Since I'm the resident movie nerd in my group of friends and people clamor for it (for my movie review AND my cock), here's the best Dark Knight review I could muster. I tried to lay off all the nerdy film terms. Promise.
As is typical of my longer entries, I'm sure it's riddled with typographical errors. I apologize. Now shut up.
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I can't do a review of The Dark Knight. I truly can't. I had such high expectations. Unreasonably high expectations, to be honest. The Dark Knight surpassed them. Ya know, whatever -- I'm a huge Batman nerd and I'm a huge movie nerd. Combine the two things and you've got magic. I was going to apologize if this post got too nerdy, but you know what? Shut up.
Heath Ledger was fucking amazing. It would require another post entirely to explain why I think a posthumous Best Supporting Oscar wouldn't merely be an empty gesture, so I won't go into that. I found this post on WWTDD.com and I think it sums things up quite nicely.
And not to trivialize Ledger's life -- lord knows there are more important things in life than movies, including the fact that his death brought much needed attention to the issues of depression and anxiety -- not to trivialize his life, but it sucks that we won't get any more of Heath Ledger as the Joker. Fact is, I can't see Ledger in the Joker. There are times when I see aspects of Bale's Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) in Bruce Wayne and I knew the entire time that Aaron Eckhardt was playing Harvey Dent. Only Gary Oldman comes close to so successfully immersing himself in character that I could sometimes forget he was just playing a character.
The film clearly sets up the prospect of more Joker; The Dark Knight was clearly the set-up piece for a bigger, better, badder battle between the Joker and Batman. Anyone who knows about storytelling understands the set-up and the payoff. Typically the set-up is, simply, something to go unnoticed. The payoff is what matters. What Christopher and Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer have done ( with respect to Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Jeph Loeb and others) is used one entire film as a set-up. There is no true payoff in this film for most characters, and that's a beautiful thing. The payoff would have been a third film that would have surely made The Dark Knight look like Batman Forever in comparison. As a would-be writer I find it incredible that nearly three hours is spent on a set-up -- and it remains exciting the whole way through. I can only imagine what a third film with Ledger would have been.
Of course, there's Aaron Eckhardt, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman, too. All terrific. And lets not forget the quick cameo of Cillian Murphy. If you blink you'll miss him, but it's a great detail.
There's the cinematography of Wally Pfister -- I can't wait to see this at IMAX to see his DP prowess in all its noir-y glory!! Pfister moves from gloomy Gotham nighttime exteriors to bright daytime sequences and it's all quite stunning. I'm thinking of the Joker's first scene as a prime example of the former and the hospital sequence as an example of the latter. Pfister doesn't go overboard with the darks in his palette. He allows the sun to shine when need be. After all, daylight can make even the dirtiest of cites look shiny. It's remarkably easy to wind up with a schizophrenic picture in terms of the photography, but Pfister does just fine here.
Massive props (har har) to the production design team, set designers and location scouts as well. I am again thinking of the jail house sequence, but also the Joker's first scene with Gotham's best criminals and the chase sequence in the second act. Again, it's easy to create an uneven palette in terms of a cityscape, but these teams did an incredible job culling together bits and pieces of Chicago to create Gotham.
And so, we come back my my insanely high expectations. Exceeded. Totally. I have a nerd boner. And it won't go away. Can someone please suck me off? You have to be wearing a Joker outfit to make this work.
Unfortunately, Toby Keith's new movie comes out in a few weeks, which means The Dark Knight will them recede from the public consciousness and fade into the void inhabited by such films as Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Howard the Duck, Scarecrow Slayer and From Justin To Kelly.
Toby Keith. Now that dude knows how to write a hit, don't he?! Yee haw!
As is typical of my longer entries, I'm sure it's riddled with typographical errors. I apologize. Now shut up.
----------
I can't do a review of The Dark Knight. I truly can't. I had such high expectations. Unreasonably high expectations, to be honest. The Dark Knight surpassed them. Ya know, whatever -- I'm a huge Batman nerd and I'm a huge movie nerd. Combine the two things and you've got magic. I was going to apologize if this post got too nerdy, but you know what? Shut up.
Heath Ledger was fucking amazing. It would require another post entirely to explain why I think a posthumous Best Supporting Oscar wouldn't merely be an empty gesture, so I won't go into that. I found this post on WWTDD.com and I think it sums things up quite nicely.
And not to trivialize Ledger's life -- lord knows there are more important things in life than movies, including the fact that his death brought much needed attention to the issues of depression and anxiety -- not to trivialize his life, but it sucks that we won't get any more of Heath Ledger as the Joker. Fact is, I can't see Ledger in the Joker. There are times when I see aspects of Bale's Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) in Bruce Wayne and I knew the entire time that Aaron Eckhardt was playing Harvey Dent. Only Gary Oldman comes close to so successfully immersing himself in character that I could sometimes forget he was just playing a character.
The film clearly sets up the prospect of more Joker; The Dark Knight was clearly the set-up piece for a bigger, better, badder battle between the Joker and Batman. Anyone who knows about storytelling understands the set-up and the payoff. Typically the set-up is, simply, something to go unnoticed. The payoff is what matters. What Christopher and Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer have done ( with respect to Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Jeph Loeb and others) is used one entire film as a set-up. There is no true payoff in this film for most characters, and that's a beautiful thing. The payoff would have been a third film that would have surely made The Dark Knight look like Batman Forever in comparison. As a would-be writer I find it incredible that nearly three hours is spent on a set-up -- and it remains exciting the whole way through. I can only imagine what a third film with Ledger would have been.
Of course, there's Aaron Eckhardt, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman, too. All terrific. And lets not forget the quick cameo of Cillian Murphy. If you blink you'll miss him, but it's a great detail.
There's the cinematography of Wally Pfister -- I can't wait to see this at IMAX to see his DP prowess in all its noir-y glory!! Pfister moves from gloomy Gotham nighttime exteriors to bright daytime sequences and it's all quite stunning. I'm thinking of the Joker's first scene as a prime example of the former and the hospital sequence as an example of the latter. Pfister doesn't go overboard with the darks in his palette. He allows the sun to shine when need be. After all, daylight can make even the dirtiest of cites look shiny. It's remarkably easy to wind up with a schizophrenic picture in terms of the photography, but Pfister does just fine here.
Massive props (har har) to the production design team, set designers and location scouts as well. I am again thinking of the jail house sequence, but also the Joker's first scene with Gotham's best criminals and the chase sequence in the second act. Again, it's easy to create an uneven palette in terms of a cityscape, but these teams did an incredible job culling together bits and pieces of Chicago to create Gotham.
And so, we come back my my insanely high expectations. Exceeded. Totally. I have a nerd boner. And it won't go away. Can someone please suck me off? You have to be wearing a Joker outfit to make this work.
Unfortunately, Toby Keith's new movie comes out in a few weeks, which means The Dark Knight will them recede from the public consciousness and fade into the void inhabited by such films as Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Howard the Duck, Scarecrow Slayer and From Justin To Kelly.
Toby Keith. Now that dude knows how to write a hit, don't he?! Yee haw!
2 comments:
weird. from justin to kelly exceeded my expectations.
I think this review is exactly what I needed to truly convince me to spend the money to see this on the big screen, where of course it belongs. Everyone's said "oh, it's great!" but what does that mean? Thank you for explaining exactly why it was brilliant. That perspective, I can get next to. :)
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