Hey everybody, Baba Ghanoush told me I could write a guest review for the site, so I figured I better take the opportunity to write one about The Dark Knight because a) I saw it on opening weekend which will make the review at least somewhat relevant and b) I thought it kicked ass.

A little background on where the review is coming from: I am not a huge movie person. I have plenty of ability to discuss the ins and outs of films and acting, but I’m not the kind of person who gets to theaters regularly. I’m that guy who’s constantly saying things like “I’ve only seen parts of The Godfather movies” and “Wait, was that Jennifer Love Hewitt or Tori Spelling in Almost Famous?” But the thing is, I’m not a jerk who has intentionally missed out on viewing these classics, I just had poor, hippie parents who thought I should be outside playing or some shit instead of watching classic movies. Whatever.

So perhaps my movie reference vocabulary is slightly smaller than some, but I will say that once I like a movie, I have no qualms with watching it many, many times over. And I don’t care if it’s The Princess Bride or V for Vendetta. If I love it, I want to know every line of it. Which takes us to The Dark Knight.

Beginning with the namesake (and leaving the best for last), I thought Christian Bale’s performance deserved a lot of credit. I mean, by design, the Batman/Bruce Wayne character is somewhat one dimensional on the surface. The guy’s a badass, but he’s definitely somewhat straight laced. I’m sure plenty of comic book worshipping douches would argue that the character is more complex than I’m giving it credit for, but to me it seems like it doesn’t leave a lot for the actor to enhance. The bottom line, though, is that, holy hell Batman is the coolest. My buddy JP and I used to always say “I wish I was Batman…” when we were sick of doing something in grade school because, let’s face it, being Batman would basically be cooler than anyone else. And that fact alone will always make Batman movies pretty tough to screw up.

In particular, I loved the scene where Wayne has the smoking hot prima ballerina on his arm and pulls rank all over the city DA. I couldn’t even feel embarrassed for the DA… I mean, he’s still stuffing Rachel and all, but seriously, you just gotta tip your cap to a guy that cool. Also, the way Batman sort of grunts through all his lines, especially when he’s worked up, kind of weirded me out at first, but totally grew on me as the movie went on. By the final scene, I was loving every minute of it and it seemed to completely increase how tough the guy seems.

As for the supporting cast of characters, they definitely didn’t ruin the movie, which is really about as much as you can expect from a movie which has so many speaking roles. Harvey Dent was a good character, and reasonably well acted by Aaron Eckhart, but I thought the delivery of his biggest line was a little bit of a letdown. Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman both nailed their roles in my opinion, though they were decidedly minor. Michael Caine was great as Alfred, I thought he and Bale had great on screen chemistry. I also love how Alfred never seems to be ruffled by anything; a perfectly written character to be guiding Batman. I was somewhat disappointed in Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel. She seemed too wet blanketish for my liking and didn’t exude sex the way you’d think anyone who could legitimately get in Bruce Wayne’s kitchen would. And I think that’s more of an actress thing than how it was written, because Katie Holmes was a whole different story. Even still, everyone did their jobs reasonably well, and Gyllenhaal did a good job in the party scene with… well I guess that brings me the main attraction.

I’m a little nervous that I’m going to come off sounding like Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney here, but holy crap was Heath Ledger good. I gotta admit, when he died I really didn’t get the hysteria about it. I mean, yeah he’s good looking, and I loved Knight’s Tale just as much as the next guy, but I just didn’t really see him as being any better of an actor than your run of the mill Paul Walker or Josh Hartnett. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Walking out of the theater, I was legitimately upset that Ledger’s not gonna be around to make anymore movies. After seeing basically two minutes of him on screen, it was already clear that it was going to be one of those movies where as soon as his scenes ended and they moved to a different part of the storyline, you got antsy for him to get back on screen. The ultimate sign that an actor stole the show.

What really got me about how he played The Joker was how ridiculously neurotic he acted. His little speech ticks and slight stuttering totally sucked me right in. Tractor beam. His whole attitude of chaos and fear over all seemed almost too dangerous to be true. He could make people hate him, themselves, or just the world in general with a few deft sentences and cheap explosives. And through all his mind games that he plays and his little tricks that make him almost seem like the nerdy, introverted type, Ledger still has the physical structure to be believable when he physically throttles people.

It’s hard to say whether this movie would’ve done as well without the untimely Ledger death preceding it, but I’d like to think that it still would’ve been just as well received. And without being a big time actor, it’s hard to say how much a role could possibly affect a person, but part of me couldn’t help but thinking that playing this sociopath probably gave Heath some serious issues that he might not have been able to work through. Either way, though, kudos to him for absolutely nailing that role. I can’t wait to watch the thing again, and I feel confident in saying that in 5-10 years, this will be one of those movies that when you see it playing on TNT on the weekend, you’ll probably be able to count on being in the house for the next couple hours.

This has been a Matt Skelly movie review. My next review will be of Hayden Panettiere’s new music video. Wow.