A Review of "The Dark Knight"

...The Joker is so weird his very presence virtually assures an unusual story. He looks so unusual, he acts in such an aggressively peculiar manner, and he is so darn happy about his work that he gives the stories in which he appears an edge that stories populated by more normal people cannot possibly have...the Joker enjoys evil because evil is as deranged as he is."

--"The Joker's Dozen" by Mike Gold

The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told

A funny thing happened to me after I saw the first two Quentin Tarantino movies. Both after viewing "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" I actually had no opinion about either movie just after the credits started rolling. If someone were to ask me my opinion at that moment, I could not give an answer. I knew I had seen something fantastic, but my senses were so stunned with humor, violence and powerful storytelling, that it would take at least twenty-four hours before my brain could process all that I had seen. A similar thing happened to me when I saw "The Dark Knight."

Oh my, what a movie. I hardly know where to begin. So many scenes jump into my mind. The way the Joker makes a pencil disappear. The scene where that truck flips into the air. The scene with the Joker in Gotham Hospital. The Batpod. All of these things are still swirling together in my head, making it tough to even sort out what I saw, how it all came together, and which scene was more powerful than the other.

Director Christopher Nolan gave the Batman franchise a much-needed kick in the pants a couple of years back with "Batman Begins." His approach was rather interesting and that was to attempt to put some reality into a character and story that is completely unreal. He succeeded. Gone was the camp and ridiculousness of the Joel Schumacher era. Heck, gone was the overbearing music and meandering stories of the Tim Burton era. Here was a Batman that those of us who read the comic books could recognize.