Review: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises

Dir. Christopher Nolan

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 160mins

When it comes to discussing Christopher Nolan’s Batman universe, one almost doesn’t even need to bother recapping. Batman (Christian Bale) has been shunned from Gotham City for a crime he didn’t commit and his alter ego Bruce Wayne has become a reclusive cripple. It’s best to enter the trilogy-ending The Dark Knight Rises knowing as little about the substantial plot (at 160 minutes there is A LOT of plot, you guys!) as possible so we’ll leave it at that. The Dark Knight Rises is indeed long, but Nolan never fails to fill the screen with exciting flights of fancy. As somebody who has major issues over his previous two Batman film – not to mention knowing next to nothing about comic book lore –I was surprised at just how much of a great, thrilling time I had. It’s a film that genuinely earns its stripes as a grand, epic work of cinema.

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Review: One Day

One Day
Dir. Lone Scherfig
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 107mins

Take one part Same Time Next Year, one part Love Story, add naff accents and obvious anachronisms and you have Lone Scherfig’s latest British romance, One Day. It’s hard not to be disappointed by this sprawling two-hander from Scherfig after the sublime Oscar-nominated An Education, but One Day’s disappointments come more in the form of being so wholly unremarkable in every way, never becoming the great romance that its literary backdrop and expansive timeline might have suggested.

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Review: Rio

Rio
Dir. Carlos Saldanha
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: G
Running Time: 96mins

Last month the animated film de jour was the bonkers and adventurous, yet rather family unfriendly Johnny Depp comedy Rango. The latest cartoon fare is from the makers of Ice Age and goes in the opposite direction, trying to be as child friendly as possible, perhaps to its detriment for the parents who will attend with their kids. Still, even if Carlos Saldanha’s Rio errs on the side of G-rated shenanigans and colourful jungle beats, it still provides enough excitement and unabashed joy that allows its brisk 90 minutes to drift on by in a haze of neon-coloured feathers and catchy tunes.

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Review: Love and Other Drugs

Love and Other Drugs
Dir. Edward Zwick
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: An Eternity

Edward Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs should have taken the title of Emma Kate-Coughlin’s 1996 Aussie Gen X romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes for a more apt description of itself. Zwick’s movie is a catastrophe all right! A truly horrendous, offensive and all-round execrable movie-going experience, one of the worst films of the year. Audiences should be cautioned against thinking it’s just another light and fluffy rom-com with attractive stars; it is actually a deeply unsetlling movie.

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Throughout the rest of my review I label this film a "circus freak show", "incredibly stupid", "offensive", "repulsive", "depressing" and an "excessively vulgar parade of grotesquery" with "one of the worst film characters of all time". And it's all true. Love and Other Drugs is A-W-F-U-L-!


I wrote about four times as many notes during the film as I usually do and most of them can be summed up as "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE!!!" Because right from the opening scene with Jake Gyllenhaal acting like a tripped out raver in the electronics store, nobody within several kilometres of this movie was acting like anybody remotely human. If I ever came across Anne Hathaway's character I wouldn't feel sorry for her, I'd wanna slap her and tell her to stop being so annoying and self-righteous. Don't even get me started on the brother. Seriously, one of the worst movie characters of all time. The movie still wouldn't be any good without him, but with with him - and so prominently too - it just plunges the film deep down into even more bottom feeding territory. Lowest common denominator type stuff that character is.

I couldn't help but feel as if this was like some strange retro screenplay from 1996 that was written as a way to get Julia Roberts and Richard Gere back together after Pretty Woman, but they turned it down and hid the screenplay in a drawer for 14 years. Hathaway is made up to look exactly like Julia Roberts in 1996 with the hair and the make-up and you can totally see Richard Gere as this "lovable" womanising cad who is not at all womanising, but is in fact disgusting and repulsive. I admit to getting a bit of a silent chuckle out of seeing how many wool knit jumper and overall combination the costume designer would make Anne Hathaway way as she sits around her Lisa Loeb music video apartment listening to the soundtrack of Empire Records. Which, by the way, brings about the issue of these characters' story being so long and yet not one of them even redecorates their apartment once or moves a single piece of furniture. When you hate a movie as much as I do this one you find fault in everything!

It's all just so... ugh. I tempted with giving it an F, but instead I am leaving my grade at a D- because, as I mention in the review, the sexuality is actually refreshingly frank for a Hollywood movie. There are so mystical L-shaped bed sheets here where she is covered up over her breasts and yet he has the sheet delicately placed just above his own naughty bits. Apart from the general "these are two attractive people walking around naked" bonus, it was just nice to see. Alas, the rest of the music is filthy garbage. D-