The Dark Knight Rises

the-dark-knight-risesWhile this movie was good on a number of levels – mostly that it just looked good. I start to wonder – just how many superlatives can they come up with? The bad guy can’t just be “bad”, he has to be the most formidable evil person on the planet, with a secret history that ties everything together, and, and, and… Enough already. Ya, sure… Bane is a bad dude. But don’t try to explain him with logic and a mysterious complicated back story. This is a comic book after all, characters like him are sometimes better shallow.

The Dark Knight

I held-out seeing this movie for quite some time. I have this thing about pop-culture movies that everyone swoons over. I just want to hate them or something. So, finally, I did see this… Ok, it was good. It was about as well-done as this movie could have been done. I’ve seen plenty of other better movies, but better similar movies? That’s a tough call. One thing I did like was the was the director delivered a sense of urgency. One thing I didn’t like was the way the joker was made to be just a little too super-human. I mean, I get it that he’s supposed to be a super villain and all, but let’s get real. There’s only so much one person can do, and how does he get all these people to follow him & help him out virtually flawlessly… when we know that most criminals (I’m talking about the underlings now) are really idiots… or they wouldn’t be criminals. So, in that regard, I guess the movie’s biggest shortcoming was that it tried to paint a picture of reality, but was just too much over the top.

Terminator Salvation

I wasn’t expecting much from this one, but you know what? It was fantastic. The mood was right, the acting was good, the plot made sense (yes, it made sense you nimwits)… It didn’t try too hard, and the action was first rate. I realize this isn’t the movie for everyone… Ok not most people, but I’m glad they made it, and enjoyed the ride.

Batman Begins

Wait, didn’t Batman begin with just “Batman”? Yes, it was stylish, had some neat effects, etc… but I thought this movie took itself way too seriously – like it was so over-grandiose I was rolling my eyes. Something was odd about the Batman character as well – like I didn’t really believe he wanted to do good. Maybe that was intentional – to show the dark side of Bruce Wayne – but it left me kind of luke-warm trying to sympathize with him.

American Psycho

A real interesting movie. By the end I wasn’t sure if he was psycho because he did all these horrible things, or if he was psycho simply because he thought he did all these horrible things. That brings up an interesting question – who is less sane, the person who falsely believes he’s insane or the person who falsely belives he’s sane? Well, this movie does definitely have its moments. There’s some unknown factor that keeps it from being an awesome movie, but it is worth a look. There seems to have been a lot of these “normal guy has a break with reality” movies lately.