American History X: *** 1/2. A powerful and overlooked movie dealing with modern day race relations in Southern California. Edward Norton, who is amazing in everything he does, stars as a skinhead who gets a second chance at life after going to jail for murdering some African-Americans who tried to steal his car. The movie gives a thought provoking and frightening glimpse into the world of Neo-Nazi organizations.
Armageddon: ****. This movie is what it is. Why such a high recommendation? Because it is great at being what it is. This film is made in the typical Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay style. It's hard to go wrong with a movie featuring Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thorton, Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck. A small team has to use a nuclear weapon to blow up an asteroid to save the earth and hopefully return to their loved ones. Total melodrama. Yet it is surprisingly effective.
As Good As It Gets: ****. Jack Nicholson proves he can do comedy just as well as he does drama. He takes the usual mean, tough guy character, which he has gotten so good at playing and turns it on its head, so that he is a hilarious, yet strangely lovable, antisocial jerk. He and Helen Hunt truly deserved their Academy Awards in this movie. It is smartly written and in a year when Titanic dominated the Oscar race, I would have preferred to see this movie win the award for Best Picture.
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker : ***. There have been a ton of Batman movies in the past ten or so years, including two other animated Batman movies, which fell flat. In a strange way, this is probably the best of all of them. This is high praise coming from an expert on Batman who has read an uncountable number of Batman comics, purchased Batman cels, and watched virtually every Batman-related movie and cartoon ever since the first Tim Burton Batman movie was released. This movie is extremely well done. The animation was outsourced to a Japanese animation studio that knows their stuff. (As most fans of animated movies know, Japan has been the source of the best animation for quite some time.) This film is dark, twisted and disturbing. Everything a Batman story should be (while most of the Batman movies have not been). It even has a great surprise ending regarding the identity of the Joker. A side note: I have not yet seen the unrated version of this movie, which was put out in limited release, but I am told that it is even better and more disturbing than the one I have seen.
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