Tag Archive for 'Morgan Freeman'

The Dark Knight

Published
by
Chalupa
on August 4, 2008
in Action, Based on a comic, Black Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Sequel and Thriller
. 0 Comments

Liz and I were able to catch the latest installment in the Batman series over the weekend.  We’re both glad we were able to catch it on the big screen.  After all the buildup, hype, and raving reviews, we finally got to see what everyone was talking about.


I was very impressed with Batman Begins and I wasn’t in any way disappointed with The Dark Knight.  I’m already looking forward to the next one.  Heath Ledger did an amazing job with The Joker.  I was reading someone’s comments somewhere and they were talking about how they’ve never been a Ledger fan until now.  They also never realized how menacing and diabolical the Joker could actually be, and after thinking about Jack Nicholson’s portrayal from 1989, they realized that Nicholson was just delivering the same role he had been for the previous 20 years or so.  You may or may not agree with that, but it was a little mind blowing to me.  Maybe I haven’t seen enough of Nicholson’s films, but I’ve never quite understood why people are so enamored by him.  Yeah, he has some good films out there with great performances, but I’ve never been that impressed.  It’s really too bad Ledger isn’t with us anymore for any follow-up films.

Often times in sequels, it’s hard to make something that lives up to the original.  I think Christopher Nolan did a good job in raising the bar by bringing in the Joker, but there’s always room for some improvements.  I don’t think Christian Bale had to really act that much this time around.  The gutteral “batman voice” got a little annoying and old, but it makes sense he was talking differently to try and hide his identity.  Aaron Eckhart did a decent job.  I’ll always remember him as Nick Naylor from Thank You for Smoking.  It’ll be interesting to see if he makes a comeback in the future.

I think Gary Oldman had a much more active role this time around.  He’s such a great actor and it’s nice to see him able to spread his wings a bit.  I liked Maggie Gyllenhaal more than Katie Holmes in the role of Rachel Dawes.  She also fit in pretty well.  It wasn’t like some films where actors change for a particular character and the whole time you’re confused as to who exactly that person is.  Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were wonderful as usual.  Some friends of mine complained after the first film that they were grossly underutilized.  I kind of agreed, however, it was nice to actually have a “real” actor play the role of Alfred for a change.  I was just happy to have a live body in the role.

Some of the scenes with the Joker are a bit disturbing, but this is rated PG-13, so there’s not a whole lot to worry about.  They cut away at just the right moments in certain scenes.  Liz and I both said we got a little bored in the middle, but overall we thoroughly enjoyed it.  I would highly suggest getting out and seeing this one before it leaves the theaters.  You won’t be sorry.

Rating: ★★★★½

Lucky Number Slevin

Published
by
Chalupa
on April 19, 2006
in Black Comedy, Crime, Drama, Neo Noir, Thriller and Twist
. 0 Comments

I was immediately interested in this film after I saw the first trailer. Luckily this wasn’t one of those movies that showed everything cool about it in the 45 seconds they call a ’sneak peak’. This one includes Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley. Sort of a Sin City mix of cast. It was actually interesting to see Lucy Liu in a role where she wasn’t a killer or mobster or just intimidating and crazy in general.

The movie starts out as one huge case of mistaken identity as Slevin is beaten up and hauled in to talk to the two mobsters in town, The Boss and The Rabbi. Slevin was just visiting a friend and that friend just happened to owe money to several people who wanted it back real bad. Things start to go from bad to worse as we see just how bad things are going for Slevin. His friend is nowhere to be found and now he’s in the middle of a war between two men and owing large sums of money to both. Even though this film doesn’t follow Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it was the first thing I thought of when we were introduced to The Boss and The Rabbi. Here were two powerful men, interlocked in a blood feud or sorts, who faced each other from their concrete and glass buildings across the street from each other. A shaky truce was at hand and neither wanted to fully cross the line and invoke the consequences.

Ultimately, this film is about revenge. True, pure, unadulterated revenge. I think I had things figured out right from the start on who was who and that kind of stuff, but that was ok. The movie still gripped me like a couple of arm rests with cup holders and kept my attention. This was a very good thing since it was about 2am and my 3rd movie of the night at the theater.

There’s some violence and some language and stuff like that. If you can handle it though, you should definitely give this one a watch. It’ll keep you entertained.

Batman Begins

Published
by
Chalupa
on June 15, 2005
in Action, Adventure, Based on a comic, Crime, Martial Arts, Neo Noir and Thriller
. 1 Comment

I started off with the intent to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith but Sarah informed us that the movie sucked so Liz, Sarah and I went to see this movie instead and I’m glad we did. For starters, we have a star-studded cast including Christian Bale (Treasure Island, Newsies, American Psycho, Equilibrium), Michael Caine (Zulu, Alfie-original, The Italian Job-original, A Bridge Too Far, The Muppet Christmas Carol), Liam Neeson (The Mission, Schindler’s List, Michael Collins, Kinsey), Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy, Glory, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Unforgiven, Shawshank Redemption, Seven, Amistad, Million Dollar Baby, Unleashed), Katie Holmes (Pieces of April), Gary Oldman (Dracula, True Romance, Leon, The Fifth Element), Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Intermission, Cold Mountain), and Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai). See? I said it was star-studded

I read a review earlier today of said movie that talked about what a crappy film this was. Apparently the good actors just didn’t quite make it good, there was action but it was full of dead spots, blah blah blah. I didn’t see any of the bad things I read about in this movie. I really believe that Christopher Nolan has resurrected the Batman movies - especially after a string of such bad ones. This one definitely rocked. I think this was also the first Batman movie to explain the origins of Bruce Wayne. Liam Neeson did an awesome job as well as Gary Oldman, one of the few films where he’s not the bad guy. I didn’t quite recognize Ken Watanabe, but his voice immediately gave him away. Then we have good ol Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Christian Bale. If you like Equilibrium, you’re definitely going to love this one.

I think this movie will appeal to the comic lovers, the action lovers and the Batman lovers. It’s definitely way more serious than the “Holy Swiss Cheese Batman!!!!” TV series, but fake and unreal like other comic hero movies. This is also a movie that should keep the interest of older kids and adults. There’s not really much swearing and other than people getting the crap kicked out of them by Batman, there’s not much else to deter people from watching this film for content. I rate this as a must see and it will probably end up on my top 10 list at the end of the year.

Unleashed

Published
by
Chalupa
on May 23, 2005
in Action, Crime, Drama, Martial Arts, Romance and Thriller
. 0 Comments

Here’s Jet Li in his latest film, written by Luc Besson - who also worked on Kiss of the Dragon - and directed by Louis Leterrier.

This movie was a bit different from Jet Li’s previous in that he actually does a little acting in here. I also talking to Mike and he was telling me that Jet Li is trying to better diversify his acting in not just being the guy that walks in, beats people up, and walks out. This was very evident when his character announced, “I don’t want to hurt people anymore”. Maybe some of the audience were just as shocked as his “uncle”.

It was quite interesting the impact the collar had in this movie. There wasn’t anything actually controlling about it - the effect was just psychological. In fact throughout the movie, whenever Bart would get mad at Danny, Bart would yell and threaten, but never actually do anything. Towards the end it was very apparent when Bart removed his own “collar” before he flips out himself.

If you’re not into anything violent, this probably isn’t a movie for you. If you’re into Jet Li’s previous stuff and enjoy kung fu/martial arts movies/people getting beat up, or watching Morgan Freeman on the silver screen, you’ll probably enjoy this one.