Friday, July 18, 2008

why so serious?



I fucking hate computers. I had written the greatest Batman review ever, but it got eaten by cybertronics and was lost. So I'll try again...
Ahem.

I went to see the new Batman film last night, The Dark Knight. And it was awesome. Supercalifreakinawesome, in fact. It was so awesome, that it inspired me to write a review for it. And I only do that to other movies that I find awesome. At this stage, only Rambo has met my awesomeness criteria.

The Dark Knight is the best movie I have seen this year, and as such is the recipient of the Mister Evil Breakfast Award For The Best Movie That I Have Seen This Year (MEBAFTBMTIHSTY). That's high praise, considering that I saw Kung Fu Panda a few weeks ago. That's just how good this movie is. And I know I shouldn't say that, because you're all going to go into the movie with massively unattainable expectation, and you could be disappointed and you'll come out and say, "Hey Mister Evil Breakfast, this movie wasn't all that good LOL!!" And you might want your money back and I couldn't do that, cause I'm a bit broke at the moment.

I'll do my very best not to give too much away in terms of plot, so if you haven't seen it, you might want to not read this until you have seen it. I can recommend reading everything else on my blog instead, cause it's fucking hilarious. Seriously. It is.

First off, everything you've heard about Heath Ledger being megatops is true - and then some. Remember in 1989s Batman movie when everyone was going nuts about Jack Nicholson being the Joker and he was the best thing since cheese on toast? Yeah. In hindsight, you realise that ol' Jacky boy was really just acting like Jack Nicholson in a purple suit and white make-up. No offence, Nicho, but Ledger is face-meltingly good. There is no Heath Ledger in his performance. The gay cowboy and King's Cross strip-club guys were nowhere to be seen here. It's a bit of a shame that we won't see Heath in anything else (except maybe Weekend at Bernie's 3), because I'd be very interested to see where he would have gone from here. It's brilliant, seriously. I have a little man crush. As for the Oscar nod... well, I'd be disappointed if he didn't at least get a nomination. The Joker is scary, man. I peed a little (apologies to the people in the row in front of me for the mess). He's the kind of guy who makes you want to (a) be a psycho killer guy with makeup, and (b) learn more magic tricks.

Christian Bale reprises his role as Batman/Bruce Wayne, and takes a bit of a back-seat in this one, despite it being, you know, a Batman movie. But he's always hanging around, being all Batman-like, a smidge angry, a little psychotic, pretty charismatic and fairly attractive. There's also a nice throwback to the super-camp 1960s Batman tv show where he proves he can pretty much do anything - a "Batman is the only person in the world with a hand steady enough to paint false fingerprints" kind of anything.

The transformation of character between Bruce and Bats is pretty amazing actually - he really is playing two roles. And with the Kevlar armour and cape and glove things apparently comes a larynx scraping with a rusty fork, followed by a gargling of petrol (and not the dodgy unleaded stuff, the really good go-juice that costs like $1.90 per litre), cause his voice is all gravely and he sounds like he's about to cough up a Siberian Husky or something. It's pretty cool actually, and I was turned on just a bit (again, apologies to the row in front).

Aaron Eckhart is also tops... I don't really have much else to say about him. Oh wait, he plays Harvey Dent, an all-round good American guy. Yeah, he goes alright.

The movie is basically a trillion storylines all flowing around like potatoes in a wind tunnel, that all come to a nice little conclusion at the end, and to try and describe them all would be like juggling cans of tinned fruit - impressive, but not entirely entertaining for a long period of time. And I'd probably fuck something up and ruin everything, and besides, I can't juggle for shit. There are also little hints as to another sequel (a trequel, perhaps?), which people will be speculating on for a while yet. My pick: It will be dark. Like, super dark. So dark that you'd need night-vision goggles to watch it. Maybe not, but it'll be dark. It'll make The Dark Knight seem like A Fluoroescent Light Bulb. I'm just hoping that the lads involved in this one (the Nolan brothers, who are officially my favourite brothers ever, beating The Hardy Boys and the Waugh twins) stay around to write and direct it, cause The Dark Knight was tight in all aspects. I almost feel sorry for whoever is the next villain, cause they're gonna need to literally jump out of the screen and grab my eyeballs out of my head to even consider being on par with the Joker and the awesomeness of this movie.

Other bits about this fillum:

· Maggie Gyllenhaal's name is hard to spell properly, even when you're reading it from a piece of paper. It just doesn't look right. Also, she has replaced Katie Holmes in this one, and I'm still not sure if she's hot or not. I think she's ok. I dunno.

· George Clooney is still embarrassed about 1997s Batman and Robin, and rightly so. Arnie is wondering why people didn't think of him for an Oscar for his portrayal of Mr Freeze.

· There are at least two moments where you audibly say, "Ooooh fuck."

· You'll stop yourself the next time you lick your lips.

· Upon leaving the cinema, you won't trust anybody that you're with, but that's ok, because you will have absorbed superhero fighting abilities and you can fight them in the carpark.

· The intro is the most awesome thing you'll ever see, unless you spend your whole life watching awesome things, then you might just be like, "Meh."

Just go see it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luckily for you, this is actually not Heath Ledger's final film. He will star in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus next year. Sadly though, i don't think it will compare to his portrayal of The Joker.

Mister Evil Breakfast said...

Thanks anon, but I meant a full movie, rather than 20 seconds of Ledgerness followed by 9 hours of Johnny Depp.

Not that I hate Johnny Depp. His work in 21 Jump Street always gives me chills.