metatextuality that makes NBC’s willingness to broadcast such a blatant critique of their past actions all the more surprising. Studio 60 likely landed at NBC (following an unprecedented bidding war) after they got their arses handed to them by the other networks, making their history with Sorkin and Schlamme a more assailable obstacle. For the last few years, NBC has been a bland, toothless shadow of its former self. Once the central pillar of American network television with shows like Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, and ER, it has since been saddled with serviceable but hardly earthshaking shows like the myriad Law and Order permutations and dreck like Las Vegas and Crossing Jordan while every other network pulls out buzz-magnets and ratings hits. The worst cut of all must be the formerly inconsequential ABC scoring with Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy, thus essentially trading places with NBC.

Being responsible for their last acclaimed show (before The Office unexpectedly emerged as a contender in its second season), Sorkin and Schlamme clearly represented a return to respectability. What makes their new project so tantalising is that they have written this saga into it, often quite blatantly. Matt (the Sorkin analogue) has recently broken up with Studio 60 cast member and Christian singer Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson) - Sorkin started dating Christian gospel singer Kristin Chenoweth after leaving West Wing, which she later joined as a cast member. And Matt and Danny (the Schlamme figure, although Sorkin emerges a little too) have found success in the movies, and while Sorkin and Schlamme haven’t exactly set Hollywood on fire, they’ve hardly crashed and burned. But they clearly still smart from their forced exit by NBC, and have other axes to grind about the state of entertainment.

This is what sets Studio 60 apart from the vapid ‘inside’ look of shows like Entourage, which is populated by venal, unlikeable characters whose tedium could be endured if the show actually had something to say about American culture and a relevance to everyday people. It doesn’t, and Sorkin has plenty. If Hollywood insider fictions bore you senseless, fear not. Just as The West Wing promoted meaningful discourse about politics – leaving aside for now any criticisms of its leftism, sentimentality, and accuracy – Studio 60 encourages us to deeply consider what has happened to our entertainment. As Hirsch’s character says, “there’s always been a war between art and commerce. Now, I’m telling you, art is getting its ass kicked, and it’s making us mean.”

The post-pilot series thus looks incredibly tantalising. What will Studio 60 the sketch show become under Matt and Danny, and what topics and discussion will it allow Studio 60 the drama series to broach regarding the state of Western culture and free speech today? Although they appear to have Jordan on their side at this point, there will clearly be a lot of resistance from other network bosses, including the cold and efficient Jack Rudolph (Steven Weber), ensuring that the art versus commerce theme will remain prominent.

But leaving aside the vitality of its commentary, this is an entertaining, well-written show with a terrific cast. Sorkin applying his pithy and intelligent dialogue to the entertainment world will be such a treat, just as his loaded West Wing scripts were dazzling portrayals of their milieu. I imagine it wasn’t easy to coax Matthew Perry back to series television, especially after what happened to Matt LeBlanc and Joey, but I’m glad they did. Sorkin’s script no doubt helped. He was always the best thing about Friends, and his appearances on The West Wing proved that he had the chops for both drama and Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue. His character here is closer to Chandler than his Joe Quincy on West Wing, but he’s hardly reprising his Friends role. His new quirks and partnership with WW alum Bradley Whitford promise something different – the two also have terrific chemistry. Judd Hirsch is tremendous in his brief appearance and it’s a shame he’s not sticking around, but I suppose that’s the point. Amanda Peet has drawn some flack for a performance that’s askew to the rest of the cast, but I didn’t notice anything. She fits in just fine and conveys Jordan’s cryptic personality very well. Whitford is wonderful as always, and while the rest of the cast don’t get a great deal to do, there’s not a weak link among them.

Where Studio 60 may fall short is in how far Sorkin plugs his own life into the story and whether the show is internally cohesive enough to continue when his own experiences can no longer fuel storylines. But that's an unlikely prospect: this isn’t a show that exists to serve a grudge. There are plenty of suggestions in the script of Sorkin’s love for television (which he has admitted his the show’s motivating sentiment), and that his frustration is with the medium’s future than with the medium itself. I imagine he relishes being back in the hot seat with Schlamme and able to cause a stir, and it’s great to see him back to contribute to the renaissance in TV drama that we’re all enjoying right now.

Check out a 6 minute preview here. 

House of M

A shift of gears to the comics world now with a review of House of M, the centrepiece mini-series for Marvel’s huge 2005 crossover. I’ve only just read this - thanks to the trade becoming available at the city library - because my relationship with Marvel Comics has soured in the last couple of years. Although Joe Quesada and his team have hardly reneged heinously on the promise of the new Marvel era that began in 2000, they’ve lost my interest by gradually returning to the internally fixated stories that blighted the company during the 1990s, albeit with more creative integrity and without shameless extortion. They’ve dispensed with the approach where a reader must buy thirty comics a month to follow the crossover storyline, but the crossover-as-publishing-nexus element is very much in force.

Once a year now, Marvel’s major titles become embroiled in tie-ins to the main event, seen last year with House of M and this year with Civil War. This creates a greater sense of a shared, thriving universe, which delights many and I have no objection to that. Marvel's recent events certainly deserve praise for following on from each other and for enacting genuine consequences. But as comics go, the impermanence of a major comics event no longer excites me. Long-running titles aren’t a problem, as long as they’re self-contained texts with a plan, as most of Vertigo’s titles are for example, or if they give rise to a stellar individual run (Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Bendis and Maleev's Daredevil) But these all-encompassing paradigm shifts at Marvel no longer seem that interesting even as radicalism, and as individual texts don’t deliver anything particularly memorable either. I sadly have no desire to re-read either House of M or Avengers Disassembled.

The latter, published in 2004, was the precursor to House of M, wherein Marvel and writer Brian Michael Bendis bravely shook up the interminably consistent Avengers team. The Scarlet Witch has a nervous breakdown and her reality-altering powers go haywire, throwing various disasters at the Avengers that swiftly pick off some long-running characters. Wanda is ultimately secured on her father Magneto’s island nation of Genosha and the Avengers are disbanded, although they are soon succeeded by the New Avengers, a cynical marketing stunt in that the team consists of the Avengers people have actually heard of along with Spider-Man and (sigh) Wolverine. It’s this type of thinking – conservatism under the guise of radical change – that frustrates me about Marvel these days.

House of M sees the New Avengers and the X-Men convening to decide Wanda’s fate as she becomes increasingly unstable. But as they search for the suddenly missing Xavier, the world is inexplicably transformed into one where mutants are now the dominant species on a stable and prosperous Earth and Magneto is the head of a noble house that dominates world politics. This is the world that Magneto dreamed of, where mutants rule a minority of ‘sapiens’. The familiar Marvel characters have been scattered, unaware of the old world, except for Wolverine (of course), who can remember everything about the real world and now his own past.

The problems with House of M are two-fold: the alternate universe ultimately proves incidental to the Marvel Universe, and its reason for existence is to facilitate a change in that universe that is simply not required. The first count is perhaps addressed by the myriad mini-series that accompanies Bendis and Olivier Coipel’s eight issues, which would have allowed readers to explore this intriguing universe further. But those stories were only adjuncts to this narrative, which has no protagonists until the regular Marvel Universe heroes are restored to their old selves by walking plot device Layla Miller. Although her existence is briefly explained by Wanda’s inherent desire to be foiled, her ability to just think at characters and restore their memories is too convenient and lacking in much suspense – Layla just presents herself to Wolverine and his human allies very conveniently. The Avengers and the X-Men then set about finding Wanda and restoring the original universe, and then it’s all over. Unlike 1995’s Age of Apocalypse series, where only one character had knowledge of the real timeline and had to convince this one’s X-Men, House of M features no such slow-burning saga, existing merely so that the Scarlet Witch to facilitate Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada’s endgame: the reduction of the Marvel Universe’s mutant population from millions to hundreds.

In the leadup to House of M, Quesada stated that the crossover’s outcome would allow one of two ‘genies’ to be returned to the bottle, elements of the Marvel status quo that he saw as fundamentally flawed. Quesada for some reason objected to the presence of millions of mutants throughout the world, as if this eliminated their minority status. Forgive the obviousness, but the world has several billion people, so even when numbering in the millions, mutants are still the minority. Their numbers also make sense given that they are a genetic rather than ethnic minority, and so are not limited to one or a few locations. And besides, did anyone have any problem with the number of mutants in X-Men stories to date? They were a sensible part of the landscape that I can’t recall much objection to.

More importantly, to reduce their number to hundreds actually damages the metaphor of mutants as an analogue to today’s multicultural and varied social landscape: if mutants are hidden around every corner and incurring the hatred of many humans in every corner of society, their potency as allegory is increased dramatically. If they become an international obscurity rather than a subculture, then their relevance is diminished. While I absolutely applaud Marvel’s willingness to shake up its status quo (the depowered mutants include Xavier and Magneto), their passion is misguided in this case. A major crossover is orchestrated to achieve an irrelevant end.

It’s this sound and fury to signify nothing that contributes to my ambivalence about Marvel these days. After spending my teenage years a devoted X-Men fan who basked in the generation-defining takeover of Marvel by Quesada and Bill Jemas and the quality and integrity that they helped to return to my beloved characters, it’s strange to feel so coldly towards them. But then I remember that it’s not the characters that I’ve distanced myself from, merely their current incarnations (although I’ll admit a greater malaise about their now unavoidably indefinite nature). The ubiquity of trade collections only offers more reason to shy away from keeping up with the flimsy pamphlet installments of these stories and enduring a process of trial and error with my finances. Collected editions now ensure that I can dip into the treats that Marvel does offer at my leisure with the benefit of critical feedback (Ultimates 2 and Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark’s Daredevil are current favourites, and I hear great things about Nextwave). But the monthly draw of these characters has now passed as I move on to the greater and wider potential of the comics medium and the multitude of genres it offers. But the classic runs of the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Daredevil, the glorious early years of the Ultimate line, and other storytelling achievements of Marvel over the last forty years will be treasures that I’ll revisit for years to come. And when it appears in trade, you can bet that I’ll check out this year’s opus Civil War, centring on an ideological issue and featuring such genuine bombshells as Spider-Man unmasking himself to the public – I’ll definitely be keeping my toe in these waters… just no longer as a Marvel zombie.

25th Hour

I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t seen a single Spike Lee film before 25th Hour, despite his standing as one of cinema’s most important voices for African-American culture. But I know that I’ll now be hotfooting it to see more of Lee’s work.

25th Hour marks a rare foray for Lee by featuring only one prominent black character, instead continuing his exploration of New York City through other social groupings. Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) has one day left until his 7-year incarceration for drug dealing, and spends his time seeming oddly prepared for the experience as he hangs out with old friends (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper), his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), and his father (Brian Cox). As the day progresses, Monty slowly peels his façade away to reveal his terror about both his life coming to a crashing halt thanks to his own choices and the realities of prison life, climaxing in a devastating confrontation between Norton, Pepper, and Hoffman, and an epic and serene monologue by Brian Cox which shows us an alternate future for Monty where he flees, mirroring a staggering Norton monologue near the start where he angrily lashes out at every single corner of New York’s population.

It’s a great story in its own right, but two things set 25th Hour apart: the grand orchestral score by Terrence Blanchard lift this tale into near-mythology, and Lee chooses to place the narrative in post-September 11 New York. On first glance, this tale of an individual confronting a terrible future of his own making has little direct parallel to the World Trade Centre attack and its aftermath, but if Monty is a product of the city with which Lee is so entranced, then it makes sense to view New York as it really exists at the time of production. I’ll be honest and say that the purpose behind this decision wasn’t readily apparent to me on first viewing, and there clearly is one based on scenes such as Pepper and Hoffman looking down on to Ground Zero. It’s this added layer of context that makes 25th Hour so ripe for future exploration.

And Terrence Blanchard’s score, gorgeous in its scope and beauty, gives Monty’s score an iconic sensibility. But Norton makes him real. Initially, his demeanour seems ill suited to a suburban criminal, but Norton soon becomes utterly believable as a drug dealer who perhaps regrets ever getting into the business, as if it was a betrayal of his own nature given that his friends, partner, and father have found success in legitimate work. Monty does seem like a fish out of water, especially among the Russian gangsters he works with, and Norton sells that admirably – it’s one of his best performances. The rest of the cast is faultless, although the subplot where Philip Seymour Hoffman is pursued and rejected by one of his high school students (Anna Paquin) is a baffling inclusion, although their performances make the story engaging in its own right. It’s another reason to see this movie again, to solve the puzzle of 25th Hour’s ultimate meaning.

Spike Lee has made a glorious urban drama for today’s world, and I can’t wait to see more of his work. This was largely ignored at the time of release, and it didn’t deserve to be. This is a tremendous modern achievement that deserves to be seen. 

Alien 3

 Today I continued my gradual trawl through the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set,  watching Alien 3 for the first time in 7 or 8 years. It’s a much-maligned film, and  while I remembered it as being pretty solid, I was expecting to think much less of  it given that a lot of time has passed and how deeply impressive I found the first  two films in the series to be when revisiting them over the last couple of months.

 So I was surprised to discover that Alien 3 isn’t half bad. It’s not a great film, nor  even a very good one, but it’s not a disaster. Director David Fincher offers a new take on the original’s one-monster-vs-group dynamic with characters that are decidedly less heroic but more proactive than those of Scott’s film. Ripley’s experience allows them to formulate a proper plan, which results in some stellar chase sequences including from the alien’s point-of-view. Plus, Sigourney Weaver is great yet again, really selling the emotional impact of her staggering bad luck with these bloody aliens, which this time has resulted in the death of Newt, who she came to love like a daughter in Cameron’s Aliens. Narrative decisions like this contribute to Alien 3’s unrelenting bleakness. The deaths are numerous and brutal, both the prisoners and their keepers cold and oppressive, and Ripley herself cannot catch a break – Newt and Hicks begin the film dead, the only other character she becomes attached to is slaughtered in front of her, and she has been impregnated with an alien herself. Although the ending allows Ripley to take a stand and decide her fate, this is not the triumphant conclusion to a trilogy.

I imagine it seemed incredibly difficult to follow up on Ridley Scott’s and James Cameron’s entries in the series, not just due to their calibre but because they used the alien in two completely different yet equally logical ways. Scott employed it in a pick-em-off horror picture, and Cameron followed a divergent path and used dozens of the creatures to craft an action/siege movie. Fincher and the screenwriters try to avoid repetition by placing Ripley and the alien in a new environment that’s hostile in its own ways, but Fiorina 161 and its prisoners are not compelling or well-developed enough to move Alien 3 into new territory beyond Scott’s original. Looking back from today’s era of ubiquitous sequels and trilogies, a more encompassing and epic story seems more appropriate for what was intended as the final instalment in the Alien series rather than this distinctive but insular monster movie. Cameron continued the plotline of the nefarious Company who wanted the alien for its own ends, and while they feature in Alien 3, nothing new is really offered. Instead of Ripley crash-landing on a planet, surely a more decisive resolution to this plot thread would have been more satisfactory, perhaps on Earth, so that the themes of playing God and the folly of controlling the uncontrollable could come to the forefront and give the third film a unique purpose in the series. An Aliens-on-Earth film has been fantasised about for decades, and it would have been a logical location for such an introspective theme and for the climax of a spacebound trilogy.

But for whatever reason, the producers of Alien 3 decided not to go in that direction. Besides, the film hardly had a smooth ride to the screen. Beset by script problems from day one (over thirty drafts were commissioned, including one by William Gibson) and the dismissal of original director Vincent Ward (The Navigator, What Dreams May Come), Alien 3 exuded portents of doom from the get-go. And this was not a film whose poor script was miraculously rescued by strong direction. Fincher rarely talks about this film these days, and declined the offer to create his own cut for the Quadrilogy simply because it would be impossible: the film was compromised before production even began, and to salvage it would be redundant (the Quadrilogy does feature a 30-minute longer ‘assembly cut’ that represents the film before outside editing took hold and will be intriguing to watch, but a Fincher cut is unavailable and implausible). I’d be interested to discover how much of the conflict came from the core concept of the film rather than on-set disputes. Were other, grander plot ideas ever mooted? Perhaps budget concerns for Aliens on Earth scuppered a more epic instalment. But then, such a film would have risked resemblance to Cameron’s film instead of Scott's, which encapsulates Alien 3’s fundamental obstacle.

It’s redundant now, of course, as this and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection have tarnished the series for many, and to resuscitate it now would seem necrophilic, despite James Cameron and Ridley Scott’s rumoured discussions a few years ago regarding a fifth instalment. The franchise’s time has passed. But Alien 3 still stands as a decent movie, albeit an empty one. It lacks the precision and control of Scott’s film and the masterful carnage of Cameron’s. To be honest, it probably shouldn’t have been made at all, as the first two films did tremendous things with the novel Alien concept. But it stands as a captivating footnote in film history of how a series can turn sour and how studio financial considerations can hijack a movie. Watching Charles de Lauzirika’s documentary on the film in this set should prove riveting, even though the real meat has allegedly been cut out by Fox, cautious about public insight into its past indiscretions and power trips. It will be a shame not to witness the full explanation behind this unfortunate project, but this can stand alongside the series conclusion fans of dreamed of in the annals of unseen stories. 

The Wire is saved

In a show of dedication to quality that almost compensates for the cancellation of Deadwood, HBO has renewed The Wire for the fifth and final season that David Simon had planned and hoped for so much that he would conclude his story as a novel if necessary. Only one episode of the fourth season has aired to middling ratings, but the staggering critical response to season four – most of the critics consider it the best show on television today, some ever – has tipped HBO’s hand toward a very early renewal.

This is such good news, a triumph for quality television after the end of Deadwood proved that anything was possible. Simon has always planned for the story to take five seasons, and now he gets the chance to finish the most important TV show of our time. I’ve found my faith in HBO again, even after the Deadwood and Carnivale debacles, the reanimation of The Sopranos and their airing of the mediocre Rome and Big Love. I look forward to David Milch’s John from Cincinatti and Alan Ball’s vampire drama with relish.

Brick

Innovation is difficult enough in film when time and budget are in ample supply. When equipped only with a miniscule budget and a 20-day shooting schedule, innovation on Brick’s scale is extraordinary. Writer/director Rian Johnson has fused two utterly disparate genres more successfully than anyone in recent memory, transplanting the visual and thematic sensibilities of film noir to a modern American high school. Such contrasting styles would usually have difficulty finding life beyond a metafictional conceit, but Johnson weds the two as if they should always have been together.

Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a voluntary outcast within his small-town high school, choosing to eat lunch behind the dining hall after his girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) leaves him for another crowd for reasons he doesn’t understand, even though he’s a savvy guy who “knows all the angles” of the high school social maze. The film opens with a stark shot of her dead body with Brendan crouched nearby, and after we catch up to this day in flashback, Brendan seeks to identify and punish those responsible. He’s the gumshoe figure of the film, evaluating the leads with cool restraint and the help of Brain (Matt O’Leary), a similarly world-weary student with useful talents. Brendan’s first port of call is Emily’s last boyfriend, Dode (Noah Segan), who is embroiled with a local drug operation led by the Pin (Lukas Haas), who Brendan is introduced to via the Pin’s violent and impulsive henchman Tug (Noah Fleiss) and mysterious socialite Laura (Nora Zehetner). He then infiltrates their organisation in order to discover the truth about Emily’s death.

But let’s get the key disclaimer out of the way: do not expect to be able to follow this film’s plot, which pays a winking homage to film noir in being almost as labyrinthine as The Big Sleep. But like that film, it just doesn’t matter. While it will be interesting to discover if multiple viewings make Brick’s narrative more lucid or whether the narrative is even logical, confusion is a good thing the first time around. Our emotional grasp of the hidden allegiances, clandestine confrontations, and decisive shoot-outs is enough to carry us through, even if we don’t understand how we got there, and it’s no doubt a deliberate choice by Johnson. Noir was as much about the journey as the destination, and Brick revels in that journey in almost tactile ways, down to the minimalist score that drips with sadness and the dissolves between scenes that heighten our sense of the inevitable. Johnson has done extraordinary things with lighting and cinematography given the very brief production schedule. So many shots are gorgeous to behold in either their starkness or blatant construction, such as an unforgettable shot where the Pin moves into a sliver of light during a monologue as Brendan regains consciousness or a chilling wide shot of an execution at the mouth of a tunnel. This is a film that just drips with style and inventiveness.

And then there’s the language. Not content with appropriating film noir conventions and visual motifs, Johnson crafts a new vernacular that merges noir dialogue with high school life, taking the genre’s lead and finding metaphors in that world to represent broader concerns (“eating lunch” becomes a designation of one’s mood and social standing, by choice or otherwise). This is the film’s riskiest proposition, and doesn’t work for many and perhaps it shouldn’t, but Johnson scripts these lines with such earnestness but without succumbing to blatancy that they work, and seem almost transcendent as a result. Even when Brendan is referred to as ‘shamus’, it somehow feels right, as if the divisive world of high school is the natural successor to the perpetual night of urban 1930s gumshoes, their molls, and their cases and we are merely visiting a Doc Brown/Donnie Darko-esque tangent universe where the dialogue of old movies played a much greater role in our culture. There are a surprising number of counterparts between high school life and noir, so the dialogue is weirdly consistent as well as beautiful to hear.

The performances are key to this dialogue working, and Johnson has cast wisely. Joseph Gordon-Levitt follows up Mysterious Skin with another solemn role in a very different film, and he’s utterly compelling. He’s in every scene, but he never fails to hold our attention. Lukas Haas is a creepy revelation as the tranquil Pin, and Noah Fleiss turns the potentially silly role of brash thug into something more resonant. The only drawback is in the female roles, which is the fault of the script rather than the performances. Johnson is perhaps too faithful to the limiting representation of women in noir as either in distress or femme fatale, mostly the latter. In most respects, Brick feels like a contemporary film despite its homages to the past, but in the case of the women Johnson doesn’t update noir sufficiently. But de Ravin and Zehetner still give great performances, particularly the sheer melancholy of de Ravin as the doomed Emily.

It’s been a few weeks since I saw this film, but writing about it has given me an insatiable hunger to see it again. Brick becomes even richer in retrospect, a riveting achievement of both style and storytelling, and parallels Donnie Darko in marking the emergence of a truly innovative young director. Brick promises to be a cult classic, and rightly so. And that music!!…..

Jindabyne

I’m one of the tragic few Australian film fans who have never seen Lantana. Although I’ve managed to see the first half twice, the whole thing has thus far eluded me, first due to a dodgy DVD and then to illness. One of these days I’ll break this odd curse and see Ray Lawrence’s second film, but thankfully, taking in his latest proved to be smooth sailing, insomuch as an intensely melancholy film can be.

In Jindabyne, Lawrence and screenwriter Beatrix Christian transplant a Raymond Carver short story to Australia, which examines the fallout of a remote fishing trip where four friends (Gabriel Byrne, John Howard,Stelios Yiakmis, and Simon Stone) discover the body of a young Aboriginal woman floating in the river. The drama – and trauma – arises from their decision to continue fishing and notify the police later, in spite of their initial horrified reactions. They simply rationalise that nothing can be done for her now. The aftermath focuses largely on the growing estrangement between Byrne’s Irish-Australian mechanic Stewart and his wife, American expat Claire (Laura Linney), who tries to atone for her husband’s inaction by reaching out to the woman’s family and others in the local Aboriginal community. Byrne himself is town between his guilt and his confusion over the logic of his newfound pariah status.

The appeal of Lawrence’s film comes from its refusal to ignore its characters’ indecision regarding their culpability. Their actions are reprehensible, which they understand on a cognitive level, but the script does not place them on an inexorable path to redemption as soon as they return to town. They are muddled over the intensity of their psychological punishment, at their own hands and those of others, and the film is an elaborate demonstration of negotiating one’s guilt in light of an innate sense of self-preservation.

This doesn’t apply to Linney’s character though, who is uninvolved in the fishing decision and is aghast at her husband’s choice. Her journey represents taking responsibility for the actions of those we love, even if those actions call that love into question and their guilt wears away at the relationship. Another theme is introduced by way of her nationality, which concerns Lawrence’s interesting decision to cast overseas Westerners in the principal roles. Shouldn’t a narrative about white Australia falling short in its respect of indigenous beliefs position a born-and-raised Australian in Linney’s role? But perhaps Lawrence feels that this has already been done to a certain degree in Australian film and television, and this new perspective of an American character immersed in Australian cultural traumas when her own history holds similar abuses does illuminate the universality of both insensitivity and humane outreach. But the script makes only incidental mention of Stewart’s Irish origins and none whatsoever of Claire’s American upbringing (her accent is untouched). Is Lawrence leaving the cross-cultural inferences solely to the viewer, or was the script not written with foreign actors in mind, which bespeaks either stunt or otherwise redundant casting.

Regardless, Linney and Byrne’s presence does not distract and certainly doesn’t sabotage the film. Whether it strengthens or weakens the story’s cultural and racial commentary is really up the individual viewer, as is the unexpected decision to depict the lead-up to the girl’s murder and her disposal by an electrician obsessed with the force he works with. He appears intermittently throughout the film as a subsequently silent, almost demonic force of local destruction, and his presence is both jarring and oddly logical – I genuinely couldn’t decide whether I agreed with the choice. He is an oddly ethereal inclusion in this mostly grounded film, but the recurring hum of electricity and the almost spiritual awe or fear it provokes adds a layer of slight magic realism that would benefit from repeat viewings. Jindabyne as a whole turns a basic premise into a complex text, but its primary narrative and characters are emotionally captivating, bolstered by fine performances and a terrific director that Australia is lucky to have.

Miami Vice

I didn’t speak to a single person who didn’t groan in the lead-up to the release of Miami Vice, Michael Mann’s updating of the seminal cop show he worked on in the 80s. ‘Yet another TV remake, and this one has Colin Farrell’, was the familiar refrain. I too have been deploring Hollywood’s mining of old and usually mediocre TV shows to strip and recast for a quick buck, but this seemed different. It was Michael Mann after all, a stellar director of urban crime dramas; Heat, Collateral, and The Insider are all terrific films with a propulsive but haunting style. I saw this project as merely using the Miami Vice name to tell a great story about the effect of undercover policing on identity. Granted, I wished that the crutch of the Miami Vice title could be jettisoned, but that was a small thing.

The problem is that Michael Mann went and surprised most of us by making an interminably dull movie. I still can’t quite believe I have to write that. Mann’s films are epic and riveting, but Miami Vice is sabotaged by a disastrously boring middle act that’s hampered by slight and uninvolving characterisation. It’s fascinating that Colin Farrell could make such an impression in Terrence Malick’s The New World, but in a similarly stoic role here he’s utterly devoid of interest. Jamie Foxx doesn’t fare much better though, despite being so engaging in Mann’s Collateral. These are just underwritten characters and the movie collapses as a result.

The film version starts very promisingly, dropping us in the middle of a nightclub operation that is interrupted by a frantic phone call from an informant (John Hawkes) in a case they considered closed who screams that he needs protection. The details are aggressively assembled for us as Crockett (Farrell) and Tubbs (Foxx) try to reconcile their knowledge of the case with this powerful new development. This portion of the script is thrilling but inexplicably gives way to a slower pace that would be perfectly acceptable if the principal characters spouted anything but macho or self-righteous platitudes and exhibited any subtleties to engage our sympathies. As their new undercover operation begins, Crockett quickly seduces Isabella (Gong Li), a businesswoman at the upper levels of this drug operation. Gong Li is just marvellous in her work with Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-Wai, so I feel terrible pointing out that her English is sadly not strong enough for that engaging acting ability to shine through. However, the script and a lack of chemistry with Farrell don’t help her either. Her partners make a malevolent impression, but the narrative is stalled in business negotiations of all things and they’re unable to help the narrative along or create any dynamite scenes.

The film gets cracking again at the start of the third act with a kidnapping by neo-Nazis. It’s unfortunate that it takes such a plot device to make Miami Vice thrilling, but that’s the truth of it. The climax is as exciting as can be expected given the lack of investment in the characters, but it’s too little too late. The film didn’t need to be a thrill ride. The midsection could be tremendous and offbeat if the characters could only support it, and not even Mann’s addictive visual style can compensate. Dion Beebe’s digital-video photography is fascinating to look at though, creating an intimacy through the technology’s inherent lack of polish and artifice and lending a new take on Mann’s trademark cityscapes.

But visual style has to be seriously staggering to overcome a lacklustre script, a flaw all the more notable in how it wastes terrific supporting actors like Naomie Harris and Justin Theroux. I’ll still await Mann’s next film with relish, but this is a major misstep. And the question still remains: why update Miami Vice anyway? The film bears little resemblance to the original and smacks of relying on nostalgic brand recognition. Even with names like Mann attached, TV adaptations are clearly a tough nut to crack whether artistry is the goal or not.

Another goal and Deadwood Season Three

In the interest of critical discipline and providing actual content, I've decided to take a page from Keith Gow's now-defunct The New Review: A Day blog and post a review of something each and every day. Be it a review of a new or recent movie, TV series or episode, soundtrack, book, or comic, or an opinion piece on a major development in those industries, there will be new critical material on this blog each day.

This is probably a stupid and futile undertaking - which I hope will encourage understanding if this crashes and burns - but it'll be a good way to get my arse into gear. There won't be an essay in each post ala today's, but there will be new critical material in some form. I hope you enjoy it (and my inevitable implosion).

First up, reflections on the third season of Deadwood.


A few weeks after its conclusion, I’ve finished the third season of Deadwood, and original superlatives are once again in short supply, as are words to convey the sadness that Deadwood the series has now ended. The movies perhaps aren’t as sure a proposition as they initially sounded, so we must face the possibility that this is the end. But that actually wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. Despite a season of odd priorities, the concluding episode could serve as a conclusion if need be. Along with the penultimate instalment, Milch presented us with a stunning tableau of unleashed tension and satisfying denouement, even though comeuppance was missing… which is to be expected in a show like Deadwood, after all.

Milch shook up the format a little this season by allowing the incursion of gold tycoon George Hearst to dominate the storytelling. While the ravaging force of capitalism began to make its mark last season in the form of the murderous Heart emissary Francis Wolcott, Hearst himself increased its magnitude immensely. He utterly reshapes the camp through sheer force of will, following up on his acquisition last season of every gold claim except Alma’s—whose refusal to sell gives us our first real glimpse of Hearst’s monstrous personality—with the start of a towering, almost demonic reign over the camp and its leaders. This naturally brings him into conflict with Ian McShane’s Swearengen, beautifully symbolised by McShane monitoring the camp from his balcony now being mirrored by Hearst, who knocks a jagged hole in the wall of his hotel room to do so.

Given the devastatingly intense impression that McShane and Powers Boothe (as Cy Tolliver) have made as unofficial camp overlords, it would take a remarkable actor to believably instil fear in them. Gerald McRaney’s single appearance last season gave no indication either way of his chances, but his performance in every episode of this one is staggering proof of his talent and that Swearengen can indeed feel fear, and we see it in his eyes. Hearst is a virtually invincible figure who is simultaneously aware that his passion for ‘the colour’ has cost him his ability to care for his fellow man—if the ability was there to begin with—and McRaney’s portrayal is the stuff of legend—his new show Jericho suddenly becomes must-see TV at the prospect of weekly McRaney. Hearst’s influence over Deadwood is a tragic glimpse into how easily but thoroughly power can utterly reshape a people. Deadwood is no longer the same once Hearst has finished with it, although in a bizarre way it has progressed as well, since Hearst’s dominance encourages the unlikely alliance of Bullock and Swearengen and the beginnings of town solidarity—a remarkable transition given the petty cutthroat politics that fuelled the town in the first season.

While the Hearst storyline is riveting and appropriate for this part of the Deadwood story, it’s a shame that its prominence comes at the price of some of the established characters. Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif) is shamefully underused this season, especially since his contraction of tuberculosis early this season barely gets mentioned afterwards. The relationship between Seth and Martha is seldom explored in spite of last season’s tragedy, and Sol Starr is barely seen at all, although he thankfully gets some great scenes at season’s end when Trixie does something rash, which furthers their quite fascinating relationship. Plus, I feel that Milch has never quite known what to do with Tolliver, but that’s a problem that dates to season two, since the character seemed lost without Ricky Jay’s Eddie Sawyer to bounce off of (although Boothe is so damn good that you don’t often notice). Given these compromises, the prominence of new characters this season seems fairly inexplicable, as does minor characters continuing to merit screen time. The bigoted Steve’s interactions with Hostetler and the Nigger General resume for fairly unfathomable reasons, and a subplot with Hearst’s cook and her ambitious son is sizable. A lot of the established characters are still well serviced, but when Richardson and Steve have more screen time than Doc Cochran, there’s a problem.

But the most curious addition is Brian Cox and his travelling theatre troupe. While it’s a joy to see a prominent character actor like Cox do a decent TV stint, and he’s marvellous in the role of the very theatrical ‘dandy’ Jack Langrishe, the storyline rarely interacts with any other. While the arrival of culture in Deadwood is an interesting counterpoint to that of capitalism in the form of Hearst, a lot of time is given to a dying member of the troupe and then the storyline more or less peters out. While this hopefully means that Cox will reappear in the movies, the story seemed awkwardly shoehorned into proceedings, and becomes more troubling when the aforementioned characters are compromised as a result. But the Langrishe troupe, Steve and the Nigger General, and Aunt Lou were all delicious stories in their own right. They just seemed poorly aligned with the show’s usual narrative efficiency, as did the similarly superb but somewhat jarring Wolcott/Chez Ami subplot last season..

But (tiny) warts and all, Deadwood remains a truly exquisite piece of work, and not just due to ‘that flowery language’. While the dialogue is, in actuality, mesmerisingly elaborate yet never incongruous, Deadwood’s majestic quality comes from its silences as much as its words. By embracing the potential of violence (in notion and deed) and profanity (they’re just words too) to move and enthral rather than repulse, Deadwood has been without question the finest series on television, perhaps ever, whose cancellation makes the constant reanimation of The Sopranos's bewildered corpse all the more aggravating. Although its HBO stablemate The Wire takes the cake for relevance and thematic ambition, Deadwood is the complete package: a period piece that resonates with today’s politics and society, a gorgeously designed and produced programme that always stays with its character, and a perfectly judged, achingly emotional drama that stands up with the classics of literature and cinema. As critic Steve Czaban recently put it, we have never seen its like before, and probably never will again. Rest in peace, and we hope and pray that your conclusion will indeed arrive. 

The plan...

Now for a more official greeting: welcome to Remote Wanderings, a blog dedicated to news and criticism on today’s film, television, and other entertainment. While I’ll be adding this to the approximately 7 trillion blogs on similar topics, hopefully this one will make a bit of a mark. I’ve got a goal for the content of this blog that fuses the popular with the niche, the academic with the raving film fan, which I hope will set this blog aside and situate it in the burgeoning arena of well-written but wide-ranging Internet pop culture criticism.

These reviews encapsulate my approach, which is driven by a frustration at what passes for movie reviewing in most corners of the media. I see no reason why a film lover’s joy in a great movie must be cloaked in clinical restraint if that enthusiasm is well expressed and avoids slobbering fixation or celebrity adoration. Similarly, too many reviewers are instantly suspicious of big-budget films and even niche genre work, laying bare their deeply entrenched preconceptions and refusing to acknowledge that ‘big’ filmmaking can be artistic or that science fiction, adult animation, or any manifestation of the fantastic must be either judged by more relaxed criteria (because we can’t expect too much from such frivolity, now can we) or assumed to offer less of substance.

This can reveal itself either in the dismissive reviews themselves or in pre-release commentary. For example, many reviewers instantly wrote off X-Men: The Last Stand, not because of the bad word coming from those behind-the-scenes, but because it was a franchise picture. Now, I most assuredly have my beef with the proliferation of sequels and remakes these days, and I was disappointed by the rushed pace and poor judgement of the third X-Men film, but I insisted on keeping an open-mind and getting excited!!. This is not verboten. Besides, big filmmaking can indeed deliver even within the constraints of a studio - V for Vendetta is a recent case in point, although many critics still couched their praise in diligent disclaimers regarding its comic-book origins.

Regardless, that anticipation is part of the joy of being a film fan, especially with the staggering amount of pre-release information that the Internet age gives us (perhaps too much? A topic for another time...). I believe in passionate but informed criticism, a blend of academic insight and the unabashed exuberance of film geeks, which is a label that should be worn proudly if discernment and rationality are along for the ride. Much mainstream film criticism only offers bland and narrow-minded commentary and convenient soundbites - just check out the excerpts on the page for any recent movie on Rotten Tomatoes for an example of how pithy and bored (or boring) many reviewers are. The other problem is the reviewers that do offer insight but restrict their scope of interest immensely. This isn’t just a criticism of ‘those fussy movie critics who only like art films’, but frustration with their staggering inability to be pleased. It’s damaging and elitist.

Now, I understand that most film critics do indeed like movies and save their raves for the truly deserving, but in the cases of many critics I read, those raves never actually come. Instead, I look to reviewers like Ain’t It Cool’s Moriarty and sites like CHUD for the vanguard of contemporary film writing on the Internet. Far more than film geek dwelling grounds, these sites offer constructive but impassioned commentaries on films and their industry, and not just on big-budget or fantasy offerings. They’ll give you as much insight into non-genre and independent cinema as any more ‘highbrow’ site (as I will be, notably with forthcoming reviews of Brick and Jindabyne. They’ve been my yardstick in the reviews I’ve written thus far, so if you’re a fan of those sites, you’ll hopefully like what you see here. I believe that reviewers and film lovers can demonstrate their love of the medium without sacrificing critical standards. That’s the ethos that will be informing this blog and its criticism. If you’re gagging to see both The Dark Knight and Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, clamouring equally for Spider-Man 3 and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, and you love both The Wire and Battlestar Galactica and can't be bothered with the new season of CSI: Law and Order, this blog may be for you, especially since I’ll be dispensing the cream of film and television news to boot. And fear not - despite the serious pseudo-activism of this post, Remote Wanderings will be FUN. I enjoy movies and TV, and will be making that abundantly clear.

And after that lengthy preamble, here are some select reviews from my personal blog over the last year or so to give you a taste of what I do. There are looks at Closer, The Chumscrubber, and The Weather Man, followed by a lengthy appraisal of Batman Begins. Apart from some other old reviews that I’d like to archive here soon, the content from here on out will be largely about the here-and-now.

[Unfortunately Blogger doesn't seem to allow for multiple links to the same subpage, so please click the 'Read More' link at the bottom of this post and scroll down to find each review.]

I unexpectedly watched Closer for a second time after catching it at the cinema back at the end of 2004, and I assumed that I would dash in and out while my flatmate was watching. I ended up staying for the whole film, because Closer utterly captivating, which is all the more surprising given how unlikeable the characters are.

Although its origins as a play are abundantly clear (only four principal characters; all the scenes are long conversations in single rooms), Closer works surprisingly well as a motion picture, as Patrick Marber’s script is aided by a constantly roving camera, weaving through conversations or zooming into a character’s enraptured eyes. Still, a film such as this is made or broken by the screenplay and performances, and both are exceptional. Marber’s dialogue flows in a beautifully natural fashion, striking just the right balance between everyday banalities and poignant insight. Plus, his script is brave enough to lay the characters’ flaws sprawled helplessly for all to see - but more on that in a moment…

The casting is exceptional, and all four performances carry the film effortlessly, consistently holding interest even without the help of a single other major (or even minor) speaking part. Julia Roberts is surprisingly good, especially since here she gives a subtle, restrained performance that still speaks volumes. Jude Law is a terrific combination of charming and pathetic, and Natalie Portman is entrancing as Alice, deftly switching between immense confidence and a disturbingly childlike innocence. But Clive Owen is perhaps the standout, showing a huge charisma despite being utterly wounded, although a terrific character arc helps him out, which sees Larry begin as the most sympathetic character due to his apparent goodness and his cuckoldry and then descend into being a cold, vindictive bastard.

These character shifts are what make Closer so intriguing… and the subject of much disdain. I’ve spoken to people who find the film abhorrent due to its apparent refusal to offer any constructive commentary on human relationships, instead beginning as a sensitive exploration and ultimately revelling in its own moral vacuum. To me, Nichols and Marber don’t reject insight, but resolution. Since the crux of the film is the Destructive Relationship, it follows that no cohesion should ultimately be presented. Although certainly the pessimistic approach, it’s not necessarily a redundant one. Closer is merely shining the spotlight on relationships that seemed to start well and then soured but that may have had no healthy foundation to begin with. So we watch the characters enduring their realisation of this and also their narcissistic, selfish choices to try and fight against it. Owen’s character arguably begins the film as the most ‘innocent’ of the four (although that may just be because we discover so little about his past), and while the external circumstances of his wife’s adultery are clearly major factors, his inherent fixation on the potentially destructive nature of relationships leads him to abandon whatever morality he may have had in order to achieve some kind of stability – he’ll forgive his wife for cheating on him for a year, but to try and preserve his self-respect he will taunt and manipulate the lover she has just left with exquisitely diabolical revelations.

Although those who may react against this starkly nihilistic characterisation are not necessarily craving a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, I feel that to condemn the film for failing to offer worthwhile insight when it is merely inverting the common narrative trajectory of flawed protagonists overcoming their weaknesses is wrongheaded. While it is clearly a film from which a variety of conclusions can be drawn about relationships, to assume that it offers only a bleak outlook is to oversimplify it. Its surprising resonance for me on second viewing, even with the knowledge of key choices and betrayals, is perhaps testament to this.

The overlap between the teen movie and the surburban angst subgenre has been an interesting development over the last few years with films like Donnie Darko, Thumbsucker, and... others I can’t recall :D. Most have been welcome and original, but one was bound to come along that has good intentions but falls short of the mark. The Chumscrubber is that film.

While describing it as Donnie Darko meets Desperate Housewives is an oversimplification of the film’s goals, that’s certainly how The Chumscrubber feels. Yeah, it’s another intertwining story of angst and middle-class repression. While The Chumscrubber has lofty goals, it falls short by indulging in cliché (the housewife high on vacuous self-help programs) and occasional caricature (Wilson’s character complains of Troy’s mother’s (Glenn Close) lack of consideration in scheduling her son’s funeral on her wedding day – “She KNEW I was getting married today!”). Plus, it lacks any visual distinctiveness and features a bizarre parallel with a post-apocalyptic video game (from which the film’s title comes) that we see in interludes and just doesn’t work, aiming for some form of ultra-modern poignancy and ending up with redundancy. And then there’s Ralph Fiennes’ obsession with dolphins… I can take a lot of weird for weird’s sake, but there’ s not enough successful material to outweigh these missteps.

However, the film impresses at its climax, as Charlie’s relatively comfortable abduction reaches a harrowing, bloody, and moving conclusion, and Dean finally confronts his feelings about Troy’s death to his friend’s grieving mother as she emerges from her denial. And the performances are strong, particularly by the two Bell/es. But this really offers very little new insight. I usually loathe such conservative recommendations, but if you’re up for a movie like this, revisit Donnie Darko - there’s always more to be gleaned from that film’s glorious ambiguities, and it’s filled with gorgeously tender and funny moments. But kudos to The Chumscrubber for trying to actually say something. It certainly kicks the shit out of most movies teens flock to these days, in their own genre and whatever studio-concocted comedy that’s out this week.

A small film that was largely ignored last year, and can currently (barely) be seen in Australian cinemas, is The Weather Man, starring Nicholas Cage as a Chicago TV weather-man going through a divorce. From the poster, trailer, and other publicity, Gore Verbinski’s film (sort of a respite between Pirates of the Caribbean and its sequels) appears to be an amiable Nicholas Cage comedy, a fluffy studio confection that’s moderately entertaining but fairly forgettable.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This film is a genuine surprise.

If you get a chance to see the trailer, either before or after the film itself, do so – it’s a remarkable example of how a film’s tone and intentions can be utterly transformed with judicious editing. In this case, a dark, fairly cynical drama has been publicised as a feel-good, off-beat comedy (although I still wanted to see it on those merits – it just looked nice). While it has a fair bit of those elements (very black, at that), The Weather Man is a solemn, melancholy, and ultimately moving contemplation of gleaning purpose when life presents you with so little to latch on to. Cage’s Dave Spritz understands that his job is vastly overpaid for little time and skill (he doesn’t even have a meteorology qualification). His marriage is over and he’s becoming painfully aware that his wife (Hope Davis) has genuinely moved on when he has yet to find new romantic prospects, and he also has quite a bit of difficulty relating to his children.

The latter is reflected in Dave’s relationship with his own father, famed novelist Robert Spritzel (Michael Caine). While Robert openly cares about his son, he has difficulty relating to him, especially given his largely absent sense of humour. But Dave isn’t entirely blameless either. He makes bad, boneheaded decisions throughout the film, and not in an endearing fashion. The script isn’t afraid to make Dave not only a tad unsympathetic, but something of a social incompetent. His lot in life is not just portrayed as bad luck, and he must then contend with middle-class desperation. Dave has brought some of this on himself, but we still feel for him - as we do all the characters - despite the film’s relentlessly dour atmosphere, which comes about from both some surprisingly confronting content (Dave’s daughter is subject to horrendous sexual insults at school, and his son falls into the sights of a paedophilic drug counsellor) and Verbinski’s deliberately cold and oppressive direction. The harsh Chicago winter setting contributes substantially to this, and to the story’s themes of alienation. I’ve rarely felt an on-screen climate so palpably as I did in this film. As a long-time winter-person, I’m amazed to say that the Chicago weather seemed truly unpleasant and I really didn’t want to be there.

But I’m focusing a lot on this film’s depressing aspects; while prevalent, they don’t make The Weather Man a nasty experience, and certainly not an unrewarding one. There are some haunting and resonant moments, such as when Dave sets his bow and arrow (he’s just discovered archery) on his ex-wife’s unsuspecting boyfriend from afar. We know that he has no intention of letting the arrow loose, but merelt watch him place himself on the edge of such an act to approach what it might feel like. We know how desperate he is for his life to return to what it was, and it makes the scene heart wrenching. And Cage’s scenes with Caine are very affecting too, and the two have unexpected father-son chemistry. These elements and others give the film a vibe and intent akin to Lost in Translation or the films of Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, Sideways), but with a dash less humour, which is certainly not the impression given by the publicists. Maybe I’m just a sucker for middle-class angst flicks, but I believe that The Weather Man is quite the hidden gem, especially due to the strong performances, stark direction, and Hans Zimmer’s beautiful score. A cruelly ignored film that will stick with you, I can’t recommend this one enough. Despite being a downer for much of its running time, this is a moving and life-affirming film, emerging as more feel-good than those that claim to be, as it’s willing to wallow in murky waters so as to earn its right to offer lessons.

After Joel Schumacher destroyed the Batman movie franchise in more creative ways than anyone dreamed possible in 1997’s Batman and Robin, there was speculation about whether the character would return to the screen and move back to his dark roots. But there was an assumption that Tim Burton’s vision of Batman in the first 1989 movie and in Batman Returns was the correct way to portray Batman on screen. In truth, the character has never been interpreted properly in live-action form. The 1990s animated series did a tremendous job, but the movies never quite nailed the character. The largest problem was that Batman himself, arguably the most interesting character if written accurately, was sidelined by the colourful and depraved villains.

So in Batman Begins, it’s a relief to the discerning Bat-fan that not only has the character been taken back to his darker, decidedly non-comedic roots, but he’s now the star of his own movie. Now, for those who are about to stop reading because you couldn’t give a stuff about Batman, fear not. What’s terrific about this film is that it’s accessible to all, not just as a geekgasm for the character’s fans, and that’s because the character of Bruce Wayne anchors the picture. The people I saw it with, none of them particularly enamoured with Batman, were proclaiming it the best film so far this year, so delighted were they with its all-too-rarely successful combination of subtle character work and effective action. The film is very much worth seeing even if not a fan, but interestingly, it’s because the character has been done justice that Batman Begins is so compelling. Batman is one of the most famous superheroes, but in popular culture terms, he’s a do-gooder lumped into the same category as Superman and Spider-Man. In reality, each character has his own distinctive and appealing character traits, and Batman in particular is a rich psychological conundrum, a man driven to achieve either justice or vengeance in the name of a childhood tragedy that he cannot move beyond. The explorations of these facets are what make Batman Begins so damn interesting.

Stepping into the director’s chair is an unlikely, but ultimately fitting choice. Christopher Nolan previously directed Memento and Insomnia, and the dark and subtle characterisation of those films, including their determined focus on their conflicted protagonist, made him a terrific choice to explore Batman more substantially than he ever has been on-screen. The only uncertainty came from his inexperience with directing action, but he delivers with aplomb, although there are a few issues (more on those later). Given the critical and commercial disaster that was Batman and Robin, Warner Bros. allowed Nolan virtual creative freedom, which included the luxury of completely ignoring the previous films. This is not a prequel at all, or even a remake - although both Begins and Burton’s 1989 Batman both depicted the hero’s emergence in Gotham, the event is tackled at a completely different pace, and Begins frequently contradicts what Burton put forward, usually in the name of doing greater justice to the comics. This free rein has allowed Nolan to construct Bruce Wayne as the complex character he has become over his 70-year publishing history, and he is so committed to establishing how this tragic young man could even contemplate dressing up like a giant bat and fighting crime that he even fabricates details that were never described in the comics, and the result is a genuinely credible journey for the title character, from the murder of his parents through to his first appearance to the criminals of Gotham. This is a blockbuster that actually deals in understatement, and while the transition Bruce makes may not be explicitly rationalised, when he finally dons the Batsuit, it makes sense in a way it never did before, and as a result, makes the film of interest to more than just fans or action movie buffs. This is about Bruce Wayne trying to understand the roles of justice and vengeance in his life, not about a superhero beating up bad guys.

Christian Bale is central to the success of this. A fan-favourite for Batman for years, especially following his turn in Equilibrium, he suits the role more than any other actor before him. Not only does he have the chin for it, but the conflict within Bruce Wayne is more apparent than it ever was in Keaton, Kilmer, and certainly Clooney. As many have pointed out, he’s essentially playing three characters here: the genuine, tormented Bruce Wayne, the spoiled, carefree playboy Bruce Wayne that the real one uses as a distraction (never seen in the movies thus far), and Batman himself, and he distinguishes the first and the last more decisively than ever before. I was pleased with his casting mainly because he would do justice to Wayne, but his efforts inside the suit are remarkable. As Batman, Bale adopts a guttural growl that some may find amusing, but others compelling. This is the first time that Batman has been remotely scary; there’s a scene where he hoists a man in the air and demands information, and Bale’s face virtually convulses with fury as the growl explodes from his mouth. Similarly there’s a calmer scene where Katie Holmes’s character first meets Batman, and the growl, along with the design of the cowl and a truly intense stare that bores into you, creates a truly definitive Batman. That single scene encapsulates the character more than in any of the previous films; he’s never been this effective in live-action before, and it’s a joy to behold.

The rest of the cast is top-notch, and their sheer calibre, not star-wattage, should signify how different Begins is to Batman and Robin. Michael Caine’s Alfred does greater justice to the character partly by just having more screen time, as his father/servant relationship with Bruce Wayne has been crucial for decades, but the previous films failed to pay him the attention he deserves. But on top of that, Caine delivers an exemplary performance (as should be expected), and although his face and accent aren’t really ‘Alfred’s’, his attitude, delivery, and chemistry with Bale are ideal.

Where Alfred was ignored in the prior films, cop Jim Gordon was virtually pissed on. Completely miscast and utterly peripheral, the significance of Gordon to the Batman mythos has never been apparent on screen until now. Finally accorded the requisite moustache, Gordon in Begins, as portrayed by Gary Oldman, is respected by Nolan as a central figure in Batman’s life, the defender on the right side of the law who works with a vigilante to achieve a common goal. They ultimately become the strangest of friends, and the beginnings of that relationship can be seen here. Oldman is terrific, disappearing into the role of an everyman thrust into an unbelievable urban situation. It’s virtually impossible to find Sirius Black, or any of Oldman’s other roles, within Gordon - he’s outstanding.

Liam Neeson provides the gravitas that he always does, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his performance. It’s just not particularly stellar, and is essentially a variation, though with better dialogue, of his role in Star Wars Episode I, but he still delivers a more subtle and effective foil than any Batman villain until now; you can never really accuse Neeson of a bad performance. Unfortunately, the incredible Ken Watanabe, from The Last Samurai, is sadly wasted in a small role, but being able to attract a recent Academy-Award nominee for such a small and frankly dull role signals the pedigree of this project. Katie Holmes’s performance is effective but nothing special, and her character suffers as being a love interest whose relationship with the protagonist is never foregrounded enough for the audience to be invested in it. Spider-Man succeeded in this regard because the love story is so central to the characters and the plot, but here it’s unfortunately superfluous.

Morgan Freeman is also perfectly fine as Lucius Fox (a familiar Batman character not even featured in a prior film), but like Neeson offers nothing new. Cillian Murphy is splendidly slimy as Dr. Jonathan Crane, and his Scarecrow alter-ego is very effectively portrayed. What victims of his fear toxin see can often be truly freakish, but the handling of the Scarecrow character exemplifies how Begins excels: the villain is prominent but never dominant, while actually serving the plot and furthering the rationalisation of the Batman universe. Before Scarecrow, there were essentially no freakish bad guys in Gotham. Mobster Carmine Falcone ran the town (a fun Tom Wilkinson), and Crane’s actions in this film precipitate the creation of that outlandish environment, leading to a final tease that’s deliciously executed.

That’s pretty much where Nolan succeeds with Batman Begins: execution. He takes already potent source material, streamlines it without betraying it, and transfers it to the screen as genuine cinema. What he’s ushered on to film here lends Begins a greatly rewatchable quality, so as to more fully discover how he’s constructed Gotham as a society and Bruce Wayne as a character. As a whole, the film is both a stronger franchise-starter than Burton’s Batman ever was while also serving as an effective film in its own right. Because Bruce Wayne has a distinctive arc, the film exists as an independent entity, unlike the original X-Men, which cried out for a sequel in order to capitalise on the first film’s potential, particularly that of several poorly developed characters. If there was no sequel to Begins, it would be a solid achievement in itself.

However, it’s not a perfect film, and Nolan’s inexperience with action creates slight problems. He’s chosen to shoot the fight scenes in a very rapid, choppy fashion, so that it’s often difficult to see what’s happening (the final fight is a notable offender). Although this could be justified as conveying how fast Batman is, it also raises suspicions that Nolan is instead concealing the Batsuit’s lack of manoeuvrability. Like action, the idea of a villain’s scheme as seen in the second half of the film is also far removed from Nolan’s previous work, and like Magneto’s in the original X-Men, it’s not particularly original or compelling. But it certainly doesn’t sink the film, because like the villains themselves, their scheme isn’t foregrounded and doesn’t anchor the film’s second half. Nolan certainly makes it more interesting than other directors would have, and there’s still enough exciting material to make up for it, such as the extraordinary sequences with the new Batmobile.

However, the reactions of bystanders to Batman’s swanky new car typify the film’s other problem - some of the dialogue can be atrocious. Now, not Star Wars-prequels atrocious, with their consistently diabolical efforts - indeed, on the whole, the dialogue in Nolan and David S. Goyer’s (the Blade trilogy) script is credible and effective, but some of the humour is forced and a little cheesy (Oldman’s reaction to the Batmobile, along with those of various random cops, exemplifies this), more suited to the often tongue-in-cheek Spider-Man films than Nolan’s serious take on the superhero. It’s not all bad though, as a speech by Wayne to his party guests is delicious, and most of Caine’s lines are too. But it’s quite a surprise that the offending lines, so obvious in their banality, got past Nolan, whose prior films were certainly not lacking in quality dialogue. But these are minor problems that may seem less apparent with repeated viewing.

In short, this is both a marvellous resuscitation of the Batman film franchise and an extremely effective action-adventure with genuine characterisation and feeling. And while the cynical may decry any setting up of sequels as forced and commercial, Batman Begins’s one concession in the final scene not only hints at one future character, but also at what this series can achieve as a whole. No longer is it about a vaguely interesting Batman fighting the film’s assigned villain/s - it’s about a compelling and wonderfully acted Batman fighting in a well-established universe of darkness and moral ambiguity. When villains are thrown at Batman, the films will concern themselves with how they affect him, rather than whether he can foil their bombastic and attention-seeking plans. There’s still more than can be said about Bruce Wayne and the themes of justice and fear that he represents, and I’m looking forward to those explorations.

More soon.