Movie Diary
1. The Dark Knight
The wife and I were like the 2 last people on earth to see this in the theater, but after 2 months of trying to go see it, and either not getting out, or ending up seeing something else, we finally caught a matinee of this. And even though I wasn't the biggest fan of Batman Begins (didn't dislike it, it just didn't leave a big impression), and my expectations weren't super high, this was definitely pretty great and lived up to the hype. The reviews selling it as a serious "crime epic" are a little ridiculous, but the twists and details at least rung true within their own universe. I was always kind of a skeptic of Ledger's Joker mainly based on the bits in that first trailer (the way he camped up saying "commissioner" really rubbed me the wrong way) but in the context of the movie everything worked, it was a pretty perfect performance. And I expected to be as annoyed by Bale's cookie monster Batman voice as a lot of people were, but all in all it didn't really bother me; there wasn't actually much dialogue from Wayne-as-Batman, and it was an adequite device for making it believable that certain characters could speak to both Wayne and Batman and not make the connection. I still want to say I liked Iron Man more on principle just because I'm more partial to that approach to comic book movies, but I'm not sure if it'd be true.
2. Waitress
What a nice little picture. The combination of whimsy, emotion and pies gave me a lot of the same feelings as "Pushing Daisies." And other than the lout husband character being kind of a hollow caricature (it's one of those movies that does the ol' "he wasn't like that when we met" dance but doesn't really do anything to make you believe the suffering spouse didn't just straight up willingly marry an asshole), everybody in it is really likable and good. Wasn't really familiar with Adrienne Shelly's work before, but now that I've seen this I am sad that she passed away after making it. Any word on whether her 2 other features as a director (I'll Take You There and Sudden Manhattan) are worth checking out?
3. For Your Consideration
Man, these Christopher Guest movies are really a study in diminishing returns, huh? This kind of had the same problem as The TV Set, where it took a very real show business scenario of the industry taking an idea and diluting it and slowly ruining it, and just removed all the realistic elements and turned it into a boring meta-movie cartoon where the jokes weren't really funny enough to be worth sacrificing the potential for resonance or commentary.
4. The Man Who Wasn't There
Despite the black & white noir aesthetic, I realized when I came to the end of this movie that all the Coens had done was written a more stylized version of terrible contemporary dark comedies like Very Bad Thing where a ridiculous amount of tragedy and death and misfortune keeps happening to a hapless protagonist, which was not at all a comparison I was prepared to make when I started watching this.
5. Balto
A mid-'90s non-Disney animal cartoon that I don't remember when it came out, but my wife saw at the time and loved. Pretty good, nice balance of drama and comic relief, and it's kind of from right before Pixar took over and studios stopped putting a lot of money into these really handsome, traditionally animated features.
The wife and I were like the 2 last people on earth to see this in the theater, but after 2 months of trying to go see it, and either not getting out, or ending up seeing something else, we finally caught a matinee of this. And even though I wasn't the biggest fan of Batman Begins (didn't dislike it, it just didn't leave a big impression), and my expectations weren't super high, this was definitely pretty great and lived up to the hype. The reviews selling it as a serious "crime epic" are a little ridiculous, but the twists and details at least rung true within their own universe. I was always kind of a skeptic of Ledger's Joker mainly based on the bits in that first trailer (the way he camped up saying "commissioner" really rubbed me the wrong way) but in the context of the movie everything worked, it was a pretty perfect performance. And I expected to be as annoyed by Bale's cookie monster Batman voice as a lot of people were, but all in all it didn't really bother me; there wasn't actually much dialogue from Wayne-as-Batman, and it was an adequite device for making it believable that certain characters could speak to both Wayne and Batman and not make the connection. I still want to say I liked Iron Man more on principle just because I'm more partial to that approach to comic book movies, but I'm not sure if it'd be true.
2. Waitress
What a nice little picture. The combination of whimsy, emotion and pies gave me a lot of the same feelings as "Pushing Daisies." And other than the lout husband character being kind of a hollow caricature (it's one of those movies that does the ol' "he wasn't like that when we met" dance but doesn't really do anything to make you believe the suffering spouse didn't just straight up willingly marry an asshole), everybody in it is really likable and good. Wasn't really familiar with Adrienne Shelly's work before, but now that I've seen this I am sad that she passed away after making it. Any word on whether her 2 other features as a director (I'll Take You There and Sudden Manhattan) are worth checking out?
3. For Your Consideration
Man, these Christopher Guest movies are really a study in diminishing returns, huh? This kind of had the same problem as The TV Set, where it took a very real show business scenario of the industry taking an idea and diluting it and slowly ruining it, and just removed all the realistic elements and turned it into a boring meta-movie cartoon where the jokes weren't really funny enough to be worth sacrificing the potential for resonance or commentary.
4. The Man Who Wasn't There
Despite the black & white noir aesthetic, I realized when I came to the end of this movie that all the Coens had done was written a more stylized version of terrible contemporary dark comedies like Very Bad Thing where a ridiculous amount of tragedy and death and misfortune keeps happening to a hapless protagonist, which was not at all a comparison I was prepared to make when I started watching this.
5. Balto
A mid-'90s non-Disney animal cartoon that I don't remember when it came out, but my wife saw at the time and loved. Pretty good, nice balance of drama and comic relief, and it's kind of from right before Pixar took over and studios stopped putting a lot of money into these really handsome, traditionally animated features.
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on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 9:54 PM.
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