B+ |
***½ |
+2-2|
Teens & Up*
The Dark Knight Rises is very nearly the thunderous finale that Christopher Nolan’s unprecedented super-hero trilogy needed after the pitch-black nihilism that Heath Ledger’s Joker brought to
The Dark Knight … Yet something crucial is missing — a major omission that lingers over the whole trilogy, a question raised ever more insistently in all three films, and at best left unanswered, if not answered negatively.
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In my
Avengers review I wrote, “If
The Avengers isn’t necessarily the
best superhero movie ever made, it is unquestionably the
most superhero movie ever made.“ That, of course, raises the question: What
is the best superhero movie ever made?
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By rights, pulp heroes like Batman and James Bond belong to this world of escapism, not the world of
The Godfather. Bond was even one of the original inspirations for Indiana Jones. (“I’ve got something better than James Bond” was how Lucas pitched the character to Steven Spielberg.) Now, though, the boundaries are becoming less clear.
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A+ |
**** |
+2-1|
Teens & Up*
So deeply does
The Dark Knight delve into the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men that it comes almost as a shock, bordering on euphoria, to find that it maintains a tenacious grip onto hope in the human potential for good.
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C |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up
Critics adored
Batman for its eccentric, Burtonesque take on a pop-culture icon, for its moody, noirish gothic art-deco Gotham City, and of course for Jack Nicholson’s showy performance as the Joker. Comic-book fans, meanwhile, appreciated the film for rescuing the Dark Knight from the over-the-top camp comedy of the 1960s series and making him suitably dark and brooding. For all that, though, the film’s flaws are hard to overlook.
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A |
**** |
+1-1|
Teens & Up
It’s tempting to call
Batman Begins the
Citizen Kane of super-hero
movies; at any rate, it’s the closest thing so far.
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