A Series of Tubes

Today the movie The Dark Knight opened in theaters, to massive success. The sequel to Batman Begins took in a record-smashing $18.5 million on its first night, surpassing the previous midnight champion, Star Wars Episode III (which sold $16.9 million opening night). I saw just returned from seeing the movie, and I have to say that I was very impressed. The Joker (above), played by the late Heath Ledger, was very impressive. He was definitely very scary, and indeed seemed to be extremely unstable. I need to re-watch Jack Nicholson’s Joker performance to really decide whether Ledger is the best Joker, but it certainly seems at the moment like he succeeded in being more frightening, less stable, and just a better Joker overall. Caution: Spoilers follow.

Two-Face was possibly even more interesting, if only because we are treated to his origin story as well as his demise, in a glaring twist on the original canon of Batman, Two-Face dies after dramatically killing 6 people, instead of providing a full-on nemesis for Batman. I particularly enjoyed watching his obsession with his “lucky coin” develop, from the first time we see it as simply an heirloom from his father through its evolution into deciding whether men and women live or die. Also I didn’t see the connection between Dent being Gotham’s “White Knight” and Batman being Gotham’s “Dark Knight” until the very, very end when Commissioner Gordon said it, but when I realized it it was a very very awesome moment indeed.

Obviously, the two movies to compare The Dark Knight to are Batman Begins (the predecessor of this film), and Iron Man (the most recent quality superhero movie to hit theaters). Compared to Batman Begins, this movie was just as good, if not better. One thing I didn’t like about Begins was the quality of the effects used. They seemed plasticky and not-quite-real-enough at best, something Knight gets around easily. The effects of the new movie are toned down a lot from the first one, but what is there is top-notch.

Compared to Iron Man, the movie was better in some ways, and lesser in others. Both films were highly anticipated, and both were amazing. The difference is in the style with which they each amaze. Iron Man was awesome. Most of the scenes make you go “wow”. The non-stop action, the amazing visual effects, everything was what I would describe as awesome. It felt like a much more glorious film. Everything shined, and sped along, and exploded and was flashy and loud and awesome. The Dark Knight was different, in that it wasn’t necessarily awesome at all times, and it certainly wasn’t glorious. I think that Knight was much deeper than Iron Man, in that it actually provoked other emotions besides awe. The Dark Knight had me on the edge of my seat for practically the whole movie. There were moments (particularly when Rachel dies) when I felt for the people on-screen, and there were times when I hated them, and I was supposed to hate them. Characters were able to actually scare me. About half-way through I started shivering with fear and anticipation, and I hardly stopped until the credits finished rolling. I can’t say the same thing about Iron Man.

I don’t watch many “real” movies, that is to say the sort that win Oscars, but I think that The Dark Knight is definitely going to be a winner this year. Two thumbs up.

I saw Cloverfield today, the new J.J. Abrams movie, about a monster attacking New York (what an original idea!). All in all, it was a pretty standard giant monster movie, though it was also very similar to The Blaire Witch Project, because the whole thing was made to look like it was filmed by one of the characters in the movie (Hud), using a hand-held camcorder. There are no establishing shots and basically nothing that couldn’t be filmed by hand (no crazy panning, pretty much no completely stable & sharp shots, except for the beginning at the party).

About the blurry, shaking camera work. I get it, it was filmed by a panicking clumsy guy with a hand-held camera, but still. I had a headache by the end of the movie, because it was so hard to tell what was going on. I’m sure the attempt to make it look messy left the production company with a very low special effects budget, since there are only two or three clear shots of the monster for the entire film. The mini-monsters get a lot more screen time, and they look somewhat like giant spiders with fangs and maybe more legs. They move very fast, so it was hard to get a good look at them.

Meanwhile, the big monster is seemingly indestructible, and is still up and moving after being repeatedly bombed. It is a very well-made monster, plenty able to realistically pull down skyscrapers and such.

It was an ok movie, not something I’d see again, but I’d say it was worth my $8.50 to see what the monster looked like…

The fifth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, opened last night, and I saw it today. The movie was very good, much better than the fourth though not quite as good as the third, I’d say. The director did a very good job cramming the longest book in the series (so far) into a little over 2 hours, whereas the fourth movie seemed to skip around way too much.

The movie was very dark, Harry pulled off an even more realistic emo than Peter Parker did in Spiderman 3. Professor Umbridge was amazingly well-casted, she really was a character you love to hate. My only beefs with the movie are that the Weasly brothers did a lot more in the book when they dropped out of school than just some fancy pyrotechnics. They had swamps in the halls and other things that lasted days, and also Cho Cheng was horribly cast. She’s supposed to be stunningly beautiful, I thought. Oh well. Luna Lovegood was very well done, and Dumbledore as well. Speaking of Dumby, I made a t-shirt for the movie premier:

Tee hee. The back lists such spoilers as “She kills Bill”, “42”, “He’s Luke’s dad”, “Rosebud is the name of his sled”, and “redrum is just murder reversed”. Yay for ironic spoilers 🙂