Movies

This week, I got to go see a movie in a theater for the first time in...oh, a really long time. Originally, I was going to say the last movie I saw in the theater was Walk the Line, which I saw on Christmas Day 2005. Then I realized that I did get to go see Knocked Up last summer. Obviously, I don't get out much.

This week, we went to see The Dark Knight. I'm not really a comic book fan, but I surprised myself by enjoying Spiderman when my husband dragged me to see it a few years back, so I thought I'd give the latest Batman movie a try. I'd heard nothing but great reviews of it.

We decided to do it up right, and went to see it in IMAX format. I realized my mistake within the first couple of minutes of the movie. I got that same feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get while going up the first hill on a really, really big roller coaster. With a roller coaster, you know it'll all be over in a matter of minutes, but I was staring at 2 1/2 hours of this in the movie theater.

And that's exactly what I got. I couldn't even look at the screen for the first 20 minutes, which was basically one big gun battle. I found myself cowering in my seat as if trying to make myself as small a target as possible. About an hour into the movie, my husband whispered that Heath Ledger excelled in his role as The Joker, and I replied that I wouldn't know, since I hadn't actually been able to watch any of his scenes yet. I have to agree, though, that Heath Ledger was terrifyingly convincing as The Joker. I would be surprised if he didn't win an Oscar for his performance.

All in all, there was far too much violence in this movie for me. Not just gun battles, but much, much worse. Even though I know it's "pretend", I have a really hard time watching violent scenes, so whenever one came up, I had to stare down at my lap and plug my ears. After the fact, I found out that a lot of the scenes were implied - that the camera cut away right before the worst of the violence. But still, far too much for me to handle.

I think I might have done better watching this movie in regular format. IMAX was just too intense for me. I have to admit, though, there was one car chase scene in the middle of the film that was so awesome, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen. And this is coming from someone who normally fast-forwards through car chase scenes when watching movies at home.

So, there were parts of the movie that I really enjoyed, but I could have done without most of the violence, even if it was just implied in some parts.

In other movie news, I finally cancelled my Netflix membership yesterday. It was very sad, but it had to be done. I just wasn't watching enough movies to make it worth it. I just finally finished watching Dan in Real Life last night, and it was shipped out to me on 5/28/08. At $9.99 a month for the membership, I paid $25 to rent that movie, and could have bought it for half that price.

Besides, I can borrow movies for free at my library, although the newer ones usually have a waiting list. If I don't have time to watch the movie, I'm not out any money. Can't beat that deal!