I’ve seen some movies this last week. Briefly, let me critique them.

The Dark Knight: I’d wanted to go see this one in the theater, and had been waiting for it to come out, but then the whole Heath Ledger thing happened. His death made me very sad, and I wasn’t so eager to see the movie anymore. He was becoming quite an excellent actor, and I knew his being dead would take some of the shine off the movie for me. I still reluctantly watched it only because it was on one of the movie channels in high-definition at a moment in time when I was channel surfing.

That said, I loved it. More than I did the first one in the series. I’ve seen it three times in the last week. It probably helps that this variation of Batman matches with the variation of Batman I knew as a kid who liked comic books. Batman is supposed to be dark and somewhat sinister (not goofy). Good movie, and I may need to get the DVDs for this one. Infinitely re-watchable.

The Happening: I did not want to see this movie. In fact, this movie was firmly planted on the list of movies I never had any intention of seeing, even if I was wide awake and bored in the middle of the night, and it was the only thing on TV. It was a movie I had predetermined was going to be beyond my death and violence threshold for entertainment. Alas, sometimes I am not the only one in the living room in the middle of the night bored and awake. Lin turned it on very late Saturday night.

I gave it five minutes to make me interested enough to watch another five minutes. It almost lost me right away, but then I saw Mark Wahlberg was in it, and he’s kind of cute. I decided to watch it until the next ridiculously violent death scene. OK, so the story got interesting, and I watched the whole movie, some of it with my hands over my face. It was a good movie, and some of the cinematography was awesome (though the music was overdone in some spots). I won’t be watching it again (ever), but it was worth seeing once for the storyline (and Wahlberg) alone, if you can stand the death scenes, some of which will set off anyone with any kind of empathy about pain.

X Files – I Want to Believe: C- … maybe even a D. Truly, it sucked. If I had paid money to see it in the theater, I would have been angry. Really, it’s a weak film all around. The acting was fine, but the story was weak and had holes, and it just didn’t feel much like an X Files movie. Only die-hard X Files fans will want to believe this was a good movie.