Batman Begins

Currently the best Batman origin film.

Opening with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in a foreign prison makes for an interesting start of this superhero film. Indeed, the first act which deals with his history and how he slowly becomes Batman is the strongest part. Ironically when he does start showing up as Batman the plot seems to loosen up a bit (in a bad way), adding some tiny scenes that aren't necessary and strange flaws like added dialogue in inappropriate sections or a mobile vehicle seat that seems extremely inconvenient.

Jack Gleeson is in it too!

The theme of fear is what ties the movie together but it also makes the "fight" scenes one sided (but cool). Fight is in quotes there because there is no real fighting except for the start/end of act one and the finale. Just people getting their asses handed to them. That's not a bad thing, but it could be if you were expecting more beat em up instead of stealth take downs.

Despite the negatives I'm listing I still highly recommend this film. Acting wise everyone is great, the music is superb and as far as I'm concerned this is one of the best Batman films to date, only outdone by it's sequel - the Dark Knight. I give Batman Begins four blue flowers out of five.

The New World

Pocahontas as you've never experienced before, and with any luck - never will.

Basically this is the Pocahontas story without any singing, though it mostly follows male leads Colin Farrell (1st half) then Christian Bale (2nd half) and their "love" for the native princess. On the positive side, the sets and costumes are fantastic. The score a little lacking but I can see what they were trying to do with a sweeping string piece for the ship shots, a piano piece for Farrell and a piano piece for Bale. Alas most of the time, the music doesn't match what's taking place.

Also, Pocahontas seems to be tripping balls for 30% of the movie.

Worse still is that the movie suffers from very odd cutting, inserting random geography shots (which by themselves are nice), and definitely too much of "he looks at her, she looks back" shots - sometimes around ten in a row. This, in combination with quiet internal monologues from each lead plus a general lack of action makes for an incredibly dull tale as the plot moves along at a turtle's pace. A turtle climbing Mt. Everest, while missing two legs and carrying seven anvils. If you want to waste almost three hours of your life then this film is for you, otherwise I deem it Not Worth Watching and give it one sailing ship out of five.

The Machinist

"If you were any thinner you wouldn't exist."

This movie serves as my example of what a good opening credits sequence is. It's a still shot in which a skeletal Christian Bale is rolling up a body in a carpet and then having a smoke. Nothing fancy and no stupid helicopter shots of a city. Anywho, that aside this movie has one main driving force: intrigue. Bale works as a machinist who suffers from severe insomnia and general unwellness.

If only I could find that fridge...

Things get much worse when his condition causes an accident at work and almost the entire world seems to turn on him. It's an interesting movie, and all the puzzle pieces mostly fall into place at the end but there are moments that range from "uncomfortable" to well beyond the realms of "WTF".

The quote above is said to Bale's character a few times but it could also be said of the underlying plot. Despite the film's best effort I still can't help but give it only one and half post-it notes out of five because it simply isn't as entertaining as some of the other movies I've already seen. For that same reason I have no desire to watch it again nor can I recommend it to anyone. :(

Noah (2014)

Really not like the version you'd probably know.

During the time when the children of Cain were plenty and doing naughty stuff, a man named Noah was chosen by "the creator" to save the innocent while everything else perished with a cleansing flood. While this movie certainly has the tale of Noah's Ark in it, a lot of liberties were added too such as fallen angels (who turned out to be pretty cool) and Noah being a violent and somewhat cold hearted vegetarian who has no problem in -directly- killing people (much like Bale's Moses).

One angry man with an axe.

I didn't really mind that part, since he was going to drown them anyway and was the grandson of a man who once slew an entire army single handedly. Other things I quite liked were the silhouette scenes and how they portrayed the passage of time. Speaking of, apparently Jennifer Connelly's character is the only one immune to aging. That's nothing compared to the other problems though. Like wouldn't the combined animal poop make the ship explode with that many torches? Just kidding.

Ham, the middle son. WTF was going through his head? He remains unsure of everything all the way to the end. I also found it funny that Noah gets an instant-magic forest, but an ark? Oh you'll need to work for that. Lastly the third act was... unpleasant? After the awesome climax of "act 2", making Noah into a villain was... different. I'll give it that, but trying to then redeem him in what seemed to be ten minutes? Nope. Bad script right there. BAD! Have some conviction writers. After what you did to him, it would have been more satisfying had he been executed at that point. Executed slowly.

Much like the animals that boarded his ark in pairs, I give Noah two fiery swords out of five.

Exodus: Gods and Kings & Prince of Egypt (1998)

A tale of two Moses?

Continuing from my previous religious movie review, these two stories follow the life of Moses - adapted son of the pharaoh who learns of his past, goes away for a bit and due to an encounter on a mountain returns a changed man with a mission to set all the slaves free. Obviously there are differences between the two, and I'm talking more than just one has Christian Bale and the other is a cartoon with a lot of singing. We'll look at Exodus first.

The movie opens with a bit of reading and that's never a good thing if your movie doesn't include the words "Star Wars" in the title. Bale's Moses is a skilled warrior who has no problem shanking enemies with swords when he feels like, and he feels like it often. He's also starts out as an atheist who only believes in himself. It's a little odd but hey, they wanted something new so that's fine.

Despite this he seems to be the favored "son" of the pharaoh since Ramses in this movie doesn't really understand the managerial part of his position. I should point out too that while Moses here ages it seems Ramses doesn't. Must have good genes? The time skips were also... sudden?

Warrior Moses personally sending people to hell!

Anywho, this movie tries to down play the powers and plagues (apart from the last one) in an attempt to make things more plausible rather than miraculous. The 3D effects of these are awesome, but they do make Moses look like a bit of a crazy chump on the sidelines and not actively doing anything.

In the Prince of Egypt, Moses is a scoundrel and trouble maker but that doesn't stop him from being good friends with his step brother, Ramses. He does kill someone too but it really shatters him entirely (unlike Bale's more ruthless counterpart). He also sticks to the staff wielding version which basically makes him the main conduit for everything to flow through. It's good to see that the Egyptian priests also had powers from their own gods to show off too, but more or less everything goes exactly as you'd expect which is surprising given the amount of death.

Wizard Moses ponders if he should attack the darkness, or summon it.

Art wise, Dreamworks did a good job here and all the character animation is fantastic. The part that involves the hieroglyph dream is pretty awesome too. What isn't so good is the music. Apart from the first song and the last (female duet) the ones in the middle are all various degrees of mediocre - especially when characters just sing in their heads instead of out loud.

Scoring time! While both movies had their own faults I did quite enjoy them equally so they both get two and a half plagues out of five from me. Which one would I want to watch again? Prince of Egypt, purely because I quite like the animation.