The Dark Knight: A+ Awesomeness!

(semi-spoiler alert)

Director Christopher Nolan, as far as I can tell, doesn’t make bad movies (Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, and Batman Begins are among his accomplishments). Dark, brooding, dense, challenging, brilliant movies - yeah, he makes those, and The Dark Knight is no exception. I don’t remember exactly my initial impression of Batman Begins, other than that I liked it a lot. Well, this most recent movie made an impression on me, and it was this: gee, Batman’s world sure is a dark and depressing place, yet so interesting! This movie was by no means a pick-me-up. It was gritty and intense. Quite a few people died. It had a menacing, often violent (albeit sometimes morbidly funny) villain. It had strained and crushed ideals, disturbing ethical dilemmas, and some tragic character outcomes. And let’s face it - that was not a happy ending! But you know, those were the same things which made this such an engrossing, interesting and therefore, in my book at least, excellent movie. Nolan sure knows how to raise the bar on good filmmaking - I can’t wait for the next one!

Do women ever direct films?

It dawned on me yesterday, as I was watching the closing credits of “An Inconvenient Truth” (which I actually found to be quite convincing), that I can’t think of a single prominent female film director in our country. Don’t women direct films? According to Wikipedia, the definitive source of all things true, they do. However, I barely recognized any of the names or film titles from their list (only a portion of whom are American). So let me revise my question: don’t any women become prominent film directors? I have to wonder what our films are missing out on by being directed primarily by men. Perhaps the abundance of trite and vulgar movies can be attributed to the fact that movies are primarily directed by men; perhaps a product becomes stale and mundane if it is consistently created from the same tired point of view. But beyond the effect of a male-overrepresentation, I wonder why it is that so few women hit it big in the movie industry. Hmmm…

Another great film by Miyazaki

I just got back from watching a truly great, inspiring film: “Spirited Away” by acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazazki. Okay, I admit, if the film had some deeper metaphorical message, it all was lost on me, so when I say “inspirational” I think I actually mean that it was simply fun and really intriguing, animationally speaking. Yeah, I just made that word up. I think it also helped that I got to see it in good company, as well as on the big screen thanks to BYU’s fantastic International Cinema program. Seriously, some of the best (or most interesting, at least) movies I’ve seen have been through that program.