Summer Movies 2008 Options

[SJN1279]

I figure we could put all the movie previews/reviews from this summer into this thread. Remember, if there are spoilers in your review, please post a warning first.

Iron Man comes out this weekend. It has great buzz, and an excellent lead actor in Robert Downey Jr. Anyone else as excited as me to see it? I have my ticket for Saturday evening and can't wait to get there! I'll send a brief report after I see it.

[Pokey]

Absolutely amazing movie, but not without fault .. if anyone hasn't seen it don't read on cos I'm gonna mention a heap of spoilers.


The Sonar thing was just... well, you heard the term jumping the shark, which has now moved on to Nuking the fridge (indiana jones 4 anyone?)
But apart from that it was supurb, the acting was top notch ... a shame they killed off two face, im willing to bet had they known ledger was going to die they would have kept two face alive. He had so much more to offer as a character in another movie, bit of a waste.
Also the end with the two boats ... that wouldn't have played out that way for real, with more than 500 people on each ship and given that ultimatum then SOMEONE would have just stepped up and pressed the button to destroy the other ship.
Ledger was incredible, the perfect blend of crazy humour and psychotic tendencies. His magic disappearing pencil trick was hilariously awesome!
I love that they treated him more like an urban terrorist then just a super villain ... they really did something with this movie, you no longer have to add "for a comic book movie" to the end of the sentence "this movie was great". It was more just a normal action/crime drama with a twist.
Ledger stole the show though, the cinema audience would just go so quiet when he was on screen, no hushed whispers, no chocolate wrappers being crumped ... he captivated everyone, you could hear a pin drop .. his performance incited laughs as well as gasps. He just stole every scene he was in.
It's just so sad we'll never get to see him reprise the role, but I must thank him deeply for finally giving me a screen version of the joker i've wanted for so long.

Some of the scenes were amazing and I can't wait to get it on dvd, the interogation scene between Batman and Joker was just intense. Joker's Meeting with the mob, harvey's transformation into two face and his reveal. Joker and Two Face in the hospital. The classic roof top meeting between Batman/Gordon/Dent. A fantastic car chase scene. Overall it was just brilliantly done, but as I say, not without fault.

[SJN1279]

I have to say that overall I did not like the film. The last 40 minutes were dull and expendable. A climax where Batman mainly talks to villains with minimal action? What was that about? Also Christian Bale is not a good Batman. The Clint Eastwood voice is laughable not intimidating.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were excellent, but basically play the same role. I feel both were underused. Maggie was a step up from Katie Holmes,but the Harvey Dent/two-Face character was not needed and took some emphasis off of the Joker. Heath was good in that role, but not as amazing as people are giving him credit for.

Just an okay movie, that would have better better if it had a two hour run time.

Just my opinion.

[Pokey]

I have to say that overall I did not like the film. The last 40 minutes were dull and expendable. A climax where Batman mainly talks to villains with minimal action? What was that about? Also Christian Bale is not a good Batman. The Clint Eastwood voice is laughable not intimidating.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were excellent, but basically play the same role. I feel both were underused. Maggie was a step up from Katie Holmes,but the Harvey Dent/two-Face character was not needed and took some emphasis off of the Joker. Heath was good in that role, but not as amazing as people are giving him credit for.

Just an okay movie, that would have better better if it had a two hour run time.

Just my opinion.

This movie took strong elements from 3 different batman comics, one of them being the killing joke in which it ends with Joker telling Batman a joke and both of them holding each other up as they laugh until the police arrive to arrest the Joker. I don't know what you were expecting, he had the Joker in a position where he wasn't going anywhere and he can't kill people so ..
I think Bale looks the part, but yeah the voice was a bit overdone, I understand it needs to be different to disguise who he is, but most of the time it sounded like he needed a strepsil for his sore throat. Although I found it more funny than anything. But some of it was intimidating, the "I'm counting on it" line before dropping maroni off the building was pretty sweet.

Caine was a little underused for such a good talent, but then again what more could he do? In a movie that had so much in it there was little space for them to do more.

You missed the point of the movie a bit though, this movie was more about Harvey Dent/Two Face than it was The Joker .. they tied in perfectly, Dent was The Joker's pet project, he was part of The Joker's storyline. I think Eckhart did an amazing job (even for someone with a bum on his chin). Two Face was brutal and should have survived to be in the next movie.
Joker didn't need too much emphasis, the point of him is that he just IS. He doesn't have a story arc or anything, he is more like a force of nature that rips through the film where as with Dent it was different, they had to build him up in order to knock him down so that you felt for his character .. a movie souly based around that with no Joker wouldnt work .. you needed someone like the Joker to push him to the extreme and then break him.
Joker was there forshadowing what was to come, his talk of him being "ahead of the curve" meant he knows that by his actions more will follow suit ... the days of the mob are over and it's time for the freaks and "rogue gallary" villains to step up ... his pleasure is knowing he can create this along with Batman.

I think the pairing of Joker and Two Face was immense and it's just a shame both wont be in the next movie for their seperate reasons.
I envisioned the next movie to have Two Face rounding up some freaks, maybe Riddler, Catwoman, Killer Croc or even Bane and waging war on the mob with Batman stuck in between with another storyline of Joker in arkham and Harley Quinn falling for him and eventually busting him out of jail. I think this movie really should have ended along the lines of Empire Strikes Back where by the villains "win" and things are looking all but fucked for Batman and Gordon leading up to the 3rd movie.

In a way Joker still won, he did get Batman to break his one rule which was not to kill. He killed Two Face. Joker created Two Face and then set him off on his way on a course he knew would lead to Batman having to kill him.

So yeah, I think besides the Sonar, Bat-voice and probably that whole matching fingerprints from bullet shards thing, it was just a top movie.

I'm still reeling over Ledger as The Joker though, I just can't see how you could nail that character any more perfectly. I got chills when he would switch between happy-go-lucky and the down right psychotic "WHY.SO.SERIOUS?". The scene with him circling Rachel was creepy, his bogus story about his wife was incredible.
He was so much funnier than anything Jack Nicholson could do too ... Ledger's Joker was funny just in his delivery ... when he visits Dent in hospital and sits down next to him still in the nurses wig and just goes "Hiiiiii" in that kinda "ok so you're probably mad at me" type voice, that killed me haha or the "I just want my phone call" part.

I'm just wondering where they go from here ... Two Face is probably the most brutal villain in Batman's world and Joker is the most chaotic and they're both gone ... while there are more good villains, it seems nothing within this Nolan made universe of realisim could quite match these two in terms of a threat. Sure there is Bane who in the comics breaks Batman's back and ends his crime fighting career, the Riddler who is the smartest criminal Batman faces, or Penguin who plays the political game very well and with Batman now technically public enemy number 1 it could mean Penguin could exploit this .. it all just doesn't seem to live up to this.