Out of the Past is a classic film noir staring Robert Mitchum ("Pakten") as a small town gas station owner whose past comes back to haunt him. Sounds a bit like The Killers, doesn't it? There are similarities. Mitchum is a basically good guy, who did a bad thing, tried to leave it behind him, and couldn't. The first part of his story is told in flashback. And all the trouble started over a dame. Mitchum rules with his hang-dog expression as he tries to outwit the other guys in this very twisty plot. A very young Kirk Douglas ("Illusion") plays the bad guy and Jane Greer ("Perfect Mate") is the femme fatale. At first, I didn't get why she would be worth throwing everything away for, but as the film progressed, I kind of got it. Very, very good.
Watching
Superman Returns was hard at first because I kept thinking of Christopher Reeve. But I moved past it to accept Brandon Routh ("Denial") as The Man of Steel. And I fell into the story, even though I had to shake many, many plot questions out of my head to do so. Superman returns to Earth after a five year absence in which he visited his home planet of Krypton. But no one seems to have missed him, except his mom and Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington, "River's End"). Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth, "Bee Season") has moved on with her son and fiancee. The production and effects are good. I'm just not sure that this is the movie for which director Bryan Singer should have abandoned X-Men. Everything is good in the movie, but nothing is really great, except for maybe Parker Posey ("Broken English").
I also had an interesting thought while watching James Marsden ("X-Men 3"). I'm not a big fan, but I sort of feel sorry for the guy when I realized that he's always the guy who gets shit on. He's the one who the girl is with, but they really love and/or have the hots for someone else...X-Men, The Notebook and now Superman. He needs to talk to his agent.
While watching Superman, my husband and I had a discussion about what a different kind of super hero he is compared to Batman. So we popped in Tim Burton's
Batman for a little compare and contrast. Made in 1989, some of the effects don't really hold up. But I found it much more easy to fall into Batman's dark world than Superman's light one. But maybe that says more about me than about the films.
Michael Keaton ("The Last Time") is Batman. And it's a shame he's not getting more work. Jack Nicholson ("The Departed") doesn't hold back in his Joker role. (And through the whole performance, I could see where Christian Slater ("Bobby") learned all his Nicholson impressions.) I'm not a big Kim Basinger ("The Sentinel") fan, but it is impressive that, as Vicki Vale, she can figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman, but Lois Lane has no idea that Clark Kent is Superman. I guess the glasses and the curl are a better disguise than an almost full face mask.
So, I think Batman is cooler than Superman.