And Batman Begins...

I cant believe I spent all my weekend mornings watching movies... but that's alright. I can't even imagine I spent my whole weekend watching 2 good, recently released, mainstream movies. Now that's something that doesn't happen quite often.

Usually if I do watch movies back to back, its only because one of the two movies are feature films; something that has been released previously and has had good reviews, and therefore, prompted cinemas here to open up a showing. Even then, its really rare that I watch 2 movies in one weekend... I dont think that's happened.. oh wait. I just did about a month ago. But that didn't count; I watched Episode III a second time around only because I wanted to accompany a friend to watch it, then afterwards I had a peek at Kevin Costner and Joan Allen's Upside of Anger. Didn't like the second movie that much, and as for Episode III, I've never watched a movie twice, except for Spiderman. (thrice, actually... oh I sound so much like a geek watching the same movie three times. *embarrassed*)

But I think both movies I've seen this weekend could beg for a second viewing. Both are nice... I've already mentioned my opinions on Initial D, now its time to put in the opinion on Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.

Its true what you've read in reviews; they say this Batman movie is the most grounded and realistic comic movie you've seen, and they're right. Director and writer collaborated pretty well to produce what suspiciously seems like a normal movie. Actually sometimes you'd even forget that Christian Bale is Batman... it feels so different from the previous Batman movies, you wonder if this one is rooted in the same comic franchise. And you know at the back of your head that it is. But it just feels so.... normal.

And people, that's a very good thing and a really interesting compliment: its such a tricky thing to screw up people's minds and make them believe they're watching a movie that seemed like it was never rooted in a comic page. Its very much different from Spiderman: All throughout the movie you know that its a comic book based movie.. you know its a Spiderman movie. He slings webs, he jumps around buildings and leave cobwebs, fights ferocious enemies like the Green Goblin and Ock Doc.. its just so.. fantastical, but yet so good. This one, without the last part of the movie when Batman makes a show of all out, it feels like you're watching a great movie that was all about a person overcoming his fear, and eventually learning that he needs to uphold justice. Its a strange feeling. All throughout I was enjoying the movie, and yet I also have to remind myself that this story is about a comic book character. I constantly had to stop and remember that this is the story of Batman.... the mere fact that I had to think about this, consciously trying to convince myself, is one absolutely awesome achievement on the director's part. Christopher Nolan has just acquired a new fan; I thought Memento was excellent, but this movie just shows that its not just distinctive storylines like Memento that prompted the director to come up with an absolutely original idea for filmmaking, he has just shown with Batman Begins that he can direct and organically tell a wowie fantastical story like Batman to a super standard, regular-joe kind of story.

He could've done it in a lot of different ways you know. Paint it like how Tim Burton did with the first Batman.. give it a dark, brooding, no touch kind of feel. Or fantastical, like Spiderman. The audiences wouldn't have minded. Batman is a comic book character. Or like how Adam West did his version of Batman, funny, nice, good 'ol fashioned jolly Batman... so many other possibilities and perspective .. and he picked this one.

Amazing... just the thought,... gives me the shivers.

I'd like to see how he'd direct a horror/suspense, or drama. He definitely intrigues me now. The whole grounded perspective leaves such a strange feeling after watching it.

As I've said, its nicely done. And I must add, like Spiderman, there's no gaps in the movie that were wasted. One of the things that I usually take notice in a movie is the way its edited and set up; if I can think of any scene in the movie that can be taken out without disturbing the continuity of the whole storyline, then in my book, it could become a crappy movie. Most of it depends on the how many scenes and how long a scene can be cut away. If I encounter a movie that had a 5 minute continuous clip that can be taken off, I usually label it as sloppy work on the director's part. Unless that clip was actually spectacular, (and nothing can be THAT spectacular... unless it was one of those nice car chases in Bourne Supremacy :) ) it should have no business being in the movie. Us ticket payers want the most of our money, and we want something that will move us in 2 hours, not trash. If we wanted something that can add fillers, we'd just stay home and watch TV. For goodness sakes, the film is only 2 hours long, unlike tv shows that have the luxury of having up to 24 hours per season! Movie directors should make the most our of moviegoers money.. I mean, hello, TV is free!

hahaha I think I've rabbled enough. I'm glad to say, there's no much of that problem with Batman. Christopher Nolan did make good use of the full 134 minutes, and not a lot has been wasted. Each scene explains something, and that's usually a good sign.

As I've said, the movie is so grounded, you feel like the whole Gotham City is actually located somewhere in the world. And even the other locations, (some of it was implied that it was somewhere in Asia.. probably Tibet.) look very.. REAL. That's the most wonderful thing about this movie, and I can't say enough of the "realness" of the movie without making it sound like its a not a real movie I've just seen. I'd suggest you guys better go watch it yourselves... maybe then you'll also be tricked into believing that you're not watching a Batman movie,... but just a good, very well made movie.

Haven't seen it yet? You should. (Although, unfortunately, nothing still tops my opinion of Spiderman as one of the best movies for comic book based ones.)

Happy viewing! Cheerio!