Comics and Kung Fu
Batman Begins: First off, it’s the best Batman film by a country mile, but that sounds like damning it with faint praise. It’s much darker than the others, with no comic relief at all, but it still feels a bit reigned in. I don’t know whether it was to keep a low-ish age rating, but it felt like it could have been a bit more intense. The ‘Batman Vs the Templars’ storyline was also kind of dull.
I saw it at the IMAX cinema, so all of the landscape and scenery shots looked great, but the fight scenes had the Bourne Supremacy problem of looking like they’d been shot on the dodgems. On the huge screen it started to get painful after a while.
I still think that the new batmobile is gubbins, and ‘Bat SatNav’ isn’t exactly the greatest superhero gadget ever invented. At least the batsuit didn’t have nipples this time. The psychotropic effects were neat, and did a much better job of getting the feel of the film across than the lingering city shots. So, pretty good, but could have done with being even more bleak.
Kung Fu Hustle: This had some great moments. Bits of it were face achingly funny. The main problem was that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. It veers between slapstick, fight scenes, Hollywood spoofs and an attempt at a poignant story, but never really gets the balance right. It might have been more effective if Beat Takeshi’s Zatoichi remake hadn’t tried a similar trick and pulled it off perfectly.
It felt quite a lot like watching a live-action anime, and not just for the obvious cartoony effects shots. The characterisation and scene setup reminded me of Samurai Champloo for some reason.
It was a lot of fun to watch, but didn’t leave much of a lasting impression.