The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan
2008

This is a real solid sequel to Nolan's reincarnation of the Batman franchise. As a guy who saw "Batman and Robin" (1997) in the theater I can honestly say that this gravely serious take on the caped crusader is a clever avenue to explore, considering the series had degenerated into A-list actors in Circe Du Soleil costumes making stupid puns on massively tacky sets. From a scripting standpoint it's clever how the Nolan brothers take outlandish and iconically established villains like the Joker and Two-Face and integrate them as realistically as possible into a world that's only marginally fantastic. I'm not saying that this grim and dour, hyper-realist batman is the best of all possible worlds, but this experiment in grounding a character whose always lived in a make-believe world is, at the very least, fascinating. Would Heath Ledger have won the Oscar if he hadn't met an untimely death? Who cares. His performance was solid and the Academy Awards kind of blow anyways. For all the creative touches, and expert filmmaking the picture's overly philosophical ending seems a little like a hollow stunt, or maybe the kind of cliffhanger Joel Schumacher would have used to get us ready for the next installment. I hear Michael Madsen is playing the Croc, and Bob Balaban's going to be the Penguin.