We have Beards so we know Movies: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Brace yourselves; here is my review of The Dark Knight Rises. It’s loaded with SPOILERS so you might not want to continue reading on if you haven’t seen the movie yet. (And if you want to read the review in Swedish instead, click here!)

I didn’t like it — period. It was epic but stupid. I usually like Christopher Nolan movies the first time I see them, but then they tend to dissolve like Fizzies in water as soon as I re-watch them. However, this time it was enough to see the movie once (or perhaps I will like it when I re-watch it..?)

Nolan doesn’t seem to like superhero comics and tries desperately to put everything in a realistic world, which I would like if he did it completely and not just when it suits him. When something from the comic book Batman is removed, Nolan excuses it with it “not suiting his realistic version” but as soon as something is deemed false or illogical he credits it to be “in honor of the comic book world’s suspension of disbelief” – something that DOESN’T define good comics at all…

I have decided to keep this review as short as I possibly can (believe me – it could have become longer!) and to achieve that I have made a list of 10 things (in no particular order) of stuff I don’t think worked and then end with a few words on what I actually did like.

1. The Plot.
I challenge you to re-tell the plot for me without scratching your heads and think “was that how it really was?”, because without the powerful musical score which tells you “what you see now is really important, believe me!” the house of cards will fall. Let me give it a try:

“Ehrm… Bane, who is like a cool character… ehrm… plans to blow up Gotham.. for some reason… Oh, yeah! Because that girl’s dad wanted that and he… ehrm.. is like in love with her.. eh.. Yeah, but he doesn’t blow up the town, he just lets a bomb tick for five months so that..

Ehrm… Fuck it! Let’s talk about Bruce Wayne instead! I mean, he IS the hero and the centre of the story and he… ehrm… builds some kind of energy-thing in secret that only he and Morgan Freeman know about… and perhaps a hundred construction workers who built the underground damn that…

Fuck it! Let’s talk about Batman instead!! Batman is the true centre of the story and he quit being a hero because… ehrm… thanks to the fact that he in the last movie took responsibility for what Harvey Dent/ Two-Face did.. ehrm.. crime has been outlawed in Gotham. Actually, we should outlaw crime everywhere; it’s a great idea.

Yeah, but Batman returns because… Bane returns? Or because that tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun asks him? I’m not really sure but I’ll bet it was memorable because it was a major plot point…

Anyway, Batman returns only to get the shit beaten out of him and get to spend the rest of the movie like he was Ivanhoe (and yes, just like in that one, he chooses the wrong girl here as well).

Because, he should have chosen Catwoman (who isn’t called Catwoman in the movie because Nolan thinks that is silly) even though she’s obviously a lesbian, at least she is one up to the point where they needed an ending that says Bruce Wayne “made it” because.. ehrm… Alfred said so. Yeah, that he has succeeded if he has a coffee somewhere in Europe with a woman who loves him. *cough* Not farfetched at all.”

2. The Characters.
Pretty much every character seems to be driven by the screenwriters as if they were puppets. None of them seem to have a will of their own, and they are only driven by what is important for the extremely hollow plot. Why does Alfred leave? “Well, it’s because it’s needed for that really clever final scene which is almost Inception-like, but amazingly even more strained”.

Bane talks about torturing souls and setting off an atomic bomb with a five-month countdown.. Why? Is it to play Caligula on the deserted streets of Gotham (who still seem to have garbage pickups and other stuff a city needs to not completely deteriorate)? NO, it’s because he’s a fool in love, a henchman who starts to cry when the musical score plays a “sad theme”.

I actually only thought two characters were believable, Commissioner Gordon and the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun. To be honest, I can’t believe no other character reacts to all the bad stuff happening like they do!

The girls are actually pretty kick-ass, but sadly they only fill one purpose: How I Met Your Mother or Who Shall Alfred See Bruce Have a Coffee With in The End?

3. The Fingerprints
Bane needs fingerprints from someone on the board of Wayne Enterprises to activate the atomic bomb, so he sneaks in to their office building in the middle of the day with a bunch of armed guys and forces someone to accompany him voluntarily.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to use Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints, which he already has in his possession? I mean, he bought them from Catwoman earlier and I’m pretty sure Bruce’s fingerprints work better. (And did the board even know about the bomb? Should its safety even be in jeopardy due to their fingerprints?

4. The Bomb.
In the Screenwriting business there’s a lot of talk about a movie’s “time lock”. You know; in romantic comedies the guy has to say to the girl that he loves her before she marries the wrong guy, in a thriller they have to find the exonerating evidence before an innocent person is executed and so on… It’s basically a deadline for the main character that sprays gasoline on the fire we call “excitement” in a movie.

The most classic “time lock” is the ticking bomb. “We have to save X and defeat Y before the bomb explodes!”

I would have loved to have been at the meeting with Warner Brothers when Christopher Nolan pitched his idea:

-“And then Bane threatens to blow up Gotham City with an atomic bomb!”
“-Wow, how exciting! How much time does Batman have to save the city?”
-“FIVE MONTHS!”

5. The Police.
I will give you all the time and money in the world to complete this mission: Trap 3000 policemen underground without killing them, keep them there for five months without them starving to death (even though they only seem to be able to receive tiny notes from the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun through a manhole cover) and make sure when they are trapped that they all somehow lose their guns, because when they finally resurfaces it will look so much cooler if they face their enemies unarmed. (I don’t know, perhaps I missed a scene where the starving policemen eat their guns to survive?)

Sure, it helps that the first hour of the movie establishes that the Gotham Police Force is as incompetent as the police force in The Blues Brothers… but still! Come on.

6. Spa Torture.
Bane wants to “torture Bruce Wayne’s soul” and accomplishes that by throwing him into a pit. A pit where nice old men massages his aching back and gives him life advice and a way to freedom through a climbing wall where you need to be able to jump like a panicky child to be able to get through.

Oh yeah, and a TV so he doesn’t miss what’s happening plot-wise, so the screenwriters doesn’t have to have someone retell him everything that has happened later when (WHEN, not IF) he manages to escape. Ehrm… great torture, Bane. Kudos.

7. Closed Off Gotham.
Nobody can get in or out – the whole town is closed off. Which is why it’s so important for Bruce Wayne and the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun to get a school bus full of orphan children out of there before the city explodes. Bruce asks the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun to nicely persuade those extremely stupid army guys who are guarding the only bridge out to let them through because… well, because they are orphan children. If you don’t help orphan children you will never win a Miss USA contest.

Smart plan. An even smarter plan would have been if Bruce Wayne had explained to the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun which way he himself took when he returned from that prison pit abroad. I would personally have chosen that way instead of the bridge.

8. Kryptonite.
Nolan doesn’t like silly supernatural figments in his Batman movies (who he doesn’t even want to call Batman movies) so he removes the fact that Bane inhales something called “Venom” in the comic books to be able to become Popeye strong. No, Nolan thinks it’s more “for real” that Bane walks around sniffing some kind of pain relieving gas through his mask.

Why even put it in there? Well, it’s in there because the screenwriters needs an Achilles heel in the middle of the face of their… ehrm… physically invincible villain… who really isn’t that invincible, it’s just that people have been eating all the guns in the city so nobody has the possibility to shoot the guy. If Bane was real smart he would down a couple of Tylenol instead, but I guess Nolan would find that idea tasteless due to… well… Heath Ledger.

9. The Bomb. Again!
An atomic bomb that explodes within a minute of Bat-flying-thing distance from the city? Congratulations Gotham! You have cancer.

10. Alfred likes cafés.
One example of something that sums up the entire Dark Knight screenplay structure is Alfred’s love of having a coffee at a specific café in Florence ONCE a year and fantasizing about Bruce Wayne showing up and having a good life. It’s ONLY at that café, once a year that Alfred thinks about Bruce Wayne; the man he raised, having a good life.

How lucky that Bruce listened carefully to Alfred when he told that story, so he later can show up there with a lesbian Catwoman (that was her only function in the movie, right?) because it IS a nice scene… so nice that you don’t even care how extremely obvious the setup is.

And THAT is how everything in the screenplay is set up. Every action, every character, every scene, every “bad guys has their own court of law, and even if it’s cool it doesn’t serve a purpose because it’s always the same judgment”-concoction is based on “Yeah yeah, the point of it is FUN” – which is the opposite of “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey.”

Which is fine by me, but if they make a movie where the journey doesn’t matter I think it would be a good idea to make it a SHORTER JOURNEY!!

Okay, so what DID I like then? I really liked all the actors, but mostly the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun. The movie is powerfully epic, bit parts who was in the trailer, the plane hijacking in the beginning, Bane up to the point where you get to know why he does what he does, Bruce Wayne limping, Gordon’s fast recovery when it is really needed and stuff like that. It’s mostly good stuff that I expect in every movie and not stuff I should be surprised to get in a comic book movie.

I’m insanely jealous of everyone that loved the movie…

More “We have Beards so we know Movies!” Reviews
Men in Black 3
Prometheus 
The Hunger Games
The Thing (2011) vs The Thing (1982) vs The Thing from Another World (1951)
The Turin Horse
Straw Dogs
Abduction
Midnight in Paris  Green Lantern
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Death Wish 1-5
Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D
Super 8
Melancholia
Insidious
Red Riding Hood
The Hangover Part II
Fast Five 
Thor 3D 
Tron: Legacy

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Opera Man

Comedian. Actor. Singer. That’s three words you might use when talking about me.

Want another one? Well, how about MODEL!?!? No, I am not kidding, I am the new, fresh poster boy of NO!, the Opera house here in northern Sweden.

My face is going to be plastered all over town promoting their Fall 2012 shows. And not only is my face on the cover of their program, it’s also going to be on a billboard in front of the Opera building!

A minor quibble though if I’m honest, ehm, nothing big, but I would have preferred not having to wear the sack over my head so only my eye is visible.. But I guess that’s what you have to accept when you are chosen to do a promo for the Opera’s production of The Elephant Man, premiering October 6.

The talented Jakob Arevärn directed the photo shoot. Check him out here, he’s done some great/crazy music videos.

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Bruce Willis Hair

I’ve started to get Bruce Willis hair.

I’m not totally bald, but I’ve noticed that my hairline has started to recede a bit. If it continues I will soon look like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. And soon after that like Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4…

I complained about it to my 86-year-old grandma. I’ve heard hair loss is inherited from her side of the family (I think I learnt that from an old episode of Seinfeld) so I wanted her to explain herself for giving me this curse and perhaps even give me an apology.

She didn’t. But she did give me a cure for it. She told me to start eating vitamin B. She said that helped my uncle when he experienced the same thing at my age.

Grandma then went on to tell me how to cure warts if I ever got any of those. Back in the 1930’s her father got two warts on his hand and he went to a wise old woman in the village and she told him to slice an orange and rub the two pieces on his hand. After he had done that, he was told to bury the orange pieces next to a big rock in the forest. He did and the warts went away.

…

But anyway, I immediately bought me som vitamin B. Now I’ll have to wait and see if this hair “cure” works or if it’s also a bunch of “crazy old woman talk”, like that warts thing. I hope it does work, or else THIS is the Bruce Willis deterioration I have to look forward to:

More “Grandma Stuff” from Lunki and Sika:
Shit my Grandma Says: Marriage
Grandma Simpson
Sh*t my Grandma Says
Living in the Hobo World

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We have Beards so we know Movies: Men in Black 3 (2012)

It took ten years, a lot of rewrites and a lot of waiting on Will Smith to get some “serious movies” out of his system, but finally a third Men in Black movie was released. I must confess, after they made that second one back in 2002 (you know, the not so good one) I didn’t wan’t another one. I wasn’t excited at all when I heard they were making it. I didn’t even plan on going to the cinema to see it.

SO, why the hell did you end up going to see it Sika, you ask? Well, I had a good reason… My mother.
A couple of times a year, me and my mother go to the movies together. And I always let her choose what movie to see. And this time around our phone conversation sounded like this:

Me: So, what movie do you want to see?
Mom: I read in the newspaper they made a new Men in Black movie.
Me: Oh, okay, yeah I heard that too.
Mom: I want to see that one.
Me: Well.. have you heard of a movie called “Cabin in the Woods”? That one is supposed to be great!
Mom: What kind of movie is that?
Me: It’s a horror movie, mom.
Mom: I don’t like horror movies. Is Tommy Lee Jones in that one too?
Me: No.
Mom: I want to see Men in Black.

So we did. And I don’t regret it. Men in Black 3 was actually really great. It was! It was entertaining from beginning to end, fast-paced, funny, action-packed and the 3D was great (like, you forget it’s even in 3D and get constantly surprised that it actually is). AND, it was so much better than the second one, perhaps even as good as the first one (which I really loved).

I’m also happy that Will Smith is back doing movies we like him to do. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him in Seven Pounds and The Pursuit of Happyness, but I think I like him even more in these kind of movies, where he can do what he does best; be funny and be bad-ass. And it seems Will Smith agrees. I just glanced at his filmography over at IMDb and three out of five of his upcoming projects are:

Hancock 2, Bad Boys 3 and I, Robot 2.. I’m really excited about Bad Boys 3. Maybe that can help Martin Lawrence get back to being in funny and entertaining movies again too? I’m a bit skeptical though, but time will tell.

And finally, even though I really enjoyed Men in Black 3, I walked out of the movie theatre with a lot of questions. I say a lot, it was two. All of them Tommy Lee Jones related though..

1. Did Tommy Lee Jones dub the dialogue for Josh Brolin, who’s playing a younger version of him? It sure sounded like it.

If he didn’t, Josh Brolin must have done his “Sounding like Tommy Lee Jones” homework and deserves some kind of award for that.

2. How old is Tommy Lee Jones? The Internet says he was born in 1946, but we all know information on the Internet can be wrong.

Even my mom was like: “Wow, Tommy Lee Jones looked really old!!” I said: “Well, it was the first time we’ve seen his wrinkles in 3D, maybe that’s the reason?” We agreed that must be the case.

Go see it. The wrinkles alone is worth the ticket price.

More “We have Beards so we know Movies!” Reviews
Prometheus 
The Hunger Games
The Thing (2011) vs The Thing (1982) vs The Thing from Another World (1951)
The Turin Horse
Straw Dogs
Abduction
Midnight in Paris  Green Lantern
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Death Wish 1-5
Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D
Super 8
Melancholia
Insidious
Red Riding Hood
The Hangover Part II
Fast Five 
Thor 3D 
Tron: Legacy

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Mockingbird Lane is mocking me

I just read that Jerry O’Connell is going to play Herman Munster in NBC’s ‘Munsters’ Reboot…

*sniffle* ..it started off great with the news of Eddie Izzard playing Grandpa, but now…  buuuuubuuhuuhuuu!

I’m inconsolable.

(P.S. I hope Lily Munster goes Piranha on O’Connell and bites his penis off. D.S.)

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The Diceman Cometh. Again.

I’ve never been a huge Woody Allen fan. Sure, I like his old stand-up and some of his movies, but I’ve never been a die hard fan. Well, until last night that is, when Janne the Director told me that Woody Allen has cast comedians Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay in his upcoming movie. Wow, Woody Allen, Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay working on the same movie, I’d bet you’d never expected to see that? Heck, I’d bet you’d never expect to see them being mentioned in the same sentence?

Here’s hoping it’s a Ford Fairlane sequel.

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We have Beards so we know Movies: Prometheus (2012)

As soon as I heard Ridley Scott was making a prequel to Alien (1979) I knew four things:

1. I had to see it.

2. I knew I had to swallow my pride and confess that sometimes (just sometimes) it’s good that Hollywood makes prequels or reboots a franchise.

3. I knew I didn’t want to know anything about it beforehand. I love to watch certain movies not knowing what to expect. Which meant I had to 
stay the hell away from any trailers, images or actor promotion videos they were going to spread to every corner of the Internet a year or so before the premiere.

4. I knew I had to mentally prepare for the fact that I had to listen to Noomi Rapace speak English. Trust me, most Swedish actors has worse English accents than ABBA.

Tonight, after months of preparations, I finally went to see Prometheus in 3D.

And I really, really liked it! I’m not prepared to say “I loved it” yet, since I’m still so much in love with its two sequels, Alien and Aliens, but I think everyone should see it AND I can say that I did love:

1. Noomi Rapace. I really loved her performance. She felt more fragile than bad-ass Sigourney Weaver AND she’d really done her homework when it came to speaking English. It sounded near perfect in my ears.
2. Idris Elba. Wow, that man would turn me gay quicker than Ryan Gosling.
3. Michael Fassbender proved he is one of the best actors out there at the moment, by stealing pretty much every scene he’s in playing an emotionless android.
4. Charlize Theron. Made me straight again.
Sure, Prometheus had some pot holes and maybe the dialogue wasn’t the greatest I’ve ever heard, and maybe some of the “chocking reveals” wasn’t chocking enough, but I actually don’t think that mattered. The suspense was there, the gore was gory, the 3D was great, I got really scared a bunch of times, I was disgusted and entertained and the acting was pretty damn good.

The only thing that really bothered me was the fact that they put a crappy “old-man-mask” on Guy Pearce. Why? Why use a young actor to play an old character? I don’t get it. I hope Christopher Plummer or Max von Sydow sues the production for ageism.

Or is that reversed ageism? I don’t know what it would be called, so screw the lawsuit. But here’s hoping Max and Christopher at least jumps Guy Pearce during an upcoming award show and beats the hell out of him while screaming: “We could have played that role better than you, bitch!”

I’m not sure whether or not I will wake up tomorrow and change my opinion from “really, really like” to “love”, but whatever happens me and Prometheus will definitely “stay friends” and I think I would like to see her, sorry, it again.

And a sequel. I would like to see that too. There will be a Prometheus sequel, right??

More “We have Beards so we know Movies!” Reviews
The Hunger Games
The Thing (2011) vs The Thing (1982) vs The Thing from Another World (1951)
The Turin Horse
Straw Dogs
Abduction
Midnight in Paris  Green Lantern
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Death Wish 1-5
Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D
Super 8
Melancholia
Insidious
Red Riding Hood
The Hangover Part II
Fast Five 
Thor 3D 
Tron: Legacy

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• Film Review: Prometheus (orbitaleccentricity.wordpress.com)
• ‘Prometheus’ Explores the Nature of Humanity (thesciencebulletin.wordpress.com)
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