Movie Review: Dunkirk

Dunkirk  **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Christopher Nolan.

Written by: Christopher Nolan.

Starring: Fionn Whitehead (Tommy), Mark Rylance (Mr. Dawson), Tom Hardy (Farrier), Jack Lowden (Collins), Kenneth Branagh (Commander Bolton), Harry Styles (Alex), Cillian Murphy (Shivering Soldier), Aneurin Barnard (Gibson), Tom Glynn-Carney (Peter), Tom Nolan (Lieutenant), James D'Arcy (Colonel Winnant), Matthew Marsh (Rear Admiral).

 

It can be hard to do anything truly new when it comes to War movies – one of the oldest genres in cinema, and in many ways one that hasn’t changed all that much over the years – except in the techniques that directors use to capture the life and death struggle of men at war. Christopher Nolan’s wonderful Dunkirk comes as close as anything in the last couple of decades (perhaps as far back as 1998 – when Spielberg made Saving Private Ryan – a film that many have tried to outdo in terms of pure carnage, and Terrence Malick made The Thin Red Line, a less influential, but greater, more meditative film). The evacuation of Dunkirk has become the stuff of legend in England – where, with the help of civilian vessels, the British armed forced evacuated hundreds of thousands of their soldiers, feared doomed, from the beaches in France before they could be captured or slaughtered by the rapidly advancing Germans. Nolan undeniably concentrates almost solely on the Brits – the French, also on the beach, are almost a nuisance, the Germans, a mostly invisible threat. The film thrillingly, and daringly, combines three different stories, over three different time periods, into one visceral and exciting package. Nolan, whose films in the past could be accused of being bloated, doesn’t leave an ounce of fat on Dunkirk – which runs under two hours, and uses every minute perfectly.

 

Nolan quickly establishes the three timelines - a week on the beach with the soldiers waiting to be rescued, a day on a private yacht, driven by a good Samaritan, his son and his son’s friend, who are sailing across the channel to pick up as many soldiers as possible – just one of countless others who did the same – and one hour in the plane of a RAF fighter pilot, trying his best to shoot down as many German planes as possible, before they can slaughter his countrymen. Nolan ratchets up the tension in all three timelines, until they come together in thrilling fashion in the closing minutes of the film.

 

If you are looking for a wide overview of the evacuation of Dunkirk, this really isn’t that film. This is a film that lives in that minute by minute, on-the-ground terror of the various people spends time with. The beach scenes center on Tommy (newcomer Fionn Whitehead), although if his name is actually spoken in the film, I missed it. He is just one thousands of men – and Nolan deliberately blends many of these young men together (seriously, they all look the same) because theirs isn’t a story so much of individuals, but all of them. If that sounds to you like it could result in a cold, less emotionally connected film – you’d be wrong. While it’s true that Tommy – and the many young men who accompany him – aren’t particularly well developed, they don’t need to be – and you do feel that overwhelming anxiety in them. The other two stories are more intimate – with Mark Rylance once again showing why he’s one of the best actors around, as an older man with his son, and a teenage friend, willing to risk it all to help with the effort. They come across a lone sailor (Cillian Murphy) – a survivor of a lifeboat where everyone else died in a U-Boat attack, suffering from “shell shock” – desperate to do anything BUT return to Dunkirk. All four of these men are sketched quickly, but you know everything you need to know of them. The same is true for Tom Hardy as the RAF pilot – once again, showing he is the actor you want to cast if you need someone to cover up three-quarters of their face for the majority of his scenes, and still find ways to emote effectively. I’m sure the people who couldn’t understand Hardy’s Bane, will have trouble here as well (but then again, I never did have trouble, so, what do I know?).

 

Nolan’s filmmaking here is impeccable. Dunkirk is a loud movie, with the constant explosions, and Hans Zimmer’s, brilliant, pounding score going throughout. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is the best work of his career, immersive in the best way possible. The structure requires the editing to be airtight – and Lee Smith’s work is remarkable.

 

In short, Dunkirk is a triumph for Nolan, and all involved. It only seems like he’s working on a smaller, less ambitious scale than some of his recent epics. Dunkirk is tight, intense, exciting and nerve jangling. It’s one of the best films of the year.

Movie Review: Interstellar

Interstellar
Directed by: Christopher Nolan.
Written by: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan.
Starring: Matthew McConaughey (Cooper), Anne Hathaway (Brand), Jessica Chastain (Murph), Mackenzie Foy (Murph – 10 yrs.), Michael Caine (Professor Brand), John Lithgow (Donald), David Gyasi (Romilly), Casey Affleck (Tom), Bill Irwin (TARS - voice), Josh Stewart (CASE - voice), Wes Bentley (Doyle), Matt Damon (Dr. Mann), Ellen Burstyn (Murph - older), Topher Grace (Getty), Timothée Chalamet (Tom - 15 Yrs.), David Oyelowo (School Principal).

There are plenty of nits you can pick with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar – some of which matter to me more than others. The fact that Nolan stretched the science in the film doesn’t really matter to me – who the hell goes to a science fiction movie expecting absolute fidelity to physics anyway? The movie has other issues – like all Nolan films, the film’s dialogue is heavy on exposition, which stunts the drama at times, especially since at times they are explaining things they have already explained before. The movie makes some story choices, particularly in the last act, that don’t make a lot of sense given what has happened before. The film is clearly an attempt to merge two of Nolan’s favorite filmmaker’s sensibilities – the Kubrick of 2001 and the Spielberg of Close Encounters, and it doesn’t always work. Yet despite the problems with Interstellar, I couldn’t help but love the film overall. Is there another director in the world who would attempt to tell a story like this – and could actually get it made? Flaws and all, Interstellar is an awe inspiring film.

The film opens sometime in the future – when much of humanity has been wiped out due to climate change, and a lack of food. Armies have been disbanded, technology is no longer moving forward, and even a highly trained engineer and one time NASA pilot like Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is stuck working as a farmer. He is the widowed father of two children – the teenage Tom will be happy to follow in Cooper’s footsteps and become a farmer himself. The 10 year old Murphy (played by Mackenize Foy), is more like her father – and looks up at the stars in with the same reverence as her father. The opening scenes of the movie recall the Dust Bowl of the great depression – where everything is dirty, everyone is poor, and no one is really happy. Through a series of events too complicated to explain, Cooper ends up, alongside Murph, at a secret NASA facility. There he reconnects with his former mentor Dr. Brand (Michael Caine) – who tells him about a secret mission that is going to launch soon. There is a possibility to save humanity – by leaving the planet, going through a wormhole and inhabiting another planet. Someone or something has opened that wormhole, and 10 years ago 12 different scientists were sent to the 12 planets on the other side of the wormhole – with the purpose of finding out which one, if any, were inhabitable. Nothing can travel backwards through the wormhole except a series of pings – and three of the scientists are pinging back telling them to come to their planet. Since Cooper is the only person with any actual flight experience he joins a crew including Brand’s daughter (Anne Hathaway) and two other scientists (Wes Bentley and David Gyasi) to figure out which of the three planets will actually be right for humanity. I won’t divulge anything more of the plot that twists and turns in unexpected ways through its three hour runtime.

The film is a heady mixture of smarts and emotions. This is the most boldly sentimental film that Nolan has made to date – and while some may reject Nolan’s emotional button pushing, particularly in the last act, it moved me more than I thought it would (perhaps it’s because I am the father of two girls, and Nolan does a great job at making the central relationship in the film between Cooper and Murph – which finds its counterpoint in an equally complex relationship between the Brand father-daughter. McConaughey is a natural in a role like this – which requires him to be cool, charming but also mine some emotional territory. Even better is Chastain as the grown up Murph – who is able to make something of a role that doesn’t have a lot of narrative significance at times. Less well utilized is Hathaway – but she does a fine job in her few big moments. The most underrated member of the cast is probably Gyasi, who arc is the most tragic, even if it’s often confined to the background.

But as much as the emotional currents in the movie help to overcome some of the narrative flaws in the movie – and they do – the larger achievement is technical. Nolan, who shot on film, and uses as little CGI as possible. I have actually loved practical effects more than CGI – they have a weight to them that makes them feel more real. The visual worlds that Nolan creates in the film are truly awe inspiring – from the dust bowl of earth, to a planet of nothing but water, with giant title waves, to the harsh, desolate frozen wasteland on another. All of these worlds are similar to earth, but not quite. The scenes in space brilliant in themselves.

No, Interstellar is not a perfect movie. While I didn’t find the much discussed sound issues to be that bad (there was only scene where I struggled to hear what was being said because the mix had the music up too high) – they were there. And the movie takes some strange steps in its final act – final minutes really – that I found to be a little hard to accept. But the flaws in the movie do not really detract from my overall feelings on the film. The film is smart, emotional and brilliantly executed. Yes, there are flaws – but there are few films this year I look forward to revisiting more than Interstellar. It is that rare sci-fi that forces the audience to look at the sky in wonder about our place in the world, and yet keeps the focus on its main characters, and their relationships. It’s a tricky balancing act, and Nolan doesn’t quite pull it off – but damn if I didn’t love seeing him try.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises Directed by: Christopher Nolan.
Written by: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer based on characters created by Bob Kane.
Starring: Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne), Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon), Tom Hardy (Bane), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Blake), Anne Hathaway (Selina), Marion Cotillard (Miranda), Morgan Freeman (Fox), Michael Caine (Alfred), Matthew Modine (Foley), Alon Moni Aboutboul (Dr. Pavel), Ben Mendelsohn (Daggett), Juno Temple (Jen).

Spoiler Warning: This film tells much more of the plot of The Dark Knight Rises than you probably want to hear if you are planning on seeing the movie. As I saw the film late, and am posting my review even later, I assume most people interested would have seen the film already. But if you haven’t, you’ve been warned.

Making a great movie is hard enough – but making a great trilogy is nearly impossible. Most series seem to run out of steam after their second film, with the third installment being a letdown – made merely as a cash grab or as an attempt to regain some past magic. But with The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan has completed a great movie trilogy. The film itself is the longest of his three Batman series – and yes, it is a little bloated and a little messy in parts, and you could easily point out some logic flaws in the film. This is not a perfect film by any means. It is also the most ambitious of the three Batman films – the one that pushes the darkness of this series to its breaking point. As a concluding chapter of Nolan’s Batman trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises gets it mostly right.

It has been eight years since the events of The Dark Knight, and Gotham City is pretty much crime free because of the so called Harvey Dent laws that allowed Commissioner Gordon to lock up the mobsters. Batman has retreated from the public eye – as has Bruce Wayne, who never leaves Wayne Manor, and is stricken with guilt and loss at his failure to save Rachel Dawes – who he believes was waiting for him. Of course, both the heroism of Harvey Dent, and Rachel’s supposed devotion to Bruce Wayne are based on lies – and when the truth comes out, things are going to get ugly again.

Into Gotham struts a new super villain – Bane (Tom Hardy) who, like Bruce Wayne, was once an apostle of Ra’s Al Ghul, but was ex-communicated from his extreme methods. Bane is a muscle bound freak of nature – whose face is covered with a mask that prevents him from being in constant agonizing pain. But his appearance masks an intelligence that equals his brutality. He knows about Wayne Enterprises “Fusion Generator” that Bruce has kept secret because he knows that it could be turned into a weapon. But Bane has a plan – that will push Gotham to the brink of destruction.

There are a few other characters added to this movie. First there is Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), a rich woman who shares Wayne’s idealism – and steps up when his corporate enemies try to destroy him. There is also Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a cop who has idolized Batman since he was a child – and an orphan – and who figured out back then his true identity. His smarts and idealism make him stand out – and catches the attention of Gordon. And finally, the most famous addition, is Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman (although she is never referred to as such during the course of the movie), a skilled cat burglar, who catches Wayne’s eye when she steals his mother’s pearls. But Bruce believes there is more than just a thief in there.

The Nolan Batman films have always been about a conflict of ideals. While Bruce Wayne has always believed that Gotham City, and its citizens, deserve to be saved – to be given a chance to be good – the villains have always believed the opposite. In Batman Begins, Ra’s Al Ghul believed that Gotham City was a cesspool, and liked previous “once great cities” needed to be destroyed. In The Dark Knight, The Joker believed that “people were only as good as they were allowed to be” – that is, when everything is going fine, people will be good – when things go wrong, people will show who they truly are – violent and amoral. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane wants to expose Gotham’s hypocrisy – expose the lies that led to them to become “crime free”. Cutting Gotham off from the rest of America, he wants the city to destroy itself figuratively – to descend into its natural state of anarchy, before he destroys it literally – and more importantly, he wants Bruce Wayne to watch, to see how completely he has failed.

I loved how this series is constantly building on its previous entries – how it evolves from one film to the next. From the first film, one of the most prominent themes in the series has been the importance of symbols – hence Wayne’s speech to Alfred in Batman Begins about how as a man, he could be defeated, but how, he would last forever. The important part of Batman is not what he did – but what he stood for, and how he gave the city hope. It doesn’t matter “who” Batman really is – he could be anyone, and that was the whole point. The city needed a symbol to rally around – and so Bruce Wayne gave them Batman. In The Dark Knight, Wayne thought his time as Batman was over – that he was no longer needed, because they had a new symbol to rally around – Harvey Dent, and despite the truth of who Dent became, his symbolic value was more important – because unlike Batman, Dent worked within the system. At the end of The Dark Knight, the audience was lead to believe that Batman's sacrifice was noble – but The Dark Knight Rises immediately calls that into question. If the city’s virtue was based on a lie, were they really all that virtuous in the first place? If you cannot trust the people with the truth, what does that really say about how you feel about them? The masses are always something to be fought over in the Nolan Batman films – seen mainly in abstract. Their starring role happens outside the scope of these movies – and will really only happen after this movie ends.

Perhaps afraid that the film would be too heavy, Nolan made the smart decision to include Selina Kyle and Blake – who, for differing reasons, inject some lightness to the proceedings. Hathaway’s Selina is pretty much the only character in the trilogy that truly seems to be having fun (yes, The Joker was having fun, but it was psychotic, creepy, scary fun that was only fun for him). As someone who believes that Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance as Catwoman in Batman Returns was her greatest performance – and the second greatest performance as a Batman villain ever (next to Ledger’s Joker), I was worried that Hathaway would be saddled with expectations that were too much for her to bare – but she more than  lives up to that high standard. Yes, she is sexy, flirtatious, seductive and cunning – but Hathaway’s Selina Kyle is given more depth – allowed to be more than just her surface. Nolan and Hathaway allow her to return to her roots – really more of a thief than the super villain that other onscreen incarnations have made her out to be. And most surprisingly – she has a conscience. As for Blake, he is the most idealistic character in the entire trilogy – someone who believes in justice and truth. He is the personification of what Batman always wanted to inspire throughout this series. And Gordon-Levitt gives him a touchingly, human dimension – in many ways, he is the supporting character you remember most about this movie. And yes, Tom Hardy is great as Bane – no he is not as good as Ledger was as The Joker, but the role wasn’t meant to compete with that. Bane has always been the most animalistic of the Batman villains (not the subhuman freak that Joel Schumacher’s film made him out to be), and Hardy, behind that mask, with that strange, breathy voice truly is terrifying.

The ending of the film will be much debated – with some already questioning whether or not Nolan ended the series on the right note. I for one, think he did. Yes, I could have done with an action climax a little more believable – the ticking time bomb clock has been done to death, as has Batman’s response to it. But that was pretty much necessary for Batman/Bruce Wayne’s character arc. In a very real way, Christian Bale has had to play three characters in these films – two of which are merely masks for the third. There is of course the gravelly voiced Batman, defender of Gotham City and the billionaire, irresponsible, playboy image he cultivates so no one will guess his secret. The third is the real Bruce Wayne – seen only rarely throughout the series in his quiet, reflective moments. As Rachel writes him in The Dark Knight, the Bruce she loved never came back at all from his seven year hiatus at the beginning of Batman Begins. In that film, he had to sacrifice his true self so he could become Batman – and in The Dark Knight Rises, he has to sacrifice Batman so he can rediscover who he really is.

I understand that much of this review talks about the Nolan Batman films as a whole group, rather than The Dark Knight Rises as an individual film. That is because I find it impossible not to talk about the series as a whole when discussing this film. While you could watch Batman Begins or The Dark Knight as individually contained films (yes, they inform each other, but no you don’t have to see one to appreciate the other). The Dark Knight Rises is the type of film that couldn’t exist without the other two. Unlike most superhero series, where the only thing that changes from one movie to the next is the villains (this was certainly true of the Burton/Schumacher Batman films), the Nolan Batman films build as they go along – leading to this final chapter when everything comes together. As a film unto itself, The Dark Knight Rises is great entertainment – filled with great action sequences (perhaps the best of the series so far, as they seem a little less muddled than before). The cinematography by Wally Pfister is once again top notch – this time much more in the day than at night, which is when pretty much all of the previous films took place. The performances are across the board top notch (someone not getting nearly enough attention is Michael Caine, who all through this series has succeeded in making the ever faithful Alfred into a real character and not just the dry, witty fount of comic relief he is often used as). Yes, the film could probably have been cut down a little bit – at two hours and forty-five minutes is the longest superhero movie I can remember – but I was never once bored by the film. Yes, there are logic flaws at points – mostly in terms of some of Bane’s motivations, although I do believe that for the most part, those flaws were in the movie to develop the movie thematically and move the story along. As a film by itself, The Dark Knight Rises is far and away the best blockbuster this summer has to offer. And when taken as part of Nolan`s trilogy as a whole, The Dark Knight Rises becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Movie Review: Inception

Inception ****
Directed by: Christopher Nolan.
Written By: Christopher Nolan.
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur), Ellen Page (Ariadne), Marion Cotillard (Mal), Tom Hardy (Eames), Ken Watanabe (Saito), Cillian Murphy (Robert Fischer, Jr.), Dileep Rao (Yusuf), Tom Berenger (Browning), Pete Postlethwaite (Maurice Fischer), Michael Caine (Miles), Lukas Haas (Nash).

Inception is almost a throwback film, which is odd for a film that is so full of cutting edge visuals. It is a big budget mind screw of a movie that keeps going further and further down the rabbit hole which each new plot development. It reminded me of a time – the late 1960s through the mid 1970s to be exact – when talented directors were given a lot of money by the studios and told to make whatever the hell they wanted to. In an era where we mainly get mindless blockbusters, here is a movie that is all about the mind and a film that constantly twists and turns itself inside out. This is the type of film you get to make when you’re last film was The Dark Knight – a huge commercial and critical success – and the studio wants to keep you happy. And I for one am happy that director Christopher Nolan decided to push himself hard with this movie. It is his best film to date.

Inception takes place in the near future where corporate espionage has taken a new twist – instead of breaking into your office to steal your secrets, thieves break into your mind and find them. They do through what is called “shared dreaming” where they are hooked up to a machine with you, and enter the world. There are a lot of rules to this world that requires architects to build the dream world, but I won’t go into them. Essentially though, you only have so much time in the dream world before the dreamer’s subconscious turns on the outsiders and try to kill them. Luckily, if you die in a dream, you simply wake up. The further down into the dream world you go however, the more unstable things get, and the risk of falling into limbo becomes all too real. The dream world moves faster than real life – 5 minutes of actual sleeping is like an hour in the dream world, and when you get into dreams inside of dreams, the time limit speeds up even more.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, who is the most talented “extractor” in the business. He is able to get pretty much anything he wants from whoever he wants, but for reasons that are not explained, he can never go home again and see his kids – which is really all he wants to do. When a mission to get secrets out of Saito (Ken Watanabe) goes wrong, Saito isn’t angry, but instead offers Cobb and his team a new job. But this time, it isn’t extraction he wants, but inception – planting an idea into the head of one of his competitors – in this case Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) who is about to inherit his dying fathers massive company. Inception is thought to be impossible, but Cobb takes the deal anyway, because Saito says that he can get him home again.

So DiCaprio assembles his team. In some regards, Inception feels like one of those 1960s heist movies, where a crackerjack team of professionals are assembled to pull off a seemingly impossible job. Cobb’s partner is Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who knows the risks, but follows Cobb anyway. Cobb adds a new architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page) to build the dream worlds, the skilled Eames (Tom Hardy) who is gifted at both theft and impersonation and Yusef (Dileep Rao) who can supply the team with the type of drugs they need to put them all under for long enough to get the job done. Since they are going three levels down – that is a dream inside a dream inside a dream – they need them. The biggest threat to them is Mal (Marion Cottilard), Cobb’s wife who shows up and screws up their plans.

That is all I am going to say about the plot. One of the joys of watching the movie is to see this intricately layered plot take twist after twist, and draw us further and further into this dream world. The smartest thing that Nolan did perhaps was not making the dream world too unreal – this isn’t like The Lovely Bones or What Dreams May Come – but rather a dream world that looks and feels much like our own, but is just slightly off kilter. The normal rules don’t really apply, and there is a mesmerizing sequence in zero gravity, but the film feels real. Like the best special effects, the ones in Inception are pretty much invisible.

Besides the plot is not really what the movie is about, it’s just what happens in the story. Like the recent Shutter Island, this film is really all about the DiCaprio characters mind, haunted by the past in ways that he only gradually comes to understand. Although they are not entering his subconscious, he brings it along with them anyway, and it becomes a danger to everyone else. The movie is about dreams and memory, the effects of the past on the present and finally life and death. A whole hell of a lot is going on beneath the surface of this film – it’s like a Charlie Kaufman film, if Kaufman made action thrillers instead of cerebral comedies.

The performances in the movie have got to be just right, or the whole effect of the film is blown. Luckily Nolan has assembled perhaps the best ensemble cast of the year. DiCaprio leads the cast, and he continues to show why he just may be the best actor of his generation – and the one most willing to take risks. He inhabits Cobb, which is a complicated role, wonderfully, and brings us into his mind literally. His supporting cast is excellent – particularly Ellen Page, miles away from Juno here, as the architect, and the only one who truly understands what Cobb is going through, and Cotillard, who is given a near impossible role as Cobb’s wife, but really only his projection of her. Joseph Gordon Levitt continues to prove that he is one of the best actors out there right now, and Tom Hardy builds on his excellent work in the under seen Bronson last years as Eames. The rest of the cast fills out their roles nicely.

It would have been easy for Nolan to make a much simpler, more audience friendly hit. After The Dark Knight, he could have probably done anything he wanted to do – as long as he agreed to make another Batman sequel afterwards. But Nolan is a director who is constantly challenging my perception of him. He continues his string of excellent films that deal with the mind and morality, to go alongside the action – which he directs better than just about anyone else out there right now anyway. He has proven to be one of the best, most ambitious filmmakers out there right now – and Inception is another step forward for him.