Remember me? Honestly, I don't either. I'm about to move into my own pad, so hopefully then I will start to blog again, with life updates galore and all the pop cultural insight the world (or two people who read it and have long since given up) has come to expect from this here blog.
But I can't move on in my life without giving "The Dark Knight" its due.
The latest Batman movie had the biggest opening of all time this past weekend, and it richly deserves every cent it makes. This is a movie created by filmmakers who really understand the Batman mythos, and who take it as seriously as it deserves to be taken.
It's also an amazing crime epic, a thoughtful film on terrorism and life in post 9/11 America, a psychological and philosophical study on human nature, a dark and disturbing look at madness, and kick ass Batman movie where the Caped Crusader rides a bad ass motorcycle and glides from skyscraper to skyscraper.
Heath Ledger's Joker will go down as one of the great screen villains of all time. If he doesn't take home a posthumous Oscar for his unhinged and unnerving performance, I just might give up. His Joker is, as many reviews have pointed out "a force of nature" that descends upon Batman's Gotham and makes it go crazy as he runs his own experiments in human psychology and forces all the characters into impossible ethical choices.
But Aaron Eckhart's tragic performance as doomed DA Harvey Dent is equally strong, though maybe not as in your (forgive the expression) face. His story is actually the film's true through line, as Joker doesn't have a backstory or real arc (which is totally appropriate for the character and works brilliantly.)
Gary Oldman, as cop ally Jim Gordon, is astoundingly good as well, giving a speech that will break your heart and give you chills at an important moment. And what else can be said about Michael Caine, who takes the role of Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, to places nobody thought possible.
And then there's Bale, who plays Batman/ Bruce Wayne with more intensity than any actor before him. This is the movie all fans of Batman have been waiting for for a very, very long time.
"The Dark Knight" is the best movie of the year so far by leaps and bounds, and it's the best super hero movie ever made by a mile. It's a dark, heartbreaking, and brooding epic, and it makes other so called "dark" super hero movies look laughable. People die in this movie, and character's lives are ruined. This is a movie where none of the main characters come out unscathed by the film's events, and there is no happy or triumphant ending like the other films in this genre always have. But there is Batman at the end, so there is hope.
The final moments of the film are so powerful that I teared up and had chills running up and down my spine both times I've seen it. This is great cinema, without the caveat that it's "a great comic book movie" or a "great super hero movie" or even "a great action movie." No, this is a great movie, period. And as such, I may have new favorite movie of all time.
As The Joker says in his mindblowing first scene, "How about a magic trick?" This whole movie is a magic trick of the highest order, and director Christopher Nolan deserves to be elevated to the elite status of God among geeks after his work on this, I'll just go ahead and say it, masterpiece.
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