Motion Picture Magic: The Dark Knight

O.K. I know this is everyone and his brother's favorite movie of all time. And if you want to find a review of this movie you can google it to find a billion of them from many different angles. This being said I wanted to add my two cents anyway. I may not add anything new, but I've seen it three times now and was completely enthralled each time.

Before I jump into the movie I should add some prefaces. First, I'm a complete geek. This is probably obvious if you've read any of my other posts. Second when it comes to comic book characters Batman has always been my favorite. He was just darker, smarter, and just all around cooler. I watched the 1960's Batman when I was a toddler. When I got a little older I watched Batman: The Animated Series. Batman TAS really got me hooked on the character. The creators, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, did everything they could to make Batman dark, edgy and cool. Eventually I saw the original movie and it's sequel, which were both decent flicks. The Schumacher directed movies of the 90's were pretty much trash, but they didn't really change my view of Batman. When Batman TAS became Justice League (followed by JLU), the creators went out of the way to make their batman character compelling to watch. His witty cynicism, and the ability to use his detective skills and mind to solve problems made him a superior hero to the others. I could go on with other Batman media, but you get the picture.

Getting back on track with the discussion of The Dark Knight. The batman character in the Dark Knight I think is a close second to the Animated Series (and it's predecessors). Gone is the witty cynicism, but it is replaced by an equally if not deeper character. The Batman of the Dark Knight is not fully sure of himself. This is hinted at in Batman Begins, but reaches fruition in this movie. One of the main plot points of the movie is Batman's quest to help Harvey Dent take over his role as the city's protector. Batman wants Dent because Dent is the district attorney, what he does is legal and doesn't require a mask. The movie makes a point of empathizing with Batman's desire to be Dent, from his ability to work in the open, to his relationship with Rachel Dawns. Christan Bale does a remarkable job expressing these emotions in the character. Interestingly though, it is Bruce Wayne who elicits these expressions. Once he puts on the cape and cowl, he's all business.

The villain of the film is the Joker. The late Heath Ledger did such an amazing job with his portrayal of the Joker. Coupled with the amazing writing of Christopher Nolan, the Joker steals the spotlight from all the other characters. The Joker of the Dark Knight is not really like any other I've seen. Sure he's still dressed like a clown, but gone are the gimmicks. Also missing is the wackiness. He's still insane, but in such a way that as an audience member you find yourself drawn in by him. The Joker represents something that is very rare to find on film. He has a completely different set of values. Most villains twist or break normal codes of good and evil. The Joker doesn't even compare. He doesn't know what he's doing is evil, he knows normal people think it is, but to him it's some great work of classical music or art. His philosophy is chaos or nihilism, he wants to show the world that it's highest values are meaningless, that deep down we are all just like him. And just before Batman inevitably saves the day, you'll wonder whether it's true.

The other notable member of the cast is Gary Oldman playing LT./Commissioner Gordon. Most portrayals of Gordon have either been as him as a victim or a hard nose cop who begrudgingly steps out of Batman's way. Here Gordon is Batman's partner in arms. Ironically while Batman is busy trying to make Harvey Dent into Gotham's White Knight, Gordon is fulfilling just that role. Oldman shows in near perfection Gordon's hard work, tenacity, and fear in a world dominated by forces not fit for your average police officer.

What makes this film great is the underlying philosophical issues that drive the plot and the characters. Batman is vigilante justice, taking the mantle of societies values, which inevitably leads to questioning it's own righteousness, and necessity. The Joker is Nihilism, questioning the very structure of society attempting to shatter it's values. Harvey Dent represents chance. In a world of chaos maybe the only justice is chance. Philosophical discussions of the nature of Justice are as old as Philosophy itself, but this movie paints a picture of these debates that is gripping. You don't even have to appreciate that they're there. The forces at work are so alluring it's almost impossible to not get caught up in it. As the Joker says at the end of the film, "so this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object."

I suggest you see this movie, as many times as your wallet allows. Edit: (I just realized I never gave this movie a rating) Guess I'll cop out completely 6/5... yeah it's that good.

Trailer:

Motion Picture Magic: Iron Man

Since this is JK's blog, I figured I would use his title for movies. This is my review for Iron Man.

Iron Man is based on the comic book of the same name published by Marvel comics. Its about a weapons manufacturer and dealer named Tony Stark. His company, Stark Enterprises builds weapons for the U.S. military. The basic plot (I won't go into details, because that is called spoiling) is that Stark goes into the middle east to demonstrate his latest weapon to the military. After his demonstration, he leaves with the military back to the base. The vehicle he is in is attacked and he is the only survivor, although he is badly wounded. The terrorist group that attacks kidnaps, and then puts an electromagnetic device in his chest to keep him from dying, because shrapnel is slowly moving into his heart. He needs a device for the rest of the movie to keep himself alive. But in the meantime the terrorist force him to make weapons for them. Instead he builds a crude suit of armor (crude but still high tech given the materials he had to work with) and escapes killing most of his captors along the way. When he returns home, he changes his ways and stops building weapons. He then makes a more advanced armor and becomes the hero Iron Man.

Of course theres a little more to it then that, but I try not to spoil movies. Anyway, I must say that Iron Man is the best Marvel movie I have seen to date. Better than X-Men 2, better than the Spider-Man series, it just blew me away. Robert Downey Jr. is perfect in the role of Tony Stark. I don't think anyone else could have pulled that off. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Pepper Potts, Tony's love interest, and Terrence Howard plays Colonel Jim Rhodes his best friend. They both play their parts very well, although surprisingly Howard's character isn't featured that much. (Though you'll probably see him a lot more in the sequel.) Jeff Bridges is excellent as the villain Obediah Stane, who becomes the villian Iron Monger. There is not weak link in the cast.

The battle scenes were amazing. They really got the feel of Iron Man down. When he flies he is like a human jet. The effects are just off the hook. (yeah I said it.)

My one pet peeve, and only because I am a comic nerd, is that they made Stark's butler Jarvis into a computer program. I would have rather seen a guy play Jarvis like in the comic. Its not a big deal, and the general audience won't care.

One more thing. You may have heard about the special scene after the credits. Well depending on your knowledge of comic books will determine whether or not its worthwhile to see it. I am a comic nerd, so the scene made me crap my pants. But it might not mean much to the general public.

Anyway this movie rocks. If you can see it on the big screen, it is completely worth it. I'll leave you with the trailer to get hype. Peace!

5 out of 5

Motion Picture Magic: Rocky Balboa

(There's an update to this post at the bottom, because I stupidly left out Rocky II when I listed the Rocky movies in my order of preference. Good catch by Judd.)

After watching Rambo, the latest installment of the Rambo series, I was inspired to watch other works by Sylvester Stallone, and naturally decided to revisit the Rocky series. And so began a grueling trial of 5 Rocky films, including Rocky I, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, and the latest film, as well as the subject of this post, Rocky Balboa (Notice how I casually skipped Rocky V, I'm not even gonna dignify it with a hyperlink). If I had to give each film a rating, I would agree with most of the ratings Stallone gives. I laughed so hard at the reason Rocky IV gets a 7.5: "lots of montage." If anything montage makes a film exponentially better, not worse, Sly! At least that's how it is in my world... But more on that some other time. Gotta love the zero for Rocky V as well (Stallone tells it like it is). Ranking the Rocky movies from best to worst, I'd have to go with I, Balboa, III, II, then IV, and V doesn't get a ranking (because it's obvious what it should be).

Now some of you might be looking at that and being like, "WTF, you have Balboa before IV?! And III before IV?!" The answer is a definitive, "You should actually try watching IV as a serious movie, beyond 'Rocky fights a 'roid ragin' Russian robot' (Alliteration, yes!). Not only is the first half of the movie absolutely ridiculous (with the robot and the pseudo life-partner relationship between Rocky and Apollo), but there is a grand total of 5 montages. Five! In one movie! (Now that's nowhere near Transformers: the Animated Movie's grand total of 10 montages, but still, that was a movie about toys. Incidentally, Vince DiCola does the soundtrack for Rocky IV, the same guy who did the soundtrack for Transformers! If you watch both movies, it's so obvious). Listing off the montages we have: Introduction montage (a staple of all Rocky movies), "Apollo dies then Rocky goes driving" montage, Training montage 1, Training montage 2, and final fight montage. Seriously. WTF. 2 training montages? A montage is basically like director saying "OK a lot of shit happens, but we don't wanna show it all, so here's a musical treat!" But I still love them.

Rocky III is also vastly underrated, (even though Mr. T's performance is as crappy as advertised) but it still tells a very good story about Rocky's heart and determination. which is really what the Rocky movies are about. Plus there's the strikingly overt gay undertones between Rocky and Apollo during their training sequence (look at how Apollo looks at Rocky's butt as they're doing the dance-training thing). That and the freeze-frame ending is priceless. But anyway, back to Balboa.

Other than Rocky I, I think that Rocky Balboa is far and away the best of the Rocky series. Stallone really brings Rocky to life one more time, and his character portrayal is his best performance since Rocky I. You really feel as if this is the real Rocky, some 30 odd years later after his first fight with Apollo. Honestly, I think you could just skip from Rocky I to Rocky Balboa and not miss a beat, Stallone-wise. Sure you'd have a few character gaps, but Stallone's performance is so good that you'd just assume they're just plot fillers. The rest of the actors also performed extremely well, with Antonio Tarver pulling off an excellent Mason Dixon, and Milo Ventimiglia giving us a believable Robert Balboa, Rocky's son.

In addition to the good acting performances, the movie has an excellent message and theme. Really, the entire Rocky series is so moving because of its thematics, with Rocky being the dumb, good-hearted fighter with the unbreakable will. I especially love the line "...it ain't 'bout how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward." I think Rocky I and Balboa should be required viewing for all kids 10 and older. It really teaches you to suck it up and keep going forward despite impossible odds against you. Rocky is really really stupid (he says his wife died of "woman cancer."), but he also shows that you can be dumb, but still have self-respect, and that you can be given nothing and still make yourself into something.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

I leave you with the best part of the film, the intro to the training sequence. Watch it; it will change your life. "Let's start buildin' some hurtin' bombs!"

Update: Rocky II definitely is the 2nd worst Rocky film for me (I don't count V as a Rocky film), because there's very little depth beyond the plot. Sure it accomplishes its purpose in Rocky winning the title from Apollo, Adrian freaking out because Rocky gets the crap kicked out of him in every fight, and everyone in the world making fun of Rocky because he's an idiot. But, it really doesn't bring much more out of the characters, and seriously makes me want to kill a couple of them (Apollo and Adrian both have a couple "omg just stfu" scenes). A decent film, but I definitely liked III better.

Motion Picture Magic: Rambo (2008)

"You know what you are..."

"...what you're made of..."

"War is in your blood..."

"Don't fight it..."

"You didn't kill for your country...You killed for yourself..."

"God's never gonna make that go away..."

...

"When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathin..."

....

Or as my friends like to say: "When ya push'd, killin's zas zeazy as breazin's."

So begins a new continuing feature that I would like to present, "Motion Picture Magic," with my reviews of really good/really bad movies (or movies that I just plain enjoy for no good reason). Above is some of the best monologue from the brilliant film that I watched last Saturday, "Rambo." Written, starring, and directed by Sylvester Stallone, "John Rambo" is the latest installment of the "Rambo" series, with 20 years since the release of "Rambo III" in 1988. I won't go into too many details about the Rambo franchise, but the main point is that Rambo is usually sent on missions involving him going into enemy terrority alone, heavily armed, and usually outnumbered somewhere on the order of 100 to 1. Now, the only other Rambo movie I've seen is the first Rambo movie, and that was a long time ago, but many of Stallone's character traits in this installment are shown to be the results of him perhaps going on one too many missions and ripping the throats off one too many dudes.

The short version of the background story is that Rambo is now living the peaceful life of a boatman/snake-catcher in Thailand, still seemingly haunted by his experiences in the past (killing hundreds of dudes will do that to you). Well, a Christian missionary group shows up and wants to be taken into nearby Burma, to aid some of the rural villages with supplies and medical skills (such as sewing up legs that have been blown off by land mines, ya know, the usual). Naturally, Rambo gives them the "wow you guys are really dumb" speech, but is finally convinced by some white chick (I guess Rambo probably hasn't had a good lay in a while). He takes them up river and drops them off safely, but somehow, the village they are in manages to get bombed, massacred, and basically completely destroyed by Burmese Tyrant X (they don't say his name in the movie, at least not that I heard), who is a short, Burmese (you guessed it) dude, with almost no motivation as to why he's destroying every village in his path. There is a reason, but it's kinda lame, in that he's pissed off at the world for being...different... (I HATE TO RUIN THE MOVIE FOR YOU, BUT HE'S INTO BOYS). Naturally, some dude shows up asking for Rambo to go save the stupid white people, and we're off to the massacre.

Now, I was actually surprised after I was done with this movie, because I didn't think it was the worst movie ever. It's probably up there in the top 50, but definitely not Top 20 worst movies I've ever seen (I've seen some bad ones, ie Troll 2). Sylvester Stallone was somewhere between bad and fair, acting-wise, but I felt the movie's direction, cinematography, and effects managed to keep me engaged for the duration of the film (a seemingly very short hour and 33 minutes). The chief white girl and white guy of the missionary party were so annoying that they made me wanna take a sledgehammer to my nuts (and that's saying something, cuz there's not many reasons I can think of as to why I would ever want to take a sledgehammer to my nuts), but the overall cast didn't make me want to puke (which is more than I can say for say...Spiderman 3, but more on that some other time). But the crazy part is how huge Stallone looks. I mean, huge (see picture above). Honestly, Stallone looks as if he's been doing more steroids than the entire MLB, NFL, and WWE combined. The man's like 60 for Christ's sake. It is not natural to be that old and that buff.

Now comes the good part. The special effects in this movie were ridiculous. When I say special effects, I don't mean explosions, crazy lights, or various visual effects. I'm talking about bodies exploding (yes, exploding). Some of the scenes had such realistic violence that a couple times I was thinking, "whoa, did they hire some random Thai dude to get his face blown off?" or "Wow, I think they may have actually killed a guy, that was so real." There are multiple scenes that involve lots of people getting mowed down by some pretty enormous 50 cal's, and people are losing limbs/faces/torsos left and right. All I'm thinking is "Wow, either they're really killing people, or that's a lot of fake blood and limbs."

In short, if you want some good entertainment (and unintentional comedy) for an hour and a half, Rambo will not disappoint. The body count is a fairly impressive 236, with 99% of the kills being either evil Burmese army guys or innocent civilians (lots of innocent civilian deaths in this one). But definitely do not watch this film if you have an aversion to blood/guts/gore/lost limbs/rampant death. Otherwise, I definitely implore you to partake in this *ahem* visual masterpiece *ahem*.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I leave you with the NC-17 teaser for Rambo. Warning: do not watch this if you have an aversion to gore.