great weekend. party over here, party over there, fathers’ day barbeque with the peerless spencer and family. kinda rough staying up til almost 5am two nights in a row though… how do i do it? yet here i am fresh as a daisy monday morning.

and it isn’t like almost everyone i know hasn’t already seen it, but if you’ll just allow me to rave for a minute, please:

batman begins – 5 stars

continuing the too-good-to-be-true streak of 2005 blockbusters that could have been catastrophic letdowns but were actually better than i thought they could be, batman begins managed to succeed specifically in all the areas that i doubted it would. being a bat-nut, i knew i’d be forgiving either way and still enjoy it, but it surpassed my expectations and even, i think, almost all the other comic book movies i’ve seen.

see, i was afraid that a film so heavy on the backstory was going to end up dull. but bale’s acting and the attention to believability and character development pulled me right in; as a matter of fact one of my only complaints was that the first 15 minutes or so felt rushed, if anything, and i could have watched them flesh it out more if they had the time (i can’t really fault them, however, for wanting to get to the batty goodness sooner than later).

my other big concern was the scarecrow as a villain, who in cartoon incarnations was great because of his otherworldiness and use of hallucinations — could they really pull that off live actions without going into cheesy CGI? and i have to say this ended up being one of my favorite parts of this movie, they pulled it off so surprisingly well. the first time he uses his fear gas, i jumped in my seat, and every time after i was appropriately scared and simultaneously delighted at how little they were holding back on showing some real terror. spider-man 2 this ain’t, folks. the first time dr. crane (played SO well by cillian murphy) doses the crime boss (played equally well by tom wilkinson — seriously, what a cast!), did they ever let loose on the screaming. and it was perfect. as was every time after that, which i’ll spare for the few who haven’t seen for themselves.

otherwise, the batmobile was cooler than i thought it’d be; way cooler than driving into a fake dead end street, huh? and alfred was great, lucius was great, and the action was completely dead-on to the combination intimidation and quick dispatch method of how batman works. okay, the evil scheme was a little over the top and katie holmes might have been a tad unnecessary, but this was a comic book movie after all so that’s all easily brushed aside, because it didn’t distract from what was good.

overall, probably the most satisfying adventure movie i’ve seen in a long time, and i’m still debating whether this is my new favorite superhero movie or not. the spider-man and X-men sequels were both pretty strong, but i don’t know, this is the dark knight we’re talking about…