Review | The Dark Knight Rises

This trilogy settles... with something hollow. And there are some spoilers in this review.

Inception (revised)

A+ (10.0)


I have been reviewing movies and when I think about film, it is a form of art. And I have done that for almost nine months. And it was hard to look at the film for what it's worth. 


One thing that gets me interested in that movie while watching is if it was based on the value it should give to audiences or if there's something that's has some interesting quality to that movie. The majority of movies I see everyday is based on the second option since I choose what I wanted to see very closely and wisely.


Inception is a huge example.


I have to admit that my initial review of this great movie from last year was way too vague and doesn't make any sense. I didn't like the sentence structure and there were numerous errors based on grammar and also because I didn't explain how good the film was properly. If the review was an essay for either high school or uni, I would've been given a zero.


So here's my opinion of this special movie I will enjoy for countless lifetimes.


I won't give out the plot so here's some snippets of it. Leonardo Dicaprio plays an extractor Cobb who goes into a person's dreams and will either do two things: steal secrets from layers of subconsciousness or plant an idea into someone's subconsciousness that the person will keep forever hence changing his life completely. This is called an Inception. Cobb is hired by a Japanese businessman (Ken Watenabe) to perform Inception on his competitor Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) and he will hire a crew to do this. Ranging from a point man, forger to an architect. Played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy and Ellen Page respectively.


Inception represents one major reason why I go to movies. Before I was analysing film, I go to movies to be entertained. I was entertained and Inception had given me something to do while watching. To think. 


Christopher Nolan had been making this film for almost a decade. Given that there are many science fiction influences towards Inception, influences especially films like 2001: A Space Oddyssey and The Matrix, it has a variety of logic and philosophy that will impact film buffs for years. Nolan had previously bended our minds with his breakout film Memento and Inception have delivered many interpretations since its release. 


What I like about Nolan is that his other gift is to bring a devastating emotion (mostly grief) to the heart of his films. We've seen Guy Pearce playing a widowed amnesiac in Memento, Christian Bale as Batman who is riddled with choice and grief in The Dark Knight, and now to Dicaprio's character Cobb who like Peace and Batman together has dealt to losing his wife (Marion Cottilard) and the decisions he makes with his dream missions. Dicaprio is both charismatic and melodramatic and given how he played the same character in Scorsese's Shutter Island, it is still convincing.


The casting is pretty good. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Ellen Page plays people who look's after Cobb's grief. Page plays therapy with Cobb and does a huge role for this movie. But I reckon that the best person out of the lot is  Marion Cottilard and Tom Hardy who both play the psychotic wife of Cobb and the person who shapeshifts in a dream. Hardy delivers much of the film's comic relief and such while Cotillard plays the confused wife who becomes Cobb's memory and sabotage his missions. There is also a nice cameo from Michael Caine.


Nolan thinks expansive, from the gravity-defying fight scenes to the quasi-looking art set, it feels like I'm in it.


While Nolan's intention is to play games with the audience, how to understand it does not count on the number of viewings. Given the numerous concepts, it should be based on how much you have paid attention to the whole movie. For some people who haven't seen the movie, you should give this movie a try if you not only wanted to like it but to try and make sense. Those people who did are doing the right thing. But the others who dismiss it because it's hard to understand, you're doing the exact opposite.


Nolan has made an impact to the film industry. He defined the reboot for Batman's Begins, invented odd and exciting story structures and created a perfect impact to everyone watching a thrilling movie that will grab you into the screen


When Inception was first released, it was a summer of films recycled from other source material. Inception would be either be a positive sign for Hollywood showing it's redeeming itself or just an exception to this era's laziness in pop culture.


Nolan join the ranks along with David Fincher, Danny Boyle, Jason Reitman and Darren Arronofsky as our best contemporary filmmakers in this time.


From this point on, Inception will be a classic.

Adaptation/Memento

Adaptation


8.9

Within this millenieum, there are a few breakthrough directors coming up to make a movement within the film industry. Those people also directed music videos of breakthrough bands like U2, The White Stripes and The Beastie Boys. They were Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson and so many more.

But in this movie Adaptation, it is directed by Spike Jonze, written by a guy named Charlie Kaufman* and his twin brother Donald (however he isn't real, starring Nicholas Cage as... Charlie Kaufman and his brother.

Adaptation is a black comedy, the story about Charlie Kaufman. After the critical and financial success of Being John Malcovich, Kaufman is assigned to write an adapted screenplay from a real life book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). However he has trouble writing the script since the book has no plot and that he wanted to focus on the concept of the book which is... Yep you guessed it... flowers. His twin brother Donald (the fictional writer of movie hence played by Cage himself) comes along and stay in his house wanting to be a screenwriter like his brother.

Meanwhile, the novelist Susan Orlean comess along to the film and looks at how her book's about to be created, and her relationship of a gentle orchid hunter John Laroche which turns into a romance.

Adaptation has a weird feel on its body. Spike Jonze has this gift into his film with making each scene almost multi layered, it's very hard to comprehend and stars real actors playing real people covering the events happened to them but then neatly contradicts these events of the plot of the film. Kaufman* With a lot on its hand (the script) it curiously explores and contradicts the events of these characters and how challenged they are to finding out what they are. It goes into scenes wildly unpredictable and goes blackly funny like Kaufman unintendingly entering into his own screenplay. The dialogue is almost breathtaking and will either want to love and hate these people at the same time.

The casting is almost flawless. Nichoas Cage is in the best performance of his career (currently he ended up into unrelentless filming) playing Charlie Kaufman and portraying him as a depressed, self loathing, lack of courage label of pessimism. His voice over goes into the mind of Kaufman starting with a monologue and then a scene with him at a dinner table sweating. Cage also execute being the twin Donald as well, with his lines being said distinctively and hilarilously. So you might feel for Charlie some hatred while you will feel likeable to Donald.

Meryl Streep is a delight as Susan Orlean earning her 13th nomination of an Oscar, while Chris Cooper deservedly wins his Oscar as John Laroche being both funny and yet emotionally fractured at the same time.

The title Adaptation means to turn one material into another material. Another meaning is when animals or living species turn into another species with new features. The movie has several meanings and questions we wanted to know and explain what they mean. With many themes being interpreted, it's wildly enjoyable and amazing and with get you close to the edge with this one.

Memento


8.1

Another movie similar to Adaptation is Memento. Like Adaptation, this movie is filled with many layers, it bend your mind almost completely. The difference is (and there are many differences here) that it's Adaptation is a black comedy, Memento is more of a film noir.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, Memento goes in a rewind order where as the ending is the beginning, the beginning is the ending. It starts with an amnesiac named Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) killing a man named Teddy (Joe Pantaloliano). His motive for this killing is that Teddy is John Gammell, the person he wants to kill in revenge for his rape and murder of his wife. Shelby used to be a psychiatist treating a patient named Sammy Davis who has anterograde amnesia, the kind of memory loss where you quickly lost track of recent events, but now he had that condition himself. He's now investigating that murder. Turns out to Shelby and to us that Teddy's not the only person in the game. It also involves a bartender named Natalie (Carrie Anne Moss) who tricks him into thinking that she was helping him with the investigation.

This is Christopher Nolan's magnus opus and I'm not just saying that because the critics said it. It was based on a short story by his younger brother Jonathon and seems immensively trippy and atmospheric. And there are many themes of poignancy, grief, perception, revenge and memory. Even so Nolan's structure of the movie is incredible as the story goes backward to how and why one event suppose to happen. It happens to challenge the audience into what is going on.

The visual of the film is excellent. Each scene starts with black and white and after goes to color. Memento then, by ten minutes, transcends into a film noir with its characterization of the genre with elements like manipulation and identity which leads to a mystery at the same time.

The casting is great. Carrie Anne Moss and Joe Pantaloliano were from the Matrix and it was like Nolan was a fan of that movie and thought "Oh yeah i can have that cast'. Even so they are outstanding in this film and no doubt about that. But Guy Pearce is sublime as the heart of the film. He plays a tragic character who is mentally fractured with this untreatable condition and his narration in many scenes are really creepy by the ears of it.

However Memento is not that perfect. Nolan has directed a really great structure for the movie but at the end of each chapter, it becomes really repetitve.

It's official. Christopher Nolan's is one of 21st Century's visionary directors