Tag: Morgan Freeman

When I first heard of The Lego Movie, sometime mid 2013, I will admit I thought it was stupid. I know Lego has been revamping itself pretty intensely for the last decade, being more than just a child’s toy. With so many themes, and now video games based on movies, it is no surprise they are making a movie based on a game.

When I first saw the trailer? I was immediately hooked. This became one of my most looking forward to movies in the first half of 2014. Shit, it was even done by the guys who did Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and Clone High. Those guys know comedy and they also know their pop culture references. Combined with an idea that has stuck its fingers in most pop culture references over the last few decades, and you have the potential for a storm of success.

See! One of these guys is excited about the storm of success!

In this story, our hero is one Emmet Brickowoski (Chris Pratt), who lives in the city and does the same thing each and every day. He follows the instructions on the box, lives his happy life, and builds things. There is absolutely nothing unique or special about him. That is, until he meets Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), who is about to turn his reality upside down and change his life forever!

She introduces him to the Master Builders, other Lego people who can see from the world around them and build creations quickly and without instructions. Like Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman). He also learns that President/Lord Business (Will Ferrell) is going to unleash some power called “The KRAGLE” on the population in a few days, destroying everyone’s way of life forever!

From a series of accidental circumstances, Emmet is being labeled the “Special” and all of their hopes to saving the day are coming down to him. He will also have the help of other Master Builders like…Batman! (Will Arnett), Benny the 1980s space guy (Charlie Day), Metal Beard a strange huge pirate (Nick Offerman), and Unikitty (Alison Brie). Also, a Good Cop / Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) is working for Lord Business to capture the builders on the war front.

Shit, there is a ton of cameos too, which I won’t tag on the bottom, but might as well mention here. They also have Channing Tatum as Superman and Jonah Hill as Green Lantern (because, 21 Jump Street), Cobie Smulders as Wonder Woman, Shaq as Shaq, Billy Dee Williams and Anthony Daniels reprising their roles as Lando Calrissian and C3P0, and Will Forte as Abraham Lincoln again. His first time as Abe was of course, Clone High.

But you don’t care about them. You all just care about Batman. Don’t you?

Wow. Just wow.

Easily, the first thing that should be talked about is the animation style. They went full out wild with this, wanting to insure that everything always A) looked like Legos, and B) looked like how Legos moved. [Editor’s note: Some contention as to whether or not LEGO is supposed to be pluralized by an S, given it’s company name. They might prefer ‘LEGO Bricks’ if you do multiple ones. Well, I say fuck that, we call them Legos in America]. So yes, the movie could be considered a bit choppy to get all the movements right, but that gave it charm and personality and made me giddy the entire time. Watching waves or an explosion, but noticing they are all still lego pieces is incredibly exciting.

It was also pretty hilarious. I love pop culture as much as the next guy, but I do think their humor relied far too heavily on the fact that they were using major properties, such as Batman. Batman was in this movie way longer than I would have imagined (longer than any other already existing property). Although he was funny too, they were all specifically Batman jokes, and rarely just joke jokes. Most of the main team had their quirks, but none were as trademarked as Batman.

I also feel like parts of the ending were a bit…forced. Shit went real different at the end, kind of ruining the pace for me. All of the sudden, bam, we got a lesson to learn from this movie. I think it went far too long and took away from the film a bit.

I still really like this movie though, just the slowed down ending and over reliance on specific characters is what disappointed me. It was hilarious, creative, and shit, the animation itself is almost worthy of 4 out of 4. Honestly, I have a hard time believing there might be an overall better animated film the rest of the year. But it still had some faults for me. Even if Everything Was Awesome.

3 out of 4.

If I learned anything about the advertising campaign of Last Vegas, it is that sometimes people don’t like seeing the same ad every fifteen minutes. Last Vegas was produced by CBS Films, so it has the benefit of being advertised on a channel that is watched by the millions during football games every Sunday.

Unfortunately for the movie, I know plenty of people who wrote it off solely on overexposure, a likelihood probably expressed around America.

At least the suits are colorful.

Last Vegas takes us into the lives of four kids who grew up best friends, but into their adulthood, their lives began to veer in different paths.

But Billy (Michael Douglas) is getting married, finally! To a girl half his age! So he wants to invite his old pals to the wedding: Sam (Kevin Kline), who is currently living a sad life in Florida in a sexless relationship. Archie (Morgan Freeman), who is living with his son (Michael Ealy), while constantly on pills. And even Paddy (Robert De Niro), who hasn’t left his apartment since his wife died a year ago and also really really hates Billy now.

Why does he hate Billy? Well, that is a spoiler. But he gets tricked into showing up for the bachelor party / wedding.

Thanks to pension funds and a little luck, the four gentlemen end up having one of the wildest weekends imaginable, while also allowing time to air out their grievances and fix their standing in life. How awesome is that?

Mary Steenburgen plays Diana, a lounge singer who helps create conflict, Romany Malco, their butler-esque character, and Jerry Ferrara, a recurring jerk.

Old dudes, doing young things. Hilarious!

I think I figured out a pattern in new comedies. First we had a group of guys in Vegas with The Hangover in 2009, then a group of girls in Vegas with Bridesmaids in 2011. Another two years later we were given old guys in Vegas, so I expect in 2015, we will get either old women in Vegas, or elementary school girls in Vegas. It depends on if this relationship is linear or a ramping sine wave, respectfully.

Overall, I guess this movie delivered exactly as the previews showed. A lot of old people jokes. Old people jokes are a subset of jokes, where everything is funnier, just because the characters involved happen to be old. So old people talking about drugs, going to clubs, flirting, being hungover. This movie has the bonus aspect of seeing Morgan Freeman do all of these things, one of the more revered older actors currently out there.

But after awhile, it becomes obvious that all of the jokes are basically the same, so it is hard to still find them funny across the entire run time. The movie also took its sweet time ending, with what felt like at least three endings thrown on.

Of our actors, Douglas was not at his best, which is a shame given his last role in Behind The Candelabra. De Niro was also hit and miss in this film. The best two were Kline and Freeman, arguably supporting actors in this movie.

Most of the plot lines for the characters went the obvious routes, so nothing felt surprising. Everything gets wrapped up by the end, the conflict presented isn’t too huge, and it is just a simple movie. It was odd to see E from Entourage, so thin. There were two cameos: LMFAO, an already outdated reference, and 50 Cent, who was a welcome surprise.

If you go into Last Vegas expecting a lot of cheap laughs and some touching moments, then you will overall enjoy it. Not a game changer by any means in the comedy genre, but an okay one all the same.

 

2 out of 4.

The first time I saw the trailer for Now You See Me, I got all sorts of excited. A movie with magic and illusions? Heck yeah! It has been seven years since we really had movies on the subject, when we were blessed with The Prestige and The Illusionist, both of which were quite enjoyable.

Oh. I meant good movies about magicians. Sorry. I tend to forget about The Incredible Burt Wonderstone already (and that was in March!).

Look at this gaggle of fucks right here. Basically every star in this movie! Wait…

To start the film, we are introduced to four different street magicians. Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), the fast talking kind of a dick magician, McKinney (Woody Harrelson), the formerly big mentalist, Henley (Isla Fisher), the former assistant turned pro, and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), the thieving tricky magician. They are all invited to a secret gathering, where they find blue prints to pull off great magical feats. A year later, they are calling themselves The Four Horsemen and headlining in Las Vegas and around the world!

Their new benefactor is Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), a big big millionaire, and they just used a magic trick to rob a bank in Paris. Huh? What?

Yep. But the FBI and lead detective Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) are in a pickle. Can they arrest them for a magic trick, with no real evidence? Well, no evidence unless they assume magic is real. The answer is no. Even with Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), an ex-magician who has a web-series explaining and spoiling other magician’s secrets, they don’t have enough to actually put them away.

Rhodes and his new partner from Interpol (Melanie Laurent) have to follow the four horsemen across America, as their tricks get more and more daring, and steal from more and more powerful sources. But are they doing these tricks alone, or is there a Fifth Horsemen secretly pulling the strings? Also featuring Michael Kelly as an FBI agent. I feel bad for not including him.

In a previous version of this review, I used famous character names instead of actor names for the plot description (like Mark Zuckerberg, or The Hulk) but Dave Franco kind of ruined that. No one really knows who he is.

Why are you so befuddled Ruffalo? Surprised I decided to leave Eisenberg out of the pictures?The more I think about the ending to Now You See Me, the more I get angry at inconsistencies. That is what I get for thinking about a movie afterwards I guess. But alas, my burden to carry as a reviewer.

In a movie like this, there will be red herrings, because they know you are trying to guess the ending the entire time. After all, clearly the fifth horseman will be someone in the movie, not some random stranger popping up at the end! But when the reveal happens it just doesn’t seem to make much since the harder you look at the film.

The movie spends a decent amount of time focusing on explaining the tricks, thanks to Freeman’s character, but at the same time, there are things done only toby the power of CGI that kind of take the mysticism out of it. We are left wondering if magic is actually real in this movie, or if it is all explainable like the normal real world. Honestly, by the end, I am still not sure.

At the same time, it still was a bit entertaining. I think Woody Harrelson was my favorite player in the movie, by far. Which is great, because I finally saw Rampart recently and didn’t have a good time doing it. As the mentalist, he was pretty funny. Ruffalo was okay as the main cop character, but definitely not the type of role he is used to. After all, aside from The Avengers and this film, every role he has had has basically been in an indie movie.

Now You See Me did a good job of playing with our mind, giving every possible misdirection in the book. But it in no way will stand up to the previous mentioned magic films in a year or two. However, it is still at least a little bit cool.

2 out of 4

Not going to lie. I was not at all interested in seeing Oblivion this week. Unfortunately I have taken to following other reviewers, although I hate knowing what other people think of a movie before I see it. But they all hated it. I disliked the preview. Everything looked pretty darn obvious to me from them. I also disliked just how many previews I had to see of it, without ever changing. I also disliked that the main characters name was Jack, but I will get into that later. But finally the title. When I first heard about it, I assumed it was some movie about the video game. Nope. Future and aliens.

That’s a lot of bad things to go against movie. You unfortunately have a biased, uphill battle to climb!

Thankfully they put quite a bit of money into the graphics department. Oooh, my eyes are happy.

It is about 60 years in the future. An alien race called scavengers came down and fucked up all of our shit. Turns out humans are stubborn and won’t just let our stuff get messed up, even if they took out our moon (causing earthquakes and tidal waves), so we nuked the fuck out of them. Hooray! We won! Small packs of scavengers roam the landscape, but they totally lost overall. Too bad the Earth is basically a barren wasteland at this point. Areas of high radiation, lot of dead. So the humans evacuated, and GTFO first to a big space station in the sky, then on ships en route to Titan, a moon of Saturn.

Only two people are left on the world, Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). Jack is a tech guy, repairing drones that cover their perimeter and protect them from scavengers. Once the plants suck up the last of the sea water (which can be used for energy later?), they can return to the space station, and head off to Titan in two weeks! Woo!

Too bad those fucking scavengers keep messing up their shit and make their last two weeks hell. Not to mention an old space ship crash lands on Earth, with the drones attacking the human survivors, including a woman (Olga Kurylenko) who has been haunting his dreams! What in the hell is going on!?

Also featuring Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as mysterious humans, and Melissa Leo as their space communications rep.

The internet is making wild claims that Morgan is barely in this movie, only 15 minutes max. Psha, I clocked him in at about 19.

Well, fuck me. I found Oblivion entertaining.

Yep, despite the negativity and the huge climb, I walked out happy, nay, excited. I had to quickly talk about it with others who saw it, about the ending, the twists and turns.

You see, it is pretty dang obvious from the trailer that certain things will happen. They are obvious twists in the movie that won’t come to be a surprise at all. That is what I thought the film would give me, and I was ready to be bored. But you know what Oblivion did? Sure, it might have had those “twists”. But the twists came in unexpected ways and then layered on more turns that I was not expecting after that.

Too many twists can ruin a movie, because then you just get tired of it all, and refuse to pay attention until the end. Like Trespass. The barren Earth they created is also hauntingly gorgeous, just like the CGI as well. I generally don’t like Tom Cruise as much when he is in his serious action roles, like this, but I didn’t mind this one.

The acting was okay, the plot overall could have been better, and I might have disliked the last scene in the end, but overall, pretty interesting.

If I actually went in with an open mind, it might have been a 2, but this is what exceeding expectations does to ratings!

3 out of 4.

I feel like a bad Ben Affleck fan. Here I am, talking about his greatness, despite having finally seen Pearl Harbor, but I have not seen a third of the movies he has directed. That means the first movie he directed, Gone Baby Gone. I might not have really known it existed. Whoops. Of course he has his brother in it, but it is nice to know his first work that lead up to Argo, right?

Damn straight. Forgive me Affleck Fans 4 Lyfe, my former Myspace group that I was in. I have redeemed myself in your eyes I hope.

But maybe not in the eyes of Ben’s brother.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a private investigator, with his long term serious girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan). On the news, there is a story of Helene (Amy Ryan) who’s child has been abducted, and she is pleading for the police to find her quickly! The police chief (Morgan Freeman) is super sympathetic to the cause, because he has lost a child himself, and has made child protection his number one goal as head of the department.

The next day, Patrick and Angie get a visit from Beatrice (Amy Madigan), the sister of Helene, wanting to hire them to find the child. This is a special case, they do specialize in finding missing people, but that means people on the run, not people who have been kidnapped. The last thing they want to do is find the child in a ditch somewhere, kind of ruins the mood. Eventually, they agree to help Beatrice, Helene, and Beatrice’s husband Lionel (Titus Welliver), while also trying to not get in the way or ruin the police investigation at the same time.

What follows is the dark paths their investigation take them on, the reprecussions that follow, and the many months of aftermath of uncertainty and grieving. You know, without giving too much away. Ed Harris and John Ashton play cop guys, and Michael Kenneth Williams is of course a drug dealer.

OH GOD I HAVE SPOILED THAT THERE IS BLOOD IN THIS MOVIE. MY BAD.

To fully enjoy Gone Baby Gone, you definitely can’t multi task through it. There is a lot going on in this thriller, with many layers of information coming in at different rates. But it is also not your typical mystery to figure out the ending, because it is actually the last thought on your mind while watching it.

Nay, loyal readers, the main point of this is the characters themselves, and their lives as they are all affected by this simple child abduction story.

But then again, personally, I did think it was going a bit slow early on, after they agreed to take the case. You know, because clues are hard to find then. I just didn’t expect so much of the movie to take place after the case had been “solved”. Solved in quotation marks can mean lots of things, so stop guessing!

Either way, it is a well acted drama/crime movie, I just think it could have been a little bit more entertaining (or quicker?) with certain developments.

3 out of 4.

As you all know, I am a patriotic American, so if there is a movie out there that will increase my patriotism, by golly, I will see it!

Not that I needed any more convincing to see Olympus Has Fallen. I love a lot of the actors in this movie, even though certain male leads may be pushing out a lot of crap in a row. But hey, this looks like Die Hard meets the White House! That is especially good news given out A Good Day To Die Hard turned out.

Arguably, both this and Die Hard 5 are going to be political. Probably. Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) used to be the best secret service agent there was, working for President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart). Unfortunately, after leaving Camp David on a snowy night, his limo hits a bridge and they are only able to save the President, not his wife. Mike didn’t do anything wrong, but the President just doesn’t want to be reminded of his dead wife every time he sees him.

Few years later, he now is stuck with some desk job. Can’t shoot anyone in the office (legally), damn it! He still relives that night, and his long term lady friend (Radha Mitchell) can’t seem to help him.

But unfortunately today is a day where everything will hit the fan. A fighter plane is able to make it into the DC airspace, and begins to open fire on the white house while the President has the South Korean Prime Minister under his care. But in the panic room, it turns out not everything is as expected. Surprise, North Korea is behind all of this! Not only have they locked the President and Vice President in the panic room, but they have taken over the building as well, and have pretty egregious demands for the country that they are holding hostage. Clearly only one man is good enough to save the day here.

Featuring Rick Yune as the bad guy, Morgan Freeman as the Speaker of the House and now acting president, Melissa Leo and Angela Bassett as government women, and Dylan McDermott as an also former secret service agent.

 

Honestly, to me this looks like they are just dancing. Sometimes you can get an idea that is so crazy, so wild, that it works on some grandiose scale, and I believe that is what is happening with Olympus Has Fallen. It is action packed (after the icy intro and set up) and entertaining. Sure, you can probably figure out how everything is going to end before its through, but that doesn’t even matter in this movie.

That’s right, no real big surprise twists! I think if the entire point of a movie is a twist at the end, it really loses its potential to watch it again for fun (unless you are watching with new people). That means Olympus Has Fallen is rewatchable!

Now there are some pretty dumb characters. I think the President is a moron, but at least he is a bit hard assed. Part of the conflict involves getting three passwords from three individuals, through torture! The President has the last password, and orders the other two to give up their own because there is “no way” he would ever give his up. You know, to stop their torture. Gee, I guess he didn’t realize that they will probably just torture his friends to get the password out of him, since it basically worked two times in a row.

But this movie is about Gerard Butler kicking ass, and damn it, he does. Nice fights, guns, explosions, and a high body count. This movie was so great that I am no longer looking forward to White House Down. When there are two similar movies within a few months of each other, one of them will always outshine the other. I don’t think there has ever been a situation where both have been amazing, but at least the other one has Jaime Foxx playing the President.

3 out of 4.

The Dark Knight Rises has the pleasure and curse of being one of the top three anticipated movies of the year (along with The Avengers and The Hobbit).

As it is a straight up sequel, not a collaboration of movies like the Avengers, it almost has more pressure because it will be compared success and fail to The Dark Knight from 2008. Which you’ve seen right? And of course Batman Begins? If you haven’t then you are silly for wanting to see this movie or read this review. Watch the first two movies first, it matters.

What in the what, hey, you there. Stop that! You don’t belong in that safe.

Don’t worry, I wont spoil much. But here, let me set the scene.

The movie takes place eight years after The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent is celebrated as a hero, and Batman (Christian Bale) has taken the fall for his Two-Face badness. So at this point crime is way down. No masked vigilantes, no super humans running amuck. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is being a commisioner, and thinking about letting the world really know.

Bruce Wayne is now a shut in, hurt leg, and doesn’t go out much, despite Alfred’s (Michael Caine) best attempts. Wayne Enterprises, still run by Lucious Fox (Morgan Freeman) isn’t poor, but isn’t making really any money anymore. Mostly sucks for all the orphanages and stuff that worked on his funding. A lot of money was tied into a sustainable energy project, brought on by an environmentalist Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard).

But when a pseudo masked strong man, Bane (Tom Hardy) takes up residence in Gotham city, err, well why is he there? And why the heck is some chick (Anne Hathaway) stealing his jewels when he wants to just be a shut in? And what is with that shifty eyed cop, John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) with his notions of justice?

Bitches ain’t nothin’ but hoes and tricks.

Ughhh, I wish I was reviewing this in 2014 so I can say all the spoilers. Because yes, 2 years is enough time to allow it.

Performance wise, I loved both Catwoman and Bane. Anne Hathaway personally never disappoints me, and I think she won a lot of naysayers over. Bane was so diabolically creepy to me. Strong, and smart, the best of both worlds, he dismantled all of Gotham and his voice and eyes were just so full of emotion to me. I almost found myself on his side, due to his weird form of Charisma.

Also, fucking Michael Caine. Every time he spoke, you listened. Powerful performance from him.

I think the story still may have been a bit too long. I think early on a few scenes dragged on a bit too long, but I understand the necessity of it all.

I’ve heard people note that there isn’t enough “Batman” in the batman movie. Instead, it felt like a lot more Gotham centric movie, and I loved the attention that went to all the different players. Maybe a bit too much time for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but hey.

I think I need to say powerful again, because there are a lot of powerful moments. I almost teared up twice, and actually did once again. I like that the expected ending wasn’t what actually occurred. Unfortunately, my comic based activities and hearing rumors gave me a specific mind set going into the film. I kept forcing plot points to go to my mindset instead of how they were presented, and fuck me, I was right.

From Fear, to Chaos, to Pain, I think the trilogy as a whole will be celebrated for its “Realism” in terms of a comic book movie, and great attention to detail, along with the social implications of it all. Whether or not this is what the people who grew up during the late 70s felt when Star Wars was being released, I don’t know, but it probably will be one of the closest relatable feelings I have to something like that.

3 out of 4.

The Bucket List, if anything, did have a lot of people talking about it. Most of which I doubt who saw it. I mean, why would you need to? You know exactly what happens in this movie from the title. Two old guys, living their last months to the fullest (somehow) and then probably dying. Both probably have some sort of family problem.

You know all of that, because the movie isn’t about surprises or the best plot, just one of those heartwarming tales that might make your cry or feel good.

That’s why it has took me til now to watch it. Really no need, but hey, I had to watch it eventually. Not because of a lame joke about needing to watch it before I died, just because I owned it and needed to watch it.

Before I died. >.>

Unrelated Orange picture? Or the rage you feel right now as I babble?

Blah Blah Blah. Morgan Freeman is an old man, mechanic, pretty smart because he reads a lot. Has a wife, Beverly Todd, has faith, and has a big family. But then he gets a terminal illness. Jack Nicholson, uber rich guy gets put in his room, also with cancer. Sharing rooms?! Yes, because he was a mean hospital owner and said each room needs two beds, to maximize efficiency and make more money. So when he finally gets sick and wants his own room, his assistant, Sean Hayes, won’t let him, as it’d be a horrible PR move.

Chemo happens, it sucks. And eventually they bond. Jack see’s Morgan’s bucket list, full of ridiculous items, like being President, and tells him they should both do it. Leave his family, travel the world, money is no option, fuck the metaphors. And eventually he says sure. Skydiving, racing, Great Wall Of China, Pyramids, etc.

But how far will Morgan go to experience life to the fullest? A man who has only been with one woman, who he has left her behind to see the world? Also, will Jack be less of a dick, and visit his family for once in his life? I think you know the answer to both of them.

Chances of green screens being involved? Pretty high.

But was I entertained is the bigger question?

Ehh not really. Morgan Freeman’s character made a good argument why he should get the chance to do whatever he wants before he ends his life, which he seems to have gotten chastised for by everyone for doing it. Bitches, please. Even Freeman’s acting I thought was just okay. But Jack Nicholson had a much more powerful character to me, and thought he did a lot better.

He was also the only character we got to see keeling over in cancer pain. Correlation?

But yeah, this movie did absolutely nothing to me, and despite the fact that people will still make a lot more bucket list references for the next few years, I will never see it again.

1 out of 4.

Hooray! Review 450! That in no way is a real significant number, just that it is divisible by 50.

Normally this is where I do a big long review of a bad movie, spoil the shit out of it, and make you laugh. Twilight series and High School Musical stuff so far. But the next bad movie I want to review I am saving for 500. It is kind of a special one for this site.

So instead, I will do a “controversial” review for a widely liked and known movie. And use the fact that there is a lot of pictures to make nerdy/lame jokes.
How could a review of The Dark Knight be controversial? Because I am only giving it a 3/4, and I will try to explain why I didn’t love it to the max.

Because this movie featured not enough bat nipples.

Batman is running around batmanning in this movie, but so are fake batmans. He has to save a fake batman from trying to batman the return of Scarecrow, in the movie as just a cameo. Apparently Batman’s existence isn’t making crime go away, it is elevating it!

Which is why we get some assholes like The Joker.

He also looks like a midnight toker.

The Joker’s back story is very simple one. He doesn’t have one. He has no other known aliases that could be proven, and no one really knows why he acts the way he does. He is chaos incarnated, and follows a very loose definition of logic to acquire his goals. His goals being more or less the destruction/torment of the Batman, an equally crazy character in his eye. It is almost as if he won’t stop until the Batman stops.

Or if he is stopped? If Ledger didn’t die, this could totally be some nice foreshadowing.

But fuck this crime shit. There is a new sheriff in town, Harvey Dent, the white knight gotham needs to legally bring the criminals to Justice. He is also now dating Rachel, Batman’s former gal, who apparently changed her look completely when breaking up with Bruce.

But that Joker is causing lots of damn problems. Not to mention huge outcries against the Batman for being a vigilante. Coupled with an attack on some high profile players and not-yet-commissioner Gordon, the Joker demand that Batman give himself up to save the city. Dent realizes that it would be bad if that happens and pretends to be Batman instead as a trap for the Joker.

He is such a fucking swell guy. High in morals too.

The trap is set, and the Joker is caught. Or did he allow himself to get caught?

He did. During it he arranged for the kidnapping of Dent and Rachel, and set it up so that only one could be saved by Batman, and the other dying in an explosion. In a very tense and lovely moment as they talk on the phone, we are teased horribly with Dent falling on the side and laying in the oil. But the Batman saves him, fuck! Oh well. Still gets his face all fucked up.

And AMC still wouldn’t let him join The Walking Dead.

More ultimatums issues by the joker. Have the town kill an innocent man, or else he will blow up a hospital. More chaos is caused, including people evacuating the city. The police get the bright idea of putting all the prisoners on a boat into the water, because they don’t want a repeat of what the Scarecrow did. The rich people also evacuate on a nice cruiser.

Haha! Another plot point expected by the Joker. Both vessels are armed with explosives, and the detonators for them are on each others boat. If one boat doesn’t detonate the other boat, they both will explode at midnight. Will the rich kill the prisoners, will the prisoners kill the rich?

“This is quite a dilemma, we, the prisoners, face.” – Big guy.

Through questionable motives, The Batman is able to find the Joker and tie him up once and for all! But too bad he has already convinced Harvey Dent (Two-Face) that life sucks, and he should kill people. Using the power of coin technology to determine life or death, he decides to go after all of those who set up Rachel’s death, thinking the Joker could not have been involved.

Through some tossing and turning, Batman stops him too at the cost of Two-Face’s life, making it the first time he has killed someone. Batman and Commissioner Gordon agree that Batman take the blame for what Dent did, so that Dent can die a hero and provide hope for Gotham, while Batman will go on the run, and be a “villain” for the city to unite together.

Morgan Freeman is also in here as Lucius Fox again, CEO of Wayne Enterprises, and really really hates unethical ways of stopping crime.

Alfred is still in this movie too, of course, because being a Butler is bananas.

Why the fuck did you not give this a 4/4?

Well part of my giving a movie a 4 out of 4 is the longing to watch it again sometime in the future and to make sure everyone sees it. Hellboy II, which came out to theaters a week before The Dark Knight, I gave a 4 out of 4. Counting the theater watch, I have seen that movie probably 7 times since. That is a lot, I really love that movie. How many times have I seen The Dark Knight?

Just two. Theaters, and last weekend on Blu-Ray. I definitely bought it the week it came out, just never watched it again until now.

But that doesn’t explain why I didn’t love it.

The film had a lot of hype thanks to the death of Heath Ledger. So much that he was being promised a best supporting actor Oscar before most people even saw the movie. Annoying fanboys is not a reason to hate a movie though. While Ledger was pretty damn awesome, I have never found the Joker character compelling or in general a great story line feature. I find him hard to grok, and that is part of the point. He is supposed to not make any sense and be complete chaos.

One of the most interesting stories throughout history though has always been the tragedy. Starting in Ancient Greece, the Tragedies always featured the same thing. No one cares if some random guy gets down on his luck, the fall isn’t great enough. People only care when someone on top of the world and is seemingly powerful loses everything and falls from the good grace. Like a King, or maybe a District Attorney who is living a fabulous life.

Despite his kind of weak origins, the comic storyline of Two-Face (ahh referencing the books the movie is based on! I am horrible! :/ ) is one of the best out there. A highly moral character who wanted to rid the streets of crime and did it all within the law to persecute criminals. But when the Justice system kept failing him, he began to crack. People need to be punished, and it isn’t working out. Then some other unfortunate things happen, like losing his loved ones (possibly at Batman’s fault) and the whole face scarring incident.

Dent’s fall from the top turns him into Two-Face, a man who believes there is no right or wrong left in the world, that Karma is a farce and everything that ever happens is always a random chance. Why not determine life or death with a simple coin flip? This way he can try to get back at those who has wronged him (other criminals, people in the justice system, and Crime) and do it the only “fair” way that must be left.

But his story was overshadowed by The Joker’s and mostly swept under the rug until the end. Having him die, while symbolic, was definitely a weird way to take the Batman franchise in. I really think I would have loved it a bit more if they dug a little bit deeper into Two-Faces actions at the end. It seemed kind of weak how the Joker convinced him to go after the people that he did, but I guess we have to believe it as a man who has given up all hope and purpose for life.

But despite all this, seriously, who isn’t excited for some Dark Knight Rises?

Despite the PG-13 rating, I think there is still a 90% chance of seeing a naked Anne Hathaway.

3 out of 4.

Wanted is by far one of the movies I have dreaded most to watch. I also have read the book and have no way of doing this in a biased way. Yes, I generally review things and ignore the book. But usually if they have the same name they at least have the same plot. This is not really true with Wanted the movie, way way different than the graphic novel.

After all, neither character looks anything like their comic version.

This movie is about a group of assassins. The comic is about super heroes and super villains. The main character is more or less the same. Some loser working in a corporation. Clearly a tool. This Wesley (James McAvoy) has a gift though. Genetically he can shoot good with a gun (what?). Again this is not really a superpower, because this is supposed to be considered normal. It is rare, just possible in the world. In the graphic novel of course it is easy to accept, because lots of people have powers.

Eventually he finds out about this gun thing, and got it from his dad, an assassin who is dead. Fox (Angelina Jolie, who is definitely not black), brings him to the organization to meet Sloan (Morgan Freeman, who is) and begins training to join the “family business”. The Fraternity which…kills people based on The Loom Of Fate. Which has a secret code which they use to find names of people to kill. Yeah. Not really well explained.

Some missions happen, he gets to go after the guy who killed his dad, other betrayal, lots of dying, long rage shots and curving bullets. Yeahh. Then some breaking of the 4th wall.

Pew pew pew.

Seriously though. This plot has nothing to do with the actual graphic novel and is actually way weirder. Who the hell would say “Lets have a Loom that tells people who to kill! Yess!” What? In the graphic novel, it is a world where the superheroes actually lost and no one believes in super powered people anymore (just tell the stories in comics. Hah). But they have this big organization. Tells of a war between all the different chapters, and search for his father.

This one of course has him go and take down the organization that trained him in a highly predictable pathline. No super powers! No other evil groups. Just…a Loom of fucking fate.

I really can’t get over the loom. I never saw that coming, just knew the one difference between the movie and graphic novel. The acting is dumb, special effects driven movie, and stupid stupid plot.

1 out of 4.