Transcendence (2014)

A week after seeing Wally Pfister’s “Transcendence,” the flick barely registers in my brain. I vaguely recall the finale as insulting, and unfathomably boring, everything proceeding a slog lacking any remote urgency. That’s an unexpected turn for director Pfister, who served as DP on all of Chris Nolan’s films, including “Inception.” Johnny Depp is Will, an AI genius obsessed with loading a person’s consciousness to the Cloud because, I mean, that’s safe. When fate deals Will a blow, his scientist wife (Rebecca Hall) uploads hubs to a supercomputer lest she lose him forever. Will 2.0 takes his new environment too well, becoming a HAL high on Orwell: Watcher of all, raiser of dead, and controller of the Cloud, and clouds. The folks at Infowars might shake in fear. I yawned. See, Depp -– appearing like a ghostly sleep-deprived Max Headroom -- mumbles his lines and gets halfway creepy, but never dangerous. This film desperately needs danger. Skip HAL. Will becomes a lovesick Speak N’ Spell. I won’t spill the end, but know this: It defies logic in such a leap that it left me fuming. Artificial intelligence has never been slower. D+

Man of Steel (2013) and Superman: The Movie (1978)

A trippy back-to-back movie marathon for a long-time superhero geek: The new, troubled, cold dark blue “Man of Steel,” followed by the pop-art all-is-good bright “Superman: The Movie” from 1978. (The latter the first film I ever saw in a theater.) 

These films seen together should make some pop culture thesis about how far down the path of darkness America has gone, or realized it traveled long ago but could never quite admit. After all, damn it, Superman is America. (If you need back story, you are lost.)

Both films are origin stories of Superman, the only hero whose true identity is his super hero self, and his alter ego costume the normal guy next door, Clark Kent. He always is Superman. The older version is straight chronological order, the second splits about a quarter way through, rocketing, so to speak, from baby landing to adult Clark at work.

Richard Donner’s 1978 film is soaked in American nostalgia, even for a bygone era with Norman Rockwell vistas of farmland and cityscapes right out of comic books and the imaginations of children. Christopher Reeve is Superman as an adult, a Boy Scout with no doubt of his inner goodness and he dives in against bad guy Lex Luther (Gene Hackman) with no second of hesitation. 

This is the film for children of all ages. I was 4 when I saw it and was, for lack of a better term, in love. I wore a Superman shirt until it fell apart. Odd now, because I see the flaws now over the nostalgia. When the hell ever was the bit with the black pimp, “That is one bay-ad outfit!’, funny? It smacks of racism, to be fully blunt. I didn’t see that from my pre-kindergarten mind. 

I digress, though, for I still love the intent of this movie. More so than the results. The boy flipping through the comic book at the film’s start, post curtain, says it all. Even if I laugh more now at goofball, neutered Luther, who –- with Hackman on pure ham -– is a kitten compared to Zod. Oh, Zod. The anti-Superman from Krypton. Oh, sure he pops up in “Superman,” briefly in the form of Terrence Stamp, but he’s near the whole show in “Steel.” 

And forget that clunky insider-nerd title. This is “Superman Begins.” And from producer Christopher Nolan, no less. Except the studio could not use such an on-the-nose title. Not after Batman, 2005. 

Donner went Rockwell. Here, director Zack Snyder (“Watchman”) under Nolan goes full Terrence Malick, with an eye that calls out beauty shots such as swaying clothes in the breeze and farm fields, but he is is not afraid to show what lays underneath. It’s Superman by way of “Badlands.” It’s an insane move, really, and on my first move, I had no idea what to think. Nor my second. Months later, I’m still crazy lost and I’m not afraid to admit unsure. 

But I like that, I like that Superman can be created as a symbol of uncertainty and conflict. Do you beat back the bully, or try and save him? What’s it like it to be a child with x-ray vision and crazy-good hearing? Yes, Snyder and his writers take all those little boy Superman fantasies I had and turn them on their head. Do you really want those powers? Or would you go mad? 

As much as “Superman” of 1978 was a celebration of American greatness with comedy thrown in (Larry Hangman!), “Steel” is dead serious about an America with great powers that must ask just because we can intervene, should we? A scene has Superman ask that of a priest, of intervention and sacrifice on the part of Christ. Henry Cavil of “Immortals” is our hero, and purposefully not fully formed or the good guy that Reeve exemplifies. That will come later. (Let’s forget about that 2006 version, OK?)

The endings of these films are full theses in their own right: In the 1978 version, Luther slams California with nuclear missiles, killing Lois Lane (Margot Kidder, still the best in the role) by earthquake. Reeve as Superman is too late to save her and goes mad and -– can I say it’s unrealistic and not be slapped? -– flies into outer space, and spins backward against the Earth’s rotation, turning back time. 

Yes, turning back time. I cheered when I was 4. Now I think, were there drugs on set?

In “Steel,” Zod (Michael Shannon, seething and peeing on all the carpets) lays waste to Metropolis, Smallville, the Pacific, and untold other places, killing untold thousands of people as he attempts to reset Earth as Krypton. (Um, long story, better not to ask.) Lois doesn’t die, but Superman near goes mad here trying to save the world, committing an act that sent shock waves through Superman fans everywhere. I gasped my first time. 

But what a bold crazy move it is, and I won’t say. (Huge leeway: Did he not do it also in “Superman II,” twice?) As a whole “Steel” may not all work, just as “Superman” does not all fit together, but Snyder and Nolan are staking claim to a new legend. 

I pause just short of calling it ballsy, or brilliant. If I can cringe at anything in “Steel,” it’s that this film is not for any child of 4 or 10, and that is who Superman is for. Not adults. For children. My father took me to see the ’78 version. Big memory. 

Had I a child now, I would have taken him to see “Steel.” That cold dark blue may be too dark, certainly too violent with crashing cities. Is that our modern America, though?

Superman: B+, on nostalgia. Man of Steel: B, dependent on a third viewing.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

“The Dark Knight Rises” is the third and clear final installment of Christopher Nolan’s definitive, genre-defining trilogy of Batman films. It is pure topsy-turvy genius Nolan, an epic urban-war film and rule-bending comic book movie that wraps around and fits like snug fingers into “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” so exactly, it feels as if we have just witnessed the ultimate story arc of a super hero’s life, unlike ever before. No fat. No lose ends. Near perfect. The balance, themes, visuals, and characters expertly played. 

In the first film, a doomed father asks his son, “Why do we learn to fall down?” And the boy, now the Batman, is still answering that question, that we are even still pondering that question is worthy of story-writing accolades. Nolan and his co-writer brother Jonathan have again raised the bar, not just on the super hero film genre, but the entire idea of the summer movie tent pole. I’m looking at you, every Michael Bay film ever made, or even the stellar, popcorn fun (but, in hindsight, flat as a flapjack) “Avengers.” 

Case in point, name another summer flick that tips its hat and quotes from “A Tale of Two Cities.” This does, liberally. Average film fan: Clueless. Nolan: All the happier devil.

The amazing kicker of this finale: Nolan’s best hat-trick of the ultra-dark film franchise, a “Prestige,” if you will, is to introduce a new hero rising from tragedy, pain, and lost trust in leadership. Not evil mass death of the Joker, nor the vigilante violence that haunted Bruce Wayne as Batman. But honest, cautious goodness. Let the fan fiction begin. The final image, before Nolan’s trademark “black screen” sign off, is a literal “Dark Knight Rises.” I saw it coming, months back, sort of. But Nolan defies the script I wrote in my head.

If you have not seen this film, then stop, SPOLIERS abound. And, really, 10 days?

“Rises” opens eight years after the events that closed out “Dark Knight,” with Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Aaron Eckhart) killed after a deadly rampage that also almost killed the son of Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman). Batman (Christian Bale) remains hated and hunted, taking the millstone of Dent’s sins onto himself. Tones of Christ, anyone?

The Dark Knight’s thinking: Give Gotham (New York, naturally) the hero he thinks it “deserves,” whatever that means, the Boy Scout White Knight that Dent was before he crossed paths with the Joker. As for the Clown Prince, he receives no mention here, with Heath Ledger’s death already hanging over the franchise like a heavy fog. Nolan didn’t want to bring up more scar tissue, so to speak. In the end, it is a smart move.

Back to this drama: Gotham is enjoying an unprecedented drop in crime thanks to a hardcore, no appeal law for criminals handed down in the name of Dent, and the Batman remains vanished. Bruce Wayne also is in hiding, rumored to be crazy or disfigured, similar to Howard Hughes -– an in-joke as Nolan once tried to make a biopic of Hughes before Martin Scorsese beat him to the punch. (Anyone still want to see that movie? I do.)

This is just the start of “Dark Knight,” and we have much to go. A hulking, massive brute of a terrorist named Bane (Tom Hardy) is living in the underground of Gotham’s water system, planning an all-out war on the city, with a purpose that strikes close to Occupy Wall Street: Take down the rich establishment, share it all, and destroy the infrastructure. 

(Yes, the film cuts deep into the left, but know that the city’s corrupt law-and-order-at-all-costs tactics, and blatant lying about peace and stripping of Civil Rights mirrors the right-wing’s mantra, including the great lie that this nation was founded on some Christian value. Never generations of racism or the murder of countless Native Americans.) 

Yet, Bane has more in plan, fully indifferent to politics. It all goes back to the first film. Nolan has followed Peter Jackson with his  “LOTR”  Trilogy, and Lucas with his own trilogy. You know the name. It is all that rock solid. (Let me say it here, this film meets our impossible expectations of the trilogy's closing, not excel, but meets. That alone is worthy of endless praise.) Consider the opposite: “The Matrix” trilogy. 

I digress. Mr. Wayne, still heartbroken over the death of Rachel Dawes, injured more in mind than body, is flummoxed by a new woman. She is Selina Kyle (Ann Hathaway), a jewel thief who breaks into Wayne’s personal safe when the manor is full of guests. She discombobulates the man, leaving him first flat on his face, then as the film progress, unable to finish sentences and struck silent. (The film is immensely dark, but also quite funny.) Kyle intrigues Wayne, and is the catalyst to bring him, both of him, out into the light. Indeed, Wayne dons the Batman suit again, but only for short chunks of time. 

This trilogy always has been about Bruce Wayne –- the rich playboy -- as the disguise, after all. The rubber suit, by now, is irrelevant. A tool. The suit, though, must come out because after a stunning set of scenes -- the film is 2 hours 45 minutes, but flies by -- has Bain and his henchmen leading a hands-on assault on Wall Street, and later ups the ante with a full-on attack of the city, centered on a football stadium, but spanning outward to include bridges and various infrastructure. Batman, sure as hell, is needed again.

The finale takes place on the streets and air of Gotham, and again has echoes of “Begins” and “Dark Knight” in certain punches, crashes, and other beats of action cinema. It’s a pulverizing film that had me thinking of 1970s Cold War paranoia films, “The Siege,” or a classic Tom Clancy novel, more than anything found in the libraries of D.C. Comics, and also of 9/11, and terrorism in our day and time. Nolan is going big here, not looking back.

Again, Nolan takes Batman out of the film for well more than half its running time. I’ll hold off on why. If you have seen it, you know why, if you have read the comic books, you know why. It’s a daring step that would make the folks behind “Avengers” or “Iron Man” quake: A superhero with an MIA superhero. Here, it perfectly fits in with what we were told in “Begins,” this is all Bruce, Batman can be anyone, the man behind the mask is irrelevant. The move also takes Batman down several pegs, a fallen boy in an old well.

Back to Gotham where a lone, hotheaded policeman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of the Nolan-directed “Inception,” which also had Hardy in it) becomes not just the right-hand-man of a sidelined Gordon, but a stand-in for the Dark Knight. Nolan shifts his film to this man, John Blake, also an orphan, as if it were an Olympic relay race. He is the man, the Dark Knight, who Rises in the end, wary of violence, iron-strong structures and also anarchy, and we presume will take on the mask. That his story plays out much like a police thriller (as did “Dark Knight”) is another way Nolan defies expectations. Gordon-Levitt rocks the role.

As with “Prometheus,” the other surprisingly great, against-the-grain summer film, there are errors along the way, mostly the Wall Street attack and its immediate aftermath, which seems to go from day to dusk to darkest night in far too short a frame period, and a questionable gap in how long the Batman remains sidelined, is it the full three months, or five? I’m still uncertain at this point. All are forgiven, easily. One more crack follows.

What is certain: This film, is a huge, bloody marvel (I know, D.C.), but it does not have the drive of Ledger’s Joker sending electric shocks out into the audience. How could it ever have equaled? Ledger’s performance remains legendary, and could never be topped. The scarily muscular Hardy –- a great actor, catch him in “Bronson” -– is playing such a different sort of evil menace, that comparisons are unfair, and irrelevant. (Had Ledger lived, had the Joker returned, would the story be repetitive? Would Bane be here?) 

Bane wears a “Mad Max”-type gas mask that obscures most of his face, and the effect is purposefully off-putting, almost fully repugnant. So we must watch his eyes, blazing with anger and power, and study his body language, how when he lays his hand gently on a man’s shoulder and brings him –- powerful as he is –- down in a second, by sheer intimidation. 

Hardy's chosen voice will remain controversial forever, tones of Darth Vader, mixed with that of an early James Bond villain, many words inaudible. It’s all crazily over-the-top theatrical, but as Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul taught Wayne in the first installment, that’s how you intimidate. Nolan is playing by the rules off screen that he lays out on screen. (Amazing how many people miss that. And, yes, Neeson appears here, but not how I expected. ) 

The film has a legion of detractors, those who hate how Nolan has mangled and morphed the Batman history and legend, to his own will, and his (undeniable) epic arc, but, again, as with “Inception,” people cannot stop talking about this movie. That’s power, for Nolan, as Ra’s al Ghul would indicate. (And that is art, too.)  

Let’s not forget just how good Bale is here, how permanently hurt and old he appears. As in the first film, Nolan and company are not afraid to show a hero making mistakes and truly getting in over his head. Case in point, despite his mantra to “fight harder,” look at the shock on Bale as Batman’s face, when he first fights Bane. It’s one for the books. Not a heroic rebel yell, but a look of sheer, absolute, “Oh, shit,” fear. Somehow fans hate that. Why? It is real.

Now, that penultimate scene, with Alfred in the Italian café, looking up, to see his life’s hope. I wish it were the very final image, not the Rising scene, and I wish Nolan didn’t show what Alfred sees, instead leaving us hanging and spinning like Cobb’s top. Cain staring out from the screen. Cut to black. Seeing those faces confirmed, it kills the drama before it. At the last moment, an over-reach that drives me mad. Debate onward...

I already have burned through too many words here, and I still have yet addressed the women of this trilogy, and the way Hathaway as “Catwoman” (the name is never mentioned, thank the film gods) turns not just Batman’s brain upside down. Nor have I touched on Wally Pfister’s endlessly fascinating cinematography, never better than the scenes where Batman fights Bain in the low, dark sewers. Hans Zimmer’s score thunders as if he were scoring a deadly serious take on “Clash of Titans,” or another story of gods at war. Every technical mark is just struck dead-on target, besting all before it. (O.K., wait, nothing beats Ledger’s  tractor trailer crash in downtown Chicago.)

“Rises” has that much going on. That many plates. Nolan barely drops a fork. I’m writing this and thinking of a third trip back to the Batcave. To discover more that I missed, re-watch the finale. That’s what movies are all about, are they not? If only that one tiny scene had been cut short, leaving us wide open, rising, in mystery, shock, wonder, and in applause. That's what I wanted. It is the sole reason -- OK< no, I still hate that time jump Wall Street attach to pieces, bad move all around -- this doesn't get a solid “A” score. A-

‘The Illusionist’ and ‘The Prestige’ (Both 2006)

I saw the magic-themed “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige” back-to-back in 2006, on purpose. Just recently, I re-watched them within a week of each other by mere coincidence. My reactions remain just about the same.

“Illusionist” is a star-crossed love story about a wildly imaginative magician and the love of his life. Magic man Eisenheim (Edward Norton) and princess-to-be Sophie (Jessica Biel) loved each other as children, but life shit happened. They split. Decades later Eisenheim arrives in Vienna, ready to woo Sophie from the cruel prick Crown Price Leopold (eternal bad guy Rufus Sewell). To grind Eisenheim down, the prince has a lapdog policeman (Paul Giamatti) who is corrupt, but yet a fan of showmanship and art. This is Giamatti’s film. He outclasses everyone, without raising his voice or getting all puppy-eyed. Norton and Biel provide kennels full of puppy eyes. The film tosses out a “gotchya” plot that’s not nearly as clever as it wishes to be. Norton’s stage presence as Eisenheim is winning, even if the magic is too CGI-heavy. The much-praised cinematography is a pitch too arty even for me. B

“Prestige” is based on a favorite book, so it has a lot to live up to. The plot concerns two rival magicians in London who start as friends, but soon enter a game of one-upmanship and then deadly, bloody games on and off stage. The instigation: An on-stage death of one’s beloved. Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a stage natural, but needs help pushing the core of his trade. Borden (Christian Bale) is the opposite: He is genius at magic design, but a boorish stage presence. Merged in one body and soul, the men would make one hell of a talent. Director Christopher Nolan has a long obsession with what forms a person’s identity, or breaks it. The reveals of “Prestige” allow Nolan to play large. But this isn’t “Memento” or “Inception.” It’s too cold and calculated, and in need of magic dust. So to speak. Nolan avoids supernatural themes that ruled the book, and some acts don’t come off justified: When a major character commits suicide, it seems only blasé inevitable. B+

Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is not for every movie-goer. It is a brain-expanding, mind-blowing trip so far down the hole of human consciousness it makes “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Matrix” seem quaint. This is a film for cinema lovers such as myself who obsessed over “LOST” because it wasn’t easy just entertainment, it required handing ourselves over body and soul to a unique visionary’s imagination, a story, and becoming part of a puzzle. This isn’t a film to ask, “What’s it about?” The question is: “What do you think it’s about?” As with "LOST" or David Lynch's best works, the answers are wide, complex and likely unanswerable.

As director and screenwriter, Nolan returns to the themes of his earliest films: “Following,” “Memento” and “Insomnia.” The plot is hung around a very basic genre concept – here, the haunted criminal on one final job – and turns the box inside out, and upside down. The mystery here lies in the seeker, the film’s protagonist, not in whatever crime he is trying solve, undo or commit. Even “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” were warm ups to this game. Nolan asks the audience with “Inception,” What makes us us? Our memories, our past sins, or our dreams? All those together? Can a person’s dreams become so solidly entrenched in his or her mind, they become as real as the memories of schoolyard games and or one’s wedding? Take over his life? Swallow him whole?

Leonardo DiCaprio is Dominick Cobb, a thief who breaks into people’s minds as they dream while sedated, and sets out to trick or force their subconscious into letting loose vital secrets, data and ideas. He works for and against multi-billion dollar corporations, apparently for the highest bidder. Among his team are Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra”) as a planner and Lukas Haas (“Witness”) as a dream architect, with Tom Hardy (“Bronson”) as a “forger” and weapons man.

The film opens with Dom and his crew targeting a wealthy Japanese business man (Ken Watanabe), who quickly turns the tables on the crew. The corker: He hires the group to usurp a rival up-and-coming tycoon (Cillian Murphy). The plan is not to steal an idea, but covertly plant one. Hence, inception. This is all just the set-up. The payoff cannot be described.

As with “Memento,” there is no central villain. The hero’s mind is a scrambled mess, and that is enough of an obstacle to overcome. Dom’s wife is dead, and he is self-exiled from America, where his young children live with his former in-laws. Nolan slowly pulls back the layers of Dom as his own memory-warped dreams smash into the custom-designed dreams of his targets. His wife (Marion Cottilard) appears, alternately seductive, desperate and completely unstable. When a train appears to crash out-of-control through L.A. traffic, it is only a hint of what’s going on inside Dom’s head, where his grip on reality is tenuous at best. Ellen Page (“Juno”) playa an alternate architect, who knows Dom’s troubles.

With the freedom of the unlimited dream-state imagination, Nolan creates cities that fold onto themselves as if they were paper boxes, entire buildings move and twist and tumble as the dreamer’s body is thrown about a moving car. Thankfully, he avoids the crappy, acid-sucking ruin of the dream-heavy "What Dreams May Come." In the movie’s tour-de-force action sequence, Gordon-Levitt fights several gunmen in a hotel hallway where the rules of gravity do not exist. Nolan also plays with time, knowing that the sleeping brain’s timer does not adhere to real, defined time. The further one sinks into dream states of subconscious -– three, four, five levels down -- time crawls. Minutes are decades, and can drive a man -– or a woman -– mad.

With “Memento,” Nolan shattered the rules on how a story can be presented, creating a murder mystery told backward and then sideways, from the perspective of a man with no apparent short-term memory. He shatters the rules again here, picking up on the unfulfilled promise of “The Matrix,” by making the characters on screen, and the audience as well, not only question the “reality” on screen but that of our own existence.

Hanz Zimmer’s buzzing, thumping score and the ironic use of Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” as a major plot device further breaks down the walls of reality on screen. Cottilard won a best Actress Oscar for playing Piaf in a French-language film. As well, a mysterious series of numbers – 528491 – take on the importance of those hatch numbers in “LOST.” As with that now-gone show, Nolan does not see the need to provide answers. Let the puzzle lay unsolved. DiCaprio’s most recent role in “Shutter Island” adds a weird layer as we grapple with trusting our protagonist in the first place.

All of this is mixed in with massive decaying cities, mind games and a snow-bound action sequence worthy of 1970s-era James Bond. With a sharp edge that is constantly off balance. Multiple viewings, I think, are required. The very final image will be debated among hardcore movie fans (nerds?) for years. The kicker isn’t the image itself, though. It’s the idea of the image. Love it or hate, or don’t get it, Nolan uses “Inception” to burrow deep inside our own heads. The movie isn’t about inception, it is an Inception. I've seen in three times, and still am awed. A

Memento (2001) and Ghanjini (2008)

"Memento" is the ultimate puzzle box film, a dive into a mind where the narrator is not only untrustworthy, but he may be completely mentally unstable. Nine years out, it is still Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, far and above "Insomnia" or "The Dark Knight" and "Batman Begins."

Guy Pearce ("L.A. Confidential") stars as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance investigator who was attacked in his home some years ago and as a result of a head injury, cannot form new memories. His whole life relies on Polaroid photos, scribbled notes, the testament of others, and tattoos that cover his body. Leonard is out to find the killers of his wife, murdered in that same attack. Or so we are told.

Nolan and his brother Jonathan, who wrote the film, tell their story backward - with an alternating forward motion in black and white -- so that we are as off balance as Leonard. Every next scene is the actual previous scene. Mark Boone Junior, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano play the regulars in his life, all not to be trusted.

The beauty of this film, besides Pearce's mesmerizing, should-of-have-been-a-star performance, is how Nolan toys with the viewer's mind. And our morality. Does memory make a person, or does a person make their memories? How reliant are those memories? A brilliant twisting film that demands multiple viewings, "Memento" may be my favorite film of the decade. It can be watched a 100 times and remain fresh. A+

How's this for a mind-melting film? "Memento" was remade as an India Bollywood musical laced with noir, revenge film, mystery, slapstick comedy, romantic comedy, music, martial arts epic, college-romp girl mystery, rags-to-riches journey and western showdown. The result: "Ghanjini" -- written and directed by A.R. Murugadoss, with Aamir Khan as Sanjay Singhania, a rich CEO in the place of Guy Pearce's investigator.

Asin is the dead lover for whom Sanjay seeks vengeance. The backbone of the film is the same: A man, attacked by goons, cannot form memories, but nonetheless seeks revenge for his murdered beloved. But this film throws in every genre and is, by God, the most kinetic, insane, over-the-top, go-for-broke film I've seen in ages.

It isn't great, though: It's way overlong at three hours and has cheesy music that would make Menudo blush. But the absolute love, joy, thrills and action -- the heart -- of this film is undeniable. Khan is amazing as the romantic, determined business man and bumbling hero/singer turned muscle-bound mad man with whoop butt skills that would turn Ahnuld, Bruce and Sly all melt into jelly.

I can't help but like it, flaws and all. If only half the American films had this much energy. For sheer nutty joy. B+

The Dark Knight (2008)

"The Dark Knight" explodes off the screen with a legendary performance by Heath Ledger as the most iconic comic book villain ever created, The Joker. The hype around Ledger's take on the homicidal clown and arch-nemesis of Batman has been building for more than a year and skyrocketed when the actor died in January 2008 at the age of 28. And it is deserved. He is mythical here, disappearing into a role that even Jack Nicholson never fully developed nearly 20 years ago in Tim Burton's "Batman."

This is a Joker for our age, a terrorist with no purpose other than to kill as many people as he can and cause as much destruction as he can before he himself is killed. And the Joker gladly welcomes that death. Excuse the focus on Ledger, but he simply owns this film, taking it from the likes of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and saints alive Morgan Freeman. See this film once and be floored by this young man's talent; see it a second time and be heartbroken over the loss of a generation's best film actor.

"The Dark Knight" is pitch-black material and an instant classic, digging deep into the darkest of Batman's storied legend for material never before seen in a super hero movie. As with "Batman Begins," Christopher Nolan directs and co-writes an adaptation that transcends its roots -- the entire plot seems to rest on America's war on terrorists who claim to be Muslim, but are the opposite of God/Allah -- they wish only to soak the world in blood and fire before they gladly die themselves. The Joker serves as their symbol here. How do you cope with that? How do you fight it, or even try and negotiate it? What are we wiling to give up and endure if it means the obliteration of those who so want to kill us?

These are the questions that Nolan and co-writer/sibling Jonathan Nolan lay out among the wild technology, stunts and set pieces. And the Nolans are not afraid to kill off major characters that will leave audiences reeling (unlike the dull third "X-Men" film which only pretended to do so).

The film opens with a bank robbery that more than tips its hat to the iconic crime drama "Heat" -- it uses one of that great crime drama's main actors as a would-be hero that crosses paths with the Joker. From there the film never lets up. A year after "Batman Begins," Bruce Wayne's alter ego (Bale) is still tracking villains that escaped his clutches whilst battling new enemies in the gist of mobsters (led by Eric Roberts) and wayward corporate demigods.

As Batman begins his duel with Joker, it's Alfred (the always excellent Caine) who tells his charge that there are times when the good must sink low to destroy evil. He tells a story from his own younger days (in the British special forces we can only surmise) as he helped track and kill a ruthless bandit by burning down an entire forest. It's heady stuff, and a road that Spider-Man wouldn't dare cross. Is Batman to kill the Joker, breaking his one rule?

Also on board is Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, the Boy Scout DA who has captured the admiration of Wayne and the heart of ADA Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, taking over for Katie Holmes who was miscast to begin with in the first film). Batman fans know most of what will happen with this plot thread, but the Nolans make it as fresh as ever.

This is a long film, too long maybe; but the balls are never dropped and the many plot lines weave into each other nicely, a feat "Spider-Man 3" failed miserably at. "The Dark Knight," far more than the still-great "Batman Begins," brings the world of costumed crime fighters into the adult world of chaos and uncertainty. I can't wait to see what's next. A

Batman Begins (2005)

Christopher Nolan shook up the busy superhero film genre with "Batman Begins." It is a dark, brooding, fascinating film that passes on over-blown special effects, and rather concentrates on character and story.

What a treat for us comic book nerds who during our teens and twenties followed such titles as "Legends of the Dark Knight" as if they were the books of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film, written by Nolan and David Goyer, follows with near exactitude the origins of Batman as told in the "Dark Knight" titles.

Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is the billionaire orphan of murdered parents who travels the world and puts himself into prison and then the hands of a mysterious vigilante group to train as a warrior. You know the rest: Wayne becomes Batman and fights for the soul of his Gotham City with a strict moral code of protecting all life.

Nolan, who made the genius "Mememto," "Following" and "Insomnia," casts well beyond any comic fan's dreams. Christian Bale is Bruce Wayne/Batman, the best ever. Gary Oldman is Gordon, the policeman/mentor. Michael Caine is Alfred the butler. Cillian Murphy and Liam Neeson are the heavies. Also on board is Morgan Freeman as a weapons specialist, and Katie Holmes as a love interest/assistant district attorney. Holmes is the only miscasting here, but it's not her acting. As Rachel Dawes, she's just far too young for the part and this sticks out as a wide plot hole. She'd be in law school, not overseeing prosecution for a major city.

That aside, it's strange to say that a movie about a vigilante superhero who dresses in a dark rubber outfit to pound the tar out of criminals is realistic, but Nolan makes it feel real. After the last serious of Batman films crashed and burned ("Batman and Robin"), we get to see Batman as a darkened soul who feels he must become a vigilante to win back his city.

Wayne fails, stumbles and is injured along the way, and his personal life suffers as those closest to him debate the righteousness of meeting violence with violence. None of Burton's or Schumacher's films even tried for such drama. This is a gold standard for any comic adaptation -- character over effects, deep, meaningful themes and top notch direction. Nolan truly is one of the best talents we have working in Hollywood. A-