The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience

Let me start off by saying: WOW! This movie completely surpassed my expectations!  And they were high to begin with!

Growing up, I remember the first modern Batman movie with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That was my first ever PG-13 movie (thanks mom and dad!) to see in the theater, and I was blown away with how good it was back then. Keaton seemed to fit the role of Batman so well, and who could imagine a better Joker than Nicholson portrayed? Well, let's leave the comparisons there, in the past, for The Dark Knight reinvents - and improves - these characters I remember so well.

Christian Bale continues his role as our hero of the night, and his performance here is at least as good as in Batman Begins. Bale has a fresh, realistic portrayal of Bruce Wayne / Batman. We see that Bruce does struggle with being Batman, and that he believes Batman should have "no limits." Bruce quickly discovers that there are limits to what he can do, and we watch painfully as he struggles with this conflict. Yes, I am being intentionally vague here - I do not want to spoil any bit of the plot!

Heath Ledger is brilliant as the Joker. As I watched him walk about crazily in the mayhem he created, it was hard to imagine that anyone else could portray this villain. He really transforms himself into the character - and when you add on the makeup and special effects, he is unrecognizable. I enjoyed every second of seeing him on screen. In fact, it would seem that most of the movie goers who were around me seemed to enjoy his performance! I could go on and talk in depth on this character, and everything that I liked, but I do not want to spoil it for those who may not have seen this movie.

Another thing that Dark Knight continues with so well are the gadgets. These are much more believable than what was around back when Keaton donned the black suit. For instance, there's the cape with memory stiffness so Batman can glide. Also, the design of the Batmobile and Bat Bike are believable.  Then there is the use of popular technology for surveillance that makes this seem all the more plausible.

So, here we have great characters, excellent plot, and an immense amount of action.  What does this equal?  One of the best summer blockbuster movies to come along in quite some time!  Also, this would have to be one of the best (maybe the best) Batman movie to date!

Anyone who has not seen this movie yet, I highly recommend seeing it in the theater.  If it is still showing at your local IMAX, then be sure to see it, for you will be amazed at how much IMAX content there is!

X-Files: I want To Believe

A line of FBI agents are seen crossing a snow covered field, while a black helicopter flies overhead. The group moves steadily, while pounding the ground with poles, trying to determine what lies beneath the surface. A man with scraggly, white, shoulder length hair runs out in front, with his arms flailing by his sides. He finally drops down to his knees and starts digging in the snow. The line of FBI agents run up to see what he has found.

The above scene could have been from any modern crime drama / thriller movie. Instead, this was from the new X-Files movie, "I Want To Believe". Like the title implies, I wanted to believe this would be an excellent movie. I wanted to believe that it would be as good as their first movie. I wanted to believe that we would have a movie that could continue where the series had left off.

Having been watching the reruns on scifi and TNT, I have been excited for this movie to come out. Instead, I found myself constantly needing reminding that this was in fact an X-Files movie. It really did not even seem like a prolonged episode. I think there were plenty of episodes that were, in fact, better than Chris Carter's latest installment in his long forgotten franchise.

Perhaps that is where the problem lies: it has been too long. Maybe Carter forgot what he was doing when the series ended. Well, let's recap. At the end of the Series, Mulder and Scully were fugitives from the FBI. Mulder was wanted for the killing of a military officer. He had a military trial and was convicted, sentenced to death. It turned out that the military officer was a Super Soldier - a human/alien hybrid incapable of being killed by ordinary means. They found out that they could be killed by some kind of metal that was in the hills in the Arizona desert. Last I knew, there were still more of these hybrids, and there was still an alien conspiracy to colonize or destroy the planet.

Well, this movie does not touch on any of that, except for that Mulder has been hiding for the last x years. The FBI suddenly needs his help because they are dealing with a psychic who says he can lead them to one of their missing agents, and they are willing to throw away the charges against him. Believable? Mulder is not so sure, but inevitably gives in - maybe because of the prolonged isolation, or maybe because he wanted to show off his beard to the FBI.

Well, I do not want to give away the entire plot, so let's start summarizing. X-Files: I Want To Believe has its good points. There are times that you will laugh - such as a point where they zoom in on a particular picture of some famous person and bring out their famous theme whistle. There are also intense moments, where you wonder if Chris Carter does not care about these characters anymore and Mulder will actually die during this movie? David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson do their best to remember what these characters were like and bring them back to life on the large screen.

In the end, this movie fails at ringing true to the series. Yes, it has Mulder and Scully. True, Mark Snow continued with the score we know from the series, and brought a familiarity to this movie. And then there was the "freak-of-the-week" villain, though I thought this seemed more like a take on "Silence of the Lambs" than an X-File. What this movie needed was something more that tied it to the series.

If you want to see this movie, see it before some of the other major movies. And might as well see a matinee, while you're at it. I want to believe that we can save some money at the movies. (Sorry, just had to throw one more movie title pun in there)