Monday at the Movies - July 16, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Six of “Monday at the Movies.” With The Dark Knight Rises only five days away, we’re kicking off a week of exciting content focused around Christopher Nolan, the man behind this generation’s definitive interpretation of the Batman mythos.  Throughout the week we’ll be looking at the trilogy, but today let’s take a few minutes to revisit the body of work which preceded “The Dark Knight Trilogy.”

On the docket for this installment of “Monday at the Movies,” we have reviews of the three Christopher Nolan films not yet covered on this site; we also have links to coverage of films we’ve already reviewed so you can see our assessment of each film in context.  Happy reading!

 Following (1998) – I was in disbelief that I’d never seen Christopher Nolan’s first film, recognizing that it was high time I patch that hole in my cinematic CV.  Following introduces many of the classic Nolan characteristics – nonlinear smart writing which plays with the audience’s expectation and understanding, obsessed characters who dress stylishly, moral ambiguity – and uses them without the disappointing incapacity of an underdeveloped filmmaker.  Bill (Jeremy Theobald) is an aspiring writer who begins following pedestrians for inspiration, but the game is turned when he follows Cobb (Alex Haw, of no relation to Dom Cobb from Inception), a burglar who enlists Bill’s help in a few break-ins.  In classic Nolan fashion, the film functions much like a puzzle box, with at least three distinct timeframes narrated simultaneously and disorienting the viewer.  The film begins somewhat slowly, with Theobald’s narration a bit less than inspiring (though still leagues better than Kevin Costner’s in Dances with Wolves), but once Cobb enters the picture things become vastly more interesting, in part because Haw is both charismatic and enigmatic and because many of the twists in Nolan’s screenplay revolve around Cobb’s real motivations.  The film is, unfortunately, very short (69 minutes, including credits), and I can’t help feeling that the film would have been stronger with 20 more minutes; while the structure is similar to that of Memento, the final twist ending has none of the weight of Memento’s, mostly because the film answers all our questions.  The ending may be neater than we’ve come to expect, but Following is one of the strongest first films I’ve ever seen, sharp and slender.

Memento (2000)
 
Insomnia (2002) – Christopher Nolan’s only remake and only directorial outing for which he didn’t also write the screenplay, Insomnia is also the least Nolan-esque Nolan film, but if it’s the least successful film on today’s list it’s still far and away better than a lot of what Hollywood has to offer.  But let’s be clear – Insomnia is not a bad movie; it’s a taut psychological thriller grounded in strong performances.  But I’m having trouble seeing it as a Christopher Nolan film.  There are no Nolan regulars here – Al Pacino stars as Detective Will Dormer, a homicide expert investigating an Alaskan murder with the help of Hilary Swank, while the killer (Robin Williams in classic creepy form) taunts him from afar.  The film, like every Nolan film, is about obsession, both the killer’s obsession with his victim and Dormer’s obsession with closing the case; the Alaskan setting, however, becomes the focus of the film as it begins to weigh on Dormer’s psyche, impairing his ability to sleep and ultimately function as a human being.  Rather than utilize a structure which forces the audience into a character’s shoes, Insomnia opts to represent as starkly as possible Dormer’s deteriorating consciousness; it’s a fine distinction, to be sure, but it proves how deft a filmmaker Nolan really is.  It’s comparably easier to confuse an audience while a character is confused, but it’s a bit more difficult to craft a film in such a way that we feel Dormer’s insomnia without staying up for five nights in a row.  And Nolan does what few have been able to do in the last decade – elicit a solid performance from Pacino.

Batman Begins (2005)

The Prestige (2006) – Before Inception, this was the film that made me think the hardest, and it’s guaranteed to leave you scratching your noodle.  Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play rival magicians bound up in a cycle of revenge and one-upsmanship with the women in their lives (Piper Perabo, Rebecca Hall, and Scarlett Johansson) and their mutual assistant (the ever-avuncular Michael Caine) caught in the middle.  With The Prestige, Nolan returns to interwoven chronologies in a story that warns you in advance to be on guard for a twist – “the prestige,” the moment in a magic act when the magician performs the unexpected.  But what the film doesn’t tell you (and it won’t be spoiling anything to do so) is that there are multiple prestiges in the film, at least one for each of the three acts of the film with several right at the end.  It’s ingenious storytelling, regardless of what you think of the story itself; while some complained that the twists were “unfair” or “unintelligible,” Nolan continually reinvents the film to prevent us the filmgoers from ever getting too far ahead of the protagonists.  In this way, Nolan proves himself a master of “movie magic” (whatever that is), expertly controlling what we see and don’t see, leaving us to puzzle out not “who” and “why” like most thrillers but instead forcing us to wonder “how” – how the magician does his trick, how the story will end, and how two hours can whiz by so quickly.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Inception (2010)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week for more brief reviews, but don’t forget to stick around for tomorrow’s debut installment of an exciting new series – “Armrest Reviews” – in which we’ll reassess Batman Begins on the eve of the trilogy’s final installment.  Stay tuned!

World's Greatest Dad (2009)

Ben Mankiewicz liked it, which should be your first clue that World's Greatest Dad isn't exactly cinematic gold. In fact, it's inordinately creepy from many angles.

Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, him) wrote and directed this little number about aspiring writer Lance Clayton (Robin Williams), who's both a high school teacher and a father. His son Kyle (Daryl "Spy Kids" Sabara) is a moody little snot with a chip on his shoulder and a predilection for auto-erotic aspyhxiation. When Kyle accidentally kills himself, Lance sanitizes the scene and stages it as a suicide, forging a suicide note. The note gets made public, though, and Lance creates more writing under Kyle's name. Ironically, his life -and his relationship with art teacher Claire (Alexie Gilmore) turns around.

I like Robin Williams, I really do; his stand-up is always outrageous and sends me into great big rolling fits of laughter. And for some reason that just never translates into his movie career. I thought Mrs. Doubtfire was loathsome, I couldn't bring myself to finish that robot movie he was in (indeed, I can't even remember the name of it), and the only movies of his I can rewatch are Aladdin and Insomnia (though that's more due to the Al Pacino/Christopher Nolan factors). World's Greatest Dad represents another entry in the "Robin Williams Canon of Unlikeable Protagonists." Lance Clayton is completely irredeemable (though the film tries desperately to do it, with baptismal imagery and a new family formed at the end), and Williams's performance is fairly flat. Where Matt Damon was putzy and at least amicable in The Informant!, World's Greatest Dad has none of the personality or moral compass that other "good people gone bad" movies have; consequently, Williams's performance comes off as very one-note.

Sabara, however, deserves a little more credit. On a visceral reaction, Kyle is a very unappealing and even repulsive character. He's foul-mouthed, governed by his hormones, and entirely unpleasant to be around. My instant reaction to the character was that I disliked him. He irritated me. That's when I realized how good of a performer Sabara is. To step inside a character that repugnant and to make him real in a way that the audience feels exactly the way about him that even his father feels - that's good acting. It's both a pity and a relief that he bows out of the picture so early.

The DVD cover lauds the film as hysterical and exuberantly funny, and I genuinely wanted that to be the case. I haven't seen a decent funny movie in a long time, and I'm beginning to wonder if real comedies still exist. (I'm still holding out hope, considering the city on the hill known as The Hangover.) World's Greatest Dad just isn't funny. It's tragic, it's pathetic, it's darkly ironic, and it's uncomfortably exploitative - but funny? Nope. There are more yuks in the internal monologue of an insomniac than in this movie. A few grins elicited here, a chuckle or two drawn out there - this is the sum total of the entertainment value of World's Greatest Dad. The film is more interested in the character of Lance Clayton, but it's an ambiguous characterization. On one count, his actions are entirely offensive, but "wrong" is a verdict the film is unwilling to render. Perhaps that's a matter of the writer being too attached to a character to label him immoral, or perhaps the movie wants the viewer to decide. Either way, World's Greatest Dad amounts to a tacit approval of behavior not far from despicable. Its worst crime, though, is pretending to be a comedy.

World's Greatest Dad isn't all that great. It's off-putting and uncomfortable in a way that might have been the creator's intention, but as it stands it's a primarily disturbing film punctuated with moments of pitch-black comedy.

World's Greatest Dad is rated R "for language, crude and sexual content, some drug use and disturbing images." This film has some of the crassest sexual dialogue I've seen in a movie, and I say that having seen Superbad several times. If there's a sex act out there, this movie talks about it in pretty graphic detail. Marijuana is abused a few times, too. And if you ever wanted to see Robin Williams completely naked, this is the movie for you.

(By the way, the aforementioned robot movie was Bicentennial Man. It would have bugged me if I didn't look it up.)

The Secret Agent (1996)

For my money, The Secret Agent is one of Joseph Conrad's best works. Having read it recently for the first time and always up for a bit of cinematic fun, I was surprised though a bit skeptical to see that there was a filmed version of it - and not in the way that Apocalypse Now is a filmed version of Heart of Darkness. This is an adaptation in the vernacular of Conrad, with as muddy and confining an England as Conrad could have imagined.

The Secret Agent is an extremely complex tale of deception, espionage, and terrorism in 19th century England. In the midst of anarchists, socialists, and other undesirables sits Verloc (a perfectly cast Bob Hoskins), a lazy agent provocateur in bed with the Russian embassy while spying on London's anarchy scene for Chief Inspector Heat (Jim Broadbent). Verloc lives with his wife Winnie (Patricia Arquette, a weak link in the chain) and her mentally-challenged brother Stevie (Christian Bale, emoting with the best of them). When a bomb is detonated near the Greenwich Observatory, suspicion falls on Verloc, who's mysteriously disappeared, and his anarchist "chums" lunkheaded Ossipon (Gerard Depardieu) and the ominous Professor (an uncredited Robin Williams).

As an adaptation, director Christopher Hampton has done a solid job. For the most part - Arquette aside - casting is well-chosen, particular Hoskins as Verloc. I've loved him since he asked Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but here he's exactly the Verloc I was picturing as I read the book. Bale, though a little older than the Stevie in my mind's eye, is incredible here, every tic, twinge, and mumbling creating a pitch-perfect character sketch faithful to a fault to Conrad's book. Broadbent is an excellent choice as always, and even Williams - though he's not straight out of the book - does a fine job as the always-wired-with-explosives Professor. And keep your eyes peeled for an entertaining bit part: Eddie Izzard as Russian ambassador Vladimir, bordering between apathetic socialist and an oddly appropriate Sean Connery circa The Hunt for Red October impression. Arquette, again, is the weakest of the cast, out of place in an ensemble filled with top caliber figures like Hoskins and Broadbent; was Kate Winslet busy?

As a movie in its own right, The Secret Agent isn't terribly accessible. Since Conrad's novel is so infamous complex, the movie loses a little something in the translation that strangers to the story might not pick up on. The pacing of the film moves at a pretty strong clip, potentially leaving newcomers in the dust. What's more, some of the poetry and mystery of Conrad's prose are sacrificed for the sake of linearity; the mystery of Verloc's whereabouts after the Greenwich explosion, for example, consumes about 100 pages of the novel while the film tells us straightaway what's been going on. The character of Michaelis, too, is notably absent, though this seems to be to pave the way for Ossipon & The Professor to take more screen time - a wise choice, since Depardieu and Williams (particularly the latter) are well-cast in their respective roles. Fans of the novel, or at least those familiar with the story, will be right at home, though, admiring the film for its fidelity and its capturing the heart of Conrad's novel.

This is one of the better literary adaptations out there, with an exceptional cast and a thankfully slavish adherence to the source material (excepting, of course, the final 30 seconds, which tweak Conrad's ending a bit and slip into the territory belonging to formula and predictable "Gotcha" endings popular in the late 90s). As I've said before, leave it to the Brits.


The MPAA handed The Secret Agent an "R for some moments of violence." There's an explosion, and we see its bloody aftermath a few times; there's also a not-as-violent scene of stabbing, as well as a few brief and abortive sexual situations that won't make the kids squirm too much. Like the kids would want to see this, anyway.