Brian's Thoughts on Movies

I should preface my remarks by saying that I have never read a Batman comic book so I am only looking at these films as a moviegoer.   I understand that Nolan draws from the comic books in plotting and designing these films but I am only interested in the results on screen.   Nolan’s films tell a three part story of about 35 years in the life of Gotham City and its most famous resident, Bruce Wayne. As a child I watched a few reruns of the 1960s Batman show and only enjoyed Burgess Meredith as the Penguin with his large cigarette holder.   In 1989 as a teenager I saw Tim Burton’s Batman with Michael Keaton and kind of enjoyed it, though I never understood why it was such a huge phenomenon.   Keaton was interesting as Bruce Wayne and Jack Nicholson was a lot of fun as The Joker but too much of the film was told from the Kim Basinger’s uninteresting character’s point of view.   B atman Returns was, save for Michelle Pfeiffer’s fantastic Catwoman, a comple...

                        Django Unchained   In Quentin Tarantino’s films over the past ten years, someone horribly wronged plans a bloody revenge against the perpetrators.   In Kill Bill, Uma Thurman pursued five people who had shot her and killed everyone at her wedding rehearsal In a two part story.   In Inglourious Basterds Jewish soldiers killed and scalped villainous Nazis and a major stem of the plot focused on a Jewish girl whose family had been killed by the Nazis planning her revenge against Nazi leadership in a movie theatre.   It was a complex film despite having a straightforward theme and I thought it stood with the best of Tarantino’s work.   It mixed genres but was most memorably an unconventional adventure film.  To give a sense of perspective let me quickly state how I liked other Tarantino films.   Pulp Fiction...