FilmBender: sh*tfaced on movies

"Thank You for Smoking" kills me

Aaron Eckhart is the man!  This guy is Thank You for Smoking.  I mean, I suppose he was in Erin Brockovich, and he was just in The Dark Knight.  But he's pretty much forgettable other than that, right?  Well... for Smoking, he surely dug deep, back to his debut role in the tiny indie film, Company of Men.  Now, that one is the movie guy's, guy movie of all time (if you haven't seen it... cruel but great).

Anyway, in this movie Aaron is the spin-master who can talk anybody's way out of anything, on the spot, with 5 billion people staring at him.  Total f-ing stud (and sh*t man, my face turns beet red giving a high school speech on BMX racing in front of a class of 25 peeps).

So... as you can likely gather from the title, he's the chief spokesman and lobbyist for big tobacco, and he totally kicks *ss.  Maria Bello is also in it too, I think.  She's from History of Violence, I believe.  And Katie Holmes and Rob Lowe are in it too... they're good and all, but mainly mentioning that just for the seo value.

 

FilmBender is Funny Movie Reviews.  What a movie... guy movie.  If Aaron wants to go toe to toe with me on a movie binge, then I say bring it on.  I mean a full on back to back to back filmtacular gorge is what I'm talking about... until the first one burns out.  Or, if he thinks he can write with italic more than me, or use more commas, or... elipses... then let's go.  Other than that, for the dude in this film... I bow down.  I'm, dead...

"The Dark Knight" is hard to see

I'm not a comic book geek.  Not a good/bad thing... just a qualifier.  It's also probably the reason why I was the last person I know to go see the movie, The Dark Knight.  Ultimately, that tainted the film for me -- hearing the hype from everyone, everywhere and, often, hearing it first hand.  "It's amazing," they said.  The same thing nearly happened to me on Iron Man -- the impossibility of living up to the hype.  But that's not a reasonable excuse for the let down I felt because a great movie should be able to survive such an imposing villain as hype -- especially a super hero movie, Batman of course, that's directed by the superbly apt, Christopher Nolan of Memento fame.  As I've vocalized here on FilmBender, for example, The Matrix crushed the hype.  Maybe that's because the hero in that one didn't even know he was, er, one.

But we all know that wasn't the case here.  It had nothing to do with the hero.  It was because of the film's actual villain, the psychotic Joker, as we all know played by what appears to be the dead body of Heath Ledger.  And his cadaver did an incredible job -- even better than the nearly-dead Jack Nicholson's campy version that received almost as much hype for his performance when that installment was theatrically released.  I'm just not sure it was enough, or should have to be enough, to save the day.  I mean, sh*t, it is supposed to be Christian Bale's (Batman's) movie.

I might even add that it also went on a scene or two too long, and that's bad coming from a guy who can beer bong a trilogy.  I'm sorry to put such a downer on it, but you'll thank me for it.  Oh, yeah, and there isn't any nudity in it either.  Because if you haven't seen it, you'll appreciate that I've unhyped it.  And since I don't know a ton about the original story, I'm not sure if the ending is faithful, abrupt, good, bad, a cop out, genius or just a sheer lack of creativity.  But check it out... you might like it.  And if Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anthony Michael Hall, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman don't make for a strange group of stars to round out a movie, I don't know what is.

 

FilmBender is Funny Movie Reviews.  OK... so I lied. You will love this movie. The Batcycle and all the gizmos and action sequences rock. And I love how The Joker re-counts the carving of his smile like a schizo. The best Batman movie by a Batmile  :p