The Dark Knight

This movie is easily 40 minutes (the equivalent of one villain) too long, has some awful dialogue, pretensions to ethical "complexity," and a cluttered supporting cast. These are problems, but they are all problems of ambition--of trying to make a *real* movie, and not a cartoon. I don't necessarily applaud that ambition, because it seems misplaced and at times pretentious, but the resulting flaws are at least forgivable on that account.

What is that ambition, exactly? Weirdly, it seems to be to tell a story about a *city*--where most movies today are blandly "topical." This gives Gotham much more time and attention than one would expect for what is usually a faceless Chicago/New York hybrid--touching on city politics, geography, the way personal lives run into our jobs when we don't live in the suburbs and compartmentalize these things, media spectacles, etc. It doesn't have a lot to say about these things, but they are there, along with the dominant motif that the film links with the urban setting: hope and faith in our public servants. This theme produces the over-long Harvey Dent/Two-face plot, which is a kind of tumor clinging to the much-more-interesting Joker plot, but the film clearly feels it welded these together more than it really did. Two-face is supposed to be the "ultimate" mechanism in the Joker's plan for destabilizing Gotham: throwing the city into chaos, and exposing the noble and normal for the frauds they are. But that summary is much more succinct than anything you'll get in the movie.

Batman/Bruce Wayne (the chiseled and unreadable Christian Bale) gets less screen time than his deformed, villainous counterparts--proving the tired cliche that villains are more interesting than heroes--but if I can turn this cliche on its head, isn't the point of Batman that he has this interesting dark side? So actually that truism explains nothing, because of all superheroes, Batman is the closest to being a villain--a point taken up IN CONTENT by the film's plot, but not at all IN FORM (i.e. it is still much more interested in the "real" bad guys).

Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart are really great here-- Oldman disappears into the role, while Eckhart perfects the way charming and charismatic (blond) people can really annoy you. I wasn't very moved or sympathetic with Dent's tragedy...for whatever reasons... Maggie Gyllenhaal did nothing for me... Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman seem like one too many old actors for basically the same role... Again, the film obviously thinks it has some real drama here, but for the most part it doesn't. Why does Hollywood think that *we* will care as much about these characters as the director does?

The centerpiece of the film is a long car chase through the underground thoroughfares of Gotham--when most of the threads of the plot are drawn into the outcome of this one sequence: it's completely riveting. The other contender for best scene is when the Joker blows up a hospital---there's an incredible long take that is uncannily real-looking and disturbing; it's not shot like an "action film" at all. And that is the film's greatest strength--when it succeeds at being "not just a comic book movie" it is really astonishing; but because these (for the most part) aren't geniuses at work here, some really great shots and situations sit amid a lot of bloated could-have-been material.

Wall*E

This is one of the more critically-acclaimed movies of the year, and it is easy to see why. The animation is beautiful, the main character is very likable, the message is eco-friendly, it's short and sweet, and the publicity campaign advertises its pedigree as something like Chaplin/Keaton meets Toy Story.

The plot is not so very different from the General, but the movie goes wrong wrong wrong by trying to stir up our sympathy for humans. That is, it's as though in the General, our sympathy had to be on both sides of the Civil War at once. We like Wall*E, and we our engaged in his pursuit of love, but the movie hits a series of false notes when we are asked to side with the humans (fat, stupid) over the robots (full of personality, quirky, sensitive).

This is a story of redemption; *our* redemption, by the actions of those who understand and love us better than we love or know ourselves. Wall*E is a FAN of humanity, where we have become alienated from it. So far, so good. But the mistake is the "evil computer" plot imported here from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In other words, the ACTION does not take up the central conflict or theme (redemption) at all. For an example of action that does take up the central conflict of a work, we need look no farther than 2001: the theme of evolution and the fate of humanity's development is played out IN THE PLOT, viz., will the computer be the "next step" in mental life, or the giant space baby? This is an existential question, but also the question of the success or failure of the mission. Wall*E is all over the map in thematic/sympathetic terms, and so all the action involving humans is more central than it ought to have been.

That is my only real complaint, but it's a big one. In frank terms: the plot should have been something else.