OK, so I went and saw Batman Begins in the theater right after it came out. Loved it — Christian Bale is an amazing actor and really makes the role his own. I remember seeing the initial previews for Batman Begins late last year, I remember thinking to myself that they couldn’t have picked a better actor to play the caped crusader. After seeing Bale in American Psycho (2000) a few years back, and Reign of Fire in 2002, I was pretty surprised that he hadn’t been in any big ticket movies in 5 years. Then after a little digging, I discovered two excellent movies he’s done since then: The Machinist, which just came out on DVD recently; and Equilibrium, which was released around the same time as the original Matrix.

Both movies are excellent. I watched The Machinist last week, and Equilibrium over the weekend. I’m not sure how unstable you need to be to manage to lose 60+ lbs for a movie, but I’ve never seen anyone look as emaciated as Bale in The Machinist. Surprisingly (I had no idea while watching it), the movie was filmed entirely in Barcelona, made up to look like Los Angeles. The amount of work that went into the movie was staggering.. from making sure every cigarette pack, license plate and street sign looked like it were in So-Cal, to Bale looking like a walking corpse. Impressive. The plot was slightly reminiscent of Memento or old Hitchcock films, but telling you pretty much anything about it would be a spoiler, so I’ll just leave it at that. Go rent it, it’s quite dark and more than a bit sad/vaguely depressing at times, but it’ll keep you watching. ;)

Equilibrium is more of a lower-budget, futuristic, post-apocalyptic style film, without the 360-degree panning and flash of the Matrix. I found it a bit derivative of 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, but it’s well done and the acting is excellent. The fight scenes are well choreographed, the plot is interesting (if a little predictable at times), and Bale does well at portraying a man completely stripped of any form of emotion (sorry, no spoilers here.) Worth a rental.

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Posted in Home Theater |

Tags: movies, christian+bale, batman+begins, the+machinist, home+theater