An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Christopher Nolan.
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Eric Roberts, Cillian Murphy, Anthony Michael Hall
Description: Millionaire Bruce Wayne continues his crusade against crime in Gotham City in his guise as Batman, aided by Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, who is romantically involved with Bruce's old flame, Rachel Dawes. Crime figures soar when criminal mastermind The Joker declares war on the police and on Batman. As the battle between good and evil becomes increasingly personal, Bruce turns to his loyal butler Alfred and to Wayne Enterprises technical genius Lucius Fox to keep his winged alter-ego from plummeting into the abyss.
Country: US. 2008. 152mins
Tortured soul: Ledger's Joker has a terrorist's determination to spread anarchy
Crash, bang, wallop: no limits for Batman
The great escape: Batman uses his flying power
Now at last we can make up our own minds after ingesting the hype. Christopher Nolan's 152-minute epic, though hailed as a masterpiece in some quarters and already breaking box-office records in America, is not quite the classic we hoped for.
It is often an impressive piece of filmmaking; there's not much doubt about that. Nolan is one of the few British directors who could pull off such a large-scale undertaking with such certainty. (Paul Greengrass is another, who may yet be asked in the future.)
Nolan's dark, almost forbidding concept renders The Dark Knight not far short of the horror-thriller movie which its comic book antecedents couldn't quite sustain. It bludgeons us half to death with its bleak view of the world before tacking on a slightly-feel-better ending as Batman (Christian Bale) speeds off to continue his attempt to clean up corrupt and fearful Gotham City.
His fight, of course, is with Heath Ledger's The Joker, now a psychopath of whom it is said, "some men just want to see the world burn". In the end, the way both men are characterised makes their battle seem like that of two nutters in mortal combat. Dramatically speaking, Ledger, in his last finished performance, wins hands down largely because he is allowed to. It is not a piece of acting that develops much and is almost on one note throughout, but that note, eschewing the slightest bit of Jack Nicholson's spiteful irony, is pretty formidable.
This Joker claims to have been ruined by the bullying father he hated and has a ravaged mouth for which he gives gruesome but contradictory explanations, constantly using what remains of his tongue to wet his lips.
Ledger gives us a tortured soul with a tortured body and a terrorist's determinationto spread anarchy around Gotham at any cost to innocent human lives. It is not a pretty sight, but Anthony Hopkins, as our favourite flesh-eating friend, did even more by doing less and there was once a chap called Bela Lugosi who frightened me as much with just a look. Will Ledger get a posthumous Oscar? He would certainly be worth a nomination.
As for Bale's billionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne, with his butler and helpmate (Michael Caine), his Batmobiles and his bevy of admiring women, there seems no good reason why he should want to become Batman except another troubled childhood and the nagging of a conscience that recognises Gotham as something like purgatory for those less lucky than himself.
His efforts to relieve fellow citizens of the crooks who have battened upon them, though largely successful, have left the gate wide open for the Joker, and himself as a hero that not everyone admires.
Bale, subject of unwelcome publicity this week after being arrested for alleged assault of his mother and sister, reprises the part well enough, but it is Ledger's performance one notices more, probably because it is so much more fun to be given the shivers by evil than to relish even the flawed good.
The story progresses down its studiously downbeat path, marked by the usual passages of technically proficient crash, bang, wallop (mostly well done but a little familiar by now). So we watch the mounting chaos as a young and Kennedy-like district attorney (Aaron Eckhart) has his face made into a grotesque piece of pulp by the Joker, and as Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a choice between him and Bruce in the penultimate reel.
There is also Gary Oldman as honest police lieutenant Jim Gordon and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. But it is the duel between Bruce and the Joker that holds the attention between the bleak Gotham City panoramas and the frantic chases.
You'll be impressed, even if a leavening of humour might profitably have pierced the gloom of it all.
And there is also the matter of the film's length. Buñuel once sagely said that if you want to make a really good film you have to cut out a lot that you like as well as stuff that doesn't work. Nolan might have taken that advice.
The first hour, in which the story is set up, is really the culprit. But there are also times when Nolan seems to be luxuriating in his expert cast, his intelligent screenplay and his spectacular effects and not thinking enough about the sharper editing that would have driven the film along.
Even so, The Dark Knight, looking as it does at a mad, bad world and some insane people trying to get the better of it, is an audacious attempt to point a few morals for today with a comic book nightmare we've never before taken so seriously, even in Nolan's own Batman Begins. When this one works, it undoubtedly works well and sets new standards for summer blockbusters.
Though the doubts remain.
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Brilliant film. In my opinion, sets the benchmark for comic-book movie franchises, for years to come. Has a moody and serious undertone throughout and succesfully manages to shorten the divide between fiction and reality. Ledger's performance Oscar winning? I reckon so, as they've dished them out in the past for performances half as good. Another point is that never before has a comic-book movie been as socially conscious as this one. I could go on... in a nutshell, great film -and I hate comic-book films. 5/5
- Jonathon Stanley, Barking, Essex
Can we put the whole 'Oscar for Heath' in perspective,a good actor who might have gone on to becoming a great actor died far too young, in an almost obscene but predictable Hollywood knee jerk reaction, the film and Heath Ledger have been elevated to a classic genre, other cast members are gushing over the performance as if its on a par with Lawrence Oliver, act four, scene 2 in a Shakespeare play. The idea that batman can be taken so serious should be left to true luvvies eating all their free trade products, watch a brilliant film called 'the lives of others' and then swoon over celluloid...
- Jonnie Of Brixton, london
Saw this at the weekend and Ledger's much-vaunted performance, whilst undoubtedly excellent, is not what I'd call an Oscar performance. If Charlize Theron in Monster is the benchmark, you couldn't say this could challenge it.
A cracking film, nevertheless, even if Batman Begins is definitely superior.
- Stuart Dean, Beckton, London
Morning:
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