MOVIE REVIEWS: THE DARK KNIGHT
Thursday, July 17 2008
|
Tuesday, The London Daily Mirror claimed the first major newspaper review of the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Night. It's a rave. Every critic marvels at the performance of the late Heath Ledger in the role of The Joker. David Edwards remarks that Ledger "is the brilliant heart of a superhero movie that's like nothing you've ever seen before." Entertainment Weekly’s review by Owen Gleiberman extols “Ledger had a maniacal gusto inspired enough to suggest that he might have lived to be as audacious an actor as Marlon Brando, and maybe as great." Likewise Richard Corliss in Time magazine calls Ledger's performance "magnificent." His Joker "is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history." In her Associated Press review, Christy Lemire writes that The Dark Night is "an epic that will leave you staggering from the theater, stunned by its scope and complexity." And Peter Travers concludes in Rolling Stone: "The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times gives it a rare -- for him -- four stars, writing, that it "is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That's because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times observes that director Christopher Nolan does not make a big to-do over the film's formidable special effects and action sequences, "This is powerful, propulsive filmmaking in which elements that must have taken an eternity to set up stay on screen no longer than they absolutely need to.” Claudia Puig in USA Today piles on the superlatives. " The Dark Knight is a more thrilling, intelligent, morally complex and masterfully crafted film than any summer blockbuster in recent years. It's probably the best superhero movie to date.” “Ledger is so horrifically riveting you can't take your eyes off of him," comments Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. Even the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter, one of the few critics who has found faults with the film, writes that Ledger's performance is memorable, "It's a subtle, nuanced piece of acting so powerful it banishes all memories of the handsome Aussie behind it.” "Ledger's work is improbably droll, impossibly creepy, meticulously detailed," comments Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune, who also awards the film four stars. And Amy Biancolli concludes in the Houston Chronicle: "Heath Ledger died too young, leaving behind performances as faceted, brilliant and few as a handful of diamonds. His final gem is no less radiant for being pitch black."
|
|
 |
|
|
