You Know Who I Am: Shane Black’s IRON MAN 3

“Who’s your favorite superhero?”

It’s a common question among both so-called geeks and their less diehard equivalents, and has never been asked more than in recent years, when the genre has finally successfully made its way into mainstream cinema. It’s not a particularly important inquiry, and it doesn’t really do much in the way of enlightening much about the chooser; “because he / she is cool” is the rationale you’re most likely going to be given if you press the question harder. Occasionally, however, there is one factor which tends to divide fans, and it has a lot to do with the most basic element of the genre: how much do we like a character’s superpowers or – as in this case – their lack of particularly fantastical abilities?

It’s one of those bizarrely divisive opinions, and one that it’s increasingly hard to get away from in a world where Batman and Iron Man are kings. These characters were not hit by waves of gamma radiation, or bit by radioactive spiders, or alien in origin. They are, in fact, quite human – completely fallible in all of the traditional senses, except for a few noteworthy skills which do not inherently differentiate them from any of their audience. Do we love Iron Man simply because he is a normal man (albeit one who was gifted with seemingly inexhaustible wealth and intellect)? Or do we find Bruce Wayne a less interesting hero because he is essentially buying his powers? This humanity may be appealing to those who prefer their drama with a little more nuance, but it may not always be particularly compelling to those who desire fantastic stories and escapism.

Of course, all of this has changed over the last ten years. Filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Jon Favreau took these fallible heroes and constructed legitimately compelling (and legitimately grounded) film worlds for them to exist in. Their status as “mere humans” was the fuel which has made them some of the most beloved comic book superheroes out there today. So, of course, it’s only natural that Tony Stark’s return to the big-screen would tackle this frailty head-on.

Directed by Shane Black (who reunites here with Robert Downey, Jr. from their KISS KISS BANG BANG days together), IRON MAN 3 is easily the most nuanced superhero film to have come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet. It’s absolutely loaded with imagery and ideas about what kind of toll being a superhero would take on a completely ordinary man. This isn’t another story about the responsibility or isolation of heroism; it’s about the psychological cost. But more importantly, it’s about identity. Wisely, Black chooses to ignore the “hero as a symbol” metaphor – which was hammered into the ground by Nolan over the course of his Dark Knight Trilogy – and instead opts for something equally interesting but heretofore unexplored: the symbiotic relationship between the identities of the hero and their alter-ego.

Stark (who is once again played to delightful perfection by Downey, Jr.) spends most of the film struggling with his identity – both as Tony Stark and as Iron Man. In an opening flashback sequence, he traipses around a New Year’s Eve party with a name tag which reads “You Know Who I Am” – a phrase which is repeated several times by several characters throughout the film. It’s a declaration of self-confidence in one’s identity, and one which is stripped from Stark over the course of the film before being returned in the final frame. Black brings us back to this moment in 1999 for reasons outside of narrative function; he also uses it as a reminder to both remind us of how far Stark’s identity has shifted since we first met him as well as to show us a moment in time where his identity was wholly (and obnoxiously) secure.

This is where we pick back up with Stark in the present day, following the events of THE AVENGERS. And in a surprising turn, we find that his glorious triumph alongside his newfound, superhero brethren has not given his ego a stroking from which he might never recover. Rather, we find that Stark is a hopeless wreck: he’s suffering from insomnia, anxiety attacks and an intense vulnerability which has him trying desperately to fuse his own personal identity with the only one he feels can protect him – Iron Man. One of his very first scenes involves him injecting himself with nanotechnology, making him able to summon pieces of his suit just by willing it with his mind. This merging of tech and man is more than just a cool upgrade to his superpower arsenal – it’s a fusion of identities, a desperate attempt to leave behind the fragility of his own mortality and enhance it beyond its own capabilities. In a world where gods fall from the sky and scientists can transform into huge, green monsters, it’s easy to imagine somebody as narcissistic as Stark feeling both inferior and incredibly vulnerable – especially after his near-death experience at the climax of THE AVENGERS.

But Stark takes this process one step further. Soon, he’s developing tech which allows him to live inside of the Iron Man suit without ever leaving the safety of his lab. It’s a mildly agoraphobic tendency which is played for laughs, but reveals a troubling dependency on his superhero facade for protection. This is a man who is unable to reconcile the differences between himself and his alter-ego, an identity within which he is able to feel powerful, strong and fully capable. Outside of his suit, he finds himself growing weaker: upon experiencing his first anxiety attack, his instinct is to run right into the arms of his waiting suit, inside which he can be safe. And when he encounters a young boy named Harley, the kid doesn’t recognize Tony Stark – he only recognizes the suit. In a candid introduction, Harley and Stark talk about the disabled suit as if it were a third person in the room, calling it “he” and explaining its troubles. Stark is all but forgotten in this conversation – his own identity is second to the suit’s.

But the suit is more than just an alternate identity for Stark to adopt from time to time. In IRON MAN 3, the suit is a character: Stark and the suit sit side-by-side on a couch, looking at one another. The suit comes to life and attacks Pepper as she tries to wake him from a nightmare, reacting to his subconscious defence mechanism. He hauls it behind himself across frigid tundras like penance for a sin when it malfunctions. It is a physical presence throughout the entire film: close-ups of the helmet’s face are numerous, and its interaction with various characters are some of the most important in the movie. In Stark’s both literal and figurative isolation, Pepper’s face falls not against that of her boyfriend’s, but against the empty helmet and face of his alter-ego. And when he finally comes to terms with the strength of his own identity at the climax of the film, the face on that helmet burns away, leaving a place for Stark’s own to fill it.

And there’s more, too: when Guy Pearce’s delightfully eccentric Aldrich Killian shows up at the beginning of the film to attempt to woo Pepper away from Stark, he shows her a virtual map of his own brain, which they step inside and explore. It’s played as a romantic moment, and it’s obvious that Pepper appreciates this chance to delve into the mind of a possible suitor – something which she can’t really do with Stark, especially given his current psychological state. This sharing of pieces of one’s self is a through-line of the story, as both men gradually give more and more of their own alternate identities to her.  Killian, who forces her involvement in the Extremis program which gives him superhuman abilities, treats her as a trophy – someone who he can force into the mould of his Extremis identity. Stark, on the other hand, gives away his own powerful identity to her in times of need: when their home is destroyed, he protects her using the suit, essentially giving her his body to keep her safe at the risk of his own well-being. Later, at the end of the film, Pepper seizes pieces of the suit herself in order to save him, affirming her choice to share in his alternate identity – something which Killian attempted to force on her.

It’s particularly noteworthy that Black makes the bold decision to focus most of the film on Tony Stark, rather than Iron Man. More than half of the film’s runtime keeps Stark outside of the suit, a move which requires him to get back in touch with the things that make him special when he’s not flying around in a hunk of metal. This, of course, brings us back to the argument at the beginning of the piece: is Tony Stark a hero without his gadgets, or did he simply buy his superpowers? It’s a question that’s as important to the audience as it is to the character, and Stark’s journey over the course of the film involves him learning to live without the safety net of the suit – and being a more impressive and effective hero because of it. His final decision to remove the reactor from his chest plate and finally eliminate the shrapnel in his body is less a refusal of one identity as it is the acceptance of another: we all know that Iron Man can be a hero, but it’s important that both we and the character also know that Tony Stark can be a hero, too.

What’s truly incredible about this film isn’t all of these delightfully nuanced convergences of fantastic, superhero semantics and grounded character development: it’s the fact that all of these things exist in a film which is downright hilarious and spectacularly entertaining. The action sequences here have been ramped up beyond anything we’ve seen in the MCU before (yes, even in THE AVENGERS), and there’s more laughs in the second hour of IRON MAN 3 than there was in the last two movies combined. In spite of how much time Downey, Jr. spends outside of the suit, Black still manages to pack in a ton of action – and make every single one of those sequences count.

The tone is pitch-perfect, and as hard as it it to believe, Black seems to understand this world even better than Favreau did. The depth of the script (which he co-wrote alongside Drew Pearce) is rivalled only by the remarkably shifting tone: at moments dark and introspective, the story is quick to take a huge left turn into the unexpected and the hilarious. Some of the plot developments are downright shocking for a major, summer blockbuster, and they’re an absolute credit to Black’s direction. He makes the franchise feel fresh and new again, and that should come as a sigh of relief to fans who have seen Iron Man four times in the past six years.

The performances are great, the action is compelling and the story is the best we’ve seen thus far in an MCU film.

Welcome to Phase Two.

8.5/10

d.a. garabedian

Mantra: Dave Grohl’s SOUND CITY

Dave Grohl’s SOUND CITY is the first great film of 2013. As his directorial debut (specifically in the documentary genre), it lacks nothing in the way of surety: shots are eloquently framed, interviews are casual, insightful and cut to the bone and his pacing is rock solid. One finds it easy to forget that this is the same man who screams bloody murder into microphones for a living.

But Grohl is a man of many talents, as he so perfectly explains in a clip which did not make it into the final film. After hearing an instrumental piece as a child – one which offered a solo passage to each of the instruments involved – he became obsessed with the idea of trying his hand at, and eventually mastering, each of them in turn – guitars, drums, et al. And so the grown-up Grohl has since proved to the world: the legendary drummer behind one of the most influential bands of the past 20 years and a powerful songwriter, vocalist and guitarist in his own right, the man has become a spokesman for this generation of rock music. And now he can add filmmaker to that list of admittedly blush-worthy talents.

SOUND CITY follows, for the most part, the story of the iconic and titular studio since its inception in 1969. The film essentially boils down to the history of rock ‘n’ roll over the past 50-odd years, filtered and magnified through the presence of this single studio and the people who ran it, used it and created inside of it. Rick Springfield, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Ratt (all of whom appear in the film – plus many, many more)… The studio defies generations and genres, but it holds one simple truth as a common thread: the importance of artistic creation and, perhaps more importantly, the importance of the human element behind that creation.

For the most part, Grohl’s focus finds itself centred entirely on the studio’s mixing console, known as the Neve Board. This board is one of only a handful that was ever made, and is essentially a one-of-a-kind artifact, left lingering as the days of analogue music recording have hit their lowest point in history. The importance of this board cannot be understated, and Grohl wisely focuses on it. It is a unifying presence amongst these impossibly diverse but equally brilliant musicians; the thing which helped make them the people that they are today. Grohl is adamant about this: Nirvana recorded NEVERMIND in that studio, on that board, and it changed his life.

Though to many non-musicians, the importance of the particulars of this technology may be lost, but Grohl does a perfectly satisfactory job in describing just how meaningful the presence of it (particularly as counterpointed against the digital age, which plays a strong role in the middle portion of the film) is to the creation of the music through which it was recorded. It’s hard to accurately describe the exact reason why this board is so special without getting into brain-melting, scientific particulars which will inevitably be lost on the non-musician, so Grohl smartly sidesteps it. In fact, in one of the funniest scenes in the film, the filmmaker gets Rupert Neve himself (the engineer who designed and built the console) to explain the particulars – which are quickly lost on Grohl’s glazed-over eyes.

Because that is essentially what SOUND CITY boils down to: it doesn’t matter how these things work. It doesn’t matter that the studio is a mess, or that nobody can explain just why the reverb and decay of a certain room in the studio makes it, against all logic, the perfect place to record drum tracks. It just matters that there’s some sort of magic in this place, and that it comes through in the music. It helps create the art, through engineering, or luck, or plain old witchcraft. It just works, because you can feel it.

And that’s what ultimately makes this film so special. After an hour or so of delving extremely successfully into the history of rock ‘n’ roll as it exists around this studio, Grohl pivots the film into something else entirely. Following the history of Sound City Studios up until the very moment when the place closed its doors forever a few years back, the musician-turned-filmmaker buys that console and continues its legacy in his own studio. He invites back all of the musicians whose lives have been changed by it, and they record what will become the official soundtrack to this movie: a series of brand new songs, written in collaboration by some of the greatest rock musicians to ever live.

This is where the film transcends itself to become something truly magnificent. I simply cannot remember the last time I was moved to so much joy as I was in the last 40-or-so minutes of this film. The entire “Real to Reel” segment is so creatively stimulating, so emotionally poignant and so downright celebratory that it defies description. Perhaps this is a fact that will be lost on the non-musical viewer, but for anybody who has ever played an instrument, or followed a band, or just been a true fan of music - this is something you are not likely to ever experience again.

It’s over a half an hour of some of the greatest musicians in the world, gathered around the mixing board that helped make them the artists that they are today and creating new music together. The process is fascinating and, frankly, humbling: when Grohl, Josh Homme (of Queens of the Stone Age) and Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) get together in a room and slowly work out the specifics of a brand new song (“Mantra”) that they are writing on the spot, you get a real feeling for just how impossibly talented these people are. And bringing them together around this metaphorical personification of what the music industry used to be is a powerful and exhilarating message.

And when Sir Paul McCartney himself joins all of the surviving members of Nirvana to write what will eventually be known as “Cut Me Some Slack”, one gets the feeling that you’re witnessing the entire history of an art form encapsulated in one room, in one moment.

“Why can’t it always be this easy?” asks Grohl.

“It is,” replies McCartney.

And if that’s not enough to make you want to follow your dreams, I’m not sure what will.

8.5/10

d.a. garabedian

Micro-Review: Colin Trevorrow’s SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED is exactly the film that you think it is, and that can either be perceived as a positive or negative thing, depending on where you stand. It’s predictable, certainly, but it’s also endearingly heartfelt and poignant, and that’s really what saves the film from falling into the bitter entrapments of so many other indie dramedies.

The film – which comes from newcomers Colin Trevorrow behind the camera and Derek Connolly on the page – is a fast, tightly constructed love story with a few high-concept trimmings to keep things fresher than your usual mumblecore fare. Thrusting the audience into the story almost immediately, Trevorrow wastes absolutely no time in getting right to the heart of the plot: a man, who has taken out an ad in a local magazine, is seeking a co-conspirator with which he might travel back in time.

The story is delightfully absurd, and though the filmmakers obviously have no interest in delving into actual science-fiction territory, there is also a clear interest in the thematic weight of the passage of time. Unfortunately, as soon as it becomes apparent that this film is a character study rather than a heady, existentialist story, it also becomes immediately apparent where the story is going to go. Characters in parallel stories bounce off of one another thematically, all learning a valuable lesson about the fleetingness of time. It’s all a bit safe, but nobody can fault the filmmakers for their lack of earnestness.

Still, the casting is spot on, and it’s the actors who elevate the film above its safe territory. Aubrey Plaza (who is basically playing a similar role to the one that she always does), is really coming into her own as the go-to, cynically apathetic young voice of a generation, and the script finally gives her a chance to stretch her limits in the final act of the film – which, thankfully, she handles admirably. Alongside her is the ever-charming Jake Johnson who, again, plays a virtually identical character to the one he’s fast becoming known for (they might as well have named him Nick here, too). Not that this is a complaint; he’s still as funny as ever, and he handles the majority of the comedy beats throughout with the kind of reckless awkwardness that he does so well. Relative newcomer Karan Soni also does a great job with the small role the film asks of him.

Luckily, Mark Duplass crafts a compellingly abstract character in Kenneth, the would-be time-traveller. Duplass has a tendency to gravitate towards roles in films like this (as both he and his brother are both well-known directors in the mumblecore movement, and this is well within his comfort zone), but Kenneth gives him a chance to do something a little different with the role, and the occasional cracks in his smug facade are a welcome change of pace for the actor.

Where the film really shines, however, is in the final half hour. The pleasant but I’m-already-forgetting-it-as-I’m-watching-it nature of the first hour aside, Trevorrow and Connolly do a really excellent job of hammering down the poignancy in the final act, giving the story some much-needed adrenaline and bringing it to a solid close. The film has some touching statements to make about the relationships we forge and the “pain of an old wound” (to quote a little Don Draper) which can be both irresistible and dangerous, but it all feels just a little “been there, done that”. That being said, a pair of scenes certainly do shine brightly: one, where Plaza and Duplass discuss – with disarming accuracy – the hollowness of unattainable, past moments (“It’s that time, and it’s that place, and it’s that song…”), and another with a song around a campfire.

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED is a light, enjoyable film, but little else. And though it does well enough in establishing themes which it carries across multiple story-lines to their logical conclusions, everything feels a bit too safe to be as effective as the film thinks they are. But there’s nothing wrong with a little light fare now and again, is there?

7/10

d.a. garabedian

Micro-Review: Judd Apatow’s THIS IS FORTY

Judd Apatow has, over the last decade, nearly singlehandedly changed the way that comedies operate in Hollywood. Alongside his braintrust of comedic personalities and talent (similar to J.J. Abrams and the Bad Robot family), the filmmaker has continuously surprised and upset the notion of qualitative, adult-oriented, mainstream comedies. And over the course of his last couple of films (specifically on the wildly underrated, misunderstood and ambitious cancer drama about comedians, FUNNY PEOPLE), he has continued to push the limits of what is acceptable in the genre.

Sadly, things don’t quite reach those heights on his latest offering, THIS IS FORTY. A meditation on, well, aging, FORTY shows that Apatow has thankfully chosen to willfully ignore the complaints that peppered the reception of FUNNY PEOPLE: the film is still very long for its genre (at about 133 minutes), its plot meanders even more so than the schizophrenic / borderline-episodic PEOPLE and his lax-to-put-it-mildly pacing is more apparent than ever.

None of which should be construed as too much of a knock against the film, either. Apatow’s deliberate editing style and his method of simply allowing a scene to play out until it strikes some absurd (sometimes absurdly humanist and realistic) core is as welcome as ever, and it’s a delight to see that in spite of all the bellyaching, he refuses to waver on this edgy brand of emotional comedy. Because if there is one thing that Apatow understands about his films, it’s that if you populate a film with enough funny actors, give them realistically poignant material and simply leave the cameras on for them to riff in front of, you will eventually reach some hidden truth about the scene. There is no greater satisfaction from the world of comedy than seeing Leslie Mann (Apatow’s real-life wife), Paul Rudd (a Hollywood stand-in for his own place in the family unit) and Mann and Apatow’s real-life kids Maude and Iris simply existing on the screen for all to see. It’s not exactly the kind of thing that will work for everybody (as it almost evokes a kind of neo-realist brand of comedy), but for the filmmaker’s oft-kilter form of familial characterizations, it hits all the right marks.

But what really hurts the film is the (possibly intentional) lack of story. Though neo-realist comparisons might seem more apt than ever when talking about FORTY’s script, it’s glaring in a rather unwelcoming way here. In spite of Apatow’s unique ability to drill to the heart of every scene, beat and sequence, there is a distinct lack of momentum and forward propulsion to the story. Again, this might be an intentional commentary on the inherently meandering landscape of middle-aged living, but it comes across as less than satisfying on film. The movie is never boring, however, and it’s often extremely funny; it just also happens to be a film wherein not much happens and there don’t seem to be much in the way of stakes or, worse, resolutions to those stakes. This might be missing the point of the story entirely, but whereas PEOPLE seemed to have self-assured purpose in its explorative narrative, FORTY seems to be content with casual, indifferent meditation.

Apatow also wisely uses the music industry as an appropriately insightful vehicle towards comparing generations – luckily, beyond the obvious generational taste gap. Unfortunately, this idea is not explored to its full potential: apart from some generation-skipping music talk and pop-culture dichotomies, he never really gets into the meat of how traditional ideas about the economics of popular culture and art parallel middle-age. The most interesting part of the film is undoubtedly Rudd’s job as the head of an independent record label, and more focus on this particular plot would have done the movie a lot of favours in finding more cohesion.

Thankfully, Apatow populates his “semi-sequel” with a smorgasbord of delightfully hilarious actors, and even a few returning faces – even Megan Fox turns in a solid performance as Desi, though the fact that she’s half-naked for a quarter of her scenes didn’t exactly hurt either. A deep, sincere laugh is never far away at any moment during the film’s runtime, even in the middle of some of the dramatic fare towards the end.

But fair warning: if you haven’t finished the entire run of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse’s LOST (and / or care about such things), there is a recurring, significant plot point based entirely around the end of the show, and the film spoils the final season completely. Though the plot uses the show as a cleverly-veiled meditation on the nature of mortality, I could certainly see its inclusion upsetting the spoiler-phobic.

Though it’s Apatow’s weakest film overall, THIS IS FORTY shows that the director has no interest in regressing from the more experimental filmmaking style he has adopting, and that’s certainly an encouraging fact. For some good laughs and plenty of emotional poignancy to boot, you could do worse.

7/10

Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold: Peter Jackson’s THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Sometime in the years following the first World War – while in the midst of grading an assortment of student papers – J.R.R. Tolkien had something akin to a flash of inspiration. Grabbing a piece of blank paper, the author jotted down a single sentence:

“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”

Not knowing himself what a hobbit was, Tolkien went about trying to figure out just what this creature might be. And 75 years later, the word has essentially cemented its way into the vocabulary of the Western world.

This is in no small part thanks to the efforts of one Peter Jackson, whose LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy turned out to be a corner-piece of turn-of-the-century filmmaking. Making nearly $3 billion at the box office and taking home 17 Academy Awards between them, Jackson’s take on Tolkien’s “unfilmable” story wormed its way into households across the world. The effects and legacy of this series cannot be measured or properly quantified; needless to say, Jackson upended the way we look at blockbuster films. For years following their release, audiences were treated (often begrudgingly so) to wave after wave of entries in the fantasy genre as studios tried desperately to capitalize on the phenomenon. Ten years on, the Hollywood system is still feeling the effects of Jackson’s juggernaut series.

These effects do not merely exist on a superficial level, either. James Cameron has on more than one occasion cited Andy Serkis’ performance-capture work as the villainous Gollum as the motivation he needed to finally make AVATAR a reality, thus making the effect a legitimate tool in Hollywood’s arsenal. Jackson and his team’s creation of the MASSIVE program (a computer-animation and artificial intelligence software package used to to generate realistic crowd effects) has been used in everything from 300 to HAPPY FEET to BLADES OF GLORY. And to say that the films popularized the idea of “extended home editions” might be a bit of an understatement. These films changed cinema in a tangible way.

So it came as little surprise to anybody when Jackson declared that, should an adaptation of Tolkien’s precursor to the legendary RINGS series by made, he doubted that he would be up to the task of competing with himself – at least, as a director.

But the road to this point in Jackson’s decision was far from a simple one. In reality, the story actually dates back several decades, to a time when Professor Tolkien sold the rights to his works out of desperation. The results of these transactions left the rights to “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” at United Artists, a studio which would eventually be acquired by MGM. And through a long series of legal disputes and production history, Peter Jackson and his team had come out of THE LORD OF THE RINGS with a significant question: was making THE HOBBIT even possible anymore?

On the road to adapt “Rings” for the big-screen, Jackson and co. had originally set their sights on the smaller, more manageable precursor, and had found that the rights issues were simply too thorny to be waded through: with the production rights in the hands of producer Saul Zaentz and the distribution rights still sitting over at United Artists, it seemed an economically questionable issue to involve a third party in the proceedings. And so, as history has shown us, audiences received the professor’s trilogy instead.

So when Jackson asked the question of whether a return to Middle-earth would be possible after the smash success of his trilogy, the same legal issues that had arisen a decade prior began to sprout up again, and it began to look like the film was a pipe dream. And if that were not enough, RINGS producers New Line Cinema soon found themselves being sued by both Jackson and Zaentz, citing a failure to accurately honor contractual agreements. The result of the lawsuit caused the studio to declare that they would never again work with Jackson, and to even go so far as to threaten production of THE HOBBIT without him.

By this point, people were already started to insist that the production was cursed. And to be fair, it sort of looked as if they might be right: after the lawsuits, New Line Cinema nearly went bankrupt and was folded back into Warner Bros. as a subsidiary (placing the production rights at Warner Bros., in direct contrast to the distribution rights, which remained at MGM), followed by a legitimate bankruptcy by MGM (the effects of which are finally being ironed out this year, with the release of RED DAWN, CABIN IN THE WOODS, SKYFALL and THE HOBBIT, all of which were sucked into MGM’s economic crisis at varied stages of their productions).

None of which stopped Peter Jackson. The director, who has notoriously steered clear of Hollywood as much as possible, had already sunk tens of millions of his own dollars into the pre-production of THE HOBBIT, acting as producer. Without a greenlight from the economically floundering studios, Jackson continued pushing forward with the project, funding it himself in the face of almost certain disaster. With rights expiring and the rivaling studios using the project as a leveraging chip to avoid bankruptcy, Jackson never relented.

During this period, Guillermo del Toro was brought on as director. Jackson had, up until this point, remained adamant that he would not compete with his own trilogy, and that a fresh vision was required in order to make this film a success. Though the decision was faced with some level of controversy amongst the fanbase, many deemed it to be the right way to go. But after a year spent working without a greenlight (as MGM’s fiscal status was still being settled), del Toro left the project, declaring that he simply could not spend any more time on a film that might never be made. In stepped Jackson to fill the void, and the fanbase rejoiced.

Which brings us, at long last, to THE HOBBIT films.

Yes: films. There will be three HOBBIT films, serving as a precursive trilogy to THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Though originally intended to be a pair, Jackson made the  unprecedented move of shifting gears mid-production and retinkering the films into a trilogy. How this gamble will pay off is yet to be seen, but it’s an interesting decision that requires an entire conversation and article unto itself. Was it done purely for money? (Absolutely not, and anybody who says so completely misunderstands the context of the material, the filmmaker and the history of the franchise – though, it would also be naive to claim that money isn’t one of the factors.) What ramifications does it have for the serialization of cinema? Do we need to rethink our judgments about how cinema operates on a basic level, insofar as judging arcs and self-contained stories as something inherent to a single film, rather than a series of films?

The answer to the last question is, I think, yes. The serialization of cinema is something that has been much talked about in the last few years, starting primarily with the decision to split the final HARRY POTTER film into two pieces. And though that move seemed originally to be made entirely from a financial perspective, it resulted in a fascinating conversation about cinema’s relationship to television, and the convergence of the two as storytelling mediums. While many denounced HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART I as a waste of time where nothing seemed to happen, some saw it as something else: the penultimate episode of a series, where considerable time is taken for character dynamics and motivations to be laid bare before the final confrontation. This serialization of cinematic storytelling is something that exists for the fans, and this cannot be stressed enough – it is an entirely new approach to filmmaking, where out-of-context perspectives are understandably baffled by their atypical existence. The old rules (some say the only rules) do not apply to these films, and to try and fit them into that seemingly century-old mold seems like a fool’s errand. This isn’t to say that creating this new kind of film precludes the piece from proper criticism – merely that we may have to adjust our perspectives in order to appreciate what the piece is, rather than denounce it for what it isn’t.

And Peter Jackson seems to agree. For THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY isn’t just the first chapter in a new trilogy, and it isn’t just the next chapter in the discussion of serialized cinema; it’s a new chapter for cinema, period. There’s a reason that this review (/essay/article) started with a brief look at the historical context of this trilogy: with THE HOBBIT, Jackson has – even more so than he attempted to do with his previous Middle-earth trilogy – attempted to change cinema in a tangible way.

I took it upon myself to see this film four times before writing my review, and each time I experienced it in a different format. The fact that this exists as an option is worth discussing as well, but will likely have to be saved for a later point in time. With each subsequent viewing, I experienced something slightly (sometimes massively) different, and I’d like to take some time at this point to discuss the tech before I discuss the film, because they are wildly different topics and should be treated as such. These four formats were: High Frame Rate (HFR) 3D, 2D Standard Frame Rate (SFR), HFR 3D Atmos and IMAX 3D SFR.

Firstly, the HFR 3D – the format in which Jackson intended you to see this film. Again, some context is necessary for those who do not know.

Around the time that sound was invented for film (almost a century ago), the film community was forced to make a decision. Since audio tracks were included alongside the film reel, studios/filmmakers/theater owners/etc. had to decide on a universal speed to project their films at, as to ensure that audio would not sound sped up or slowed down to the audience. As film stock was, at the time, very expensive to produce and develop, it was decided that they would use the lowest speed possible, as to minimize the consumption of film stock. Thus, it was determined that 24 frames per second (fps) would be the universal speed at which film was shot and projected – it was slow enough as to not cost too much money, and fast enough that it created the illusion of constant movement.

Now, 100-some years later, we are still filming and projecting our films at that speed, regardless of the fact that most movies are shot and projected digitally – a format where the question of film stock cost is no longer a relevant one. Even as we attempt to move cinema forward into the third-dimension, we are still, for some reason, shackled to this projection speed, even though digital projectors the world over are all capable of being upgraded to utilize higher speeds – speeds which would remove motion blur and create a generally more realistic picture.

This, anyway, is the argument: why should we remain attached to the way films are “supposed” to look when that decision was made out of complete necessity almost 100 years ago? Why not try and push cinema forward into newer, more realistic places, especially when technology is fully capable of it? Say, twice the speed – 48fps, which THE HOBBIT was shot at?

The answer is not clear. There has been significant (often conflicting) debate in all academic circles already about the notion of HFR, most of which seems to coincide with the “legitimization” of 3D. Does creating a format that differs so wildly from “conventional” cinema somehow affect the way we perceive it? Yes and no, it seems. Much like in the first forays into contemporary 3D, HFR can, at times, affect the way one perceives the film, but only in certain cases. For some it may not be an issue at all, while for others it can be disastrous.

The effect is, needless to say, jarring. For avid cinemagoers who are used to films looking a certain way, it can be downright shocking. The 48fps (combined with the shot-in-3D images) is brutally, uncompromisingly real – sometimes to the point that it all looks just a bit fake. The best description I’ve come up with is that it appears as if one is watching a staged play; like the back of the theater has been punched out, and beyond it a large-scale play is taking place, where actors in noticeably-dressed costumes are acting out scenes before your very eyes. It can be distracting at times, and it can be wonderfully awe-inspiring at other times – it all depends on the person, and the scene. Perhaps a film that depends on the combination of CGI and live-action to the extent that this one does may not have been the best guinea pig for the format, but we are stuck with what we have, and the effect is generally mixed.

It is worth noting that the HFR makes 3D a much more digestible and pleasurable experience, as the elimination of blur and strobing that are inherent to SFR have been removed. This makes the 3D picture much easier on the eyes, and everything looks much more real and vivid.

I will say, however, that I did enjoy the format significantly more on a second viewing, and I highly recommend trying it out – though, perhaps, only on a second viewing. I look forward to the evolution and progression of the format, in ways I didn’t look forward to the evolution of 3D.

The 3D in SFR, it is worth noting, is quite gorgeous, and I found that IMAX 3D was the format I most preferred out of all of my viewings. The picture quality was crisp and stunning (unlike at other screenings, where it was quite noticeable that the projector was not quite calibrated correctly), and, barring PROMETHEUS, you are unlikely to see a more accomplished use of the third dimension at the cinema this year. Jackson uses the format with subtlety, and one gets the definite impression that he altered absolutely nothing about his directorial style in order to accommodate the new format.

Lastly (as the 2D version will be the one that I am properly reviewing) there is the inclusion of Dolby Laboratories latest audio format, Atmos. This new system is unlike anything you have experienced in a cinema before, and when it is placed alongside the 3D HFR, it becomes a rare and unique presentation that you will not be able to get elsewhere.

The format, which uses around 120 speakers around the room, basically creates the illusion of a three-dimensional soundscape. As the entire ceiling is lined with speakers, filmmakers are able to carefully pinpoint very specific places around the room from which sounds come from. For instance, in scenes where characters were singing and tossing objects around the room, one gets the impression that the voices are coming from all around them. When an arrow shoots towards you in 3D, the sound follows it right past your head. It is the pinnacle of audio immersiveness, and I’m excited to see what filmmakers do with it as the format evolves.

But outside of all of those (many, many, many) technological advancements and format options, there’s still a movie at the core of this discussion. Because, although it is easy to allow the trimmings to affect your perspective of the film, there are still some very basic categorical elements that exist entirely independently of them, and to judge those in tandem with the film itself would be a disservice.

This film is not THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Although it follows a similar trajectory to THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, it is a decidedly different kind of film, and that is partially due to the last-minute decision to divide the film (for a single film it almost certainly is) into three parts, rather than two. Much in the same way that FELLOWSHIP takes a substantial amount of time getting off the ground in its first half, AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY revels in its beginnings, and that’s not a bad thing (though many will perceive it as such). This is, after all, the first three-or-so hours of a full, seven or eight-hour epic.

It is immediately apparent that Jackson has gone for a different tone with this new trilogy, though it does begin to skew back towards the one we know and love from the originals in the latter half. This, again, is almost certainly a result of moving the ending of this film into the beginning of the next, as the plot developments which follow the ones depicted here are somewhat darker and more in line with the earlier films.

That being said, the bulk of the discussion next will be about the film’s tone, as it is the most crucial and wildly overlooked / misunderstood element of AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. Though fans and non-fans alike are quick to mention that the decidedly lighter and sillier tone of the film is appropriate given the source material, there is a crucial contextual argument that seems to be missed in all of the debates: the existence of the revised novel. For this, a bit more history is necessary.

Tolkien’s novel, “The Hobbit” was written in 1937. It was successful enough that it warranted a sequel – one which would, after 17 years, become “The Lord of the Rings”. In between those two publications, it became clear to Tolkien that the tone and general style of his first novel was out of sorts with his newer, more mature and sophisticated one. He then went back and rewrote the “Riddles in the Dark” chapter, giving it a darker and edgier tone and rewriting the character of Gollum and his relationship to The Ring to fit more in line with what would come in the sequel.

In the early 1960s – after the smash success of “The Lord of the Rings” – Tolkien decided to go back and rewrite his precursive novel, recreating it in the style and tone of “Rings”. After a few chapters, he abandoned the project, deciding that it simply wasn’t “The Hobbit” that people knew and loved. These manuscripts are widely available, and detail a more sophisticated version of the book that would never see the light of day.

Enter Peter Jackson. When it became clear that Jackson would return for the series, it became obvious that the only way to rationalize his existence as the helmer of this prequel would be to resurrect that version of THE HOBBIT; to make the version that Tolkien intended to but never did, one which made sense as a complete work. Jackson often made mention of these manuscripts and the portions of which were made available in the appendices of “The Lord of the Rings”, and it stood to reason that fans would finally see the 1960 “Hobbit” come to life.

Except that’s not what happened.

Instead, Jackson took a bold risk and decided to balance the two versions of the book, the ’37 and the ’60. The hodgepodge result is what we’ve begun to get a glimpse of in THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, and it’s equal parts baffling, satisfying and mesmerizing. What might have been the film’s downfall (and, to many critics’ eyes, it undoubtedly is), turns out to be its greatest strength: its boldly unconventional, tonal disparity, which counterpoints a silly dinner song with a caravan of dwarves with the dark, brooding song that comes out of Thorin Oakenshield’s (Richard Armitage) eventual presence. All of which comes directly out of Tolkien’s text, mind you – this bizarrely captivating back-and-forth is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the author’s vision; possibly even more so than RINGS was. And so Jackson walks the tightrope, giving us stirring monologues one instant and ridiculously silly (but spiritually appropriate) rabbit sleighs the next moment. It’s an interesting, certainly controversial choice, but Jackson ought to be commended for figuring out how nail the tone somewhere between the two versions.

But that’s far from where Jackson’s controversial decisions end: there is no more polarizing discussion than that of the three-movie debacle. Though the results of which have yet to be made apparent (and will not be until THERE AND BACK AGAIN is released in July of 2014), there does not seem to be an issue as of yet; in a film made up almost entirely of climaxes (as befits the adventurous style of the source material), it isn’t particularly difficult for the films to be retinkered into creating semi-satisfying arcs, as is seen here in the Thorin / Bilbo arc. Though, again, it is worth noting that the serialization of the films makes this point slightly moot. Indeed, there are plot points in this film that have quite obviously had their resolutions shifted into the second film, such as the existence of the spiders. What we get instead, therefore, is the seeding of future plot elements that have little bearing on the present story (much as in television), further solidifying the film’s serialized format.

The greatest question, however, seems to be why there will be three films at all. Why make three films out of a 300-page story? There are many reasons. The first and most obvious is the book’s narrative style and brisk pace, wherein key story beats take place over a single chapter, or sometimes even a few pages. Just as Jackson turned the ten pages of Helm’s Deep into an hour-long battle in THE TWO TOWERS, the events that take place over two or three pages in “The Hobbit” could (and will) fill entire movies. The political ramifications of certain plot points are spelled out and left dangling, as befits a children’s novel, but will create substantial amount of material in their cinematic counterparts. This can be seen even in AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, where the entire last hour of the film takes place over three chapters – only a couple dozen pages. And if you thought that the Goblin’s kingdom and “Riddles in the Dark” sequence was boring, then this franchise is simply not made for you.

There is also the addition of all of the supplemental material that was intended for the revised edition, as mentioned previously. This material could fill a book almost the same length as “The Hobbit”, and fills in gaps in the narrative that were intentionally left as question marks in the novel’s original run. All of this material combined together, means that there is plenty of material for a trilogy. Whether Jackson pulls it off is another question altogether.

But THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is a fine beginning. Opening the film just before the beginning of FELLOWSHIP, audiences are treated to the return of two major characters from the original trilogy: Ian Holm as the older Bilbo Baggins, and Elijah Wood as his nephew Frodo. This sequence, much as was done earlier this season in LIFE OF PI, introduces Bilbo as the unreliable narrator of the story we are about to witness, automatically giving Jackson and co. leeway to play up the “storytelling” aspect and tone of the film, ensuring that any discrepancies between it and the former trilogy are made instantly irrelevant. As Gandalf (played once again by the incomparable Sir Ian McKellen) tells Bilbo later on in the story: “All good stories deserve embellishment”. And embellish they do.

After launching us into the now-trademark opening prologue – wherein an historical event that bears relevance on the current story is depicted in all its glory – JOURNEY soon finds us drawn back 60 years, to where a young Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is being recruited for an adventure by Gandalf and thirteen dwarves. Freeman was born to play this role, and his mannerisms are so impeccably nuanced that it’s impossible to imagine Bilbo as anybody else.

But the true triumph of this film is the dwarves. Handling fifteen main characters on screen at once is daunting, to say the least, but Jackson somehows manages to pull it off. Each and every dwarf (Nori, Ori, Dori, Balin, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin and Thorin Oakenshield) is unique and memorable, and the mere fact that over half of them significantly transcend the one-dimensional characteristics of the book in the first chapter of this series alone is something worth acknowledging. Though the uninitiated may find themselves floundering amongst the characters, I can’t imagine a finer introduction to the group.

And so the quest begins. Jackson deftly sets up the dwarves journey to reclaim their homeland and defeat the dragon Smaug who stole it from them, and Bilbo unexpectedly finds himself whisked along on an adventure all his own. Though the film falls into the unmistakeable pitfalls of adventure stories of this kind (get into a mess, miraculously make your way out again, repeat) and Jackson tends to go bonkers on the number of action sequences he throws at us, the adventure is fulfilling and never for a second boring. Moments that have become immortalized in the literary world spring beautifully to life in front of our eyes, embellished with just the right degree of whimsy.

For whimsical is probably the best word to described this film. Much as in the original novel (and unlike “Rings”), this is a lighthearted, good-natured but surprising story, and its themes still resonate as powerfully as they did 75 years ago. Bilbo’s quest to not just prove himself (to himself as much as to others) but to understand the importance of saving a friends’ home at the expense of leaving your own is moving and universal.

But the real success is in the development of Thorin, who is played perfectly by Armitage. In a string of flashbacks, we learn of the downfall of his people and his family, and the impossible burden that has fallen on him to protect and provide for his people. Legacy is a brutally important element of THE HOBBIT: Bilbo’s unfortunate withdrawal into his family’s legacy of peace and plenty juxtaposes well against Thorin’s desperate attempts to reclaim his father and grandfather’s. The sequence depicting the struggle between his kin and their enemy, the Orcs, tells the audience all they need to know about this would-be King, in spite of his gruffness. And though in the book Azog (the “Pale Orc”) is killed in the battle and Thorin instead inherits the vengeance of Azog’s son, the bitterness here between the two is enough antagonism that it works equally well.

Of course, in the years since Serkis and Jackson pioneered performance-capture the medium has grown exponentially, and it’s put to great effect here. Both the sequence with the trolls and the legendary “Riddles in the Dark” scene are sights to behold, and Gollum in particular looks better than ever. Serkis does an incredible job of recapturing the character and all of his nuances, even ten years on. The goblins also look surprisingly fantastic, as there was significant doubt over whether the filmmaker should have gone all CGI for them. But they and their entire lair looks amazing, and the nice touch of Barry Humphries as the Great Goblin is a bit of spot-on casting; he nails the tone of the character perfectly, adding just the right amount of Tolkien whimsy to his croaking song and dance.

But the most important character is that of New Zealand, which was nearly abandoned by the studio as a location for economic and legal reasons. Fans the world over can all breathe a sigh of relief, however, as the stunning vistas inherent to the country are on full display, and are unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed before in 3D HFR. The soul of Middle-earth is undoubtedly the countryside of New Zealand, and Jackson and his team somehow manage to find the perfect locations every single time.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is a welcome addition to Jackson’s Middle-earth canon, and though it may not quite reach the heights of his previous offerings, it spells promise for the rest of the trilogy. Its implications for the future of the industry are yet to be seen, but nobody can judge Jackson for trying to push things forward (again), and the discussions about the serialization of the film and the formatting revolution that the series suggests are all topics worth discussing. And though the film has the necessary flaws inherent to adapting the source material, it gives fans everything they wanted – even if it’s not quite in the way that they expected it. Most importantly, it’s a fun time at the movies, and does a wonderful job of revisiting old faces and places.

Plus, it’s just great to have more of these movies, isn’t it?

8.5/10

d.a. garabedian

That Which We Are, We Are; One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts: Sam Mendes’ SKYFALL

In the 50 years that the franchise has endured, there has never been a James Bond quite like Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the character. It was apparent from the very beginning, even in the opening moments of the now-legendary modernization of the series, CASINO ROYALE: cold and brutal, sure, but surprisingly fallible and – at times – even vulnerable. And this vulnerability – something which, once upon a time, might have led to the demise of the character’s integrity – has instead reinvigorated the long-standing espionage franchise. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Sam Mendes’ proverbial hat-in-the-ring, SKYFALL.

SKYFALL is a black sheep of a Bond film – that much is clear. Though large portions of it subscribe to 007′s formula, another, equally large chunk veers violently away from it, leading the character down roads which he has heretofore never traveled. Sure, Craig’s time spent under the mantle has seen him dipping his toe into the realm of a deeper, more humanized and complex Bond in the past, but nothing quite like this. SKYFALL is something else entirely, and Mendes (along with joint writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan) ought to be commended for the risky leaps they take with the character in the final act. Suddenly, Bond is a subtextual, thematically rich character, and he’s all the better for it. In simpler terms, SKYFALL might just be the best James Bond film ever made.

It’s a bold statement, no doubt, though one that seems to have been repeated quite a bit in anticipation of the film’s North American release. And with 23 official installments in the franchise, it’s sort of a difficult claim to back up. Yet stacking up SKYFALL against some of most celebrated entries finds it surpassing many of them in meaningful and substantial ways; most notably, in Martin Campbell’s twin reboots, GOLDENEYE and Craig’s aforementioned inaugural effort, CASINO ROYALE.

GOLDENEYE, for one, holds a special place in the James Bond canon for reasons beyond that of nostalgia and successful reinvention: it’s also the first film in the franchise’s history to contextualize its story (and the character) in allegorically-rich ways. Centered entirely around the literal ghost of the Cold War coming back to haunt a contemporary (and, in many respects, outdated) secret serviceman, GOLDENEYE took the franchise out of the ’70s and into the present day – all while acknowledging just how difficult it is to recontextualize a figure that is, for all intents and purposes, stuck in the past. Likewise, CASINO ROYALE’s hyper-modern take on the character became an instant favorite for really delving into the psychology of 007 for the first time, making him a living, breathing person rather than the caricature he’d been reduced to on so many occasions.

And – without spending too much more time on the past – GOLDFINGER must, of course, be mentioned. Sean Connery’s third outing as the man with the license to kill is thought by many to be the pinnacle of the series – the moment when the James Bond formula achieved true perfection. That may certainly be so, but the truth is that SKYFALL fits into this same mold. It is the pinnacle of a reinvented version of the character; one who is objectively more complex and compelling than the initial interpretation. If GOLDFINGER represents the pinnacle of the Cold War-era hero, then SKYFALL undoubtedly represents the pinnacle of the fallible, modernized hero.

In spite of how much time has already been spent here discussing the merits of SKYFALL amongst the rest of the franchise, where the film truly succeeds is in just how impressive it is as a film outside of the series’ context. Frankly, SKYFALL could probably be enjoyed by people who have never considered themselves fans of Bond films before; they may even benefit from the lack of baggage that the series inevitably carries. It succeeds as a compelling character study of a man who is altogether different from the versions of Bond that we’ve seen in the past (with the possible exception of the rest of Craig’s canon), and that is something that can rarely – if ever – be said for the franchise. At the core of 007′s latest outing is the question that seldom gets asked: “who is James Bond?” Most surprisingly, the film gives us a genuine answer, and I’m not exactly sure it’s the one that people were expecting.

Most of SKYFALL’s thematic weight comes in the form of Bond’s relevance at various, sometimes theoretical, moments in his life: his present, his future and, most importantly, his past. This film delves further into the character’s past than any that I know of that have come before it, all the way back to his childhood. Needless to say, the traumatic experiences of Bond’s childhood factor not only into the necessary unraveling of the character’s psyche, but into SKYFALL’s actual plot. This is a film about James Bond; not James Bond trying to save the world, not James Bond trying to save Mother England – just James Bond. Who is this man? Where does he come from? Where is he going? The answers are, again, surprisingly poignant, resonant and particularly relevant.

Because, yes, this is yet another contemporary James Bond film about the character’s relevance in a modern world. Yet, unlike GOLDENEYE – whose answer to that question lay in an audience-reflective statement about our enduring need for a hero figure, even after the Cold War – SKYFALL’s answer is more internal. There are various (read: copious) references made throughout the film to how sometimes “the old ways are better” – suggesting that, yes, the world still needs a hero like James Bond to protect us from those in the shadows  – but the story itself tells something of a different tale. In spite of M’s (Judi Dench) insistence that the apparently-outdated system of MI6 is still relevant, Mendes makes it clear that the fallibility of this institution is exactly why we still need it. Our heroes may not crack puns as often as they used to (not that there aren’t a few particularly pleasing ones thrown around here for good measure); they may actually take a few bullets in the line of duty; they may actually get killed in the line of duty; and they may be vulnerable, tortured and complex souls which defend freedoms in spite of their lack of indestructible cartoonish-ness, but we do still need them. Now more than ever, it seems. We may actually need them because of those things.

And so we are left with a spectacularly compelling interpretation of a character that has been almost entirely static for nearly 50 years. Delving (ambiguously, of course) into Bond’s past means we can actually begin to discern a few things about what makes this raw, killing machine tick. What was his childhood like? Who were his parents? Why not just “stay dead”, given the chance? M’s self-serving statement (“To hell with dignity; I’ll quit when the job’s done”) may tell something of the truth, but it isn’t the whole truth; at least, not for Bond. What does his incessant, nearly blind loyalty to a matriarchal system (both in his office and his country) say about who he is as a person? And left to linger inside of that system, who does Bond become if he cannot rectify these answers within himself?

The answer comes in the unlikeliest of packages: Javier Bardem’s fantastic performance as ex-MI6 agent Silva. Made up with blonde hair and blue eyes, Silva’s haunting physical parallel to Bond is immediately apparent, and it sets off a kindred that is at once both unsettling and fascinating. Silva’s terrifying psychological relationship to M is uncomfortably similar to Bond’s, and it’s a remarkably poignant peek at what James Bond, left to his own devices and freed from the shackles of perpetual reinvention, might become.

So, Mendes skillfully takes SKYFALL beyond the boundaries of yet again answering how this “relic of the Cold War” could possibly still be useful. Instead, we’re given a look at not just how he could be useful, but why he might be necessary – to keep his country safe from others as much as from himself. All of this is resolved in an incredibly left-field, risky third act which serves to thematically enrich the character on a multitude of levels in spite of its seeming randomness. It’s a bold move, one which will undoubtedly leave many disappointed and scratching their heads – but it’s effective and refreshing enough to close out the film with suitable resonance.

Other noteworthy elements of the film include the introduction of a more ensemble-based cast, similar to earlier entries in the franchise. By the end of the film, all of the pieces of MI6 are put firmly back into place in a way which hasn’t been seen in the series for a decade. Most notably are the inclusions of the always-stellar Ralph Fiennes as Gareth Mallory, Ben Wishaw as the new Q and Naomie Harris as Eve. Performances are strong across the board, though it’s difficult for any to shine too brightly from beneath the shadow of Craig, Bardem and Dench.

Lastly, but certainly not least, is Roger Deakins, the unsung hero of SKYFALL. The nine-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer sets the bar so high, it’ll be hard to come back from in future installments. SKYFALL is, simply put, breathtaking. It’s the finest camera work ever done on a Bond film, bar none. And though the Macau sequence is of particular note for its stunning imagery, its the Shanghai and Scotland sequences that will stick with you long after you’ve left the theater.

For Shanghai, Deakins provides the usual, mesmerizing visuals that the city inherently provides: neon lights swirl, reflective surfaces trick the eye on a continuous basis and light and shadows intermingle gorgeously. It is here where Deakins establishes Bond as a figure of the shadows, a visual (and literal) motif which is stated and repeated throughout the film for both him and Silva. The fight scene which takes place amongst these shadows is some of the most elegant action ever performed in a Bond film.

Meanwhile, Deakins’ shots of Scotland’s landscapes are absolutely unbelievable. It’s hard to imagine that you’re actually watching a 007 film during those brief moments of sweeping vistas. It’s really something special, and fans should be proud to have had the legendary cinematographer lend his talents to the franchise.

All-in-all, the film isn’t perfect. The last act is mildly troublesome, but certainly not a deal-breaker – especially considering what comes out of it and how bold of a direction it is for a film in this franchise. It’s hard to nitpick the little things though, when SKYFALL might just be the finest outing James Bond has ever embarked upon. For fans and non-fans alike.

9/10

d.a. garabedian

It’s Easy to Promise the Impossible: Tim Burton’s FRANKENWEENIE

It’s obvious at first glance that Tim Burton’s FRANKENWEENIE – the feature-length adaptation of his own short film from his early years as a filmmaker – is an adaptation of the original FRANKENSTEIN story: a character named Victor Frankenstein, shaken by his inability to cope with death, brings a creature back from the dead. What is not obvious is just how deep Burton’s reverence for not just FRANKENSTEIN, but all monster films, comes across in the film. Though FRANKENWEENIE begins harmlessly enough as an innocent FRANKENSTEIN clone, by the end of the film Burton has made it clear that this is not just an homage to Mary Shelley’s original work – it’s a love letter to all monster films, whether they be from Universal’s back-catalog or not.

Shot beautifully in black-and-white and 3D, this stop-motion, children’s horror film brings Burton back to his roots in the best way possible. It’s a huge return to form for the director, especially for fans of his who have longed for a qualitative return to his early animation days. Reaching back in time and dusting off this little short, it’s obvious that the Gothic director cares a great deal about this material – more so than can be said about anything he’s done in a long time. It’s clear that the charm, the wit and the genuine heart of FRANKENWEENIE resonates with Burton on an emotional level, and it comes across on screen in every frame.

The story begins fairly predictably: young, brilliant outcast Victor, after losing his dog, resorts to the scientific inspiration of his new teacher in order to bring the dog back to life. It’s a timeless story that’s lent renewed potency by the innocence of the child-and-his-pet dynamic between the characters. This is not about Frankenstein struggling with the idea of death and thus creating a monster – it’s just about him struggling with the idea of death.

In this way, Burton captures the spirit and thematic content of the original story with commanding dexterity. Victor’s story arc is reasonably similar to that of his spiritual counterpart – though filtered through a new lens of youthful discovery – but it’s the parallel themes between the Monster of the original story and Sparky the dog where the story truly shines. In spite of the fact that Sparky is just a dog, Burton never lets him off the hook of the progression of the story; the adorable little animal (seriously – cutest thing I’ve seen all year) still has to struggle with his own existence. It takes a rare touch to display to an audience the inner turmoil of a reanimated dog, but Burton pulls it off in one of the most affecting sequences in the film.

And in the final act of the film, Burton and his team manage to pay homage to a host of  memorable creature-features from throughout Hollywood’s history, all filtered within the context of the story: Boris Karloff, GODZILLA, GREMLINS, Vincent Price and more all get their fair due. FRANKENWEENIE is, in actuality, a Universal Monster fanboy’s dream come true, but Burton never lets the fan service devolve into anything other than an organic progression of the story.

The animation is perfect. Stop-motion is a dying art form, and it’s terrific news to fans everywhere that Burton is one of the few mainstream directors out there who are still willing to direct an entire feature in the format – especially in black and white. There’s something tremendously endearing about the way that Sparky moves within the lush, beautiful sets, somehow feeling both nostalgic and fresh all at the same time. It’s the perfect medium to tell this story in, and Burton nails the design around every corner, as he often does.

Which is the best part about FRANKENWEENIE: Burton’s eccentricities – which have so often actually limited and burdened him in recent years – are actually spiritually and tonally relevant here. This is a Tim Burton film, not a studio film directed by Tim Burton, and that’s an important distinction to make. The Gothic aesthetic is beautiful and natural, lending the world of the film a uniqueness that actually gels the story together, rather than haphazardly fragmenting it.

But what really makes the film come alive are the characters, which are Tim Burton through and through. Many of the characters are directly inspired by horror staples: Mr. Rzykruski (voiced by Martin Landau) is a perfect throwback to Vincent Price, and Edgar “E” Gore (Atticus Shaffer), Martin Short’s Nassor (a Boris Karloff circa THE MUMMY imitation) and Winona Ryder’s Elsa van Helsing all recall famous horror characters and actors of old. Each character is memorable and wildly original, but the fan favorite seems to already be Catherine O’Hara’s “Weird Girl”, who steals every scene in which she appears with her saucer-eyed, absentee expression and equally vacant-looking cat, Mr. Whiskers.

FRANKENWEENIE is a big win for Tim Burton, who has crafted yet another Gothic, stop-motion classic which will resonate with both children and adults for entirely different reasons. After a couple of critically disappointing features, it’s nice to see the director get back to doing what he does best.

8/10

d.a. garabedian