After months of waiting, it’s finally here, the conclusion to the animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s epic, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  Like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1, the folks at DC’s animated division have once again created a movie worthy of the source material. When I first heard that DC was dividing The Dark Knight Returns into two movies, the cynic in me saw this as a cash grab. But now that I’ve seen both movies, I’m glad the decision was made to divide the story into two movies. Nothing feels rushed, nothing feels left out. Michael Emerson did a great job voicing the Joker. His Joker is not Mark Hamill’s Joker, but it is terrific in its own way. While I love Batman: The Animated Series, and hear Mark Hamill’s Joker and Kevin Conroy’s Batman when I read those characters, I like that Andrea Romano was tasked with finding all-new voice talent for the two Dark Knight Returns movies. The climatic fight scene between Superman and Batman was awesome, as was the scene where Superman is hit by the nuclear bomb. Both scenes were like seeing what my mind’s eye sees in the gutters of the comic brought to life. The producers did an amazing job with both. My only complaints about the movie are minor. The lighting seemed too bright for some of the street level action. I would have expected more shadows and murkier colors. The comic is full of a lot of blacks and  grays, but the animated movie has a more colorful overall palette. There were two character designs that stood out for me that seemed very off from their comic book counterparts. In The Dark Knight Returns comic, Bruno, the Joker’s swastika-adorned, Neo-Nazi goon always...

I was hanging out with a couple of friends recently and You’ve Got Mail came on TV. I’d seen You’ve Got Mail before and enjoyed it. But it wasn’t until seeing it this time around that I realized how much of a manipulative jerk Tom Hanks’s character Joe Fox is. I’m serious. The guy is a borderline sociopath. I’m not even talking about his character early in the movie, when he’s just the head of the big, bad chain of Barnes and Noble Fox bookstores. No, I’m talking about later in the movie, when he’s smitten with Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly and both she and we are supposed to realize that hey, this Joe Fox isn’t a bad guy at all. But he is! Look at what he does. He basically splits himself into two personalities when he’s around Kathleen. When he interacts with her online, he’s her mysterious suitor and when he hangs out with her person, he basically becomes her gay best friend. Gay Best Friend (GBF) Joe Fox starts giving Kathleen advice on how to deal with online J03_F0X. And that’s when it gets weird. Because Joe Fox is giving advice on how to respond to himself. It gets really weird when J03_F0X asks Kathleen to do something. GBF Joe Fox tells her not to do what online Joe Fox wants her to do to make IRL Joe Fox look like the better man in Kathleen’s eyes OVER HIMSELF! This cutesy Jekyll and Hyde bit goes on for a while. At the end of the movie, Kathleen agrees to meet her online suitor in Central Park. Instead of a stranger, Joe Fox walks up to her in the park and it’s revealed to her that her cyber-beau has been Joe Fox all along. She...

4/5 – Quite a rush! I finally caught Premium Rush on Blu-ray this week. I missed it when it was in the theaters. Now that I’ve seen it, I wish I had seen it earlier. I remember not being that excited for it in the theater thanks to the trailer, which it turns out did not do this movie justice. Premium Rush is an excellent thriller. I wouldn’t have expected a movie that takes place mostly on bicycles to be that entertaining, but Premium Rush really is great. The movie is told mostly in real time, between 5:30 PM and 7:30 PM on a weekday evening. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, a bike messenger with what appears to be a death wish. Granted, anyone who is a bike messenger in New York City is taking their life in their hands every day on the job, but Wilee lives at the edge. He doesn’t have brakes on his bike. He speeds through busy intersections and rides between buses. Wilee picks up a package that gets him in a mess of trouble. It turns out there’s a McGuffin in this envelope that a bad man would like to get his hands on. It’s the bad guy in the movie, Bobby Monday (played by Michael Shannon), that was the only low point in the movie for me. At times, it just seemed like Shannon was overacting his part. But after watching the bonus features, it seems Michael Shannon might be like that in real life too, just full of crazed energy. So maybe I have to rescind this complaint. Wole Parks does an awesome job as the other main antagonist in the movie, Wilee’s nemesis Manny. Manny is Wilee’s opposite in many ways. He wears a helmet, has brakes...

5/5 – Perfect adaption of THE Batman origin story. Batman: Year One might be my favorite comic book story ever published. Like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, it’s a story that I’ve come back to year after year and it’s never felt old. When I heard that DC was planning an animated adaptation of Year One, I was a bit worried. Would they change the story? Would they stay true to Mazzucchelli’s line work or attempt update the art style? My worries proved to be unfounded. Bruce Timm and Andrea Romano have once again put together the pieces to make a great animated movie. Batman: Year One should be considered a must-see for any Batman fan. I would also say that Batman: Year One, the comic this movie was based on, is mandatory reading for any Batman fan. After hearing Bruce and Andrea talk at New York Comic Con, and seeing the quality of Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1, I’m very excited for everything coming down the DC Animated pipeline. This movie shows Batman at his most fallible. He’s inexperienced and unsure of himself. He doesn’t have the super computer, all the fancy gadgets (though he does have some), the fancy car or the network of crime fighting colleagues to call upon. It’s cool to see Batman make mistakes, like when he attempts to foil a home burglary. And I was very happy to see that the coolest scene from Year One, which was also used in Batman Begins, was kept in the animated movie, namely Batman calling the cloud of bats to come to his aid when fleeing the Gotham PD. Batman: Year One is much Jim Gordon’s story as it is Bruce Wayne’s. This isn’t only Batman’s first year...

Score: 2/5 – Paul Rudd’s charm only goes so far I really like Paul Rudd and wish I could give Our Idiot Brother a higher score. Looking at the cast, which includes Zoey Deschanel, Rashida Jones, TJ Miller, Steve Coogan, Adam Scott and Elizabeth Banks, I would have thought Our Idiot Brother would be a much funnier movie. In the movie, Paul Rudd plays Ned. Think of the nicest and most innocent guy you know. Ned is that guy times three. Ned spends the majority of the movie bouncing around the NYC apartments of his three sisters after spending a short stint in jail. The biggest problem with Our Idiot Brother comes from the script, which renders Ned’s sisters unlikable beyond repair. Ned unwittingly helps them expose and realize their personal and professional problems. They’re problems that none of the sisters want to deal with, so they blame Ned. But they come across as generic animated types, not individuals. There’s the Park Slope liberal mom, the Williamsburg lesbian and the uptight corporate bitch. That’s all you need to know about the three of them because that’s all there is to them. There are characters in this movie you aren’t supposed to like. Ned’s sisters aren’t three of them. But they are all made unlikable by the script. Any scene where they appear without Rudd suffers. There are funny bits in Our Idiot Brother. I loved the very end of the movie. Any time Rudd and TJ Miller were on screen together was great. Basically, any scene with Rudd is better for it. His boyish charm is stretched to the max in this movie. Our Idiot Brother needed more Miller time. The DVD has an alternate ending. It’s good they didn’t go with the original...

5/5 Great adaptation of a great story Like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1, Green Lantern: First Flight and Batman: Under the Red Hood, Justice League: Doom is part of DC Comics/Warner Bros direct-to-DVD line of releases. It is based on a story from the JLA comic book called Tower of Babel. Why the name chance? In the original JLA story, Ra’s Al Ghul builds a tower that will render all forms of communication on Earth useless. This titular plot point is dropped from the animated movie (as is Ra’s Al Ghul as the story’s villain), necessitating a title change. Not to mention that Doom sounds much more menacing. In the animated movie, the immortal villain Vandal Savage gathers an Injustice League made up of villains of each member of the Justice League. It’s a 1-for-1 match. If Vandal Savage wanted a higher chance of success, I’m surprised he didn’t stack the odds in his favor by hiring three villains for each hero, seeing as he seems to have an abundance of resources. Hubris is clearly Savage’s kryptonite. Clothing is Star Sapphire’s kryptonite. If you were a fan of the Justice League cartoon from a few years ago, you will like the voice cast on this movie. Kevin Conroy is Batman. Tim Daly is Superman. Carl Lumbly is the Martian Manhunter (and also pulls double duty as the villainous martian Malefic). Michael Rosenbaum is the Flash, though here he’s playing Barry Allen instead of Wally West. Susan Eisenberg plays Wonder Woman. A big addition to the cast is Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern. Fillion played Green Lantern in Green Lantern: First Flight, so it was nice to see him reprise the role here. If I were to nitpick any part of the film, it would be Mirror...

What!? Are you kidding me?! Pardon the rage. The Oscar nominations came out today. I don’t always agree with the nominations, but this year seems particularly egregious. I have four major problems with this year’s Oscar nominations: Ben Affleck gets snubbed for Directoring. I was shocked to find out Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated for Directoring. Did you see Argo? If you did, I’m guessing it’s easily in the top five movies you saw this year. It is the best of the movies I’ve seen that was nominated for Best Picture, and the second best movie I’ve seen this year. After seeing the Best Picture nominees, Argo seemed like a shoe-in for the Best Picture winner. But the last time a movie won Best Picture without the director being nominated for Directoring was Driving Miss Daisy in 1989. I would definitely nominate Ben Affleck for Argo over Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. And I’d give Ben the award too. Lincoln gets 12 nominations. Lincoln was a good movie. It was not a great movie. Daniel Day Lewis was awesome in it and deserves to win Actor in a Leading Role. He deserves every bit of praise he gets for playing Lincoln. But Tommy Lee Jones? No way. I loved Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, but that’s because I love Tommy Lee Jones, and in Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones was playing Tommy Lee Jones as a senator. Tommy Lee Jones is the new Jack Nicholson. You can put him in any role you want, but chances are you’re going get Tommy Lee Jones playing Tommy Lee Jones. Like I said, I love Tommy Lee Jones, but I don’t think he should have been nominated. I saw three movies that Joseph Gordon Levitt was in this year. Out of the three, Lincoln...

4/5 – Russell Crowe cost Les Miserables one star more After The Dark Knight Rises, Les Miserables was the movie I was most excited for in 2012. The countdown  began months out, once the first trailer was released. It was that trailer that really made me excited for the movie. Watching Anne Hathaway, as Fantine, singing I Dreamed a Dream over shots of the movie, my expectations were raised. If the rest of the movie looked and sounded as good as this trailer, this was easily going to be my movie of the year. As it turns out, I Dreamed a Dream is the best song in the movie. The producers were smart to put that in the trailer. I’m guessing it put many more people in the seats than Russell Crowe’s rendition of Stars. I liked this film version of Les Miserables a lot. I’ve now seen it twice. The first was on Christmas Day (which made that Santa scene feel a bit awkward). I think Anne Hathaway is a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actress at this year’s Oscars. She was easily the best part of this movie not named Colm Wilkinson. I’ve never heard I Dreamed a Dream the way she sings it. In every previous rendition of it, it’s been a showcase for the singer’s voice, but no one ever sang it with the overwhelming despair that Hathaway infuses in it. When she finally gets to “I always dreamed my life would be so different from this hell I’m living,” you are seeing a woman at the end of her rope. This is Fantine at rock bottom. Rock. Bottom. Eddie Redmayne really impressed me as Marius. Going into the movie, he just looked like a guy with a goofy smile and...

Tuesday Night Movies presents a look back at the best comic books of 2012. These are the books that reminded us in the past year why we’re comics fans.  Billy says… Hawkeye– If you are not reading Hawkeye, then you are missing out on Marvel’s best series. Matt Fraction and David Aja show what Purple Arrow does when he’s not on missions with the Avengers. Fraction’s scripts are thrilling and witty. Aja’s artwork is amazing. The way he breaks down the page story-wise is unlike anything being published today. I defy anyone to read issue #1 and not become a fan. I love this series so much that I want a pair of purple Chuck Taylors.   The Walking Dead– 2012 was the year where I went from reading The Walking Dead in the collected softcover books to buying the individual issues. The build-up to issue #100 was just too much for me. I used to be able to wait. I can’t anymore. When part 1 of Something to Fear was released in issue #97, I had to read it immediately. Issue #100 was a punch to gut. I love this series so much.   Spider-Men– The Spider-Man from the Marvel Universe, Peter Parker, meets his Ultimate Comics counterpart, Miles Morales, in this awesome adventure. Which was the better scene? Peter interacting with Ultimate Gwen Stacey or Ultimate Aunt May getting some more time with Peter? Uncanny X-Force– Rick Remender, you magnificent bastard. What an end-cap to an amazing series. This series will make you a fan of Deadpool and Fantomex if you aren’t already. Remender’s Uncanny X-Force is an instant classic, and is easily the best X-Men comic to be released in years. When’s the omnibus for this series coming out? Batman– Scott...