Batman Begins

We also saw Batman Begins this weekend. It certainly did not disappoint. I, of course, enjoyed the darkness (if you thought Tim Burton's version was dark, wait 'til you get a load of Christopher Nolan's) and the general scary atmosphere. One of the bad guys in this one, played by Cillian Murphy, who single-handedly made me want to see Red-Eye, has a spray that induces hallucinogenic panic in his victims. That is pretty neat, and any movie with fire-breathing horses is liable to be pretty cool.

We saw the movie at the Imax, which was incredible. That magnified my only major criticism of the movie: the fight sequences were shot at such close quarters that it was really difficult to tell what was going on. I found this doubly annoying because the movie spends so much time building up his training that it would be fun to see how he put it into use and because I study karate and am always curious now to see if I recognize any moves. Even seeing the fights giant-size really didn't help the clarity.

Overall, though, this was a minor criticism, and I loved the movie. The characters were all great, except for Katie Holmes'. However, I think it was less a function of her incompetence as an actress and more the role she was playing. Her character was just annoying, and I really don't think it would have matter who was delivering the lines.

I also gave a thumbs up to Christian Bale as Batman. I still rank Michael Keaton as my favorite Batman, but it's pretty close. I think if I needed to fight crime, though, I would pick Christian Bale's Batman. The way he growled and spit out his lines was very menacing. With him, you could really believe that cold-blooded criminals would be afraid of a man in a bat suit.

In conclusion, go see the movie and hope that you don't end up in front of the same inappropriately laughing Asian man that we did.