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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 4, 2017 8:08:01 GMT
Discussion, articles, video essays, your personal reviews, etc.
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 12, 2017 23:33:01 GMT
From: The Lesson of ‘Logan’: Superhero Sagas Are Better When They’re Real Movies; by Owen Gleiberman, 2017: From the moment “The Dark Knight” was released — and let’s be clear, it wasn’t exactly preordained that Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film was going to be a culture-quaking smash, the rare movie that transcends mere monster-hit status — what everyone was talking about, apart from Heath Ledger’s performance, was the film’s distinctive quality of working like a 1970s thriller. The opening bank heist set the tone: We were in a dank gritty urban universe that happened to have Batman within it, rather than a gothic-playground “Batman universe” that could just make up its own rules. Ledger’s performance was part of that. The actor evoked the tormented audacity of Marlon Brando, but part of his commitment is that the Joker — for the first time ever — seemed an honest-to-God psycho, a seriously sick wreck of a human being playing a supervillain. He was all the things we want the Joker to be (scary, flamboyant, ghoulishly witty, a maimed agent of chaos), but the ultimate reason he was all of those things is that he seemed real.
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 28, 2017 6:11:32 GMT
The Manohla Dargis review, NYtimes: After seven years and two films that have pushed Batman ever deeper into the dark, the director Christopher Nolan has completed his postmodern, post-Sept. 11 epic of ambivalent good versus multidimensional evil with a burst of light. As the title promises, day breaks in “The Dark Knight Rises,” the grave and satisfying finish to Mr. Nolan’s operatic bat-trilogy. His timing couldn’t be better. As the country enters its latest electoral brawl off screen, Batman (Christian Bale) hurtles into a parallel battle that booms with puppet-master anarchy, anti-government rhetoric and soundtrack drums of doom-
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Bruce-Batman swoops into an intrigue that circles back to the first film and brings the series to a politically resonant conclusion that fans and op-ed bloviators will argue over long after this one leaves theaters. Once again, like his two-faced opponents and the country he’s come to represent, Batman begins, feared as a vigilante, revered as a hero.
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The accomplished Mr. Bale continues to keep Batman at a remove with a tight performance that jibes with Mr. Nolan’s head-over-heart filmmaking.
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Post by RhodoraO on Apr 10, 2017 22:11:13 GMT
The brief, witty Michael Musto review (The Village Voice): www.villagevoice.com/blogs/the-dark-knight-rises-and-i-sit-down-to-review-it-6368664The third and last of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, the film is dark and ominous and portentous and sometimes lugubrious, rarely letting a laugh or some lightness get in the way of the driving plot.
In fact, Nolan seems to have so much passion for the goings-on it's almost like he believes he's presenting a true story, not a fanciful tale of superheroism and vengeance.
Everyone on earth is in this, and as the time went by, I spotted four Oscar winners, three nominees, and the guy from Suddenly Susan!
Christian Bale doesn't dominate as much as you'd think, but he radiates the proper poignancy and conscience, while Anne Hathaway mercifully doesn't play into any stereotypical meowing and purring--she's subtle and effective, and manages a couple of the only laugh lines.
Tom Hardy is the bad guy with the steel mask and the disembodied voice, all based on Bain Capital, I'm sure.
There's gadgetry and much talking and a lot of gloom about saving Gotham City, and it leads up to an ending that I won't reveal since you know you're going to see this whether it's really good for you or not.
And by the way, Nolan insisted on avoiding 3D, which is refreshing.
Instead, you can see it in IMAX, which is just the kind of grandiosity this kind of downbeat escapism deserves.
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