Ranking the Batman Films: Part 1

After we watched The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in Christopher Nolan's epic trilogy, we thought it would be good to go back through the seven films that have made up the modern Batman films thus far, starting with Tim Burton's Batman in 1989, continuing through Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin (that temporarily killed the franchise) and ending with the Nolan films in the last seven years. How did they stack up to one another? Which was the best? And since we couldn't make up our minds alone (this was too important), we enlisted the help of tons of guest bloggers, friends, and colleagues to rate and talk about the seven films. Or, at least, we tried to talk to all of our guest bloggers - My Mom kindly declined, saying that "these are frivolous movies. I have no need for them." Harsh words, but, for the rest of us, here are the rankings:

Hit or Miss: Quick Movie Reviews!

Let's just get down to it. There are a lot of actually pretty decent movies out right now, and we here at Tableau Your Mind want to take you through our viewing catalog and let you know what you can miss and what movies should instantly make you want to hit up a movie theater. It's called Hit or Miss, and here we go:

Captain America doesn't like 'bullies'

Captain America: The First Avenger

Synopsis: The plot is mostly incidental, but basically Steve Rogers is a wimpy kid with a big heart and a lot of moxie who, when injected with a super serum, becomes the super buff Chris Evans Captain America. He then has to fight another super soldier, Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), who is also a mad scientist who stole a blue glowing cube (the Tesseract) from a dying Illuminati or something and is now using it to create super advance weapons. Also,

[Spoiler Alert] Best Picture Nominees #1: Inception

Looking back at this year in movies, the film landscape seems to be scattered with tons of good-not-great movies, and the nominees for best picture this year makes the Academy's decision to expand the category all the more ridiculous.  We at Tableau Your Mind will be looking back at this year's best picture nominees in as quick a fashion as possible, and hopefully bitter in-fighting will ensue.

First up is Inception, a film that suffers from what we like to call "Avatar Syndrome."  That is, it's a visually stunning and fun movie that is hindered by the pretentiousness of the director.  With Avatar, James Cameron harshed everyone's buzz by constantly talking about how original and innovative the storyline was and how his amazing new technology was changing the landscape of modern film.  The movie is gorgeous, but the storyline is trite, many of the characters one-dimensional, and antagonists so evil they're more cartoonish than the doe-eyed N'avi.  Let's call a spade a spade.

Ellen Page is FALLING! Someone catch Ellen Page!

Inception is similarly afflicted. It's beautiful, and a lot of the ideas