It seems that whenever a new Clint Eastwood film is announced nowadays it immediately is thrown into Oscar contention. Regardless of the plot, or the people that are involved, it is automatically considered a "good" film. However, rarely any of those films ever turn out to be something worth even mentioning. Since his 2004 Best Picture win for Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood has had four other films that have graced the silver screen. Flags of Our Fathers, which was a poor attempt at re-creating the flying of the flag at Iwo Jima, Letters from Iwo Jima, which was Eastwood's best directorial effort and Changeling which may be one of the worst films of 2008.

Batman Begins was easily the very best DC comic based film ever made. Yes, better than the Keaton Batman, yes better than the Reeve Superman. It was gritty, intense and fun all at the same time. The success of the film made it a virtual no brainer that there would be a follow up movie at some point… and the fact that Gordon shows Batman the Joker card made it even more obvious. But could another Batman flick live up to the expectations generated by the first? Would the film actually end up being as good as the fans WANT it to be? Would Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker be as good as everyone is going to say it is regardless if he was great or horrible since there is an unwritten rule that everyone is SUPPOSED to say how great he is in it no matter what?

Well… off I went to see The Dark Knight this evening at the IMAX here in Los Angeles along with my buddy Robert from IESB, and I can tell you the film is not perfect… but it is one impressive movie nonetheless.

There used to be a plethora of legitimate big screen action heroes for us to go and idolize on Saturday afternoons. Jean Claude, Sylvester, Arnold, Segal and a handful of others. These days it’s hard to point to a legit action hero with the possible exceptions of The Rock (yeah he likes to go by Dwayne Johnson now… but he’ll always be “The Rock”) and maybe even more so, Jason Statham.

Death Race comes along, and obviously it’s a remake of the 1975 classic… and almost as obvious is that it’s a very lose remake. Not many people have been giving any buzz to this flick, including myself since despite the presence of Joan Allen, has looked cheap at best and an abomination at worst. So off we went to catch Death Race. Was it as bad as we thought it would be. Actually… no.

I used to LOVE Ben Stiller. Zoolander, Dodgeball, Meet The Parents and several others. But over the last couple of years it seems he’s put out trash film after trash film and I’ve almost totally lost interest. I sort of feel the same way about Jack Black… used to love him, but he’s disappointed me too much over the last little while. So when the first couple of trailers came out for Tropic Thunder, the only thing that REALLY caught my attention was the presence of Robert Downey Jr. playing a black guy. It looked like it could be too funny for words. So my expectations were that the movie would be bad, but that Downey may be good enough to at least give me some laughs. I’m very happy to say the film greatly exceeded my expectations.