Last movie you watched......

I've been wiped out by the flu all week, but I've been wanting to see 'Django Unchained.' Maybe tonight.

Dick, I also disliked the third Batman movie. Did you like the first two? I know they we discussed at length when they came out, but I don't recall.

 

I definitely would say I liked the second one the most in the trilogy. A lot has to do with the Joker character, and Heath Ledger's performance in that role. I don't love every second of it - at heart, it's still an action superhero movie, and that takes me out of it a little bit at times. But I liked it.

It's funny. I actually love the idea of Batman. I love the imagery. I definitely love the score Nolan uses. I like the comic book artwork and what it conjures. I like some of the better Batman animation sequences I've seen through the years.

It's just that when you have to start attaching plot to it that it kind of loses steam to me, particularly live-action films. Sometimes I feel like Batman was meant for the page and the panel. But there are certainly missteps Nolan made with the third chapter that were avoidable. Bane isn't a very interesting villain, I don't feel, and he kind of arises out of nowhere - I understand we get the brief back story later in the movie, but he's just not as compelling as the Joker was. Not even close. He feels like a contrived foil for Batman - and perhaps the graphic novels did it better. I haven't read them. I'd like to, though. Maybe I'll run out today and grab one to check it out.

I also didn't like the Anne Hathaway character at all, and thought she could have been cut out of the film entirely. They could have easily lost that entire subplot and found a way to make the main plot work. No chemistry between Bale and her, or Bale and Cotillard, either. And I think that had more to do with the script than the actors.

 

I saw Django yesterday afternoon as a "team builder" with some friends from the office. Generally liked it quite a bit and enjoyed a lot of the revenge fantasy stuff the same way I enjoyed it in Inglorious Basterds. That being said...

Holy crap is it violent, as Dick said, I am wondering if I am more sensative to it in light of Newtown.

Chris Waltz can act, makes a cartoonish character very beleivable and credible.

Same with Foxx and Dicaprio.

Not the same with Tarantino, guy can't act and wrecks even bit parts, maybe just knowing who he is when he appears on screen jars me.

The N word. I never got used to hearing it which is probably the point. I know this is stating the obvious but it is crazy to me that we are not that many generations removed from humans being property.

Unlike most Tarantino films I don't have a desire to see this one again. I could watch Pulp Fiction all day and Jackie Brown sucks me in every time it is on TV, this one was too depressing to give another watching too.

 

I think this is a really good review of "The Dark Knight Rises," and more eloquently states some of what I was feeling:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/07/the-dark-knight-rises.html

I wonder if this would have worked better as a TV series? Has anyone ever tried to pull that off - "Smallville" comes to mind as the closest I can think of. And maybe "Walking Dead," though that's not a superhero adaptation, just a comic book adaptation.

Someone might be able to do a great job with it given a "Game of Thrones"-type budget at HBO or AMC.

 

Django Unchained.

Minus two hokey pieces (one involving Jonah Fucking Hill, the other involving Tarantino with a bit role), it's very good and very intense with devastating dialogue and typical Tarantino blood splotching.

It's not *quite* as good as Basterds, but there is a 45-minute stretch that rivals any 45-minute stretch in Basterds. And the ending satisfies you way the way Basterds made you feel satisfied at the end. There was applause at the end.

Jamie Foxx is off the chart excellent, so goddamn intense when the moment called on him to be so like Jackson was in Pulp Fiction, and even though he doesn't quite match his performance as Landa, Waltz is very good as Foxx's partner. I love DiCaprio but don't think he should have played Candie. He was fine as Candie but the character should have been played by a lesser known actor so that Foxx, Waltz and Jackson could stick out a little more. There was too much star power in this one.

Really impressed by Foxx.

 

It's crazy but my father, born in 1927, had a nanny who was born a slave.

 

Saw This is 40 a few nights ago and thought it was well done with some great laughs. Also a bit too realistic in parts. The scenes with Melissa McCarthy were among the funniest in the movie - including the one mid-way through the credits.

 

Dick, I'm surprised that the second Batman is your favorite. I've said it on here before, but I think Batman Begins is the best film of the three by a fairly wide margin. After reading your review of the third one, I would have assumed you would feel the same. The characterization and plot are so much stronger and more grounded in the first one. It's more than an action movie.

 

I think a lot of what you just said is accurate, and I think I'm swayed by two things:

(1) Origin story overload; and

(2) The Heath Ledger performance and the Joker character generally.

I'd like to go back and watch the first two again with my biases in mind, and re-evaluate.

 

In this country, anyway.

In others, human beings are still treated as property.

My current movie: The Outlaw Josey Wales. I've never seen it before.

 

Argo.

Never felt like the people were in danger.

 

I felt like the origin story was paced really well and actually made me care about a superhero more than any other superhero-related movie I've seen. The second one has a ton of action set pieces, which make the movie too long and lowers its rewatchability for me. I still really like a lot of its parts, but I think taken as a whole, it's a step down from the first one.