Quadruple Bill

[alobear]

It's been a long, but very enjoyable day.  I spent most of it at the cinema, and then came home and watched my current rental DVD.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

This was a fairly standard kids' fantasy plot – boy finds strange book in old house, reading book unleashes evil ogre on boy's family and threatens the fairy realm, boy and siblings have to work together to defeat evil ogre. What made it a cut above average was the time and care that was put into the set up and development of the characters of the three children and their mother. Freddie Highmore, in particular, was excellent as twins, Jared and Simon, building on the tremendous promise he showed in Finding Neverland.

The Dark Knight

Over-hype was inevitable on this one, what with the five star reviews all over the place and the clamour for Heath Ledger to get an Oscar.

Still, I tried to go in with an open mind, and it was indeed a very good film. I liked the fact that it was shot in a very realistic way, avoiding the usual hyper-reality of superhero movies, and so making the abnormal aspects of the story that much more disturbing and effective. I thought the Harvey Dent arc was extremely well done, particularly with the development of the use of his trademark coin. The portrayal of the Joker was interesting, too – I liked how they dealt with the explanation of his scars, and the way in which he responded to situations of impending death was very effective.

Two things that annoyed me were: the fact that Maggie Gyllenhall seemed to be trying to do an impression of Katie Holmes (who played her part in Batman Begins) and so diminished her performance by imitating a lesser actress; and I hated the over-the-top deep voice Bruce Wayne put on whenever he appeared as Batman. I realise he didn't want anyone to recognise his voice, but it made him sound like an idiot and was the only thing that broke the realism and turned him into a comic book character.

Overall, I thought it was very good, as I've said – but I don't think it deserved five stars, and I wouldn't consider Heath Ledger's performance (though extremely good) to be “monumental”, as Empire termed it. I've enjoyed his performances in everything I've seen him in, and would have liked to have seen him in a lot more films, but I don't agree with over-exaggerating his talent just because he died in January.

However, my last comment on The Dark Knight will be of a somewhat less intellectual bent, and also touch upon what I consider, despite all its other excellent qualities, to be the best aspect of the film – Christian Bale, yummmmmmmmmm.

Mamma Mia

What could have been an embarrassingly bad film was made extremely enjoyable by an excellent cast, who gave it their all. I would say, though, that Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth really should have left the singing and the removing of shirts to others. All of them are not unattractive, but I don't think any of them have ever been able to carry off the shirtless look, even twenty years ago. Still, I have to give credit to Pierce Brosnan, in particular, to making a real effort on his songs despite a less than stellar voice. I haven't been able to get Abba out of my head since the film ended, and it was all very good fun – the highlight being Christine Baranski directing “Does Your Mother Know?” at the frankly edible barman.

Stranger Than Fiction

I annoyed Dave all the way through by complaining about how the premise of this film made absolutely no sense. His argument was that it didn't matter – and, indeed, just because I was complaining, it didn't mean I wasn't enjoying the film. However, luckily, the ending managed to solve all my problems with the preceding 90 minutes, and also supply a very satisfying conclusion to a film that might have been very difficult to end well. So, I can recommend it wholeheartedly as very enjoyable and extremely well written.