I grew up on reruns of the Batman series originally shown in 1966-1968.  I loved those episodes and, as a child, I did not see how corny or campy they were.  They were just the way my Batman and Robin were.  Of course, then, an older me discovered the Dark Knight Returns mini-series and my opinions changed.

That did not mean that I started to hate on the Batman series.  I still loved it, but I could approach it in the way it was intended, as a comedic take on the Caped Crusader.

A few years ago, they released a film called Batman: Return of the Caped Crusader and it featured the returning voices of Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin.  This was awesome and I got to see this in a limited run in the theater thanks to Fathom Events.  I loved the throwback film which I thought had the perfect touch from the 1966 series.

Then, with the passing of Adam West, I heard another animated film had been finished prior to his death, with the voice talent of William Shatner as Two-Face.  I was very excited, but I didn’t hear anything else about it and it slipped my memory.

Today, while searching through Amazon for something to watch, I stumbled upon this movie and I was excited again.

Unfortunately, I just did not find it as magically nostalgic as I did with the Return of the Caped Crusaders.

Don’t get me wrong, there was still a lot of material here to enjoy and knowing it was the final performance of Adam West as Batman did give me some feels, but I had a real problem with the story and the portrayal of Two-Face.

Without spoiling, there was something that the story hinted at involving Harvey Dent and Two-Face that turned out to be just a taunt and I did not like that.  It made no sense from what we had already seen so it spoiled the movie for me.

I am also not sure that this film went campy enough.  There were parts that certainly worked but it felt like a pale comparison to the Return of the Caped Crusader.

I am not unhappy to have seen it, but I would have preferred more than what it was.

This coming fall, there is a new Halloween movie coming out in theaters.  It is taking the continuity of the first film and discarding the remaining ton of sequels and reboots that followed.  Consider it like a Halloween 2.

I had never seen the original Halloween full and all the way through so I wanted to make sure I had a chance to see it before the release in October.  Tonight, it fit into the schedule so I watched John Carpenter’s original Halloween.

Watching it, you can see what type of classic this movie would become.  One of the first slasher horror films around, Carpenter’s film has all of the things that would eventually become horror tropes and cliches.  Of course,they were not cliches at the time, but they were so effective in this movie that we got the same type of tropes again and again.

Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie is running from the slow walking Michael Myers and she falls down.  How many times did we see that in horror movies after this.  The phone cord was cut preventing her from calling the police.  She couldn’t find her keys.  The doom that comes after teenagers have sex.

Heck, I found myself yelling at Laurie to finish him off when she had him down or to tie him up.  We all know about double taps these days…although it sure looked as if Michael Myers was more than able to shake off some serious damage to keep his desire to kill.

This film set the standard for countless imitators and followers the same way that Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho did in the 1960s and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did in the early 70s.

The Halloween score is iconic as well, written and performed by John Carpenter himself.  They may have overused the Halloween theme a bit for my tastes here, but I can understand why he did it because it certainly created a tense mood in the scenes.  I was on the edge of my seat, even though I knew the outcome of the film and which of the characters would survive.

Halloween was tense and anxiety-inducing, filling the audience with fear and it did it without the use of much if any blood.  It goes to sow that you do not need gore to have effective horror.

I am glad that I was able to get a chance to see this first film.  I have never been a huge fan of the slasher film genre, but this one is one of the most important films of the time.  Admittedly, there is little character development, but you still connect with Laurie and her plight because she is such a good person.

I am looking forward to Laurie Strode to return in the next Halloween movie in October to see where her life has taken her.

I was watching Collider Movie Talk at some point this week and someone mentioned a movie with Tom Hardy called Locke.  They were making the point that Tom Hardy was a great actor and that the trailer for the upcoming Venom trailer may not be the worst film ever because Hardy is a strong performer and, to prove it, in Locke, he was able to carry the film on his own inside a car.  It was an interesting discussion and so I went on my business.

Then tonight I was looking at Netflix and I came across the movie Locke.  It was one of those that I would not have paid much attention to unless I had heard that discussion on Movie Talk, so I pulled it up and watched it.

Locke was a fabulous film.

Tom Hardy played Ivan Locke, a happy family man and a construction manager preparing for the biggest project of his career.  However, one night, his life was thrown into chaos when he received a specific call.  A woman with whom he had a one-night-stand and had become pregnant had gone into premature labor and she was at the hospital an hour and a half away.

Locke, who had issues with an abusive/deadbeat dad growing up, was not going to make this child feel the same way he felt, so he got in his car and left his work site and started driving to the hospital.

Unfortunately, that meant that he was going to have to take care of the problems -at work, confessing his affair to his wife, with his work associate who was too much into the drink, and with the company he worked for, over the phone as he drove.

Tom Hardy spent the entire film on screen, driving his car and talking on the phone and it was riveting.  Each time the phone rang, some new horror was dropped in his lap.  His wife Katrina (Ruth Wilson) was shocked and betrayed by his confession and was not sure what to do.  His employee Donal (Andrew Scott) was thrust into more responsibility than he was used to in order to get the cement poured in the morning.  His sons, confused by the evening’s events and why their mom was crying, wanted to be watching the football game with their dad and tried to ignore what they could see happening around them.  The lonely and sad woman (Olivia Colman) who was giving birth kept calling with worries and concerns, especially after they discovered the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck.

Tom Hardy was tremendous throughout each phone call, trying desperately to stay in control and to manage every situation that appeared to him.  He could tell things were slipping away, but he stubbornly clung to the hope that he could fix things.  He also carried a monologue along inside the car with the memory of his dead father, whom he had serious anger directed towards.

Then, one of his sons had called him to tell him about the football game and as I was listening to this voice, I thought to myself, that sounds like Tom Holland.  Sure enough, in the credits, Tom Holland was listed as playing his son, Eddie.  You could see that Locke loved his children but he just could not explain to them how this happened despite their increasing knowledge that something was terribly wrong.

Add to that the fact that he had been fired by the company from Chicago, Locke had plenty of reasons to give up.  However, he was still as dedicated to seeing the job, that he had walked out on prior to a huge cement pour, get finished.

It is quite a risk putting just one actor on screen the entire time, but Tom Hardy gave probably the best performance I have seen him give as he literally and figuratively drives this movie along.  His dialogue and facial expressions were spot on and really carried the mood.  He showed the strength of this man who was slowly losing everything that had mattered to him.

I must say that the ending was a little up in the air, but I understand that you weren’t able to wrap everything up in a film like this in the 82 minute car ride.  Tom Hardy controlled each moment in the car and brought a wonderful character study together.  This was more than just a gimmick film.  It was truly well done.

I went to a 20th anniversary showing of The Big Lebowski by Fathom Events today which was the first time I have seen this movie.  I know it is one of those films that people hold up as a classic, but I never thought that it would be my piece of cake.  AM I WRONG?

Yep, I sure was.  I actually really enjoyed the movie.

I tend not to enjoy those “stoner” films or the films that encourage the use of drugs.  However, there was not that mush of that here, with it really being used more of a character thing than anything else.  Heck, the Dude spent more time drinking his White Russians than doing anything else.

And Jeff Bridges was as charming and entertaining as just about any lead character that I have ever seen. I thoroughly enjoyed his work as The Dude.

Though I was not as much of a fan of John Goodman’s character, I appreciated his commitment to the character and his performance.  He was really loud and I wondered why the Dude continued to come back to him.

The story itself is unbelievably convoluted and really is not the focus of the movie.  It is more about putting The Dude into these different situations and watching him deal with them, and that is just fine.

The dialogue is incredibly smart and witty throughout and I am sure that I missed plenty of funny lines delivered perfectly from Bridges.

The Coen Brothers followed up their Oscar nominated Fargo with this film, which did not receive as much initial success, but developed over time as a cult classic.

The biggest advantage The Big Lebowski has is that it is damn funny.  Most of the jokes land and deliver what you are wanting.  I laughed through the whole film and I had a really good time.

I love Alfred Hitchcock, but there are holes in my knowledge of Hitchcock movies so I decided to fill one of those holes today with Strangers on a Train.

Now, I knew of the storyline for years, since it came up on an episode of Castle with Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic.  Two strangers meet on a train and they decide to swap the murders of the troublesome people in their lives so there would be no motive for the murders.

Well, that was not quite the way it went in the classic movie.  In Hitchcock’s film, tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is on a train and he is approached by Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker).  Bruno was clearly setting up Guy for his plan, being very manipulative and tricky.  The whole idea about swapping murders was made to come off as nothing more than a flippant conversation.  Guy never gave it a second thought, but clearly Bruno had done his research.

Bruno followed Guy’s wife (whom Guy wanted to divorce, but she refused to accept one) on a date to the carnival where he strangled her to death.  Soon, he approached Guy with the news of the murder and he hoped to plan what he wanted to do with his father, the intended victim Bruno wanted Guy to kill.

Guy was shocked and angry and threatened to go to the police, but Bruno said that the police would believe that they planned this together and that would make Guy an accessory.

I enjoyed this movie, but there were some glaring problems that I had with the narrative, starting with, if I were Guy, I would have gone to the police immediately and trusted that I could convince them that I was not the murderer.  The fact that Guy does not do that immediately tells us more about the weakness of his character than anything else.  He also does not “come clean” with his fiance Anne (Ruth Roman) until she figures him out.  She believed him fairly quickly after catching him in the lie which showed how much she loved him.

There were some weird scenes when Bruno tried to insinuate himself into Guy’s life, showing the skills of a stalker, more than anything else. The strangest of all of the situations was when Bruno lost control and almost accidentally strangled a socialite at a party because he was demonstrating how to murder someone and caught a glance at Anne’s sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock) who had a passing resemblance to the woman he murdered.  That was a strange addition to the story and really felt out of place.  Perhaps it was just to demonstrate how crazy Bruno was.

There was a lot of tension and suspense built through the film, as the scenes flashed back between Bruno on his way to the carnival and Guy playing tennis.  It may not sound like it should have worked, but it was very effective.  And the final fight on the out-of-control merry-go-round was actually very solid, even though the chances that it could actually happen would be inconceivable.

Strangers on a Train is full of anxiety and tension and, because of that, it is a lot of fun.  The performances are solid even if there are some narrative scenes that make you roll your eyes at the plausibility of them.

In this darkly black comedy, Colin Farrell starred in a film where two hitmen, after a job goes bad, are sent to Bruges, Belgium to lay low until the people in charge decide what has to be done.  While in Bruges, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) is enjoying the medieval ambiance of the city while Ray (Colin Farrell) struggles with what has happened and the uncomfortable surrounding he has found himself stuck in.

This was a hoot.  I laughed throughout the movie and truly enjoyed it.  The fellow hitman relationship between Ken and Ray was excellent and both actors brought some of the best work I have seen them do.

There is more to the movie than just the laughs though.  There is an inventiveness that is on display with the typical genre fare that is quite unexpected.  There is a deep character arc, especially for Ray as he tried to live with the tragic circumstances that he found himself in.  The film examines honor and responsibility from a bit of a warped perspective.

There is a scene with a karate chop and a dwarf that absolutely made me laugh so hard I cried.  It was a fabulously funny moment among a mockingly humorous situation.

The city of Bruges was gorgeous as a backdrop as well, though Ray never had a good word to say about it.  It brought a certain fairy tales aspect to the story, which is a joke you’ll understand once you see In Bruges.

Ralph Fiennes arrives two thirds into the movie as the big boss and I was not as fond of that character near as much, but he was a consistent threat and really kicked the action for the third act into gear.

This was not your typical hitmen movie, but it surely had all the elements of a great one.  I really enjoyed this film more than I expected.  It is currently on Netflix.