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movie

[Movie] Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Alfred

Batman vs Superman is the story of an engineering genius named Alfred who has decided to dedicate his life in service to the Wayne family as a butler, much to his detriment. As not-so-young-any-more Master Bruce goes into an out-of-control spiral of obsession laced with extremely lucid an violent dreams that really ought to have him seeking out help from a mental health professionals, Alfred does the best he can to get him to reel it in, with such pointed remarks as, “…the feeling of powerlessness that turns good men cruel.” Alfred can only watch in growing dismay as Bruce becomes completely fixated on Superman as a symbol of all things wrong, presumably resentful because Superman is way better at murdering people than Bruce, and is also the most popular girl at prom. It’s the story of one man being slowly crushed under the weight of another man’s insurmountable ego, as Alfred laments, “Go upstairs and socialize. Some young lady will make you honest… in your dreams, Alfred.” Ultimately, Alfred’s soul becomes one more piece of collateral damage in the massive manpain dick-waving contest that occurs between Batman and Superman, thankfully cut short by the intervention of a badass woman wielding a sword and round shield, who is the only person capable of finding some sort of joy in this entire film. Maybe she will make the dark knight an honest man and answer Alfred’s dying hopes, but I wouldn’t want to inflict that on her, she deserves so much better, and it’s obvious from the way she’s willing to dive into battle and take her hits with a fierce grin, having at last found a worthy opponent.

In case you couldn’t tell, the only parts of this movie I liked were Alfred (Jeremy Irons) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), who probably accounted for less than 5% of the film’s running time. (My driving away from the movie reaction here, since Didi asked for it.)

I’m not surprised I didn’t like this movie. I really didn’t care for Man of Steel, and in Batman vs Superman, Zack Snyder makes a film that’s even less coherent than the first. Even worse, the soundtrack for this one is bombastic, overblown, and oddly desperate, which is the cherry on the shit sundae, kind of like the soundtrack for Transformers 4 sucking. (The only good bit of the soundtrack was when Wonder Woman showed up, holy shit that guitar though.) You leave me with nothing, Snyder. But I decided that I would see BvS anyway because 1) Wonder Woman and 2) Alfred, and at least they didn’t disappoint. Also, it’s hard to justify saying mean things about a movie if you haven’t seen it (particularly egregious nonsense like Gods of Egypt excepted) no matter how much of a hot mess it looks in the trailers.

As usual, Zack Snyder makes a film that’s visually appealing (if so ridiculously color filtered that at times it looks almost black and white) and lacks any sort of sequential or narrative coherence as shots form scenes. It also feels like he jammed at least three movies together and the plot just bounces between them all like a frantic pingpong ball. We get the Batman origin story again. We get Lex Luthor coming out of left field (way the fuck out in left field, more on this in a minute) and doing some kind of six dimensional villain chess thing that’s so poorly developed it’s impossible to follow. We get Wonder Woman trying to set up the Justice League, squeezed into a few spare seconds. We get Bruce’s manpain, and more manpain, and even more manpain, and then some bizarre dream sequences that really don’t add a fucking thing. We get Superman getting called in front of Congress and constantly talked about as what a giant threat he is because everyone likes him, which seems very weird when in the movie literally no one but Lois Lane seems to like Superman until we’re midway through the second act and he finally rescues some people from a burning factory. (By the way, Lois Lane and Clark have a couple really cute scenes and kudos for that tiny sliver of character development.)

Henry Cavill tries with Superman, bless him, you can tell he’s trying so hard as someone who gets the character under a director who plainly doesn’t. But I honestly laughed out loud when Ma Kent reassures Clark that he’s not a killer. Actually, Ma, we have Zack Snyder and the previous movie to thank for that. Though I will note that Clark goes out of his way in this movie to try to not murder a lot of civilians, and that I appreciated. But it’s a bit ridiculous when his supposed reason for going after Batman is that Batman is brutal and causing people to die. Your body count is still way higher, kiddo. But it doesn’t help that even Superman doesn’t seem to know why the fuck Superman is doing anything, perhaps because Zack Snyder doesn’t get it either, and Ma Kent acts as reverse Uncle Ben, assuring her son that, “I never wanted the world to have you… you don’t owe this world a thing. You never did.” (Ma Kent’s an objectivist, who would have thought.)

Of course Ben Affleck’s Batman is another step in the descent of this character becoming the Punisher Lite. There’s only one fight in the entire goddamn movie where it really feels like he’s fighting like Batman, using hand to hand and ninja skills and gadgets instead of shooting things and blowing up cars and basically murdering people left and right, even if he doesn’t do it personally. This version of Batman, charmingly enough, brands people with the bat symbol so that when they get sent to prison, they get murdered by the inmates. This is a thing he plainly knows is happening. It’s as if Snyder took a look at the Bale/Nolan Batman and went, yeah, but this guy is way too likable and morally upright. Now, why he’s got a hate-on for Superman makes sense in a strictly hypocritical fashion–it’s okay to murder people when you’re Batman, but Superman is just way too good at it. Obviously this cannot be allowed to stand, and thus some kind of battle, blah blah blah manpain manpain angst angst posturing oh wait we need to unite to defeat a common enemy that gets airdropped in at the last minute. (Though I will note that I think Ben Affleck did a fine job with what precious little he had, and I’d actually really like to see more Batfleck if he’s in a movie that isn’t directed by Zack Snyder.)

Maybe if you liked Man of Steel, you’ll like this. Maybe Zack Snyder movies are for you. But if you’re like me, just wait for some perfect soul to make a super cut that’s nothing but Wonder Woman (or ideally, Wonder Woman and Alfred) and watch it on youtube. Don’t worry, there’s a much, much better Batman movie coming soon.

The worst part of all of this is I’m going to drag myself to whatever DC does next as long as Gal Gadot is in it, because I’m that fucking thirsty for a female superhero movie. So hell yeah, I will still show for a Wonder Woman movie, even if Zack Snyder ends up directing it, (bless Farli for pointing out that Patty Jenkins is directing Wonder Woman, I can feel hope again!) because I love Wonder Woman and still have hope in my heart that hasn’t been entirely crushed that maybe she will get the treatment she deserves. (Her five minutes in BvS was pretty good.) But I sure don’t have a reason to trust her movie won’t suck, not after the way this one ended.

SPOILERS for the end from this point, if you even care.

Continue reading “[Movie] Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Alfred”
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writing

Biweekly(?) writing update #1

Okay, we’ll see if this is going to be a thing. An awful lot of writing stuff seems to be happening to me these days. This covers a bit more than a week, though–just everything that’s happened in my awesome writing life since the last update on July 31.

  1. I have sold a story to Lakeside Circus for their first issue! This is my new record for fastest acceptance ever, at 16 hours. From their post is sounds like issue #1 will be coming out at the end of NOvember. And that issue #1 is currently only about 1/4 full, so if you’re a writerly type you might want to check that out. They pay $.01/word.
  2. Blood in Elk Creek has a cover! Isn’t it purty? The next adventure of Captain Ramos (aka: Captain Ramos is a giant pain in the ass to someone) will be out on 9/6, so less than a month away.bloodinelkcreek-500
  3. The Ugly Tin Orrery was reviewed by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam of Short Story Review. Spoiler: she liked it. The fact that she enjoyed it when she has previously not liked steampunk fills me with the sort of glee I normally reserve for puppies.
  4. In other Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam love stories, Comes the Huntsman also made it to her list of top 10 fairy tale short stories on SF Signal.

  5. I well be participating in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at Worldcon! The reading is at 10 AM on Sunday you should come see me.

Also, WANTED:

  1. I’d like to try start getting some guest blogging going. If you’re interested in putting a post of yours in this modest little space, I’d be happy to have you (WITHIN REASON). Just drop me a line on twitter (@katsudonburi) or at katsuhiro at gmail dot com.
  2. My ravenous ego demands more reviews, because the first two have been so awesomesauce. MORE REVIEWS I SAY. If you have a book review blog or column, I will make it rain digital ARCs for you. Or, you know, politely send one to your inbox all while showering you with kisses from across the internet.

#SFWAPro

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movie review

Total Recall: An Inexplicable Obsession With Elevators

I tried to go in to this movie with an open mind. I really did, I swear.

Then Total Recall told me: So yeah. Elevator through the center of the Earth.

Well. If you’re not going to take this seriously, neither am I.

And no, I don’t count that as a spoiler, because the damn movie slaps you with that facepalm-inducing concept within five seconds of the opening credits starting. (If that revelation stops you from seeing this movie in the theater, I’d appreciate it if you use some of the money you saved to send me a cookie.) That’s right. The grandeur of possibly fake saving an entire planet has been replaced with a giant elevator that somehow goes through the center of the Earth.

It’s a sad, sad day when you manage to come up with a concept that makes even less scientific sense than the original Total Recall. And here’s the thing: the elevator through the center of the Earth is actually the least aneurysm-inducing part of the world build. Don’t even get me started on how the societal set up itself makes no damn sense. (Everything is a chemical cesspit except Europe and Australia so every day all the people from Australia get shipped to the other side of the world via the elevator to go to work WHAT okay I need to lay down now.)

I’m kind of wondering if the script writer was perhaps savaged by an elevator as a child. Because there is a lot of elevator action going on in this movie. Large chunks of it, action scenes and chase scenes, take place in elevators. I don’t know, is there a Jungian archetype for this? I suppose we could get all Freudian and boil it down to sex because HEY A THING GOES INTO ANOTHER THING, only I can think of nothing potentially less sexy than Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel looking vaguely uncomfortable at each other in a giant elevator.

That, and this new version of Total Recall was so infested with lens flares that I had this crazy moment where I wondered if JJ Abrams had punched Len Wiseman in the head and taken over, only then it would have been a much more interesting and suspenseful movie. I’m not really a fan of the Abrams love affair with lens flares, but at least he manages to do it in a way that’s not actively annoying. Here, I got very, very tired of seeing ghostly blue streaks over Jessica Biel’s face. As far as I can tell, her only purpose in the movie was to look pretty, and that sure didn’t help.

The original Total Recall wasn’t exactly a festival of logic, but I think I was more willing to go with it because the movie so obviously didn’t take itself seriously. I’m more than capable of enjoying movies that have a certain sort of gleeful badness – Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter anyone? – but with this one I just spent a lot of time rolling my eyes. Total Recall took the concepts of the old movie (loosely based as it was on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale) and sucked all the joyful, ridiculous mayhem out of it. So instead, it feels ponderous, silly in a squirm-inducing way, and you don’t even get copious blood spatter as a reward.

Blah.

I did find it amusing that in the future:

  • Great Britain apparently becomes the Empire, complete with stormtroopers and battle droids. Glad to see that they’re keeping up with their glorious tradition of being cartoonish villains in American-made movies.
  • Enormous guns on combat helicopter things can only fire two second bursts and then have to reload themselves, which takes just long enough that they are basically useless.
  • Collin Farrell gets his ass thoroughly kicked by a suit-wearing politician. 
  • Stabbing someone in the intestines kills them instantly, except that it doesn’t because they subsequently come back to life just in time to be blown up.
  • Bill Nighy is the leader of the resistance. (If I had somehow managed to keep it together after the ELEVATOR THROUGH THE CENTER OF THE EARTH thing, to be honest that would have killed it for me. Sorry, Mr. Nighy.)

There were precisely three things that I liked about this movie. One, the sets and backgrounds were done really well. I liked the sprawling multi-level dystopian metropolis. It looked intense, wonderful, and at times downright Blade Runner-esque, and that hits all the right geek buttons with me.

There were some great little nods to the original Total Recall that I appreciated, as someone who loves that movie in all its silly glory. There was the hooker with three breasts, the woman in the ugly yellow coat at security, and a lot of other little nods in lines. Spotting those Easter eggs were some of the only truly fun moments in the movie.

Third and most important, Kate Beckinsale almost managed to salvage the entire movie by being unbelievably badass in every single scene in which she appeared. I found myself hoping she’d show up even more often to punch the good guys repeatedly in the face. She also does the amazing Natasha Romanov-style crotch punch, which I will never get tired of seeing. The only regret I have is that at the end she gets killed by Collin Farrell. In the original movie, Quaid’s not-wife gets taken out by his girlfriend, and it’s quite satisfying. But as far as I can tell Jessica Biel’s character was basically just there to look worried and get punched, so I suppose she didn’t have the necessary reservoir of awesomeness to even penetrate Kate Beckinsale’s BAMF field.

In the contest of which movie is a better homage to We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, neither Total Recall wins. They’re based on the story, but it really should be “based” complete with scare quotes. I think I do have to reward the 1990 movie with a slight edge, though. Douglas Quail never goes to Mars in the short story, but the red planet is there, and aliens come up as well. And frankly, the 1990 movie does a much, much better job of creating that lingering, uncomfortable feeling about whether or not this entire thing was real, or just an insane fantasy.

Because let’s be honest. If you’re going for insane fantasies, standing on top of a mountain on miraculously terraformed Mars while kissing your girlfriend in a pose off a pulp fiction cover wins over celebrating blowing up the big, mean elevator by being wrapped in a blanket.

Go big or go home. You’re better off getting your ass to Mars.

Categories
movie review

Waiting for Jason Bourne

I’ve got some mixed feelings about The Bourne Legacy. There was actually a lot that I liked about it. But there were certain choices that were made in the movie that I feel made it weaker, and I’m not really sure why they were done.

The non-spoiler summary:

Generally, it was a fun Bourne-style action movie. There was some suspense, interesting and wonderfully grimy settings, lots of improvised weapons. There were chase scenes where, as usual, I had absolutely no clue what the hell was going on, but I thought maybe we were winning. It was a fun way to spend my evening, though I don’t know if my opinion would be the same if I’d gone in cold.

Jeremy Renner was likeable, Rachel Weisz was actually really interesting, and Edward Norton was a standard amoral government guy in a suit. There were a lot of missed plot opportunities that could have gone for some great character development and raised Renner’s character Aaron Cross toward the level of Jason Bourne. I think instead, those opportunities got blown on making the chase scenes just a little more incoherent and shaky.

I don’t feel like I wasted my time at the movie, and if there’s a sequel (and I’m sure there will be) I’ll definitely go see it. But I hope next time they give us more. The original Bourne movies really raised the bar on spy-fi in a lot of ways – internal drama to go with all the action, for one – and I’d like to see that legacy continue in truth. 

THE WHOLE ENCHILADA WITH SPOILERS BELOW:

To begin with, there was the entire choice of making the events of the movie basically concurrent with The Bourne Ultimatum. I haven’t had a chance to watch that movie in a while, but I remembered enough that I at least knew who Pamela Landy was and why a bunch of older white guys in suits were saying “My god,” in deep, serious tones. I really don’t know what the experience would have been like for someone who hadn’t seen the original Bourne trilogy.

And of course, they kept bringing up Jason Bourne. The serious white guys in suits mention him constantly. Aaron sees his name carved in the bunk bed at the way house he stays at. We see a photo of him flashed during a newscast. But it feels like a plot point that never delivers because not once in the movie do we actually see Jason Bourne. Aaron doesn’t meet him, or really seem to have any kind of attachment to him as anything but  a name. This makes Bourne feel like something that got added in at the last moment as a way to keep his name in the title. He becomes the movie’s Godot, where he never shows up even as he provides the necessary fig leaf to explain why the characters are talking. Though at least he never triggers a serious discussion about suicide being better than waiting any longer.

I understand if they couldn’t get Matt Damon. But I think if they wanted to keep the connection between the original three movies and this one, they needed to find a better way to connect the character of Jason Bourne to the new guy, Aaron Cross. Maybe they met once in the back story. Maybe Bourne is a legend in the program and his defection has a real psychological effect on its last living lab rat. Maybe Aaron could have found out more about Bourne and taken some kind of direction or inspiration from the way that he went rogue and remade himself. (Actually, I think that would have been really interesting…)

Then there’s the issue of LARX-3. He has no name other than that. He also, to the best of my memory, has no dialog, and only two facial expressions – cold and grrrrr. He also feels like an afterthought to the plot – an oh shit we’re in the third act and the boss fight music just cued up, send in the plot device! Part of what made the original Bourne movies so interesting was that anyone significant Jason Bourne faced had at least some kind of internal life – which made his killing them more meaningful, both to the audience and to him as a character. The way the end battle with LARX-3 played out, it was really like Aaron versus the drone part two. It was another missed opportunity, I think. Even if the point of LARX-3 was that he’s a human with the humanity removed, that would have been great food for thought for Aaron had he known, I would think. Hey dude, that’s the new model, see where we’re going with this?

I really loathed what they did with the wolves while Aaron was up in Alaska. I’ll just say here that I am anti-shooting and blowing up wolves, even if it’s in movies. And the way the wolves were acting made absolutely no sense anyway, which just makes it a bit more annoying.

Otherwise I found the movie pretty enjoyable, though inferior to the original Bourne trilogy. Aaron Cross was a likable character, though he lacks what made Jason Bourne so interesting. Bourne’s character development was really about him figuring out who and what he was, wrestling with the sins of his past, and then deciding to remake himself. Aaron’s struggle is never really that visceral. While he mentions several times that he’s done bad things (and thus they seem to bother him) he obviously kept going with the program and doesn’t seem to struggle with it all that much.

His real motivation is to keep his enhanced mental capabilities because he doesn’t want to regress to being an idiot, and it sounds like that regression process is really horrible. That’s something that is sympathetic, but it lacks the punch of the “who was I? who will I be?” that we learned to expect from the Jason Bourne movies. There were a few tantalizing lines thrown in there – maybe predators don’t think Aaron is human any more – but that incredibly interesting question never really seems to cross his mind.

I was actually far more interested in Dr Marta Shearing, the character played by Rachel Weisz. She does go through a really good character arc, where she starts out as someone who was “just doing science” without any real thought to the ethics, and has that come home to roost. She does struggle with that, and grows. Unlike Aaron, I think she comes to accept responsibility for her involvement, realizing how pathetic her own sacrifices (I didn’t get to go to conferences! I couldn’t talk to people about my work!) really were in light of the much larger, darker picture.

You weren’t bad, Bourne Ultimatum. But I want more. Give me more. I expect better of you.

Categories
review

Moriarty

For the most part, I’ve really liked the BBC series Sherlock. Benedict Cumberbatch makes an excellent Sherlock Holmes, and Martin Freeman is definitely my favorite Watson ever. The two have great chemistry, and I’ve enjoyed watching the old stories get re-imagined in a modern setting.

Also Lara Pulver as Irene Adler? Oh, be still my beating heart.

Unfortunately, there’s one big bone I have to pick: Moriarty. I’m sure Andrew Scott is just doing his best with the script and the direction he’s gotten, but I just loathe Moriarty as he was played in season 1 and 2. To the point that the two episodes he was involved in, I actually had a difficult time focusing enough to watch.

It’s boring. Annoying. To the point that even Benedict Cumberbatch being awesome isn’t enough to keep me from scrolling through Twitter.

Now, for all Moriarty gets massive lip-service as a villain, he’s really not the most arresting figure in the source material. I’ll admit that. He’s only in two short stories and one of the novels (The Final Problem, The Adventure of the Empty House, and The Valley of Fear) and he also loses a lot of potential oomph just because he’s always being described by someone else rather than being directly observed by Watson. So I suppose you could say there’s maybe a little too much interpretation possible for Moriarty.

Though one thing does come through I think – there’s a sort of cold menace to him. In The Adventure of the Empty House, Holmes speaks of “reading an inexorable purpose in his grey eyes.” Inexorable. That’s the bit that’s supposed to make Moriarty scary. He’s as smart as Holmes, but without the detective’s (at times questionable) morals and an arachnid inhumanity to him. He ought to be terrifying, yes, because he’s so in control of the situation. The man ought to breathe menace from under a veneer of civilization.

Instead, we get shrieking, overtly crazypants Mortiarty.

Steven Moffat said:

We knew what we wanted to do with Moriarty from the very beginning. Moriarty is usually a rather dull, rather posh villain so we thought someone who was genuinely properly frightening. Someone who’s an absolute psycho.

Okay, I get wanting to avoid posh and dull. I am completely on board with that. I can’t say I’ve ever really encountered a Moriarty that I felt was properly menacing. But note menace is not necessarily best achieved via hysterics. And if I wanted to feel even vaguely threatened by the caricature of a psychopath, I’d go watch a slasher movie. At least in that, I can find the threat from someone with such obvious impulse control issues a tad more believable as rapid stabbing occurs.

What really bugs me is this isn’t the first time in a BBC series menace has been badly replaced with histrionics. Remember me bitching up and down about The End of Time? Yeah, one of the things that annoyed me to no end was that they took the crazy knob on the Master, turned it up to 11, and gave him a glow-in-the-dark comedic skull for a head. The Master was at one point a wonderful villain, and he actually didn’t start out too bad in the new Doctor Who series. Then it just sort of went off the rails and he spent all of his time mugging and shrieking.

That’s really what Moriarty felt like, except he was never on the rails to begin with. I could not find it in the least bit believable that he’d orchestrated a series of immensely complex crimes whilst frothing at the mouth. And worse, I just found him boring, because he had precisely one villain setting – over the top – and there’s a very limited amount of scenery chewing I’m willing to accept from something unless I’m specifically watching it because it’s bad.

Please, Steven Moffat. Don’t turn into Russell T. Davies on this one.

Spoilers below, even though you should totally already know what happens with Moriarty and if you don’t, go read the short stories already.

At this point I’m hoping that since this was Reichenbach Falls-ish, that means Moriarity is well and truly out and we’ll never see him again. As I said before, he wasn’t in that many of the original Sherlock Holmes stories to begin with.

But oh! This is another thing that bugs the hell out of me about that episode. I actually thought it was interesting that there was the Moriarty framing Holmes as a fraud sub-plot, particularly since one of the scholarly proposals regarding Moriarty’s existence is that he’s actually someone Holmes made up to excuse a series of cases he messed up – among other rather weird and twisty theories. So that was fun. But then Moriarty shoots himself in the head because he’s so utterly crazypants and hates Holmes that much and what was that even. It made absolutely no sense.

And gosh, I hope that it’s not a plot twist that will allow him to be brought back because I really do want to enjoy watching Sherlock and not just using it as enhanced time to read blog posts on my phone. Bring back Irene Adler instead, please. She was much more interesting as a character.

Hm. Thought for another day – parallels between this Irene Adler and Catwoman as seen in The Dark Knight Rises?

Categories
movie review

Gotta Dance

This movie was on instant play on Netflix and I had some time to kill while I ate dinner, so I thought I’d just put it on for a bit. I’m not normally one for documentaries or cute, but I actually ended up watching it all the way through to the end and enjoyed it quite a bit.

The film is about the 2007 senior hip-hop dance team for the New Jersey Nets. If ever there was a movie designed to make you feel better about getting older, that would be it. Initially, you sort of feel like it’s a thing that might be played for laughs, but that definitely isn’t the case. They train hard, and actually face being not allowed to perform at one point because their run through isn’t good enough.The oldest member of the team is a 80-year-old lady named Fanny, and I’m pretty sure she dances better than I’ll ever manage.

I think it also definitely makes the point that the key to staying young at heart is finding something you love and not being afraid to do it. I wish I was even half as fearless as that when it came to things that didn’t let me hide behind my keyboard.

Though I think my favorite bits were watching the team hang out together, going dancing or shopping for clothes to suit up Betsy, one of the team members who had grown a lot of confidence from the experience. Heartwarming is a word I’ll happily apply, and not in a sneering hipster way. It made me feel happy and right with the world, and it’s nice to have movies like that on occasion.

It also made me want to dance.

Still attempting to get excited about the remake of Total Recall, coming out this weekend. I’ll go see it anyway, I promise. And maybe I’ll have nice things to say about it. Maybe I won’t. Time will tell.

Categories
movie review

The Dark Knight Rises

Tragedy or no, of course I had to see this movie. I love Christopher Nolan. I loved the other two movies in the trilogy.I’m a nerd. Duh.

(Oh, and in case you missed the news? Christian Bale is a fucking superhero. For reals.)

I liked The Dark Knight Rises, quite a bit. Though I didn’t like it as much as The Dark Knight. I think it felt like it was just a bit too long, and a few of the expository points were a bit too heavy-handed. Which is to say it was still an excellent movie and you should definitely go see it. It was dark and moody and a fitting end to the trilogy, action and suspense and more bat toys than you can shake a stick at. All of the actors did great work. Anne Hathaway has now fully erased the horrors of Halle Berry and her CGI butt from my mind. Tom Hardy deserves a medal for managing to convey so much emotion with most of his face obscured by a ridiculous mask.

Really, Michael Caine stole the show as Alfred, though. That man made me cry. Twice. Best Alfred ever. He puts so much depth into everything, and just the weight of the relationship between Alfred and Bruce is crushing.

Of course, I never get tired of Christian Bale doing the Batman voice. I admit it.

And then there will be some spoilers.

SPOILERS BELOW

Honestly, there were a couple of things that did kind of bug me about the movie. First and foremost was Bruce Wayne sleeping with Miranda. It just seemed very out of the blue, particularly considering all the real chemistry there was in that movie was between him and Selina. Pretty much at the time that happened, I remember thinking, “…what?” Then by the end it just feels like a cheap trick to squeeze a little more impact from Miranda’s betrayal, when she really wasn’t enough of a character to even begin with. I didn’t feel all that shocked at the big reveal, because there just hadn’t been quite enough time setting her up.

I think the problem really was the movie wanted to have only one interest.Catwoman really crowded whatever development there might have been to build up Miranda. Or at least to get me to care about Miranda at all.

The other thing that bothers me a little is the setup for the “rabble” taking over Gotham. Now, on one hand I really don’t get all the bitching that I’ve seen on Twitter about this movie being quasi-fascist, or about fearing the mob, or anti-99% or whatever. I don’t think that was the point at all. The way the upper classes of Gotham were presented there was nothing to sympathize with, and the plight of the poor was made pretty damn clear. Rather, I easily saw the parallels to A Tale of Two Cities as soon as that plot line ramped up. My god, the first time you ever see the court room, it should smack you in the face.

But then the problem becomes that it’s not a real revolution or a good parallel to the Reign of Terror, because it’s something that was imposed top down by Bane. It wasn’t the underclass rising up against the worthless rich; it was Bane telling everyone he was going to turn the city into a sea of glass if people didn’t play by his rules.

So that setup didn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure I buy Gotham falling apart quite like it did. Though I can buy that once things have gone totally to shit, people who have nothing to lose probably wouldn’t feel too bad about seeing the decadent get their comeuppance.

I will tell you this. The Dark Knight Rises managed to do the impossible. I’m actually thinking of reading A Tale of Two Cities again. That’s even more amazing than the level of emoting Tom Hardy managed with just his eyebrows.

Categories
books review

Leviathan Wakes

This was the last of the Hugo-nominated novels I needed to read. Good thing too, since I have to do my votes in the next week. I’m hoping to at least run through the short stories, though I’m afraid I won’t have time for anything else before the deadline, which makes me sad. 

My feelings about this book are… complicated.
There’s a lot to like about it. When I first picked the book up, I’ll admit the fact that it was over 500 pages long filled me with a certain amount of trepidation, mostly because I don’t have a lot of time to read these days. But it was a fast read, it kept me interested, and I can’t say I felt like it was too long. The characters were likable, it was definitely wonderfully epic like only space opera can be, and I liked all the space battles and politics. The writing was good. It deserves its Hugo nomination, I think.
So why do I feel unsettled about it? There’s a sort of vague, lasting sense of discomfort that has just stuck with me since I finished the book.
It could be that recently I’ve been talking with a lot of friends about how we wish there were more awesome female characters out there. It’s a constant source of frustration. Literature doesn’t have quite the same problems as, say, television and movies with women being window dressing even when they’re shooting things, but it’s still annoying. 
SPOILERS BELOW
Now, the two main characters of Leviathan Wakes are guys. Whatever, I don’t mind that so much. There are only a few female characters that really have any impact on the story: Captain Shaddid, Julie Mao, and Naomi. Shaddid is mostly there to be stone-cold and fire Detective Miller, and other than that she’s not all that major as a character. 
Naomi, I really liked. She’s feisty, she’s smart, she’s a survivor, she doesn’t take crap off of anyone. She tells off Holden and tells him she doesn’t want to hear ‘I love you’ to get her in bed. The way Holden is as a character, this kind of smackdown was entirely appropriate, and I loved it. Then a couple of chapters later, she sleeps with him anyway. They’re also about to head off on a potential suicide mission, so that’s a very human thing to do, even if I found it a bit disappointing. I still liked Naomi. 
It’s with Julie Mao where the discomfort comes. She’s also presented as being very self-reliant, a survivor, a rich girl who abandoned her family and fought off the emotional blackmail. But she’s mostly not actually present in the story. She’s there to be the motivation for Detective Miller, who becomes creepily obsessed with her, to the point that he’s hallucinating her and decides he’s in love with her. Then we find out at the very end that she’s being used by the “protomolecule” to pilot Eros-turned ship to Earth. What stops this is Detective Miller, working on that one-sided connection he has with her. He basically commits suicide to be with her. 
It just… bugs me. Julie Mao ends up being used by one side or another throughout the entire book and is then talked down by a guy she’s never met who thinks he loves her. Naomi ends up feeling like a prize that gets won by Holden, despite her initial resistance to it. Both women are like goals for the two main male characters.
I’m probably being unfair here, but it just bothers me. I think if it had just been one or the other, I would have  been fine. 
Categories
movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 4: Henry V

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start.

This. The Saturday I’ve been waiting for! Favorite play ever, favorite actor ever, go!

Rather than start this review with seven pages of frantic keysmashing, allow me to just say: Fuck yeah. With bells on.

There was everything to love about the performances turned in for this version of Henry V. Tom Hiddleston was superb. I’ve already gushed and gushed about him as Hal in Henry IV part 1 and part 2. At this point all I can really add is chocolate sprinkles delivered by a magical sparkling unicorn of pure badassery. Which is to say I thought he made a darn good Henry V.

What I noticed most about this Henry V was a pronounced somberness. Hiddleston shows clearly that Henry feels the weight of all his decisions. At the same time, there were lovely moments of supreme temper (such as in Act I scene 2 when he receives the Dauphin’s mocking present) and at the end of the battle of Agincourt with the enraged delivery of:

I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant.

And then there was the end of the siege of Harfleur:

What is’t to me, when you yourselves are the cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?

That is one scary as hell speech, and Hiddleston delivers it with terrifying implacability. (And achieves a wonderfully disbelieving look from Anton Lesser’s Exeter, but more on that later.) I also was pleased that he still preserved the hints of playfulness that live on in the more responsible Henry. When he confronts the soldier who picked a fight with him when he was in disguise, and later tries to woo Katharine, we’re reminded that there’s much more to Henry than a stern and bloody soldier.

There’s just so much complexity to the character, so many tones and notes, and it was all there. Of course, I can’t go on without mentioning the two greatest speeches. I actually watched the “Once more unto the breach” speech three times, since the first time the delivery was so different from what I’d been expecting that   I needed another view. The tone was much less bombastic than what I’m used to seeing, which I think is ultimately for the good. It suited Hiddleston’s take on Henry well.

And the Saint Crispin’s day speech. My god. Tears. Perfect.

What really sold Henry’s more scary moments was actually the presence of Anton Lesser as the Duke of Exeter. His reaction to Henry at Harfleur, his confidence in his king, his shock when Henry orders the prisoners to be killed at Agincourt all add up to show even the court didn’t quite understand what they’d get by awakening Henry’s “sleeping sword of war.”

I honestly didn’t feel all that enthused about Lesser as Exeter in Act I scene 2, but by the time we get to Act II scene 4, I was sold:

Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
Come here himself to question our delay…

At which point I realized that Exeter is a soft-spoken, fearless badass. I was rather amused in Agincourt as well, when he’s speaking with Henry on the battlefield. Everyone is just coated in blood and mud, and Exeter is clean except for some splashes around his hem. Because he is just too much of a badass for dirt.

Paterson Joesph did very well as the Duke of York, and I was extremely charmed by Melanie Thierry as Katharine. Really, I liked the whole cast, but those are the ones that really stood out to me.

Also, while there was a bit of shaky cam in the battle, I have no objections to it this time. It didn’t make me feel motion sick, and I could actually tell what was going on. I was surprised that there were bits of the battle in slow-motion as well. Overall, I thought it was all right, particularly for a BBC production. Tom Hiddleston, Paterson Joseph, and Owen Teale (hope I’m spelling that right, the credits were kind of blurry) as Captain Fluellen were the ones that really did the heavy lifting on the battle. They all had some serious crazy eyes going.

The acting was good. That’s going to guarantee I’ll be regularly re-watching this when I need a Henry V fix. Some things, I didn’t like so much. The score, for one. I found it intrusive in Henry IV part 2 and even moreso here.

I’m also fairly stunned by just how much they cut from the play. Obviously, this was for time constraints, but it was jarring nonetheless. I actually watched the movie with my pocket Henry V in hand so I could follow along, because I’m just that kind of nerd. It meant that I felt like I was tripping over a rock when something was missing.

Several characters didn’t even make it in, notably Gower, and Henry’s two brothers, Gloucester and Bedford. Which seemed particularly strange to me, since they were present in the two parts of Henry IV. I guess this time around they had something better to do than go murder the shit out of the French with their big brother. Or maybe they just got stuck in the pre-Olympic traffic in London. We’ll never know.

With the loss of Gower as a character, that meant we lost most of the character development scenes with Fluellen, which I think are a shame since Fluellen’s quite fun, and he has an excellent enmity with Pistol that doesn’t get nearly as much play because of the deleted scenes. Act II scene 2, where the traitors are revealed and taken away was eliminated.

Now, I can understand doing away with it for time constraints, but it’s a really good scene for Henry:

The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy…

If nothing else, it’s another big point in his development as being so merciless as we see him later.

Also missing is Act V scene 1, where we find out the sad fate of Pistol (his friends are dead, his wife is dead, he’s going back to England to be a thief). While again this isn’t important to Henry, sine we’ve had Pistol throughout the play it does bother me that he’s just left without any kind of conclusion.

Act III scene 7 is also mostly absent, which I was disappointed by. It’s the French camp scene, which always seemed to me to be important setup for the battle at Agincourt – it shows how overconfident the French were, how outgunned the underdog English seemed. That also takes a lot of development away from the French characters, since they really only have a couple of scenes, so seeing them die in the battle later has a lot less impact I think.

I’m also puzzled about the choice to leave out the bit where the French kill all the boys at the English camp and set fire to the baggage. While Henry does order the English to kill their prisoners before that, it’s actually the catalyst for him screaming about how utterly enraged he is. (“I was not angry since I came to France…”) This has the effect of making what was previously Henry’s reiteration to kill the prisoners seem much less justified. So I suppose if the point was to remind us that the man is absolutely brutal when he feels he needs to be, it does do that.

Anyway. I wonder if those scenes are gone entirely, or if maybe some might have been filmed and we’ll get to see them when there’s not the time constraints of television. I guess we’ll find out.

And of course, the inevitable comparison to Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V. That movie was my first love, so to speak, so it’s not really fair to compare the two. I’ll be watching both movies when I want a Henry fix. I hope they can manage to take turns and not fight, because I do love them both and they have very different qualities.

But I will tell you this. Man, I miss Patrick Doyle’s score for the movie. (And sorry, John Hurt. Derek Jacobi wins. He will always be Chorus in my heart.)

If you want to watch this wonderful Henry V, here’s a recorded livestream, which has something like 10 minutes of sports in front of it. Also a direct download. And you can still watch it on the BBC iPlayer if you get Expat Shield, which is how I did it. (I actually started watching an hour late – shame on me! – because I was out carb loading for tomorrow at a Chinese Buffet.)

As of this writing, by the way, Branagh’s Henry V is available on instant play for Netflix. If you haven’t gotten to watch it, you should. It’s 23 years old but still fantastic.

Henry V is probably the most straightforward of the history plays (less politics, really, more Henry being a shiny badass on a horse) but if you had trouble following it here’s a quick synopsis.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

Categories
movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 3: Henry IV Part 2

Finally got to watch this, and not a moment to soon! Darn field work for standing between me and Shakespeare anyway. It’s okay, baby, I’m here for you now. I’ll never let them tear us apart again.

Henry IV Part 2 starts off with scene 1 and 2 being intercut again, as it was in Part 1. This, I like less than I did. It made more sense in Part 1 so we could understand a bit better why Henry IV is having such problems with his son. In this, it’s making Falstaff being, well, Falstaff with what is the setup for the political conflict for this play, and it seems really unnecessary. They also trimmed a bit off the start of scene 1, including the opening monologue of Rumor. Which is a nice speech that’s fun to read aloud, but its loss doesn’t bother me so much, particularly since we only see Rumor once. (It did give me a moment of concern about Chorus in Henry V, but considering John Hurt is on the cast list in that role, I think we’re safe.)

Anyway, little tweaks (and they did exist here and there, probably many more than I realized since I don’t know this play nearly as well as Henry V) like this are normally necessary. I just mentioned the first one because it struck me rather wrongly.

And while I sound like I’m complaining, the only other potential complaint I’ve got is that for some reason the score felt very intrusive in this one, far more than in the previous two plays. I already felt incredibly moved by  Hal’s final scene with his father; I didn’t need all the strings to tell me I ought to be. The music for the coronation scene also made me cringe slightly; I half expected the classic record scratch news when Falstaff breaks through the crowd and stops Hal. Oof.

But other than those minor quibbles? Perfect, perfect, perfect.

While I already gushed about Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston in Part 1, this performance requires even more glee and sparkles. Jeremy Irons was incredible. There is so much pain and marrow in that performance: all the guilt that Henry feels about his acquisition of the crown, all his conflicts with his son, the weight of the crown bearing down on him, his palpable worries that his death might hand the throne to someone who will never be ready for it. The last moment when he reconciles with his son was beyond beautiful.

And of course, his entire monologue:

…Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

The delivery was wonderful. Though there was part of me that found it disturbingly cute to see Henry wandering around in his pajamas.

I feel as if Tom Hiddleston’s performance in Part 1 was really just the teaser for this. Hal lets go of his wild days and finally grows up, when it’s almost too late. It comes back to act iv scene 4, when Henry IV is on his death bed. Hiddleston does an amazing job of taking us through Hal’s grief. It’s that realization that’s unfortunately common to so many of us, that we spurned and insufficiently loved those closest and dearest to us because we thought they would always be there tomorrow.

…And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
I spake unto this crown as having sense,
And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending
Hath fed upon the body of my father;
Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold:
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
Preserving life in medicine potable;
But thou, most fine, most honour’d: most renown’d,
Hast eat thy bearer up.’

The words are powerful enough on their own. The delivery killed. I cried. Not ashamed to admit it in the slightest.

Though if I thought that was the best, then there was the final scene, where the newly crowned King Henry V officially turns his back on Falstaff and the life he once knew. I always thought, “I know thee not, old man,” would be the most powerful line. But in this rendition, I found:

I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The more subtle expressions from Hiddleston (showing this isn’t all that easy for Henry) and the stunned disbelief from Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff just sells this. Of course, a lot of the play focuses on Falstaff being old and his impending death – paralleling the mortality of Henry IV, the father that Hal ultimately chooses. Falstaff and Hal are only in two scenes together; I think even in the first one, there’s a sense of Hal already distancing himself from Falstaff, continuing the process that started in the previous play.

Beale makes Falstaff complex through the end. I was never quite certain if the majority of Falstaff’s upset at the end was because he lost someone he actually cared about, or if he saw his long-cultivated meal ticket walk away without so much as a backward glance. That I’m still not sure reflects incredibly well on the performance, I think.

Also, a shout-out to Alun Armstrong as Northumberland. While the political setting of the play is very much overshadowed by the family drama aspect of it, he turned in a good performance at the grieving father of Henry Percy.

This was excellent, and I recommend it heartily, though you should watch Part 1 of the play first so you can get the full arc of Hal’s character development. It’s definitely worth the time investment.

I watched this and Part 1 on the BBC2 iPlayer with the use of a little program called Expat Shield. If you don’t want to go that route, there’s the whole episode on youtube as of this writing. There’s also an upload of Part 1 on  youtube, but it’s cut into 15 minute sections. You can watch it via playlist here.

Henry V tomorrow. My favorite Shakespeare play ever. I can’t even. I can’t begin to say how excited I am.

…yeah, something like that.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V