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NORTH BY NORTHWEST: The famous crop duster scene -- which always seemed like it would be kind of silly to me -- worked a lot better than I thought it would. I really like the way Hitchcock set it up and executed it. He takes his time. It's a little dream-like. Vague echoes of The Birds (though didn't that come later?) -- a peaceful set-piece of iconographic elements mutating into a faceless and unexpectedly deadly enemy diving out of the sky. That realization of how oddly helpless you are against something you normally take for granted when it suddenly turns against you. Hitchcock does that well. The art auction scene is interesting, too. Hitchcock's good with managing and pacing his fictional situations. Of course none of that's news, and plot holes you could drive a truck through tend to abound, but hey. Eva Marie Saint's initial seduction of Grant is a thing to behold. It's saddening to compare it to what would pass for a comparable sequence today. James Mason was pretty awesome in his minor role.
I'm not sure I liked it as much as Notorious, or The Birds. But I liked it.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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I liked it enough, but I'm not sure I get what Anderson was after. I sort of wish he had either stuck to making a character study or made the entire movie as weird and oddly compelling as that final scene. Daniel Day Lewis was terrific though, and his performance is reason enough to watch.
Posts: 624 | Registered: Oct 2002
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Last weekend I saw a Norwegian film called Reprise, which was superb. I'd love to see it again, but there's a lot of stuff out there that I feel I'm on the verge of missing.
Still...
It's a formally clever (but not overly flashy) look at what *might* be the results of two young hopefuls beginning their careers as authors. The first scene shows the fast friends standing a mailbox, dropping their first manuscripts in. What follows may or may not be the different paths each of their careers take. Everything may just be a story that an author made up...
Also, superbly acted, especially by the leads, who play complex roles -- two very different young men facing very different challenges, with varying degrees of internal resources, in the same stage of life.
A warning -- most of the major characters are male, and none of those men are particularly likable (altho one of the leads does, admittedly, garner much audience sympathy, due to his circumstances). So, you may leave the theatre feeling kinda icky about the guy-folks for a while...
Matthew
Posts: 4993 | From: Seattle, WA USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD: It's like a character study without the study. This movie was fairly boring, it has no particular center of gravity; perplexing, to be sure, but not particularly intriguing. The narrator is awful, as is the narration. The final 15 minutes or so give a glimpse of what the movie could've been: an interesting exploration of an unglamorous and unappreciated assassination, and its effects upon the life of the man who thought it'd make him a hero. Instead we get two-and-a-half hours of garbled narrative conveyed via random-ish interactions between various characters who are never properly introduced to the audience and whose relationships with one another are never adequately developed. Moments of intended poignant dialogue fall flat; Pitt's James never makes particular sense as a character. Nor does Affleck's Ford for that matter. It all feels very clumsily handled somehow.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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It probably says things I don't want to know about myself that the last three movies I saw in the theater were Wanted, Hancock and The Dark Knight.
I'm a big fan of both James McElroy and Morgan Freeman. I also dig Angelina Jolie for some reason, so the cast alone had me intrigued. The movie is full of totally implausible action that works anyway. It's a lot of fun. Apparently, the story works as well as it does because it bears almost no resemblance to the Mark Millar comics it was loosely based on. And I'm fine with that. Even if the curving bullets stuff is pretty silly.
Recommended.
Hancock is a fun, sweet movie that would have seemed even better if some of the funny parts hadn't been spoiled by the commercials. Will Smith is great as a depressed, alcoholic superhero who doesn't really care if he causes unintentional property damage. There's a love triangle subplot that takes up more of the movie than I expected, but I was satisfied.
Highly recommended.
The Dark Knight... I pretty much loved every character except Bale's version of Batman. Heath Ledger is incredible. Morgan Freeman is really cool as usual. Michael Caine is great. Gary Oldman is terrific once again as Gordon. Maggie Gyllenhall is a vast improvement over Katie Holmes. Aaron Eckhart is okay. Bale has some great bits when he's out of the costume, but as Batman... eh. The glider cape is cool, I guess. And it was cool when he fought those dogs.
I suspect that David Goyer's biggest contribution was coming up with weird ways to destroy stuff and kill people, but hey... it works.
posted
FIRST BLOOD: Going back to cheesy 80s movies I never caught at the time with low expectations attached can be fun, because sometimes I find myself pleasantly surprised, as with First Blood. I never tuned in to the whole Rambo thing -- in fact I think, prior to this, the only Stallone movies I'd ever seen were Rocky IV, Cop Land, and -- wait for it -- Over the Top. I always assumed the Rambo movies were just Hollywood's utterly dim-witted action-adventure version of Vietnam. Well, my mistake: I'd never have guessed the first Rambo movie was a self-contained US-based story of one vet's psychotic breakdown under police harassment, boasting a surreal sort of playing-in-the-backyard version of the guerilla warfare he'd engaged overseas, and culminating in a one-man assault on a small hick town and its sheriff. It's a silly movie, and not terribly subtle, but I liked First Blood. Stallone's marble-mouthed, rambling monologue/breakdown at the end before he folds over into his former commander's arms crying like a baby is a thing to be witnessed: the whole "action" movie before it is like an implosion towards that point, the emotionally broken core from which it all stems. My only regret is that -- as surprisingly decent a movie as it was -- the 'making of' feature clued me in to exactly how watered down it was compared to the book it was based on. In the book, Rambo goes completely batshit, sniping pedestrians in the town at random, and committing suicide at the end. I understand that wouldn't have played as well with audiences at the time, but that'd have been an even better movie, in my book.
RAMBO: Fresh off my First Blood high and curious to see Stallone's new version, which got not-as-bad-as-you'd-think reviews, I went into Rambo with higher expectations -- and consequently found myself disappointed. The best thing was the opening, a scene of sheer and all-too-real-seeming brutality, and the promise of vengeance and death in the cut from the Burmese commander's flame-reflecting sunglasses to the scuffily-fonted movie-title, "RAMBO." If Rambo has a strength, it is Stallone's willingess to dive head first into unflinching violence, even going so far as to depict the up close and personal murder of children (or at least, close enough that you'll think you witnessed it.) Forget the limb-shredding and CGI supergore on display in the final gunfight; that's awfully strong stuff, for a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet somehow, to the best of my knowledge, Rambo avoided controversy. Maybe it's because it's only Burmese children getting slaughtered, empathy reining itself in at the shore of the Pacific; rest assured, the attractive white female Christian missionary avoids even the very obvious raping that all evidence would indicate awaits her, and that numerous Burmese villagers in the movie endure, along with death or even significant injury.
Still, to its credit, Rambo doesn't get sidetracked into the goofy romantic subplot it flirts with, focusing itself instead on the job at hand: jungles, gore, and stealthy rescue missions. Sadly, most of the action and violence is highly compromised by Stallone's ill-advised choice of that -- it has to have a name -- choppy/"quick"-editing technique, wherein all action looks, well -- choppy and sped-up. It's such an utterly goofy effect, I don't understand its present popularity as a directorial choice at all. It completely ruined the climactic gunfight for me. I.e. "this would be sort of cool, if I could see what was going on and it wasn't in Charlie-Chaplin-Cam." I also felt that -- given the film's purposes -- the final confrontation between Rambo and the Burmese commander should've been more dramatic.
And of course, the action and gore aside, there is -- unlike with First Blood -- little else there. The dialogue is ridiculous (though thankfully minimal) and the characters -- while not entirely uninteresting -- are barely developed at all. The movie has nothing particularly coherent to say. It's just a stupid, clumsy action movie, but a stupid, clumsy action movie with the brutality and gore knob jacked to the highest setting Hollywood's likely to tolerate. In the 80s, this movie would've easily been rated X.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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Near Dark: Speaking of going into Eighties movies with low expectations...
This low budget vampire movie set in Texas is surprisingly cool. It stars Adrian Pasdar from Heroes and three people from Aliens--Lance Henriksen, the gal who played Vasquez and Bill "Game over!" Paxton.
I had read and heard good things about it, and now I understand why.
Adrian Pasdar, who I hated on both Judging Amy and Heroes, is pretty good as a young guy from Oklahoma who gets turned into a vampire sort of by accident. A blond girl he picks up and puts some moves on feeds on him, but she can't bring herself to kill him.
He ends up being accepted on a trial basis by her "family"--a gang of redneck vampires who use guns and drive around in a mobile home. They're more like Old West outlaws than your typical goths with real fangs.
Henriksen is quite effective as the head vampire. He's scary, but somehow likable at the same time.
Bill Paxton--who continued his tradition of getting better roles in lower budget movies and playing unlikable weenies in bigger flicks like Tombstone to pay the bills--is actually really good as the Sundance to Henriksen's Butch Cassiday. Paxton is the wisecracking comedy relief guy, but he's also surprisingly bad ass. And it's actually sort of believable that redneck chicks dig him.
Another one of the vampires is a creepy little kid named Homer who, much like the girl from Interview with the Vampire, is pretty bitter about the fact that he stopped physically aging. The kid who plays him is really effective.
The story is more plausible than you might expect, and all the vampire stuff is handled more intelligently than other recent movies such as Dracula 2000 or The Forsaken. It also helps that they don't try to explain everything and they give you just enough stuff for the plot to work.
It's refreshing to see female vampires who are attractive, but sort of "average" by Hollywood standards. That seems more realistic somehow than the topless harem girls in Coppola's Dracula remake or casting Seven of Nine just because she has huge boobs. And they never get naked, which really surprised me.
Anyway... Paxton and the kid (Joshua Miller) end up having different reasons for being in conflict with Pasdar's character, so things get complicated for Pasdar who really just wants to go back to his father and sister in Oklahoma.
Pasdar's crush on the girl who "turned" him (Jenny Wright) helps explain why he keeps making feeble attempts in fit in with the gang instead of being more serious about his attempts to run away. But his heart just isn't in feeding on people, and after Homer sets his eyes on his sister things get ugly fast.
There are a lot of twists and turns in the plot, but they all make sense because they're in character for the various vampires. The attention to story structure and character development is a nice change of pace.
posted
GONE BABY GONE: Not too bad of an effort, I suppose, for being a first-time flick from Ben Affleck. There's a sort of unintended goofiness to the plotting, due to tremendous implausability to certain aspects of what is -- atmospherically -- intended to be a very gritty and realistic-seeming narrative. Affleck is reaching for hard-boiled authenticity, but the problem is that none of his (main) characters are particularly believable overall: character motivations are highly questionable, and plot-holes abound upon close scrutiny. There's not enough of an umbrella over the story, not enough contextualization: the entire film is oddly confined to a few key players, with no outside interference, and the passage of time seemed clumsily handled. All of this serves to damage the believability of the narrative and gives the movie a somewhat amateurish feel. It's also, on a purely aesthetic level, not that interestingly shot. However, all that said, I'm sympathetic to Affleck's intentions. He has the right idea, sort of, making some interesting choices, and not going too easy on the viewer while successfully illustrating some complex and difficult moral questions. I also found it relatively difficult to predict as I watched it, in a general sense, so it certainly held my interest. Recommended? Kinda. If it sounds at all interesting to you, it's probably worth a rental, anyway.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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This movie features Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and some other cool Hong Kong action stars in key roles. So, I let myself forget that I didn't like either of the previous movies and I wasted seven bucks on a matinee showing of this bit of fluff.
Rachel Weisz allegedly didn't like the script for Mummy 3, so she isn't in this one. I can't really blame her if that's true. But instead of doing the right thing and writing her out of the story, they hired Maria Bello to take over her role. So... Not only was I deprived of getting to drool over Rachel Weisz and her oddly sexy voice, I was disappointed by Maria Bello (who I usually like) trying to do a Rachel Weisz impression--right down to mimicking her accent in a way that's kind of creepy.
In this one, Alex the precocious son of Rick O'Connell (Brendan Frasier) and his wife Evelyn (Weisz, now Bello) from the second movie is all grown up and he's a tomb raiding explorer in his own right. Which sort of makes the story a rip-off of the latest Indiana Jones movie.
Which left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the guy who plays the son in this movie is way cooler than Shia LeBeouf. But on the other hand, he's even more of an Indiana Jones rip-off than Frasier's character already is. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
At least Luke Ford, the guy who plays Alex, can do some movie kung fu so he's more fun to watch than the folks playing his parents. But... The only reason to even have him in this movie is that they're apparently planning to do a Mummy 4 without Frasier. So, this one helps fans of the series warm up to him before the next one.
Ford's dialogue is less blatantly anachronistic than Frasier's, but all that does is make Frasier's use of slang terms and concepts that probably weren't invented yet more annoying.
Jet Li makes a good bad guy. He's supposed to be the emperor who built the great wall of China. In this version, he's also an evil sorcerer with an army of terra cotta warriors. You get to see him do just enough stuff with swords and Wu Shu to wish there were more of those scenes and less stuff with the boring CGI zombies.
Michelle Yeoh is her usual awesome self as a sorceress who is trying to stop Jet Li from becoming immortal. It made me all nostalgic about The Tai Chi Master (where she and Li were on the same side). But she doesn't get to do as much cool stuff as I hoped.
The movie starts out with a prologue in 50 B.C. before moving forward to 1946. The 50 B.C. part is pretty cool even if it is just enough like Hero to feel derivative--making me wish they would have just made a period movie about Jet Li's character and forgotten all about the main story. Things go downhill fairly quickly with the shift to the twentieth century.
There are funny moments here and there and some good action sequences, but most people are probably going to focus more on the parts that "homage" other movies (such as a chariot stunt and other bits that are obviously swiped from Raiders of the Lost Ark).
Isabella Leong is the best thing about this movie. Her character would be even cooler if she didn't end up being the son's love interest, but I'll take what I can get.
Posts: 5361 | From: Melnibone, Idaho | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
I get pissed off at you whenever I read one of your blog entries. And it's partly because even when you make a point that I can agree with, you do it in the most asinine way possible.
Your arguments against Christian rock, for example... I sort of agree with you, but reading that stuff still made me wish I could leave a flaming bag of poo on your front porch.
I don't need more reasons to think you're an asshole. Life's too short to waste it being irritated by you.
Posts: 5361 | From: Melnibone, Idaho | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote:Originally posted by madget: FIRST BLOOD: Going back to cheesy 80s movies I never caught at the time with low expectations attached can be fun, because sometimes I find myself pleasantly surprised, as with First Blood. I never tuned in to the whole Rambo thing -- in fact I think, prior to this, the only Stallone movies I'd ever seen were Rocky IV, Cop Land, and -- wait for it -- Over the Top. I always assumed the Rambo movies were just Hollywood's utterly dim-witted action-adventure version of Vietnam. Well, my mistake: I'd never have guessed the first Rambo movie was a self-contained US-based story of one vet's psychotic breakdown under police harassment, boasting a surreal sort of playing-in-the-backyard version of the guerilla warfare he'd engaged overseas, and culminating in a one-man assault on a small hick town and its sheriff. It's a silly movie, and not terribly subtle, but I liked First Blood. Stallone's marble-mouthed, rambling monologue/breakdown at the end before he folds over into his former commander's arms crying like a baby is a thing to be witnessed: the whole "action" movie before it is like an implosion towards that point, the emotionally broken core from which it all stems. My only regret is that -- as surprisingly decent a movie as it was -- the 'making of' feature clued me in to exactly how watered down it was compared to the book it was based on. In the book, Rambo goes completely batshit, sniping pedestrians in the town at random, and committing suicide at the end. I understand that wouldn't have played as well with audiences at the time, but that'd have been an even better movie, in my book.
RAMBO: Fresh off my First Blood high and curious to see Stallone's new version, which got not-as-bad-as-you'd-think reviews, I went into Rambo with higher expectations -- and consequently found myself disappointed. The best thing was the opening, a scene of sheer and all-too-real-seeming brutality, and the promise of vengeance and death in the cut from the Burmese commander's flame-reflecting sunglasses to the scuffily-fonted movie-title, "RAMBO." If Rambo has a strength, it is Stallone's willingess to dive head first into unflinching violence, even going so far as to depict the up close and personal murder of children (or at least, close enough that you'll think you witnessed it.) Forget the limb-shredding and CGI supergore on display in the final gunfight; that's awfully strong stuff, for a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet somehow, to the best of my knowledge, Rambo avoided controversy. Maybe it's because it's only Burmese children getting slaughtered, empathy reining itself in at the shore of the Pacific; rest assured, the attractive white female Christian missionary avoids even the very obvious raping that all evidence would indicate awaits her, and that numerous Burmese villagers in the movie endure, along with death or even significant injury.
Still, to its credit, Rambo doesn't get sidetracked into the goofy romantic subplot it flirts with, focusing itself instead on the job at hand: jungles, gore, and stealthy rescue missions. Sadly, most of the action and violence is highly compromised by Stallone's ill-advised choice of that -- it has to have a name -- choppy/"quick"-editing technique, wherein all action looks, well -- choppy and sped-up. It's such an utterly goofy effect, I don't understand its present popularity as a directorial choice at all. It completely ruined the climactic gunfight for me. I.e. "this would be sort of cool, if I could see what was going on and it wasn't in Charlie-Chaplin-Cam." I also felt that -- given the film's purposes -- the final confrontation between Rambo and the Burmese commander should've been more dramatic.
And of course, the action and gore aside, there is -- unlike with First Blood -- little else there. The dialogue is ridiculous (though thankfully minimal) and the characters -- while not entirely uninteresting -- are barely developed at all. The movie has nothing particularly coherent to say. It's just a stupid, clumsy action movie, but a stupid, clumsy action movie with the brutality and gore knob jacked to the highest setting Hollywood's likely to tolerate. In the 80s, this movie would've easily been rated X.
K
Like FB, it was bout killing machine that couldn't go home. Not the most earth-shattering idea, but coherent.
-------------------- The Man of Mettle Posts: 4000 | From: The MBA (Mysterious Blue Area) of the MMM (Mighty Marvel Moon), Nagga (Pal) | Registered: Aug 2001
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It didn't seem to me that was what the movie was about: one or two goofy pseudo-flashbacks reminding us of the themes from the previous films doesn't count. It seemed more targeted towards the idea of accepting the need to fight for some things and to brave danger to help others; but those pushing that message are the ones that Rambo ends up needing to come and save, while the Burmese villagers continue to be raped and killed as far as the eye can see. Of course Rambo ends up killing the head commander and taking out a significant faction of military and saving some villagers too, but it's incidental, only happening at all because he has to go follow-up on the missionaries (at the request of others) to begin with. And hell, he was supposed to wait in the boat, but I guess Mr. Killing Machine realized if there was killing to be done, he'd need to be part of it. But really, I think we're supposed to understand it's because of the woman, whom he feels some remnant tenderness towards. Still, if it's true his sole motivation is that "he's a killing machine that can't go home," I just thought the premise was covered better in First Blood.
Rambo was at its most effective when it simply showed what the Burmese were being subjected to. That's all the set-up we need to watch Rambo go do his thing. I'd have liked it well enough if the action hadn't been in Chaplin-cam. All that weird editing just kind of ruins the effect for me.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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I don't agree with his metaphysics, but The Mindscape of Alan Moore is a good documentary/performance piece where he discusses his views on reality and how it pertains to his art. There is no kvetching about business relations of the past, just his philosophy and politics (I particularly liked his modern culture as steam metaphor and his take on conspiracies). The style of the flick goes from good photography to hokey dramatized scenes, but mostly the former. Really, the only element that out-and-out stinks is the music. The 2nd disc contains lengthy interviews with collaborators and associates (e.g., Gibbons, Gravett, Lloyd). By far, the most intelligent discussions of comics I've seen on film. It comes out in the US in late September. here's the trailer. And here's some details on the UK release (which is the same).
-------------------- The Gospel, wherein much Truth is written. Posts: 7110 | From: us of fuckin' a | Registered: Aug 1999
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THE DARK KNIGHT (spoilers): Eh, this was okay. To my surprise there were only about 3 other moviegoers in the same screening I went to earlier tonight. That disappointed me slightly, as I would've been curious to note how much (if any) derisive snickering occurred collectively every time Batman opened his mouth to emit yet another canned line of dialogue in his goofy Bat-growl. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks he sounds ridiculous. I figured I'd get over it in short time, but the Bat-growl seemed only to become more and more snicker-inducingly over-the-top as the movie progressed, culminating in the final scene, wherein Batman seems to be flirting with a new language all together, some faux-primitive tongue inspired by the unintelligible grunts and garbles of deeply hung-over pro-wrestlers involuntarily awakening to pounding headaches and the sunlight of a new day. Maybe the DVD has subtitles.
I liked Ledger, particularly in his nurse's outfit (the entire sequence of him in the hospital and coming out of it is movie gold.) The Joker in and of himself was generally really good, even if his various schemes -- fairly implausible from the get-go -- become downright embarassingly so by the movie's end. For someone who just "does things," he's blessed with a pretty remarkably uninterrupted string of good luck. Bombs, boats, and buildings are rigged, skyscrapers sequested, police dodged and/or overpowered, all as if by magic, and often in shockingly short time; in the police station he detonates a bomb (implausibly sewed inside the body of a fellow inmate -- all part of the plan!) that seems to affect everyone in the vicinity but him. It's also a good thing Dent survives the Joker's initial seemingly sincere attempt to murder him, since that would've put a hitch in his plan -- (sorry, "random anarchic thing he was doing") -- of being intentionally caught, and having both Dent and Rachel carted off to separate locations to play complexly-rigged morality games with Batman that seemed more like what I'd expect from the Riddler (though I'll grant my knowledge of the Batman comic canon on which the movie incarnations of these characters are all based is not very thorough.) To its credit, the movie successfully raises a bevy of interesting and challenging moral questions -- unfortunately, with the subtlety of a ball-peen hammer thunking you on the head over and over again. It's conclusions are debatable, and its mechanisms of exploration felt hammy to me (e.g. the two boatloads of people challenged to blow each other up.) I hate shit like that, and find it particularly groan-worthy to have to suffer their unlikely collective heroism, as even the hardest-boiled criminal throws the detonator out the window, facilitating two random mobs of people ever-so-cheesily validating Batman's fundamental faith in humanity, the one thing that allows him to foil the Joker w/o any large group of civilians dying in the process. And its few critics came down on this movie for being cynical?
Getting back to plausibility, I know it's a little silly to nitpick that in a superhero movie -- obviously, we're not going to be grounded in reality, here, and you have to let some things slide -- but it becomes problematic in the hands of directors who want to make everything seem so realistic. I think a part of the problem was Nolan's dizzying scope. Others have applauded it, this almost There Will Be Blood-like overlapping, unrelenting, multiple-hour-montage feel, complimented and amplified here by a camera that's never still. But I think Nolan would do better to concentrate on more focused and carefully built up situations, instead of the barely coherent international sprawl offered by The Dark Knight. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. For all its many faults, the Gotham of Batman Begins felt more like its own character to me (which I think is what Nolan and the movie's writers want); although neither versions compare to Burton's Gotham, particularly in the first of his pair of Batman films. Despite the frequent, almost fetishistic shots of endless glassy skyscrapers, The Dark Knight's Gotham felt insubstantiated to me somehow, its streets and locations jam-packed with people or weirdly empty by turn, as the situation needed, a bit too conveniently; much of it seeming far too close to its real-world shooting-location counterparts, e.g. Chicago.
If Burton's Batman was just as implausible overall, Burton's Batman at least didn't take itself so insanely seriously. It retained an ironic, winky sort of cartoonishness, something Nolan can't stoop to embrace. In fairness, it'd be inconsistent of him to do so at this point; but I feel his more realistic vision for the world of Batman could bear more than little fine-tuning. Also in fairness, I found the somewhat more subtle echoes of contemporary figures and issues somewhat interesting: Dent reminding me a bit of Obama in some of his rhetoric, Batman's sonar-cellphone technology (and Fox's disapproval of it) reminding me of the government's post-9/11 survellience of, like, everything. Nothing specifically analogous, but there were little elements to the movie like this dressed up with just that pinch of current-events-familiarity.
Casting-wise, I still don't like Oldman as Gordon. I don't know why. He's better here than in Batman Begins, but he seems so dopey and downtrodden, somehow. Gyllenhaal as Rachel was an improvement. Eckhart was fine as Dent early on; as for Two-Face, I don't know -- I'm not sure how sold I was on the CGI there, and the somewhat rushed-feeling conclusion to his character's "second half." Seemed hokey. Maybe it's a compliment to Eckhart's characterization of Dent that his tranformation into Two-Face and decisions thereon seem implausible. There's also not enough room to develop the whole "chance" motif that goes with the villain or give him a real prescence of his own. I was sort of hoping, after the Joker's discussion with him in the hospital, that that would be it for Two-Face this movie, and he'd feature more prominently in the next film. As for Bale, he's as bad as Batman here as he was in the first film, and he's kind of increasingly boring as Wayne.
As for where the series *does* go next, I understand from interviews that nothing's decided yet, but the reference early in the movie to Batman's outfit being able to withstand cat attacks made me think Catwoman was floating high in the writers' minds as a possibility.
Now, all this griping out of the way, I can't say I entirely disliked The Dark Knight; it was engaging and Ledger was really fun to watch, and if the action was occasionally too chaotic for its own good, there were still some money moments and exciting sequences. So, it was okay, better than your average superhero movie at any rate, with an admittedly standout villain.
K
PS: Quantum of Solace looks pretty fun.
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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Nice one. As usual, you provide a lot of food for thought, skipping over the subjective tallying off of what amused or failed to amuse you, and cutting straight to a closer look at the thematic underpinnings sans an arbitrary aesthetic judgement. (I'm just not well-read enough for that, so I've gotta make do with mocking the Bat-growl.) The clarity of your writing has improved over time, I've noticed, too.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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Also, you mercifully clear this up (if you're to be trusted):
quote:Finally, when the Joker gives Batman the forced choice between rescuing Rachel (the girl he loves) or Harvey Dent (the white knight of supposed systemic change), Batman chooses the subjective. Because the Joker lied about the location of the two victims, Batman mistakenly rescues Harvey, while Rachel goes up in flames.
I had a little trouble following exactly what went down, in that sequence.
K
Posts: 3866 | From: michigan | Registered: May 2001
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