Art La Flamme

This weekend I went and saw the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, at the IMAX theater in Atlanta.

And I gotta say: Oh. My. GOD.

Go see this movie. Go see this movie in the best theater you can. With the best sound, and the best screen, and the most comfortable seats.

Because it’s two and a half hours long. And it’s that good.

OK, so what works?

Well, it’s visually stunning. Very beautiful to watch. It’s the kind of movie that I’d watch, even if the sound were off. So much to see. And on the IMAX? Holy crap, it’s beautiful. All movies should be in that format. All.

And the Joker is awesome. Yeah, Heath Ledger might be dead, and he might get the Oscar out of pity, but he is really, really good in this. He pulls off an amazing performance.

But there were at least a couple of times when I thought the movie was over. And it wasn’t. It just kept going and going and going. Sometimes, that worked. At least once — the whole Two-Face aspect is something that was not necessary (well, it is and it isn’t).

Something else — not everybody dies. Scarecrow, from Batman Begins, makes a cameo appearance in this, just as the Joker’s calling card made a cameo at the end of Batman Begins. That’s awesome for one reason — that’s what really happens in the comic books.

Oh, and Gary Oldman? Awesome. As usual.

Lastly — Aaron Eckhart. Great performance as the DA. Not so great as Two-Face, but not because of him. He really shines in this movie.

But there are some things that just seemed, well, out of place. Where’s Katie Holmes? She was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal – who did an OK job, just not a great job. Not as good of a match.

And why does Batman sound more like the offspring of Eartha Kitt and Clint Eastwood, than a superhero? I know I’m not alone on this one, either — read and watch this and see what I mean. It’s bad. Ugly. Wrong.

This is a good movie. I use to think that Batman Begins was a movie getting from Netflix, but no, when The Dark Knight comes out on DVD, get (and here I do mean, “buy”) them both on DVD. Or Blu-Ray.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.