The Dark Knight - which arrives at a level of craft and dedication that will be a high-water mark for 2008 - is not just the film that Batman Begins inspired in all of our minds with its critical final words ("escalation," "taste of the theatrical," "calling card"). It is significantly more: the most dextrous, complicated, and absorbing "comic book movie" ever made.

Click here to read my review, with a heavy spoiler warning.

This review was murderously hard to write. Actually, I guess it isn't even a "review" at all, more of a film analysis than anything about pros/cons of a new Batman flick. Oddly enough I glimpsed at my review for Begins just now, and was struck by how oddly and unintentionally parallel the two reviews are in construction. Which I suppose bodes well for my theory on Nolan and the films, if they could spontaneously generate such similar responses without any purposeful re-examination of my previous writing. That guy is doing some fucking incredibly solid work, man, and with each successive entry I become more and more fascinated.