" In light of nothing overly exciting coming out at the cinema this weekend - unless you're one of the six people who begged for a "Mummy" sequel - the box office narrative again centers on "The Dark Knight." The question many die-hard fans want answered is whether the "Batman Begins" sequel will break the overall domestic box office record of $600 million held by "Titanic."

To those fans - young males, mostly - "Titanic" is the antithesis of their taste: An epic romance whose audiences turned out in droves to relive the heartache and catch another glimpse at Leonardo DiCaprio at the height of his heartthrob status. It took its box office crown from another movie sacred to young males, "Star Wars: A New Hope." So for another franchise friendly to those fans to take that distinction back would be sweet revenge. Unlikely as it is, due to the sheer rarity of "Titanic's" months-long strength of ticket sales, I'm personally pulling for the Bat.

-David "

" While watching "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," it was obvious writers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz wanted to bewitch fans with the reunion of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

Too bad they didn't want to make a good movie as well.

While the chemistry between David Duchovny's Mulder and Gillian Anderson's Scully is as potent as it was at the peak of the series' popularity in the mid-90s, that relationship is also the only redeeming part of the otherwise ho-hum tale of medical horror that reunites the two on screen. The poor pace and shallow writing of "Believe" builds little suspense, crafts no new compelling characters and arrives at a climax as pulse-pounding as a lesser monster-of-the-week episode of the show. I won't spoil any details out of respect for the filmmakers' wishes, but I must say that silence now seems more rooted in shame than anything else.

Meanwhile, "The Dark Knight" grossed another $70 million over the weekend to continue racking up box office records. But what I find most amusing about the movie is the almost frightening amount of affection its audience has shown for it. Hearing some of my friends praise the movie, and particularly Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, you'd think they had spent two and a half hours cuddling with their soulmate. Call me a cynic, but I'm already bracing for the possibility of the next Batman movie falling in line with the rotten threequel curse followed by "Spider-Man," "X-Men" and even the previous run of "Batman" movies. "But 'The Dark Knight' was SO good," you say? So was "Spider-Man 2."

-David "

" Right now I'm reminded of a line from the last "X-Files" movie.

"One man alone cannot fight the future."

Sadly, that seems true. In the future I and other fans of the landmark science fiction show hope to see, a third film will follow up "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," which releases today. Series creator Chris Carter has said the success of this film will influence the minds of the men and women who would clear the way for a sequel.

But three heavy obstacles stand in the way. First is the record-setting box office triumph of "The Dark Knight," which is quite likely to take the top box office slot this weekend as it whisks past $300 million overall. The second is Will Ferrell and "Step Brothers," the actor's biannual replenishing of frat boys' reservoir of inside jokes.

But third is the overwhelmingly negative critical consensus on "I Want to Believe," which has been dismissed as a rote and unexciting retread of the series only sustained by the chemistry of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. While die-hard fans will brush these reviews off, they (rather, we) can only support the film so strongly. Without much incentive to see the film and six years of dormancy after the series' end, the casual fans - or lack thereof - may darken the future for the rest of us.

-David "

" Crime drama meets superhero myth in "The Dark Knight," and it's surprising how well the two genres get along.

Heath Ledger turns in the type of performance that could mythologize the late actor to James Dean levels. He's really that good. He cackles and swipes his tongue over his scarred rictus grin, hunches over when he walks and uncoils to cut someone up. Just the way he fires a gun is hauntingly stilted.

For all Ledger's talents on display in "The Dark Knight," it is Aaron Eckhart who tethers the film together as Harvey Dent and later Two-Face. The Gotham City D.A. carries himself with cool-guy bravado and sends genuine chills down your spine with speeches less rah-rah than morally rallying.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement of "Dark Knight" is its furtive pace, which never lags nor burns you out. It simply rolls you along with a steady storm of beautifully filmed action anchored by weighty characters like Wayne and Dent, as well as several ethical themes that thoughtfully echo long after the end.

And, no surprise, it's my new film of the year.

-David "

" With "The Dark Knight" releasing later this week it might be a short stay, but for now, "WALL-E" is my front-runner for the best film of 2008.

This Pixar gem is so many things: An ode to the work of Buster Keaton, a cautionary tale of Earth's future, an intoxicating love story, a madcap comedy and more. Director Andrew Stanton brilliantly manipulates kinetic language to build the most charming on-screen romance I've seen in years.

WALL-E and EVE barely talk; it's in their hands and their eyes that they spell out their swelling feelings for one another. When they do vocalize, it's their subtle intonations that speak several degrees of emotion throughout the film to mark the ascent of their affections. It's a tremendous credit to Stanton that their romance never turns sappy; I doubt anyone but Pixar could convey robot love so organically.

The dystopian bots' journey is anchored to an absorbing narrative about a trashed Earth, whose displaced citizenry is content to let the planet rot while they fatten up on deep space luxury liners. As WALL-E and EVE struggle to save the human race from its hedonism by hastening a return to Earth, their affections take hold to strengthen their resolve. Surely if robots can fall so deeply in love, there is hope for humanity after all.

-David "

" The hype for "The Dark Knight" is reaching ridiculous heights. The first reviews have poured in with sweeping positivity, and Internet film fiends remain poised to descend on dissenters with their now-standard arsenal of witless barbs.

I don't care. Lately I've become almost immune to the impact of criticism. Between the wars readers go to over quantitative scores and the deification of agreeable critics as speakers of some immutable truth, the entire critical establishment feels bloated and impotent. Worse yet is its democratization on the Internet. In addition to providing everyone with a platform to trumpet their moronic opinions - yes, there is such a thing - the Internet dims the spotlights on the more insightful thoughts suffocated by the stupidity.

Just see things for yourself, and go from there.

-David "

" Last week "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" was released for PlayStation 3.

It's certainly a video game, but if you listened to the bellows of the game's harshest critics, it plays more like a film.

For every minute of game play comes another minute of cut scenes advancing the game's plot. In my review of the "Patriots" in this week's Citizen Player, I say that these scenes are so entertaining - so lifelike in their realism and so brilliantly conceived - that watching them while waiting to pick the controller back up was nothing short of delightful.

Other players don't see it that way. Quality means nothing to them; the very idea of long periods of cinema between bouts of game play is such anathema to them that they dismiss the game outright.

But why? Why is uninterrupted play that essential? Any "gamer's high" it supposedly saps is not only a questionable suggestion, but it's more than balanced out by the emotional connection these scenes build with the protagonist and his conflict.

Some players I've read on game message boards say they buy games to play games, not watch movies. "Patriots" is a masterful mixture of the two arts. So why is quality cinema that unbearable?

-David "

" Sex and the City

Hello! My name is Jessica Harkins and I write The Young Pro blog here on auburnpub.com. I think it might be safe to say that my fellow blogger, David Wilcox, will not be blogging about the Sex and the City movie in his Citizen’s Cinema’s blog, so since I’ve seen the movie twice, I’m going guest blog here and take a stab at it. He is posting this week at The Young Pro’s blog (link to your right).

Ok, first, I should divulge that I abso-freakin-lutely love the series. I have the DVD’s and I’ve watched them so many times that I don’t want to tell you because I know you’ll laugh. So when the talk of the movie came around, needless to say I was so super excited. In fact, my first draft of my review of the movie was practically a manifesto, at over 3 pages long, and I wasn’t finished either.

In any case, the one thing that I had so much fun with while watching, was picking up on the things that carried over from the series. The pink dress Carrie wore on her last night in NYC, Bitsy VonMuffling, and the reference to Steve’s ailing mother. What I didn’t see was the chair Carrie bought from Aiden. While her relationship with him was long over, I would have thought that would have stayed.

I liked how when Carrie moved back in, her stuff was everywhere. And it didn’t really get cleaned up for months either, kind of like her. So, when Carrie was saying goodbye to Louise (her personal assistant who helped put her life and closet back in order), she said “You brought me back to life”. I thought that was so sweet and so true. Sometimes you need an outsider to help you see things differently and to help you with new experiences.

Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha were all excellent. I thought that each of their stories were relevant to their lives and were things that you would find in real relationships. Identity crisis, joy, heartache, cheating, trust, and I think all that shows that just because you are married or with someone doesn’t mean that the road is easy from there on out.

I would say that the only thing I didn’t like was that it seemed like the movie moved along slowly. I’m not sure if that came from the heaviness of some of the topics that were being discussed or because of the length of the film. I certainly didn’t lose interest, but I did feel like it moved slowly.
All in all I thought that the movie was great. It brought in elements of the series while telling a story that those new to “the girls” could relate to and fall in love with.

I think that it was smart to pick up their lives three years later, it made sense and allowed for those new to SATC to pick up at a spot where they wouldn’t be lost. And I think it was also smart that they recognized that the girls are getting older, they aren’t out in day glow underwear at the bar all night anymore. They are lunching at classy restaurants and covered up a bit more and each of them have fallen into a great time of their lives where they can relax, enjoy the company of great loves, family and friends, and go into the next chapter of their lives being just as fabulous as ever.

- HARKINS "

" It completely slipped my mind to talk about the possibility of an Avengers movie, as I promised to do a couple weeks ago.

Frankly, I'm all for it. So long as all the A-list superhero characters - Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America - are introduced and established prior to the crossover, I think it could be quite fun to bring them together.

Clearing that hurdle of exposition has always been the big challenge facing superhero movies. If they can build our empathy with the man behind the mask - or visor or weird hair style or whatever - the filmmakers typically succeed at winning the audience's approval. With overwhelmingly positive reviews for "Iron Man" and so far positive reviews for "The Incredible Hulk," it's so far, so good.

-David "

" Auburnmoviebuff,

I'm discussing the merits of a movie. Of course it's personal bias; fact has no place. Also, I'd prefer you didn't make negative inferences about my reasons for defending "No Country for Old Men." In depth I've explained the value I find in the film, rather than peppering it with empty invectives as you've done.

It is rather amusing to see you, bigal and aubooster so aligned in opposition to this movie. I'd almost swear you three were sitting in the same room...

-David

p.s. The only worthwhile M. Night movies are "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," the latter much more so. "

" I wonder how someone would react to "Cloverfield" were they sheltered for a week, told nothing of the outside world and then forced to watch the film. Of course, one would have to control for the subject's consciousness of the experiment. If the viewer suspects something's up, chances are they'll see through the test. (This consideration is my psychology major at work).

Assuming that's not an issue, I wonder whether the viewer would recoil in fright at the belief that a 50-stories-tall lizard beast has ravaged Manhattan. The filmmakers went to every length imaginable to weave this illusion by presenting the mayhem from the recovered digital camera of a city resident.

This setup frames the terror perfectly. As the cameraman and his friends flee from the devastation, he drops, shakes and even rewinds the device to show others its fleeting glimpse of the monster. The filmmakers strengthen the realism by splicing the terrorizing footage with a serene trip to Coney Island that occupied the camera's DV cassette beforehand. It's about as organic as a mainstream monster movie can appear; "Cloverfield" is to "Godzilla" and "King Kong" what "The Blair Witch Project" was to pretty much every horror movie ever made.

"Cloverfield's" director, Matt Reeves, skillfully shrouds the monster behind skyscrapers and the night sky through the first seven-eighths of the movie to spike the audience's fear of the scaly, tentacled creature. And when we finally get a decent close-up, it kills us - the camera man, Hud, meets his end when he can't look away. It's hard to miss this lesson on digital voyeurism in a YouTube-obsessed world.

That said, for all its successful efforts toward verisimilitude, the film would likely fail to convince the sheltered viewer for one unexciting reason: special effects. Though no less convincing than most big-budget films, "Cloverfield" ultimately falls short of truly blurring the line dividing fiction and non, despite all its successful narrative efforts to do so. It seems technology still has not caught up to imagination, and that's not such a scary thought.

-David "

" Sorry Dave
I have read these comments too. As a supposed Movie commentator you let personal bias get in the way of fact. Obviously you are all hyped up by the so called "sexy moviemakers". Bet you can't wait for M knights next one to come out. Listen. I have been a movie fan for decades, and I consider myself a die hard one. Old country may be the most overated flick of the decade. It offered nothing in my opinion. Bad acting, stupid script, no message other than you'll need dandruff shampoo after it's over to stop itching your head and saying. What?
Now Pulp Fiction is one of my all time favorites. This movie will never approach that kind of status. But I guess you're all about jumping on the bandwagon of the so called "message" moviemakers. YOu sure have that right.
But I have yet to meet a SINGLE person who thought old country was much of a flick. Sorry, Thats from the real world. "

" Bigal,

You reinforce my point by applauding "2001." Today it's recognized as a classic almost across the board, back in 1968 its acceptance wasn't so universally warm. Time changes perspective.

I know the appreciation for "No Country" is already wide - contrary to your perspective - as it did win near-universal praise from critics as a cinematic masterwork, and it was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture of 2007. But with time, I wouldn't be surprised to see this appreciation strengthen even more.

"No Country" does share some things in common with "Fargo," namely the focus on a small-town law enforcement officer and their bewilderment at the gruesome crimes they encounter. But Tommy Lee Jones is shaken to the core, while Frances McDormand is able to mostly brush off the bloodshed. Otherwise, "No Country" is far less attentive to its characters' psychology, and it shirks dark humor in favor of straight action and heavier suspense.

Now then, I think likening the ambitions of "No Country" to "Pulp Fiction" is foolish. To quote Samuel L. Jackson, "Pulp Fiction" isn't in the same ballpark, the same league or even the same sport as "No Country," which isn't to say one is better than the other.

Also, I must ask: What wasn't resolved in "No Country?" The money is gone, but if you like "Fargo," that shouldn't be a problem. The bad guy didn't meet his end, but as I've already explained, that's germane to the message.

And yes, I did enjoy the last episode of "Sopranos." If you can't see the symbolism in that final scene, the Sword of Damocles hanging over Tony's head as part of his chosen lifestyle, then I'm sorry all you saw was an abrupt cut to black and no vicarious pound of flesh. These aren't things I "have to try and interpret," nor are the moviemaker's intentions the point. They're the messages I happen to derive from the movie, or TV show, and in any act of art I feel this decoded meaning carries more weight than the meaning encoded by the author.

-David "

" 2001?? Hey. that was a great movie! I remember watching it as a young pup.
No comparison here. Sorry, just can't go along with your theories. This movie was an attempt to be Pulp Fiction or Fargo without the humorous relief points or actual plots which had resolution. I suppose you enjoyed the last episode of Sopranos too? When you have to try and interpret what the moviemaker was trying to do you lose the essence of the film IMO>
No country is a loser. I have not heard a positive comment on it from anyone but you. Theending dialoge with Jones was almost painful. "

" Aubooster,

I never stated there was a specific point where "No Country" earns its viewer's respect. However, as the film heads toward its conclusion, it becomes clear that "No Country" has no interest in honoring the conventions of a chase film. The subject of the chase is not only caught, but murdered, and the black-hearted pursuer escapes justice.

These events alone don't make the movie good. Anyone can kill off the good guy and let the bad guy go on living. But it's the lessons the Coens attach to these events that bestow significance upon them.

As I've explained in this blog before, Llewelyn dies because of hubris; the moment he pauses out of belief that he can become stop the forces pursuing him is his last moment alive. Another character later remarks, "You can't stop what's coming, it ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."

Chigurh escapes because of chance, and by flipping a coin to determine the fate of the people who cross him, he acknowledges the inescapable play of this force. Before we see the last of Chigurh, he is randomly struck by a car and seriously injured. The absence of meaning in this singular event attaches a grander meaning to Chigurh, and by extension everyone in "No Country": Even their very fates are not beyond the reach of the random.

I must say I'm surprised to read such spirited disdain for "No Country For Old Men," but many people bemoaned "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Raging Bull" when they were released as well.

-David "

" At coffee this morning my friends and I were discussing how bad movies are recently. Like the 300, and 310 to Yuma, both of which are now on constantly on HBO. My only comment about Yuma, which he was bashing, is that it was 5 times better then Old Country. He said he was glad I told him. Now he won't waste time watching it. We have similar likes in movies. "

" David What was the point in the movie where it had earned the viewers respect? I'm missing that. "

" I have to agree with Big Al Here. I easily think that if this wasn't one of the worst all time movies I've been to at least it had the worst ending.
Acadamy award nominations? For what?
Sadly, I get pretty much the same feeling from all the movies out lately.
They don't make em like they used to.
that's for sure. "

" Bigal,

I obviously can't argue against the fact that you didn't like the movie, nor can I reply to your descriptions of it with anything other than, "I disagree." And I do, vehemently.

But for the sake of discussion, what recent movies do you like?

-David "

" Trying to call "No Country" art of any kind is a stretch. Try disaster. It was easily the worst movie i've seen in years. A movie where you're constantly waiting for something to happen. Because it's a cohen brother film I guess you're supposed to be impressed by stupidity. Tommy Lee Jone's character was basically useless.
I saw no moral messages at all.
What I saw was a meaningless, forgetful, terrible movie. "

" Yesterday I finally made my foray into high-definition DVD. Kind of.

I bought a PlayStation 3. My reasons are more video-game related than anything. I wanted the system to play "Metal Gear Solid 4" when it's released next week.

Now I find myself with a Blu-ray player, which is a pleasant bonus of my purchase. But I don't have an HD TV yet, so I'm not currently in a position to savor the 1080p graphic splendor of the player.

Still, I can't help feeling like a shroud of inevitability has fallen over my DVD collection. Every movie must be replaced with its Blu-ray version during my upgrade to HD, which transformed from an 'if' to a 'when' event yesterday.

I only have 75 movies - down from a high of 200, as I frequently buy and re-sell DVDs (due to a neurotic instinct toward minimalism). Regardless, the process will be costly and even prolonged as I wait for each $30 movie to see new life on Blu-ray. Facing this process, I have to ask myself: Is it really worth a crisper picture and better sound? Is it worth the colossal headache that will strike with the next technological revolution, be it higher definition DVD or the ubiquity of movies on demand?

And I ask you, have you made the switch? If so, how have you enjoyed it? And at the risk of really striking a nerve, did you switch to HD DVD instead?

-David "

" Karl,

I think the ending scenario you describe would have been a cheap cop-out in a film that had already earned the viewer's respect by eschewing the clean notion of comeuppance. Such an ending would have nullified the path of Jones' character, the one with which audiences are most positioned to identify. The other characters' deaths would have lost their lasting lesson, which is that slaughter is sometimes without sense. And, worst of all, "No Country" would have lowered itself to the conventional level of pretty much every other shoot-'em-up that ends with order restored and the wrongs righted.

Art does not always equal entertainment, at least not in the escapist sense. In my case, the absence of a traditional "good guy prevails" ending does not rob the movie of redeeming value, but instead instills within it a valuable moral: Even the balance of good and evil can lie beyond our control.

-David "