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The idea of this topic is to tell us your thoughts about movies you've recently watched, and then we'll see if we can get some kind of discussion out of that. Please don't clutter up the topic with posts stating that you just saw some movie, if you don't have anything to say beyond that.
If you post spoilers, please say so in the beginning of your post, so that people have a chance to avoid them.
I went to see to movies this week. Here goes:
1) Batman Begins (MINOR SPOILERS!!!): Went to see it last tuesday. Very enjoyable, I must say, and IMO the best of the Batman movies, even surpassing the first one, which used to be my favourite. I very much liked the mood of the movie, although I think Tim Burton's movies still score higher on that count. However, the story of this movie is better than in any previous Batman movie, and I think that Christian Bale makes a much better Batman than Michael Keaton (who's the only other Batman actor I'll even bother to mention, as the rest sucked big time IMO).
The realism of the movie is also much greater than in the other movies, although it's still thoroughly unrealistic. Batman isn't invincible anymore, he has moral problems, etc. All in all, he seems more human. This stops about two-thirds into the movie, when he dons his costume, and seems to change from a somewhat regular human being into a flawless superhuman, from one scene to the next. For this reason I liked the first half of the movie better, and I suspect that if a sequel was made, it wouldn't be as good, since he would be flawless from the start.
In any case, I very much liked it, and would recommend it to any Batman fan, or anyone just looking for a good action movie, containing some stuff for afterthought.
2) Land of the Dead (HUMONGOUS SPOILERS!!!): I went to see this yesterday, when it premiered in Denmark, and was appalled to find out that it only premiered in one movie theater in all of Copenhagen. And a small, crappy movie theater - that I usually avoid - at that.
I don't quite understand. It seems that George Romero somehow lost his moviemaking skills somewhere during the late 70's/early 80's. I was hoping that the (IMO) atrocious Day of the Dead was just a slipup, and that Land would restore the zombie genre to it's former glory. This is not the case. Although Land isn't quite as bad as Day, it's still lightyears away from either Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead.
It seems that George really wanted to tell a story in this movie. A story involving more characters and a larger setting than any of his previous movies. Unfortunately he tries do so in less time than in any of the previous movies (93 minutes), which means that character development - which, in my opinion is very important in the other movies - is almost non-existant.
It also means that he has to explain the background of the movie as fast as possible. He chooses to do this by having some of characters explain to each other what's going on. Unfortunaly they should all know already, since they all live in the same city. I hate it when movies do this, since it always seems fake and stupid, and usually shatters the illusion of the movie.
The acting is pretty bad, although nowhere near the level of incompetence we saw in Day. Dennis Hopper seems as if he's wishing that someone would just shoot him.
The gore is good, which is to be expected from a Romero movie. Strangely enough, Tom Savini doesn't seem to have been involved in the special effects department of the movie. This may be just an error by IMDB, since he does have a cameo as a zombie in the movie.
One thing I absolutely did not like about this movie, was the intelligent zombie(s). I don't like it when the zombies run in movies (which thankfully they don't in this one), but thinking zombies is almost worse. I like my zombies slow and stupid, thank you very much. This is probably a matter of opinion, though. Also, I knew about the smart zombies before seeing the movie, so I had braced myself.
As any fan of Romero's movies knows, they usually contain some political comment. In the other movies these comments were fairly subtle, but in Land he seems to assume that people are stupid, and that he therefore needs to spell it out to them. This results in Dennis Hopper's character stating that "we don't negotiate with terrorists", and some other dude talking about going on a jihad. This is a bit much, IMO, and it isn't necessary to get his point across.
Another thing I wondered about was the rebel group in the city. They seem to play absolutely no role in the movie, seeing as how they don't overthrow the oppressors. The zombies do. It's also a bit strange that the good guy doesn't want to shoot the zombies at the end of the movie, saying "they're just looking for a place to stay". They are? Then why did they just eat hundreds of people, for no apparrant reason? The could have just gone around the town, you know. Oh, well.
All in all I enjoyed myself, but wouldn't go as far as calling it good. As I said, it's better than Day (but so is almost everything else), but nowhere near as good as Night or Dawn. It seems that Romero is unable to work with a "big" budget.
I'd still recommend it to anyone who likes zombie flicks, but don't expect a masterpiece or anything. Just take it for what it is: A mediocre splatterfest, directed by someone who used to be a good director.
Storyline 
Overall 
Of course there's going to be a lot of devastation after a bit slow start, but it's worth waiting. If you have certain style sense of humour this is sure thing, although it is far from excellent. Storyline isn't exactly brilliant, but works, Pitt and Jolie are excellent couple and work stunningly together - and to be honest, there's more than little sexual tension between them (being damn jealous to Pitt 
). Not for humourless persons!
Humour 
