As you know, the big movie that is opening this weekend is The Dark Knight, the latest in a series of movies that focus on the Batman universe. Many people around my age were introduced to Batman for the first time through the Tim Burton movies where Batman was played by Michael Keaton. The villain in that first Batman movie was Joker, as played by the wonderfully eccentric Jack Nicholson.

Appropriately enough, the first super villain to appear in this Christian Bale era of Batman movies (I don’t think the bad guy in Batman Begins really counts) is Joker too, except this time, the criminal kook is played by the Heath Ledger. Nicholson and Ledger approached the roles in very different ways, but who did a better job at portraying the violent jester? Who is the better Joker?

This is a question posed by the people at Slashfilm, culminating in a mashup trailer for Joker vs. Joker (embedded below). I haven’t watched The Dark Knight yet, but I definitely want to watch it. It looks positively epic. Interestingly, every Batman movie after Nicholson had two villains each (one of which featured Two-Face). I guess it takes two bad guys to equal one Wacky Jack.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what Christian Bale is up to next, he’s going to play John Connor in Terminator 4. T3 wasn’t nearly as good as Terminator 2, so let’s hope T4 is an improvement.

While everyone else may be crowding the patios and the beaches this weekend, you may be inclined to escape the heat in favor of the air conditioning you’ll find inside your local movie theatre.

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed three mediocre movies that should be available on DVD, so I thought that it would be nice to highlight three movies that are still playing at the multiplexes for this go-around. Better still, all three of these movies are actually pretty good.

It’s summertime, so you’re allowed to shut off your brain for a couple hours at a time. Watching a good movie is a great way to relieve the stresses related to work. Relax for a change and enjoy yourself.

WALL-E
When I first saw the trailers to WALL-E, I thought that it was a rather lame concept. Why would Disney and Pixar make an animated film that would involve next to no dialogue? It’s just a stupid robot bandying around in a pseudo-postapocalyptic world, picking up garbage all day. Big deal. Even though the film started to receive overwhelmingly positive reviews, I remained skeptical. And then I was wowed. Yes, there is no real dialogue — aside from robot noises and body language — for about the first half of the movie, but there is enough chemistry and communication there for you to totally understand what is going on between the trash-compacting WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class) and EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). It’s gut-wretchingly cute at times and it almost feels like Pixar is trying too hard to melt your heart, but the end product (and love story) is incredibly endearing and you can’t help but love the open-eyed innocence of WALL-E.

Iron Man
Superhero movies typically aren’t that great unless you’re a big fan of the series. When you watch Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider, for instance, you should expect little more than some character recognition and giant explosions. Iron Man still offers character recognition and big booms, but you really start to believe that Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. He is absolutely terrific in the role and I think that Iron Man could have easily held its own without the backing of a Marvel fanboy-base. It does drag on a little longer than it should and I found Gwyneth Paltrow to be a little awkward in her role, but Iron Man is definitely worth the price of admission. You have to see it on the big screen to truly appreciate it.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Although I’m a relatively big fan of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, I was never really all that big on Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford is not the young man he used to be and he looks even older next to the babyfaced Shia LaBeouf. The action is a little slow to get going and the story behind the crystal skull is nowhere near what I was expecting (I won’t spoil it for you), but the acting is right where you’d expect it to be. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may have bigger proportions than earlier Indy Jones movies, but it’s still not nearly as epic as the Temple of Doom or Raiders of the Lost Ark.

If you’re looking for a little inspiration for my creativity contest, maybe the video below can lend you a hand. In it, we see the most feared bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe let loose with a little Flashdance. I never knew Boba Fett knew how to dance. What a feeling!

Happy Saturday, everyone.

[Flash/Javascript needed. Go to the original post if you can't see the video.]

The summer months provide an excellent opportunity to be a tourist in your own town, but there are also plenty of great blockbuster movies to enjoy as well. If you’re not as inclined to fight the crowds at the local multiplex, you may be better off looking into renting a DVD.

Last month, I took a look at three very different movies and I’m doing much the same today. Whether you’re into gambling, intense action, or a little bit of fantasy, I’ve got a film here for you to consider. Too bad they’re all pretty mediocre at best.

21 - The Movie
Those who like to gamble will find an obvious appeal to this movie about raking in unfathomable amounts of money in Las Vegas. Loosely based on the book Bringing Down the House, 21 follows a group of brilliant students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who, with the aid of one of their professors, manages to “beat the house” in blackjack through a rather simple card-counting scheme. Card counting is not illegal, per se, but it is certainly frowned upon by the casinos. Kevin Spacey does a pretty good job playing the money-happy professor and the rest of the cast are believable and admirable. In the end, the tale is more about the psychology of greed than anything else. I was a little disappointed with the ending, but there is enough substance here to keep you entertained for the length of the movie.

Death Proof (Grind House)
One half of the Grind House double feature from Quintin Tarantino, Death Proof was a terribly strange film. As far as I can surmise, it surrounds the character of Stuntman Mike McKay, played by Kurt Russell. This Stuntman Mike is the proud owner of a stunt car that he says is — you guessed it — immune to death. It’s a decrepit looking thing and it would look totally out of place at just about any auto show. The plot is very segmented and it feels like Death Proof is actually comprised of several similar tales told over and over again. There are some exchanges that will bore you to death and then when the action comes, it’s actually quite shocking. Maybe this film makes more sense with Planet Terror, the other half of the Grindhouse double feature.

Golden Compass
You could say that the initial fascination surrounding Golden Compass came from the excitement that people enjoyed through the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies. It’s a fantasy film that combines real-life action with a significant amount of computer-generated imagery. I went in with rather low expectations, hoping that the armored polar bears would make up for any other deficits, but I still came out the other end utterly disappointed. Nicole Kidman is forgettable and the tale, as it is told, does not even hold a candle to better films in this genre. Don’t waste your time with Golden Compass. The needle points to two hours you’ll never get back.

I’ll admit that I didn’t exactly have very high expectations for Kung-Fu Panda. It just seemed like such an outlandish proposition to have Jack Black provide the voice to animated panda, let alone one that would go around beating the tar out of bad guys using advanced martial arts. I figured that it would just be yet another animated movie that dangled from a thin plot by an even thinner thread.

Thankfully, I was very pleasantly surprised by Kung Fu Panda. Created by the good people at Dreamworks Animation, Kung Fu Panda follows the tale of a blundering idiot of a panda named Po, voiced by Jack Black. He was raised to sell noodles alongside his goose father Mr. Ping, but this is not the life that he desired for himself. He has an ambition to become a great kung-fu master and through some strange stroke of luck, he comes to be earmarked as the Dragon Warrior, a distinction that has not been bestowed for a thousand years.

The comedy in Kung Fu Panda, for the most part, is of the slapstick variety. We laugh as Po makes an idiot of himself, crashing in every which direction and getting abused by the various training exercises. You shouldn’t expect much in terms of sophisticated humor in this film, because you just won’t get it. Instead, you will see Po struggle to lug his noodle cart up a long flight of stone stairs, only to see that he has barely made it five steps. You will watch as he gets his ass handed to him by a tiny insect. But that’s okay, because that’s the kind of movie that Kung Fu Panda is.

Serving as Po’s master is Master Shifu, a red panda voiced by Dustin Hoffman. I found the naming of this character to be a little strange, because it is ultimately redundant. Shifu literally translates as “master” or “teacher” in Chinese. I also found that Master Shifu was some strange blend of Master Splinter from the ninja turtles and the furry protagonist from Gremlins.

In fact, it seems that Kung Fu Panda has borrowed many elements from other popular films and television shows. The awkwardness and clumsiness of Po in his attempts to learn kung-fu are not unlike those that we witnessed in Beverly Hills Ninja with the late Chris Farley. The way that things seem to work out for him without making a distinct effort is very Winnie the Pooh-like in nature. Even the evil Tai Lung, who serves as the primary villian in the film, made me think of Scar from The Lion King.

Despite being a little generic and unoriginal in its approach, Kung Fu Panda has enough substance to warrant the price of admission. The tale is heartwarming and Jack Black actually does a reasonable job portraying an ill-fit kung-fu master of a fat panda. The action scenes are surprisingly intense and the physical comedy will easily keep you amused for the full 92 minutes. The all-star cast — which includes Jackie Chan, Angelina Jolie, Michael Clarke Duncan, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen, and Wayne Knight, among others — is pretty impressive too.

Whether a certain panda slayer would approve, however, remains to be seen.

As we all ease ourselves into the weekend, it is perhaps appropriate that I take a look at three very different movies, all of which are available for rental (or purchase) on DVD.

None of these films is nearly as epic as Cloverfield, nor do any of them come with animated animals like the upcoming Kung-Fu Panda, but they each have a little something special to offer all the movie fans in the audience.

The three flicks being reviewed today are The Omen, Hard Candy, and Idiocracy.

The Omen is yet another in a long history of horror movies that combine the paradoxical cuteness of children with the fury and fear associated with the Devil. Even though I am not a Christian myself, I totally dig movies that dive into religion and address the issues of good versus evil. The premise is that the young boy above has been possessed by some sort of demonic spirit. Ironically, the name of the child is Damien. While this movie does touch upon the occult and there are a couple of moments that might make you jump, there just aren’t enough thrills or insight in this film to make it worthwhile. The anticlimactic conclusion is particularly disappointing.

Hard Candy is a seriously disturbing movie. It stars Ellen Page of Juno fame, but don’t expect her character to be quite as whimsical. Hard Candy approaches the topics of child pornography and child molestation, with Page’s character trapping a man who she believes is guilty of both (the promotional poster has a girl in a red hood standing in the middle of a bear trap). She goes so far as to take the man hostage and threaten to castrate him herself. The subject matter is clearly taboo, but this film is incredibly thought-provoking. You may or may not like it, but one thing is for sure: you’ll be talking about Hard Candy the next day. Highly recommended.

Idiocracy is the quirky creation of Mike Judge, the same man that brought us King of the Hill, Office Space, and Beavis and Butthead. In Idiocracy, a remarkably average soldier is cryogenically frozen and they neglect to unfreeze him at the end of the experiment. He wakes up 500 years in the future in a world where everyone has gone stupid. All the “smart” people in the world pursued their educations and their careers to the point where they failed to procreate. All the “dumb” people, however, did it like rabbits and reproduced in monumental numbers. As a result, this remarkably average soldier awakens as the world’s smartest man. The humor is crude (a future television show is called “Ow! My Balls!”) and the story isn’t the best, but the message portrayed in Idiocracy is one that we should all take to heart.