Dark Knight Review

The follow-up to the action hit Batman Begins, The Dark Knight reunites director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale, who reprises the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and the committed new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to destroy organized crime in Gotham City for good. The triumvirate initially proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a rising criminal mastermind known as The Joker, who thrusts Gotham into anarchy and forces The Dark Knight ever closer to crossing the fine line between hero and vigilante. Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger portrays arch-villain The Joker, and Aaron Eckhart plays District Attorney Harvey Dent. Maggie Gyllenhaal joins the cast in the role of Rachel Dawes. Returning from Batman Begins are Gary Oldman as Lieutenant Jim Gordon; Oscar winner Michael Caine as Alfred; and Oscar winner Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.

I feel I should start this by saying, "Believe the god damn hype." Nolan has made the best superhero film, and Batman film hands down. You know nothing about how deep, intense, shocking, awe-inspiring, and beautiful this movie is.

What hasn't already been said about Ledger's performance I sure as hell couldn't think of something. The best performance in a comic book film. No one comes even close. He is a completely soulless "mad dog" as Harvey Dent calls him who has been let loose on Gotham. There is no empathy for this man. You laugh at some of what he says, but it makes you go "What the hell is wrong with me", afterwards. Remember in Batman: The Animated Series episodes with the Joker when he would be 5 steps ahead of everyone, and when you find out what he's been planning the whole time it makes you go, "Ah fuck"? Well think of that, but all the time. He is always ahead of everyone, yet he draws in the audience in every scene he steals. It is impossible to remember that the man underneath this cackling maniac is a deep voiced Australian man who was in 10 Thing I Hate About You. Ledger is the Joker. It would be a crime to not give a nomination of Supporting Actor to Ledger.

But to only give credit to Ledger would be a disservice to the ridiculous amount of talent that this film holds.

Christian Bale takes the screen with his three characters (Batman, Bruce Wayne: Playboy, and Bruce Wayne: Person) and flows through each of them perfectly. He is the hero that Gotham deserves, a battered, tortured hero, who has found his limits. Bale brings the audience into the ethical and moral questions that must be posed when it comes to his role as a hero. He does so expertly.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is a huge step forward from Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. She is much more real and down to earth with the character, making her more interesting and likable, whereas Holmes portrayed the character as holier than thou, unsympathetic, and plain unlikable.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine come back with their usual of being really good. Gary Oldman surprised me by bringing A LOT out of Jim Gordan that was not there in Batman Begins. It will be interesting where Nolan takes the character from this film.

And finally is Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. I wrote on a message board a month ago that when Dent falls (not a spoiler really, in other news water is wet) it is going to rip the hearts out of everyone in the theater. Eckhart brilliantly plays Dent, showing a side that I have never seen from him in his other films. When Two Face is in the car with Maroni and he flips the coin for Maroni's life and then goes to flip it again I thought, "Oh god please don't repeat Batman Forever." And then it was for the driver's and it made that scene really awesome.

In the same vein we also have some fantastic and beautiful cinematography and a fresh and bright screenplay that brings out the best of everyone.

It's very hard to talk specifics without giving tons of spoilers, but to give an excellent example of what Nolan has created: As the first third of the film that establishes our characters, their current situations, and setting up the basic structure of the plot, things go about in a very Batman Begins style with very quick editing, steady pacing, constant music, and jump cutting. This is almost to show a Batman that has grown accustomed to a Gotham that is steady, albeit slowly escalating. But once the Joker is arrested everything changed drastically. The cuts are much longer, the music is many times non existent, the pacing is much more drawn out, and the edits are fewer. This is a Gotham that no one has chartered before, and things are about to get extremely hairy.

I feel that I have to end by saying that all of the preview footage: the 12 clips, 20 tv spots, 3 trailers, HBO special, interviews, and a partridge in a pear tree, barely cover a fourth of this film. Even the scenes that you might have seen with the footage are not what you expect, and I have to applaud the marketing people for really going out of their way to catch us by surprise.

I'll be seeing this again tomorrow probably. I have been waiting for 2 years for this film and it blew away all of my very high expectations. See this movie for the love of God.

I cannot do this right now with any objectivity. I am total geek at this point.

Rating: 10/10

Hellboy II Review

The Golden Army begins when an ancient truce existing between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic is broken; Hell on earth is ready to erupt. Hellboy 2 tells the tale of a ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below, defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Its up to the planets toughest, roughest superhero to battle the merciless dictator and his marauders. He may be red, he may be horned, he may be misunderstood, but when you need the job done right, its time to call in Hellboy (Ron Perlman), and the B.P.R.D.

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) will travel between the surface world and the unseen magical one, where creatures of fantasy become corporeal, along with his expanding team pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), aquatic empath Abe (Doug Jones), and protoplasmic mystic Johann Krauss (James Dodd), the newest member of the BPRD. Hellboy, a creature of two worlds who is accepted by neither, must choose between the life he knows and an unknown destiny that beckons him.

A slip-up results in the F.B.I. being forced to reveal the existence of BPRD to the general public. Brash old Hellboy doesn't play well with the public, which only increases the instability of his already-turning-rough relationship with Liz. However, fellow paranormal Johann (who is a sort of ectoplasmic spirit held within a very special containment suit) is far better with the public -- and with Liz, apparently. But in the end they've all got to come together to fight Prince Nuada(Luke Goss), who, with his army of ghouls, faerie, and the like, is attempting to resurrect a golden army once controlled by his father.

Credit: IMDB (waflynn)

Opinion: I feel that I should start this off by saying that I have never seen the first Hellboy, although I fully intend to, but not because of this film.
Let's start with with positives shall we? All of the action scenes are very well done. It's nothing we haven't seen before, but the choreography, timing, CGI, and placement of the action scenes are all very well done. The tooth fairies scene in particular was one of my favorite scenes of the film.
The other aspect that people will be talking about is the costume design and visual effects. Hellboy II comes through in spades with visual effects that live up to Guillermo Del Torro's reputation for the bizarre.
The cast is where things start to go a bit off kilter. Not all of it mind you, but parts. About half of the cast is great. Rob Perlman is standard fan fare as Hellboy and doesn't disappoint. Jeffrey Tambor steals every scene he is in. His awkward stammering is one of the necessary comic relief devices that were necessary for a film that had far too many (more on that later).
But my favorite character in the film was easily Doug Jones as Abe Sapien. I wish there was a film primarily about him, since I find him to be much more compelling that the Hellboy/Liz fiasco that dominates the film.
Which is where things go downhill and fast. Selma Blair is sleepwalking through this. I swear there must be cue cards off screen because there is nothing genuine in anything she says. Seth MacFarlane's German voice for Johann will have a lot of people talking, but I have no idea why. It's the same voice as the fish in American Dad. His character is supposed to be an unlikable dick but his voice is so naturally comedic that nothing he says is taken seriously (which is another thing we'll get to later). But the reason to fast forward when this comes on DVD is Anna Walton as Princess Nuala. My...God. It's painful to think about, and not in the cliched way that pompous reviewers blast a moderately good performance but focus on a couple of flaws and then exaggerate them with dramatics. I'm one hundred percent serious when I say that Anna Walton's performances is the worst thing that I have seen on screen all year (not counting Bio-Dome for health reasons). She's a wooden puppet with a shrill, ridiculous voice that cuts in and out of her own and her characters. It's almost funny to watch her fail so bad.
Speaking of failing badly, let's talk about the pacing. Again, I have not seen the first, but I had to ask my friend afterwards if the first one had a ludicrous amount of excess stuff going on at once, with none of it having a purpose. The introduction of the BPRD in particular is all over the place, which would be great if that was the intended effect, but I kind of got the hint that things are weird when I saw the blue guy in the tank listening to Vivaldi, I don't need 8 more CGI pans of other weird things that flow so oddly that I lost everything that Abe and Tom say to each other in the beginning, which was apparently pretty darn important.
Or the one hundred different plot directions that are thrown at us. Hellboy isn't liked by people, which should throw that in there, but only have it brought up 4 different times and have it not mean anything at all. SPOILER Let's have Hellboy get stabbed, let's go to Scotland to fight the Prince, and find some extremely random appearance by the Angel of Death who literally rasps gibberish that somehow means that Hellboy would doom humanity if he lives, thus giving Liz a choice of either Red or the world. This would have been great had it been posed to us in the beginning of the film, but instead it is completely thrown away as an afterthought. END SPOILER
What would also normally be pretty darn important for a film is tone, of which this movie has none. It comes off as a convoluted mess that tries to be an engaging action film, a sci-fi thriller, and a comedy and fails badly when all three counteract each other. There's some great laughs between Abe and Red, but they make me go, "Who cares?" whenever something of consequence happens to either of them. The fight between Red and the big plant monster is awesome, but then Nuada shows up and tries to convince Red not to kill it when there is no real conflict of whether or not to kill it. The drama, romance, and thrills are all very half-assed compared to the comedy, which does not make for a great action film.

Rating: 5.5/10
The whole time I spent watching this film I was saying to myself, "God damn I wish I was watching the Dark Knight." As a superhero film in an age where the genre is transcending the stereotypical brainless popcorn fest (Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Batman Begins, X-Men, X2, The Dark Knight), Hellboy doesn't and takes a couple of steps backwards. The film throws whatever to the wall including genres and hopes something will stick. Now, I did find the film to be quite fun as the action and effects are great, but there was far too many flaws for me to fully enjoy it as a story.