Monday, May 9, 2011

Movie of the Week - Batman Begins

This week’s movie is Batman Begins (2005).

The action-adventure is the first of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. It is the origin story of how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. Written and director by Nolan (with additional writing work from David Goyer), it is the Batman film fans had been waiting for, as Nolan delivers the character in a realistic world with phenomenal performances from a wonderful cast and brilliant narrative and aesthetic filmmaking. The film is Nolan’s fourth (third commercial film), and he again worked with great cinematographer Wally Pfister (who also shot Memento and Insomnia prior) and production designer Nathan Crowley (who worked on Insomnia prior). He also brought editor Lee Smith (who has done every Nolan film since) and composers Hans Zimmer (who is a frequent collaborator since) and James Newton Howard (whose work on The Dark Knight with Zimmer is quite astounding, and changed modern scoring) to his team, a team that has gone on to work on all Nolan’s subsequent films (more or less). His wife and producing partner Emma Thomas and brother and writing partner Jonathan Nolan are also big parts of the Nolan creative team. The cast of the film (as stated above) is amazing: Christian Bale stars, while Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Kate Holmes, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, and Ken Wantanabe highlight the supporting cast. What makes the movie great is Nolan’s handling of the Batman world. His take on the world is dark (a bit like Tim Burton’s Batman sans all the campy and goofy stuff) and character driven. Along with Spider-Man 2, this film took comic-based films to a new level of quality and expectation. It is a must for genre fans. Check out the trailer.


Available on Blu-ray, DVD and to Rent

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