In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?
I only act like I know everything, Rogers
Black Widow, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
The TMINE multiplex is open again – and I promise you that unlike all the other cinemas in town, we won’t be showing No Time To Die (2021) on every screen, as we had an exclusive showing on Tuesday.
This week, we’ll be showing three movies. Somehow – I’m a secret genius! – I’ve themed them as a series of confessions… or maybe admissions:
- Screen 1: Infinite (2021)
- Screen 2: The Green Knight (2021)
- Screen 3: Batman Begins (2005)
Then we can all hit the bar! In this dress and these shoes, I’m not going to be dancing for too long, but if you could get me a mojito, that would be super-sweet of you. Is that okay?
Screen 1: Infinite (2021)
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writers: Ian Shorr (screenplay), Todd Stein(screen story) and D Eric Maikranz (based on the book The Reincarnationist Papers)
Available on Amazon Prime
Evan (Mark Wahlberg) is haunted by skills he has never learned and memories of places he has never visited. He is rescued by a secret group called “Infinites” who reveal his memories are real, from his past lives and he must race against time to save humanity from one of their own who wants to destroy it.
Nat says: ‘Surprisingly, it’s not based on an independent comic’
So here’s my first confession. There was a point in Infinite when I had a dawning realisation. A very judgy, unfair realisation.
“This is based on a comic book series, isn’t it? One of those ones that’s got really rabid fans, has been running for seven years, is printed by an independent publisher I’ve never heard of and has art done by some guy with Freudian issues, judging by the size of the women’s breasts?”
I came to that rapid and unfair – so unfair! – conclusion based on the fact that Infinite really sucks. Not totally and completely. It’s directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) so it knows how to do stabby! fighty! shooty! speedy! things. It’s got noted Brit thesps Sophie Cookson, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Toby Jones among the cast. It has redeeming features.
There are even moments when it comes across as philosophically interesting. Supposing we do get reincarnated and supposing some people can remember there past lives with perfect clarity. What would that be like for them? Would they love it? Would they hate it? What if the Buddhists are wrong and you never achieve nirvana, just more lives? What would life become for you?
Or what if you’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia when you were a teenager and then got told when you were in your 40s that actually, all those voices in your head were memories of your past lives? Would you believe whoever told you? Would you think they were a hallucination, too?
Unfortunately, it stars Mark Wahlberg and while he often produces great movies, his starring rate is worse than my predictions for who’s going to win this year’s Love Island. He’s never too bad in them, but with a few exceptions, every film he’s been in for the past 10 years has been awful nevertheless. Sorry, MW!
The movie bounces between sub-Highlander (1986), sub-The Old Guard (2020), sub-The Matrix (1999), with two opposing groups of reincarnating humans fighting for ‘The Egg’. I never like to tell writers their business – it’s not like I’ve ever written any ‘major motion pictures’, now is it? – but ‘The Egg’? Really? That’s the name you came up with? That’s so disappointing!
I digress, though. The bad guys think all life is suffering and are upset that they keep being reincarnated, so have decided to kill all life on Earth with ‘the Egg’ to stop it all from happening; the good guys are optimists who want to learn with each lifetime and make the world a better place, so think this idea is teenage boys in trenchcoats nihilism.
Unfortunately, MW is the only one who knows where the Egg now is and he’s forgotten, ever since he died the last time (awks). So they have great big fights to find him and then remind him. This involves car chases and drowning Marky Mark, so that his past lives flash before his eyes. Great plan, guys. I’d have loved to have been in the brainstorming meeting when someone suggested that. “No idea here is wrong. Feel free to make whatever suggestion you want.” That’s what brainstorming meetings lead to – wanting to drown someone.
As if the promise of someone having thousands of years of memories and skills to draw on to make fights and life better wasn’t enough, Infinite decides that there need to be psychic powers as well. If only MW can put his powerful mind to work remembering how he was able to do that.
I mean… do you think I was wrong to jump to that conclusion? I was wrong, I know, but it feels like I should have been right.
Plot to one side, all the things you might have relied on the movie having to offset these problems just aren’t there. Fuqua can’t make even exploding cars, people diving onto cranes, sword fights or martial arts look exciting. In a movie predicated on everyone being not just experts but multiple-lifetime experts in particular skills, that’s a big flaw – everything should be dialled up to 11 on the skills scale, better, more impressive, faster, more flowing, more exciting than anything you’ve ever seen before.
Except you’ll have seen better even on Amazon Prime. The free things, too, not even the things you have to pay for.
I’m assuming he’d had an off… year. Maybe he ate something bad. I don’t know. I just wished I knew how I could help him get better! Do you think I should send him a muffin basket to at least let him know I’m thinking of him?
The dialogue is dreadful, too, particularly anything that MW has to say. He’s never been a great actor, but he’s really good in Boogie Nights (1997) and Three Kings (1999), at least. I know he has it in him to be better. But if you hobble him with dialogue that even if it’s not straight from a comic, feels like it’s straight from a comic – and, worse still, attempts to paint him as a genius – you’re never going to win.
The poor guy, whom everyone calls ‘Wikipedia’ because he can remember so much and who makes money by fashioning swords in the same way Japanese blacksmiths of old did because he used to be one, gets asked how to make gunpowder.
“Potassium nitrate: 75%, charcoal: 10%,” he snaps back immediately.
It almost feels like someone’s playing a practical joke on him. “Go on. Say this. You’ll look smart.”
“I will? Okay!”
I feel so sorry for him. He’s like real-life Joey from Friends, isn’t he? Or maybe Ron Burgundy?
Ejiofor, for his part, knows that the entire movie rests almost entirely on his shoulders. Like some RSC Atlas waiting for a Herakles who’ll never come to lighten his unbearable burden, he begins to overcompensate as the movie goes on, starting from subtle and mesmerising before going full Gary Oldman by the end.
Otherwise, everyone’s just going through the motions of an action movie, filmed in England but pretending to be everywhere and everywhere.
Fight. Stab. Utter nonsense dialogue to explain the plot and get us to the next scene. Fight. Stab. Utter nonsense dialogue. It’s like watching the front of your washing machine during a rinse cycle.
I get the feeling that Amazon wanted this to be the start of a new franchise. It won’t be. Sorry!
Screen 2: The Green Knight (2021)
Director: David Lowery
Writer: David Lowery
Available on Amazon Prime
An epic fantasy adventure, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur’s headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring adventure to confront a mysterious giant in order to prove himself before his family and court. Made by the visionary filmmaker David Lowery.
Nat says: ‘Mystifying, but not as mystifying as some people think’
Time for confession number two: I’ve never read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I know I should, but I haven’t. Sorry!
I have listened to a really good episode of In Our Time about it, though. Does that count?
I’d like to think it does since watching The Green Knight, I more or less knew exactly what was happening and why. Until there’s a big twist towards the end. But my apologies, English grads, if you think that’s hubris – look at me like I’m wearing skinny jeans, and I’ll get the message. I’ll understand.
The “hero” of the story is Gawain the not-yet-knight (Dev Patel), the king’s nephew – the king (Sean Harris) is never called Arthur and the queen is never Guinevere (Kate Dickie). The movie roughly follows the plot of the poem from the arrival of the Green Knight with his challenge through to Gawain’s quest to his arrival at a certain lord’s (Joel Edgerton) house, where he’s ‘tested’ by the lady of the house (Alicia Vikander). After that, he has to meet the Green Knight himself for the second time – where he faces his inevitable death.
The middle section between those two points is a little aimless, more a series of incidents, with Gawain getting put upon by thieves and more while wandering around the countryside on his horse.
The movie is a beautifully shot piece that evokes the original Arthurian poem via Ben Wheatley and even a touch of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), with medieval life not always being hay beds, disease and misery in this. There are echoes of English paganism beyond those of the poem. The Green Knight looks like he’s straight out of either a pub sign or an academic tome on the Green Man. There are ghost giants, too.
Lowery also puts Patel front and centre at all times. Gawain’s wanderings on horseback feel almost like a zoetrope, but many of the most memorable shots are close-ups of Patel’s face as he responds to whatever’s going on around him.
The movie has a twist. If you know the poem, you’re more likely to be surprised by the twist than someone who isn’t, given the film’s previous faithfulness to its source material.
However, that twist is more a slight updating of the poem: if the original had a Gawain who was a knight and sure of himself, in a Christian time when chastity was an indication of moral purity for both men and women, the movie has a Gawain who still isn’t sure what it is to be a knight and is definitely not morally pure.
Although ultimately, like so many things do, that twist reminds me of the Twilight saga, I think it works in the context of the movie and actually makes Gawain’s act more noble. The removal of the poem’s other twist – (spoiler alert) that the Green Knight and the Lord are the same man, and it’s all been a big joke – also ups the stakes and gives the movie a stronger ending, perhaps one that can continue in your mind as it’s open-ended.
Patel is fabulous and certainly the strongest cast member. I had issues with the more performative quality of the other actors’… performances, which often veered between wooden, self-satirising and self-important. Contrasted with Patel’s more naturalistic delivery, it made the movie feel like something of a joke. Perhaps that was the intention though?
I don’t think The Green Knight is for everyone. As an adaptation of the poem, it’s very good, but if you’re unaware of the poem, you might wonder WHAT IN THE NAME OF HOLY HELL HAVE I JUST SEEN? But I really enjoyed it, at least. I didn’t love it, since the poem meanders a little and doesn’t really fit into the standard Act structure of a modern movie. If you’re prepared to work at it, though, there are some decent rewards to be had from watching it.
Screen 3: Batman Begins (2005)
Director Christopher Nolan
Writers Bob Kane(characters), David S Goyer(story), Christopher Nolan(screenplay)
Available on DVD and streaming services
After training with his mentor, Batman begins his fight to free crime-ridden Gotham City from corruption.
Nat says: ‘Makes you think comic books are plausible’
My friend needed a boost last movie night. He needed to feel a bit superheroic. He’s more like Superman – he even looks like Henry Cavill (way hay!) – but I figured we needed something that was both good and not made by Zack Snyder. Batman Begins was my suggestion, since I think Christopher Nolan is a wonderful director, I thought Batman Begins was a really great superhero movie and although arguably Blade (1998) got there first, it does set the tone for many of the superhero movies of the next 15 years, particularly DC movies.
And I really do like it a lot. The story is very familiar, of course: everyone knows how Batman becomes Batman. But Nolan and Goyer do their very best to make it seem plausible that a rich man would dress up as a bat in order to scare criminals in his corrupt hometown and make it safer for everyone.
They do such a good job, too! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it in one of my informal Nolan retrospectives and admired things about it. The filming locations – how beautiful is Iceland, hey? – the cast, Hans Zimmer’s almost genre-defining score, Bale’s split-personality performance as Bruce Wayne and the quite terrifying Batman.
True, being a Christopher Nolan movie, the female roles are just awful, but I’ve learnt to live with that. It’s his biggest blind spot as a film-maker and it doesn’t look like he knows enough women who can help him fix his scripts that that’ll ever change.
Indeed, that latent misogyny to one side, the script is excellent: humorous, character-driven and doing it’s best to convince you that a man should dress up as bat in some circumstances. He’ll get hurt, he’ll have to come up with some very expensive contraptions and gadgets to stay alive, but he could strike fear into a city and save it from criminals.
You can almost believe it.
This time I didn’t.
That’s my third confession of tonight.
Really, just give your money to charity, Bruce. Or even start your own charity. Help the homeless. Don’t travel to China to become a ninja. Just don’t. I can’t even. Where did you even get that idea? Don’t blame Tom Wilkinson! This is all on you.
I just… I wish I’d been there for you, Bruce, to let you know this at the time. It’s really just not your best option. You went to Princeton, for heaven’s sake!
To be fair, wearing my DC Girl Hat, it’s all in the comics (particularly Batman: Year One). Goyer and Nolan have simply plucked whatever elements they think are the most realistic from those comics and which True Batfans think are core; they have then turned it into a movie and Nolan used all his film-maker’s skills to make us believe what we’re seeing.
But it’s about a bunch of ninja who have secretly been burning down whole cities throughout history because they’re a bit worried about the crime stats, while a rich white guy smashes up a whole city in his big car and nearly kills dozens of police because he’s a bit worried about his girlfriend.
If you’re going to live by mimesis, guys, you’re going to have to die by mimesis, too. Batman doesn’t come across well in this.
But that caveat aside – which honestly, now I think about it, is probably a problem with the comics anyway – Batman Begins is thoroughly entertaining. It has Liam Neeson with entertaining facial hair, back before he was an action star and a good guy. It’s not totally po-faced. It has Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Rutger Hauer and others in its supporting cast. It really properly got my adrenaline flowing in a way Antoine Fuqua can only dream of, not just through its action scenes but some surprisingly horrific, hallucinogenic scenes, too – a movie about fear and the use of fear as a tool, it really is very good at using fear as a tool itself.
It’s at the top of the superhero movies list and it’s a Christopher Nolan movie. Even when he does wrong, he can do no wrong, as far as I’m concerned.
So if you’re going to watch a superhero movie to cheer your friend up, Batman Begins is definitely a good choice. Just don’t take it as seriously as DC took it.
