This may seem like faint praise, but about the highest compliment I can give Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight right now is to say that there were many long stretches during which I didn't even realize it was a superhero movie

| Dec 13, 2017

Too much psychology and not enough pop. It's possible to be too serious, you know.

| Jun 2, 2017

You will feel utterly numb after the screening of The Dark Knight. The film is bleak and brilliant.

| May 31, 2017

This is an impressive film in many ways, and Nolan directs with real confidence, yet the overall result feels cumbersome.

| Aug 20, 2014

Among the great strengths of The Dark Knight is the way it combines hardboiled naturalism with the kind of stunts and setpieces you expect in summer blockbusters.

| Aug 20, 2014

To talk of Heath Ledger's performance is difficult, merely because, as gigantic as it is, it is only one important feature of an intricately wrought canvas.

| Aug 20, 2014

An exceptionally smart, brooding picture with some terrific performances.

| Apr 10, 2013

The Dark Knight is a film that's fantastic on the action front, seeds its acrobatics in its own reality, and always feels relevant even when its ideas are drowned out by clatter.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 24, 2011

Christopher Nolan is much, much smarter than your average filmmaker.

| Original Score: A+ | Jul 6, 2010

Flawed and overrated.

| Jul 6, 2010

The symbiosis of good and evil is the film's philosophical core, and images of duality and cloaked identity are strewn through it like shards from a fun house mirror.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 18, 2008

[Ledger's] manic zest gives the film its energy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2008

You will exit the cinema with an enhanced respect for Nolan's intelligence, for Wally Pfister's pin-sharp cinematography, and, sadly, for an acting talent tragically curtailed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2008

Shouldn't Nolan, marvellous as his directing here is, be creating original films rather than rebooting and retooling franchise fare?

| Jul 25, 2008

Watching the first dizzying, vertiginous overhead shot of the glittering skyscrapers and minuscule streets, I literally forgot to breathe for a second or two, and found myself teetering forward on my seat...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2008

Now you see it, now you don't.

| Jul 18, 2008

It has chases and crashes and fight scenes, including a somersaulting truck, but when it is over it is the wrenching choices, the internal confrontations, that reverberate.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 18, 2008

I'm betraying my childhood to concede this, but Nolan has finally topped Tim Burton's two twisted spectaculars.

| Original Score: A+ | Jul 18, 2008

Christopher Nolan's latest exploration of the Batman mythology steeps its muddled plot in so much murk that the Joker's maniacal nihilism comes to seem like a recurrent grace note.

| Jul 18, 2008

The film is so relentlessly bleak that, paradoxically, its blackness is not given its full due. But this comic-book movie is more disturbing, and has more freakish power, than anything else I've seen all year.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 18, 2008