Movie Monday: The Dark Knight (No Spoilers)

Justin and I have been SO lucky this summer to have so much family around, including new family we gained when my Mom got married in June! My new sister, Jemma, has been spending time with Sam (he loves her, of course), and she watched him on Saturday night so we could go see The Dark Knight! Woo hoo!

NO SPOILERS HERE

It was good. It was really good. I was talking to Jemma afterwards and telling her how I like this new take on the Batman movies, I like the darkness and the rawness, and the non-humor of it all. I was kind of comparing it to the new James Bond movies with Daniel Craig and how he's just James Bond... he's not smarmy like Pierce Brosnan was, and despite my love for Pierce, I do like this new Bond. Heath Ledger was just... insane. Crazy. Scary. Amazing. I've been reading a little bit about some Oscar Buzz for him for this role. There are two things. One, he was pretty impressive in this movie, and compared to other things I've seen this year I would not find it in any way unreasonable for him to be nominated. Two, I have read a couple of articles regarding Heath holding an Oscar IOU since he lost when he was nominated for Brokeback Mountain, and since this was his last finished film, it's also the last chance to honor him. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he does get an Oscar nomination next year. Whether he wins will depend on what he's up against.

I loved this movie. It was long, almost 2.5 hours, but that's the way I like my movies! I often find myself wishing movies were longer or wondering about what got cut or extra scenes that could have been added. I felt that the time was used wisely considering that about 1/2 way through I felt like so much story had been told I was starting to get a little anxious about how the heck they were going to be able to wrap everything up in time! Luckily, I had nothing to worry about.

Despite how much I liked the movie, there was something that bothered me. The most annoying thing about this movie to me was Christian Bale's "Batman voice". I get that he would need to disguise his voice when he was being Batman. But it was SO over the top, low and gravelly, that I found it distracting. I don't remember it being like that in Batman Begins, but maybe it's just been a while since I saw it? In any case, there was absolutely nothing else annoying about Christian Bale except for maybe the fact that he is TOO hot. Seriously.

Heath Ledger played the joker so well. I liked the darkness of his performance. I like goofy comic book movies (Fantastic Four etc), but I have found that I REALLY enjoy the darker more graphic novel based movies like 300 and this world of Batman. Gotham City is a dark place, and Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was spot on for that world. Criminally insane. He had no motive other than to create chaos. And that he did. The make-up was not funny, but scary and discomforting. The tics, the speech effects, it was all there.

I don't want to post anything here that will spoil the movie for anyone, but I will say that I LOVED the outcome of the ferry scene, and I loved Batman's crazy ass motorcycle thing. I found at several points in the movie I was surprised by things, which I love, because that doesn't always happen anymore, especially with this kind of movie. I didn't figure every single thing out before it happened, and of course that just made it more fun.

SEE THIS MOVIE.