Dark Knight

Slothrop: Slothrop saw this at the Alamo and liked it. Then he went home, thought about it, and decided he like the Joker best and but it was still good. Then he read a really smart review of it by a hoighty-toity intellectual , and decided that yes, this movie is pretty terrible. But he still likes it, mostly. Or probably not.

Koko: Dangerous freshman ethics and no ninja training in the snow make this much anticipated sequel, the first real clunker from Nolan, excepting his gratuitous remake of Norse bedtime stories, decidedly pedestrian. Sure, the Joker brightens everything he touches, but he appears on screen only once for every fifteen flabby indecisions featuring Batman and his. . . girlfriend? Companion? Troubadour delight? The movie's sole consolation to viewers marauded by gay terrorist hypotheses imported directly from 24, which, by the way, sucks in the most irresponsible way possible--and why would you strain to complicate the already convoluted moral universe of fake, underwear-on-the-outside-wearing egomaniacs who fight each other and use fancy new technologies, by subjecting them to long, enthymemic banter about retribution and civil liberties--and fuck that sprawling supercomputer Morgan Freeman uses to transform Gotham City into, uh, Gotham City--the only consolation comes with Maggie Gyllenhaal getting blown up, mid-sentence.

Also, you cannot, after two excruciating hours of moral nonsense, redeem all mankind with ferryboats. However much he may have loved waterbirds, even Rousseau would have feigned nausea, seasickened by the unwarranted and unprepared appeal to conscience and innate sympathy--and from hulking Negroes, no less, straight out of The Green Mile. I half-expected bees to come swarming out of the prisoner's mouth soon after he tossed the detonator overboard. I'm sorry, but deus ex machina flourishings of civic goodness catalyzed by Mr. T?

Finally. . . oh, fuck it. This movie is awful.