A View From Mars:

Batman Begins (B+)

A little history . . . I liked Tim Burton's gimmicky dark Batman back then, although I'm not sure it stands the test of time now. The second one had its moments, but I wasn't too particularly fond of its villians, The Penguin and Catwoman. As for the last two, let's just say Joel Schumacher killed the franchise then chopped it into little pieces and fed it to the sharks, etc. . . you get my point. I'm rather tired of the "franchise has been resurrected" label, but it is very fitting indeed. A fine step 1 was hiring independent minded Christopher Nolan (Memento) and letting him cast a very independent minded actor in Christian Bale to play the lead. Surround him with some A listers to play Alfred (Michael Cain), Lt. Gordan (Gary Oldman), Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) and you just might have something beyond decent here. I won't go much into plot as there's an origin story and some villians and personal demons to overcome, but I will say that more attention was given to the characters than to the special effects and the spectacles that they could have become. I'd almost go out on that limb and say that this was about as realistic as you can get for a comic book movie, but there were moments in the film in which that comment just doesn't belong. Some just aren't into comic book adaptations, but for the rest, this movie is a must see and definitely better than the Spidermans and X-Men of the movie comic book world.