Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Dark Knight
The IMAX Experience

Director – Christopher Nolan – 2008 – US – Cert. 12a – 152m

*****

If you see The Dark Knight in an ordinary cinema rather than IMAX 70mm, you haven’t seen it at all – review originally published in Third Way in 2008.

The Caped Crusader is as significant a figure in the media landscape as he is on the Gotham City skyline. Ever since revisionist graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986) suggested that the methods of a so-called hero who went around beating up villains might in fact be less than heroic, the complexity of the character has become increasingly apparent. In print, the high point has been the Red Rain trilogy (1991-98), which reinvented the character as a vampire! Hollywood has jumped on the bandwagon in the last two decades with two quirky Tim Burton movies, two vacuous, family-friendly Joel Schumacher sequels and two darker Christopher Nolan outings (Batman Begins and this one).

Nolan’s entries have focused on Batman / Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) rather than simply on Batman, whose masked vigilante is less a fabrication than his everyday millionaire playboy alter-ego. Bruce is trapped between wanting to protect the city from criminals and the dubious methods he employs to do so as Batman.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Railway Children
(1970)

Director – Lionel Jeffries –1970 – UK – Cert. U – 109m

****1/2

After their father is arrested and the family plunged into poverty, three siblings and their mother leave London for the Yorkshire countryside – now on BBC iPlayer until around mid-August, also recently back out in cinemas for one day only on Sunday, July 3rd

E. Nesbit’s book The Railway Children, set in 1905, has been filmed several times, most notably as the BBC TV series of 1968 and Lionel Jeffries’ 1970 cinema film, both of which starred Jenny Agutter as the eldest of three children sent from the city to Oakworth in Yorkshire. What is arguably the 1968 and 1970 version’s most memorable sequence has the children stand on train tracks waving red flags to stop an oncoming train and prevent an accident after a tree falls on the line ahead.

My parents used to sit me and my younger brother down and make us watch Sunday teatime BBC classic serials, something which has engendered a deep seated dislike within me for both filmed costume drama and literature considered worthy enough to film. I found the former stodgy and suspect the latter may be more to do with BBC cultural filters than anything else.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Nitram

Director – Justin Kurzel – 2022 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 112m

*****

A drama re-imagining of the events in the life of a young man leading up to Tasmania’s 1996 Port Arthur Massacre – out in cinemas on Friday, July 1st

This extraordinary character study starts off with a sense of foreboding which never really lets up. Children are interviewed at the Royal Tasmania Hospital’s Burns Unit and asked how their accidents occurred. We expect cautionary tales of lessons learned. But the second child interviewed states matter-of-factly that he still plays with firecrackers, Then we see Nitram (Caleb Landry Jones) as a grown youth, some years later, doing exactly that in the garden of the house in which he lives with his parents, to the annoyance not only to his parents who have to put up with it but also to the neighbours.

His mum (Judy Davis), worn down by years of such behaviour, insists Nitram surrender the fireworks to his father (Anthony LaPaglia) who is weighed down by financial worries – he needs to get a loan off the bank – and ineffectual at discipline. She also insists he put his filthy overalls in the wash (and they are pretty disgusting) before sitting down to eat dinner with them, which he then does, returning to the table in his underpants, which she lets pass with no comment since he’s complied.… Read the rest