Someone Stop Michael Bay

Or else I am going to have to look up “Assassin” in the yellowpages myself. Michael Bay, the king of explosions, special effects and black hawk helicopter shots set to drum roll soundtracks, is producing three remakes of three classic horror films. The first of which is Friday The 13th. I know what you are thinking, “Aren’t there are already 12 films from that series? Why would anyone need to add one more?” Well, you are wrong, there are only 11 Friday The 13th films so we’re all good. Mr. Bay can go ahead and remake his little horror flick with my approval. Seriously, someone needs to give him some fireworks to go play with before he hurts himself and any other film genres.

Just in case you were wondering, he is also producing the remakes for Nightmare On Elm Street & The Birds (thats right, he is taking on Hitchcock).

Review: The Dark Knight (spoiler warning)

Seeing as how TDK is ranking #1 on the current IMDB Top 250 list, it broke three records on its first day ($18.5 million on its midnight showing, $66 million on its first day & 4300 screens across the U.S.) & Rotten Tomatoes has it at a solid 94% approval rating I really don’t think my opinion is anything more than white noise at this point. Nevertheless, I will give my ideas on why I think it is doing so well.

They Need Each Other

In the comic books there has always been this yin yang balance between Batman and Joker that goes deeper than any other hero & archenemy relationship in history. Neither will ever be able to kill the other and yet both wish the world would be rid of the other. Batman is held by a moral code to not kill & the Joker insanely enjoys his battles with Batman way too much to kill him. The Dark Knight is the first Batman film to finally tackle this complex relationship and succeed with flying colors.

Secret Identities

Something that comic book movies have always tried to shy away from is the preplexing question of why no one is ever able to figure out the secret identities of super heroes. The Dark Knight in its own subtle way includes this issue in the film and integrates it into the storyline with near perfection. In fact, Morgan Freeman’s character, Lucious Fox, gives one of the best lines in the movie when Mr. Reese, one of the accountants at Wayne Corp, unveils that he has figured out Bruce’s secret identity and threatens him with the information. “He sneaks out at night and beats people up… and you want to blackmail him?”

Real Tech

A theme that Christopher Nolan explored in his first Batman film continues in this one and adds onto it even more. Early on Nolan decided to give Batman some legitimacy to his gadgets and weapons by basing them all in real technology that has been developed by Wayne Corp but had never gone into full production due to setbacks or financial problems. TDK keeps this idea going with all of the new gadgets used by Batman throughout the film. An element in the story that changes it from being a melodramatic characature flick into a true crime saga with real depth.

Heath Ledger

All I could think of at the end of the film, when the Joker gives his final monlogue while hanging upside down from Batman’s grappling hook wire is that this amazing performance is not the beginning of a rising star’s soon to be stellar career. Instead it is the final curtain call for a performer who was taken before he could truly be seen for his outstanding genius and talent he had to offer the movie industry. Heath Ledger gave, in my opinion, the best comic book character performance any one has seen since Christopher Reeves (maybe even better than him even) and if he is indeed nominated for an oscar in 2009 he will not deserve it out of pity for his death but will instead deserve it for what it really was. A brilliant masterpiece that will stand out for years to come in the cinema history books.

There it is. Now, go see TDK are else pretty soon you will be the only person in America who hasn’t.

Watchmen Trailer

Not even joking, I got chills watching this trailer that was just released for the upcoming Watchmen movie.

It looks from the trailer that everything is being kept pretty close to how it is in the original graphic novel. Doctor Manhattan looks friggin sweet. There even some shots from the trailer that look as though they are direct remakes of stills from the novel, something Snyder did a lot with 300. The thing I am really curious about is seeing how snyder and his writers managed to pack some an in depth story into a respectabel feature length film timeframe. Hopefully nothing too iconic or important from the novel got cut in order to shorten the runtime. We’ll see next March.

Review: Wall-E

First came Toy Story, a masterpiece in a class of its own. Then came Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo & The Incredibles. All great additions to the Pixar family, all standalone blockbuster hits. Then came Cars, the first letdown from the guys at Pixar as far as I am concerned. Then after that came Ratatouille. Somewhat of an improvement from Cars but a letdown nonetheless from the quality we had all become accustomed to coming from the Pixar family. Now there is Wall-E, the great redeemer.
A read an article on Wall-E the other day and I think the author put it best when he said Pixar gained its fame from creating movies that had two strong elements. They all were spectacular achievements in 3-D animation technology and they all had stories and characters that will stand the test of time. Unfortunately, as time went on the spectacle side become more and more common in other films and with other production companies so Pixar was left with being challenged to make their stories stand out even more. In my opinion, Wall-E is their first achievement at actually accomplishing that goal ever since The Incredibles.
To be able to take a main character who says nothing more than one word through the entire film and make the audience fall in love with him within the first ten minutes and stay in love with him till the credits role is what real writing is about. Wall-E had a fantastic story, memorable characters, dazzling animation effects, a killer film score and even a hint of a sociological message that asked its audiences to think a little bit while on their way back to their cars from the theater. This film did not let me down and renewed my faith in the Pixar as a production company. This one gets a good solid “A” in my book, go see it if you haven’t gotten a chance yet.

Review: Lars & The Real Girl

When I saw the first trailer for Lars & the Real Girl I thought “Looks like an obscure and awkward comedy with ryan gosling. He’s an okay actor, maybe I’ll see it.” I thought this because that is what the trailers and marketing for the movie lead you to believe about the movie. Fortunately this movie turned out to be a lot more than just that. There was much less emphasis on humor than I was expecting and much more emphasis on character development and chemistry within a complex story about a severely disturbed and somewhat developmentally retarded young man who acts out his oddities in a unique way by purchasing a “Real Doll”. Don’t get me wrong, there were some pretty funny parts throughout the story, I just found, after watching it, that the movie was much deeper than a series of cheap laughs about a man dating a life-size mail order doll.
Ryan Gosling gives another outstanding performance and solidifies in my mind even more how much I see him becoming one of the great ones in the film business down the line. To be able to have arguments with a mannequin type object on screen in a way that does not have the audience chuckling to themselves (you’ll understand what I mean if you have seen it) is a difficult task to do and he thankfully pulls it off. This one gets an A- from me.

Max Payne

Wow. been a while, eh? Well, I’ll ease back into the movie blogging madness with a little Fanboy post about a a movie set to release October 17 called Max Payne. It is based off of a video game series that started in 2001. Anyone who remembers playing the original one like me on their pc’s knows that this film, like a lot of films based on hit video games, has a lot to live up to. A lot of people still have a bad taste in their mouth from the Resident Evil trilogy and the Hitman film that I am sure most of you didn’t even know was made. Nevertheless, some critics are saying this one looks like it is stacking up to be a piece of saving grace for the video game-to-film genre.

There are not a lot of good films out their that get their stories from video games. In fact, I just went to wikipedia and I can’t find one. Wow. But I am rooting for this one and hope that come October I am not disappointed.