Simply put, Batman Begins is a great film. Christopher Nolan does an absolutely perfect job of capturing the dark mature side of the comic.
Christian Bale arguably does a better job as Batman than even Michael Keaton. Keaton’s batman was sophisticated, mature. Bale is a little hot-headed, learning to face his inner anger. He manages to make his character’s transformation very believable, and he also succeeds in portraying the character’s duality. (Which reminds me of American Psycho, in which Bale also turned in a sick but brilliant performance as the title role.)
Thanks to the development in filming technology, the new Gotham City looks surprisingly dark and detailed. Batman’s gadgets are all duly upgraded to the next level of detail, and the new Bat-mobile has a sick sense of humor (IMO). All these efforts help to create a very believable environment in which the story is developed in.
The other cast members also deserve credit. A lot of big names are up there, but they dutifully stay to their roles and don’t steal the show.
The first half of the film can feel to be a little confusing, but once the momentum kicks in, it never stops. One hell of a ride.
8/10
As a small Michael Mann fan, I was quite disappointed with Miami Vice. I was looking for some of the same kind of intense storytelling in Heat, however this film just feels to drag along.
It would be quite an unfair comparison, to put Miami Vice and Heat together. To start off, the latter has Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, arguably in their finest form. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx has some screen appeal (especially Foxx), but they can’t pull the film together by their sheer force alone.
But they are not really given chances to shone, either; I felt the film was surprisingly lacking in developing the two main characters. Throughout the film, not much is built on the first impressions. All we see is two serious cops. In a typical cliche, one falls for the druglord’s woman. But even this romance does not reveal much more about the character, except perhaps he enjoys the “action”.
In Heat, the plot was complex but straightforward. Tension was maintained well. In Vice, there are only bits of agonizing tension. And on the action side, while Vice succeeds in bringing more realistic gore on to the screen, the shootouts were far less memorable than Heat.
Again, I really don’t want to compare the two, as I’m sure I’m biased towards Heat, who happens to be one of my favorite crime dramas. Still, that’s no excuse for Miami Vice being such a disappointment.
As the 3rd and (perhaps final) installment of the X-Men franchise, The Last Stand carries the series tradition of exploring philosophical themes through some rather intense action.
Compared to the 2 previous films, the 3rd film certainly didn’t feel as ambitious. The over-the-top special effects are no longer that awe-inspiring, and there isn’t a strong sense of character development, probably because there are so many characters, and each character has so little time for him/her self.
The film focuses on another crisis that the mutants face: a cure has been development that could remove their special talents and turn them into ordinary people. While this may seem to the humans as the catch-all solution to all their problems, the mutants certainly think they have their own choice in whether they want to be mutants or humans.
The plot feels to be a bit too messy. There’s a lot of plot devices of convenience to just push the story forward, and while it is acceptable, it certainly makes the film feel very hasty. No character is really portrayed in detail. A few just dies, making you wish for more scenes from them. The film is built on the assumption that you’ve seen the previous works, and know each character’s own story by heart. Again, nothing wrong with this, but having not seen the prior works in quite some time, it does make the characters far more distant.
I didn’t have time to write this, but the week before last I was in the NE for my first ever field trip. It was a 3 day trip to Liaoning. Stayed in Shenyang, and traveled to Yingkou for 1 day.
It wasn’t very intensive, but definitey physically challenging. I felt exhausted going back to the hotel in Shenyang on that Yingkou day. The coach ride was a full 2 and a half hours.
It was also a challenge for me to really try to interview somebody, and try to get as much information as possible, on an industry that I didn’t have any experience. But then again, I don’t have experience in any industry…
All in all, I don’t think I wasted my time on this trip. It was demanding, but also rewarding. The only painful thing was that the more I saw and noticed, the more I had to write down in my notes… I spent a whole afternoon typing furiously…
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