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Something didn't quite sit well with me the first time I saw this film. Maybe my expectations were skewed, as I loved Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and I expected to love Be Kind Rewind just as much. Maybe I just didn't really pay attention to what I was watching (I think I remember wandering around my room as it was playing). But there was something about it that wasn't what I hoped it to be.
Watching it for the second time, however, was very different. For one thing, I now actually know who Fats Waller was, and that heightened my interest. I enjoyed hearing his music dotted throughout the film. I feel privileged that I can recognise the songs and it made me feel more affectionate to the film.
I like it when that happens, when you enjoy something more the second time around. It's like you weren't ready for it the first time around and it had to wait until you were in the right place. It leaves me wondering whether I'll enjoy The Science Of Sleep more the second time I watch it as well...
Final Thought: If you watch this on DVD, in the special features there is footage of Mos Def singing Fats Waller's songs in Paris. Watch it. It's only 6 minutes but it's great.
Up Next: Beauty And The Beast (1991)
The thing about Batman for me (and many others) is that he's a superhero who isn't a superhero. No special powers, no radioactive catalysts, no botched experiments, no mutations. Just a vigilante guy. And that's where much of the fascination with him lies, in the idea that, given the means, anyone could be him.
And what makes Batman Begins work for me is that it recognises that. We're not in a cartoon world, we're in a gritty, everyday but heightened reality that is almost believable. The punches have weight behind them and the falls hurt.
There's so many movies adapted from comic books now. I can understand why, there's so many stories all laid out already, a catalogue of complex characters and a fanbase at the ready. That raises the expectation though, so it's amazing that the number of good quality comic-based films is relatively high.
Final Thought: Gary Oldman should be in every movie, please.
Up Next: Be Kind Rewind (2008)
When I was a kid discovering music, I would pinch my father's CDs that I liked the most. My father listened to a lot of jazz and classical music, so that was where I started. Henry Mancini made an impression on me. I loved "Baby Elephant Walk" and "Pink Panther". There was another song on the same album called "Main Title from The Great Mouse Detective".
Being a child, and therefore prone to come up with my own definitions for things, I thought it cool that a composer my father liked had written a piece of music about an imaginary mouse detective. I thought it was just an idea that had occurred to Mancini one day; "Suppose there was this detective, but he was a mouse... I think his life would sound like this..." After all, he'd written music about baby elephants and pink panthers, so for me it wasn't much of a stretch. I loved the piece of music and was satisfied with my explanation for it.
Years later, I discovered the film Basil, The Great Mouse Detective at the video store. It had animals in it, so of course I hired it. When the opening credits started and the theme played, I froze. I knew that music! I scrabbled through my CDs to confirm that I was right, and sure enough, there it was on the track listing. I'd been listening to it for years and never learned that it was the theme music for a Disney film before that day that I'd hired it on a whim.
After I'd watched the film, I pulled out my CD and listened carefully to the title music several times. I heard it so differently having seen the film. I could picture the characters and their world. The piece seemed more emotive to me, knowing what it was created for. This was a piece that was part of my discovery of music. It wasn't something that I was told was good, it was a piece that I decided myself that I liked. I had made that choice independent of outside influence. I had listened to that album so many times growing up, I knew every little nuance of every track. And then, out of the blue, completely unwittingly, I'd discovered a whole new meaning to a piece that I thought I knew so well. It was an amazing experience to listen to a piece of music that I knew intimately, and hear it as though I was listening to it for the first time. Because it gave me that feeling, this film will always be special to me.
Final Thought: Hooray for mice with Scottish accents.
Up Next: Batman Begins (2005)
