blake johnson

I have seen several movies in the last couple weeks: Wall-E, Wanted, and Batman: the Dark Knight. Two of these were spectacular. Another was spectacularly terrible. I have already encouraged you all to see Wall-E, so let me say a few things about the other two.

Wanted

This movie is a perfect example of a movie made for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The main character is so utterly unlikeable as to make the audience completely apathetic to his fate. The story is ridiculous, and I am not talking about the usual level of comic book ridiculousness either. When you (spoiler warning) find out that the assassins are getting their targets from a loom, and that the other characters find this completely normal, you know something has gone wrong with your screenplay. The movie could get away with this if it were about explaining the origin story of the hero; however, the plot and morality of the actions of the main characters depend crucially on this plot device.

The upshot of this, though, is that it makes the movie mostly laughable. I was left thinking, “what?!” so many times that I was laughing. So, in the end I was entertained by the impressive special effects and the (unintentional) hilarity of the story. I left the theater in a good mood.

The Dark Knight

Wow. I mean, wow. Spooky, creapy, dark… but with enough sunshine seeping through the cracks as to not become so depressing that it loses its audience. Summed up well by the movie itself, sometimes “the night is darkest before the dawn”. A probable posthumous Oscar is in the works for Heath Ledger.