Executive Decision

Air Force One
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Paul Guilfoyle, Xander Berkeley
Released: July 25, 1997

Oscar nominations:
Best Editing (lost to Titanic)
Best Sound (lost to Titanic)

Spoilers for a 16 year old movie!

While I was watching this movie (my third time), I kept wondering, What if Bill, Hilary, and Chelsea (who were the First Family when this was released) were in this situation? What if it were old Dubya, Laura, and their twin girls? What it if were Obama up there with Michelle and their daughters? And in every scenario, EVERYBODY DIES.

All-American President

Harrison Ford plays President James Marshall, the most kick-ass POTUS of all time! He's a veteran of the Vietnam War, a recipient of the Medal of Honor, a retired military aviator, a black belt in karate, a member of MENSA, and a Noble Peace Prize winner. (Okay, I may have embellished some of those!) Seriously, if something like this had happened to a POTUS like the one Michael Douglas plays in The American President (or a real life President like I mentioned before), it's safe to say everyone would be screwed and nobody would make it out of this situation alive. President Marshall has just given a speech in Russia and is headed back to Washington on Air Force One along with staff and his wife and 12 year old daughter. Also included on this flight is one mole and a group of Russian reporters who have been given permission to ride in the plane and interview the President. What nobody knows until it's too late is that the real Russian reporters were killed by a terrorist group led by a man named Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman) and their name badges and identities were stolen.

The mole is played by Xander Berkeley, one of many character actors in this movie. You think he is part of the Secret Service, but once he kills other members of the Service and tosses guns out to the terrorists, you know he is a mole! And just think, a few short years later, the same actor would go on to play George Mason in 24, a man who would sacrifice his life for the United States. I guess he was making up for this movie! Hey....wasn't Air Force One exploding and killing the POTUS on an episode in 24? There have been so many presidential deaths on that show I can't keep them all straight!

Once Secret Service hears bullets flying everywhere in the plane, they take the POTUS and hustle him down to a pod and launch him out of the plane so he will be safe and will easily be found with a tracking device. Apparently such a pod does not exist on Air Force One, but that would be awesome if it really did. Meanwhile, the other hostages on the plane have been ushered into a guarded conference room. In a creepy almost kind of foreshadowing to 9/11, the terrorists break into the cockpit and kill the pilots and divert the plane to head to their destination, which is Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the VP (Glenn Close) is alerted of the situation as well as the U.S. Defense Secretary played by yet another character actor, Dean Stockwell (Al from Quantum Leap!) Korshunov contacts them and tells them he wants the release of a dictator he supports who had just been sentenced to prison. He tells them they will execute a passenger every half hour until he is released. And he is true to his word. Nobody in Washington has no idea if the POTUS is still alive or not and don't want to make any deals if they don't know for sure about the President's safety. The pod is found, but it is empty! Marshall stayed on board in the cargo area because there was no way he was going to leave his family and members of his Cabinet and his advisors up in the air with terrorists! This President doesn't run from anybody or anything!

Marshall calls the operator in D.C. and there's a bit of a comic relief moment when he tells her he's the President and wants to be connected to the White House and she tells him that the President never calls this line and scoffs at his acclaim of being the president. Once she hears gunfire, she puts him through right away and he alerts the VP and everyone else of the situation.

Korshunov takes the First Lady and First Daughter to a private section of the plane to keep an eye on them. Marshall shoots the terrorists who are guarding the conference room and sneaks everybody down to the back of the plane where everyone is fitted into parachutes and the hatch is open to let them escape that way. Soon just a few people are left on the plane including the terrorists, the First Family, a few other passengers, and the (undetected) mole. When Korshunov threatens to kill the First Lady, Marshall gives the VP the go ahead to release the dictator. Now it's been quite a few years since I last saw this movie, but I could have sworn that the Fist Lady was killed in this movie. I remember the other woman, the Deputy Press Secretary, was killed, but for some reason, I also remember the First Lady being murdered. Maybe I am thinking of another movie. After the prisoner is released, Marshall and Korshunov get into a physical altercation and it ends with the President snapping the terrorists' neck and before kicking him out of the plane (the hatch was open at the point) tells him, "Get off of my plane!" Once they don't have to worry about Korshunov anymore, Marshall races back to call off the release of the prisoner and he is shot right before he gets to his freedom.

Even though all the terrorists are incapacitated (or so they think! The mole is still among them!), the airliner is not going to be able to land due to outside damage from other terrorists (I'm telling you, this movie is non-stop action!), so outside help from the Air Force is needed. We next proceed to the most ridiculous scene in the entire movie: a huge military plane is flying in front of them and some guy (sorry, I don't know the correct jargon for any of this!) hooks up a zip line from that plane to Air Force One. The mole is the one who's standing by the door of AFO and he's supposed to let the guy in and you think he might cut the line or something, but he doesn't. A few more guys come from the other plane to help assist the others off the plane. They clip the First Daughter, then the First Lady to the zip line and they make it to the other plane. They next want Marshall, but he insists that his wounded Chief of Staff (played by C.S.I.'s Paul Guilfoyle - another character actor!) go before him. Soon the only people left on the plane are Marshall, the mole, and Marshall's Air Force advisor (played by yet another character actor, William H. Macy). Air Force One is about to crash and they only have time to get one more person to safety. Macy tells the President to go and this is the time where Berekeley reveals himself as the mole when he kills Macy. Marshall finds himself in (yet another) physical altercation and the zip line breaks at the last minute as he manages to clip onto it so he's dangling from the other plane as the men pull him up and tell Washington that the President is safe. Of course at the last minute he escapes from Air Force One, it crashes into the ocean and thus the new plane Marshall is on is dubbed Air Force One.

Now can you see why I think if this scenario happened with a real President's family everybody would die? Yep. A fun and thrilling movie nonetheless.

The President Who Got Shot

JFK
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner,  Gary Oldman, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci
Released: December 20, 1991

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Director - Oliver Stone (lost to Jonathan Demme for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Supporting Actor - Tommy Lee Jones (lost to Jack Palance for City Slickers)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar (lost to Ted Tally for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Sound (lost to Termination 2)
Best Film Editing (won)
Best Score - John Williams (lost to Alan Menken for Beauty and the Beast)

I've only seen a few Oliver Stone movies. They range from ones I really liked (Platoon) to the God-awful (Alexander - which, by the way, I had to see in the theater because other members of my family wanted to see it and my choice for seeing National Treasure was overruled). I would say his heyday for great movie-making was the late '80s/early '90s which JFK falls nicely into. 

I watched the special edition of the DVD which is about three hours and twenty minutes, so I treated it like a miniseries and watched it over a span of about three or four days. Whether or not you believe there's a huge conspiracy behind the assassination of the 35th President of the United States (which the entire movie is based around), you can't deny this is a fascinating film. 

First of all, the star power is pretty amazing. I already listed the actors with the most screen time, but the film also includes Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Candy, Kevin Bacon, John Larroquette, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, Laurie Metcalf, and Wayne Knight. 

The film begins with a little montage of Kennedy's life in office and soon begins after his death on November 22, 1963 in Dallas and goes all the way to 1969. It's based on a book written by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Costner) who becomes obsessed with proving that there was a huge cover-up behind Kennedy's death. He becomes so obsessed that he ignores death threats and puts his family second to the case - he reminded me of Robert Graysmith in Zodiac and how he was obsessed with finding the identify of the killer. 

The movie does make a pretty good case of there being a conspiracy linked to JFK's death, but then again, it's what the movie/Stone wants you to think. Garrison and his team interview witnesses who saw Kennedy's assassination first hand and their recounts don't match up with what's documented by the government/police; the doctor who performed JFK's autopsy testifies that government officials kept a close eye on him as he looked at the body and wasn't allowed to examine the gunshot wound; one of Kennedy's bodyguards tells Garrison he just happened to be sent to an assignment in Antarctica when the assassination occurred and that security was very lax (even if Kennedy had never been killed, I cannot ever imagine the POTUS being allowed to ride in a frickin' convertible - that just seems really stupid); it's determined that there's no way Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Oldman) could have shot Kennedy from the angle of the window he was supposedly at and there must have been two other assassins involved as well.

The CIA, FBI, Mafia, Secret Service, and even Vice-President Lyndon Johnson are all considered to be part of the cover-up. They wanted Kennedy dead because of his involvement in the Bay of Pigs and he wanted to pull troops from the Vietnam War. They also weren't happy with the changes he had in store for America. I guess Kennedy was a little too ahead of his time back then as the sixties weren't the most noble times for the U.S. Garrison also thinks they had something to do with the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. 

There's some gruesome footage of Kennedy's murder shown at a trial. For some reason, Stone feels the need to show a clip of part of Kennedy's head being blown off not once, but about six times. Yeah, didn't need to see that, Ollie. Luckily it's not a close-up, but you can still tell it's very graphic. He also shows a close-up photo of the deceased Kennedy presumably taken during his autopsy. It's very jarring because his eyes are open. Ever heard the term "dead eyes"? Yeah, it's ever creepier when the person in question is actually, you know, dead.

I was flipping through an almanac from 2000 and it has the Kennedy assassination listed as number 6 of the top 100 news stories of the century. Honestly, I think that's kinda low - I would rank it as at least one of the top three! 

If you're fascinated by history, have three plus hours to kill, and even have an inkling that there was some shady business involved with Kennedy's murder, then give JFK a whirl. 

Happy Birthday, Harry!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Gary Oldman, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, David Thewlis
Released: 6/04/04
Viewed in theaters: 6/11/04

Oscar nominations:
Best Score - John Williams (lost to Jan A.P. Kaczmarek for Finding Neverland)
Best Visual Effects (lost to Spider-Man 2)

It is no coincidence that I am posting this review on Harry Potter's (and JK Rowling's) birthday. Just thought it would be a good day to post my next Harry Potter film review. I would also like to boast that I share the same birthday as Hermione which I think is pretty darn cool if I do say so myself.

This is the third film in the series and this is the point in the novels when the story really gets more interesting. We're introduced to new characters who are quite pivotal throughout the rest of the series. Of course I'm talking about Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. I know many people love this film and claim it's their favorite Potter movie and while I think it's cinematically better than the first two, I still had many issues with it, mostly the characterization of certain characters.

While enjoyable to a certain level, I always found the first two movies to be too cutesy and mostly marketed to the kiddie crowd. Of course Harry and friends are eleven and twelve in those movies, so I can somewhat understand the reasoning for that. Also, I don't know if it's because of Curaon's direction or because they're getting better with experience, but the three young actors don't act as though they're reading their lines from a cue card and the interaction between them and the other characters seem to flow much more naturally.

My biggest gripe with Azkaban is the characterization of Hermione. She is so out of character in this film, it drives me insane! First of all, she seems to take over the movie halfway through even though the movie is called HARRY POTTER and the ..... She's the one who's pretty much front and center and she steals other character's lines. But those aren't the reasons why she's OOC. Let's go through the examples, shall we? I can name three off the top of my head:

1. Hermione punches Draco: Okay, yes, Hermione dislikes Draco greatly, but punching him in the face? No, just no. If Hermione were to attack him, she'd use her wand, but even then this is the rule-following Hermione we're talking about. Now if Ron had punched Draco, that might have been more believable.

2. Hermione fretting about her hair: Ugh, I hate that scene when Harry and Hermione have used the Time-Turner and they're hiding in the woods so their past selves, who are crouching behinds the pumpkins in Hagrid's yard, don't see their future selves (I'm sure that sentence didn't make any sense for those of you who have never read the books or seen the movies!)  Hermione looks at her past self and makes the comment, "Is that really how my hair looks from the back?" Um, excuse me, but has Steve Kloves even read the books? Hermione is not the vain type who cares what her hair looks like, especially in a situation like that. It was a stupid throwaway line that wasn't needed.

3. Hermione not thinking something through: When future Harry and Hermione are trying to pry the werewolf (awful CGI, by the way), away from their past selves, Hermione howls so the wolf comes over to them and tells Harry that she "didn't think about that!" when the wolf comes running over to them. This is Hermione Granger the smartest witch in her grade and she doesn't think something through? Huh?

It's not just one little thing, it's all these scenes where she is totally out of character and it makes me wonder if Rowling was busy writing Half-Blood Prince when the film was being made because surely she wouldn't stand for this murdering of her beloved character!

Luckily there are a couple of cute HeRmiONe scenes. When they're both looking at the Shrieking Shack, Hermione suggests that they move closer. She means to the shack but Ron thinks she means to each other and gets all flustered. Also, when Buckbeat is executed, Hermione hugs Ron, but then Harry tries to get in on the action too, tisk tisk. Forget Bella and Edward! (GAG!) Ron and Hermione are the cutest literary couple from the last decade

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!