The Dark Knight Rises

I believe that Christopher Nolan is the best director of the last decade. Whether the film is mind-bogglingly confusing (Inception, Memento), wonderfully deceptive (Insomnia, The Prestige), or studenty (Following), his films are always well written, cryptic and dark. And his talent has been proven in his perfect Batman trilogy. Instead of going back to the easy, campy, and horrifying 1997 Clooney vehicle Batman and Robin, he went back to the darkness of Tim Burton's 1989 effort and multiplied everything that was good about that film by a thousand. There we got Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, two of the best films of their year. So the hype is on for Nolan to raise the bar even more. And he definitely delivers. The film continues eight years of from The Dark Knight, where Batman is reclusive and lonely. The only thing that seems to spark him is the   sassy jewel-thief Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, played wonderfully by Anne Hathaway, who has been climbing up the A-list ladder ever since her Oscar nomination in 2008. Not only is Hathaway athletic and clever, she gets a fair share of the film's genuinely funny one liners. On top of the hero/villain Catwoman we get Bane, played in enormous form by Tom Hardy with a face mask which mutes his speech to a terrifying Ian Mackellen dialect. As well as the normal cast we get the unbelievably cool Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a noble policeman who knows Bruce Wayne outside of his Batman guise and Marion Cotillard as the possible love interest and head of Wayne Enterprises. I won't reveal any more, but I have to say: This is the best film I have seen of the year so far, ahead of Moonrise Kingdom. Not only that, it is the best Batman film ever made. 

5/5 

Teo