Been catching up with comic book movies.
Batman: The Dark Knight
Entertaining, but the hype for it was so great that it was bound to disappoint in some ways. Unlike some fans, I'm of the school of thought that simply cannot take a comic book movie seriously and only want to see beautiful people kicking ass and doing eye-pleasing exciting and sometimes funny things. As much as I like the previous Batman, it's a bit silly to me how serious this new version of Batman is. Ok, "dark" is in now, I get it, but all this moralizing, all this brooding- stop it. It's a bat-man- by definition, impossible to be anything but silly fun.
That said, the movie was fast-paced and certainly had its fare-share of thrills. I was worried at the 2.5 hr length, but it went along at such a pace that it didn't feel as torturous as long movies usually do (still, I rarely see the need for non-history based movies to ever be more than 2 hrs, especially ones about super-heroes).
Favorite sequence: Batman on motorcycle flipping Joker's truck over using Luke Skywalker's rope trick from Empire.
Other things I liked: I am so smitten with Maggie Gyllenhaal that half the movie could've been just her walking around and I'd be happy. But to be objective, her generally understated presence doesn't really fit in the backdrop of such larger-than-life characters and backgrounds.
Yes I liked Ledger's Joker, who didn't. But at the same time, the talk about it was way over-blown: for pete's sake, people, we're not talking about Brando in On the Waterfront here, we're talking about crazy killer clown guy.
Morgan Freeman and Michael Cain are... well, Morgan Freeman and Michael Cain. They just show up and every movie is better.
Things I didn't like:
Christian Bale's Batman voice. It just sounds silly.
And Batman/Bruce Wayne feels like such a diminished character in this overly complicated and busy sequel that it almost feels like a waste of effort by one of my favorite actors.
Joker's omnipotent plotting. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, but the Joker's endless supply of munitions, wealth and personnel, absurd Rube Goldberg-like setups and constantly evolving and changing goals were reminiscent of post-season 1 "24" (a reason I stopped watching that show).
Using every cell phone in the city as a sonar spying network. Wha? Um... no. No. Ridiculous. Graphics looked cool though.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
The immensely entertaining sequel to the most underrated comic book movie franchise ever. Unlike the pretentiousness of Nolan's Batman, Hellboy is an unabashed, kid-friendly, FUN (remember when comic-books were fun?) spectacle of entertainment.
The first movie delivered the goods but my interest in the 2nd was due to the direction of the guy that made Pan's Labyrinth. While I wasn't as smitten with that film as some, it's hard not to appreciate the guy's vision when it comes to creating CGI monsters, and I wanted to see how that would play in a mainstream Hollywood action flick. And I love it! Every scene in this movie is filled with some new odd-ball creature. Trolls, elves, demons, robot soldier things, some angle/demon dude with eyes in its wings, Wink, little antenna-headed three handed messenger dealies... heck, there's even a troll market, ie, "place to put all the monsters we came up with but didn't fit in the rest of the story." Good stuff.
I think there was some sort of lame-ass plot or something, too, can't remember, but it's not really important here.
Iron Man
You know who's good? Robert Downy, Jr. He's the only comic book movie guy I've seen since Christopher Reeve that actually was able to convey the spirit of what he's going through. I know many felt that way about Spiderman, but I just couldn't get into that series, as much as I enjoyed the character as a kid. When Downy's Tony Spark suits up, there's a sense of joy and adventure with it that carries the whole movie.
Tony Stark is the complete opposite of Bale's Bruce Wayne. Where the latter feels this emo-angst burden of being a gorgeous playboy billionaire superhero, Spark acts that role the way it should be- with the sense that being a gorgeous playboy billionaire superhero would actually be fun!
Jeff Bridges was a nice bonus. And is it me or does Terence Howard always look like he's about to cry in every movie no matter what he's doing?
Iron Man is probably my favorite comic book movie since Superman.
