The Dark Knight

I have to say I am extremely excited about The Dark Knight coming out. The movie looks to be fantastic. The viral marketing is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Just check out Gotham Cable News, Gotham National Bank, and The Gotham Times for examples.

I thought Batman Begins was great and I knew they had to make another. Every preview for TDK I’ve seen has blown me away. This does not look like a comic book movie. This looks like a crime thriller, such as Heat. It’s being compared to The Godfather II, meaning it’s a sequel that is so good it blows the first film out of the water. There are even whispers going around that if Heath Ledger doesn’t win an Oscar for this it will be a travesty. Christopher Nolan is a talented director and Christian Bale is one of the top actors in the business.

I’m counting down the days until its release. I’ve seen every Batman movie in the theater. I’ve seen every one, since the first back in 1989, when I was 6, with my dad. I’m looking forward to going with him. It’s one of our traditions. 19 years of Batman movies. Thankfully, Christopher Nolan was able to revive the franchise after the horrible Batman and Robin and hopefully he’ll come back for a third in the series reboot. Until then, I’ll continue to drool over more news and previews of TDK and wait impatiently for the day my dad and I can see it together.

Be Kind Rewind

be kind rewind

Last night I watched the movie Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def.  I’m not really a fan of Jack Black but I think Mos Def is a really fine actor with a lot of talent.  When I first saw previews of this Michael Gondry directed film I knew I had to see it.  Not only was it being directed by an amazing director and starring a really fine actor, but it also featured the actors remaking scenes from one of my all-time favorite movies, Ghostbusters.

In short, the movie is about a man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend’s video store. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films.  It really is much more than that though.  The movie is about friendships, community, and making the most out of what is around you.  It really was a fantastic story that is fun and much more light-hearted than Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine.  Stellar performances from Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow and Jack Black (yes, Jack Black was actually good) made this movie great.  If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you watch it.  You won’t be disappointed.

I Can’t Watch This

Earlier this evening I tried watching a movie called Funny Games. The basic synopsis is as follows:

In this exploration of our violent society and how depictions of violence reflect and shape our culture, a middle-class housewife Anna tells the story of how she and her husband George and their 10-year-old son Georgie submitted both physically and mentally to the torture, violence, and death foisted upon them by two young, unexpected, white-gloved visitors at their weekend vacation retreat near a lake.

Violence has never really bothered me in movies. I’ve watched movies that have been considered incredibly violent. There has only been one movie where the violence actually bothered me. That was in the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. That movie was not a horror movie as much as it was violence-porn, meaning they tried to get away with as much as possible and still have it rated R. I started watching this movie tonight and I couldn’t. It was making me sick, and it wasn’t that violent when I turned it off. Maybe it was because the serial killers were incredibly nice but you could tell they had bad things in mind for the family. Something about it just disturbed me. When I started to think about it, the new Rambo film gave me this same feeling. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I was ill as I was watching it but now I wonder if the feeling was due to the violence in the movie. Strangely, movies like The Departed, The Boondock Saints, and Pulp Fiction don’t bother me. Maybe I’m getting too old for such violent movies. I typically am a lover of all movie genres, but this may be one I have to start straying away from.

,

Movie Boredom

I don’t know what it is but I’ve been really bored with the movies I’ve been watching lately. Even independent movies, which have become my favorite movies over the past couple years, haven’t kept my interest. Too much crap is coming out of Hollywood. I’ll give you some examples(warning, may be minor spoilers).

Southland Tales: The only thing I can say about this movie is WTF? I shouldn’t be surprised at how weird and dumb this movie was. It was by the same guy that did Donnie Darko which has to be one of the most overrated pieces of crap to come out over the past several years. Even all the celebrities (Justin Timberlake, Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Rock, Sean William Scott, Kevin Smith) couldn’t save this movie.

Sweeney Todd: Pure crap. The play is much better. Depp was ok, Helena Bonham Carter was terrible. Boring movie.

No Country for Old Men: Another movie that was overrated. Yes, the acting was good, but the story I thought was stupid. Why did they have to kill Woody Harrelson so quick? Why introduce the character at all if five minutes later he’d be dead? Made no sense. I don’t see how people liked this as much as they did.

The Mist: This movie I was actually made me mad at myself for watching it. I thought, Steven King and the director of The Shawshank Redemption (also written by King), it should be halfway decent for a horror movie. No. Though it was funny to see the religious nut convert everyone and how stupid people get during a panic, the ending spoiled the entire movie. Complete crap. There’s been movies where the ending has totally saved an otherwise crappy movie (The Others), but this is a case where the ending made me so mad and was so terrible I can’t believe the studios even let it be shown in theaters that way.

I have watched a couple good movies recently. Dan in Real Life I thought was excellent. Steve Carrell did a great job and it was one of those movies that engulfed you and made you feel what was going on while watching it. The Darjeeling Limited was surprisingly awesome. The performances were great and the soundtrack was even better. It was much better than Wes Anderson’s previous film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. For the most part though, everything has been pretty bad, and with the looks of what Hollywood is doing (remakes of TV shows, cartoons, and movies (a remake of Short Circuit… really?)) it doesn’t look to get any better any time soon.

,

Another Brainwashing in Hollywood?

This is getting sad. More and more people are being brainwashed into the Cult of Scientology. I can handle Tom Cruise going completely nuts. I’ve never been a Tom Cruise fan. Sure, Vanilla Sky was a great movie, and it’s true I can’t watch it anymore without thinking what a nut job he is, but I’d never say he’s a great actor. For those that know me, they know that I think all religion is a sham. Well, Scientology is the biggest sham of them all. When you read about their beliefs and scandal behind the cult, you’ll understand why.

Rumor has it another major actor is pushing Scientology now. None other than Will Smith has been linked to the religion lately. I’ve always thought Will Smith was fairly smart (besides in his decision to do Wild Wild West). He’s a great actor, in roles such as in The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Pursuit of Happyness and the action films that made him a bona fide star, like Bad Boys and Men in Black. Sadly, if this movie is true, I’ll never be able to see him or his movies the same way again. Anyone who believes in their beliefs must be completely insane. Of course, I also think that all organized religions dupe people. Scientology is just the craziest of them all.

EDIT: Oh, and if you want the beliefs in a nutshell, South Park actually did a great rundown of what they believe. They aren’t dramatizing the beliefs at all. It is what they actually believe.