The Dark Knight Rises

Audiences for Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy fall into roughly three camps.  There are the devoted/rabid fans, the casual fan that likes blockbusters that aren't always vapid, and those that just can't get past Christian Bale's "Batman Voice."  After seeing The Dark Knight Rises, I'm reasonably sure that this film won't be changing anyone's mind about the series as a whole.  But what about this last chapter, specifically?


The Dark Knight Rises picks up eight years after the end of The Dark Knight.  Does that mean you need to watch The Dark Knight to understand what's going on here?  Well, it doesn't hurt and it gives you an excuse to see Heath Ledger's Joker again, but it's not necessary; it does help the beginning make more sense, though.  Gotham City, once a hellhole of crime and corruption, has now become a safe city, thanks to legislation passed after TDK.  Batman, once a staple in the city's grimy streets, has not been seen since and remains a suspect in a murder he did not commit.  But, other than that, things are just fine.  Instead of spending his evenings with thugs trying to kill him, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has opted to go the Howard Hughes route, avoiding human contact in his mansion and feeling sorry for himself.

He'd put the suit on, but he doesn't want to devalue it by removing the original packaging

Meanwhile, a series of seemingly unconnected crimes and shady business activities prove to be the work of a single mastermind: Bane (Tom Hardy).  Bane claims to be the heir of Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and the leader of the League of Shadows.  What does that mean to folks that haven't seen or don't remember Batman Begins?  Bane wants to destroy Gotham City and the dude has, like, ninjas on his side.  Or random street thugs.  Whatever.  Oh, and this time, it's personal --- Batman (more or less) killed Ra's, so Bane is gunning for the Bat.  But first, Bane wants Batman to suffer.  All the advantages Batman has had in the past --- his brains, his brawn, his skill, and his money --- are negated as Bane either removes them from the equation or one-ups Bats.  AND Bane holds the entire city hostage with a fusion bomb.

AND Bane insists on leading when they dance

Things look pretty bleak.  Then again, you have to fall before you can rise, I guess.

The recognizable cast in The Dark Knight Rises swells from past entries, but I generally liked the focus on the core plot and not the characters.  Once again, Christian Bale is Batman/Bruce Wayne.  I think Bale did another great job embodying the odd personality of Bruce Wayne; he conveys the mix of privilege and riches with determination and psychosis quite well.  I've never been crazy about his "Batman Voice," but I generally like his portrayal of the Bat.  Anne Hathaway has a sizable supporting role as Selina Kyle (NOT Catwoman) and she was far better than I had expected.  It's not that I doubted Hathaway's acting skills, but I didn't buy into her costume in the promotional footage.

As it turns out, I actually didn't mind the costume at all, in the context of the film, and I liked the quasi-femme fatale qualities of her character.  However, Batman is the greatest superhero because he has the greatest villains, and TDKR had a lot to live up to after Ledger's Oscar-winning performance in the last film.  I wouldn't say that Tom Hardy's Bane steps entirely out of that shadow, but he was pretty damn awesome.  The character design was very cool and Hardy managed to be both physically intimidating and a believable mastermind.  You can argue that Bane sounded like someone doing a Sean Connery impression through a broken vocoder --- and you would be correct --- but I enjoyed the dialogue I understood (roughly 60%) enough to not mind the bits I missed, kind of like my attitude toward Brad Pitt's accent in Snatch.

Sadly, Bane never says "Man talk, baby" in his Robo-Connery voice

Joseph Gordon-Levitt shows up to play a beat cop that sees value in the moral space between Batman and Commissioner Gordon.  Marion Cotillard also has a small, key part.  While neither of these actors stole their scenes, their parts were clearly there to fill thematic purposes, and they played them well.  As for how necessary their characters were...well, if you're going to include them and not make the story as a whole suffer, then this is the way to do it.  Gary Oldman returns as Commissioner Gordon and I thought this was his best work with the character yet.  Morgan Freeman also returned, although in a greatly diminished capacity.  Similarly, Michael Caine once again played Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, Alfred, but he isn't in very much of the film at all.  There are a few other noteworthy bit parts --- Matthew Modine is a useless cop, Liam Neeson briefly reprises Ra's Al Ghul, the guy whose face was digitally removed in The Social Network (Josh Pence) played a young Ra's, and Cillian Murphy returns because...well, just because.

However, the acting in a superhero movie is really secondary to the spectacle.  As much as I enjoyed Tom Hardy here --- and I did, quite a lot --- this is a Big Movie, made for IMAX, and it shows.  The largely practical effects in The Dark Knight Rises were excellent.  The opening scene with the plane being destroyed and the shots of the bridges being blown were my personal favorite visual moments (aside from Bane tossing aside the broken Batman mask), and that ignores the vastly improved Bat-cycle and Bat-plane scenes.

Where do you park that thing?

The action scenes are solid and large in scope, but this series has never been about intricate fight scenes as much as it has been about Batman being a scary bastard.  But with Bane outdoing Batman, does that really work this time?

"I'm not internationally know, but I'm known to rock the microphone"

Director Christopher Nolan did a great job bringing this trilogy to a close.  It ties in with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but has an identity of its own.  The camerawork is good, the big scenes feel huuuge, and this epic sequel managed to hold onto that epic feeling throughout.  As a comic nerd, I appreciated the choices made with a lot of the characters and I was impressed with how many classic Batman ideas were included in this story without it feeling disjointed or suffering from the (lower case "b") bane of superhero sequels: too many villains.  More than anything else, Nolan crafted a tale that is as realistic as a Batman movie can be and actually concludes logical character arcs.  Is this as good as the excellent (but flawed) The Dark Knight?  Maybe not quite, but it's damn close.

Here's the biggest problem with the film, though: there isn't a lot of Batman in this Batman movie.  This is a great story about Bruce Wayne, the man inside the suit, but it is not the quintessential Batman movie.  That's fine by me and was obviously a conscious choice by the filmmakers, but it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.  Yes, Bruce Wayne overcomes personal and physical obstacles in his quest for victory, but there are not nearly as many moments here where the Batman seems truly bad-ass.  You can also make a valid argument that time was an enemy in this film, specifically its liberal use.  The time gap between TDK and TDKR is fine, for the most part, but it raises some interesting questions.  For starters, just how low was Alfred willing to see Wayne sink before telling him about that letter?  The best detective in the city, Gordon, never tried to identify Batman?  Even a rookie could (and did) figure that out --- just look for the guy who can afford all those wonderful toys.

"This Batmobile piece reads 'Property of Wayne Enterprises.'  Hmm..."

And the convenience of the fusion bomb's countdown nearly matching Wayne's recovery period was a bit much.  And how did a penniless Bruce Wayne get from Hell's Toilet, Middleeasternistan, to the US, much less inside the isolated Gotham?  And if removing his mask puts Bane in unbearable agony, how does he manage to maintain such a perfectly smooth shaved head?

A: he has a mohawk ponytail underneath the center strap

So, no, it's not perfect.  Hell, it's not even that fun to watch; it is 2:44 of gritty angst.  It is, however, a fantastic end to a trilogy.   It could have been better if we saw Batman outsmart Bane instead of just punching him in the face, but the scope was so epic that I didn't mind the second Death Star that Batman solved his problems by punching harder.  I will go so far as to say that The Dark Knight Rises is the single best movie to date that features Batman.  I may like The Dark Knight a little better, but the flaws are fewer and less important in this film.  This is also one of the few trilogy endings that actually delivered; I would put this above Return of the Jedi, but below Return of the King and Slap Shot 3: The Junior League. 

To put it another way, The Dark Knight Rises might not have a lot of Batman in it, but it gets to the core of what makes Batman great; Batman is the single greatest superhero for many reasons, but his legacy, influence, and punk rock DIY attitude toward justice shine through here.  In the hands of just about any other filmmakers, the last few scenes of this movie might have come across as a cheap teaser for the next sequel.  Instead, Nolan & Co. closed the Bruce Wayne chapter appropriately, even if the story still goes on.  This unexpectedly became less about Bruce Wayne as Batman and more about Batman as an abstract idea.  I wasn't expecting that, and I found that approach very satisfying from a film and comic nerd perspective.

And if you really just can't get past Bale's "Batman Voice," enjoy this clip from Attack of the Show.  I think it captures the ridiculousness of The Voice rather well.

Billion Dollar Brain

I'm a pretty huge James Bond fan.  It all stems from an overnight hospital stay I had as a teenager that happened to coincide with a James Bond marathon on TV; since then, I have seen every Bond at least four times.  This love of James Bond has transferred into a love for the spy genre, both in books and on film.  John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum (in my mind) provide the same level of enjoyment as Derek Flint and Peter Joshua (AKA Alexander Dyle, AKA Adam Canfield, AKA Brian Cruikshank).  Let's just say that I can appreciate spy movies that are serious, campy, or just plain fun.  With that in mind, you might understand my shock when I learned that Michael Caine --- a man who will act in almost anything you ask him to --- starred in a pentalogy (!) of spy movies that I had never heard of.  Even more surprising to me was that most of these films were contemporary to the Sean Connery Bond movies.  Am I just culturally ignorant?  Possibly.  Or is the Harry Palmer spy trilogy just not good enough to have a legacy?

Answer me, you cocky Cockney bastard!

Billion Dollar Brain begins with Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) working as a private detective instead of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  That doesn't last long, though.  Harry receives a mysterious job from a robotic-sounding voice over the phone; he is to take a package to a certain person in Helsinki, Finland.  Coincidentally, my wife (Wifey Vs. Movies, as her family refers to her) once spent a year in Helsinki, but somehow missed Michael Caine.  Anyway, Palmer takes the job, but it's not just a simple delivery.  No, in Helsinki, he meets a beautiful and cryptic Russian babe (Francoise Dorleac) who guides him to his next destination.

Such are the perils of espionage

Along the way, MI5 show up and tell Harry that he needs to pretend to be a double agent to foil the plans of whoever he was hired by.  It turns out that Palmer's contact is an old American spy friend, Leo (Karl Malden).  Like Harry, Leo has quit the employ of his country and is enjoying free enterprise.  The big difference between them is that Leo takes his orders from a super-smart computer, which tells him who to hire for what job, who lives and who dies.

Yeah, I'd take my glasses off, too, in the company of naked Karl Malden

It also turns out that Harry's delivery package is a box of eggs, which carry a ridiculously deadly disease inside them.  Why eggs?  Why not?  But why is Leo taking orders from a machine?  Well, it seems that Leo is working for a crazy Texas billionaire (Ed Begley) who wants to fight Communism.  Billionaires are the most likely people to build billion-dollar computers, so there's you answer.  Can Harry prevent World War III?  Maybe, but the story gets much more convoluted than you might expect.

As far as the acting goes, Billion Dollar Brain is decent.  I was surprised at how charmless the Harry Palmer character was; well, he had a British accent (which goes a long way in America), but the character was fairly blank in this film.  I don't blame Michael Caine for this, because I believe he did a good job given his role, but the script just didn't make Harry very likable.  Karl Malden did a solid job as the conniving, yet workmanlike Leo.  Toward the end, his character got kind of silly, but I blame the script more than Malden here.  Ed Begley was hilariously over the top as the crazy Texan.  If there was a couch in a scene, you can assume he chewed it apart.  While his character was utterly ridiculous, he provided a much-needed jolt in the arm for the film and helped make the final third of the movie silly, but enjoyable.  As for Francoise Dorleac, she's reeeel purrty.  Aside from that...well, she's purrty.

"Ridiculous?!?  I'll 'ridiculous' you...!"

So, how about the direction?  Well, this is definitely better than the last Ken Russell film I watched.  To be fair, though, almost anything is better than the film adaptation of Tommy.  Honestly, I wasn't very impressed with Russell's work here.  He did a decent enough job with the actors, but the story is pretty thin and his editing doesn't make it any easier to understand.  This is a story of double- and triple-crosses, but Russell never really goes very deep into the tension that would normally accompany deep-cover operations.  Instead, he plays up the silliness of Ed Begley.  He does that very well, but it's at odds with the tone of the rest of the film.  Billion Dollar Brain is simply an example of an under-directed film.

"Okay, Michael...your motivation is...um...it's cold.  Action!"

Is there anything as sad as a spy movie that doesn't have a coherent plot?  Well, yes, if you want to get all "big picture" on me, but in terms of spy movies, the answer is "no."  Harry Palmer doesn't know exactly what he's supposed to be doing for a decent portion of this film, which makes it awfully difficult for the audience to follow his logic.  Harry's working as a double agent for somebody who is double-crossing a madman, while there is another double-agent involved...and several supporting characters die for little or no reason.  I might accept the random plot holes and ridiculousness if the main character's charisma was enough to help this movie coast to the finish, but Harry Palmer is not very impressive in this film.  Aside from Caine's Cockney accent, Palmer doesn't have much personality.  While this may be the third movie in the series, the inherent coolness of Harry Palmer must be established early and often to forgive story weaknesses of this magnitude.  Billion Dollar Brain does not do that.

That is not to say that Billion Dollar Brain is worthless.  Even a script-hampered Michael Caine can be entertaining, and he goes through enough of the motions to make this film seem like more of an adventure than it really is.  In fact, the final third of the film almost serves as a template for the silliness that the Roger Moore Bonds would become infamous for.  This isn't a good spy movie, or even a good regular movie.  It is mildly entertaining, though, and probably better than the third installment of most film series. 

Harry Brown

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for stories about bad-asses that have given up their violent ways, only to have circumstances back them into a corner where they have to murder defeat a hell of a lot of people.  That's the basic plot to almost every good martial arts film, let alone the Rambo series and countless other action movies.  But what how long can a bad-ass retire from bad-assery and still have what it takes to get the job done?

Harry Brown (Michael Caine) lives in a bad neighborhood in South London; he lives in a housing estate, which is the British version of a low-income housing development.  There is a lot of graffiti, youth gangs openly deal drugs and regularly assault people without provocation.  It's a generally scummy place.  Harry visits his comatose wife in the hospital daily, and then goes to the pub to have a few pints with his best friend, Leonard (David Bradley), over some chess.  Even there, though, social decay can be seen; the pub's owner, Sid (Liam Cunningham), gets kickbacks from drug dealers/stolen merchandise vendors.  To be honest, it's not a particularly sunny look on old age.

If time flies when you're having fun, I bet the clock hasn't moved in years.

A pair of unrelated tragedies shake Harry up.  First, Harry receives a phone call from the hospital, urging him to rush over for his wife's final moments; he leaves the house, but opts not to take the gang member-filled underpass that would save him time (assuming he doesn't get robbed, beaten, or killed) and winds up just missing her death.  Almost immediately after, Leonard tells Harry that he can't handle living in constant fear any more, and he has taken to carrying an old bayonet tip for protection.  The very next day, Detective Inspector Frampton (Emily Mortimer) and Detective Sergeant Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles) arrive at Harry's door with the news of Leonard's death.  Local gang members are suspected, but no charges are made.  With nothing left to lose, Harry (consciously or subconsciously at first) prepares to take out his frustrations on the scumbags that caused them.

You can't to the "That's not a knife..." bit if the other guy is senile

As luck would have it, Harry Brown used to be a Royal Marine who had fought in the urban areas of Northern Ireland forty years ago.  What can an elderly marine do against a youth culture that is starting to resemble the ultra-violence of A Clockwork Orange?  If nothing else, he can prove that an out-of-practice bad-ass almost always has the edge over hot-headed idiots. 

He may look grandfatherly, but he's not here to tuck you in

While I wouldn't say that the acting in Harry Brown is fantastic, there were no bad performances in the bunch.  Michael Caine can be awfully hit-and-miss due to his mercenary attitude toward taking roles, but he's good here.  His portrayal of Harry is a depressing one, and he is fueled less by rage and revenge (as is common in this type of film) and more by despair.  His gang member counterpart is played by Ben Drew, AKA British musician Plan B.  I thought he was pretty good as a thuggish nogoodnik, although his character wasn't particularly complex.  Emily Mortimer was fine as the only cop that actually figures out what is happening in the film, and she has more than her share of good small moments.  Her character's motivations seemed to be more than just doing her job, but no insight was ever really given to her character; I think that was a missed opportunity. This was the first time I had ever seen David Bradley outside of a Harry Potter film, and he was okay in his small part.  The only other actor that stood out to me was Iain Glen as an insincere and mildly incompetent superior police officer.  There were a number of small character roles for street thugs, but none of them were terribly developed.

Kids, don't do drugs

Harry Brown is Daniel Barber's first feature film, although it is worth noting that he received an Oscar nomination for his only other credit, a short film.  Barber did a good job with the cast, getting realistic performances out of a story that could have occasionally been over the top.  I liked the action in the film --- it looked good and painful, and none of the characters appeared to be accomplishing anything unrealistic.  I was surprised that my biggest take-away from the film did not involve Michael Caine's performance.  Instead, I was impressed by how frightening the youth gang members were.  The opening scenes, featuring a gang initiation and some random violence set the tone for the movie.

The only real problem I have with Harry Brown is that it is retreading familiar ground.  The obvious comparison is to Death Wish (the first one, not the ridiculous sequels), where a good man takes steps to fix what the law cannot (or will not) fix.  Harry Brown isn't as focused on its action sequences or the brutality of the hero (as in Man on Fire, Taken, Law Abiding Citizen, or Edge of Darkness).  Instead it focuses on the despair of the main character, kind of like Death Sentence.  Of course, this movie also features an elderly man killing a number of younger men on his path to vengeance, which is awfully similar to The Limey.

I've seen this scene before.  I bet the sleazy arms-n-drug dealer lives.

I'm totally okay with Harry Brown being just another revenge movie.  What I didn't like was the conscious effort to make this movie sad.  Harry's situation is hopeless and there is no real happy ending for an old man who is alone in the world, since he's unlikely to start over somewhere new.  Seriously, this feels less like a revenge movie and more like suicide-by-gang-member.  This isn't a movie that glamorizes or glorifies violence, either.  It's a fairly realistic look at the probable effects of vigilantism in a crime-heavy area.  While this makes Harry Brown unique, it also makes it one of the more depressing revenge movies out there.  It was well-made, but is kind of a downer.

When I discovered that the main thug in the movie was a British pop star, I checked his credits and found a music video from the Harry Brown soundtrack.  This is Chase & Status ft. Plan B - End Credits.  It's not my cup of tea, but it is very British.

Jaws: The Revenge

Wow.  Just...wow.  The fourth and (presumably) final installment in the Jaws series, Jaws: The Revenge, is quite possibly the absolute lowest point in the history of movie franchises.  Sure, there are a handful of worse movies out there, but the difference is quality between this and the original Jaws is staggering.  Is there a greater drop off in quality between a great film and its sequel?  I don't think so, but please leave a comment if you have a better nomination for the crown.  Oh, and before I forget to mention it, this review contains SPOILERS, because you should never ever ever want to watch this movie without knowing exactly what you are getting yourself into.

The first sign we have that something is going to go horribly wrong with this movie can be seen during the opening credits.  No, I'm not referring to the fact that Mario Van Peebles has high billing, although that is another bad sign.  I'm talking about SharkVision.  You know how, in the original Jaws and in many other horror movies, the camera assumes the Point of View of the killer?  Well, here the camera is underwater at times, which makes sense from SharkVision; however, the camera then lifts out of the water so that it can see clearly, just above the waves, and it spends most of its time in this position.  Let's just assume that SharkVision is the intended purpose of these shots...does that mean that this shark swims while floating on top of the ocean?  Wouldn't that mean that the beast couldn't breathe?  And wouldn't that make it a hell of a lot easier for the locals to kill?  I hope that is the intended inference I am supposed to draw from that camera work, because the alternative is that the shark has its eyes on its dorsal fin.

The presumed pre-production shark model

Anyways, it is almost Christmas time on Amity Island, where all these movies take place.  Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) has been living with her son, Sean, and his wife ever since her husband (Roy Scheider's character) died between movies.  Lucky bastard.  Sean, like his dad, is a local policeman and one night he is given the task of retrieving a broken piece of the dock that is stuck to a dinghy in Amity harbor.  It's the last emasculating chore he will ever have to do; as he reaches for the floating wood from the safety of his boat, a giant great white shark pops out of the water and bites his arm clean off.  It's frighteningly realistic, too; it positively doesn't look like a guy who pulled his arm out of his sleeve and is just pretending that the arm is gone, and that he simply has an arm-shaped tumor beneath his shirt.  He doesn't have to live with that tumor long, though, because the shark eats him (and a decent part of his boat) almost immediately.

When his body is discovered, Ellen immediately realizes what has happened.  The shark that didn't actually ever kill anyone in her family before is now targeting her family.  I'm not joking.  That is her conclusion, and that is the premise of this film.  Do yourself a favor and turn the movie off NOW.  Ellen's other son, Michael, comes to Amity for the funeral with his wife and daughter and invites Ellen to spend some time with them in their island home in the Bahamas.  She agrees.  The end.

But wait...there's more!  Apparently, the shark was notified that the Brodys were leaving Amity and it decides to follow them to the Bahamas.  Wow, that's pretty unbelievable.  What is completely unbelievable is that the shark arrives maybe a day or two after the Brodys.  Yes, a great white shark traveled 1200+ nautical miles --- and entered into waters where great white sharks don't live, mind you --- just to kill off Ellen Brody's bloodline.  Again, this is the professionally-written story.  People were paid to come up with this.

In the Bahamas, the shark tries to eat Michael, but fails and quits, because a shark that traveled 1200 miles to taste Brody meat is going to give up after four minutes.  Before the shark disappears, Michael manages to tag it with a device that reads the shark's heartbeat; the louder the beat, the closer the shark is.  That might seem like an oddly specific tool for Michael to randomly have at his disposal, but only if you haven't self-medicated by this point in the movie.  As an added treat, Mario Van Peebles has a very "authentic" Jamaican accent, mon.

Only one of these characters dies in this movie.

After getting its heartbeat measured, the shark somehow figures out A) that Ellen has a granddaughter and B) who she is and C) where she is and D) exactly when she will take her first dip in the ocean after returning from Massachusetts.  The result?

Oh.  My.  GAWD!  It's eating Tommy Shaw from Styx!

  The stupid shark misses the granddaughter (she's in the pink) and eats somebody else!  When Michael finds out that his daughter has been near a shark attack (she wasn't actually harmed, mind you), his response is, "I should have known..."  Instead of telling him that nobody can predict shark attacks, Mike's wife screams at him something along the lines of "YOU KNEW AND DIDN'T TELL US?!?!?"  What, that a shark was in the ocean?  Go figure!  In any other instance, I would ask what is wrong with these idiots.  Unfortunately, they are correct to be paranoid, because the shark is after them.  It's not paranoia if somebody's really out to get you your script is really that insultingly stupid.

Meanwhile, Ellen has been rediscovering the single life with a local pilot (Michael Caine, who was infamously filming this instead of accepting his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters) when she hears the news of her granddaughter's not-shark attack.  Ellen does the only logical thing the script allows her to do --- she steals her son's boat, heads into the ocean, and plans to kill the shark with...um...well...she doesn't bring any weapons, so...kindness is my best guess.  How's she going to find the shark?  The answer to that is, and I quote, "It will find her."  Oh.  Okay.  Sure.  That makes sense.  Here is the original ending of the film, which was later changed for the theatrical release because audiences didn't like it:

Now, you're probably thinking, "No kidding, they didn't like that ending --- sharks don't roar!"  You have no idea.  What they ended up doing for the final cut was keep most of that ending (roars included) and changed what happened when the boat hits the shark.  As soon as they make contact, the shark explodes for absolutely no conceivable reason.  And that was the ending that test audiences liked more.

I just don't know what else to say about this movie.  I am disappointed in everybody involved, naturally.  I've seen other Joseph Sargent movies that have been both entertaining and good, but this is inept in every possible way.  Aside from the insultingly ridiculous story, the terrible cinematography, and the poor use of actors, the editing of the shark attacks makes it impossible to understand what is happening; you are left to infer what you saw, based on the aftermath.

The acting is painfully bad, although Michael Caine seemed to be having a good time.  He must have been drunk.  When he is asked about this movie, he usually gives a response something along the lines of it being the movie that gave him an island vacation, paid for a new house, and he won an Oscar while filming it, to boot.  Michael Caine is a glass half-full kind of guy, apparently.  Everyone else is B-movie quality at best.  The worst, though, was whoever played Sean.  There is a scene where he is trying to leave the police station to go home for Christmas Eve or whatever; he keeps walking out the door, but six or seven seconds after he closes the door, the police receptionist shouts "Hold it!"  You would think that it would take at least six seconds for him to walk back in again (probably more, if you factor in reaction time and rolling his eyes), but he opens the door almost immediately each time she does this...almost as if he wasn't really leaving the station, but just waiting for a cue to deliver his lines.

There are just two more things I want to touch on before I drown my memories of this movie with scotch.  The first is Ellen's unmistakable sixth sense.  When her family is attacked, she somehow knows; she has a shark sense.  Nobody mentions this, but it is an accepted fact in this movie.  The second is that Ellen has flashbacks to shark attacks just before she mysteriously blows the shark to hell.  The first clip is of Sean dying (which she wasn't there to see).  The second is of the shark not really attacking her granddaughter (for which she was way too far away to actually see anything).  The third was of her late husband preparing to not-quite kill the shark at the climax of the first Jaws (which she wasn't present for).  That is some memory she has, isn't it?

I would give this movie zero stars, but the exploding shark bit was too funny to hate.  It is the second-best (or worst, depending on you point of view) movie I have seen with an exploding shark, after Adam West's Batman: The Movie.

Now, I can understand people that want to watch bad movies and laugh at them.  There is a lot to laugh at in Jaws: The Revenge, but it's more conceptual humor than laughing at what the characters say or do in the film.  Well, except for the exploding shark, that is too awesome for words.  Because the ideas are funnier than watching the movie itself, I give this movie the Lefty Gold rating of

By the way, there has only been one shark attack fatality in Massachusetts in recorded history, and that was over 80 years ago.  Just FYI.

Inception

Christopher Nolan obviously has a fascination with the notion of reality.  In Memento, he focused on how our memories shape us and how we shape our memories.  In The Prestige, he looked at the power of illusion.  Now, with Inception, Nolan ditches the pretenses and goes for broke; this film delves into the world of dreams.

In this story, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a corporate spy with a unique modus operandi: he enters dreams with his intended victims and steal their ideas right out of their minds, a process called extraction.  Inception is the flip side of that coin; instead of stealing an idea, you plant one.  Just as it is far easier to destroy than to create, it is far more difficult to perform inception than extraction.  Indeed, Cobb's partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and others insist that inception is absolutely impossible.  However, after botching a job, their intended victim, Saito (Ken Watanabe), makes them an offer they can't refuse.  If they successfully perform inception and convince his corporate rival's heir, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), to dismantle his father's massive corporation, Saito will pay everyone handsomely and give Cobb access to the only thing he truly wants --- his family.

There's more to it than that --- a lot more --- but I can't simplify it and still do the story justice.  I can, however, marvel at the unique story elements.  This is a very intelligent story that has been thought through from start to finish.  To pull off the inception, Cobb and his crew design several elaborate dreamscapes and they layer the dreams one inside of another inside of another.  So, they all go to sleep and go into the shared dreamscape, and then they go to sleep in that dream and then go to sleep in the next dream to reach that third layer.  Does that sound complicated?  Well, wait.  Each layer of dream has a different concept of time.  In the first layer, five minutes of real-world time equals an hour of dream time.  In the second layer, that becomes ten hours, in the third, a hundred.  What makes that notion interesting is the fact that the dreamers have some level of awareness with the level above them; like someone that has water dripping on them might dream of drowning, these characters are affected by what is happening around their sleeping bodies.  There is an extended sequence where a car is falling, for instance, and the next dream layer has everyone floating in mid-air because their bodies are all asleep in the falling car in the dream layer above.  What only takes a few seconds (a falling car) feels like several minutes to those dreamers.  That opens up a lot of layered storytelling possibilities and introduces some tricky timing, and Christopher Nolan did a great job making each layer work.

While this is more of a psychological thriller than anything else, Inception has its share of solid action sequences.  There is a surprising amount of gunfire in the movie and a lot of full-contact driving sequences.  These are nice, but that should come as no surprise from the director of The Dark Knight.  The movie's uniqueness is shown primarily in a great scene where Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights in a hallway with no consistent gravity.  It's not a particularly flashy scene, and Gordon-Levitt doesn't come across as ridiculously bad-ass or anything, but it's a wonderful illustration of the possibilities available in the dream worlds.

Something that surprised me about this film was the emotional content.  Clever ideas and good action are nothing particularly new to Nolan because his movies are all about the plot.  Honestly, I don't think I've seen an incredible acting performance in his movies, aside from the notable exception of Heath Ledger.  That diligence to the story usually sacrifices any true emotional attachment.  Here, though, we are given two distinct and satisfying stories with heart.  On the one hand, we have Robert Fischer, who felt like a disappointment to his empire-building father (Pete Postlethwaite).  By the film's end, though, there is a genuine moment between the two; the fact that the moment was completely engineered by Cobb and his crew doesn't negate the scene's emotion.  On the other hand, we have Cobb.  He has been dealing with intense loss and guilt for a while, to a degree that is affecting (and infecting) his work.  When he finally confronts the manifestation of his guilt, there are a few minutes that acknowledge the importance and limitations of dreams, and these moments are the core of the story.  If that scene had felt forced or flat, the whole movie would have seemed like a clever piece of filmmaking, but not an important work.  And this is undoubtedly an important film.

What is odd in a movie filled with oddness is the absence of any truly charismatic character.  Leonardo DiCaprio does a very good job as Cobb, willing to risk his sanity and that of his friends just to see his family again.  The character is smart, but flawed, and DiCaprio (who I think is a good actor that is smart enough to work with great directors) gives his best performance in recent memory.  He is the heart and brains of the story and he deserves recognition for how well he carried this film.  Of course, his performance would have been wasted without someone of equal talent in his scenes.  Marion Cotillard turns in a varied and emotional performance, alternately cooing with love or screaming with hate.  DiCaprio's performance required someone to react to him, and Cotillard played her part well.  Her performance is somewhat hampered by the limitations placed on her character, but she still was able to convey a lot of emotion.

The rest of the cast is good, but their characters are not as integral to the plot as DiCaprio's or Cotillard's.  Cillian Murphy has the next most emotionally complicated role, and he does it well.  Resentment is often a trait that makes characters unsympathetic, but he is able to show that emotion and still come across as someone in need.  Ellen Page acts as the story's point-of-view character, the character least familiar with the dreamscape.  Her scenes are primarily used to show off the possibilities of dreams, and her character acts as Cobb's conscience.  It's not a terribly complex role for Page, but her character still seems well developed.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns in another subtle performance as the matter-of-fact member of Cobb's team, but he shows personality in a few brief scenes that help change him from just another character into someone you're rooting for.  Tom Hardy is appealing as the rogue of the group as well.  The rest of the cast has more limited roles, either because of screen time, or because of their character's role.  Still, Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger and Lukas Haas all add something to their roles that make them feel more substantial than they are.

This film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan.  I've already mentioned how clever the story is, but it's worth mentioning again.  This is a smart screenplay that has heart and some humor.  Most importantly, though, this is a unique story.  You can argue that it shares some similarities with Dark City or The Matrix because it plays with the notion of reality, but Inception is a lot deeper than that and is better in almost every way than any movie with a similar conceit.  The acting is full of competent performances, but it is noteworthy that this is the first time Nolan has been able to capture this much honest emotion on film.  The cinematography is good for the most part, with a few truly exceptional scenes that show the potential of the plot.  I think this is Nolan's best work to date.

The one thing it lacks is an extraordinary character.  I find it odd that a movie with so many bigger-than-life moments has characters that are all essentially normal.  Well, except for the entering people's dreams thing.  I can see the importance of having DiCaprio, Cotillard, and Page as regular folks, but I think an opportunity was missed by having Hardy do the same.  Hardy was somewhat sarcastic, but I think his character would have been a little more appealing if he had been a little more of...I don't know...maybe a lovable bastard; he was only a few steps away from the guy you like to hang out with, but wouldn't trust alone with your sister, but those few steps can make a big difference for supporting characters.

That is just me nit-picking, though.  This is a visually interesting, intellectually fascinating movie with good direction and acting.  It has a good ending, too, but it's better seen than read.  I expected to enjoy this movie because I like so many of the people involved, but this turned out to be the best new release I have seen in a few years.