The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

There’s a Storm Coming, Mr. Wayne.

I went into each of the new Batman movies with some degree of trepidation.  The first movie suffered from the reputation left by the previous movie, and the second movie suffered from the high standard set by one of the actors in the Tim Burton version.  Going into the third Batman by Christopher Nolan, I did my very best to keep my expectations low, but I could feel myself losing that fight the second a plan was made to see it.  That’s when it was becoming real.  But I still had the nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me that there was no possible way this movie could be better than the Dark Knight.  The Dark Knight may be my favorite comic book movie ever, tied with Avengers and Watchmen.  If this movie trounced its predecessor, then I would need to write a review naming a new movie as my undisputed favorite comic book movie of all time.  Am I about to do that?  Let’s find out in my review of The Dark Knight Rises, written by Jonathan Nolan, co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Josh Pence, Juno Temple, Nestor Carbonell, Matthew Modine, Alon Abutbul, and Cillian Murphy.

Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, Gotham City has reached a relative state of peace due to the Dent Act and the efforts of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman).  So peaceful has Gotham become that the savior of Gotham, the vigilante known as Batman (Christian Bale) has disappeared into seclusion that he breaks only to have conversations with his butler Alfred (Michael Caine), and to get robbed by a cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).  But Selina stole more than Bruce Wayne’s mother’s necklace; she also stole his fingerprints … and a congressional representative.  She sells the prints to a criminal named Bane (Tom Hardy) who uses them to bankrupt Bruce Wayne.  While investigating the sewers, Commissioner Gordon also gets shot by Bane’s men, but is rescued by a cop named Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but a speech Gordon had in his jacket falls into Bane’s hands, revealing to him the truth about the cover-up of Harvey Dent’s crimes.  Gotham City needs Batman again, but does he have it in him to defeat this new foe and stop his terrorist plot?

This time I was right.  The Dark Knight Rises was not able to come close to the legacy left by The Dark Knight.  I’m in no way trying to say that this movie was bad, but it had a whole lot to live up to and it wasn’t able to.  That being said, Dark Knight Rises was a really good movie, and really strong in a lot of ways, but my three favorite comic book movies are resting comfortably on their thrones.  I think the story was what got on my nerves a little bit.  Though it was good, there were just too many things that just didn’t make sense to me.  Take, for instance, when Selina Kyle steals Bruce Wayne’s car early on in the movie.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but Bruce Wayne is the most famous person in Gotham, yet the valet doesn’t realize that he’s not married and that he left his really expensive vehicle by himself, so he just gives the keys to any lady holding a ticket claiming to be his wife?  So that dude’s fired.  There were plenty of things that I loved though.  One such occasion was when Selina Kyle disappeared when Batman turned around and he said, “So that’s what that feels like.”  Without spoiling it, I was also very happy to see that they used the most famous thing from the comic book storyline of Bane in this movie.  I don’t know the Batman universe that well, but the one thing I knew that Bane did happened, and I loved it.  There’s also a great deal of emotion in this movie, and I don’t think they’ve really done that successfully in the previous movies.  But I really liked the last thing Batman says to Commissioner Gordon in the movie, and a few of the things Alfred said to Bruce during the last half of the movie almost brought me to tears.  I will say that I did not like the ending of the movie, but I’ll go into more detail in the next paragraph.

I know that doesn’t sound like I had that many complaints about the story of the movie, but the reason I left some out was that they contain spoilers.  The first non-spoiler I would give you is about spoilers, but I would recommend you not check IMDb before watching this movie.  Just looking at the credits for this movie spoiled something that could have potentially been a huge surprise near the end of the movie.  Maybe two things, depending on how asinine and descriptive the posters get with the character names.  But here’s the rest of them ::SPOILER ALERT::  The huge thing it spoiled for me was that Talia al Ghul, the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, was in the movie.  That’s not revealed until the last 15 minutes of the movie!  But, when I went in knowing she was in the movie, it was pretty easy to figure out who she was and who the trigger person was going to be.  One of the big problems I had was with Batman in the prison.  He tried to escape the prison around three times before he realized that he needed to make the jump without the rope holding him back.  Friendboss Josh realized that when the first person tried to make that jump.  How is he smarter than the World’s Greatest Detective?  I regarded the ending of the movie as a total “fuck you” as well.  Batman dies … or does he?!  No.  The problem with this is that it really didn’t make any sense.  If Batman wanted a vacation, he doesn’t need to fake his death, and certainly not to the people he’s closest to.  He let Alfred, Lucius, Gordon, Blake, and Selina Kyle all think that he was dead for a good long time before they either figured it out on their own or ran into him on vacation with Kyle in Italy.  It did have a bit of an emotional impact on me as a viewer though, but it was mostly anger.  Knowing this was Nolan’s last Batman movie, I had entertained the possibility that he might kill off Batman, but you can’t just do that.  Batman’s almost a century old; you can’t just come in and kill him.  Then, when I saw him in the café at the end, I just wondered why the fuck that little misdirection was necessary.  There were some good spoilers as well.  I thought it was total genius how Bane’s mercenaries used the army against the people of Gotham by making them keep the people of Gotham in town because they would set off the bomb if even one person made it across the bridge.  I also thought it would’ve been an awesome reveal if I didn’t already know it was coming (Fuck you, IMDb!) to find out that Talia was the kid in the prison and Ra’s was the mercenary being talked about in the story.  I got goosebumps when they showed the scene from the first movie that tied into it.  ::END SPOILERS::

I enjoyed all of the performances in this movie, but there certainly wasn’t anything on the level of Heath Ledger.  I know it’s an unfair comparison, but it’s also necessary.  Christian Bale did a great job in the movie.  He wasn’t really the same Bruce Wayne we’d seen before as he was dealing with a lot of emotions in this movie.  In the beginning of the movie, he’s in seclusion and his guilt at the death of Rachel is still wearing on him, and it’s only getting worse with him turning it inward as he doesn’t have the distraction of being Batman anymore.  But that was part of the problems I had with the movie: there was not enough Batman!  He’s not Batman for a large part of the movie, and the first time he becomes Batman he just doesn’t seem that into it anymore.  He’s back in form near the end of the movie, but I was getting bummed out about it by then.  Tom Hardy did a great job in this movie as well, and I’ll avoid the Joker comparison to give him the credit he deserves.  This is the Bane they needed to make in the movie.  One of the biggest problems I had with Bane’s appearance in Batman and Robin was that they seemed only interested in recreating the character’s look.  Yeah, he’s a big brutish looking guy wearing a mask, but he’s not some mindless goon.  Bane had a genius-level intellect in comic books, but that movie makes him unable to string two words together.  This movie does Bane justice.  Tom Hardy makes him completely intelligent and intimidating.  They also had a good reason for him to wear the mask, which I was wondering how they’d pull off when they didn’t want to take the Venom angle from the comic books.  Anne Hathaway also did a pretty good job as Selina Kyle, but I can’t say that I think her role required all that much out of her than being fuckin’ hot.  She did that part of it with gusto, but also gave a pretty good performance.  I probably would’ve preferred that they had a few hundred more scenes of her riding Batman’s motorcycle wearing skintight leather from behind though.  Her character created some questions for me, though.  The main one was how Bruce could still be moping over Maggie Gyllenhaal 8 years after her death when he just met Anne Hathaway.  I’d be over it pretty gundamned quickly.  I also really liked the look of her “Catwoman” costume (though she’s never referred to that way as far as I know).  And not just because it was skintight on Anne Hathaway’s body either.  I liked that it felt really reminiscent of the Catwoman costume from the Adam West days, but they made it better by making it so she wasn’t intentionally wearing cat ears, it just looked like she was when her goggles were pushed back onto her head.  On another note, I understand that Catwoman is very agile and flexible and everything, but was it actually necessary for her to kick the lever on the window washing scaffold at one point in the movie?  It was above her head and you could’ve just pulled it with your hands.  Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

I’m sure it’s hard to tell from the review I just wrote, but I did really like The Dark Knight Rises.  It was a great movie and did not lessen the average quality of the trilogy in the least, but not much can live up to the legacy left by The Dark Knight.  The story was fantastic, but had some problems that hindered its overall quality, but all of the performances were fantastic and made me so happy that someone finally did Bane justice so we can stop using Batman and Robin as a character reference for him.  I had some problems with the movie, but I had absolutely no problem seeing it in theater.  It was totally worth it.  I’m happy I saw it, I’m in love with the trilogy in total, and I can’t wait to buy it on BluRay.  The Dark Knight Rises gets “You made some mistakes, Miss Kyle” out of “The Batman has to come back.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Dark Knight (2008)

And … Here … We … Go!

Having already seen Batman Begins, I figured the sequel would at least be good.  Christopher Nolan’s new vision for the Batman universe struck me as mostly realistic, but totally awesome.  When the sequel was on its way, you could assume that the quality might diminish as with the greater majority of sequels.  But my hopes were fairly high regardless.  What my hopes were low about was the villain.  I was definitely amongst the group of people that thought it would be completely impossible for anyone to surpass Jack Nicholson in the role.  I was sure the actor they picked would do a fine job and, from what I had seen, he looked fantastic in the role, but come on!  It’s Jack Nicholson!  Well, what happened?  Let’s all be not surprised by the results of me reviewing The Dark Knight, story by David S. Goyer, written by Jonathan Nolan, co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Chin Han, Eric Roberts, Ritchie Coster, Michael Jai White, Ron Dean, Monique Curnen, Nestor Carbonell, Colin McFarlane, Nydia Rodriguez Terracina, and William Fichtner.

A make up wearing criminal known only as The Joker (Heath Ledger) is robbing mob-owned banks in Gotham City and, though he loves to show his face on camera, continuously evades Batman (Christian Bale) and Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman).  In reaction, a Chinese accountant named Lau (Chin Han) hides the money for the mob bosses – Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts), The Chechen (Ritchie Coster), and Gambol (Michael Jai White) – until the Joker shows up and tells them they are avoiding the problem.  What they really need to do is kill the Batman, which the Joker claims he can do, but he demands half of their money to do it.  If you’re good at something, never do it for free.  Out of the desperation of the mob bosses, the Joker is unleashed on Gotham.

I always remember that I like the Dark Knight before I decide to rewatch it, but it still blows my mind with how good it is.  I’ve said it before with two other movies, but this movie stands a very good chance of being my favorite comic book movie.  Avengers was easily the most fun, Watchmen is a fantastic movie as well, but the Dark Knight is an amazing movie.  So exciting, so dark, so smart, and so so good.  It’s an extremely well-written story with action, chaos, and loss.  And the darkness and realism that I liked so much about the previous movie returns for this movie.  That would, of course, mean that the Joker wouldn’t be using the toys you’d typically find him using – things like guns that pop flags with “Bang” written on them or Jack in the Box’s that explode – that Joker purists may miss, but it wouldn’t fit the atmosphere.  What you get instead is a super dark and demented insane genius that actually has his shit together while still being completely off his rocker.  We all knew the Joker was coming, though.  They hinted at it at the end of the last movie.  But when I was going into this movie, I started wondering why they didn’t hint at the villains from the next movie.  But I think I found one.  It seems like there was a very good chance that, when Bruce asks Lucius how his new suit will do against dogs and Lucius said, “It should be fine against cats,” it may have been a hint that I never caught before.  As much as I loved the movie, I took issue with a few smaller things in the story.  The first was that I never understood what happened with the rescues of Rachael and Harvey.  Batman tells the cops that he’s going after Rachael as he’s leaving the police station, but then he shows up to rescue Harvey.  Did the Joker lie to Batman and he actually intended to rescue Rachael, or did he change his mind off camera and tell the cops to go after Rachael?  It’s always kind of bugged me.  The second was the cell phone echolocation machine that Bruce had built.  He spends all this money and all this time researching and perfecting this technology to find one man one time, and then he blows it all up.  I grant that it worked, but it just seems so wasteful.  The third part I had a problem with was towards the end of the movie, when someone was going to punish someone else by having him choose between his wife, daughter, and son which one he loved most.  How shitty do the wife and daughter feel?

The action in this movie was spectacular, made even better by the fact that the greater majority of it was done practically and involved minimal computer graphics.  As good as computer graphics have gotten over the years, you can usually tell when it’s fake.  Most of the Dark Knight is not fake, as best as I could tell.  There were plenty of highlights amongst the visuals, but I’ll focus on three.  Two of them were in the same fantastic action scene: when the Joker was trying to destroy the SWAT vehicle with Harvey in it.  It was freakin’ amazing when the Tumbler drove into the garbage truck that was following the SWAT vehicle, smashing the top of the garbage truck into the ceiling of the underground road.  Thinking that couldn’t be topped, slightly later they make a semi do a front flip.  Later on, they even actually blow up a building to simulate Gotham Hospital.  Suck it, Avatar!  You can take your blue people with hair dicks back to Pandora and sit on Home Tree.

Credits be damned.  Even amongst the stellar performances in this movie, I think we all know who the real star of this movie is: Maggie Gyllenhaal.  I don’t know how they didn’t incorporate it into the story that, much like Harvey Dent, Rachael must’ve endured some serious trauma and third-degree burns in between the first and second movie, and all in the face region.  In fact, the moment I realized that the Joker was truly insane was when he referred to this new Rachel as “beautiful”.  Okay, in truth I don’t think Maggie Gyllenhaal is as ugly as all of the things I say about her indicate, but she’s certainly not great looking.  And the real star of the movie is actually Heath Ledger.  This mother fucker disappears into the role of the Joker, and easily (and surprisingly) blows Jack Nicholson’s take on the character right out of the water.  I believe that, had I gone into this movie unaware of the Joker’s true identity, I may not even have recognized Ledger in this movie.  He’s that fucking good.  I said it after I first saw the movie and it’s as true today as it was then, but everything else in this movie could’ve been complete horse shit and his performance alone would’ve made it worth seeing.  It truly was the performance of a lifetime, and a gundamned shame that it was the last performance in his lifetime.  The only non-Gyllenhaal performance I took issue with in this movie was Melinda McGraw as Commissioner Gordon’s wife.  All of her reactions to bad news in this movie were a little over the top and never convincing.

The Dark Knight is an amazing movie.  The story is great, the action is fantastic, and the performances are all terrific.  There’s not a lot of bad things to be found in this movie, but even if there were, the movie would be worth the watch for Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker alone.  The fact that the rest of the movie is also amazing is just icing on the cake.  I don’t know that I’d be comfortable calling the Dark Knight my favorite comic book movie of all time, but it would certainly be considered.  This movie should not only be owned; it should be watched at least once per month.  Put it on your calendars.  The Dark Knight gets “A little fight in you.  I like that” out of “Harvey Dent.  Can he be trusted?”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Batman Begins (2005)

You Must Become More than Just a Man in the Mind of Your Opponent.

Let’s go back in time to roughly 2004.  At this point, Batman had fallen on hard times, somewhat devastated by the shit sandwich known as Batman and Robin.  So devastating was this movie that it was almost a decade before they put out another one.  But this guy, he wanted to reboot the whole series.  What kind of bullshit is that?  We’ve all seen Batman’s origin story!  And you want to throw down your movie against the Tim Burton Batman’s origin story?  This has bad written all over it.  But, they wanted to take the movie in a darker direction, and it seemed as if they got mostly good people to be in it, so maybe I was judging too harshly.  I would still give it a chance.  Also, the word “Batman” was in the title, so there was a very good chance I would be seeing it anyway.  How could this movie possibly do?  We’ll find out as I review Batman Begins, written by David S. Goyer, co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Mark Boone Jr., Ken Watanabe, Linus Roache, Sara Stewart, Richard Brake, and Gus Lewis.

A young Bruce Wayne (Gus Lewis) must leave a play because of his fear of bats.  His father Thomas (Linus Roache) and mother Martha (Sara Stewart) escort him into the alley behind the theater where they are murdered in a mugging gone wrong by a desperate criminal, Joe Chill (Richard Brake).  Later, when Chill is granted parole if he testifies against crime boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), Bruce (now Christian Bale) sets his mind on killing him, but is beaten to the punch by one of Falcone’s men.  Seeing how corrupt Gotham City has become, Bruce disappears into the world to study the criminal element and train physically and mentally in martial arts.  He gets himself arrested and, while imprisoned, he meets a man named Ducard (Liam Neeson), who offers Bruce the opportunity to train with and join the League of Shadows, a group of ninjas led by Ra’s al Ghul with a mind to bring justice to the world but, after training with them, he realizes that their plot is to dispel the evil from Gotham by destroying it and allowing it to rebuild.  Bruce says, “Good day,” picks up his hat and spikey gloves, and burns the place to the ground, killing Ra’s and saving the life of Ducard.  Bruce is picked up by his butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) and returns to Gotham to use his new skills and a pointy cowl to bring justice to Gotham in his own way.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Ra’s al Ghul immortal?  Are his methods supernatural?  Eh, it’ll probably never come up…

I tried, probably in vain, to act like I wouldn’t like this movie.  I can’t imagine anyone didn’t see right through that.  Of course this movie is awesome.  With each new reboot of the Batman it gets darker and better.  The old Adam West Batman was goofy and fun, then Tim Burton put out a much darker and more serious Batman with Michael Keaton that got goofier and more terrible over time as George Clooney took over the role.  What Christopher Nolan gives us is the darkest and most realistic look at the Caped Crusader we’ve ever seen, and probably the best Batman movie that had ever been released up to that point, renewing the faith of the fans that had been trampled down over the years.  I can’t recall if I went into this movie thinking that it couldn’t possibly be better than the Tim Burton Batman, but I would say it succeeded.  And, just as great, they went with some fantastic villains that we hadn’t seen in the movies prior: Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul.  I loved the realism in the movie as well.  Everything they changed they changed for the better, and all of it seemed like it could really happen.  The armor, the memory cloth cape, all of the setup stuff.  I don’t know that any of that stuff really exists, but it feels like it does.  The Tumbler seemed much more realistic, but I must admit that I miss the Batmobile from the first movie.  It’s an acceptable substitute.  Even the villains were more realistic.  Ra’s al Ghul stayed immortal with the use of the Lazarus Pit in the comic books; here he uses deception to spread the legend of Ra’s al Ghul as immortal.  Scarecrow was never all that unrealistic.  It’s probably not that hard to find an inhalant that will make you trip balls.  The only real issue I took with the story of the movie is that the fat cop was made out to be a dick for telling the guy he took food from that he should feed his kids falafel.  That’s just good logic right there.

No one should’ve been surprised that the greater majority of the people were able to bring it.  They got some fantastic actors to participate in this thing.  Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman; so many great actors that deliver in every way.  And Katie Holmes is in the movie too.  That’s perhaps harsh.  She actually did a fine enough job.  Not spectacular, but certainly not bad.  Christian Bale is probably the best performance in this movie as far as I’m concerned.  He really gives three performances.  The Bruce Wayne he puts on is mostly for show; what he’s been told a billionaire playboy would act like.  Then there’s the real guy, who is much more serious, but still finds the time to toss quips back and forth with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman – both of which bring a great deal of snarky comedy with their lines.  Then, of course, the Batman, who is always serious and speaks in a super gravelly voice that does grate on the nerves, but I didn’t take that much issue with it.  I think I more took issue with how breathless it always made him seem.  It was as if … he couldn’t do … more than three … words at a … time … like that …

Batman Begins is awesome.  One could argue that it starts out a little slowly as we have to sit through the origin story that the bulk of us were already familiar with, but once it gets moving, it gets moving.  This is the exact type of Batman movie the world wanted.  Or, in the very least, it’s the one I wanted.  The action is fantastic, the darkness and the realism are amazing, and the performances are top of the line.  I love you, Batman.  And you, Christopher Nolan.  Something tells me I might be saying that once or twice more in the next couple of days.  Come back to find out.  For now, Batman Begins gets “You’re not the devil.  You’re practice” out of “Death does not wait for you to be ready!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Fighter (2010)

White People Do This to Other White People

The award nominations that today’s movie received piqued my interest in it.  But, generally speaking, I get turned off by these types of movies.  Drama movies tend to be quite the journey to make it through, having their ups and downs and usually the downs are a lot heavier than the ups.  But I’m also a fan of boxing movies.  I would never call myself a boxing fan, but boxing movies tend to be more interesting.  They’re usually fairly uplifting stories about facing adversity and rising above it.  And there’s some face punching to keep me interested.  I put today’s movie on my Netflix queue when I started doing reviews and even noticed that it was streaming instantly, but I never felt like I was in the mood to watch it.  It took so long that it actually got sent to me even though I could’ve watched it without having to wait on shipping, but it sat on my desk unwatched for a while longer.  I finally reached a point where I couldn’t think of anything else to watch, so I decided it was time to watch this movie.  Let’s see how that went in my review of The Fighter, based on the life of Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson, directed by David O. Russell, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Jack McGee, Mickey O’Keefe, Frank Renzulli, and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts, managed by his mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) and trained by his half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale).  Micky is not doing well as a boxer, considered mainly a stepping stone for better boxers, but he’s looking to change that.  Dicky is being filmed by a documentary crew about his comeback.  Micky gets left in a bad situation – fighting a boxer he shouldn’t be fighting – by his mother and brother, which leaves him wondering if he’s in the best situation for him.  His brother’s addiction to crack is not really helping matters.  He meets and starts a relationship with a bartender named Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), but she’s not really accepted by his family.  Dicky’s trouble eventually leads to his incarceration, and Micky gets his hand broken in the process.  While in jail, Dicky and his family are embarrassed to find that the documentary was actually called High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell, and actually about Dicky’s crack addiction.  With Charlene at his side, Micky cuts his mother loose, gets a new manager, starts training with Micky O’Keefe (Himself), and starts actually winning fights.

At first, I found myself a little let down by this movie.  Not because it wasn’t good or anything, but because I somehow went in expecting a different movie.  I don’t know how I got those expectations, knowing that this movie actually got award consideration, but I was kind of expecting a movie about boxing.  Boxing is actually fairly secondary in this movie to the family drama.  Once I had gotten that through my mind and I realized what I was watching, it made the movie much better.  I don’t think I’d say the story was what deserved to be applauded as it was just the life of Micky and Dicky.  They were interesting lives and made for an interesting watch, but I don’t feel comfortable giving the writers too much credit.  The action of the movie was decent too, when it happened.  The fights were few and far between and I would’ve appreciated more of them, but that wasn’t really what this movie was going for.  I probably would’ve appreciated more action-packed, Rocky-esque fights, but that also wasn’t really what they were going for.  They wanted realistic boxing, but since I’ve never been that big of a fan of actual boxing, that never really excited me.  Of course, my favorite part of boxing is always just watching the knockout compilations on YouTube.  Real boxing is often too slow for me, but if you’re a boxing fan you’ll probably really enjoy the realism of the fight.

I think the greater majority of the praise this movie received came from the performances.  And these performances certainly did not disappoint.  The greater majority of the cast not only put on a great performance, but they became the character.  I don’t know that I’d call the greater majority of them likeable, but they seemed like the real people they were trying to be (at least as best as I can tell from the limited time I’ve spent with them on the making of featurette).  I wasn’t entirely impressed with Mark Wahlberg in this one … or any one I can think of.  He was probably a lot like Micky Ward, but I don’t know Micky Ward.  I’ve seen Mark Wahlberg before, and he acted a lot like him.  He wasn’t bad, but everyone else being really good makes him fall short.  Christian Bale was almost unrecognizable.  He lost a lot of weight, wore fake teeth, and acted exactly like a crackhead.  I didn’t want to have to spend any time around that guy.  Same goes for Melissa Leo as their mother.  She was a controlling annoying bitch, who would rather defend her crackhead son than give Micky the credit he deserves.  Amy Adams was also really good in this movie, and was hot and wore a bra you could see her nipples through.  YAY!  And she’s the one that punches one of Micky’s asshole family members in the face, which was very satisfying to me.  Micky’s baby mamma was also a dirty bitch.  Basically, none of these characters were likeable, but the actors deserve props for acting like them.

The Fighter was a good movie, but not entirely what I expected when I went in.  The story was good, the boxing was very realistic, and the performances were mostly superb.  Being not a fan of dramas or boxing, it’s not really the movie for me, but there are definitely lots of people that would love this movie, and nobody can take anything away from the performances.  I recommend this movie for a watch.  Especially since it’s available to stream on Netflix.  The Fighter gets “I told everybody I was gonna win that fight and get back on track” out of “I heard she’s into threeways!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Equilibrium (2002)

If I Was Gonna Shoot You, I’d Shoot You in the Face

Nothing really inspired me to watch today’s movie. I decided it was based mainly on the fact that I need to do something to prep myself for the release of Dark Knight Rises. Since there are only two Batman movies with Christian Bale, I decided I could fill the time in between with other Christian Bale movies. But that’s a flimsy premise, as I decided it after I started watching this. In truth, I just wanted to watch it. I have no idea how I originally came to see this movie, but once I had, I liked it enough to get it on DVD. Since then, I have decided at random to watch it probably a dozen times. That may spoil my review of the film, but I don’t care. This movie is Equilibrium, written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, and stars Christian Bale, Sean Pertwee, Angus Macfadyen, William Fichtner, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Sean Bean, Matthew Harbour, and Emily Siewert.

We’re in the future and, as we have seen many times in the past, we did not age as a fine wine. Shit went bad. There was a WW3 and, instead of leading to a bunch of really good movies and really good video games as it’s predecessor did, it lead to people deciding we needed to kill emotions so people wouldn’t get in fights and kill folks. That also isn’t going well, but people seem to like it or, more likely, feel nothing about it. They’re all on a drug that stops everyone from feeling, but there are people that decide to go off their meds and start feeling up the joint. That’s where the Tetragrammaton comes in, acting under the rule of the “Father” (Sean Pertwee). They go in, do a lot of fancy shooting, and burn the artwork and stuff that they’ve collected so that no one will be inspired to feel. This is where we join in. We follow a high ranking Grammaton Cleric named John Preston (Christian Bale). After a raid, he finds out his partner, Errol Partridge (Sean Bean), is off his meds and feeling. He finds him reading poems by Yeats and shoots him in the face. Shortly after, he accidentally knocks over his dose of Prozium and decides to not take it anymore, causing him to start feeling. He and his new partner, Brandt (Taye Diggs), raid the house of Mary O’Brien (Emily Watson), and Preston starts feeling for her. Trouble begins to amp up for Preston as his feelings start getting in the way of his job and he has to make some decisions that may change society as a whole.

I really like this movie, though it is somewhat less awesome with as many times as I’ve seen the movie. The story is interesting, but we’ve seen versions of it before. It’s a pretty regulation dystopian future/government control story, similar to Aeon Flux. The whole lack of emotions thing raised some interesting questions for me, and probably most people. Would it be better to have no emotions, but also no negative emotions and all the things that go along with that (wars, murders, etc.)? The movie didn’t make sense in that the people that were saying how emotion stopped people from killing each other would go out and kill people that were feeling, but if there weren’t the killings it would probably be a pretty boring movie. If they just said “We’ll stay here, you go feel out there somewhere and we can just ignore each other”, then what would we be watching? The real reason to see this movie is the fighting. This movie is probably one of the most innovative uses of guns I’ve seen since the Matrix movies. They were the ones that brought slo-mo to the mainstream, but this one brings in something I called “Gun Fu”, but they called “Gun Kata”, but we’ll stick with Gun Fu because puns are more funs. The whole Gun Fu thing in the movie was supposedly based on the strategic directions you could shoot in to maximize kills and minimize the amount of time you put yourself in the typical crossfire trajectory. It ends up looking like a Kung Fu fight with guns, thus the name I gave it. The use of guns in this movie is worth the watch alone. They also have some hand to hand combat (or, since it is using the butt of the gun, gun to face combat). These parts didn’t work as well and looked more like Christian Bale flailing his guns at surrounding attackers like a couple of drunk girls fighting in a club, when he was CLEARLY my man from the start, Shaniqua! Hold my earrings, gurl! … Sorry. But Shaniqua is a bitch, am I right? They also throw in some sword combat near the end, and it’s pretty good. It made me wonder how they were able to choreograph stuff that was brand new like the Gun Fu fighting, but not that interested in the tried and true types of combat.

It’s hard to judge the performances in this movie. The movie called for the greater majority of the cast to perform in almost robotic, emotionless ways, which would normally be a really poor job in the acting department. It works fairly well here, though. Christian Bale does a good job, starting off really cold and emotionless, but slowly getting those emotions in there, and having to try to hide them as well. It did strike me as weird that Bale was supposed to be the top Cleric, but he lived with three people (his wife and two kids) who were feeling the whole time, but he never had any idea. That makes him a pretty shitty Cleric. Taye Diggs’ performance kind of bothered me because he’s all career-minded and wants to overtake Bale by any means, but seemed like he might have been feeling the entire time. He may have just been a douche bag, so I don’t know if that counted as an emotion. I thought Sean Bean’s performance was really good as well, though he wasn’t in it very long. Angus Macfadyen makes a pretty good bad guy as well. Everyone else was kind of nondescript as the movie called for that. There was this dog in the movie that gave a great performance as a super cute dog. It was like it really WAS a super cute dog! But it also got like 10 people killed by barking from Christian Bale’s trunk. But I forgive you because you’re adorable. Also, there was this group of Resistance fighters that got on my nerves. Christian Bale tried to tell them to escape when the Tetragrammaton was invading their hideout, but they wouldn’t run like he was telling them to because he would shoot them in the back. It got on my nerves (for reasons that Bale even said in the movie) because he could just as easily shoot them all in the face, were he so inclined. They got killed, and they deserved it for being dumbasses.

I really like this movie, but it gets a little stale on the 10th viewing. The story is stuff that we’ve seen before, but still pretty interesting. The real reason to watch this movie is the awesome fight scenes, mainly the Gun Fu, but also some decent sword fighting. The performances are a little robotic, but that’s what the movie calls for so it’s okay. Bale still puts on a really good performance. And he’s Batman, so respect! I bought this movie on DVD, and I recommend you guys at least rent it and give it a watch, especially if you like guns and action. If you liked the Matrix, this is pretty similar to that, but great in it’s own way. Equilibrium gets “I pay it gladly” out of “You’re treading on my dreams.”

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