http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/16155928/review/21477208/the_dark_knight 

The homonyms will be my downfall. 

my most anticipated movie of the year, last one was excellent. 

Really loving the latest trailer for TDK, Begins was hands down my favourite "super hero" movie made so far and I think they really nailed the Joker character for the sequel.

CANNOT WAIT :) 

The Merchant of Venice (2004) - problematic but reasonably competent version of the shakespeare play. Its not one I've come across before but I believe the movie changes the play's focus from the comedy/love story angle to the much more interesting mini tragedy involving Shylock.

This decision is both good and bad, good because the movie spends less time with the awful and smug Joseph Fiennes and his attempts to win over Lynn Collins' Portia and more time with Al Pacino's Shylock (easily one of pacino's best recent performances), the jewish lender who literally seeks a 'pound of flesh' on forfeit of a bond as revenge for the torment he has had to endure over the years. But its bad because it also means the focus on Shylock leaves all the other characters (except maybe Portia) very underdeveloped and when the action moves away from Shylock's story, the movie bogs down noticeably.

6.5/10


Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) - danish director Susanne Bier's hollywood debut is a decent if unremarkable affair held together by strong acting from Benicio Del Toro and Halle Berry.

Berry plays a wife whose husband suddenly dies in unfortunate circumstances and Del Toro the recovering junkie best friend of the husband. They form a bond after the death and help each other with their grief and problems.

In other hands it could have been a very shonky, cliched and oversentimental movie, but in Bier's hands it never ends up like that even though Allan Loeb's flawed screenplay tries to push it in that direction.

However, in an effort to negate some of the dodgy scripting, Bier does also go a bit overboard with her stylistic touches which end up distracting and she would have been better off relying more on the strength of Del Toro's and Berry's acting to overcome the script problems. Still, overall, it's a fairly solid work that's worth watching.

6.5/10


The Piano (1991) - not great but its not bad either. The direction and writing waver a bit between very good and questionable and it also looks very ugly.

But most the performances are quite first rate and the music is excellent too. The rest of it is quite interesting, I am not so sure the execution was quite there though.

6/10


Sorry Wrong Number (1948) - quite good film noir by Anatole Livtak that's beautifully shot and well performed by Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. Not quite as good as other noirs both actors have been in but still excellent stuff.

7-7.5/10


Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - I was ready to absolutely hate this but its actually decent if a bit stupid, corny and crude on occasions. It looks great and Henry Mancini's score is perfectly suited but I'm not sure about the rest which wavers in quality.

Audrey Hepburn works overall but still doesn't suit the role, some of the humour works but some of it is terrible, some of the drama works and some of it is just orchestrated by silly plot contrivances. There's a pretty good film in here somewhere, but it gets lost in what was probably a combination of restrictions of the era and sloppy direction from Blake Edwards.

6/10


Howl's Moving Castle (2004) - beautifully animated as usual by Miyazaki, in fact it's probably the best 2d animation I've seen, but once again the actual film just didn�t work for me.

It starts off fine and is reasonably decent for the first hour or so but then the last 40 min seems to have a mind of its own and makes absolutely no sense. I suppose you just have to go with it for it to work but I wasn�t prepared to.

5.5/10


The Player (1992) - quite entertaining but only a fluffy semi-skewering satire about the Hollywood system by Robert Altman. There's far too much winking at the audience for it to be anything more, but it's made well enough to be worth watching, especially if you like movies since there's about a gazillion references to films prior to this.

7/10


2:37 (2006) - decent debut from young aussie murali thalluri, showing plenty of confidence and talent, despite obvious influences from Gus Van Sant's Elephant.

I liked this better than Vant Sant's film though because the characterisations were better and more sympathetic, despite using stock characters and situations. Nothing new here but it's quite well done.

7/10 

has that something, at least that Danish dogma movie Elsker Dig for Evigt or sth was good.
There are a million Danish and Swedish flicks handling those themes though, serious family/individual slow drama style.
Maybe Bergman's portraits of a marriage series was the grandmomma of them all on film. And of course there are probably much more books written earlier.

I have a bit mixed approach to that stuff. On one hand I'm cynical and they seem funny since the people end up in such stupid decisions constantly. On the other hand, it's sometimes too much to bear for the fragility of the people and their emotions and vulnerability. And sometimes, rarely though, something unexpected happens and the movie breaks out of the mold. 

After the Wedding, which was great.

Have two others though, Open Hearts and Brothers which I'll get around too who knows when.

And there's big influences from Bergman for sure, which is not a bad thing. 

You've all heard it, you can't un-hear it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

I always wondered where this cinematic legend came from :) 

funny ! 

Drillbit Taylor (2008)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0817538/
So stupid that typing this is a waste. 

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Was fun. Before I saw it, I was told that it was a very reactive film: things just happen, for no reason, and the characters just react to them, which was pretty accurate but also pretty irrelevant to enjoying the ride.

Breach

Interesting spy tale, sent me off to wikipedia to read up on the real events (which, as far as pikiwedia goes at least, seem to be pretty accurately reflected in the film). But dear God, it starts slowly.

Prince Caspian

Eh... I need to read the books again, I think. But this seemed pretty uneven. I kept trying to just see it as a fantasy tale and ignore the religious overtones and failing. Whether this say most about me, the source or the film making, I'm not really sure. 

not as good as 1 and 3, but better than 2 IMHO.

I found Breach above average, but apart from the main acting it was a bit lacking. 

The Dark Knight - the best film of the year to date by a considerable margin. Starts off a bit messily where its overly chaotic for the first 45 min or so but once it settles down, it's an absolute cracker of a movie. The second half in particular is some of the most thrilling cinema in recent years.

From very early on it establishes that the threats are real and the stakes are high, something which serves it very well during the second half where it feels like anything can happen.

Performances are absolutely first rate (especially Ledger, Eckhart and Oldman) and save a couple of lines of dialogue, its also pretty well written.

8.5/10 

 

if you can, definitely watch it in IMAX. 

I thought Batman Begins was the best action hero film ever and one of the best in any action genre, mostly because it portrayed the fantastical subject matter in a gritty, well-thought-out and altogether convincing way, something which is usually and critically lacking in sci-fi / action films.

I'm very much looking forward to TDK. 

it was but TDK is better :) 

Shambler said: "mostly because it portrayed the fantastical subject matter in a gritty, well-thought-out and altogether convincing way, something which is usually and critically lacking in sci-fi / action films."

Except for the... technology :) 

compare BB to any other movie of a similar genre (or even previous batman movies), and it's a lot more believable/less retarded.

seeing TDK friday night, cannot wait.

Nolan and Bale rule. 

I seem to remember some of the Batman technology was half-explained / justified in the film?? Something about military tech or something?? That itself seemed unusual, and good, for this style of film.

P.S. Is Wall-E any good? 

Best movie this year by far, and not likely to lose the spot either. Whereas Burton brought his "style of film" (the 'ironic warped fairlytale' - which over the years I've realized that I really don't like) to Batman, Nolan has finally had the chance to bring his style (complex scripts full of manipulation and double crosses) to it. Nolan's movies are always strong because of the scripts he and his brother write, and this is one of his best. You are always in the middle of something, the good guys (and the audience) can barely keep up (this will demand multiple viewings). A lot is always implied to be going on in the background. Nolan also fixes the problems with action/fight scenes in Batman Begins - the fights and action scenes here are great. Furthermore, he isn't worried about maintaining any kind of comfortable stability - (what you get in, say spiderman - all three movies were predictable because of this). This is a world where anything can, and will, happen.

Ledger's performance is fucking amazing. I hadn't seen anything with him in it before, but this role is brilliant - arguably even more brilliant than Javier Bardem in No Country or Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood last year. I actually think he IMPROVED upon the comic-book version of the Joker. He is totally credible as an utterly unrealistic, bizarre, psychotic character (like Bardem), who somehow exists whether you like it or not. 

"This is a world where anything can, and will, happen."

pretty much my thoughts from above :

"From very early on it establishes that the threats are real and the stakes are high, something which serves it very well during the second half where it feels like anything can happen."

Ledger's been great before but because it was a 'gay cowboy movie', no one cared :)

It really is a cross between a Batman film and say Michael Mann, particularly Heat.

I thought Eckhart was very very good too. 

was the use of humor. A film this dark needs some comic relief, and it wasn't just the joker but other characters occasionally who did this. I mean, I love dark, deranged, nihilistic films, and this is by far the darkest "blockbuster" I've ever seen, but it is impressive that they were able to incorporate moments of humour or hope, where were all the more poignant because of their rarity.

Nolan picks good films to be influenced by - Blade Runner on Batman Begins, and now Heat on TDK. The Blade Runner influence on BB wasn't as much as I would have liked - I'd LOVE to see them delve into the neo-futuristic Azrael-Batman storylines or even The Dark Knight Returns, but even so it was cool. Heat's influence can be seen all over TDK, and TDK captures the brilliance of Heat very well. The only thing it doesn't do is capture the mafia's perspective as Heat did. I always thought it would be interesting if an anti-criminal hero movie could be combined with something like The Godfather where the criminals have their own perspective. In TDK, obviously, the Joker has no rules, but there are other criminals who do have rules and even ideals (the guy at the start, for example). Falconi in BB was good, it would be nice to see this angle explored more (although, at 2.5 hours of jam-packed implication-exploration there is no room for anything else).

This movie is probably impossible to top, and so it might be advisable for Nolan to quit while he's ahead. That said, what I'd like to see is Nolan cap off the trilogy with something even better (and continued critical acclaim), and then hand it off to another director with a TOTALLY DIFFERENT vision (perhaps Darren Arofonsky, who was Nolan's main rival in being director of the rebooted Batman series). I'd love to see Bane done properly, but he's nothing without the story elements attached to him. In an uneconomic, perfect world, Nolan would end Part 3 with Bane's victory over batman, and Arofonsky would start a new series with an entirely different style, as Azrael acts as Batman while Wayne recuperates. 

Yeah, I dunno what they can do in the next one. It would almost have to be Poison Ivy as the main villain, I don't know how they could do Mr. Freeze or Penguin. Manbat would be cool, but unbelievable in this setting. 

would be my guess.

tronyn,

there's Heat but there's also the classic noir feel which Nolan's obviously a fan of (Memento and Insomnia both had this too) and which is well suited to this because the Batman comics started out of that same genre really.

As for the trilogy, they all signed on for 3 at the start, and I do think this is one case where some thought has gone into where each film will be generally heading. This doesnt end like BB which signalled a sequel but its not hard to see where the third is going to head into.