MOVIE REVIEWS (1): THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
July 17, 2012 by admin · 7 Comments
Reviews have begun to trickle in for this weekend’s much anticipated The Dark Knight Rises, and some of them are as extravagant in their praise as audiences are expected to be in their spending. In the Hollywood Reporter, Todd McCarthy calls the movie a “blockbuster by any standard. … “[The] Batman trilogy makes everything in the rival Marvel universe look thoroughly silly and childish,” he says. Richard Corliss of Time magazine agrees, writing, “The most eagerly anticipated movie of summer 2012 was worth waiting for. … The movie may not top The Avengers at the worldwide box office, but it is a far, far better thing — maybe the best, most troubling, assured and enthralling of all the superhero movies.” Likewise Xan Brooks comments in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, “If viewers were wanting a corrective to the jumpsuit antics of The Avengers, or the noodling high-school angst of The Amazing Spider-Man, then rest assured that Batman delivers in spades.” Several critics pour praise on the performance of Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Indiewire’s Todd Gilchrist writes that Bale “gives the character such an inescapable melancholy — a certain perseverance in the face of absolute resignation to his fate — that he becomes a more tragic figure than ever.” Not every review is positive, however. Christy Lemire of the Associated Press remarks that after viewing the film, her “feeling of frustration and disappointment is unshakable.” The movie, she continues, “is plot-heavy, obsessed with process, laden with expository dialogue and flashbacks that bog down the momentum and — dare I say it? — just flat-out boring at times.” On his site Hollywood and Fine, former Gannett News critic Marshall Fine writes, “There is very little about The Dark Knight Rises that will make you tense, hold you in suspense or cause your adrenaline to squirt. At times, the action is so massive and thunderously clunky that I might as well have been watching one of the Transformers movies.”
UPDATE: For later reviews, click here.
