Boston Rats

The Departed

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin

Released: October 6, 2006

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (won)

Best Director - Martin Scorsese (won)

Best Supporting Actor - Mark Wahlberg (lost to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine)

Best Editing (won)

Best Adapted Screenplay - William Monahan (won)

If you've never seen it, I would highly suggest watching The Departed before reading this review. I will give warnings when I get to spoilers...I have slight spoilers and I have major spoilers. It probably won't be a big deal if you're spoiled slightly, but, trust me, you don't want to know the major spoilers if you haven't seen this movie yet! 

So this film is actually a remake of a 2002 Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs. I've never seen it, but from what I do know about it, it's an hour shorter than The Departed (which is two and a half hours long). The inspiration for that movie was a more realistic version of Face/Off and while I was watching this, I did kind of get that vibe (just not as absurd!)

Even though this is a remake of a foreign film, I did get a slight Goodfellas vibe from it. Even though I enjoy The Departed, I like Goodfellas better. Let's be honest: that's the movie Scorsese should have won for! I will say this is my favorite collaboration between Marty and Leo. Well, it's a toss up between this and The Wolf of Wall Street. I'm not too high on Gangs of New York or The Aviator or Shutter Island. 

Slight spoiler warning alert! I feel like this information is probably known to everyone because it starts pretty early in the movie, but you never can be too careful! 

The movie takes place in Boston where Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) has become a detective for the Massachusetts State Police. However, he is actually a mole to gather information who has been trained and groomed by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), an Irish mob boss who has been like a father figure to Sullivan ever since he was a young boy. In fact, when I saw the young boy they cast as him, I knew instantly it was Matt Damon's character! They did a really job casting him. In fact, he even calls Costello "Dad" whenever he calls him on the phone right in front of the police captain, Queenan (Martin Sheen). "Hi, Dad, I can't make it to dinner, but my friends are still coming!" Seriously, how did they not figure out what that's code for when he was saying that right in front of them?

Meanwhile, while there's a rat in the police unit, Captain Queenan and Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) have placed undercover cop William Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate Costello's mob group. He has just graduated from the police academy and nobody knows who he is except for one person (and I'll get to that later). Their plan for Costigan is to have him get arrested for assault, spend some time in jail, then get in with Costello's group. That way at least it will look authentic he's a hood rat. Queenan and Dignam are the only two people who know that Costigan is working undercover.

After a major transaction of microprocessors (whatever the heck this is) goes wrong, Sullivan and Costigan are well aware there are rats on the other side and warn their respective leaders of them. While Sullivan is on police duty watching this transaction go down through surveillance with the other officers, he reaches into his coat pocket and we see him text a message to Costello, with one hand, mind you, and keeping his phone in his pocket, "No phones". Okay, this is 2006, so he's doing this with a flip phone and he's obviously memorized which buttons to push and how many times to push the up/down arrow to get to his contacts, then how many down to click on Costello's name and which buttons to push to write "No phones", but....if I did that, I would probably end up sending it to the wrong person....if I even got to contacts and the message would probably read "77 74843" or whatever numbers correlate with those letters! Obviously, he probably practiced doing that until he got it right, but I was pretty impressed he could do that. So he warns Costello to shut off the phones and everyone is like, "They turned their phones off!" However, there's one person who has kept his phone on and Costigan has texted Queenan a simple "$" to let him know the buyers are there. So that's how the two infiltrators are aware of each other. They just don't know who they are. 

For a movie without any adolescent girls or hardly any female characters for that matter, there's a lot of period talk. It's really gross. Well, it's really gross and skeevy in one scene, and in the other scene, it's still gross, but it's also funny. In the opening scene, when we're introduced to Costello and see him talking to a young Colin, he asks the girl who's working behind the counter, "Have you gotten your period yet?" First of all, ewwwwwww. Second of all, the girls is clearly at least sixteen. Of course she's gotten her period. Don't be an idiot, Frank. During this whole monologue we're getting from Costello, they keep him hidden in the shadows and I thought they were doing this because it takes place in the past and they didn't want us to see Nicholson's face cuz he needs to be young, but at the very end of his speech, we see him step out of the shadows and see his face.  In the other scene where periods come up, Costigan is at a bar where Costello's guys hang out and he orders a cranberry juice. One of the guys tells him that's what his girlfriend drinks when she's on her period and asks Costigan if he's on his period and in response gets a shot glass smashed on his head.

Speaking of women, police psychologist, Madalyn (Vera Farmiga) is the only one of note, and thank God, we don't have to hear about her menstruation cycle. She strikes up a relationship with Sullivan and they start dating. Their meet cute is super annoying. They're both on an elevator with several other people and Sullivan strikes up a conversation with her. When the elevator opens, it's her floor, and she gets off, but Sullivan, who tells her he's up one more floor, stays on the elevator, but keeps his body against the door to keep the elevator from closing and is still talking to her for several minutes, eventually getting her card. And there are other people still on the elevator waiting while these two are shamelessly flirting with each other! I'm surprised nobody got pissed at them! They're all just standing there, nonplussed. I would be so annoyed! It's like, why don't you get off the damn elevator and get her information and then just take the damn stairs up one flight when you're done! UGH! I did laugh when she gives him his card and he says, "I don't need it...I'm a detective, I'll find you" and she starts to take it back, but he snatches it and tells her, "I do need it." That was pretty cute. 

So they start dating, but guess who Madalyn has an affair with? Costigan, of all people! What a small world! Later in the movie, Sullivan will get a whiff of this information and Madalyn will tell Sullivan they're having a baby, but I have to wonder, as I did, if he suspects that it's not his as he has some, ahem, problems in the bedroom. 

When Queenan tells Sullivan to follow Costello because he believes that will lead them to the rat inside the police unit, a lightbulb goes off over Sullivan's head and he tells two officers to put a tail on Queenan, telling them he suspects Queenan might be the mole. It's actually a brilliant idea, it's just too bad the bad guys thought of it first! The two officers track Queenan to an abandoned warehouse where, indeed, Queenan is meeting with the infiltrator. Sullivan calls his guys and gives them the address and tells him they found the rat. When Queenan and Costigan found out they've been exposed, the former tells the latter to use the fire escape and that he'll be okay.

And now is a good time to go into MAJOR SPOILERS! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE AND DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED BECAUSE NOW I WILL BE GIVING AWAY HUGE PLOT POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!!!

Well, Queenan wasn't exactly telling the truth when he tells Costigan that he'll "be okay" because when Costigan walks outside and around a corner, Queenan's body literally goes splat on the pavement in front of him from being thrown out the window. Oh my God! They killed President Bartlett! This is the first of many, many characters to become departed, hence the title. Costigan starts crying and freaking out and I'm thinking, Run, Leo, get the hell outta there! But when someone comes out of the building and asks him what took him long, I remembered that he was supposed to meet there in the first place. HOWEVER....in the next scene, the guy who texted Costigan tells him he gave him the wrong address and finds it curious that he showed up. Lucky for Costigan, this guy got into a shootout with the other policemen who followed Queenan and literally dies a few second later, so his secret is taken to the grave. I mean, how convenient is that?

There's a great scene where Sullivan dials the last number Queenan dialed on his phone and Costigan is smart enough not to say anything when he answers it. Both of them are just holding their phones to their ears, waiting to see if anyone will talk first, but no one does. When they hang up, Costigan starts packing, but then calls the number back and says, "You called this number on a dead man's phone. Who are you?" Sullivan tells him who he is and that he's taking over Queenan's division. Costigan wants to confer this piece of information with Dignam, but he took a leave of absence (or rather quit because he was furious that Sullivan got Queenan killed by putting a tail on him). I don't know why he just didn't call Dignam to ask him unless he didn't have his home phone number? :::shrug:::

In another turn of events, Sullivan finds out, from going through Queenan's notes, that Frank Costello is an FBI informant. What the huh? I wasn't exactly clear who all knew that information. Queenan for sure and probably Dignam. But did Costello know that Costigan was working for the FBI too? This whole reveal really confused me. Maybe I'm just stupid, who knows! Sullivan is worried that Costello is going to rat him out, so he kills him when the police bust him and his gang for some drug thing. Costello has one of those movie deaths where he's shot in the chest and spits up blood, but psych! He's not dead yet! It takes another shot to kill him and Sullivan is hailed as a hero, so I'm guessing nobody there knew about Frank's secret. 

There's a scene where Costigan gives Madalyn an envelope and instructs her to open it if something happens to him or he tells her to and that she's the only person he trusts. Remember this piece of information. Speaking of envelopes, there's another one that's an integral part of the story. When Costello finds out there's a rat among his crew, he makes everyone fill out a form with their name, address, social security number, etc. so he can check out everyone. All of these papers will be in an envelope with CITIZENS (actually it will be written twice because the first guy who wrote it spelled it wrong) scrawled across it. Everyone is supposed to stay in the bar where they're filling out until they've all been checked, but Costigan says he's not staying, so that's a huge sign that he's the rat! Though I don't blame him that he wants to leave...if he stays, he's dead.

So this envelope with "Citizens" will come up later when Costigan sees it sitting on Sullivan's desk when he goes to get his pay and that's when he knows that Sullivan is a mole within the Force. He also knows that Sullivan knows he was the rat within the mob. He leaves without telling Sullivan, but he doesn't tell Dignam, who is, remember, the only living person who knows the truth about him. Instead he gets Sullivan to meet him at the building where Queenan was killed, baiting him by saying Costello told him he has recorded all his conversations for insurance and if they are released, Sullivan will be revealed. Costigan also called Anthony Anderson, the one person who was also in the same academy as Costigan and knows who he is. Costigan thinks he can get him to trust him, but it doesn't quite work out that way. I still don't understand why he didn't call Dignam! 

Costigan takes the elevator down with his gun pointed at Sullivan's head, but when the door opens, we see someone shoot Costigan in the head, and then when Anthony Anderson comes down the other elevator and sees Costigan dead on the floor and two of his fellow officers, he doesn't quite know what's going on. The guys shoots him too. This is someone we've seen in the background, but not a major character. He tells Sullivan that he wasn't the only one working for Costello and they have to look out for each other. When Sullivan gets the chance, he kills him. 

Not long after, Sullivan will come home to his apartment to see Dignam there with a gun and he kills him. You may have never noticed this if you've only seen the movie once, or maybe you didn't even notice on a second time, but next time you watch this movie, be on the lookout for X's when a character dies or is about to die. When Sullivan is walking down the hall to his door, the carpet in the hallway has large X's (super tacky if you ask me), when Costigan and Sullivan are in the elevator, you see an X created with duct tape about Costigan's head, and when poor Queenan falls out of the building, he pasts several windows with tape making an X. 

Remember that envelope Costigan gave Madalyn to open if anything happened to him? We never see it again. The last we see of Madalyn is her at his funeral, crying. I guess they thought it was unnecessary since we already knew what would be in that envelope, but it just seemed weird to bring up if they're not going back to it.

The movie ends with a shot of a rat on the balcony railing which made me groan for two reasons. One, this is an extremely nice apartment complex in Boston and now there are rats balconies? No, I don't buy it. (And I literally wouldn't buy the apartment if it had rats!) Two, it was a little too on the nose.  

A Very Long Review

Um spoilers...and please ignore how crappy this looks (especially towards the end)! I have not mastered Blogspot yet; why can't it be simple to use like LiveJournal?

Batman

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger

Released: 6/23/89

Oscar nominations:

Best Art Direction (won)

Batman Forever

Director: Joel Schumacher

Cast: Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman, Chris O'Donnell

Released: 6/16/95

Viewed in theaters: 6-7/?/95

Oscar nominations:

Best Cinematography (lost to Braveheart)

Best Sound (lost to Apollo 13)

Best Sound Effects (lost to Braveheart)

The Dark Knight

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman

Released: 7/18/08

Viewed in theaters: 7/20/08 (Um, my first viewing)

Oscar nominations:

Best Supporting Actor - Heath Ledger (won)

Best Sound Editing (won)

Best Art Direction (lost to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

Best Cinematography (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Editing (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Makeup (lost to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

Best Visual Effects (lost to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

Best Sound (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)

As you can see, I watched three different Batman films. Three different decades, three different directors, three different Batmans (sorry, Clooney, you didn't make the cut - there's no way you can make me watch that dreck!). Now I should preface this by saying that I'm not a Batman fan in the least; I know nothing when it comes to the world of Batman. In fact, for the longest time, I had no idea he was referred to as the Dark Knight. When I first heard of Nolan's title, I thought he was the one who came up with it (I'm being serious, people) and thought it was a catchy title and could totally see Batman being called the Dark Knight. Little did I know... Actually, they refer to him as the Dark Knight twice in Batman Forever, but I didn't remember that since it's been at least ten years since I've seen that movie. I also didn't know that Harvey Dent and Two Face were the same person. I remember Eckhart doing press before TDK was released and didn't understand why all the interviewers kept bringing up the character of Two Face and then I put two and two together. Aha! So in this review I'm going to compare and contrast the different elements of these three movies. I totally won't discriminate - oh, who am I kidding? I so have a clear favorite and you might be surprised by which one it is. Or not. Probably not.

Director: Burton v. Schumacher v. Nolan

All three movies are very different in style. Burton's has a certain athestic where you definitely feel like you're watching one of his films. There's a very gritty and almost nostalgic feel to '89. It kind of reminds me of an old mafia movie, especially with the way the men dress: trenchcoats, bowties, vests, fedoras. Watching it is almost the equivalent of watching a comic book come to life.

Then there's Schumacher who took over when Burton's movies were deemed too dark. (While I didn't find '89 scary, Batman Returns is pretty twisted and dark.) Forever is a flashy summer blockbuster. It's almost like watching a live-action cartoon. Most of the characters are caricatures with over the top performances and it's clear Schumacher chose the actors based on their attractiveness or popularity at the time. Watching this is like eating a bag filled with fun-sized candy bars: enjoyable at first, but the more you have, you start to get sick of it and want to stop and make it go away. It gets very tiring very fast.

Nolan's version is the most realistic and I mean this as a compliment when I say it's like I wasn't even watching a Batman movie (except when Bale showed up in costume). All the characters felt real, not as though they were taken from Saturday morning cartoons and there was no dialogue that sounded like it came from a balloon bubble. It's insane how well this movie did. Look at it this way: according to IMDb.com, it made more money in the first six days of its release than Batman Begins made in its ENTIRE run. As Brian Fellows would say, That's crazy! Oh yeah, you should know Begins made $205 million. Crazy! (By the way, TDK made over a billion dollars around the world.)

Gotham:

Obviously, the look and feel of Batman's hometown differs in all three films. There's a very 1930s New York vibe to it in '89. It doesn't look like a place I'd visit because of its dark and gritty appearance. I read a review that said the exterior shots of the city looks like "a diagram of an artificial city" and yeah, I have to agree. Of course, this film came out twenty years ago, so of course the special effects are going to be outdated and crappy. I'm sure twenty years from now we'll all have a good laugh over how big the cell phones are in TDK.

If Burton's Gotham looks like a place I wouldn't want to visit, then Schumacher's vision is a city I would avoid at all costs. Good Lord. His Gotham makes Las Vegas look like the small Iowa town where my mom grew up. There are neon lights everywhere and the GCI exterior just looks cheap. Forever's Gotham gave me a huge headache and can you imagine living there? Ugh! Nolan's Gotham is a real place where real people live. Of course, that's because it's Chicago, but they film it so it's not obviously Chicago and it works. No stupid and cheap made-up Gotham.

Batman/Bruce Wayne: Keaton v. Kilmer v. Bale:

In all three movies, I prefer Bruce Wayne to Batman because I cannot take a grown man in a bat costume seriously and all three actors are way better when playing Wayne. Keaton is charismatic as Wayne but it bugs me he didn't alter his voice as Batman and the delivery of the line about "dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight" to the Joker is just awful. Another thing that bugs me is the scene where he's sleeping hanging upside down. There are so many things wrong with that. First of all, Batman is human, not a bat, so WTF? And if he was a bat-human, wouldn't he be sleeping during the day? Duh! And second of all, Vicki Vale was there and saw him; wouldn't she be suspicious? It was just stupid.

Kilmer at least attempts to change his voice as Batman, but he gives off a very metrosexual vibe (perhaps it's the nipples on the Batsuit?) as Bruce Wayne as in he wouldn't want to break a nail. With Bale, you could totally see him taking some names and not afraid to pull a punch. Now his Batman voice is unintentionally funny but you have to give the guy credit for at least trying. Maybe he should've used his natural accent as Batman, though people would all be "why the f--- does Batman have a British accent?"

The Women: Basinger v. Kidman V. Gyllenhaal:

The love story in the Batman films always seem like filler to me and they're just thrown in there to fill a quota. As photographer Vicki Vale in '89, I thought Kim Basinger looked better with her hair pulled back and wearing glasses then when she was "glammed up" in those ugly pouffy dresses. She has so much hair that it's almost her supporting co-star.

As Chase Meridian, Kidman's role in Forever is pretty much only to seduce Batman and make booty calls and come off as desperate. See, she's in love with Batman, but Bruce is in love with her (she's his psychiatrist - and whose therapist looks like that anyway? Please!) and she doesn't know her patient is the Caped Crusader. Hijinks! So of course everyone knows Katie Holmes played Rachel Dawes, Bruce's childhood friend and love interest in Batman Begins, but due to "schedule conflicts" (please, Joey Potter, we weren't born yesterday!), Maggie Gyllenhaal stepped in for her in its sequel. So here are my thoughts about TomKatGate:

I like Maggie, but I found her to be the weakest link in TDK only because I didn't really care for the character of Rachel and found any scenes with her to be boring. While I was semi-spoiled about her death (when I was walking into the theater, I walked past these guys who said, "I can't believe they did that to Batman's girlfriend!" So yeah, it wasn't that hard to figure out something terrible was going to happen to her), and while I felt bad for Bruce, I was kinda glad she was gone from the movie at that point. Oh, well, at least a certain someone's sister played her so I can write hilarious captions like this:

"Hey, didn't I make out with your brother once?"

The Joker: Nicholson v. Ledger

It's the age-old question that's been going on for decades (okay, under two years): who was the better Joker? Who do I prefer? I was a teenager when 10 Things I Hate About You came out, so who do you think? Hey, I don't discriminate...against hot Australians. Okay, I may be a bit biased with my decision. I've always been a Ledger fan (and yes, that was an awful day for me). Plus I heard that Nicholson said that he would only be cast as the Joker if only Burton billed him first? Uh, shouldn't the guy playing the MAIN TITLE CHARACTER be billed first? Dude, get over yourself!

But actor preference aside, let's just focus on the acting aspect. Now I have no idea whose Joker is more like the original one (probably Jack's since his is more like a comic-book character), but if I watched a clip from '89 without knowing who played the Joker, I would have said Nicholson in a second. His schtick is he falls in a vat of chemicals and his skin turns white (not burned as you might think) and he has a permanent smile. He kills people by using a cute array of deadly gags like hand buzzers that electrocute and acid-squirting flower pens. He's a happy clown! He likes to twirl his cane and dance to Prince. (WTF, I know). Creepy, yes. Scary, um, not really. He plays it very campy. Now I'm going to get a lot of flack for this, but I really don't see what the big deal about his Joker is and I remember when it was announced Heath was playing the new Joker and everybody was saying he would never do Jack justice and how he was going to suck and ruin the movie. I'm sorry, but if John Lithgow (who was actually considered for the part; I bet he wouldn't have demanded to be filled first!) had played the Joker the EXACT same way as Jack did, nobody would be saying anything about his performance. And now it's funny that people are saying Heath was the better Joker (except for the stubborn Burton fanboys). Now if I saw TDK and didn't know who played the Joker, I would have never guessed in a million years who it was. (Well, except for the three second he's not wearing make-up, then it's pretty obvious). I think the voice he used (which Entertainment Weekly described as "Al Franken mixed with a nerdish pedophile" - thank you, EW, I couldn't have said it better myself) was the big reason that made Ledger almost unrecognizable. In real life, Heath's voice was like buttah, but his Joker voice is so damn creepy! Now, undoubtedly, he is scarier than '89 Joker, but I would dare say that he is funnier too...and he didn't even have all those cutesy gags. I laughed when he overheard one of his goons describe him as "the crazy clown in the cheap purple suit" and tells him "Oh, by the way, my suit wasn't cheap. You should know; you paid for it." And by the fourth time he asked somebody if they wanted to know how he got his scars, all I could think of was '08 Joker at some dinner party, asking guests that same question and people thinking, Oh, God, not this schmuck again!" Also, did anyone else think he rigged those detonators on the boats so they would blow up their own boat instead of the other one?

Two Face: Jones v. Eckhart:

In Forever, Two Face is every bit the comic book caricature with his 

"normal" side and his 

"wild" side. Not only is his appearance and suit divided into

two, but also his headquarters and he has two, uh,

concubines, I guess: Sugar and Spice. We never see him as D.A.

Harvey Dent, although there is a quick explanation of how he

turned evil, but I didn't really understood what happened to him 

physically. 

In TDK, Eckhart doesn't actually become Two

Face until the third act; we see him as good guy Dent for the

first two. His Two Face makeup is definitely more gruesome

than Jones'. In

fact, the only thing I would say is not very realistic about TDK (well, besides, some of the Joker's 24-style terrorist activities; seriously, you would need to know some serious access codes to pull off what he does in that movie), is the fact that this man is walking around with half of his FACE burned off right in the open. Even if you lived to survive that, there's no way anybody could go out in the open like that and not get infected. But that said, it is still a Batman movie. I have to give Eckhart props, because even though Heath Ledger steals the movie, he definitely held his own. Harvey Dent is also featured (in a very small role) in '89 and played by Billy Dee Williams. Burton never got to use him as Two Face, but there was some serious foreshadowing when he reads a letter from Batman at the end of the film and states, "If the forces of evil should rise again, call me." Hmmmmm....he was talking about himself! And speaking of foreshadowing, there was some of that in TDK when Fox tells Bruce that his newest weapon of choice "should do well against cats". Whoever could he be referring to?

The Riddler and Robin:

To get a good sense of Jim Carrey as the Riddler in Forever, take Ace Ventura and the Grinch and smash them together, multiply that by ten and you have the Riddler. Carrey is ridiculously over the top and I have a feeling that Schumacher was encouraging him to be as obnoxious as possible. Unlike '89 and TDK where the villains are feared, I never got that sense with the Riddler or Two Face. They were used more for comic relief, and honestly, they weren't that funny. While I wanted more scenes with the Joker when I watched TDK, the Riddler couldn't get off my screen soon enough when I watched Forever. Now I've seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I know Carrey is a capable actor, but man, he is awful in this. There's even a scene where he says something to Batman, then asks, "What that over the top?" YES! Yes, it was! The real person we should feel sorry for, though, in

this movie (after all, Carrey laughed his way to the bank), is Chris O'Donnell. Not 

only did he have to play the useless Robin (who is Batman's answer to Scrappy-Doo), 

but he is the only one from this film who went on to be in the even worse Batman and Robin - which I've never seen and never want to judging from the few clips of it I have seen.

Okay, to wrap things up, because I'm sure nobody is reading

this anymore, I actually preferred

Michael Gough's Alfred in '89 and Forever to Michael Caine's in TDK because with the former

that's the only character I've ever seen him play, so he is

Alfred to me. With the latter, I've seen

Caine in other movies and at award shows, so I just saw

Michael Caine. (Though he did have

some funny lines). Commissioner Gordon is hardly used in

'89 and Forever, but is very much

used in a great storyline in TDK and Gary Oldman is right

behind Ledger and Echkart in terms

of performance.

Why so...Sirius?
Somehow my font keeps changing and and I have no idea why and this review is going to look really messed up and I'm about to go all Christian Bale on this stupid site, so I better wrap this up. Anyway, here is my final evaluation of the movies: Batman: See it if only for it's a classic and it did jump start the whole franchise (which is a good and bad thing). And if you don't compare Nicholson's Joker to Ledger's, he's not entirely that bad. I still think Lithgow would have make a better '89 Joker, though. Batman Forever: This movie sucks. Don't see it if you haven't already. The Dark Knight: This movie is awesome and if you haven't already seen it, you must live under a rock. There's a reason this movie made a boatload of money: because everyone and their grandma went to see it...multiple times!