The Dark Knight Rises Review

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Thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims of the Aurora shootings. Such a senseless and horrific act should have no place in this world.

Is there a better slogan than 'The Legend Ends'? Just awesome.

This review will be mostly spoiler-free but may (probably will) contain some spoilers, (no major ones though, that is a promise) you have been warned.


After 2008's masterful 'The Dark Knight' (a movie I have watched too many times to count) nobody knew whether or not director Christopher Nolan would be able to direct a sequel that would even come close to it. The Dark Knight featured what was arguably the late Heath Ledger's best performance in a movie ever, the psychopathic Joker, Batman's arch nemesis. The Dark Knight had a great story, phenomenal acting, great action scenes, and way too many fantastic quotes to count; asking someone to make a sequel to that movie was basically asking for an absolute flop. Nolan however came through, and he came through in a big way. Not only was 'The Dark Knight Rises' a good film, it somehow managed to meet expectations and match the ridiculous hype that had been building up prior to the movies release.So did Nolan do the unthinkable and make a better movie than the Dark Knight? That is a question I will save for the end of this review.

Seeing as I don't really want to rehash the plot, or summarize the movie, I will just break this review down into some categories and talk about what I enjoyed.

Style

The film relies on the use of flashbacks to a much greater extent than the other movies in the trilogy. While different, it did not really take anything off of the table in terms of how the movie flowed. In fact, I have no idea how some of the plot twists (ones that I will not touch upon in this review, but will say were really a lot of fun) would have worked without using flashbacks; as always, in Nolan we trust. The main problems that most people seem to have with this movie is that 'the set up is too clunky' and 'too many new characters are introduced'. While there were many shorter scenes in the opening act of the movie, I did not really find them to be 'clunky'. I actually liked how all sides of the story were being shown at once, rather than doing them individually.As for the characters, this movie introduces Bane (the main villain), Miranda Tate (business partner with Wayne Enterprises), Selina Kyle (Catwoman), and Jason Blake (a rookie cop). The movie actually introduced a few more, but those characters that I did not mention only served to move the story forward, rather than directly impacting it (as the characters I mentioned did). Again, I did not really find this to be an annoyance and criticizing the movie for its character selection would be nitpicking at best. What nobody should have an issue with is the action scenes. Put simply: you will not be bored during this movie. The bat-gadgets and vehicles were also really cool and it was nice to see Bruce Wayne display his intelligence in certain scenes.

Acting

There really is not much to point out here other than the fact that all of the actors and actresses did a really, really good job. Tom Hardy was fantastic given the fact that half his face was covered by a mask for the entire movie, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception) did an admirable job of playing a hot-headed rookie police officer, but the star of the show was Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. I have to admit, when I heard about Hathaway being cast for this role I was very skeptical. After seeing some of the previews, my skepticism subsided a bit, and after watching the movie I can't believe I ever doubted her.  Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Catwoman was probably just as good as Ledger's portrayal of the Joker in the overall scheme of the Batman universe. I really think that those two performances will be hard to top in future Batman movies. Bottom line: this movie would not have been as good without Anne Hathaway's incredible performance, that is a fact.

Score

The music for this film sensational, you can't really go wrong with Hans Zimmer.

Story

The movie is basically an incredible roller-coaster ride (except with no down points) that is a lot of fun to watch. Many were disappointed that batman (Bruce Wayne wearing the actual suit) does not appear as much as he did in the other two movies. (Ironically enough, this is one of the few batman movies that actually makes things about Bruce Wayne, who appears a whole lot in the film). Although Batman did not appear as much as the comic book nerd in me wanted him too, it was not that much of an issue, as there was plenty of material to fill in that void.

So how did this movie stack up to the Dark Knight?The problem with reviewing The Dark Knight Rises is that people will inevitably try to compare it with its predecessor. In this era people seem obsessed with;the next 'thing' (for lack of a better word) always surpassing the thing that came before it. When it comes to movie sequels, this obsession creates an unfair perception and ultimately detracts from the movie going experience of the sequel. For example, upon exiting the theater both of the times I have watched this movie, I heard people talking, not about what they just saw, but how it compared to the Dark Knight. Some people believed that it was better, some thought it was much worse, but the point is that they were not talking about the movie, instead they were comparing it. By automatically trying to argue (for or against) whether or not 'Rises' is better than the Dark Knight, people don't give 'Rises' the chance to be better. That's not to say that I think that 'Rises' is better than the Dark Knight, the truth is that at this point: I don't know. Until some time passes, and I am able to enjoy 'Rises' a few more times I wont know the answer, nor will I try to find it. All I know is that we as fans, have been incredibly lucky to be able to experience such great super hero flicks, for now we should just sit back and enjoy them, not compare them.


Overall Rating for 'The Dark Knight Rises' 9.7/10 Bonus points for the fact that it did not miss a beat, even on the second viewing. Up next for Christopher Nolan: an executive producer seat on this.

Chills every time I watch it.

Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 2: 'Madrigal' Review

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As always, there will be spoilers  in this review, you have been warned.


Now that was a really good episode. The pacing, tone, story, and acting (acting has never actually been in question with this series, but it still warrants mentioning) were all top notch. I don't think that it is merely coincidence that the formula: less Skyler = better episode came into play here. As I have stated before, Skyler's story-lines only seem to get in the way of the main plot, while at the same time managing to be horrendously boring and uninteresting. Less Skyler means more Mike, a really under-rated character in my opinion, I get that what he does is popular among breaking bad fans, but his actual character might be the best one on the show. I will touch on that point as I go through the episode in more detail.

Breaking Bad Season 5 Episode 1:Live Free Or Die Review

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Be warned, there are spoilers ahead. So if you have not seen the episode you should probably stop reading this right now... unless you like spoilers in which case keep reading.
Quick tangent:  AMC decided to split season 5 into two parts. As if it wasn't bad enough that we had to sit through endless promos for the garbage that is 'small town security' throughout the season premiere. Finding out that this 'season' will only have 8 episodes this summer, then conclude with 8 episodes next summer did not make for a fun night, but I digress

After a long wait (seriously, it felt like forever) we can finally watch Breaking Bad again. The season premiere wasted no time and quickly picked up right from where we last left the show but not before treating us to a scene from the future. We know that Breaking Bad is not afraid to flash forward and show glimpses of where the current plot may be going (remember the pink teddy bear from the plane collision in season 2?) and the scene they showed was very interesting indeed. Seeing Walt buying an M-60 on his fifty-second birthday using an alias in New Hampshire obviously brings up a lot of questions, but those are probably questions that we wont have answered until the summer of 2013 when part two of season 5 is set to air.

Following the flash-forward scene, we got to the immediate aftermath of last season's finale.The writers did their best to answer many lingering questions from last season, including what happened to Ted. The answer to that one probably made many fans let out an audible groan. I've hated all story points involving Ted and Skyler so far and that trend continued in this episode. I really hate to start the review here, but I really want to get this out of the way before moving on to the good stuff. I pointed out before how incredibly stupid it was for Skyler to support Ted and try to save him from the IRS precisely because of what happened in this episode. Obviously Ted is going to be blackmailing Skyler which is just going to bring more complications (ones they easily could have avoided). At this point I hope Mike sneaks into the hospital and cuts his head off.

Whew!, now on to the story lines you actually care about. Walt quickly moves to destroy any remaining evidence that could be used against him. He cleans up the materials he used to make the bomb that killed Gus and he gets rid of the 'Lily of the Valley' plant that he used to poison Brock (and his involvement in the poisoning was confirmed by Saul later in the episode). This is what I like to see: characters acting logically! Unfortunately for Walt, he forgot about the cameras from the meth lab; the same cameras that had been recording him and Jesse cooking meth for months. To make matters worse for our favorite anti-hero, the hard-drive that stored the videos is in the hands of the police. Realizing that they could be done for, Jesse and Walt convince Mike (nice to see that he has recovered nicely) to help them destroy the evidence. The scenes with these three were really fun to watch. From the tense confrontation where Mike wanted to shoot Walt (stopped only by Jesse), to the scene where they were arguing about how to destroy the evidence (where Jesse of all people had the best idea on how to do it, "magnets") there never was a dull moment.

I wont get into too many details about how they managed to destroy the evidence (it has been an extended hiatus from writing for me, I need to warm up a bit) but long story short: their elaborate plan appears to have worked. What will be really interesting to see though, is what was written on the inner frame of one of Gustavo Fring's photos. Scenes from the next episode revealed that Walt will try and recruit Mike into a partnership, will it work? Mike is not exactly Walters number one fan (ironically, Mike openly questions Jesse's loyalty to Walt while he pretty much has the same exact allegiance to Gus, it doesn't really add to this, but it is interesting to point out) but if that means more scenes of them together, then sign me up. Overall, this was a very fast paced episode that looked to answer a lot of remaining questions, while setting up future plot points. We are only 15 episodes away from seeing just how far Walter White will fall and if this episode is any indication; it will be a fun ride.

Overall score for this episode 8.1/10 It was a very entertaining and fast-paced episode, but nothing too drastic happens that would warrant a higher score.


Best scene: Mike and Walter arguing over how to destroy the evidence room, while Jesse yells "Magnets" about 9 times before they listen to him.


The AMC decision to split this season: -12/10 


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