very.very.good go see it - not suitable for children - David, you can't go, it'll give you nightmares.

(david=italics) Batman Begins (contains spoilers ooo what a surprise!) I'd been waiting for this movie for _so long_. I love Batman movies. Christian Bale was good too and hardly reminded me of Patrick Batemen at all - though, like Michael Keaton before him, his chin seemed to grow to superhero dimensions when he dons the cowel. His voice changes to a raspy whisper when he's in his nippless Batman suit - maybe the cowel is a bit tight. And silly Katie Holmes doesn't recognise him even though he has a distinct speech impediment but, given who she's dating these days, "smart" isn't on her list of attributes (Ok, I didn't really mean that - no, really - as much as I don't care about what the hell Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or any of those other so-called celebrities do in their private lives, I do know that you should take joy where you find it and if Ms Holmes and Mr Cruise have found out that together they can feel that amazing, heart expanding, chest aching, head spinning thing we call "falling in love" then all power to them. It's rare. You can't help who you fall in love with and you don't know how long those feelings might last so.. embrace with both hands and hang on for the ride and the rest of the World be damned) Where was I, oh yeh..the dialogue annoyed me. I mean, okay, I wasn't expecting cleverly twisting and curling Shakespearian screenwriting but I was hackling at the rawness of the script - it felt like it needed two more rounds to soften and pad it out. But it was fun. And Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were utterly wonderful, even if the later's accent was cockney'd-up a few too many notches. I couldn't wrap my head around Qui-Gon Jinn having moved to China, changing his name to Ra's Al Ghul (okay that's a spoiler) and turned to the Dark Side to teach Bruce Wayne how to look believeable holding a sword against a magnificent glacial backdrop (how cool is that hide overjacket thing with the tie wrapped round the middle!) Oh and it was amazing; the ice, I mean - I needed to put my coat back on it felt so cold. I liked Bruce Wayne's clothes - he was very textured, especially in the gear he wore to walk up the mountain - I guess there were a few Rustic Man stores on the lower slopes or something. And wow, look how old Gary Oldman got. But anyway.. good fun movie, especially if you like spotting continuity-slips cos there are a couple of them to spot. Madagascar Madagascar is really funny because when my mum tried to help me write this review, she made me laugh so hard I spat my hot chocolate all over her. True Story! The movie started off with us buying two packets of Jaffas because we are both too selfish and don't like to share one packet between us. Armed with our individual-serve Jaffas, we found our "allocated seats" (trademark 1976) passing our time until the movie trailers in the time honoured tradition of "being silly" and "laughing at dumb stuff that isn't funny" such as "do I have something in my teef??" and "hissing at the lights pretending we are vampires caught in sunlight" finishing with the Classic "arrgghh I'm going blind!!" as the lights begin to dim. Worrying about the distorted aspect-ratio of Willy Wonka (heh, you said willy) we both agreed that Willy Wonka seems to have been modeled on Michael Jackson (hmhmm *nodding* *agreeing*) Although both worried and unable to remember Tim Burton's other release (Bride, The Bride, The... Corpse.. Bride) all conversation was banished as the screen filled with the wonderous and greatly anticipated new Aardman Production: Wallace and Gromit's "Revenge of the Were-Rabbit" (it's Terror of the Were-Rabbit - it's the first movie so how can it be the Revenge?) Onto the main feature... *I like to party, party* (it's "I like to move it move it, I don't know where you get party from.) Marty (voice of Chris Rock) dreams of The Wild. He feels the lush savanna beneath his hooves, (he's a zebra, mum.. he can't have grass between his hooves, he's not a camel! That's why I said "beneath" oh, right.. yes.. i wasn't listening properly, carry on) the gentle breeze ruffling his mane. He imagines paradise and freedom. But Marty doesn't live in The Wilds, he is infact an animal housed at the New York Zoo. With help from four psychotic penguins, Marty and his friends: Alex the Lion (voice of Ben Stiller), Gloria the Hippo (voice of Jada Pinkin Smith) and Melvin, the hypochondriac giraffe (voice of David Schwimmer), leave the comfort of their zoo and find themselves in the lush forests of Madagascar and The Wilds Marty had dreamed so long about. They soon discover the truths about the Wilds - you know, the whole Food Chain thing - and long to return to the safety and comfort of their previous existance. The animation is gorgeous. The textures and colours and movement are all as they should be in this day and animated age. The movie was good fun and had some good laughs. Madagascar was good. It was funny and pretty adult orientated - though the kids in the theatre seemed to enjoy it but my mum laughed the loudest - as usual. Fantastic Four This movie begins with a series of comic book illustrations/pages flickering on the screen (see that speech bubble? that one there.. that says "shut up and watch the movie"?) Fantastic Four is like the Made for TV version of X-Men. It was good - the storyline was.. good.. ahh.. oh! the ah.. um.. the characters were portraited with flaws and weakpoints rather than all strengths so that was good. yeh. meh, I don't know. it was good. There's not much to say besides that really - five characters with a connected past all go into space and get zapped by some age-old (the ones that activated life on Earth back in the day) cosmic rays that effect their DNA and cause some pretty weird talents to shine through - one guy (with too much hair) becoming really stretchy and rubbery, another (that bald guy from The Shield which is kinda funny now I type that) looking like something from a cliff face, having lost a finger on each hand and gaining about 1000 pounds in weight. Fun movie - great second movie for our movie double feature. We toyed with the idea of tacking War of the Worlds, 11:30pm session and Heffalump (the new Winnie the Pooh movie) 11:30am this morning onto our movie weekend but - meh - we decided that might just appear a bit *silly* and Lord knows we don't do silly *sideways glance at David* eye roll at mum. There're leftover slices of Hell's Pizza in the kitchen. We'd picked up our order on the way through to Mission Bay's Berkley with the idea we'd eat on the sea-wall or something but by the time we got there it had started raining. After Fantastic Four, we came out of the theatre to find that it had been raining the entire time and, in fact, there was a lightning storm overhead. Spectacular bolts lighting up the sky right out over the harbour and huge thundering booms rolling across the sky. The roads were flooded in some parts on the way home coming high up on the car's wheels. A lot of water falling from the sky and going nowhere on the ground.

My expectations weren't that high, you know? the last two movies saw to that. I'd read some reviews - something I don't usually do before a movie - and the general opinion was this was a better movie than was expected: darker, stronger, better, longer etc. Well. 10 minutes in I was saying it was dumb. 20 minutes in I realised it was even dumber. by 40 minutes I was considering what else I could be doing with my time. But I stuck it out. I'm not sure I was *supposed* to find parts as funny as I found them - no.. not the cute corny stuff, that was just nausiating. No - parts like when Anakin spontaniously combusted; now *that* was funny. And how come they didn't take his burnt clothes off before patching him up and dressing him in his DV outfit? complete with voice-changer in the mouthpiece of the mask ($14.95 from The Warehouse) I don't think I'm the only kiwi who cringes having to put up with Dr Ropata in space, ow. Speaking of "ow" .. that's what the robotic troops say when they're diced by light saber "ow, ow .. ow ow o..." or.. if they get oil in their eyes. It's just crap. Oh and, if you do go and see it, check out that *everyone* has bad-plastic hair, just like Mr Lucas himself. Thank god that's over and he's never gonna make another one cos he's not good enough at it. Though, he's off to remake Indianna Jones - now he's learned how to ruin a good thing I guess there's no stopping him, or his hair.