.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Batman and James Gordon join forces with Gotham's new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, to take on a psychotic bank robber known as The Joker, whilst other forces plot against them, and Joker's crimes grow more and more deadly.

Honestly I think Christopher Nolan can do no wrong....he's only made 8 movies and 3 are in the top 250 on IMDB...and I'm guessing this will make it 4 (Memento, The Prestige and Batman Begins).

He's back again to take us on another rollercoaster, Batman Begins was hailed as one of the best superhero movies of all time and it really returned to the roots of Gotham City..dark, brooding, nasty and violent. The character of Bruce Wayne was captured by a fantastic Christian Bale - he's fast becoming one of the best actors around.

And this...The Dark Knight, just rocks in and blows you away. It's sad, truly sad that Heath Ledger is gone and I would be surprised if he doesn't nail an Oscar for his performance...he's truly terrifying, unhinged and totally believable as the joker. It's hands down one of the best performances in any movie I've ever seen. RIP Heath, you surely went out with a bang.

This movie delves deep into the character of Batman and Bruce Wayne, his own flaws and how the Joker desires to make him look at himself and why he does it - does he have a deep down loathing for society? It's a character study and a gripping one at that. The cinematography is perfect along with the sound-track - it really takes you there.

The Batpod comes out, and it's awesome! Christian Bale is great as Bruce Wayne and Batman, although the spotlight isn't on him so much in this movie.

Maggie Gyllenhaal was better than Katie Holmes in Batman Begins....but still not the strongest player in the movie.

The rest of the regulars put in great performances (Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman). Not sure about Aaron Eckhart still..The Scarecrow made a very brief entrance too, but wasn't really part of the movie.

The movie was long, and in places it felt it - this would be my one and only complaint. If not for that it's near perfection. This is the most I've written about a movie for a long time and I definitely have to get a BluRay version of this to watch on a huge HD projector at some time in the future.

I give it a dark and dastardly 9/10, definitely close to being best movie of the year.

I still feel elite as I saw this movie on Tuesday...and IMDB still doesn't have a rating because not enough people have watched it!

A rancher struggles to support his ranch and family during a long drought. Desperately needing money to build a well, he takes an assignment to transport a notorious felon, in the hands of authorities, to Yuma for imprisonment. But, once the two meet, the criminal tries to tempt him with--in exchange for allowing him to escape--an offer of much more money than the rancher ever expected, the result of a hidden loot.

This movie is actually a remake of a classic 1957 cowboy flick of the same name, exactly 50 years after the original a star-studded remake appeared and took the cinemas by storm. It shot straight up in IMDB and is currently Top 250: #227 with a rating of 8.0/10 (47,816 votes) - pretty impressive eh!

The movie itself is a good old-fashioned cowboy movie that we haven't seen of for quite some time (do you count Brokeback?). It had ranchers, gun slingers, bad guys, good guys, sexy bartenders the whole works.

Crowe played the ice cool brooding bad boy of the cowboy world, he was smooth as butter with the ladies and relentless when it came to killing. He fitted the role very well.

Christian Bale demonstrated once again he is one of the best leading male actors out there, the way he commanded the screen and displayed such depth to his character was amazing. The interaction with his son was great and you really felt like you got to know Dan Evans.

Last but not least was Ben Foster as Charlie Prince who had a very memorable performance for me in Alpha Dog, he dominated the screen and there hasn't been someone as badass as his character for quite some time. He's definitely going to be one to watch.

The cinematography is just beautiful and the pace just right, it really takes you back to the heyday of Western movies.

All in all the movie has some good underlying morals and an interesting plot, how far would you go to be seen as a hero by your son? And even the bad have a good side....and vice versa.

It's definitely a movie you have to watch, the best movie I've seen for quite a while.

I give it a gun-slinging 9/10.

A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences. From the time that they first met as young magicians on the rise, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden were competitors. However, their friendly competition evolves into a bitter rivalry making them fierce enemies-for-life and consequently jeopardizing the lives of everyone around them. Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London.

I'll say straight up this is probably the best movie of the year so far without much competition, it's been a pretty bad year for movies all in all after 2005 which has a clean sweep of great movies, 2006 performed pretty badly, a good sign before watching this movie was the extremely strong 8.2 at IMDB.

It lived up to expectations! KY even joined us to watch it for the second time.

This is a truly allstar cast mixing new talent with old, pitting Hugh Jackman (Robert Angier) and Christian Bale (Alfred Borden) against each other is a work of genius, both have already proved themselves with movies such as X-men and Batman Begins and even more so for Bale with the haunting The Machinist.

The sparks really fly between them, imagine turn of the century magicians fighting for audiences and fame, Bale (Borden) is the technical expert, the magical genius, but his showmanship lacks the pull to bring audiences..Where as Jackman (Angier) is the opposite, suave, charming and the superior showman, but his tricks are lacking, his technical knowledge and innovation aren't matching Bale.

Michael Caine of course puts in a stirling performance with his strong screen prescence, a lesser actor would have paled in this supporting role.

David Bowie pops up too, did you spot him?

I can't really talk about the story without ruining it, just watch out for the the pledge, the turn and finally the prestige. You do have to suspend belief a bit though, it's not a real story, it has elements of fantasy or sci-fi and stars some great scientists from the same period.

The cinematography, set design, production and direction are top notch, the pacing of the movie is excellent and has multiple narrators, so you see the same things from various views. It's a dark brooding movie showing the nasty side of human nature.

Christopher Nolan is really showing us what he's capable of with Memento, Batman Begins, Insomnia and now this!

Just go and watch this movie now.

I give it a film of the year 9/10.

THE MACHINIST is the story of TREVOR REZNIK, a lathe-operator who is dying of insomnia. In a machine shop, occupational hazards are bad enough under normal circumstances; yet for Trevor the risks are compounded by fatigue. Trevor has lost the ability to sleep. This is no ordinary insomnia...

The Machinist is a great movie (it rolls in with a 7.7 on IMDB at time of writing), I only came to find out about it as it was shown on the 'International' screens at GSC, and the poster looked intruiging. Christian Bale is almost unrecognisable from his bulky muslce-bound Batman figure.

Christian Bale lost an amazing 63 lbs. for this role, making himself into a skeletal shell of 120 lbs. for his creepy potrayal of Reznik in this movie.

I will say though, this is definately not mainstream popcorn cinema, if you like films like Memento, Pi, Magnolia, Donnie Darko and Saw, then you will like this. The story plods a little, but you have to appreciate the sheer genius of the cinematography, character development and directing. It is very Hithcock-esque in parts, and has a bit of a Hitchcock feel to the whole thing.

It's basically a story of a man, a machinist (operating heavy factory machinery) who having terrible insonmia hasn't slept for a year, he loses weight rapidly, and starts to lose his grip on reality, he doesn't know what is real and what is not, a scary devilish character with a wicked grin shows up to torment him more (Ivan).

The movie establishes new plotlines and new characters so smoothly you don't feel any transition, it is I would say fairly much a masterpeice.

If you are into Brittney Spears and Spice Girls movies however, I'd say you should probably avoid this.

I would give it a very good 8/10, it's a movie that will stay with you.

When fate prevents him from avenging the deaths of his parents, young Bruce Wayne (Bale) flees to Asia where he seeks counsel from a dangerous ninja cult leader known as Ra's al Ghul (Watanabe). When he returns, Bruce finds that Gotham City has become overrun with crime and corruption, and that there are forces at work trying to remove him from his inherited place as the owner of Wayne Industries. Discovering a cave under Wayne Manor, Bruce assumes a new identity as a secret detective and guardian of the people of Gotham City against the criminals that plague them...

Batman has gone back to it's roots, this is a gritty, dark movie with an impoverished crime ridden Gotham dominated by drug lords, evil-doers and corrupt officials.

There is a star studded cast, I was like, wow another famous person, and another and another and another (Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe), and so many brits?!

It's already hoisted itself into the number 64 spot on the top 250 in the first week!

Not surprisingly it's a far far better movie than the previous few lame Batman attempts (Batman and Robin, Batman Forever *yawn). It's actually a good movie.

The original Batman was a classic! All the back from 1989. With Jack Nicholson as the joker. After that was Batman Returns in 1992, with Michelle Pfeieffer as Catwoman...meow! I loved that, but the film itself wasn't so great. Both were pretty gritty, dark movies, staying in line with the original comics, Batman Returns was a bit cheesier, after that it went downhill fast with Mr Freeze..

What most people don't realise is a lot of these comics are actually very violent and adult in nature addressing serious issues in a form more acceptable to the mainstream..

The action through-out was great, good fight scenes, nice gadgets, nice introduction to all the things we know so well about Batman.

The only thing that ruined it for me, was as usual the hotdog cheese American lovey dovey suck my hairy nut sack ending, SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS..

Anyway, if you haven't, go and watch it.

I give it a good 8/10 (9 if it wasn't for the ending).