Edward Norton movie selection bothers me, too :( 

Watched it today. While the movie (although good) in it's entirety wasn't the 2nd coming the media painted it to be, Ledger's Joker is everything the hype says and then some. He absolutely steals every single scene he is on, almost to the point of turning it into a movie about Joker and his arch-nemesis Batman.

Watch in cinema. 

although I wish they'd been able to make it even darker (R rating - it would have been good if he actually cut the smiles into others' faces). But then, basically everything I like, I feel like it could be improved by making it more dark, nihilistic, disturbing, etc. But as is Ledger's Joker is up there with Chigurh and Lecter for me. 

worth watching I guess but could have been a lot better

...

There just aren't enough good horror movies coming out these days to satisfy what I'm looking for

those were my initial two thoughts after watching. it had potential but was handled all wrong; less emphasis should have been put on the monsters since the whole 'horror' aspect lay more with the religious mob culture it portrayed. seeing monsters rip people into a bloody mess isn't scary. seeing people becoming religiously delusional to the point of sacrificing each other, however, is pretty fucking dark. it's a shame it was portrayed as more of a by-story without a great deal of thought or detail. add to that the general standard of acting / character stupidity being on par with your average cheap horror flick and it left alot to be desired. although i thought the 'twist' (if you can call it that) was actually pretty unconventional and effective

i'm sure there has to be a market out there for DECENT horror movies.. why aren't there more of them? 

has faults for sure, but better than most 'horror' that comes out these days.

Also I dont know which version you guys saw, but the B&W version that's on the dvd is tons better in terms of atmosphere and claustrophobia. 

since the director couldnt even get the studios to agree showing the movie theatrically the way he wanted (ie in B&W), its hardly surprising that it wasnt more darker etc. 

one thing which was really, really awesome about it was the line "Tentacles - Yeah." 

The Dark Knight
Finally saw this. A great action movie, a great superhero movie, and a great crime thriller. The previous Nolan/Bale movie was good, but this is a step up even from that, in terms of characters, writing, the maturity of the vision of Gotham City, and in terms of themes.

It does fall back into normal action movie territory at times, but at 2 and a half hours, it can't all be brilliant.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
It's been ten years since I saw the first one, so my memory of the original might be gilded by age (pun intended) but it just seems like the first movie was a serious political movie with a meaningful personal angle, while this was more of a historical soap opera, with a mundane love triangle and little historical or character insight.

Coming Attactions:

Death Race: appears to be a direct ripoff of Running Man, but with muscle cars.

Quarantine: looks like the spanish zombie thriller Rec is being released in the US this fall but with a more marketable name. Worth seeing, I reviewed it upthread. 

Juno
I was suprised by the genuineness of this, was expecting another throwaway "quirky" comedy. Once you get past the first fifteen minutes or so, Juno breaks free of its indie hipness to tell an actual story, with actual feeling. 

agree with juno, the first 10-15 min had me bothered but it actually has heart and likeable characters.

as for elizabeth, I didnt like 1 or 2, for different reasons. But I thought both were quite poor. 

Just saw this. Very good, does exactly what it says on the tin, one of the classics of modern "for kids AND adults" animations*. The aspects and scenes that were particular to this film and it's theme were good all-round, the more derivative cartoon moments were weaker.

* on the subject of animations, the "earth / robot" so-called CGI was so good I don't believe it was CGI, I reckon they did the whole thing with models and stuff...! 

swears to me that his daughter was absolutely hysterically distraught after seeing this. He said that he thought she had spilled the kettle on herself or something she was crying that much.
Doesnt it die at the end? 

Nah, humans return to earth and everything is ok yay!

It was my one issue with the film, the ending is all happy/clappy. But then I suppose it is a kid's film. The rest of the film is amazering 

Agree about the ending, not as strongly themed as the rest of the film. Although the credits were pretty cool.

The leading lady is well hot! 

//SPoiLER//

I have ever seen. The humans come back to live a life of Luddite like subsistence farming? Besides, the entire movie is a bourgeoisie attack on the proletariat. propaganda to deny the working man the fruit of his labors. 

Not really my type, looks too much like an iPod.

The abhorence that was Marvin in the H2G2 movie might go for her though. 

What everyone else said. Brilliant. Hurrah. 

It was a bit long though, with a disappointing amount of video game action and had some things that could have just been dropped (like the sonar stuff! wtf!).

But the Joker will stay with me for a long time. 

I'm clearly the hugest batman fanboy on these forums, aand, I admit it was too long, aand, I think the finale was disappointingly conventional (same as Batman Begins, although the ferry sequence was unusually interesting) but... what do you mean "video game action"?
I felt that the action for the most part was believable and meant something aside from just explosions, no one was flying through the sky doing slo-mo moves (ala, Batman Forever, Spiderman, etc).

I actually loved the Hong Kong sequence. If I was a major criminal, I'd be worried about being hunted down like that. What an FU to Lau, and what a warning to anyone who tries to help the mafia. Awesome too how Dent feigns ignorance.

I'm surprised they didn't explore the angle of someone alleging (reasonably enough it seems to me) that the existence of such a character (batman), in apparent cooperation with the government, is a secret government project testing out the public's reaction to "extra-legal" law enforcement (and eventually fascism, blah blah etc). Surely if a guy like Batman existed, all kinds of conspiracy nuts would argue that some level of government was in on it. 

barring the car chase were still edited far too quickly, but that's more of a hollywood trend than anything else. Better than Begins but still nothing that great. 

Not as bad as I expected - I expected more prolonged fights with super-quick choppy "can't see WTF is going on and looks really really shit" editing that is so trendy amongst people who try to make films worse these days.

But it was instead more like that each fight was over very quick (i.e. it was not just the editing style but rather the fight speed), a couple of sharp blows and onto the next bad guy - and to me this seemed in keeping with Batman's style, dealing with enemies very quickly by killing/disabling blows rather than getting involved in a prolonged fight.


I thought the Hong Kong sequence was great, great filming of the city too. 

So, on thinking about it a bit more, the only action scene that bothered me was the one where the Joker was trying to get Dent as he was being transported around. How long was that underpass? I yawned.

I liked the Hong Kong excursion and parts of the ending.

I guess I'm just surprised and disappointed by the lack of focus in such an otherwise incredibly competent film. It seemed almost like the makers lacked the ... courage? not really sure of the word ... to leave some of the things they'd worked on on the cutting room floor. It's annoying, not because the film was bad, but rather because it was so close to being great.

In other news, I watched Run, Fat Boy, Run last night. Dear me, it sucked. 

(2nd time I saw it, I figure I would go with my freinds and see it at the big screen cause the 1st version was a bit shit....)

I like it.

OK, ok.

Heath ledger reminded me of Nicholson a couple of times.

Which was a good thing.

Bale was bale. I liked the "dirty batman voice"

Dent was cool. Good CGI. Made up for the plentyfull bad (or obvious) CGI. The BatCycle was ace.

But the thing about it which shined the most was the turbulent and depthfull STORYLINE. Character development! Good stuff. More of this please Hollywood. And without the martyrd actors pls. Too OTT. And horribly tragic.

Heath Ledger RIP. 

Heath ledger reminded me of Nicholson a couple of times.

Same for me, but Ledger did something far more clever than an impersonation of Nicholson as the Joker. The cadence and accented twang he used was from Nicholson's character in One Who Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest instead of his character from the Burton flop. 

beginnings of tonsillitis when I saw this film so Ledger really haunted my feverish dreams afterward. Really menacing turn.

I thought the film was let down by the uncharacteristically OTT sonar goggles and Harvey Dent's injuries, which would have just been so much more terrifying if they looked realistic. Seriously, his eyeball would have been way more fucked up than that. The burnt side of his face should just have been dead.

Other than those two small gripes, thumbs up all round.