So Let’s Talk About It

And “it” would happen to be The Dark Knight. It broke all the records. It brought in, what, $155.3 million dollars in it’s first weekend? How many of those people will be purchasing return tickets? I’m thinking quite a few of them.

The story: A few months have passed since the situation of Batman Begins with many of the mob running scared. Wayne Manor is in the process of being rebuilt so Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred have moved into a penthouse. (the lower level fills in as the Batcave)

Our first sight is of a group of bank robbers sporting clown masks. They are stealing cash which belongs to the Mob. Then things get dicey; the men in the masks start killing each other. Turns out the guy in charge of this robbery, The Joker, has informed them that the fewer people standing at the end, the more money they will share. Following a shootout, one masked man is left standing. This turns out to be The Joker himself.

The other characters include: Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Lucius Fox is now in-the-know that Bruce Wayne is The Batman and continues to assist as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises and the gadget man for Batman.

Rachel Dawes is now romantically involved with the new District Attorney of Gotham Harvey Dent and helps him crack down on the crime lords of the city.

Jim Gordon has created his own police task force after a severe infiltration and subsequent arrest of tainted police officers.

Bruce Wayne/Batman is ready to put aside his cape and mask and let Harvey take over as the heroic face of Gotham. (He also isn’t happy that Rachel is dating Dent)

But all of that isn’t what’s important about this movie right? It’s all about Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker. Ledger eats up the screen. Everything about the character is addicting. He’s a ruthless killer, but the audience can’t get enough of him. And he is more than a match for The Batman.

The Joker believes that everyone can turn evil. He doesn’t believe in innocence. He tells Harvey Dent that he is an agent of chaos. And for two and a half hours, we are privy to the manifestation of this belief as Joker carries out a series of murders and explosions.

While his main target is The Batman, The Joker sets his sights on Gotham’s White Knight hero, Harvey Dent. He believes he can transform the pure, righteous attorney into a villain just like him.

What happens when your life is brought to the brink of horrible choice? What if you had to choose who lives and who dies? What would you do? Who would you save?

The Dark Knight is the greatest superhero movie ever filmed. I hope the third film exceeds this one. But I have no idea how it could.

The Day After

Happy day after July 4th. How many of you have hang overs and trash to pick up? Not me! How many of you enjoyed a nice display of fireworks? Not me! We went but were chased away by the down pour. Instead, we enjoyed the latter part of the fourth by watching Vantage Point; a movie about the President of the United States being assassinated in Spain. You watch the same fifteen minutes from several different “vantage points”. Quite clever aren’t they?

It was an enjoyable film. Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox play secret service agents. Sigorney Weaver plays the director of a major news company (I think it was called GNN). Forrest Wittaker plays a tourist who just happens to be there and tape the entire thing.

There are twist and turns revealed with each vantage point. It’s only an hour and a half long, so it turned out to be a great evening movie. Go rent it.

Back to the fourth of July.

Can someone explain the reasons for shooting off fireworks? Is it supposed to represents the bombs bursting in air? Because if it is, I find it a little weird that we sit around watching simulated bombs going off in the air above us. Perhaps someone will spell it out for me.

The Happening Explained

Many movie goers have come up short after watching M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, The Happening. They come away believing it’s one man’s sermon on Global Warming, and the evils we humans have performed at the expense of the plantlife of this planet and now it’s their turn to retaliate on us.

However, this is not the whole case. Like all of Shyamalan’s films, there are many layers of storytelling and a much deeper meaning/theme to The Happening.

Let’s first go over the plot: people begin to commit suicide in the north eastern part of the United States. They begin to talk funny, pause in their walking, walk backwards then find some way to kill themselves.

Mark Wahlberg plays high school science teacher, Elliot Moore, who becomes the main character. We also meet Moore’s teacher friend, Julian (John Leguizamo), Julian’s daughter Jess and Moore’s wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel). We follow this small group as they flee Philly (as typical found in a Shyamalan film) to escape what they believe to be an act of terrorist.

Throughout the movie, people are trying to understand what exactly they’re dealing with and what caused the event. While they come to their own conclusions, the careful movie goer will realize they have missed the true explanations.

First of all, this is not a movie about plants wanting to kill humans because of how we treat the planet. However this may be a thin layer within the real reason.

Elliot believes that the toxin which causes these mass suicides are targeting people in large groups and so they much get into smaller and smaller groups in order to escape and survive. This is also only partly true. By the end of the film, a lone woman they board up with falls victim to the toxin. And she was only one person. The true explanation is that anger and hatred trigger the effect. Moments before her death, this woman is yelling at Elliot.

Elliot and his wife are not affected by the toxin because they are peaceful and almost childlike. This comes across in their actions and dialogue. Critics have panned their acting as horrid but I believe it is all part of the show. All part of the story Shyamalan wants to tell.

The message of this movie is that we need to stop being such an angry race/culture. We need to return to being peaceful and embrace love for one another.