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Review of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel
I enjoyed Man of Steel. Now it's over I'll argue that it suffers from weak plotting, a dodgy script and a bland leading man, but I won't deny that I was transfixed from start to finish, and I say this as one not given over to drooling over spectacle. Sadly, while it has plenty of outstanding and brutal action, it also lacks a heart. →
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Review of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises
While The Dark Knight Rises feels satisfying as you watch, it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. Logically tenuous and structurally dubious, the film suffers from a surfeit of characters and plot. Worst of all, the film just feels pointless, a film that didn't need to exist and one that adds little to what came before. →
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Why I like the rumours of Jon Hamm being the next Superman
Mad Men star Jon Hamm has recently been rumoured to be taking on the role of Superman in the upcoming Man of Steel, to be produced by Christopher Nolan and written by David Goyer. I would never have thought of Hamm myself but now the idea is there, it seems perfect to me. →
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Inception
Inception plays as if Christopher Nolan was in a pub one night and an angry drunk shouted "Oi! Nolan! Think you're clever with your intertwining narratives and chronological playfulness? I bet you can't juggle five different threads at once though, spacially, temporally and in a coherent and entertaining fashion!", and Nolan went off and did it, just to prove a point. He succeeds, but at the expense of characterisation and a sense of any meaning or purpose. →
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I am already bored with 3D
And I haven't even seen a 3D film yet. I'd been holding out for a film that I wanted to see, and so far pretty much everything has looked like crap. No, I haven't seen Avatar. No, I don't intend to. It doesn't look like a good film. I've spent too much money at the cinema seeing bad films over the years and I've heard nothing about Avatar that makes me want to see it as a film, not as a gaudy spectacle. →
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Reboots and remakes
I'm not sure where the habit for using the word 'reboot' came from but when people use it when they mean 'remake', I start getting angry in the same way I get angry when people spell it 'loose' when they mean 'lose'. →
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The Prestige
Along with Aronofsky, Raimi and Singer, Christopher Nolan is one of the very few directors who I can really rely upon. A film with one of those names attached is, to me, a guarantee that I'll be enjoying myself. →
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Following
Christopher Nolan is currently in my good books. His career so far has been limited to less than a handful of films yet I've loved them all --- Memento, Insomnia and Batman Begins; all have delivered darkness, tension with just a spot of black humour where needed and I find them all hard to fault. →
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Batman Begins
This was the one I've been waiting for. Not since the original Tim Burton/Michael Keaton outing has there been a good Batman film; the franchise style has been slowly whittled away by Joel Schumacher's love of dry ice, naked male torsos and high camp. Batman Begins was to be the one that redressed the balance. Did it? →
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The Shape of Things to Come
With 2004 nearly over, and fewer opportunities to be disappointed by awful films that promise much yet deliver little this year, I thought I'd have a look ahead to see what's in store. →