PG-13

Batman Begins Review: Upon Further Consideration…

October 25, 2016 by JD Hansel

Most of the time when I review a movie on this website, I’m doing it because I hadn’t seen the film before. “Upon Further Consideration…” is the series I use once in a blue moon when I feel like sharing my thoughts on a film I haven’t seen in a long while.

Since I talk too much about how I generally disapprove of what Christopher Nolan did with Batman, I thought it would be best for me to finally sit down and watch The Dark Knight all the way through – which I probably should have done before I started complaining about how it’s the film that’s ruined the theatrical beauty of cinema. However, when I went to the library to pick up a copy of The Dark Knight, I realized that I was uncertain as to whether or not I had seen its predecessor, Batman Begins, also by Nolan. For this reason, I picked up Batman Begins and watched that instead. As I watched the film, I continued to be unsure as to whether or not I’d seen it before, because the beginning was very familiar, but I didn’t recognize much of what happened after Bruce went back to Gotham. Since I knew the ending and seemed to recall various parts scattered throughout, I came to realize that I must have seen it before – or at least most of it – but it’s just a really forgettable film.

First of all, there’s that blasted visual style. In this movie, it’s not quite as gray as I expected, instead focusing a lot on brown, but it seems the color scheme turns to the Nolan light-bluish-gray for Dark Knight, and finally to blackness for Dark Knight Rises, giving each film in the trio its own color. It’s a neat way of doing it, but what it’s made me realize is that my conception of the “Nolanization of cinema” is not entirely accurate – while I had always assumed that Nolan’s grayed out Batman update was responsible for the rest of cinema turning gray, I know understand that this does not work out chronologically. Batman Begins came out in 2005, and Dark Knight came out in 2008, while Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released in 2004. This means that I have been incorrect in accusing Nolan of leading to franchises getting retooled for the worse the way that the Potter franchise was, when in fact it was Azkaban that can be blamed for what Nolan did to Batman, and arguably Pan’s Labyrinth is another of the first main culprits. For this reason it is no surprise that the movie is forgettable – it was just following a trend by adding grays and browns and killing the greatest hits of the color spectrum. Some shots in the film, on the other hand, surprised me by looking very good, but these were interestingly the shots that very closely resembled Tim Burton’s first imagining of Gotham, and I must ask: what is the point of making a new visual style that looks its best only when it closely copies the old visual style?

Not only is it visually forgettable, but its characters are forgettable. I really like Morgan Freeman’s character in the movie, but that’s only because he’s Morgan Freeman, and there is nothing special about that character on paper – his only value is the actor who plays him. The villains are threatening and mildly scary, but overall they lack some sort of villainous “it factor.” I could see myself wearing a T-shirt bearing the face of The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin, or any number of other DC villains, but not The Scarecrow, and certainly not whatever Liam Neeson’s character is supposed to be called. Don’t even get me started on Katie Holmes’ portrayal of Rachel Dawes, which I mostly blame on the writing, but there is no excuse for how insufferably bland she is. Dawes is a device, and one that I never cared about. At all. Part of the problem with Dawes is that she’s primarily designed to spew out cat-poster morality at are morally confused protagonist, which gets old and feels preachy.

This leads to one of the film’s greatest weaknesses: its moral confusion. Never before have I seen a film that spends so much time exploring morality without having any coherence in moral philosophy by the end of the film. One could argue that this just means the film is “complex” or “complicated,” but it doesn’t have an intelligent kind of incoherence at the end of the film, like what is presented just before the closing credits of Do the Right Thing. Instead, it feels like listening to a sermon written by a child who just took different moral sayings he heard and threw them all together, without any clue what he was talking about. Example: at the end of the film, Dawes kisses Bruce, but then says she can’t love him because he has become Batman, while she’s in love with the good man he was before he became Batman, but then she say’s she’s proud of what he’s done as Batman. So . . . does she like his personality and behavior or not?! What’s worse is that the film celebrates Bruce for having empathy when he saves Neeson from falling off the cliff in the first part of the film, even when the villains try to convince him that empathy is bad, but at the end of the film – after all this talk about how wrong it is for good people to do nothing – he decides he will not save Neeson from dying in the train. It is now his choice to withhold his empathy and his goodness that is considered a positive trait, which makes the film give out more mixed signals than Dawes does.

I think it goes without saying that I think this movie is, in many respects, a train wreck. Nolan tried to make the audience take Batman very seriously, but, ya know . . . HE’S A GUY IN A BAT COSTUME – it’s inevitably going to be either campy or awkward, so he should have had more fun with the character. So, so much of this film just feels off, strange, flat, or inconsistent, and the film adds virtually nothing of value to what Burton had so perfectly established as the cinematic Batman in 1989. Yet, in a way, it still feels like a Batman movie, and that makes it fun. Not as fun as it could be, but fun. It’s interesting and amusing enough to be enjoyable, so I think that, all things considered, it’s okay. Not great – maybe not even good – but okay. I’ll give it a good rating because I find it entertaining enough, but does this mean I’ll have to stop giving Nolan such a hard time? Oh, wait – no it does not – I still have to watch The Dark Knight . . . .

Bowfinger Review

July 31, 2016 by JD Hansel

Frank is the best Frank that’s ever happened to me.

There are a few master craftsmen in the world of film direction that are rarely recognized as such, making for cranky rants from snobby movie buffs like me. Generally, if a filmmaker is good at getting good reviews, and has done some memorable work, people associate his or her name with his/her film-making. Frank Oz, on the other hand, has had quite the career as a director, and yet this is largely overshadowed by his time spent as a Muppet performer back in the day. Seeing as how I am one of the geeky “Hensonites” who just adores the various skills that Frank has, it is important to me that people appreciate both his work as a puppeteer and as a director. So, I’m adding his to my Missionary List – the list of movies I promise to spread the word about at any opportunity like a missionary shares the gospel – where it will join the ranks of other underrated triumphs like Phantom of the Paradise, The Twelve Chairs, Play It Again, Sam, and even the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup.

This is one of those movies that is done in such a careful way, with such remarkable precision, that the knowledgeable spectator will be constantly aware that he/she is watching a master at work. It’s special when a film carries an aura of craftsmanship that is always present, but never too disruptive of the feelings that the spectator is supposed to be experiencing. The jokes, overall, do work well, even though I think that the same screenplay – perhaps eve with the same cast – could have made for a mediocre movie. Heck, it would even be easy to hate the main character for being so sleazy. Frank seems to be the element that makes everything about the film work the way it’s meant to, from the pacing to the mood.

While it’s not necessarily the funniest film I’ve ever watched, it has a number of very strong comedic moments, and is pleasant and fun throughout. The performances from Steve Martin and Eddy Murphy are some of their best, and the story is written very cleverly with a smart resolution and satisfying ending. It also has the benefit of being both a good movie on first-viewing and a good “Hindsight Movie” – a film that becomes more enjoyable when thinking about it in retrospect, or when watching it again. I suspect this may not be uncommon for Oz films, since I really liked Little Shop of Horrors the first time I saw it, but over the years I have grown to obsess over it, and it has become a big part of who I am. I can’t say for sure that I’ll ever love Bowfinger on a level that’s very close to how much I love Little Shop, but I can say that this is a movie I’ll happily sit down and watch again with whoever would be willing to join me.

If anyone is ever in need of a fun comedy film for movie night, this is one of my top recommendations.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape Review

July 18, 2016 by JD Hansel

Some of my readers – if I may presume I have readers – may be aware that I have three younger brothers. The oldest of the three is Brian, who has down-syndrome, which has made my family’s dynamic an interesting one. As of the time I’m writing this, he’s eighteen years old, and he adds a lot of joy to the family, although he also adds some challenges that we wouldn’t have with a more ordinary teenager. Brian, however, is not the reason I watched this movie. I watched it because of my youngest brother, Grayson, who insisted that I watch it with him. For whatever reason, he adored the movie, but as is common for him, he couldn’t explain why. I was willing to humor him and watch it since it had such critical acclaim, but it unfortunately strikes me as the average “critic porn.”

I have so little to say about this movie because the movie gives me so little to review. What’s actually accomplished by the events of this film? How is the ending necessitated? How does it even make sense? Where do they even live in the end? What the heck was the point of the plotline with FoodLand? Oh, and the other question – why do I care?

I don’t understand what substance Johnny Depp’s character has that’s supposed to make me like him or root for him. I also don’t understand why I’m supposed to like the girl that he likes. When she says the line, “I’m not into that whole ‘external beauty’ thing,” I immediately dismiss her as the kind of pseudo-intellectual hipster that’s not worth my time. So why is she worth the screen time? And if I’m really supposed to care about her, how does the movie expect me to be satisfied with an ending in which she only sees our main characters for a couple months of the year?

What I think I understand is why it’s received such acclaim. The acting is good, considering what the characters are. I have to give credit to Leonardo DiCaprio for his excellent performance, but of course good acting is never the best measure of a film. The “story” is fairly interesting, and I must credit the film for keeping me from getting too bored, which could have happened easily with a film in this genre. It obviously deals with a tricky subject matter, which always gets the attention of the critics, but even with how similar my experiences with my family can be to the experiences of the family in this film, I just don’t care enough about the family to really enjoy the movie. I get what it’s trying to do, and it does that well, but I would never try to do what it’s trying to do, simply because I don’t care for Oscarbait.

Now You See Me 2 Review

July 15, 2016 by JD Hansel

Oh, shut up.

Why is it that everyone (encompassing the world’s audiences, the world’s critics, and the world’s John Olivers) is acting as though this movie is worthless? Well, I think there’s a certain psychological effect – I’ll call it “Sequel Blindness” – at work here. I remember being stunned by the reviews that Muppets Most Wanted received, because the movie was getting hammered for problems that were worse in its universally acclaimed predecessor: the overuse of fourth-wall jokes, the cliché plot, and the “kiddie” vibes. Somehow, the critics were willing to overlook these flaws in the first film because that was the Muppets’ comeback to cinema after a twelve-year hiatus, but once they were used to Muppets being in movies again, they could suddenly see all of the problems that they missed before, but they only saw them when they came to the franchise for a second time. This is the effect of Sequel Blindness: when a sequel makes critics rethink the franchise by bringing them back to it after time to reflect on the predecessor, allowing flaws in the franchise to become more noticeable, prompting them to erroneously attribute the flaws to the sequel. While the original Now You See Me got very mixed reviews, I still think this is what happened with Now You See Me 2.

Don’t get me wrong – the movie has its flaws and its fair share of scenes that make no sense, so I wouldn’t call it an excellent film. It is, however, a good film, that feels like it’s allowed to make no sense since the first one didn’t make sense. In the original Now You See Me, the “girl Horseman” walks into a bubble and starts floating around in it, which is followed by flashlights changing the numbers on pieces of paper in perfect synchronicity with the magicians’ act. This impossibility is presented because the filmmakers wanted to do a movie that showcased the tricks that might become possible to pull off at some point in the future, but when the sequel contains equally implausible feats, critics complain that there’s no point in asking how the tricks were done (even though that was never the point of the franchise).

I do wish the reviews would focus more on the ways in which this movie improves on its predecessor. It has more emotion and heart, and in a way that I actually think was done acceptably. It has better comedy – particularly in one of Daniel Radcliffe’s scenes that made me laugh hysterically. It has a better “girl Horseman” by far, and I’d happily watch Lizzy Caplan’s character in her own spin-off. So stop complaining about the movie. It’s stupid in many ways, I must admit, but it’s a fun kind of stupid, so just enjoy it.

The Birds Review

July 13, 2016 by JD Hansel

With High Anxiety being my favorite Mel Brooks film, one would expect that I would be well-versed in the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Quite contrarily, after watching Strangers on a Train for a film history class I took a few years ago, I was turned off by Hitchcock. I felt like whenever he was trying to have me waiting in suspense, I found myself just waiting. I put off watching his films for another day, simply because I didn’t feel like being bored, but I eventually felt like I may have been missing out on some important films. I decided to give him another go, trying out one of the films he’s best known for, if not the film he’s best known for, The Birds.

While I had a little bit of a hard time getting into it at first (since its pace is almost annoyingly slow at times), I was quickly impressed more than I thought I would be by the characters and dialogue. The conversations that the characters had when they weren’t dealing with a bird attack were actually very interesting for the most part, and it’s always good when character interactions are enough to keep me interested. Then, during the now-cliché panicked bar scene – that scene in all the disaster movies with the flustered witness of the attack, the bartender who tries to keep things under control, the skeptic who happens to be an expert on the subject, and the lunatic who believes it’s the end of the world – I was delighted by how Hitchcock had perfected this kind of set-up. The addition of the panicky mother made the scenes in the bar that much better.

Oh, and I suppose the scary elements are sort of an important part of this film, being its mark on the history of cinema and all, so I’ll briefly say that I liked them. The scary scenes weren’t exceptionally terrifying in the sense I’m used to, but maybe that’s a good thing. I despise jump scares, so it’s nice that Hitchcock did a good job at keeping me on the edge of my seat and fearing for the well-being of the characters I’d come to really like, all without relying on too many cheap gimmicks. While the ending somehow manages to be both gripping and underwhelming at the same time, making for a movie experience that feels a little awkward, I think that this picture is nicely crafted work of cinema that’s creative, fascinating, and supplies just the kind of experience it needs to to make it into the film history books.

Captain America: Civil War Review

June 30, 2016 by JD Hansel

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Well, okay, here’s one thing that no one else has said: I didn’t go into this movie taking a side. I did declare myself as Team Cap or Team Iron Man at any time, because I tend to be on Team Shut Up and Talk Like Civilized People, but I suppose that wouldn’t make for as interesting of a movie. It’s challenging for a movie like this to make the audience very understanding of both sides, and then turn around and make us want to see everyone we love in this franchise beating the snot out of each other. Remarkably, the movie not only accomplishes this daring feat, but also puts the characters on the wrong sides (without making the audience bat an eye at it). Allow me to briefly explain what I mean.

Please, consider the following: Captain America is the one who would ordinarily want to work with the government, especially since his roots are with the U. S. military, and Stark is the type of person who would never want to give control over himself to anyone else, since it would hurt his ego to be the U. N.’s puppet; and let’s not forget that Romanoff has weirdly decided to fight against Cap’s team, at least for the most part. In the end though, I think the most impressive thing about this is that, in the midst of all this drama, the movie is a heck of a lot of fun. It may be rather awkward at some points and tedious at others, but between the creative action sequences, the perfect cast, the smart dialogue, the surprising twists, the bizarre inclusion of Ant Man, and the spectacular Spider-Man, Civil War hits all the right spots. It’s one of Marvel’s finest films – quite possibly its best to date.