Movies

Cyndi and I went out and saw a movie double-header on Saturday night. Yes, this is a little excessive, but was oddly interesting above and beyond the entertainment provided by the movies.

The two movies we saw were Star Wars Revenge of the Sith and Batman Begins. The next couple paragraphs will be my mini-review of each.

I went in to Sith being mildly optimistic. I wasn't expecting great acting, dialogue, or plot. I'm happy to report that it fully exceeded my expectations on all counts. Now, this isn't to say that the acting was great, which it wasn't (although it was a lot better than the previous prequels), or that the dialogue or plot were particularly fantastic, which they weren't (although, again, they were better than the first two). But, I thought the did a pretty good job with several things. First, the light-saber fights were the best of any of the other five movies. Seeing Palpatine wielding a light-saber was pretty cool, and the Obi-wan/Anakin fight was awesome. Also, I got goosebumps when they flicked the switch and Vadar took his first breath. So, all and all, pretty good.

Batman Begins was great. Nice and dark, some cool stuff with bats, and a new take on the story. They did screw with some pretty significant back-story (like who killed his parents), but it wasn't enough to detract from the story. Christian Bale was great as both Batman and Bruce Wayne. Seeing the evolution of the batsuit and belt was pretty cool from a nerd point of view. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable take on how Batman came to be. They delved a little into the mental stuff that played too big a part in the 3rd and 4th Batman movies (you know, the ones that killed the franchise because they were two of the worst movies ever made?), but again, it wasn't too heavy and not enough to really detract from the movie (really, this is just a nitpick).

Reading that last paragraph may give the impression that it was just ok, but that's not the impression I intended. It was awesome. Go see it. Cyndi liked it better than the first one (Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson/Tim Burton/Danny Elfman), but I think that may be pushing it. But it was absolutely better than any of the other three. If I had to list them, I'd go: Batman, Batman Begins, Batman Returns, then the other two are tied with a turd for the worst Batman movies ever.

And thus ends my mini-reviews of the movies. Now, I'll comment on some other stuff we experienced while watching two movies in a row on a Saturday night.

Commercials before movies: they still suck!

Previews: The Island looks good. Opens nationwide May 2006! That's right! May 2006! They're showing previews for a movie a full 11 months early. There were some other previews, but none of note. Except, that is, for Serenity (the Firefly movie). The first few seconds played and I saw one of the cast members and I thought to myself "Oh, look, there's River from Firefly." And then, I realized that it was a preview for Serenity and I had to physically force myself to look away. You see, I've decided to not see or read anything about it until I see it. I'm that big of a Firefly nerd. I don't want to be tainted. So, as Cyndi was watching, I was looking at the floor.

Kids: I'm not talking teenagers (although there were a ton in Batman and of course they all talked incessantly). I'm talking children. We saw several kids ranging from new-born to 7 or 8. This was a PG-13 movie that was really dark, loud, and had a bunch of pretty freaky stuff. Oh yeah, it started at 10:30 p.m.! We walked out of the theater at 1 a.m.! They were probably my neighbors who leave their kids (some as young as 3 or 4) playing outside until 9 or 10 at night on school nights.

Update 2005-06-20 21:28 fixed some typos and removed a reiteration of the turd joke.--ben