Reviews

Wow, what a disappointment this movie was, after Nolan had spent such effort in crafting a Batman universe that felt tangible, this finale was a total mess. Paper-thin plot and questionable motivations, the film felt overly contrived.

Jump to 8 years after 'Batman's last sighting' (where our caped crusader escapes into the night a wanted man), we discover Batman hung up his cape that fateful night and simultaneously Bruce Wayne became a limping recluse - the whole of Gotham couldn't work out that coincidence, but wait, John Blake, a feisty cop, did work it out because Bruce Wayne's an orphan like him and he can see that look in his eyes?

We are introduced to Batman's new nemesis, a powerful, fearless and intelligent member of the League of Shadows, Bane, his Bond baddyesque accent to highlight his intelligence; his single-minded goal to destroy Batman unclear (to some degree because of his mumblings through his respiratory mask).

We meet Miranda Tate, a wealthy woman with similar ideas as Bruce Wayne, so similar in fact, that the pain of losing Rachel disappears and they sleep together.

Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) captures Wayne's fingerprints for John Daggart, in league with Bane and sitting on the Wayne board of directors. The prints are used to purchase stock/shares through Wayne's account to make him loose all of his money. These trades are done during a 'terrorist' attack of the stock market and therefore are immediately honored. The baddies have infiltrators everywhere, hiding guns in mop buckets and shoe-shine kits. The police surround the building, but our baddies escape on motorcycles which they also smuggled into the building in mop buckets and jump over police blockades using the handy ramps attached to the police blockade metal barriers.

Alfred becomes overly emotional at the prospect of becoming homeless.

Our hero, putting his faith in Catwoman, gets double-crossed and is led to Bane in the sewers directly under his secret R & D dept only to be pummeled to near death and have his back broken. To make Batman's punishment 'more severe' he is sent to a full-board 3 star hotel in Morrocco, also known as 'the worst hell-prison on earth', where he must endure color TV and being bed-fed. In addition to this, the hotel features the best osteopathic clinic in the world, healing his broken spine. We are led to believe Bane, as a child born in this 'hell-hole' managed to escape whilst countless other fully grown men fail. After a few failed bungee jumps, Bruce 'rises' (spiritually by being afraid, again in contrast to previous outings) and checks out of the hotel with an added backpack of supplies.

In the meantime, Bane has released all of Gotham's prisoners and informs everyone about 'the truth about Harvey Dent' from Comissioner Gordon's handy 'admission of guilt' speech. He's blown up most of Gotham using cement explosives installed by the men working for Daggart's construction company, blocked off all exits to and from the city and has the slowly radioactive decaying bomb with inbuilt led clock moving about the city in an armored truck (with decoy trucks running about the place also). The lame-ass people of Gotham abide by Bane's rules for the entirety of the film, as do the military.

Batman comes back, enlists the help of his trustworthy good friend Catwoman and the battle ensues and he smacks Bane's mask enough to give him an asthma attack and here comes the gigantic twist we've all not been waiting for; Miranda Tate is Ras Al Guhl's daughter, Talia Al Guhl and in fact she was the one who was brought up in the Morrocan hotel and the only one able to escape, thanks to Bane! To put it simply- A Warlord for whom Ras had been working for becomes enraged when Ras gets his daughter pregnant and imprisons him. However, his daughter begs her father to release Ras and replace his place with hers, so obviously the father does! The daughter Talia, is born and as a child witnesses her mother get raped and killed and Bane loving all things innocent (as witnessed in the rest of the film), protects her, helping her to escape. The prisoners beat him to a pulp, but the resident orthopedic specialist is also a ear, nose and throat surgeon and sorts Bane out no end. Ras Al Guhl comes back with his men to free Bane for his daughter, but ends up exiling him from the League of Shadows, as he finds him to be too extreme. The daughter Talia, hating her father for exiling Bane, decides to forgive her father, because Batman killed him and is really the manipulating figure behind Bane; she sticks it to Batman and twists it for good measure. Make sense?

Thanks to Catwoman's love of weapons and killing people (except apple-stealing boys), Bane is speedily dispatched without much emotion from Talia and the Bat and Cat save the day. The armored truck with the bomb that should have detonated but didn't thanks to intervention of Gordon in the back of the truck comes crashing to a halt and Talia dies in standard Cotillard style whilst Gordon is unscathed with the two tonne bomb missing him completely. The Batman straps it to his 'Batplane' with under two minutes to go and flies the Neutron atomic bomb over the sea (approximately 6 miles) where it detonates. Although we see a glimpse of Batman in the cockpit with 5 seconds before detonation, we are later led to believe he may have survived the explosion. The bomb is a special type that has no radiation, so the folks of Gotham celebrate. John Blake has a middle name Robin and gets to go to the Batcave, whilst Wayne manor becomes a orphanage.

Oh and Bruce Wayne IS alive as Arthur sees him WITH Selina Kyle in Italy (something he wouldn't have known)

Slightly disappointing remake of the 1998 classic Ringu Japanese horror film. Although the film made a good effort at 'Westernising' the original concept behind the Ring, it failed in creating the mysticism behind the originals urban legend story.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

The removal of the psychic abilities from mother to daughter from the original story means we have no background on Samara, prior to her apparent 'adoption'. Also, the inclusion of actually seeing Samara, in a mental hospital, speaking e.t.c., completely ruins the mythos surrounding the 'evil' little girl. The necessity to over-explain plot points through banal dialogue and the inclusion of more disturbing imagery and shocks during the film, only helped to detract from the horror of the final act (especially the overly artsy video).

The acting, however, was not bad from Naomi Watts and Brian Cox, but the little boy, Aiden, I found to be irratating and somewhat resemblant to a potato.

If you can get hold of the original Ringu, watch that instead. 3/10

It's all about faith, right? Well slap me around the face with a dead halibut!

Shyamalan brings us a mildly interesting film about the reaffirmation of faith of a man who has lost it after the death of his wife, packaged as an alien/crop circle movie.

SPOILERS..

Although elements of the film were indeed well crafted and filmed, it seemed a shame that the director felt it necessary to 'hammer-home' his concept of faith and belief that 'things happen for a reason'. The issues of faith were much better dealt with in films like Contact and not as tidily resolved or telegraphed as they were in Signs. Many have critisized the alien element of the film and have been berated for not looking past the invasion and concentrating on the main 'faith' theme. The problem that arises when you're developing a story that contains serious issues, like fate and faith, is if you surround it with inconsistancies and implausabilities (no matter how improbable the scenario is), it loses alot of it's impact.

The acting in the film is commendable and even M.Night does a reasonable job (with his hydrophobic (yes, again) prophecy) and the story moves on at a reasonable pace. That is, until towards the end. Subtlety is thrown out of the window in favour of childlike story-telling and your left feeling that a good film (certainly amongst this months fare) becomes completely average.

I for one, feel too many people are quick to applaud the works of certain directors (especially those that share their name) and not judge a film soley on it's merits. Based on it's merits, this is a wholly average film.

Oh and by the way, the Hitchcock associations end with the opening credits!