Hancock, dir. Peter Berg (2008)

STEVE says:

I thought this was going to be a lot lighter than it turned out to be. The trailer would have had be believe that it was a comedy, but it was far from it in the end.

It's a tale of the Reluctant Hero - in this case, the Reluctant Superhero - who eventually embraces his role and ends up saving the day. Plenty of room for hilarious hijinx here, especially with Will Smith. I'm expecting something like Men in Black with a cape. But the humour was spent in Act 1, and it quickly became a tale of redemption and unrequited love between - apparently - gods. Not what I signed up for, but it still managed to grab my attention and hold on to it for the duration.

3/5

The Dark Knight, dir. Christopher Nolan (2008)

STEVE says:

I thought Tim Burton's Batman was dark. I mean, compared to Adam West's camp comedy and Joel Schumacher's neon-loaded glam-fests, of course it was. But Christopher Nolan's new movie makes Burton's look like a little girl.

Even compared to Nolan's own Batman Begins, The Dark Knight has upped the darkness quotient. It's got a whole different feel to it. More realistic. Like it's, for once, not a comic book movie, but a movie set in the real world, of which Batman happens to be a part. Like Heat with a superhero.

But nobody's talking about the production design, or how good Chicago looked doubling for Gotham. It's all the Joker. So let's get this out of the way.

Heath Ledger was good. Very good. Different from the Joker of days past - no César Romero, this guy, and definitely (let's be very clear about this) better than Nicholson's portrayal where he showed up and, basically, gave us Jack Nicholson in white-face. Ledger took the Joker to a whole new level of dark, playing him as an anarchist instead of insane. Deeply psychotic, still, but the anarchist thing was new. So, having said that, let me say this:

Wasn't he really just doing Christian Slater?

Everybody's talking about how he channelled Jack Nicholson, but I just don't see it. First of all, you put those two performances side-by-side, and Nicholson comes off as a try-hard, playing a thug with a grudge - which is all the script really allowed for him, to be fair. But I don't see any Nicholson in Ledger's performance. If anything, it's Slater he's channelling, from Heathers.In that movie, Slater's Jason Dean was a deeply psychotic anarchist who wanted to destroy the school and everyone in it just for the sake of doing it. Ledger's Joker really isn't that far removed. Sure, there were Slater/Nicholson comparisons when Heathers hit the screens, and they weren't inappropriate. But can we please, for the love of God, stop rolling out "Nicholson" every time someone does something brilliant in a movie, huh?

4/5

Iron Man, dir. Jon Favreau (2008)

STEVE says:
Hey, Fantastic 4, Punisher, Daredevil! See? That's how you do that.

I went into Iron Man knowing nothing at all about it: I've never read an Iron Man comic, and know nothing about the character, his origins, his nemeses, none of it, so I had no preconceived notions about what the movie should be, and could judge it only on what it was.

And what it was was absolutely fucking awesome.

4/5

NIKKI says:
Is it better if you go in with no idea what you're looking at? I have no knowledge whatsoever of Iron Man, the comic, its history, the villains, and heroes, and whatnot. I'm like Deb -- I hear the words "iron man", I think of the Nutri-Grain cereal: "Iron man food!"

Still, the previews for this looked really good. I felt after so many lame movies of this type (the Spiderman sequels, X-Men 3, Fantastic Four), we were finally looking at something ready to turn that around. It appeared smart, funny, and slightly subversive with Jon Favreau at the helm and Robert Downey Jnr in the lead. Those two guys are as far from comic book movie guys as one can get.

Turns out the previews didn't lie. This is probably the best superhero movie since the original Superman. It's fast, it's clever, it's got its adult audience firmly in mind, and it doesn't waste time on stupid romantic subplots or windbag on about the state of the world. It gets in there, does its thing, and we come out knowing who iron man loves, and how he feels about his country.

It's good storytelling, good direction, and filled with a cast of real actors. Oh, wasn't that just the best? Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow -- real actors and not just hotties ripped from hip TV shows or newbies I have no chance of relating to. Everything came together to make for a really cool experience. It had cute robots, good computer effects (for once), and Ralphie was in it, from A Christmas Story. I'll see it again, for sure.

4.5/5