The Campaign is Will Ferrell and Jay Roach’s latest tag team effort. Calling an audible they take on another sport: politics. Ferrell plays Cam Brady who is a long sitting Congressman for the state of North Carolina. When the Motch brothers decide to swing influence in the favor of their mega corporation they tap the unwitting Marty Huggins (a beardless Zach Galifianakis), an innocent, doe eyed director at the local tourism center.

There’s some really funny parts here, but they’re spread apart pretty far. It’s a big hill and valley kind of ride with this movie. At times it felt a little too real despite all of the more outlandish moments. There’s a kernel of truth to each outlandish set up that kind of marred the experience to me. While fitting for the times we’re in with a good cast, I can’t shake the feeling that this is a better rental than a full ticket price movie.

I’m a huge Batman fan, so I have a obvious bias towards these movies. I love Christopher Nolan’s work and I’ve loved the first two Nolan Batman movies. I like the vision he and his team created and ran with.

I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight just before going to The Dark Knight Rises. So glad I did, it refreshed me on each story and the overall arc of the trilogy. A lot comes back into play in Rises and being immediately familiar helped me enjoy the movie even more.

This is a really epic movie, the scope is huge, and coming from TDK, that’s saying something. While the Joker was anarchy, Bane is a more militant and physical threat. Pulling off a huge overthrow of Gotham, Bane takes complete control of the city while leaving its already “disgraced” hero broken and shattered. The villains win for most of this movie, giving a real sense of a phoenix rising mentality to the end of this Baman tale.

It’s a dark and complex world that Bruce Wayne has found himself in. He relies a lot on friends in this one, especially Jim Gordon and most notably Selina Kyle (Catwoman). I’ve never been a fan of Anne Hathaway, but she completely won me over in her take on Selina. Hathway takes a refreshing spin on Michelle Pfeiffers ‘ Catwoman. She’s sexy and sneaky, but she doesn’t have the feral nature that Pfeiffer goes with. She works really well in scenes with Bruce Wayne and Batman. Tom Hardy also impressed me as Bane, a real unique and daring bit of work (which really describes Rises as a whole to me). Heath Ledger as Joker is the Everest of character acting and while Bane really isn’t as strong of a character, his presence and actions are unique and leave a lasting impression. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as police officer Blake is another wonderful addition, he’s one of the best actors working today.

The movie just looks amazing, there are so many amazing shots and set ups, it’s just too much to describe. The vision and scope is immense and matched perfectly by Hans Zimmer’s powerful score. Christopher Nolan does as much in camera as he can and uses CG to augment the special effects only when necessary. Stunt guys all over the place, very little obvious CG elements, the integration of the real and the fantasy is tightly knit together.

Christopher Nolan likes to keep brewing his story from start to finish and that often makes things more messy than it needs to be. At two hours and forty minutes, Rises is a wicker basket of a story. The set up of a cleaned up city that is still rotten, Bruce Wayne’s tortured soul from the events of the last film, Bane’s underground moves to take over, all the chess pieces of old and new characters being moved around. There’s a lot of foreshadowing and if you know the Batman stories, the big reveal isn’t a reveal. When everything is working, I’m completely sucked in to the world. In the first chase scene with Batman, he’s on the Bat Pod when he goes into a tunnel and hits an EMP device to disable the lights and vehicles around him. You see his shadow flitting around the cop cars and then his glorious reveal as he starts taking down the bad guys actually gave me a head rush. A super hero come to life right in front of me. A few minutes later the introduction of Batman’s new ride The Bat from the alley way? Forget it, just so cool it made me smile like a 6 year old. But when the movie missteps, it feels that much more odd, like a jolt to a train car. Sometimes it’s little things like dialog that could have been improved. Then there are the odd bits of comic book logic and/or strange editing (the opening action sequence would leave wreckage for about 20 miles, wouldn’t look like an accident, sudden skips of time that can be hard to keep track of, how did Bruce get from the prison to Gotham and find who he needed right out the gate at just the right time). The choice to make Gotham not look like Gotham from each movie is really odd though. TDK was Chicago and Rises is mostly NYC and Philly, the aesthetic that Begins started was dropped for reasons I can’t think of. Thankfully it’s nothing that ruined the experience for me. Most of the problems I have I think could be fixed with some different editing choices.

As the credits rolled I felt really satisfied. The Batman book that Nolan brought to us in seven years was complete using his own words and images. The end is a mixture of emotions with some awesome visuals (I just can’t keep saying that enough) that filled me with hope. Even in great darkness, good will always be there to fight evil. Now someone give Nolan the directors chair for the next James Bond movie.

After Sam Raimi and company piledrove the Spiderman films into the dirt with Spiderman 3 in 2007, Sony needed to kick start their franchise again (for legal and creative differences). The Amazing Spiderman reboot is the result and it’s pretty much a success.

I consider the first move to be overrated, 2 is a truley great movie and 3 is a complete mess. Here we are given a new cast, new director, new stunt team, slightly new story. Here’s the main problem with the movie: it’s a reboot. There’s really no reason to do an origin story again when it’s only a decade after it was first brought to the movies. This could have just been a direct sequel, ignoring anything that happened in 3. Everyone knows the start so it’s just redundant. That said, it’s done well. A different take on the Peter Parker and Uncle Ben catalyst for the superhero starts us off and thankfully they’ve done with a new villain with Dr. Curt Connors (The Lizard).

I really liked the new cast, Andrew Garfield is a perfect Peter Parker and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy is a perfect match. I didn’t miss Tobey Maguire at all. He’s more of the comic smart ass here and they have him using mechanical web shooters like the comic as well. It’s a nicely layered movie, it’s a smooth track to setting up the loveable teenager to heroic hero as the stakes are gradually ratcheted up. “With great power comes great responsibility” is well at work here.

The unique fight scenes are great, really pushing the difference between Spiderman and all other superheroes abilities. There’s a great weight to all the hits but the quickness of a super nimble person. It’s a lot of fun to watch him disable people with webbing and then swing around different ways in each scene. The 3D isn’t anything really worth mentioning. It’s used subtly in dialog scenes but there is next to no separation during the big action scenes. There’s some great work done with traveling as Spiderman in the first person perspective, but it looked surprisingly flat in 3D. There either very little visual depth or the background is in such a blur the whole image just turns into a streak. Not worth the money.

I think it’s worth watching, if only to get another one with this cast. Spiderman has some life in him, something I didn’t think was possible after watching 3.