Me: “Are you excited that Episode VII is being made?!?!”
Amanda: “What?”
Me: “I GUESS NOT.”
Then she comments that she can’t really get into Star Wars because she hasn’t read the original books upon which they are based.
GIRLS.
Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan
My review of “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012)
Blogging some of my past movie reviews — this is my take on “The Dark Knight Rises.” Warning — fanboy bubbling ahead.
*****
Dear Lord, “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012) was fantastic. This third and final installment to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, at several times, wanted to make me stand up and cheer.
This film deserves a perfect 10. All of the magic of “Batman Begins” (2005) and “The Dark Knight” (2008) return – especially with respect to an excellent script with a layered, detailed plot and great, three-dimensional characters. I found myself seeing parallels between this movie and another current popular comic book adaptation, AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” Both seem to have expertly taken the best elements from the comics, but then also changed or updated the source material to enhance it and surprise longtime fans. And there’s a great continuity with the preceding films in terms of characters, themes, motif and story.
The dialogue was wonderful; this is a quotable movie. And the basic story is perfect, especially in the way this film was challenged to follow up the amazing “Dark Knight.” They made some wise choices. Instead of trying to match Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, Nolan simply presents us with a new kind of “Bat-villain” — Bane, a supremely logical and ordered personality whose background seems very similar to Bruce Wayne’s. I was a Batman comic book fan in the early 1990’s, when Bane was created. He remains one of my all-time favorite villains, along with Randall Flagg, Two-Face, (Matt Wagner’s) Grendel, and Hannibal Lecter. Nolan seized the compelling original character (created, I believe, by writer Chuck Dixon), and truly capitalized on it.
So too, did Nolan capitalize on the great character of Selina Kyle as Catwoman (again best characterized in the original comic by Dixon). She was wonderfully played by a runaway performance by Anne Hathaway, and she really does deserve her own movie.
The acting was wonderful all around (even though Tom Hardy doubtlessly was challenged as an actor by a mask that obscured his face). Hathaway, was a terrific surprise, and Gary Oldman and Michael Caine were awesome as always. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard did just great in their supporting roles, especially with some character aspects and choices that viewers might not have expected. I’ve criticized Christian Bale’s acting in the past … but here I thought he was at his best in the trilogy.
By the end of the movie, the two quibbles I had were extremely minor. One, we see various supporting characters use high-tech military vehicles that would seem to require at least some training. (You and I cannot simply hop into a tank and know how to use it.)
Two, by the end of the movie, Bane is not quite the iconic character I remember from the comics. He seemed upstaged by certain other characters. But I’m a nerd, and Bane is a favorite, so … really? There’s probably no pleasing me, anyway.
Seriously, though, THANK YOU CHRISTOPHER NOLAN.
Publication Notice: Dead Snakes features “Girl On A Film Screen”
I’m honored to have another poem, “Girl On A Film Screen,” published over at Dead Snakes.
Dead Snakes remains a terrific place for newer authors to find an audience. It is quite easy to submit, and Editor Stephen Jarrell Williams always seems to have an encouraging word for contributing writers.
Here is the poem:
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2014/10/eric-robert-nolan-poem.html
I caved to peer pressure and I’m glad.
“You’ve got to at least TRY IT.”
That’s what my friends kept telling me about putting peanut butter on Saltines, with all of the ardor and persistence of a meth dealer.
And it was goddam amazing. Look at this expression. You can’t fake that — even with training as an actor. (Why does everyone laugh whenever I tell them I once studied acting?)
Anyway, the best things in life are free. Or … y’know, the price of Saltines.
My review of “Conan the Barbarian” (2011)
I’m blogging some of my past movie reviews from Facebook — this is a (relatively rare) positive review of 2011’s “Conan” remake.
*****
I’m not sure why so many people panned “Conan the Barbarian” (2011); I was pretty happy with it. I’d give it and 8 out 0f 10.
Of course it cannot match the original. “Conan the Barbarian” (1982) is a camp classic. But I really doubt the filmmakers were trying to upstage Arnold and Co. They were simply trying to resurrect a profitable fantasy franchise, after Peter Jackson’s success with “The Lord of the Rings.”
I was bracing myself for disappointment after all the bad advance press, then kept seeing various things that I really enjoyed. For starters, the kid who played young Conan, Leo Howard, is off the hook. He’s a great child actor who was well cast; it’s great seeing him alongside the always-awesome Ron Perlman.
This is also a movie that is “played straight.” There is absolutely no attempt to add cheese or humor in order to amp up the nostalgia factor, as so many other 80’s remakes have done in recent years. This movie gives a fan of the original films (and the comics and novels) exactly what they want – a violent adolescent escapist fantasy. It’s like “The Lord of the Rings” if it were an angry 13-year-old on steroids.
There was very good fight choreography for the swordplay. Scenes are staged, blocked and shot so that you can actually follow the fights (a great ingredient in a “guy movie.”) Yes, it’s bloody and gory and gratuitous – but, again, that’s what true Conan fans are expecting.
Feminists and Joss Whedon fans will be pleased by some nice use of strong female characters, both good and evil. And we have a fun (but too small) supporting role by the incredibly under-recognized Said Taghmaoui, of whom I’ve been a fan ever since his brilliant turn as an Iraqi interrogator in the classic “Three Kings.”
It isn’t perfect. Some of the dialogue is just plain bad, for example. There are pacing problems. Conan here is much less interesting than the Schwarzenegger incarnation – the original Conan was a thief and a brute; sometimes he was only a great anti-hero because he was LESS of a jerk than so many people around him. Here, Conan is an altruist, freeing slaves from passing caravans on a whim. That’s fine. But it does feel as though we’re watching Sir Lancelot and not Conan the Barbarian.
Also, for a film that seems loyal to its source material, there a surprising dearth of visible sorcery and few monsters. The Conan of the comics fought everything from zombie ninjas to coyote demons to giant scorpions. There was also another weird departure from the books and comics. Conan and his clan are … secularists? Huh? Did I hear that right? Any comics reader worth his salt knows that CONAN, LIKE ANY GOOD CIMMERIAN, WORSHIPS CROM. We know this because every time three-headed snake men surprise him from the shadows, he screams, “CROM!” as an expletive.
Personal note: I was obviously a fan of the (rather subversive) comic books when I was a kid. When I was between the ages of 7 and 12, I would beg my parents to buy them for me when we stopped at the pharmacy after church in Wading River, NY. Then I carefully hid their contents. Hooboy. These books were violent; Conan eviscerated or beheaded at least half a dozen bad guys every issue. I can’t remember if this was Marvel title or if it was produced independently. In retrospect, I get the sense that maybe a lot of this stuff wasn’t approved by the Comics Code Authority (CCA). At any rate, the writing was fantastic, and the artwork was simply incredible, even though many of these books were in black and white. Great memories.
When I was a boy, we had so little money for fabric …
… that our neckties were only an inch wide.
AND WE WERE THANKFUL FOR WHAT WE HAD.
[Thanks to Carrie Schor and Ahmad Butt (pictured) for the photo (Longwood High School, circa 1989?).]
My review of “The Chernobyl Diaries” (2012)
Well, this was disappointing. Make no mistake about it – “Chernobyl Diaries” (2012) was nowhere near as good as its trailer made it look. I’d give it a 4 out of 10, and that’s primarily for a great shooting location. (This was filmed in Serbia and Hungary, but it sure as hell looked like something filmed near the titular doomed Russian nuclear reactors.)
You want a truly frightening new found-footage horror movie? Skip this and check out the Australian gem, “The Tunnel” (2011).
My review of “Cabin In The Woods” (2012).
The fantastic “The Cabin in the Woods” (2012) is a surprise-filled movie that is difficult to review without spoilers, so I can’t say much about it. Suffice to say, I really, really liked it – I’d give it a 9 out of 10.
This is a smart, inventive film that is probably the most creative thing I’ve seen in a long time – it’s safe to say that I’ve never seen anything like it. Do yourself a favor and avoid news articles or websites like imdb.com – you’ll enjoy this much more if you know little about it.
It actually takes a while to get going. I had a lukewarm response to this movie for maybe its entire first half. The end — which brings together a surprising number of story elements (I really can’t say more) – really redeemed it. The buildup to that ending is a lot of things that have long been established as horror clichés. But that’s intentional, as screenwriter Drew Goddard and producer Joss Whedon made it, I think, partly as a parody and partly as an homage to the genre.
A few caveats … if you’ve been looking forward to this movie for a while, as I have, you’re aware that it was very well reviewed. But I’m pretty sure it got so much praise because it was creative and original – not because it was the best HORROR movie ever made. The central plot device is too contrived and fantastic to be really frightening, and the movie is too self-aware to allow us to forget it’s just a movie. Parts of it were disturbing, but there’s just too much humor to make this a truly scary movie. You’re not sitting down to “The Exorcist” or “The Shining.”
Also, various reviews seem to indicate a twist that is impossible to guess. This isn’t true. Horror fans – especially fans of a certain subgenre – will know the big reveal before the halfway mark, especially if they listen to the dialogue of the story’s antagonists. Hell, I was just talking about it with another aspiring horror writer just the other day. Don’t expect a surprise on the level of “The Sixth Sense” or “Unbreakable.”
Still, this was a hell of a lot of fun. And what a GREAT Halloween movie it would make!! It would also be fun to watch back-to-back with “Cabin Fever” or one of the “Evil Dead” movies, given their similar settings.
“The Vagabond Poet”
I got acquainted for the first time yesterday with “The Vagabond Poet,” Don Blanding. Dear Lord … this guy’s life sounds like an adventure novel. (A WWI veteran who enlists to fight WWII at the age of 47?!)
I particularly like “The Poet and The Woman,” the first poem on the page at the link.
My review of “A Beautiful Mind” (2001)
I finally saw “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), and I really liked it. It had a fantastic script with great performances by Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany and Adam Goldberg. I’d give it a 9 out of 10.
I had no idea that Crowe was this good of an actor. He had a “Rain Man” role in this film, in which an established actor can show his range by portraying a mentally ill person. Yet even his terrific performance here was maybe outshined by Harris’. I don’t know what it is about Harris … but he grows on you. He’s a great actor, even in a somewhat one-note role like the one he has here. He can be forceful and intimidating, and even genuinely frightening, but also sympathetic at the same time. (See his performances in “The Stand” miniseries (1994) or that Saturday-afternoon, guilty-pleasure standby, “The Rock” (1996).) Plus he’s just got a damned cool voice. And those crazy-ass eyes that bore right through you. Seriously, if Ed Harris were your Dad, would you ever f%#@ up as a teenager? Ever? I would never come home late with beer on my breath, EVEN IF ED HARRIS WERE AN OUT-OF-STATE UNCLE.
Ron Howard’s directing was good – very good. Still, I couldn’t help comparing him with other directors who have a genius for this kind of source material. This is a movie where the main character comes to doubt his perceptions of reality – when I think of films like “12 Monkeys,” “Vanilla Sky” or “Jacob’s Ladder,” I couldn’t help but wonder if their directors really would have given a tour de force with this story’s fantastic elements. Think about it … if Terry Gilliam had directed “A Beautiful Mind,” wouldn’t this great movie be even better?
All in all, though, this was an excellent film. I cheerfully recommend it.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 