Heath Ledger

I'm not going to make the argument that The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever made, but it's closer to that spot than 99.5% of movies are. And it's my favorite movie ever. Why? Many reasons. The Joker is just about the scariest and most iconic villain since Hannibal Lecter and Ledger absolutely blows Nicholson out of the water. I love the realism - Gotham looks and behaves like a real city. The ensemble acting, especially by Ledger, Oldman and Eckhart is tremendous. The action scenes, especially the truck/Batpod chase in middle, are some of the best ever shot. Christopher Nolan is a genius - his tale is complex, striking, iconic and deep. He has taken a blockbuster franchise and made it a towering, Shakespearean drama - he has successfully combined the best of pop entertainment with the best of enduring art.

Two young lovers are binded by drug addiction, one tries to break away and the other falls behind. Sound familiar? It's been done many times before, with drugs and alcohol ("Days of Wine and Roses," etc.). What makes this one worthwile are the sincere, touching performances by Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger.

The director of "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994), "Sense and Sensibility" (1995) and "The Ice Storm" (1997) has delivered a moving - even heartbreaking- tale of love that cannot be fulfilled. The performances are uniformly solid, with particularly worthy turns by Ledger and Gyllenhaal.

Nice Movie.

Christopher Nolan is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary writer/directors. The first in the newest batman series, Batman Begins blew me away. Nolan managed to take my favorite comic book hero (the only one that has the balls to fight crime without any special powers) and turn out not only an entertaining movie in Batman Begins, but one the preached all of the morals and ethics I believe in. I thought he could do no better, but I was wrong. The Dark Knight really is one of the best films to come out in the last decade, if not longer. The realism in it down to the way the actors deliver lines is incredible. Nolan managed to create a perfectly believable world. On top of that, the hauningness of the Joker as his plan begins to unfold to the audience is overwhelming(particularly in the interrogation scene between he and batman). I'm not neccessarily a movie buff, but I'm a huge movie fan and a man of strong morals and ethics and I believe that the Dark Knight sends a wonderful message. I don't get to the theaters too often (I usually don't have money) but I saw The Dark Knight 5 times in theaters, and more on video. It is one of the best movies I have ever scene, and it never gets old. I strongly recommend it.

Great film; very intense and dark to be sure. The oft-mentioned great performance by Ledger is certainly merited. Good storyline and effects, with lots of action but tries to not go too much "over the top" with action. Excellent movie that deserves to be held up as a new standard for comic book films (albeit a very dark one).

I liked the movie a lot and would have given it three paws. But just for Heath Ledgers performance alone I had to give it four paws.

A super-hero movie this good could have been even longer than 2 1/2 hours. Especially if the extra time would have made room for a more noteworthy entrance and exit for the Joker in order to expand his story. There was not much of a story arc for him, but he was equally fascinating to watch from his first moment to his last. "Who let the Joker out of his box?" someone in the film asks. And I wouldn't have minded seeing the box. Christopher Nolan did the same thing with Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins. Given the overdone origin stories in previous Batman films, Nolan falls off the other side of the horse by giving us crazy people who did not become evil; they just are evil. It is fascinating how the Joker changes his story about the origins of his scars depending on who he is addressing. I was disappointed when Batman didn't let the Joker finish telling that final version. Given the progression of the first two versions of the Joker's tale, there is the hint of a suggestion that the Joker actually afflicted himself with his deformities. As fascinating as Ledger's Joker is to watch, we have no perspective of him as a character. And as awesome as Ledger is, we will never know what it would have been like to watch this role without the actor's death attached to it. But this film is also about someone named "Batman," who is getting short-changed in recent hype about the film. Batman gets an awesome new suit - one that lets him turn his head (so he doesn't have to use sonar to know what is behind him). He gets a new, slightly chubbier mask. His gravelly, THX-enhanced voice remains the same: a bit too death metal (I found his grunting contest with Two-Face almost laughable). Batman is much cooler when he is not trying to explain things. The action set-pieces are amazingly done. The film is short on digital animation. It shows Indiana Jones how shocking and exciting a spectacle like this can be with restrained CGI. The dank, grey, smoky, digital Gotham City from Batman Begins is traded in for a Gotham that is more pristine, brighter, more familiar, more corruptible. The action of this film takes place in realistically conceived space. See the rest of this review at http://braidedthreads.blogspot.com/2008/07/will-real-batman-please-stand-up.html

Truly great performances all around.

I'll be honest - I was worried that Heath Ledger's death had tainted some of the early reviews - it's hard to diss a dead man. I was greatly relieved when his performance actually made the movie. He was perfect.

Maybe the best Batman movie ever? Heath Ledger is creepy yet strangely mesmerizing as the Joker, I couldn't wait to see him onscreen again during the film (is he doing a sort of freaked out Bugs Bunny accent? really, I swear, listen to it again!) The Bat cycle is cool, and the rest of the cast and script is great, but Ledger proves why he was so well-regarded, in his last (unfortunately) performance.

If you want to read more about THE DARK KNIGHT, check out the MovieRetriever.com review in the BARKS WITH BITE blog by clicking HERE!

This is a great movie

I love his gestures and freaky behaviour. We miss him much after seeing the movie

If you are not a Shakespeare fan, or if you have no interest in how movies ideas are created, then you wouldn't know that this movie is based off William Shakespeare's play "Taming Of The Shrew." I think the move does a really good job capturing WS ideas and vision not to mention it offers a dummied down version of the actual play for people like me who hate iambic pentameter.

This is the best romantic drama that I've ever seen. Heath Ledger will be missed!