The Batman

Year:  2022

Director:  Matt Reeves

Screenplay:  Matt Reeves and Peter Craig, based on characters from DC Comics

Starring:  Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell

Running Time:  176 minutes

Genre:  Action, superhero, crime, thriller

On Halloween night, the mayor of Gotham City is brutally murdered by a masked individual calling himself The Riddler (Dano), who leaves a series of cryptic clues aimed at masked vigilante, the Batman (Pattinson), the secret identity of reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne, who has been fighting crime in Gotham for two years.  As Batman investigates, he realises that The Riddler is just getting started, as more and more of the great and good in Gotham turn up murdered.  With the help of nightclub waitress Selina Kyle (Kravitz), who has her own secret, the Batman uncovers a vast criminal conspiracy, which hits uncomfortably close to home.  

It's tempting to roll the eyes at the thought of yet another Batman film, or indeed yet another superhero film as the last ten years has seen a seemingly endless stream of them.  The tendency, particularly of the Batman films, has been to get increasingly dark and gritty, which to be fair is in keeping with the character's origins in the pages of Detective Comics in 1939, but a long way from the colourful, campy Batman TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward which defined the character for decades, at least until the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film.  Despite Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) the character seems to get darker and grittier with each new iteration, and this is possibly the bleakest yet.  Devoid of light (literally for the most part, the film takes place almost entirely at night in gloomy, cavernous rooms, and strobe-lit nightclubs), humour and mostly any sense of hope, this is Batman for the 2020s.   It is less of a superhero action film, although there are some very good action scenes, including a spectacular car chase, it's more of a gritty crime thriller, closer to films such as Se7en (1995).  Batman is more of a detective here, trying to crack the case by solving the clues and interviewing witnesses and suspects.  Robert Pattinson is good as Batman, and his Bruce Wayne is a very different take on the character.  Instead of the traditional billionaire playboy, his Bruce is a recluse lurking around the Batcave, always in black, listening to Nirvana and writing his thoughts in a journal. and seems to be more than. little bit disturbed, closer to characters such as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) or Rorschach in the comic series Watchmen (1986-87), who incidentally was inspired by Batman.  Andy Serkis plays Alfred, Bruce's one connection to a normal life.  Zoë Kravitz is very good as Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, who helps Batman for her own purposes and whose moral ambiguity challenges Batman's black-and-white worldview.  Paul Dano is chilling as the Riddler, turning the character from a gimmicky prankster to a genuinely frightening killer.  Jeffrey Wright is good as Commissioner Gordon, Batman's friend on the police force, and one of the few honest cops in a corrupt city.  Colin Farrell is almost completely unrecognisable under layers of makeup as mobster and club owner the Penguin.  While the Batmobile does make an appearance in the film, and very impressive it is too, Batman uses less gadgets than usual in these films, mostly allowing his targets to hear his heavy footfalls as he looms from the shadows  This is an impressive and complex film which spins out an intriguing mystery and remains gripping throughout what could politely be described as a generous run time.  While this may be too dark and sombre for many people's tastes it feels right for the character, and I liked the fact that it was a smaller scale than most recent superhero films, and I also liked the portrayal of Batman as a crime-solving detective.

Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz) and Batman (Robert Pattinson) in The Batman

Career Girls

 Year of Release:  1997

Director:  Mike Leigh

Screenplay:  Mike Leigh

Starring:  Katrin Cartlidge, Lynda Steadman, Mark Benton, Kate Byers, Andy Serkis, Joe Tucker

Running Time:  83 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, drama

Two young women, Annie (Steadman) and Hannah (Cartlidge), reunite in London for the first time in six years, when they shared a flat as students.  As the two reconnect, memories of their former friendship resurface, both good and bad. 

Following the multi Oscar nominated Secrets & Lies (1996), British director Mike Leigh went for a much more low key approach with this small, funny and often touching comedy-drama.  It's a character study of two women and deals with how places and people change over the years.  As students, Annie is painfully shy and diffident, suffering from dermatitis on her cheek, while Hannah is loud, arrogant, confident and yet very brittle, masking her feelings with odd affectations and games (such as frequently using her treasured copy of Withering Heights as a divination tool).  Six years on, Annie seems a lot happier, her skin has cleared up, and while still shy, she has a lot more confidence.  Hannah has a good job in a stationary supply company, she is still confident and cutting, but kinder and more at ease.  Not much really happens in the film.  Annie is visiting Hannah for the weekend, and goes around to view flats with her to keep her company.  In the funniest sequence in the film, Hannah trades a succession of barbed one-liners with a sleazy yuppie (played by Andy Serkis) who is trying to sell his flat, but soon seems more interested in Hannah and Annie than property.  Over the course of the weekend they encounter a succession of old friends and boyfriends, perhaps most tragically the stuttering, socially awkward Ricky (Mark Benton) who was a flatmate of theirs in college but ran out when Annie didn't reciprocate his romantic feelings.  Mike Leigh's style involves starting off with only a very vague idea of a plot, and allowing the actors to shape and develop the story along with their characters over long periods of rehearsal, so with the right actors his films are often very perceptive in regards to character, but his technique does not really make for particularly strong narrative.    Katrin Cartlidge (who previously worked with Leigh on Naked (1993)) and Lynda Steadman are both excellent, and they get good support from the rest of the cast.  There is a bit too much coincidence in that they keep happening upon so may old friends over one weekend in a place the size of London, which Hannah does comment on a couple of times, and Hannah especially is pretty unpleasant in her student scenes, but the film is about growth and change and they do win you over.  This is a film where the characters feel like they have a existence outside the film, and by the the film's gently optimistic conclusion, you are left wondering where Annie and Hannah found themselves in another six years.

Annie (Lynda Steadman) and Hannah (Katrin Cartridge) in Career Girls

24 Hour Party People

Year of Release:  2002
Director:  Michael Winterbottom
Screenplay:  Frank Cottrell Boyce
Starring:  Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, Danny Cunningham, Shirley Henderson, Lennie James, Sean Harris, Andy Serkis, John Simm 
Running Time:  117 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama, music

Manchester, England, 1976:  Tony Wilson (Coogan), reporter for local news show Granada Reports and music show So It Goes, is inspired, after seeing a Sex Pistols gig, to open a showcase for local, unsigned bands.  Wilson's "Factory Nights" are a huge success, and he subsequently starts his own label, Factory Records.  Despite making a huge splash with the legendary group Joy Division and, later, the brilliant, but mercurial, Happy Mondays, as well as their own nightclub, The Hacienda, Wilson and his friends soon realise that the wild nights can produce some devastating morning afters.

This is the cinematic equivalent of a great night out:  Funny, wild, scrappy, sometimes weird, sometimes emotional, and leaving you blinking at the cold grey light of dawn.  I was kind of too young for the whole "Madchester" of the late '80s and early '90s but I do remember it being a thing, and I knew people who were really into it, also my Dad is from Manchester, so I enjoyed the film's celebration of the city.  The film is a heady mix of drama, documentary, comedy, music video and surrealism which doesn't as much break the fourth wall as throw a sledgehammer at it.  In one scene one of the real people depicted in the film cameos to dispute the film's version of events.  The film even breaks it's story to list some of the people who cameo in the film, including one whose scene was cut but, as the narration states, "I'm sure it'll be on the DVD" (I've seen the DVD and it is).  The film is certainly messy (the tragic real life suicide of Ian Curtis, although played respectfully in the film, feels at odds with the goofy comedy surrounding it).  Steve Coogan channels more than a little of his Alan Partridge character as Tony Wilson, a talented man who is so unapologetically and full-bloodedly a complete arse, that he becomes almost kind of heroic in a weird way.  Otherwise, the film is full of famous, or soon to be famous British stars, including Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg. I love music, but I'm not really a big music person and don't know a lot about it, however I loved this film.  It makes me feel a little nostalgic for the wild nights out and dazy, hazy mornings.   

Lennie James, Shirley Henderson and Steve Coogan are 24 Hour Party People   

Brighton Rock (2010)

Year: 2010
Director:  Rowan Joffe
Screenplay:  Rowan Joffe, based on the novel Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Starring:  Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough, Helen Mirren, John Hurt, Andy Serkis
Running Time:  111 minutes
Genre:  Crime, drama, gangsters

This film is an adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene, which was previously made into a critically acclaimed film in 1947, directed by John Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough.  In this film the setting is updated from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Brighton, England, 1964.  Violent gangs of warring Mods and Rockers are tearing up the coastal town of Britain, and young gangster Pinkie Brown (Riley) murders rival Fred Hale (Sean Harris) against the express wishes of his gang.  Brown hastily seduces and marries young waitress Rose (Riseborough), who is the only person who can tie him to the murder.  However Rose's boss, Ida (Mirren), was a close friend of Hale's and suspects that Rose can tie Pinkie to the crime and is determined to make her testify.  With the threat of the police, and powerful and wealthy local crime boss Colleoni (Serkis), as well as his own gang increasingly turning against him, the already psychotic Pinkie becomes increasingly unhinged and it is only a matter of time before he decides to silence Rose permanently.

This is a powerful and intriguing gangster movie, which plays more like a doom-laden tragedy.  The main focus of the film is the corruption of the innocent waitress Rose by the sadistic gangster Pinkie.  Despite a memorable riot scene between the Mods and the Rockers, it is difficult to see what difference it made, updating the story to the 1960s.  Also the film suffers at times from being too heavily symbolic, with Catholic symbolism (well, it is an adaptation of a Graham Greene novel) and at times almost apocalyptic portents of doom being layered on with a trowel. 

However, despite the flaws, the film looks good and is stylishly made.  It memorably depicts a bleak and savage world where there is little light or hope.  In the process, it manages to make the seaside town of  Brighton make Dante's Inferno look like an ideal holiday destination.  Sam Riley, who previously made an impression as Joy Divison frontman Ian Curtis in musical misery-fest Control (2007), gives a great perfomance as the monsterous Pinkie Brown, and Andrea Riseborough gives a star-making perfomance as the tortured Rose.  

This is a slow-burning but endlessly fascinating film, which provides enough thrills and suspense to keep fans of gangster movies happy, but adds a bracing layer of darkness and grit to the genre. 

Oh, they do like to be beside the seaside: Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough in Brighton Rock 

Burke & Hare

Year: 2010
Director: John Landis
Screenplay: Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft
Starring: Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Isla Fisher, Tom Wilkinson, Jessica Hynes
Running Time: 100 minutes
Genre: Comedy, horror, period

Summary: It is the year 1828 and the city of Edinburgh is famous as a centre for science and medicine, and is home to two prestigious medical schools, one run by Doctor Robert Knox (Wilkinson) and the other by his arch-rival Doctor Monroe (Tim Curry). In order to keep these schools supplied with corpses to use as teaching aids, most of which are provided by the bodies of executed criminals. However, Monroe uses his political influence to have all the bodies of the recently executed automatically turned over to him. Deprived of the only legal means of obtaining fresh cadavers, Knox finds himself having to turn to the body-snatchers (also known as "resurrectionists") who steal bodies from graves and sell them, a potentially lucrative but also highly illegal profession. William Burke (Pegg) and William Hare (Serkis) are two Irish immigrants who attempt to make a living as con-men but without success, their only regular source of income being a boarding-house run by Hare's wife, Lucky (Hynes). When one of their lodgers dies, Burke and Hare realise that they can sell the body to Knox for a good price. Add to this is the fact that Knox always needs more bodies. The problem is that the cropses need to be as fresh and as intact as possible. The only solution is for them to provide the corpses themselves.

Opinions: This film is based on a true story which is still something of a legend in Edinburgh, although the film is very far from being historically accurate (one scene for example features another Edinburgh legend, Greyfriars Bobby, the little dog who spent fourteen years guarding the grave of his owner, depsite the fact that the dog wasn't born until 1855 - 16 years after the events of the film). However it is an entertaining film which manages to be funny throughout. The humour is mostly pretty broad and slapstick. The film is also very gory, which may put off some viewers, and some horror fans might be put off by the comedy element. The production design and sets are impressive creating an impressive vision of 1820s Edinburgh. It is also very well performed by a talented cast which is filled out by numerous cameos from well-known British actors and comedians. Focusing mostly on Burke and Hare themselves the movie makes them genuinely likeable and sympathetic characters, despite their murderous activities, and give Burke a moving romantic story with aspiring actress Ginny (Isla Fisher).
While far from being perfect, this film is both funny and dark.



Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis in Burke & Hare