Oh West Philadelphia...

The Dark Knight Trailer

I'm not totally sure about Heath Ledger's Joker. I've never seen(or I don't remember) the original Batman movie by Tim Burton so I don't know how he compares to Jack Nicholson, but it seems like he's trying a little bit too hard. I still want to see this since Batman is, you know, the coolest superhero ever and Batman Begins was really good, but I don't know how it'll turn out.
**1/2 out of ****
*SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER*
I Am Legend(dir. Francis Lawrence)
Surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting to like this much especially after seeing Will Smith's last movie, which I found to be particularly terrible. He really does carry the movie even if his performance is a little overly emotional. The biggest problems lie with the script, which forces him to have a long monologue about why Bob Marley is such a bitching human being. He describes how Bob wanted to "light up the darkness" with his music and the mental image of Bob Marley lighting up a joint in a dark room quickly follows. There's also the CGI, which was particularly bad. The film would have been much better if it suggested these "dark seekers"'s presence instead of actually showing them. The film also relied on "jump" scares a little too much, but they remained effective to my friend, who sat next to me, even after the sixth or seventh time. It was also much more emotionally engaging before other people entered the picture since the dialogue wasn't so hot. It's interesting to say that since one would expect it to be the other way around and it truly exposed how shitty the script actually was. There was actually a moment that I thought I was going to cry because, you know, killing a dog is possibly the saddest thing a movie could do. Manipulative factors prevented any tears from flowing, however, with an overly sentimental score and Smith's character revealing that the dog was, in fact, a female, which seemed like a cheap tactic to garner some audience sympathy. I still don't understand how these mindless fucking things were able to devise such a complicated booby trap, which leads to the dog's death, but whatever. It's post-apocalyptic world was also quite impressive. It's probably the best sci-fi film of the year, but I still haven't seen Southland Tales so it might not be. I recommend.
*** out of ****