"The Dark Knight" and "Next"
Jul. 21st, 2008 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
martinlivingsSo, we decided to go out for a change on a Saturday night, grab us some dinner at Hans Cafe, then watch "The Dark Knight". We boought ourselves a bunch of movie money vouchers for eight bucks a pop, so it wasn't as expensive as it could have been!
Okay, it wasn't perfect. It was too long and had too much crammed into it. And it fell victim to the curse of previous Batman films, feeling the need to increase the villain factor in each film. This one had three (if you count the miniscule - but welcome - appearance of the Scarecrow). It had flaws of narrative and logic. The acting was variable. Bale's Batman-scary voice is just silly.
And it was easily the best Batman film ever made.
I need to say, though, that it was probably too ambitious for its own good. Like Spiderman 3, it needed to be a little simpler, so that it could remain focussed on what was important. The Joker was important in this film, so whenever the focus changed to Dent/Two-Face, it lost steam. That was a plot that could have been carried over to the next film, so that we get ourselves a ninety minute Jokerpalooza instead of a hundred and fifty minute Joker-and-Two-Face-omelette. In fact, Two-Face was the ultimate weak link in the movie for me. His relationship with Rachel didn't strike me as being particularly deep, so his reaction to her death seemed out of proportion. Similarly, his sudden hatred of Gordon didn't make much sense. And the make-up, while stunning, was just a little TOO stunning - the damage it showed was basically impossible to survive and walk around with. At the very least, he needed a bottle of eye-drops to be keeping his exposed eye moist, since it had no eye-lid. It needed to be sickening, rather than a pure horror effect. A good example was the makeup applied to Gary Oldman (thus forming a connection!) in "Hannibal". It was a gut-churning effect, and required no CGI, just absolute dedication from the actor involved. And general, the script felt a bit too crammed with stuff happening - it's scary when a 2.5 hour movie feels rushed! It was as if the writers just threw everything they had at us to see what would stick, again a flaw tshared with Spiderman 3. I do wonder how much of this was due to the editing, which could probably have been more vicious. It also wasted some great actors; Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Maggie Gylenhaal had basically nothing much to do in this one.
But what's interesting about this film is that I get to criticise it on the same level as other films, not just comic book movies. For all of its flaws, this is a "real" film. The comparisons many (including the director) have been making to films like Michael Mann's "Heat" aren't unjustified, though really the serious similarities pretty much end after the opening heist sequence. Where "Batman Begins" was an excellent comic book movie, "The Dark Knight" is just an excellent movie. I was still thinking about the thematic and moral ramifications the next day, which has to be a good thing.
Oh, and Heath Ledger was excellent as the Joker. I liked the John Doe/"Se7en" approach to him, in that he had no identity, no past other than the various lies he told about himself. He was a force of nature. it was a great bit of acting from Ledger, and makes me sad that he was foolish enough to OD and ruin not only his career, but the prospect of further Batman films.
I'd like to see it again, definitely. I think there's stuff I missed. And I'll most certainly be buying the DVD, as I'd love to see how they did a lot of it.
Then yesterday, we watched the Nicholas Cage SF action thriller "Next".
Oh...
My...
God.
Where does this fit in recent Nic Cage works? Well, it's not as bad as "The Wicker Man", though not for lack of trying. It was probably on a par with "Ghost Rider". And it was enormously entertaining to watch, mainly to point... and laugh... and mock. A film ridden with so many mistakes that it became like shooting fish in a barrel to spot them. Some fun ones included:
- FBI looking at a photo of a dead girl while talking about how she'd had her throat cut, while the photo showed no wound in her neck whatsoever.
- Jessica Biel lying in bed next to Nic Cage, and in each shot her position changes entirely, from lying on her back to lying on her side. Oh, and wearing the Magic Sheet that never falls off her boobs.
- Jessica again, tied to a wheelchair strapped with explosives that are to be detonated by a cell phone... despite the fact that, in the previous scene, the FBI disabled all the cell phone towers in the area!
I could go on and on. Oh, and Cage's hair. His acting style seems to have become based entirely around wigs lately:
The many wigs of Nicholas Cage
And then the ending... IT'S ALL A DREAM! Yes, everything that happened in the last two-thirds of the film... DIDN'T HAPPEN! It was a premonition! Which included scenes that Cage wasn't in or involved in, FBI discussions, terrorist plans, etc!
It also involved Cage having multiple premonitions... WITHIN THE PREMONITION! Which means his ability to see two minutes into the future is actually unlimited, since he could effectively see himself two minutes in the future seeing two minutes into the future, in which he's seeing two minutes into the... you get the picture???
This film was dumb. Actually, it was, and I use the word with a large amount of consideration, retarded. Even a couple of neat action sequences - and watching Jessica Biel get blown to smithereens multiple times - couldn't save it from its own terrible script.
So, talk about contrasting weekend movies!
Okay, it wasn't perfect. It was too long and had too much crammed into it. And it fell victim to the curse of previous Batman films, feeling the need to increase the villain factor in each film. This one had three (if you count the miniscule - but welcome - appearance of the Scarecrow). It had flaws of narrative and logic. The acting was variable. Bale's Batman-scary voice is just silly.
And it was easily the best Batman film ever made.
I need to say, though, that it was probably too ambitious for its own good. Like Spiderman 3, it needed to be a little simpler, so that it could remain focussed on what was important. The Joker was important in this film, so whenever the focus changed to Dent/Two-Face, it lost steam. That was a plot that could have been carried over to the next film, so that we get ourselves a ninety minute Jokerpalooza instead of a hundred and fifty minute Joker-and-Two-Face-omelette. In fact, Two-Face was the ultimate weak link in the movie for me. His relationship with Rachel didn't strike me as being particularly deep, so his reaction to her death seemed out of proportion. Similarly, his sudden hatred of Gordon didn't make much sense. And the make-up, while stunning, was just a little TOO stunning - the damage it showed was basically impossible to survive and walk around with. At the very least, he needed a bottle of eye-drops to be keeping his exposed eye moist, since it had no eye-lid. It needed to be sickening, rather than a pure horror effect. A good example was the makeup applied to Gary Oldman (thus forming a connection!) in "Hannibal". It was a gut-churning effect, and required no CGI, just absolute dedication from the actor involved. And general, the script felt a bit too crammed with stuff happening - it's scary when a 2.5 hour movie feels rushed! It was as if the writers just threw everything they had at us to see what would stick, again a flaw tshared with Spiderman 3. I do wonder how much of this was due to the editing, which could probably have been more vicious. It also wasted some great actors; Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Maggie Gylenhaal had basically nothing much to do in this one.
But what's interesting about this film is that I get to criticise it on the same level as other films, not just comic book movies. For all of its flaws, this is a "real" film. The comparisons many (including the director) have been making to films like Michael Mann's "Heat" aren't unjustified, though really the serious similarities pretty much end after the opening heist sequence. Where "Batman Begins" was an excellent comic book movie, "The Dark Knight" is just an excellent movie. I was still thinking about the thematic and moral ramifications the next day, which has to be a good thing.
Oh, and Heath Ledger was excellent as the Joker. I liked the John Doe/"Se7en" approach to him, in that he had no identity, no past other than the various lies he told about himself. He was a force of nature. it was a great bit of acting from Ledger, and makes me sad that he was foolish enough to OD and ruin not only his career, but the prospect of further Batman films.
I'd like to see it again, definitely. I think there's stuff I missed. And I'll most certainly be buying the DVD, as I'd love to see how they did a lot of it.
Then yesterday, we watched the Nicholas Cage SF action thriller "Next".
Oh...
My...
God.
Where does this fit in recent Nic Cage works? Well, it's not as bad as "The Wicker Man", though not for lack of trying. It was probably on a par with "Ghost Rider". And it was enormously entertaining to watch, mainly to point... and laugh... and mock. A film ridden with so many mistakes that it became like shooting fish in a barrel to spot them. Some fun ones included:
- FBI looking at a photo of a dead girl while talking about how she'd had her throat cut, while the photo showed no wound in her neck whatsoever.
- Jessica Biel lying in bed next to Nic Cage, and in each shot her position changes entirely, from lying on her back to lying on her side. Oh, and wearing the Magic Sheet that never falls off her boobs.
- Jessica again, tied to a wheelchair strapped with explosives that are to be detonated by a cell phone... despite the fact that, in the previous scene, the FBI disabled all the cell phone towers in the area!
I could go on and on. Oh, and Cage's hair. His acting style seems to have become based entirely around wigs lately:
The many wigs of Nicholas Cage
And then the ending... IT'S ALL A DREAM! Yes, everything that happened in the last two-thirds of the film... DIDN'T HAPPEN! It was a premonition! Which included scenes that Cage wasn't in or involved in, FBI discussions, terrorist plans, etc!
It also involved Cage having multiple premonitions... WITHIN THE PREMONITION! Which means his ability to see two minutes into the future is actually unlimited, since he could effectively see himself two minutes in the future seeing two minutes into the future, in which he's seeing two minutes into the... you get the picture???
This film was dumb. Actually, it was, and I use the word with a large amount of consideration, retarded. Even a couple of neat action sequences - and watching Jessica Biel get blown to smithereens multiple times - couldn't save it from its own terrible script.
So, talk about contrasting weekend movies!
