Movie log

[trude]

Batman Begins: I haven't seen any of the previous Batman movies (I've tried to see Batman Forever twice, but it is possibly the Worst Movie Ever.), so I cannot compare this to them, but I liked it. Quite a lot actually.
If there was a major problem with it, I think it was that there was too many more or less important supporting characters, too many little subplots, that didn't get enough time to develop. Rachel and the Rachel/Bruce-relationship suffered the most from this, I think - one could see that at one stage they might have had a plan for an interesting, atypical love-interest in a superhero movie, (and compared to Mary Jane and Peter in the Spiderman movies, R/B was awesome) but both Rachel's dismissal of Bruce, her confrontation with Batman, and the scene at the end felt slightly out of place. (It doesn't help that Kate "Child-bearing woman" Holmes isn't the greatest actress around, either.)

Liam Neeson was fantastic. I must have watched Love, actually so many times that I forgotten that he can play other things than nice, sad guys.

I normally like/don't mind facial hair on men, but that thing that had crept up and died on Gary Oldman's upper lip was special. Good, very likable, performance, though.

Alfred, and Michael Caine as Alfred, rocked.

While I'm very fond of Morgan Freeman in general, and liked his performance here, his character seemed to be a bit too...convenient, but I guess there were some stuff that needed an explanation.

I didn't like the way Bruce's mother was pushed into the background. It's OK, I think, for TPTB to decide that he was closer to his father, but she died too and I'm not sure we even got to know her name.


Orlando: Re-watch. I liked it better now than I did the first time I watched it some ten years ago - but it might be that I had very high expectations on it that time, and pretty low now. Very "arty", but beautiful and quite fun - though I'm not sure that I get the point. Tilda Swinton is only convincing as a man in a "because it says so in the script!"-way, but stunningly beautiful as a woman. (Er...) Quintin Crisp is quite good as Elizabeth I, though.
Billy Zane and Swinton look extremely mis-matched, but they have nice chemistry and the scene where Orlando and Shelmerdine meet is adorable.


The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: Re-watch. Loved it back in 1989 (?) when I first saw it, loved it again now. (Insert huge sigh of relief.) The first few scenes in "fictionalized late 18th century Europe" reminded me quite a bit of "fictionalized early 19th century Europe" in The Brothers Grimm, before I remembered that they have the same director. And Evil Jonathan Pryce is back! Or already there! Or something. (Though Jackson is much scarier than Delatombe).
John Neville is a lovely Munchausen, and I liked how the "classic" elements of the baron's story is worked into the plot. Women are kind of underrepresented, but Sally Salt is still one of my favorite heroines, and little Sarah Polley was completely adorable. The Turks come off looking pretty badly. So does some of the Europeans, but...I don't know.
The scenery is kind of cardboardy at times, but it works really well, actually.
The battle at the end is a bit too long.
It's much easier to spot Gilliam's Monty Python roots here than in most of his other films (of those I've seen, anyway).

A good haul.