Very occasionally a movie comes along that is something special.  It is not defined by its genre or its box office appeal, but rather its greatness.

The Dark Knight is one of those movies.  To call it a superhero movie would do it a disservice.  To call it an action movie would not capture its essence.  Perhaps the best description of it would be to call it a morality tale, but even that is mostly insufficient.

Though this is a movie about everyone’s favorite caped crusader, it is not he who the movie is about.  And even though Heath Ledger does give a ridiculously good performance as the Joker, the movie’s not really about him either.

The Dark Knight is about morality.  This movie does not have good guys and bad guys; it merely has people, all of which have to make decisions based on their own agendas.  Perhaps their agenda is what separates good from bad, but their means do not always honor the ends.

There are two things about this film that deserve true Oscar consideration.  Heath Ledger is one of them, but moreso is the script.  How anyone could sit down and write something this twisted is a mystery to me.

While Ledger may have embodied the Joker, someone had to have sat down and put keyboard to screen to birth his anarchic craziness.  Someone who can think like that has the potential to be a scary person indeed.

Teenagers think its cool to support the idea of anarchy.  The idea of getting away from parental rule may sound appealing, but the definition they use of anarchy is not a true definition of the word.

To be honest, I’m not sure I knew the true definition of the word until I saw this movie.  The Joker does everything out of pure sadistic pleasure.  His decisions aren’t made to be evil or good, but to breed pure chaos.

While every character in the movie has an agenda that they are addressing, the Joker is the scariest of all because he has none.  How do you beat someone who makes decisions in such a unpredictable and haphazard way?

That’s exactly the question that Batman must answer if he is to defeat him.  And it is exactly that question that the Joker wants to force Batman to answer; no matter how unpleasant the consequences.

Although Heath Ledger isn’t on the screen nearly as much as he deserves to be, his presence is so strong that you feel him through the entire movie.  You feel the Joker’s impending destruction every second of the film.

Every decision that Dent, Batman, and Gordon have to make is one that is overshadowed by the gravitas of what the Joker may do with their decision.  It makes for a dark, foreboding — and sometimes difficult to watch — story.

Though we may instinctively root for Batman, he is no saint.  Through the Joker’s manipulation, we see Batman making horrible decisions with dire consequences.  But never is it the Joker’s direct intervention that breeds this destruction; but rather the choices that our heroes make in response to him.

It is a beautifully crafted story; filled with moral traps that not even Batman can navigate out of.  There are no moments in the film where you’re pumping your fist because of Batman’s brilliant kickarsery.  The movie is more real than that.

Instead, you feel remorse at every act of violence the dark knight must commit.  It threatens to destroy his very fiber; it threatens to drag him into the pit of insanity that the Joker calls home.

By the end of the movie, you will feel almost as crazy as the Joker.  You will flounder through the first half of the movie, never quite sure what the Joker may do.  And then you will understand his way of thinking; and you will almost hate yourself for it.

But it is then that the Joker does something you weren’t expecting and you realize that true madness cannot be predicted.  Having no goal leads to having no path.

This script and this incarnation of the Joker are some of the finest things ever put to film.  I don’t get to vote on Oscars, and maybe the fact that it’s a superhero movie will exempt it from true consideration — but it deserves Oscars.  It is truly a masterpiece.

Verdict: A+ Tilt: A++++

Notice that’s one more + than Iron Man’s tilt.

I never thought I’d say it, but I’m getting tired of watching movies.  I’ve seen every movie in my 2008 Summer Movie List so far except The Happening.  That’s a lot of movies in less than 2 months!

This week we have the latest installment from the fantastical world of Hellboy.

I was one of the odd fans of the original Hellboy.  Though dark, gothic, and downright strange I found its world to be refreshing and unique in superhero-filled cinema.

The second movie doesn’t disappoint.  It’s more of the same, with none of the same; if that makes any sense.  It’s both predictable and unpredictable at the same time, and though a bit too long, it manages to endear Hellboy to the masses even more than before.

It’s a hard sell.  Though pop culture is moderately interested in the anti-hero these days, even the least religious among us cringe at the idea of a hero who’s a demon.  There are just some things that are better left alone, and Satan is one of them.

Two things make this movie work so well: Ron Perlman as Hellboy and director Guillermo del Toro.  The latter is so full of creativity that even when you think you’ve got it figured out, something will sprout out of nowhere.

Though the destination of this movie’s plot isn’t a secret, the path is a complete masterpiece of imagination, the likes of which I haven’t seen in a movie in quite some time.  A lot of this owes to del Toro’s vision as well as his stubborn refusal to use CG.

The characters in this film feel real in ways that we as filmgoers have forgotten.  They feel real because they are real — Hellboy is Ron Perlman in an awful lot of makeup; not some Jar Jar Binks/Gollum mock-up of Perlman.

Everything  in The Golden Army is much more fleshed out this time around.  The focus seems to be on Hellboy and Abe Sapien, his fishy friend.  The interactions between them are genuine, and both do a good job of balancing between freaks of nature and just regular joes.

I would have liked to have seen less Abe and more Liz, though.  Selma Blair plays Hellboy’s ‘hot’ girlfriend who doesn’t like his tendency to leave the house a mess.  She’s a funny character, and the play between her and Hellboy is interesting to watch.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t get as much screen time as she deserves.  Perhaps that’s because her character is only a person who can light herself on fire.  We’ve seen that before, while the odd demon fella and his fish-like friend a bit more unique.

This film also sees the addition of Johann Krauss, a gaseous entity who lives in a steampunk diver’s suit in order to retain shape and blend in with the masses.  His character challenges Hellboy’s authority at every turn; and there’s nothing funnier than a ticked off demon.

The plot is a little bit thin.  It’s clear from the beginning what the end result will be.  This flaw isn’t all bad, though, because you spend very little time wondering about the outcome and lot more time marveling at the unique world that the movie creates.

The bad guy is a little bit LotR, a little bit Men in Black, and a whole lot of bad.  An elf that has long been forgotten by humanity, he presents a very formidable foe for our heroes.  Such a formidable foe, in fact, it almost seems unbelievable that Hellboy & gang are able to conquer him.

Unlike the other superheroes out there, Hellboy has a limitless world to play in.  There are no self-imposed rules or expectations of what may exist in Hellboy’s world, and this really let’s del Toro run free.

Iron Man still hasn’t been challenged for the 2008 Movie Crown, but Hellboy runs a close second.  Though the movie gets a bit long and probably could have been edited to be a tad faster-paced, it’s really what the movie represents in theory that makes it so amazing.

The Golden Army pulled in $10 million more on its opening weekend than its predecessor.  Hellboy may have found his niche.

Verdict: A- Tilt: A

I’m not one to usually delve into politics on my blog, so linking to an article by Glenn Beck might seem a bit odd.

But this article titled “What’s right with America? Plenty” really hits home.

It’s not about politics, but rather looking at what America has going for it rather than spending time on what’s wrong, as we more commonly do these days.

An excerpt:

Our economy is almost as big as the next four largest economies on Earth (Japan, Germany, China and Great Britain) combined. The state of California alone has an economy as large as the entire country of France. Illinois has the same GDP as all of Mexico. New York matches the entire GDP of Brazil. Florida’s economy is as large as South Korea’s. Texas has a GDP roughly equal to Canada’s. Michigan’s economy is as large as the entire country of Argentina.

And that’s just about the economy. It’s a good read, and refreshing outlook on the state of affairs in the US.

Slightly worse than awesome isn’t as bad as we make it out to be.

I finally watched Wall-E. Better late than never, eh?

A lot of critics are hailing Wall-E as the best picture of the year.  Some have gone so far as to insinuate that it deserves a nod for Best Picture at the Oscars despite it’s CG goodness.

So what do I think?  Frankly, I think that’s all a bunch of crazy talk.

While an entertaining movie of Pixar quality, Wall-E is not nearly as spectacular as some seem to think.  I don’t know that I’d even call it the best Pixar movie, much less worthy of an Oscar.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie.  As is par for the course for Pixar, they bring to life a rich world of characters, the most important of which can’t even talk (except to say Wall-E, Eve, and Directive).

It’s really this intriguing point that makes the movie work as a whole.  This is a character study of two characters who have to connect to the audience with only actions.

It’s an impressive feat.  You really get into Wall-E’s head.  You understand his feelings and his goals.  You’re never left wandering what’s going on.

My favorite character is actually Eve, a robotic probe sent to earth to ascertain whether there are any remnants of life on the planet.  She’s sleek and sexy; the imagined result of Apple designing a Transformer.

About halfway through the movie I had the realization that I had feelings akin to a crush on Eve.  It’s a true testament to just how skillfully Pixar was able to humanize these futuristic, mechanical characters.

Wall-E also has a message.  Set in the distant future where mankind has made Earth inhospitable,  the movie is a reminder of our own tendency to be trapped in consumerism to the detriment of all things around us.

The humans portrayed in Wall-E are slovenly, disgusting creatures who sit in chairs their entire lives with infinite amounts of stimuli and food.  Perhaps it was an attempt to have us look in the mirror as a society, but it’s uncomfortable and unpleasant.

I don’t go to the movie for a lecture or to be made to feel guilty; not to mention there is some irony in lecturing us on this topic after taking our money to watch the show.

It harps on consumerism as the root of all evil, while slyly relying on it to exist in the first place.  The end result is a bit too hipocritical for my taste.

If I sound down on the movie it’s only because the expectations for it were set so high.  With the buzz of ‘best movie of the year’ surrounding it, there was really nowhere to go but down.

It was a better movie than most, but this is Pixar and they’ve set a higher standard than your average action movie.  Although I like Wall-E, and almost fell in love with Eve, the over-wrought plot was just a little too much to stomach.

Verdict: B+ Tilt: C

So I watched Hancock last Wednesday night but I’m so accustomed to blogging my movie reviews on Monday that I waited.  Okay, fine.  I’m just lazy.  Sorry.

My first inclination was to actually write two reviews for Hancock because Hancock is basically two movies.

The trailer that we all saw and loved represents one half of the movie.  It’s a movie about a bum of a hero who falls in with a PR rep who tries to reshape his image to be a superhero that people love and respect.

It’s a well done piece of cinema.  Jason Bateman is almost as funny as Will Smith in most scenes and the concept in general is golden.

There are a few more curse words thrown around than I’ve come to expect from a Will Smith comedy, but they are forgivable enough.  After all, he is a bum that everyone hates.  He can’t start out too couth.

And Will Smith does an excellent job slowly changing his personality over the course of the movie.  But, Will Smith always does an excellent job so anything less would have been a disappointment.

After Hancock is all rehabilitated and ready to be a bonafide superhero is when we get to the second movie.  The second movie isn’t even hinted at in the trailers so I won’t get too specific about it here.

A lot of other reviews seem to hate the second half of the movie, but I actually quite liked it.  The story turns into more science fiction than superhero, and it has some really intriguing concepts that I wish would have been played out a little bit more.

It’s sort of fun to get into any superhero’s origins, and Hancock does so in a very strange and unique way — after he’s already a hero.  Instead of us watching him become a hero, we get to see him be one and then backtrack to find out why.

Both halves are the makings of a good movie.  The only problem is that they aren’t the same movie.  It would even be a stretch to put them into the same universe as two movies (which would have been a much better choice here).

The acting is actually pretty good.  Theron, Bateman, and Smith all deliver to the best of their ability and make the plot as believable as it can be given the circumstances.  They deserve none of the blame for what ultimately is a disaster of a movie.

The real blame lies in direction and editing.  The filmmaking is downright amateurish.  The director, cinematographer and editors should all be ashamed of the awesome movie that they ruined.

Though the writing can be partially to blame for the mishmash of a story, a more capable director and more intelligent editing could have made the two halves blend together instead of simply crashing into one another.

Will Smith is Mr. July and a part of me is glad that Hancock pulled down impressive numbers to keep Smith on top.  I just wish he would have vetted his director a little better before agreeing to this one.

Hancock is a little like Star Wars.  It’s a horrible movie, but the story has a lot of meat to it that isn’t quite fully realized.  The only difference is that George Lucas could have done a better job directing Hancock than this guy.

And that’s just sad.

Verdict: D+ Tilt: C