Posting again?

I'm pulling an old trick and posting twice when I have time, so that I don't feel so bad when it takes me another week to get back to a computer.

I just watched Munich, and I was disappointed. Spielberg uses an interesting plot device to highlight the moral conundrum the main character faces. The massacre of the Israeli Olympic team is told in chunks alongside the story of a team of Mossad assassins sent to kill the people who murdered the athletes. The story is mostly about how the Mossad killers struggle with the morality of assassinating killers - who probably deserve to die, but who deserve to die for doing things very much like what the assassins have to do now. In other words, the act of assassinating the terrorists is a lot like terrorism. Perhaps it could be argued that these were not innocent people, but terrorists argue that way too.

I suppose it's an interesting thing to think about, and I like sitting here thinking about the ways that this movie folds back on itself and connects in odd ways. I like the way that the movie pulls an actor that I haven't seen in anything except Moonraker as Mr. Drax, and makes him a strange sort of French businessman. This actor, and the son who supplies most of the information about the whereabouts of the terrorists to the Mossad team, really intrigued me as a character who sold information about the location of the terrorists, and then someone who turns around and sells information on the Mossad team.

I hate it, though, when a movie tries to catch you not paying attention. There were a lot of things that I missed because of bad lighting or because I wasn't paying enough attention. I couldn't decipher whether they managed to kill the last target or not, and I don't know if the guy who was with him died or not. I hate that I don't know, and I'm too frustrated to go back and check now. Part of it was that I was watching it on a small TV from far away and my eyes are not that great. Part of it was that they didn't make the movie in a way that I could follow easily.

The other movie that I watched was Batman Begins. This was much better. I was surprised at how deep they tried to take it, and how I was willing to follow it. I suppose I'm a sucker for superhero movies, and Batman has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid - though not as big as Spiderman to me. Anyway, I thought that this movie was really well done. I like Katie Holmes as the in-your-face idealist assistant DA, and I like it when she slaps Bale around for bringing a gun to kill the guy who killed his parents. I like Liam Neeson in the movie - he seems a good choice for the strangely mystical Shadow guy. The Ninja training that Bruce goes through doesn't seem like much - there are some montage scenes of fighting and stuff that look kind of cool. But the scary part was the sudden way that Dr. Crane spooks people. That was kind of nifty. I suppose I liked that part - the dust and the scarecrow mask were kind of a shock.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now. Night night.