Has a new era in intelligent movie making begun?

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 2005)

Amazing! I didn't think a "comic book" movie could get better--more coherent, compelling or intelligent--than Spiderman I. But it can, and it's called Batman Begins. Like all great sci-fi creations, this Batman movie has serious and poignant comments to make on the real world. Batman, a fantasy character, has very real moral, psychological and even existential decisions to make, decisions that have a correlation to ones we all face in society. How far will we go to do the right thing? Batman could have easily rationalized the excesses he was externally and internally tempted to take, but he chose to "do the right thing" in the face of overwhelming misunderstanding and criticism. In other words, he didn't attack or kill just because he could. He tried to be measured; he tried to help a bleak situation, not just exercise his machismo. Who'd a thought that nowadays we'd get a movie in which the effects and the carnage were truly subservient to the narrative? Glory, glory hallelujah. Have I lived long enough to see a new era in intelligent film making?