The Dark Knight Rises - Late Review!

Let me start by saying that I love Batman. Always have done, since I was a child and discovered we shared the same first name, I thought he was the coolest thing since Captain Scarlet.  So it might seem like a bit of an odd time to be reviewing The Dark Knight Rises, considering that the film was released over a year ago. But I watched the DVD a couple of weeks back so it seemed vaguely relevant to write a review, and it took about this long for my throbbing Bat-erection to subside so that I can look at the film with a slightly more critical eye. To do that, there may be some spoilers so if you haven’t seen the film (where have you been?) and don’t want specific plot points ruined for you, then the gist of it is that the film is very good and the series is fantastic. If you haven’t seen any of them yet, watch them. If you have, watch them again anyway. Okay? Okay.

So, 8 years after the events of the last film, Bruce Wayne has become a recluse and Batman is M.I.A. He is spurred back into action, against Alfred’s will, by the criminal mastermind Bane, the apparent heir to Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Shadows. Beyond this, the plot starts to get all sorts of complex and hard to detail without getting into spoiler territory, but in short Bane has big plans for Gotham and Batman sets about trying to stop him with fisticuffs, all the while having his older body and mind tested by the younger and more dangerous villain. As well as having to contend with the distraction of Catwoman’s lovely bottom.

A bottom that we see a lot of during gratuitous shots from the rear of the Bat-Cycle.

The biggest strength to this film is, of course, the acting. I mean, look at the cast; I’m not sure it’s possible to make a bad film with a pool of talent that’s so deep that if you tried to reach the bottom of it you’d perish in the heat of the Earth’s core. I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the actors by not going into detail about why each of their performances are so good. The biggest compliment I suppose I could give to the ensemble is that the quality of the acting is so good that (before I watched the film to death) I didn’t even notice the sheer weight of dialogue in the film. There is no need for this much chatter in this film, but the actors are bringing the script to life so beautifully that I find it hard to grudge Nolan the amount of dialogue. Yes, there’s no real need for so much of it, but in the hands of such great actors and characters, I do find that I want it. There’s even some moderately successful attempts at something resembling comedy, which should be commended for not falling flat on its face in the series’ ultra-serious Bat-universe.

One marked improvement from the first two films are the action set-pieces. While these have always been a strength of this series, Nolan really brings it this time and they all look spectacular. The film’s opening and climax in particular are fantastically choreographed and shot. It’s also nice to see that that Nolan’s somewhat gotten over his obsession with close-up, shaky-camera, pitch-black fight scenes and now we’ve pulled the camera back a bit so we can actually see what the fuck’s going on. The characters have been, on the whole, well-developed and kept interesting throughout these films and continue to be in this one. JGL’s young cop John Blake and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman Selina Kyle are implemented successfully and are actually sometimes more interesting than Batman and Bane. Hathaway in particular really brings it with her surprisingly badass femme fatale performance. Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bane has been continually compared, unfairly, to Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn as the Joker, considering that the characters are entirely different (Joker’s chaotic mindset making him unpredictable and confusing for Batman, whilst Bane’s strategic intellect and physical prowess are what make him a threat). On the whole Hardy’s Bane is entertaining, if somewhat underdeveloped, as are many other new characters in this film, as they are crammed in often unnecessarily. However the creators’ inability to use The Joker this time around means they do somewhat have to work from the ground up in some aspects of the film’s plot.

Seriously, with that cast, how can you go wrong?

The plot itself is very entertaining, though the film’s structure does leave something to be desired. This does cause the middle of the film to drag somewhat as there’s so much plot to keep track of, however everything is wrapped up efficiently and in fantastic style in the film’s brilliant climax. On the whole, the film is carried from stunning set-piece to stunning set-piece by a fantastic plot and the performances of the actors, and that's all we really wanted to conclude this epic franchise. This film is not the best of the series, but that's no criticism. That's like being the worst member of the Beatles. You're still definitely somebody's favourite one, and no matter what you're one of the fucking Beatles! It’s actually a very good film, and a deliciously satisfying conclusion to a masterful film series. Ringo is still my favourite Beatle, by the way.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus Review

Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus is a 2009 Direct-to-DVD film created by The Asylum, a film studio of masterminds behind other spectacular films like Nazis At The Center Of The Earth, Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies and Titanic II. If you hadn’t guessed by now that this is not exactly Oscar-worthy stuff then you’d have even less sense then this film studio does. That isn’t to say that I don’t like the film. Far from it – I think it’s fucking brilliant! This is a gloriously bad movie. Admittedly, there are times when it’s frustrating how terrible it is, but if you just let yourself be open to it then it’s a giant, hilarious disaster, a bit like the Jeremy Kyle Show. Or Jeremy Kyle himself.

The plot (if you can call it that) basically breaks down like this: During some underwater study nonsense carried out by an oceanographer played by 80’s pop star Debbie Gibson, some military sonar device that is dropped into the ocean at the same time and a helicopter crash causes the Mega Shark and Giant Octopus to be thawed from the ice of a glacier and they go around causing havoc. It’s up to Debbie Gibson and a load of other science types to figure out what’s going on and how to stop it. Along the way there’s some bullshit sub-plots and a message about being kind to animals but nobody’s watching it to see that. They’re watching it for the giant prehistoric creatures (did I mention they were prehistoric?) kicking the shit out of humans and each other.

And when they do, it’s fucking glorious. Just imagine the most ridiculous shit you think you could get away with in a film with this title and multiply it by 10. The first attack we see Mega Shark make is on a plane. That’s right. A FUCKING AEROPLANE. The Mega Shark leaps thousands of feet out of the water, into the air and bites the plane out of the fucking sky! Not to be outdone, the Giant Octopus’ first order of business is to destroy an oil rig like he’s the Kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean. AND THOSE ARE JUST THE FIRST ATTACKS. The sheer ludicrousness of the entire film only escalates from there. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you spit out your drink so that you can yell “Whaaaaaaaaaat!?” at the screen, then turn to your friend and piss yourselves laughing at it. And no, it doesn’t matter that that may distract you from the film because even if you paid complete attention to the whole thing it would still be poorly-structured, cliché-ridden, horribly acted batshit lunacy that doesn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever.

Yep. This actually happens.

The film does its best to pad out this paper-thin story with a few sub-plots that have about as much business being there as your Grandad does being at a Skrillex concert. There’s a token romance that rears its ugly head about halfway through for seemingly no other reason than the writers couldn’t think of anything else for one of the giant monsters to destroy and they needed to extend the running time. It occurs pretty much out of the fucking blue between our Debbie and ‘Dr. Shimada’, the Japanese scientist she’s working with. That’s the official job title he gives when he introduces himself, by the way. Not 'Marine Biologist' or 'Experimental Physicist' etc. Nope. Scientist. “I’m a scientist. What do I do? SCIENCE!”  They exchange about 4 lines of dialogue about their backstories – well, I say their backstories, but all the guy says is “Me too” to whatever she says, in the flimsiest attempt to establish a rapport with somebody since you tried flirting with your friend’s hot older sibling when you were 13 – before they get down to an uncomfortable love scene. There’s less chemistry going on here with these two than there is in the laughable “science” montage where everyone pours different coloured liquids into beakers and does their best to convince us they aren’t all wondering why the fuck they agreed to be in this movie. There’s also some stuff about a professor being fired, a government official being racist and a nameless submarine crew member pulling a gun on the captain. It’s all pointless but the hilarity of these moments far outweighs the ridiculousness of them, so you become kind of glad that they’re there.

Scientists doing science!

It’s not all so-bad-it’s-good of course, and some of it is just frustratingly terrible. The number of times the screen suddenly flickers into black-and-white vision for half a second then back to colour is funny for a bit and then it just gets on your tits. There’s no need for it to be there and in a film that already looks this terrible it’s actually irritating to see the filmmakers actively trying to make it look worse. Establishing shots that display a caption to show where we are take up probably about 2-3 full minutes of screen time, and they happen so frequently it’s just insulting to the audience’s intelligence. It's not like it matters. Most viewers will spend screen time without the monsters doing something more worthwhile, like watching paint dry or sniffing glue. But overall, it’s worth it to witness what beautiful disaster the rest of the film is. It’s trying really hard, but it just doesn’t know what the hell it’s supposed to do or how – as if it was written by your younger brother after he’d drank 12 cans of Red Bull and just watched Godzilla for the first time.

And that’s where its “so-bad-it’s-good” charm lies. It’s actually trying so hard to make you enjoy yourself that it becomes endearing and you actually do start liking it, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. The characters are clichéd, the plot is thinner than a picture of Kate Moss (ooh pop culture!) and the special effects are terrible. Seriously, they’re woefully bad. For a film that is named after two CGI creatures, you would not believe how poorly put together that footage is. Not only that, but they re-use the same shots of the Shark and Octopus constantly! There’s one sequence where Mega Shark’s fin comes menacingly closer and closer to a boat, but then they re-use the footage and so the shark doesn’t actually gets any closer to the boat, as if he can’t quite decide if he’s hungry for sailors or not (Oh dear, that sounded far more like sexual innuendo than I intended). Just watch the epic final clash between Mega Shark and Giant Octopus and you’ll see what I mean – even the fight the entire movie is based around seems half-assed and poorly edited. The acting is woeful (what else do you expect from Debbie Gibson?), the sets would be better if they’d been drawn in crayon on the wallpaper, and the whole thing is riddled with clichés. The characters, the dialogue – everything! My particular favourite is Debbie’s boss who gives her shit about her conduct at work because he seems to have been lifted from a 1980’s American police Drama.

The epic final battle. Jesus.

Suffice to say, this film is an utter car crash, but a hilarious one. A car crash of two tiny cars filled with fat clowns skidding on a custard pie off a motorway. Wait, that sounds slightly terrifying actually. The point is, if you go in knowing what to expect (and with a title like that you must do) then it’s a complete riot. You’ll laugh uproariously at the hammy acting, wooden dialogue and the general over-the-top shenanigans of the title characters. It’s well worth the £2.99 I paid for the DVD. You’ll have paid more to see worse films. Damn you, Benjamin Button.