QUICK HIT

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Is this going to go down as the most polarizing movie of the year? It might be, with Cloud Atlas barely registering on the radar, and without a Michael Moore movie. The feeling I got when I heard anybody talking about this movie was that their love or hate was never as strong as they let on, but they felt they had to argue their point so hard that the opposing group was made to feel like idiots. In the end, as usual, both groups are probably wrong. Now that we’re past the feverish anticipation, and past the endless, Borat-level impressions of Bane, and now that you can watch it at your house, instead of a potentially dangerous theater, the movie rings as true mediocrity. Its biggest problem, more evident than ever upon a second viewing, is that while Point A might be cool, and Point B might be cool, the journey between the two points, and the reason for the journey, are often as stupid and nonsensical as the worst action movies out there. This seems like a trick on us, because we thought this franchise was different. We accept the stupid reasoning for the things that happen in The Expendables, because we never felt like The Expendables would treat us like smart filmgoers. We know why we go see those movies, and so the stupidity doesn’t bother us that much. But Christopher Nolan took a stand and said that this Batman franchise can and will be something more. He teased it with Batman Begins, and it mostly came to fruition with The Dark Knight. But in Rises, one of two things happened. He either tried to take on way too much, and had no room left for decent storytelling, or he said “Fuck it. I’m Christopher Nolan. This is Batman. People are going to love it and no one is going to notice that almost nothing in this movie makes a lick of sense.” The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t so awful the first time I saw it that I thought my second viewing could go either way, with more love or more hate. There’s nothing in this movie that forced me to like it more than I did. It’s, at best, a goodish movie that was pegged with this terrible tragedy and, at worst, a major disappointment. – RH

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES: ** 1/2 (OUT OF ****)

THE NOLAN BATMAN TRILOGY: *** (OUT OF ****)

Look for Suck My Disc Quick Hits all this week, including reviews for Hope Springs, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Ai Weiwei: Never Scared!