In The Summer, In The Cinema

My most recent poll was put up probably too late to draw much attention, but for once that screw-up was only partially my fault. As I mentioned before, this is a particularly weak summer line-up, and we can perhaps attribute that to the after-effects of the writers' strike, as well as the stellar quality of 2008's summer season, which set the bar so high. How could this year compare to a line-up that featured such entertaining films as The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Kung Fu Panda? Still, I should have at least made more of an effort, even if only for old time's sake. Here are the results:

• JJ Abrams Risks Death by Unwashed Nerd Rage-On - 8 (47%)
• Quentin Tarantino and the Broken Spellcheck - 3 (17%)
• Transmogrifiers 2: Return of the Awesome - 1 (5%)
• I’d Rather Be Dragged To Hell Than Watch Spider-Man 3 Again - 1 (5%)
• Pixar’s Whassup, Bitches? - 1 (5%)
• The Time-Travelling Bana - 1 (5%)
• Harry Potter and the Thing in the Place with the Whatsit - 1 (5%)
• District 9 (AKA Neill Blomkamp Rocks Your Face Off) - 1 (5%)
• Terminator Franchise: Salvage Operation - 0 (0%)
• The Curious Case of Wolverine Wutton - 0 (0%)
• Angels, Demons, and Probably Ewan McGregor’s Schlong - 0 (0%)
• Another Worthless Woody Allen Movie - 0 (0%)
• Hott Sam Rockwell’s Lunar Oscar Bid - 0 (0%)
• Depp and Bale in: Untouchablesque - 0 (0%)
• Sacha Baron Cohen and the Inevitable Lawsuits - 0 (0%)
• (500) Days of Self-Conscious Indie Movie Quirk - 0 (0%)
• Demetri Martin + Ang Lee + Hippies = WTF? - 0 (0%)
• G.I. Joe: The Struggle to Give a Shit - 0 (0%)
• The Unnecessary Remaking of Pelham 123 - 0 (0%)
• Final Destination: Rube Goldberg’s Revenge - 0 (0%)
• Judd Apatow’s Self-Loathing People (feat. The RZA!) - 0 (0%)

What's weirdest about Star Trek's overwhelming success is that people were still voting for it weeks after it had come out. From what I can tell people were seeing it more than once, so perhaps this was a retroactive vote of happiness after people had already seen it. Whatever the reason, it's great to see so much support for something that was treated as a hubris-tainted disaster before even a frame of it had been shown. I had expected something approximating greatness for a while, hoping that J.J. Abrams would go for broke after playing safe with the frustrating Mission Impossible 3, but sadly my anticipation worked against me.


When I finally saw it I was a little disappointed, even though I liked it a lot. The hectic pace was necessary to get all of the characters into place while setting up the Trek universe for N00Bs and telling a story, but it might have been a touch too crazed even for me. It didn't help that seeing it in IMAX made all of those whip-pans and lens flares far more exhausting than they would be on a regular screen, as well as making Zachary Quinto's eyebrows and the... how can I put this tactfully... heavily-detailed face of Chris Pine hella-distracting. I have been trying and failing to see it again on a normal sized screen to give it another shot at blowing my mind. Even without that reassessment, so far it's the movie to beat this summer. Why? Because Abrams destroyed Vulcan. That takes balls of brass. Or dilithium.

After that, the only movie generating more than baseline excitement is Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. All the more surprising after the critical drubbing it received at Cannes. Not that that matters. Tarantino is one of those rare artists that have created a work of pop culture art of such great impact that they get a free pass for life. Just as I'll follow Eno or Dylan or Scorsese through thick or thin, Tarantino movies will always feel like an event, even when the result is a disappointment (I'm thinking Kill Bill Part Two). It worries me that a die-hard Tarantino fan like Bradshaw gave it a memorable slating, but he seems uncomfortable around schlocky b-movie stuff.


Yes, he gave Star Trek a big five-star review, but then claimed throughout the review that Nero and his grumpy cohorts were Klingon. It suggests he never really pays attention to the "baser" end of the cultural spectrum. Which is fine, of course. Thank God for him giving props to Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Andrei Zvyagintsev despite the whining of readers offended that he would dare like something "arty". Nevertheless, if the movie is going to feature more than one explosion or decapitation, or is actually colossally dreadful, stupid, and predictable on almost every level, best to take his review with a pinch of salt/gunpowder.

Speaking of things that explode, Disguisatrons Two: There Will Be Oil got my vote. Yes the first one had as many flaws as it had great moments. Yes it could be confusing. Yes it blah blah ah fuck it. I loved the first one just because it set out to be a robot mayhem movie with broad jokes and explosions and unearned drama, and it did that with zero apology. I wasn't a huge Transformers fan so I didn't weep because Mammothtron was the wrong shade of teal. I think Michael Bay's decision to make every action scene hectic and every conversation a series of unconnected smart-ass jokes is a terrible kind of genius because you can tune out every few seconds and never lose track of what's going on, because there's nothing coherent to lose track of, and nothing has any dramatic weight. It's spectacle for the sake of spectacle. Criticising Bay for not being Ingmar Bergman is as futile as criticising cheese for not being gaseous. (ETA: I wrote that sentence yesterday, and what do you know, Bradshaw hated it, using a customarily brilliant metaphor about sex to illustrate the point. However, when criticising the awful Megan Fox, he invoked the memory of Liv Ullmann! Spooky.)


Bear in mind, he's probably the only action filmmaker I'm willing to give this latitude to (see Stephen Sommers comments below), simply because he does this stuff bigger and better than anyone else. Without the outrageous spectacle, that dramatic emptiness is really apparent. As I feel obliged to say every time I get excited about a Bay movie, I'm not crazy. I'm fully aware it could suck, but I won't have to wait long to find out. I'll be seeing it on Saturday on IMAX, Crom willing, and if that format made Star Trek hard to watch, it will almost certainly render hardcore Bay nigh-unwatchable. But, you know, who cares? BOOM!

I'd be very very surprised if it gave us anywhere near the pleasure Drag Me To Hell did. Sam Raimi's gloriously silly granny-spitfest entertained parts of my brain I'd forgotten I had, i.e. all of the neurons that were born during my first viewing of Evil Dead II. Much as I have grown to dislike seeing movies with large audiences, I would have liked to have seen this with more people, even if only to drown out the noise of this one old guy who chattered away when we went to see it (my intense glare of disgust did not phase him, oddly). The few dozen people who were in there hooted and shrieked and laughed throughout, and it was great.


I can't remember the last time I saw a film work so well simply because it is so proudly base and silly, but then that's probably because Sam Raimi has not been making those films for a while. Seeing his return to his roots has been one of the highlights of the year, and not enough people have experienced it. For shame, humanity! If you've not yet seen it, you have to go see it right now, even if only for the fight scene in the car about twenty minutes in. I can't remember a more brazen attempt to get a response from a crowd, nor can I remember a scene that has been as successful in generating one.


Canyon's vote went to Pixar's Up, the long-awaited follow-up to Monsters Inc. from Pete Docter. This is a particularly hard movie to write about as the majority of Americans we know have already seen it, and we remain Ed-Asner-less. It's not out in England until October, meaning we're going to have the same silliness we had with Ratatouille, where we saw the movie on the big screen three weeks before the release of the region 1 DVD. Wall*E came out quickly, but we were not crazy about that. Up's trailers have been so wonderful, and unexpected, and glowing, that we're more excited about this than any other Pixar movie to date. Now I know how the Japanese feel (movies get released months late over there, for reasons I do not understand).

Then there's some weirdness. A vote for The Time-Traveller's Wife? Was this a Journeyman fan? An Eric Bana fan? Just for having Ron Livingston in the cast, I'll be giving that sucker a miss. Same goes for Harry Potter and the Wig of Translucence or whatever it's called. I'm afraid I'm not a fan, though that's partially because I stopped reading the books before they, apparently, got a lot more complex. While Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy captured my imagination, J.K. Rowling's books almost completely passed me by. I enjoyed Prisoner of Azkaban (the book), but never got any further.


As for the films, Chris Columbus' dreadful work on the first one put me off for good, even though Alfonso Cuaron eventually turned up to save the day. Of course, that fifteen-hour narcolepsy-inducing disaster is the one Potter movie that's in constant rotation on Sky Movies, so there's no getting away from it. I will watch them all eventually, even though the second one is full of icky spiders BAD BAD MOVIE!!! I like that they're becoming darker as they progress (just like the books), but from the impressive trailers for the latest film, if the next two are darker, they'll have to be directed by Michael Haneke. (Idea!)


One final vote, for Neill Blomkamp's District 9. Alien Nation without a rubber-headed Mandy Patinkin drinking sour milk? I can't wait either.

After that, the majority of the films on the list got no votes. Fair enough. I struggled to come up with a list, and most of these films wouldn't interest me either. I had high hopes for Terminator Salvation, though most fans had written it off just because McG was involved. For a good stretch of the film he did a good job, with two stand-out setpieces in the first hour, and the good sense to hire Bryce Dallas Howard, Christian Bale, relative newcomer and scene-stealer Sam Worthington (Marcus Wright rocked), and last but certainly not least, internet search engine sensation Moon Bloodgood, as Tough But Beautiful Post-Apocalypse Lady In Sexy Tight Trews.


Sadly, it all fell apart in the final twenty minutes, with action scenes dragging on for too long, before a horribly compromised final reel fell flat. Then there was the distracting and relentless tide of references to the first two movies. I had had enough by the time Christian Bale pulled out the CD player and cranked out You Could Be Mine, an act that suggested he had occupied himself during the nuclear winter by scavenging in burned-out record stores when not shouting into his walkie-talkie. Sadly, there was more to come, with numerous shots lifted wholesale from James Cameron's originals. By the time "Arnie" showed up, I half expected Rick Rossovich to rush in from stage left to hit him in the head with a lamp.

Still, at least I had enjoyed it for a while, and it exceeded my expectations by some distance. The opposite could be said for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which could well be the worst Marvel adaptation to date. It's definitely in the bottom three. There are no words to express how awful the goddamn thing is, and even my fanboyish pleasure in watching Hugh Jackman do his thing was dented, probably because I know he got more involved in the making of it, which means the stink of failure is upon him. Sadly, that stink oozes off the screen like some kind of miasmic deathcloud, and settles on us as well. And when I say stink, I'm talking a mouthful of skunk-ass-juice stink right in the mouth. That stinky. That FAIL-y.


Even weeks later, after numerous failed attempts to remove the stink with lemon juice, Viakal, and Febreeze, I was still flashing back to some of the dreadfulness. The hilarious sped-up shot of Wolvie hacking away at a fire escape; Ryan Reynolds wasted as Deadpool; that horrible final fight in front of a green screen; the pointless last act retcon of one major death just to have that death happen all over again; Cyclops' eyes setting fire to things when any fule kno that his eyebeams are pure force, not heat; Wolverine meeting Ma and Pa Kent and getting them killed within a few minutes of showing up; "Why is the moon so lonely?", which has to be the funniest line of dialogue of 2009; the galactic-level stupidity of the whole sorry enterprise. Right now, not even an Uwe Boll movie written by Paul Haggis and starring Cameron Diaz and Paul Walker could topple it from the Worst Movie of 2009 position.

I mean, Angels and Demons was not as bad as Wolverine. How is this possible? Middle-aged man runs around Rome shouting factoids about Catholicism vs. adamantium berserker rage. It should have been a slamdunk. And yet the former was more entertaining, even though the identity of the bad guy was obvious as soon as they opened their mouth. I spent the whole film being very obnoxious to Canyon, acting like a cross between Rex Reed and Sherlock Holmes, and I was even more annoying when my suspicion was vindicated. Still, my mom liked it, so it all worked out well.


What else is there? I have high hopes for Moon, as my mancrush Hott Sam Rockwell is pretty much the only person in it, which is how I feel about a lot of movies he's been in. God knows when it comes out here. Public Enemies will thrill me no matter what: my love of Michael Mann is so strong that I liked Miami Vice despite its many many flaws, so the only thing this could do to disappoint me is to be less entertaining than John Milius' muscular feature debut, Dillinger. Bruno could be fun. Who doesn't love jokes involving dildos and rednecks?

Other than Woody Allen, who seems to have hired Larry David to replicate his own shtick but without the bite. No votes for Whatever Works, which tells me that this blog is not read by Larry King. He recently tweeted 'Just saw Woody Allen's new movie Whatver [sic] Works" It's his greatest movie, even better than "Annie Hall" I can't say good enough about it!' Considering the endearingly random quality of his tweets, which are not that far removed from the comments in this prescient Onion article, I'm not sure this is an opinion to be trusted. After the hysterical car-crash that was Cassandra's Dream, I just don't see how Allen can even recapture the dizzy heights of Alice and Another Woman, let alone Husbands and Wives or Manhattan.


I'm also uninterested in (500) Days of Summer and Taking Woodstock, partially because they seem super-quirky, but mostly because I can't help but think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Demetri Martin accidentally switched movies. Surely JGL should be working with Ang Lee by now? If we do see (500) Days, it'll be in the hope that a) Zooey sings, and b) we find out if that fucking irksome (500) is justified by the plot.

For a change, I'm even less interested in seeing the last two action movies on the list, which is odd considering my love of pyrotechnics. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is by Stephen Sommers and will therefore have the same tedious talkFIGHTtalkFIGHT structure, but without the exuberance of Bay, or his gift for composition. (I will ignore all flaming on this point, so don't bother.) Plus, it will not be anywhere near as good as the Warren Ellis-scripted cartoon on Adult Swim.


Speaking of futile attempts to improve on greatness, The Taking of Pelham 123 shouldn't even exist. Last week we rewatched the original Joseph Sargent thriller, and it's enormous fun. Plus, it's already been remade as a TV movie, and indirectly by Spike Lee with Inside Man (obviously it's not the same plot, but it has the same feel, and has great fun dramatising New York's infamous air of exasperated cynicism and multicultural tension).

Though I'm not surprised no one wants to see The Final Destination (now in eye-shattering 3D!), why does no one want to see Funny People? Okay, so it sounds like incredibly mawkish navel-gazing sub-James-L.-Brooksian tripe, but The RZA is in it! Bobby Digital, people! Have you seen Derailed? He plays a postroom guy who hangs out with executive Clive Owen, and it's the most out-of-place performance I've ever seen. Each time they interacted, my brain tried to leap out of my head. There's that bloke from Chancer, walking through the office, and OMG HE'S CHATTING WITH THE RZA! Everything's better with a bit of RZA in it.


So, anyway. Go see lots of movies, and in a couple of months, if I remember, I'll put up my usual end-of-summer polls to determine which movies sank, which swam, and which soared like celluloid eagles.

What's So Great About The Dark Knight?

It's been over a week since I saw The Dark Knight, and yet I have not blogged about it, mostly because of the bizarre reactions to the movie as expressed all over the internet. It's the fastest backlash I've ever seen, which garnered an equally fast backlash against the backlash. As of now, with a worldwide box office gross that stands at the approximate figure of $597,387,000 after seventeen days (after being released in only a few countries), and IMDb users voting it the best movie of all time (as of today's date), there are seemingly only two available opinions about it: "it's a masterpiece", and "no it's not".

Warning to the four people who have yet to see The Dark Knight: Spoilers ahoy!


From my obsessive trawl through the heated debate which is popping up everywhere like weeds in a poorly tended garden, the opinion of the blogospherical joint consciousness seems to be bouncing back to an overall negative view of the movie's merits. Over the last couple of days I've seen The Dark Knight lambasted for not featuring enough Joker, for showing too much Joker and not enough Batman, for rushing Harvey Dent's transformation, for being too violent, for not being violent enough, for spending too much time on Dent at the expense of the Joker, for being too long, for not developing its ideas far enough, for not explaining the Joker properly, for smelling of rotten eggs, for being too loud (because Christopher Nolan is going from screen to screen adjusting the volume), for being badly lit (!!!!!), for not generating genital-obliteringly powerful spontaneous orgasms in those who see it like we were all promised, etc. etc. etc.

As a result of the excitement and enthusiasm of the fanboy massive, the drubbings have been especially vicious. Armond White's increasingly notorious panning (during which he suggests only 21 year olds could be enthusiastic about it, and compares it poorly against De Palma’s vapid and messy Black Dahlia, of all films) and Kevin Uhlich’s dissection of the film are especially forthright, coming early and thus gathering the majority of internet hatred like some much hatey pollen to a bee’s leg, much of which is so knee-jerk and poorly written that it does the fanbase a terrible disservice. There was more to come; Patrick Goldstein from the LA Times comments on the rapidly growing phenomenon here, and this Cinematical article followed the growing online controversy here, at the bottom of which you will find comments from critic David Edelstein, commenting on being flamed by many Batfans. It’s all depressing, but, as Cinematical points out, at least there’s this excellent response to Keith Uhlich and Stephanie Zacharek's reviews at Only The Cinema. It is possible to engage with the critics in an intelligent, non-flamy manner, and that proves it.

The question I pose myself, though, is can I do that? If some critics had an overwhelmingly negative reaction to the movie, then that's the experience they had. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that. And yet, my gut response to these criticisms, from paid reviewers and unpaid bloggers, is "What the fuck is wrong with these people? It's a work of unbelievable integrity, vision, and genius!!!" I'm not leaving insulting and poorly written comments on people's blogs, but still, I've been pissed. It's only once I've stopped gripping my Batman action figures with all the force of my frustration that I realise I've gone fucking crazy. What is going on here? Why have I taken leave of my senses in the same way that the Batman fanbase has? And why would I do that when Batman isn't even my favourite superhero? Or even in my top ten? It's deeply worrying, and a few days ruminating on it leads me to believe we (the fanboys) are all being silly, losing our perspective, but that we do have reason to be irked by some of the negative remarks, i.e. those that have been made from either a position of ignorance or snobbery. The problem with that is, how can I tell genuine, justifiable dislike from expressions of that critic's bias against movies of this type?

First, I'll address my craziness. One of my fears (an unprovable one) is that the negativity is just a reaction to the crazy praise it was getting prior to release. If this is one explanation, I understand, considering Peter "Shill" Travers was first out of the gate with the line "the haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination", which is beyond parody. The IMDb vote craziness certainly justifies a slapped forehead of horror, even if you really loved the movie. Not that it matters much in the scheme of things, but it can make a viewer predisposed to disliking the film just because the fanboys are crazy (I gather this is one of the reasons people reject Joss Whedon; his fans are often seen as too enthusiastic). As I say, there's no way I can prove this, but it happens.


Another part of my frustration is definitely rooted in my nerdiness, and the reflexive defensiveness I have towards myself and those of my ilk (I make it sound like we're a put-upon ethnic group, for crying out loud), hoping for some validation from the critical establishment that the superhero genre (or the sci fi genre, or the horror genre, etc.) that I love so much is not just treated as the low-quality flotsam and jetsam of modern culture, that they are understood to be tools and canvasses for telling stories and exploring modern life, and not just whizz-bang-zoom spectacles that overload the eye but avoid the heart and brain. I realise that that defensiveness is my problem, not anyone else's. However, how can I take the thoughts of a critic seriously is his or her dislike of a genre is not backed up by anything other than a sense that it is not worthy of serious appraisal?

I get that critics might have biases against filmmakers; hell, I get angered to the point of localised space/time warpage at Lars Von Trier's experiments in audience baiting. But an entire genre? Canyon and I once had a long conversation about romantic comedies, and she made me see how crazy it is to dismiss every movie in a genre just because it doesn't appeal to me. She was right. We both think the genre has been ill-served over the last few years, but that's not the genre's fault. The movies have just often been uninspiring. That's not a criticism that can be levelled at the superhero genre (which bleeds into the action and sci fi genres, or the crime genre as in The Dark Knight). This year has already seen the vastly entertaining Iron Man and the bold failure Hancock (which tried to approach the genre from a different angle, though it didn't really succeed the way I had hoped), though the unambitious but amusing Incredible Hulk didn't help my argument. Luckily, The Dark Knight reaches higher than all of them. Which is where the difference of opinion seems to fall most often.

Sure, a lot of people are down on the movie for the filming of the action. To be honest, I only had a problem in the hostage sequence toward the end of the movie, though that could have been because I was trying to get my head around the moral quandary at the heart of the scene and I was freaking out a little (because, emotionally, I'm like a small child). Others think some actors didn't get much to do (I'd say Gyllenhaal definitely got the short end of the stick), and that Batman was sidelined (I'm not sure about that, but if that's your take on it, then... well... that's your take on it, I guess). Some hated the palette (totally! It really needed some garish reds and oranges and maybe some lemon yellows!). I'm sure someone out there hated it because the Scarecrow didn't get enough to do, or Killer Croc wasn't introduced, or because Batman contradicted something he said in a Denny O'Neil issue from the 70s. I would be crazy to have a problem with any of that opinion (except the palette criticism).

That’s not the kind of thing I want to rail against, though. I don’t agree with much of that, but it’s someone else’s opinion. However, what really does gall me is that UK critics seem to hate the movie mostly for trying to expand its ambition beyond the parameters of the superhero genre that they have decided upon, thinking it incapable of being more than a reductive and nuance-free depiction of a black and white battle between opposing forces. If you think no critic would ever dismiss an entire genre like that, read this wilfully nasty and unfair review by Michael Atkinson.

Somehow the entirety of American culture, young and middle-yeared and old, is embracing the childish universe of superheroes – which is structured around the easily-distracted worldview of kids, not around the reasoned, complex worldview we would hope children would grow into. Does America need that badly a post-post-9/11 big Daddy to vanquish danger so we can slumber in our cradles? The much-lamented infantilization of the mass populace continues, and at what cost?

As you can imagine, I have no truck with that opinion, nor with the rest of his pissy review, especially his comments about there being no story there, which baffle me. He must have been scribbling “HATE HATE HATE” in his notebook during it and forgot to watch it. That said, fair play to him for nailing his colours to the mast. UK critics exhibit similar bias, but don’t go as far in expressing their hatred. Superhero movies represent the most obvious example of dumbing-down in modern culture? Is he serious? The wish-fulfilment aspect of the genre is definitely an important part of it, but it’s not the most important, especially when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along and challenges that specific notion. Is he angry because once the genre is legitimised by this and, hopefully, Watchmen, he will have to go to the trouble of finding a new knee-jerk enemy of culture to hate on (I doubt this would happen, somehow)?


If you have read this blog before, you'll know that I have a bee in my BatBonnet about possible bias against genre movies (and all of the Shades of Caruso team has a problem with the possible bias against genre TV). I had hoped that The Dark Knight, directed by a Brit, would avoid that kind of thoughtless dismissal, but sadly not. I'm not saying the UK reviews are proof of a definite bias, and I'm certainly not saying it amounts to any more than a hill of biased beans in this crazy mixed-up world, but if I'm ever going to take the work of a critic seriously, I don't want to have to work around their preconceptions about an entire genre. Michael Atkinson in particular is someone I cannot bring myself to read again, not because he insulted me and my brethren, but because he is incapable of seeing the merits of a large proportion of popular culture, the best examples of which often become cultural signifiers or benchmarks of artistic quality over time. It’s not I'm having a hissy-fit just because his worldview doesn’t tally with mine 100%; whose does? It’s that he refuses to grapple with these pop-culture phenomena in a serious manner. I may not like comedies that do little more than spoof other movies in the most flat and obvious way possible, but I’ll at least engage with them, a position that once led to an unexpected fit of giggles experienced while watching Scary Movie 4 (bravo, Anna Faris. Bravo).

Anyway, here are some examples of what I see as an obnoxious bias against the superhero genre in the UK press, which was far more negative than the US press. Sukhdev Sandhu, in the Daily Telegraph, liked the movie, and yet still had to get a dig in [from this point on, italics mine]:

anyone who prefers their entertainment with less rather than more of a message may wish to shield their ears during the dialogue about the "cost of power"... Other reservations: shouldn't Nolan, marvellous as his directing here is, be creating original films rather than rebooting and retooling franchise fare? Why can't Hollywood put a tenth as much of the craft and vim into its average releases as it does into what is ultimately only a superhero movie?

Philip French seemed to like it more than most, but also said:

The Dark Knight is a clever, loud, technically brilliant film, superbly designed by Nathan Crowley and dramatically lit by Wally Pfister. Whether such a movie can bear the increasing moral weight imposed upon it is another matter.

Peter Bradshaw, whose Iron Man review annoyed me earlier this year, seemed to thoroughly enjoy The Dark Knight, but even so, is under the impression Christopher Nolan is doomed to do nothing but make nothing but summer superhero movies for the rest of his life:

Nolan has made an enormously profitable smash with the Batman franchise, but at the risk of sounding priggish, I can't help thinking it may be a bit of a career blind-alley for the talented director who gave us brilliant and disquieting movies like Following (1998) and Memento (2000), whose inventions still linger in the mind. The Dark Knight's massive box-office success has surely given Nolan the means to write his own cheque, and in addition something sweeter still - clout. I hope that he will use it to cultivate movies that are smaller and more manoeuvrable than that great armoured Batmobile.

Anthony Quinn thought it average, but when he gets the chronology of the film wrong you tend to think he wasn't really paying attention:

Art and entertainment feel locked in a deadly struggle, which accounts for the movie's peculiar schizoid personality. Just when it poses its most heart-stopping question – how do you tell a loved one facing imminent death that "everything's going to be all right"? – it swerves into a maniacal car chase, with our hero now hot-rodding a vehicle known as a Batpod, a kind of monster-truck tyre with a seat. The ear-lacerating volume and the automotive mayhem that attend these action sequences seem to be doing everything possible to shake whatever subtleties that may have entered one ear straight out of the other.

Dude! The shots of the BatPod racing through the streets are not part of a chase, but a tension-cranking cross-cut between the imminent death of two characters and Batman's attempts to save one of them. Surely this is self-evident, unless you're trying to score points against it. Fellow Independent reviewer Jonathan Romney also seems to have not been paying attention:

Played again by Christian Bale, he now speaks, when masked, in a gravelly synthetic bass; he also has an eerie habit of suddenly appearing out of and vanishing into shadows.

He now speaks and hides in shadows? What was he doing in the first movie, then? His comments about the Batmobile in the next paragraph suggest he didn’t see Batman Begins at all:

This is an impressive film in many ways, and Nolan directs with real confidence, yet the overall result feels cumbersome. The tenor is set by Nolan's conception of the Batmobile – a clanking all-terrain engine of war, a chunk of brutalist engineering that manifestly weighs tons. There's something comparably tank-like about the film, and despite several genuinely head-spinning moments, it all comes to feel grimly overwhelming, a vision of total war you fear will never end.

For goodness' sake, no one expected a return to Adam West and bad puns, but this cocktail of ultraviolence, artillery and pessimism makes for a gruelling, even depressing experience. Perhaps Warner Bros could offer the next episode to Werner Herzog, just to cheer things up a bit.

We see a genre damned for being fluffy, or damned for trying to do something more ambitious. Why did Nolan bother? Especially when Britain has its very own Michael Atkinson, except with a tiny IQ and a fear of the modern. Christopher Tookey, you win some kind of horrible internet award for being an out-of-touch Toryboy waggling a miserly fist at a world you can’t even be bothered to try to understand:

You can take a character out of a comic-strip, but you can't take the comic-strip out of the character. Batman is not a tragic hero at all, but an adolescent action-figure with the kind of problems most of us can only dream of having. This may make him good box-office - especially among males who feel ineffectual, impoverished and lacking in even one personality - but it doesn't give him the depth of Hamlet.

Oh Tookey, you little bitch!

This summer blockbuster explores grand themes: whether it can be right to use torture on terrorists; the conflict between public and private morality; and whether the public prefers to be told lies rather than deal with the truth. The Nolan brothers are clearly determined not to be confused with the Nolan Sisters [ZING!]. I appreciate their ambition, but they've over-reached - and lost their sense of humour... Their film is compromised by the perceived demands of its audience. It's grimly sadistic. It doesn't fight terror, it embraces it. Ledger becomes, in a curiously twisted way, the moral centre of the film, and this makes The Dark Knight an unintentionally sick spectacle, pretending to justify law and justice, but in reality celebrating violence and chaos.

Perhaps when you're a critic sitting in the dark with a bunch of similarly disgruntled men and women whose heads have been filled with talk of movie genius, it's easy to think that, but how does that account for the reaction of the audience I saw it with, comprising a demographic of men and women of differing ages, ethnicities, and cultural expectations, who reacted most strongly to Tiny Lister's disposal of the detonator during the ferry scene. I know I choked up at his decision, and the room erupted into applause and cheering. Sorry, Tookey. The Joker actually lost completely, both in Gotham and the real world. Rail against the Hypothetical Idiot all you like, but he/she is HYPOTHETICAL! Get used to it.

It wasn’t all bad. While this incoherent rant on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section does little to dispel the suspicion that CiF is The Great Blogging Graveyard, this blog from The Times is endearingly nerdy and filled with good points . In fact, James Christopher is the only UK critic that seemed to really love it, though Cosmo Landesman's point-missing Sunday Times drubbing made up for that. The FT’s magnificent critic, Nigel Andrews, wasn’t crazy about it either, but at least his review was well-written and contained many good points, as always.

So is it just a knee-jerk dismissal of the genre? Surely something like that would have been universally applied across transatlantic lines, and while I’ve linked to some reviews that have just sneered, “superheroes are for kids”, most critics embraced the film for taking the genre seriously and showing what it is capable of illuminating. Jenny McCartney, who also rails against its rating in a dramatic piece full of Daily Mail-esque "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!!?? panic, also says in her dismissive review:

This is essentially an adult action thriller, in which the action itself is often difficult to discern from the darkened screen, a roaring tangle of crashes and explosions and muttered imprecations. Added to this is a jumbled sprinkling of philosophy on the nature of heroism, villainy and the necessary lies it takes to keep the public believing in something grander than selfish survival.

If the meaning behind the mayhem is difficult for an adult to perceive, it would be well nigh impossible for a child. But then, despite the heavy marketing and the almost inconceivably indulgent 12A rating (meaning that any under-12 can see it with an adult) this is not a film that pre-adolescent children should watch.

The Independent ran a piece about the rating that put the BBFC's decision in a clearer light, but I'm still pissed that the BBFC chose to do that (either in a fit of liberalism or due to pressure from Warner Bros.), if only because this adult movie now ends up being treated as Public Enemy No. 1 Child Corrupter (knocking Grand Theft Auto IV off its perch of evil) when it is plain to see it is not a movie for children. It's an adult movie dealing with adult themes (in a manner I found easy to follow, UK film critics, and I'm not alone in that judgment, I'm sure), and that it came during the summer months, when film critics froth at the mouth at the lack of substance to Hollywood movies, has served to confuse panicky critics who were expecting nothing more than BOOM BANG.


Yet what do we get? Relief that it is possible to fuse serious subject matter with the expected number of WOW moments? Of course not. Just anger that something from such a tawdry genre, designed merely to appeal to children, would be crazy enough to try to address a serious subject in a thoughtful manner, when it should only be full of explosions and bright colours and two-dimensional motivations and not be seen by anyone who has the complete Bergman collection at home, because liking genre movies means you are a simpleton and emotional retard who is incapable of seeing more than two sides to a conflict.

Of course, if The Dark Knight was like that it would be hated for not having any ambition, but what are you going to do? American culture is morally corrupt and intellectually dead, anyway. Oh, if only Christopher Nolan could return to the country that recognised his talent and threw money at it all those years ago! Then he could make another version of Northanger Abbey or Jane Eyre! Or a comedy about two mis-matched Islington professionals trying to find love in the middle of a multicultural city that conspicuously fails to show any significant characters of non-white ethnicity! Or Happy-Go-Fucking-Lucky!

Even worse than all of that, some writers are reading the film as a pro-Bush, pro-rendition, pro-phone-tapping argument. It's not pro-phone tapping or rendition. These actions undertaken by Batman are shown to have negative effects. Lao, captured by Batman and dragged back to Gotham to testify against Maroni, is brought into immediate danger and killed by The Joker. Batman raises the game with his bold actions and loses the love of his life, the way out of his psychic torment (though he was deluding himself all along with that), and even his support from the world, having to paint himself as a villain, a martyrdom that must have been borrowed from the little bits of messianic symbolism left over from Wall*E.

Yes, Batman prevails, but the Joker is still around, and to just capture him he has to betray himself and isolate himself from everyone, symbolised by the switching off of the phone-tapping program (which I thought was a nice nod to Brother Eye). If it is a straight reading from this to America and the War on Terror, it's saying, "if you're going to play as dirty as the bad guys, you're going to have to give up everything that you are and everything that you have, and even then you're not going to win. The only way the battle can be won is if we all agree to not lose our heads, to remember on an individual level that we are human". The battle rages between two men high above the city, but it is won with two simple choices by two "mortal" men, one “evil”, one “good”.

That's how it is done. We're not meant to approve of Batman's actions; Morgan Freeman, as the audience surrogate, proves that with his displeasure over "Brother Eye". Critics seem to have missed that point, thinking that because it's a superhero, he is the one we should be automatically applauding, which means the Nolans are expecting us to accept his immoral tactics, but that's not the case. We're meant to be horrified. Considering all of this talk about the movie not being as deep as people thought, it seems it was too deep for those who couldn't appreciate that glaringly obvious fact. The only writer who seemed to understand that the movie was loosely playing with War on Terror tropes without actually transposing them directly from our world to the world of Batman was Moriarty’s customarily excellent take from AICN. Some of the other cultural commentators would do well to read that.


Why should I care what anyone else thinks? Why would I get so monstrously obsessed with the experiences of people I'll never meet, and I regularly both agree and disagree with? And, perhaps most pertinently, why would I doubt the opinions of others, thinking them the product of some innate snobbery or inherited bias, and not just their actual opinion made from a point of view that is merely different from mine and not caused by some form of voluntary cultural myopia? Possibly because of all of the films I've seen recently, this was the one that moved me the most, more than almost any movie I have seen in the last few years. Believe me, I was as annoyed by the relentless hype as anyone, and tried to keep as open a mind as possible, fully expecting to like the movie but not love it, especially after a pre-Dark Knight viewing of Batman Begins revealed that I had increased reservations about it since it was first released.

Those efforts were futile. The Dark Knight amazed me more than I could ever have hoped, leaving me emotionally drained even before the final, heartbreaking scene. The escalation of The Joker's campaign of psychological torture, the city's response to it, and Batman's final sacrifice shattered me. Is that merely because I love superheroes and superhero movies? Maybe, but for the most part I forgot I was watching one. It was more like watching L.A. Confidential than a "popcorn flick".

Was it because I saw it in IMAX? Possibly. We were lucky enough to see it at the Leows IMAX in New York, with a mostly fantastic audience (except for the shrieky woman sitting in front of us who refused to turn off her phone and tried to kill the guy who asked her). Every big moment in the movie was greeted with laughter or applause; the pencil trick, the BatPod, the end of the big chase sequence, The Joker shuffling out of the hospital, and best of all, Tiny Lister and the detonator. I'm not ashamed to say that made me cry. What I suspect would have already been an overwhelming moment was made even more moving by the elation around me.

While critics have carped about the action scenes and what they consider to be faux-profundity, the only flaw in the movie that I could see was that Heath Ledger’s performance was of such an otherworldly nature that it overshadowed Aaron Eckhart’s excellent work as the inspirational Harvey Dent, and the twisted psychotic Two-Face. In the middle of a superb cast taking the subject matter as seriously as possible, he was a stand-out. Even better, those incredible IMAX shots of Gotham, shot with glorious precision by Wally Pfister, took our breath away. On that vast screen it was like looking through a window at a real world (I know it was filmed in Chicago, but surely there were buildings added in post-production). As we left Loews and walked around New York, it felt like we were still in the movie, so much so that I expected Batman to zoom past at any moment.


That feeling lasted all day, keeping the movie running through my head long after we left, riding past a construction site covered in signs featuring the word Gotham, and on to the Lincoln Tunnel, with its art deco spires. I didn't just see a movie; I had an amazing experience, and New York was only half of it. I've proselytised about IMAX before, and been obnoxious about it on message boards, but really, if you want to see The Dark Knight in such a way as to make it hard to care about the flaws or shortcomings of the film, you need to see it on a bigass screen. Maybe it won't work for me on a small screen. Maybe in time my high opinion of it will fade over time just as it has for Batman Begins. Perhaps critics who were agnostic about it would love it in IMAX, seen with an enthusiastic audience, especially one that isn't baying for blood like The Hapless Tookey imagines. Who can say? All I know is that for now at least, it might not be the best film I've ever seen, but I can't imagine 2008 offering up anything superior. It was everything I had hoped for and much much more. Now we have to see if it holds up to further viewings, as soon as IMAX Waterloo has some tickets spare.

Hancock Defeated By Wuxi Finger Hold And Awesomeness

I was really really rooting for Hancock. Shades of Caruso loves Peter Berg, and wants his movies to make enough money that he can salvage the many box office disappointments from his back catalogue. We also wanted Hancock to be good enough to silence the doubters who have been complaining about it since it was announced, and, possibly most of all, wanted to see Will Smith being generally excellent. Well, it's made a boatload of money (and its overseas gross is big too), and Will Smith was great, but his performance was not what we expected. In fact, the film is not what anyone would have expected, and for that, we have to blame the marketers for making this look like a funny film about a self-loathing superhero when it mostly isn't, and also we need to point a finger at writers Vincent Ngo and X-Files ace Vince Gilligan, and director Peter Berg, for not knowing how to make the material they had work.

I'll go into details after the spoiler marker, but consider this my capsule review. John Dykstra's effects are pretty undistinguished and messy. Berg's decision to film this the same way he filmed Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom might have made some sense thematically, but it's a horribly ugly film with a sickeningly grey palette that made my head hurt (not helped by seeing the jawdroppingly beautiful Kung Fu Panda first).


I didn't totally hate it, though. The three leads are great, which is a big deal for me as I'm not a fan of Charlize Theron but was impressed by her in this (Canyon was less impressed). Jason Bateman is so likeable in this he steals the film, adds a lot of emotion that would otherwise be lacking, and though he at first seems to be nothing more than Michael Bluth after marrying Rita, comes good in the otherwise frustrating final act. His dramatic role in The Kingdom was no fluke, it seems. Will Smith comes out okay too, and the box office gross suggests we are still on our way to renaming the next thousand years the Willennium. That said, in terms of his career, he just made his Golden Child, or Far and Away. I hope his next project is a 100% success. FYI, I will never apologise for being a Will Smith fan. Get used to it.

Even better than those little pleasures, my personal superhero movie bugbear didn't come into play; Hancock might start the film as an asshole, but he is really a hero, a proper hero who helps people and doesn't just fight supervillains with whom he has a personal connection. One of the main themes of the movie is about wanting to do the right thing even though it doesn't seem to be worthwhile. That character trait really pleased me, and made up for a lot of the unfocused events in the latter half of the movie.


Anyway, time to carp. Kung Fu Panda praise follows later.

--------------Hancock spoilers follow-------------

The biggest problem in Hancock is the mid-movie twist, which, after we left the cinema and discussed it, isn't really a twist, more a shift in story perspective that makes the first half of the film seem like a pre-inciting incident sequence stretched to 45 minutes. That section of the movie, concerning Hancock's depression and attempts to better himself and become a beloved hero, contains many funny moments and unexpected pathos, but if you've seen the trailer, you've seen a lot of the best parts. However, the trailers will make you think this is the whole point of the film, and give no hints as to what it really is. The depression and bad behaviour of Hancock are the set-up for the big reveal later in the movie, and if you thought you were going to see a superhero spoof, you're wrong. It's a straight superhero movie with a mythology that might have made more sense in the first draft (though some people are not too keen even on that), that has been mistakenly seen as a twist movie whereas it is a story different than the one we were sold, one which has its emotional centre buried in the final moments of the film, which then crawls over the finish line with zero energy and a frustrating lack of resonance. That's a problem with the script, but also with the handling of it. It's fair to say that Berg, who re-edited the finale several times in order to beat the bad feedback from test screenings, had to change even more than just the underwhelming ending, considering how the original script featured Hancock having ejaculation issues, something that is totally absent from the movie.

Too much of the movie is lying on an editing room floor for it to make any sense. Perhaps a two hour version would work better. This ninety minute version feels like two episodes of a TV show called Hancock shmushed together to make a feature film (just like in the 70s when Glen A. Larson was trying to squeeze more money out of his creations), but sadly the Hancock showrunners have ineptly combined a mid-season comedy episode and an end-of-season high drama episode, not realising they don't quite go together. With two halves battling against each other, what's the story it's trying to tell? Even once we had picked it over while eating an excellent burger just off Abbey Road neither of us had a clue, and after tinkering with it for a long time, I doubt Berg knew either.


The second half of the movie concerns Hancock discovering that he is one of many millennia-old heroes created by the Gods to protect humanity, but forced to be apart from them due to his immense power. Luckily, the Gods knew that their minions were bound to want to settle down eventually, and so created them in pairs, where each one of them acts as a power dampener for the other, allowing them to live as a human couple if they so wanted. That's happened to every other hero on the planet, except for Hancock and his opposite, Charlize Theron. All of the others are now dead, for reasons not clearly explained. It's either old age, accidents, or "Them" that have picked them off. Who are "Them"? You've got me. Neither of us could understand that plot point, or if the evil Red, played by Eddie Marsan, is one of these "Them"s that are important enough to be referred to but not important enough to be explained. One thing that is stressed very late in the film, however, is that proximity to each other sets off the power drain, and only living as far apart as possible allows them to remain super.

I can get behind the idea of a mythology not being fully explained, so as to generate some mystery (as in Unbreakable), but if the events of a movie make no sense (as the actions of the main characters seem completely mysterious without a full explanation), you cannot connect with the events on the screen. One gets the idea that editing the movie into this empty mush has taken out a lot of exposition that might have helped. To make things worse, a lot of the information I explained above is all delivered just moments before it becomes relevant in the last five minutes of the movie, so you spend the majority of the movie not really understanding what the hell is going on, or why you should care.


It's like the latter hour of Atonement, with a lot of things happening for no explicable reason, and then the final scene comes along to straighten everything out, except that here, nothing really gets explained properly. Again, it might have been in order to generate mystery, and curiosity about the mythology, and in that sense it works, as I'm inspired enough by the vagueness to want to read the previous drafts, and hopefully see a longer DVD cut to find out more about these individuals, but as it stands, the film falls completely apart at the end of the second act, and the third act did nothing more than annoy me greatly. Contrary to the marketing, the movie is not just about a drunken hero, but with a second half as ill-formed and messy as this, I guess it might as well have been.

Even worse, some iconic moments in the trailer are either omitted or just breeze by, so badly edited is the film. It felt like every decision made in post-production was a mistake. John Dykstra's effects are rushed and unappealing, the action scenes have no oomph as the editing obscures events, and the soundtrack is horribly misjudged, either trying to generate the emotional connection that is missing onscreen, or being brassy comedy plinky-plonks you'd expect on NCIS or something equally silly. As for the leads, I liked them, but their efforts often make no sense at all. The best thing I can say about it is that I went along with it simply because they obviously believed in what they were doing, but I have no idea what that thing they were doing was. Is Hancock about loneliness? About responsibility? Does Hancock do the right thing at the end to save Theron? Or is he still out for himself? I can imagine we're meant to think of his actions as selfless, but that's just because we expect the film to follow certain conventions. As it stands, the movie doesn't make it clear enough on its own. When it was over, we were approximately this nonplussed.



---------------------Spoilers Over------------------

I think I liked it more than Wanted, and probably less than Jumper, another compromised movie from a director I like from a concept I loved, but it didn't help that prior to that we saw the eagerly awaited (by me) Kung Fu Panda, which was not only way better than anything else I've seen this year, but thousands and thousands of times better than I had hoped it would be. The opening scene alone was better than I thought Dreamworks/PDI would ever aspire to, the sequence so funny and clever and eye-blisteringly beautiful that I was helpless in the storytellers' grip. The voice casting is spot-on (especially my main man Jables, who is utterly sincere and hysterically funny), the direction perfectly judged, the action more exciting than most action films I can name, and the emotional arcs totally satisfying. The showdown between Shifu and Tai Lung was a magnificently cinematic moment, with genuinely resonant power. Make no mistake, the studio might not have made anything worthwhile before, but this is Pixar-good. I'd even put it above Cars, Finding Nemo, and maybe A Bug's Life, and possibly on a par with Toy Story 2, it's that good.


Some UK critics have treated it as a mildly amusing spoof of Hong Kong cinema (the increasingly off-target Peter Bradshaw reckoned it was dumbed-down and less sophisticated than the first two Shreks!!?!?!!!). However, the majority of critics got what it was aiming for. Even the perenially grouchy Cosmo Landesman loved it, which means we have seen eye-to-eye twice this year. The other time was Speed Racer; he was pretty much the only UK critic to like it, though the Times website has decided not to reprint it, thus making me seem delusional.


It's no wonder even critics who often turn a blind eye to genre movies understand the ambition of Kung Fu Panda. the opening ten minutes of Kung Fu Panda should have clued any viewer in to its utter sincerity. This is a real movie, a simple tale beautifully told by people who understand not only the conventions of the genre and the signifying details that make it distinct (watch the wonderful Master Oogway's final scene under a peach tree and tell me they don't love the genre and want to do right by it), but they also understand how to tell a story. Perhaps this story is less complex than what I assume the makers of Hancock were aiming for, and perhaps it is more straightforward than Wanted (a movie with a similar character arc involving destiny and self-belief), but it is almost infinitely better than either of them for one simple reason; everyone involved in the making of this film knew how to tell a story, knew what worked and what didn't, and just made it knowing the audience would be right there with them. Sometimes that's all it takes.


So yes, I recommend Kung Fu Panda with every fibre of my being. And Canyon's too! We loved it so much we're hoping to see it again this week, this time on IMAX. Something this beautifully crafted and sumptuous to look at needs to be seen on as big and clear a screen as possible. If I could describe its level of quality in one sentence while resisting the urge to just wail nonsense sounds of joy, that sentence would be, "It does everything right." It really, really does. If you've ever enjoyed a martial arts movie, you must not miss it.

Speed Racer Vs. Total Critical And Popular Apathy

Perhaps it was always going to be a hard sell. With the fanboys turning their noses up at what looked like a candy-coloured movie for babies, critics followed their cue, leaving a handful of cinema-goers excited about the film and feeling like pariahs (yes, poor me). Genre movies (by which I mean sci fi, fantasy, or horror) always get a hard time from critics, and while I'm not crazy enough to suggest that any film that fits the category is automatically worthy of praise (there's a lot of genuine shit out there), I would hope critics realise they are all worthy of serious attention. I get that it's hard for a critic to really give all of their attention to every movie released each week, but even so, any movie that fits the bill described above (and often any movie that can easily be sneeringly dismissed as "typically Hollywood") will be the one to fall by the wayside.


That I expected. The UK reviews of Speed Racer have been horrible, a litany of horrified complaint about the subject matter, the performances, the plot, the running time, and most often, the visual style. "A movie of such garishness and impenetrability as to test the stoicism of any audience member older than 14," says The Independent's Anthony Quinn! "I can’t begin to describe how creepy this futuristic movie is," says James Christopher of The Times! "You have to be 12 to like it, and I have to say there is little or nothing here to remind us why we were all quite so excited about The Matrix," says Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, who also describes Lost as "interminable," and as a result is removed from my Love List and placed on my Shit List (he was already on probation for that appalling Iron Man review last week).

In fact, the only mainstream critic who liked it was Sukhdev Sandhu of the Telegraph, who still had reservations but seemed to get that it was for kids and not think this was a terrible strike against it. James Christopher seemed to think that it was a kids' film by accident. I won't even begin to point out the laziness of Anthony Quinn's review, which led me to believe he had lost his press pack and couldn't be bothered to even Wikipedia the source material; he also missed vital plot points that were not that hard to spot and then bitched about subsequent "illogicalities" (his comments about Speed's race up a cliff-face are the ones that made me mad, if you're curious).


I would have liked to have seen Nigel Andrew's review, as he usually responds positively to films that are a bit out there, but he appears to be missing in action at the moment. The most positive review I've read so far is from Moriarty from Ain't It Cool News, and he did what the "respectable" critics couldn't be bothered to do: forget his prejudices and watch the movie on its own terms. You could say he only gave it a chance because he's a nerd critic, but even now, with the film about to be released, nerd opinion is massively critical of it. "It's too garish, it's too childish, it looks stupid, I hated the cartoon, it's got a chimp in it, it's too colourful, it's too fast, it's too weird, it's not violent enough, it's not The Matrix." The Wachowskis seem to have made a movie that no one wanted to see. And they say Hollywood only panders to its audience.


From all of that it should be apparent that I have a huge chip on my shoulder about this, and not just because I regularly get annoyed when critics dismiss genre movies, an annoyance that has been exacerbated by my current reading material, Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures. It's a hugely entertaining read, and Biskind is a terrific writer, but it is laced with snobbery about Hollywood product, even -- at one point in the introduction -- claiming that its subject matter, independent film, appeals to "real people" in contrast to mainstream populist fare. So is the usual mass audience not made up of people? What are they then, figments of his imagination? Pod people? Androids?

Ridiculous. And insulting. There are millions of people out there (REAL people, even), that will happily watch a movie as transcendently beautiful and moving as Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring one day, and then watch Pirates of the Caribbean the next day and have a different experience but one that is no more or less real than the previous one. One isn't better than the other because it does certain things that the other doesn't even attempt. If one has to be judged better than the other, let it be by internal criteria. Which one of them succeeds best at doing what it was made to do? Otherwise we're just going to be bitching at every movie that isn't Citizen Kane for not doing the things Citizen Kane does. That way lies misery and madness.


Sorry, I digressed. As I was saying, I do have an inherent bias towards Speed Racer that makes me touchy about it, and that's down to my love of The Matrix. It's my favourite film, one I can watch over and over again and never get bored of. I still remember the first time I saw it, and the shellshock I felt. I've heard the criticisms of it, and the carping about the sequels (one of which I liked), and I'm not interested. If a movie or book or song is meant to touch the viewer and move them, that's exactly what The Matrix did to me. It was as if the film I had been waiting all my life to see had finally arrived, and it was better than I had hoped for.

So I'm defensive about the Wachowski siblings, and get tetchy when their work is criticised, especially because experience has taught me that film critics will happily dismiss genre work rather than engage with it, as if by dint of its mere existence it is not worthy of the effort. The reviews have focused on two things that are cardinal sins of that enemy of quality that is glossy Hollywood product: how little the story matters, and how emotionally empty the movie is because of the technology used to create the film.


I'll grant that these can be valid criticisms, but only if they are used against films that fail in those respects (and many do; I'm not crazy!), and not just as a kneejerk response against that nasty Hollywood product. Well, I risked breaking my own brain with fatigue and sensory-overload by seeing Speed Racer yesterday, and I can give you my opinion on these most pressing of questions. Does Speed Racer fail in telling a story? No. Is it emotionally empty? No. Here are some other questions that are less important than those, but need answering nonetheless. Is it perfect? No. Does it matter? No. Is it impossible to follow what is going on during the races? As long as you're not sitting in row H of the London Waterloo IMAX or lower, no. Will it make any money at the box office? Probably not, no. Should it? Unequivocally, yes.

Here's a litmus test for anyone watching the movie, and that includes critics. The film starts pretty much in the middle of a race, during which we flash back and forth between the race and Speed Racer's childhood, where he bonds with his brother and idol, Rex, played by Scott "Whiny Jason on FNL" Porter.



The race continues for a little while past that clip, with Speed attempting to break the record set by his brother, who we learn died in disgrace many years later, an event that shaped the lives of the entire Racer family, who are gathered together in the stands watching Speed racing. It's a busy few minutes, setting up the bizarre palette (which you will grow accustomed to much quicker than you might expect), the otherworldly future physics of the race cars (all impossible spins, leaps, and crazy drifting), the family dynamic, the history of the Racer family, their triumphs and failures, and the sadness that haunts them.

If you've gone in expecting a garish, empty movie for kids, the sophistication of the criss-cross narrative format might throw you (there's a particularly bold time-shifting moment in the middle of the film I liked), but there's nothing there to convince you of any emotional depth, until the very end of the race. What Speed does as he's about to cross the finish line is a marker for whether the film is for you. If you don't notice or care about his decision, you're not going to care enough about the characters to give the film a fair shot, and you might as well walk out of the room. If Speed's decision makes you grin, and you understand exactly what his motivation is and admire the character for making that choice, then you might end up liking the movie a lot more than you would have expected.


And I did. A lot. For the majority of the movie I was very happy, if not overjoyed, by what I was experiencing. After a few minutes of discombobulation, the visuals made a lot more sense to me once I had figured out what the Wachowskis were trying to do with them -- i.e., they weren't building a multitude of 3D environments to place the green-screened actors in, and they chose instead to create a number of photographic backgrounds and use them the same way backdrops in animation are used, to slide past each other in a parallax effect.

The only time the environments look fully rendered is during the race scenes, with the tracks featuring a more conventional perspective. The other trick used throughout is the scrolling of talky-heads across the screen, just as in anime. I made my peace with that a lot faster, as it's a technique used so often in Japanese animation that I've become inured to it, though I had a moment of WTF, simply because I'd not seen it used in live-action before. It's a terrific effect, carrying us through expositional dialogue (of which there is quite a bit) without sacrificing pace.


In fact, the dialogue delivered during races, often as a form of flashback, barely alters the pace of the action, so completely does it add energy to what would normally be dreary. A lot of people have said the races are confusing, but I thought they were pretty clean and edited with plenty of clarity, though perhaps if you're not used to the floaty heads it might cause problems (plus, if you're invested in the narrative, they carry plenty of dramatic kick, contrary to the opinion of the critics, at least IMHO).

Those races would mean nothing if they were not surrounded by solid performances and a carefully crafted narrative, and the one we get, concerning the struggle of the little man to succeed in a world where the monolithic nature of The Market stands in the way of artistic expression or freedom of the spirit, as well as the value of teamwork and learning from your mistakes, is immensely satisfying, so much so that the final race, which is already overwhelmingly filmed, achieves a kind of emotional warp factor as dialogue from the previous two hours slides past the camera, and you see just how important it is that Speed wins that race.


The hapless Christopher Tookey of the Daily HateMail stated that the film is meaningless and soulless, but if you've been sucked in by the carefully constructed narrative, the committed, irony-free performances, and the emotionally resonant conflicts and tribulations of our heroes (all of which he missed, instead carping about not knowing what was going on and hating the commercialism of it), the final ten minutes are filled with significance. As I said earlier, for the majority of the film I thought it was very very good. However, my final verdict was boosted by the brilliant, resonant, and totally satisfying finale, where my "overall grade" leapt up about three notches. All of this is code for "I cried at the end." Laugh, you doubters! I don't care.


And yes, it is resolutely a kids' movie. The majority of the humour lies in the actions of Spritle, played by Paulie Litt, who has annoyed some critics but cracked me up consistently, and his simian buddy Chim Chim. They pretty much spend the whole film eating candy, getting into trouble, and throwing Chim Chim cookies around (and I'll let you see the movie and discover what they are). Maybe it's not as "sophisticated" as Jacques Tati and his pipe-smoking japery, but it works and fits the tone of the movie perfectly. However, the plot itself, though featuring a manichean battle between a big corporate scumbag (played to perfection by Roger Allam) and the innocent small guy Speed, is filled with corporate intrigue, reflections on achieving an almost artistic perfection through sport, and what it is to be free to do what you want. That it touches on some of the themes of The Matrix (purpose, free will, self-belief) came as a surprise even to a fan like me. There's even a shot of stock-market notations scrolling across the screen that echoed Matrix Code, a nice little touch that made me smile.


One of the criticisms I saw thrown around (particularly in Bradshaw's review and the AV Club's withering dismissal) is that the film is anti-corporate and yet, hypocritically, is a heavily marketed and expensive big-budget money-making machine unleashed by the Warner Brothers monolith. I'll be honest, I was very worried about that, and reckoned I might have trouble reconciling it with any possible enthusiasm I might have for all the whiz-bang. Again, the Wachowskis surprised me. Roger Allam's Royalton is obviously an unscrupulous bounder and cad, uninterested in racing as sport (or art) and only concerned about how he can gain a monopoly over the production of a revolutionary engine by manipulating the outcomes of races. However, his enthusiasm for the machinations of The Market (revealed in a brilliantly demented monologue about share values) is just as complete and almost childlike as Speed's obsession with racing, even if it does involve ruining the tiny, independent Racer family. Other CEOs featured in the movie do unscrupulous things too, but end up siding with Speed at the end, realising that he is blessed with true talent and artistry in a way that moves them.

Glenn Kenny of Premiere says in his review that, "the narrative of Speed Racer, such as it is, is one of the more blatantly anti-capitalist storylines to come down the cinematic pike since, I dunno, Bertolucci's 1900," which is not what I took from it at all. It's made clear that the Racer family is a business, one that thrives on making cars that will be used by Speed to win races, mostly for the love of the game. But as long as they are allowed to participate on a small level within the financial framework of their world, keeping their aims low, and not worrying about being swallowed up by big business, then they're fine. They don't opt out of the capitalist system at all. They just want to play the game on their own terms, using their talent and ingenuity to make a living. Surely that's at the heart of the capitalist message, something Anthony Lane should keep in mind as he delivers paranoid and inaccurate comments about the film being nothing more than "Pop fascism" (because it features crowds cheering at a sport, for crying out loud). Why doesn't he rail against actual crowds cheering actual sport? Why is it only bad in the context of a movie? Gah!!!


If anything, the film is merely anti-monopoly, anti-greed and anti-corruption, showing how a single spanner in the works of The Market can crush those who abuse their position of power, thus turning the pursuit of prosperity into a game on a level playing field, with room for monoliths and minnows, both aiding each other and prospering from that cooperation and mutual respect. Isn't that what Thomas Friedman naively thinks The Market already is? Of course, we're meant to side with the Racer family exclusively, but it's clear that, just as The Matrix Revolutions ended with a detente between the machines and the humans, Speed Racer finishes with a respectful distance left between his family's independent company and the almost benign Togokhan Racing. At least, that's how I saw it. I will admit I was more interested in the story as parable about one man chasing his dream, doing what he is built to do, and not letting anyone talk him down, but that's just where my head is at right now.


But enough of this. I want to lavish more praise on it. I've never really been a huge fan of John Goodman unless he's in a Coen Brothers film, but this is my favourite non-Lebowski performance by him. His sincerity won me over totally, as he screws up with one son and is given a chance to get it right with Speed. It's a testament to the skill of the Wachowskis that the scene where he attempts to bond with Speed at his lowest ebb is one of the best in the whole film, a finger in the eye of the doubters who insist the film is hollow.


Even better than Goodman (and I know Canyon will be pissed at me for saying it again [You are right. Foxy must be destroyed! -- Canyon]), Foxy is terrific as Racer X, playing it cool and mysterious for the most part, before opening up in two scenes towards the end that rank as my favourites in the whole film. He's come on in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, and here he's in top form. Plus, he gets to beat up ninjas! Seeing him do some Neo moves on a bad guy made my nerd chip overheat. Also, much love to Owen Paterson, whose production design is a delight from start to finish, and Michael Giacchino, who delivers yet another wonderful soundtrack.

So yes, since seeing it, I've had images from the film popping up in my field of vision like a fever dream; the undulating desert landscape rolling behind Speed, the Eadweard Muybridge homage in the final race, cars exploding into flame and glitter, camera flashbulbs changing into love hearts, highways seen from a distance as glowing ribbons of light, oversaturated colours glowing during the single shootout, and, best of all, a Chim Chim cookie in a bad man's face. Even though I've been happy to rail against what I see as a dismissive critical attitude to it, at least some writers have been eager to point out how gorgeous the whole thing, and it is. It's new. It's something you've seen before done in a completely new way, and as such is a triumph of design, vision, and uncompromising chutzpah. I'd hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly, because it's obvious it's not going to be for everyone (and I have a terrible feeling it will lose out at the box office to both Iron Man and What Happens In Vegas, which would hurt my feelings as I cannot stand Kutcher or Diaz), but try it out, and maybe apply that litmus test. It might surprise you. Bravo, Wachowskis! Bravo!