The Dark Knight

Before we begin, let me go on the record - Batman Begins was without a doubt the best vision of the comic book superhero ever done. BUT, somewhere between that vision and this mess, Christopher Nolan must have suffered a severe head injury or, perhaps more likely, a near fatal level of toxic ego massage. Of course you are going to sit through all 152 minutes of this thing... it will seem longer... for one excellent reason. Heath Ledger.

Synopsis? Batman (Christian Bale,) DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) are cleaning up Gotham. Enter new bad guy - the Joker. The story wasn't important beyond that. Ledger is mesmerizing as the sociopathic jokester who's only real goal is to mix things up. He's brilliant. In every way. Makes the skin stand up on your neck, scary, brilliant. And for the first couple of hours that was enough to hold my attention. That, and the cool toys and nifty effects.

But then it all started wearing thin. Bale demonstrated the emotional range of cardboard with a speech impediment (I know, I know - so people won't guess he's really Bruce Wayne... right.) Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman aren't given enough material to justify their salaries, and we won't even get into the ridiculous role of Maggie Gyllenhaal - to suffice as appropriately gendered victim and look earnest. The film belongs to Ledger. Sadly, I fail to see how Nolan can follow his Joker with anyone else. But the real tragedy is that we'll never get to see how truly remarkable Heath Ledger was going to be. See the mostly commercial (buy it NOW!) website here.

Chaos Theory

Okay, you know that I'm not that into comedies - given my theory on tasteless vs. mindless a thousand times. Not one to sit still for much cute. Can't abide chick flicks - safe to say you will not see a review of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on this blog. It's a rare one that makes the cut... by virtue of originality, or just plain old silly, or sometimes, like this one, enough reality to bring the funny into pleasant contrast. Chaos Theory starts out like a traditionally mediocre comedy- ohmygod, saw that coming from last week sort of Disney bad - and then morphs into a meaningful, and sweet, little movie. Largely due to Ryan Reynolds.

If they don't lose you with the opening dumb pre-nuptial of his daughter mess, let's get to the real story ... it goes like this: Frank is an efficiency expert with a lovely wife, a beautiful daughter and a career about to take off when a series of highly unlikely, but seriously funny accidents lands him in the doghouse - lovely wife (Emily Mortimer) thinking he's been leading a double life complete with baby. In an effort to convince lovely wife of his fidelity, Frank learns that he is in fact sterile, and always has been, leaving lovely wife with some explaining to do.

What follows is some soul searching that is tenderly handled by Reynolds - his moment of falling apart will go down in my head as one of those rare moments of watching an actor cry so believably that I do too. Mortimer is equally adept at working with complicated emotion and her character is multidimensional and believable as well. Parts of Chaos Theory are predictable, parts are silly, some of it is deep and clear and true. A lot of it is really funny. See the website here.

The Visitor

I loved "The Station Agent." That said, I was really glad to see that Tom McCarthy is off and running with more original, and meaningful, material. A subtle director who tells heartbreaking stories with wit and grace - go figure. He's never going to make any money in Hollywood. But he sure is going to have my attention.

The Visitor follows Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins,) an aging, insufferably dull economics professor on the verge of simply fading into nonexistence - Walter is so pointedly colorless that you feel the need to take a pulse. But Walter is unwillingly shipped off to Manhattan to present a paper he didn't write, and when he unlocks his long unused city apartment, he finds it terribly occupied by the very colorful Tarek and Zainab. The couple has been scammed into renting his apartment, and Walter, on a very un-Walter like whim, let's them stay until they can sort things out. What follows is a kind of coming of age film, where Walter grows a soul through a deepening friendship with Tarek, a passionate musician from Syria.

Tarek and Zainab are illegal aliens (you know there are some who aren't from south of the border,) and when a very predictable misunderstanding brings Tarek to the brink of deportation, Walter gets a life. Richard Jenkins is positively brilliant, taking Walter from walking corpse to a man of passion so gently that you can record the changes in nanoseconds. The supporting cast is splendid and the film is a quiet reminder that there are people all around us who may not be citizens per se, but are Americans just the same. Hope Oscar notices this sleeper.... website here.