Rating:
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Yes, Heath Ledger really is amazing as the Joker. And good lord, does Christopher Nolan deliver a film worthy of the performance. From the start, The Dark Knight is as intense as a war zone, and while it has more noticeable imperfections than Iron Man and less charm and vision than Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight has brains and ambition and yes indeed, a hell of an effects budget. The action is spectacular, if sometimes confusing, and the film looks magnificent, especially in IMAX.

Rating:
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones

In the summer of intense comic-book violence (see Wanted and The Incredible Hulk. Or don’t.), writer-director Guillermo Del Toro certainly holds up his end. The first half of Hellboy II: The Golden Army moves like you’ve accidentally sat on the fast forward button. Mystery, horror, whimsy, action, character moments all come at triple speed, almost always in imaginative settings with a dozen things going on in the background, and it’s to the film’s detriment that the audience rarely has enough time to actually process and enjoy any given scene. If we refer to key story moments as “beats,” then the first hour or so of this movie is a relentless drumroll. The result is that the audience has a harder time connecting to the story and the characters. It’s like we’re watching scenery whip past from the sterile interior of a bullet train, when what we want is to be out there walking with the characters, breathing the same air.

Still, even at high speed, the scenery is amazing. Del Toro creates an unforgettably gruesome twist on the Tooth Fairy in a demon-infested auction house, choreographing his fight scene with inventive brilliance that is just shy of too violent and too intense. The second Hellboy movie, much moreso than the first, is clearly from the same mind that created the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth. Hellboy II is Pan’s Labyrinth on a case and a half of Red Bull.

Rating:
Director: Alex Gibney
Starring: Hunter S. Thompson, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Tom Wolfe, Johnny Depp

A documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most original, entertaining writers and personalities in living memory, is going to be a hoot. I mean, if you can’t make an engaging film about this guy, you have no business in show business. So it’s a given that there will be laughs and outrage and interest in Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Question is, will it live up to its subject or simply be an interesting clip show?

Rating:
Director: Andrew Stanton
Starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger

Pixar’s Wall*E continues an amazing run of top-flight entertainment marred only by the execrable Cars, a misstep already made up for with last year’s charming Ratatouille. Wall*E does right exactly what Pixar always (minus one) does right.

What’s more interesting about this film is the two specific risks it takes as the Emeryville animators continue to push themselves and their audiences.

Rating:
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman

Wanted has been designed as a delivery system for intense, repeated brutality presented in a creative and nonsensical manner probably meant to prevent you from thinking too heavily about the really unconscionable nature of the story and characters, or about how much you’re thrilling to artful sadism and a fetishization of bloodshed.

And yet, I didn’t hate it. One hippie-ish biddy sighed and moaned repeatedly in protest of the jackhammer