Dark Knight mixed reviews...

This is the last post about The Dark Knight, I promise - otherwise I may as well turn it into a Dark Knight fan blog. In my defense I'm rarely this enthusiastic about any new film so you should really make the most of it while it lasts.

Anyway, a couple of posts ago I mentioned some of the mixed reviews the film got. This was partly due to me mistaking the current uproar over the 12A certificate for negative press. There were however a number of specific reviews I was referring to, so in the interests of equality (and the hope of making other people as angry as I was) I'm posting the links here:

First off, Andrew Collins of the Radio Times gave the film 3 stars:

http://www.radiotimes.com/servlet_film/com.icl.beeb.rtfilms.client.simpleSearchServlet?frn=46447&searchTypeSelect=5

As we now know from The Congo Review (www.congoreview.bravehost.com) this would suggest the film is three times as good as Congo. Actually that's probably accurate.

Here's another one. After going on for weeks about how all super-hero films were rubbish due to the emphasis on spectacle and CGI nonsense Mark Kermode had this to say about the film that should finally have lived up to his expectations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAjcFZlbu78

I do generally really like Mark Kermode, but disagree with pretty much everything he said here.

Self-confessed comics fan Jonathan Ross apparently had this to say:

http://www.flixster.com/news/2008/07/21/jonathan-ross-says-batman-the-dark-knight-is-boring

Finally, saving the most scathing for last, here's what David Cox had to say about the film:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/28/dark.night

Actually, it's great that the film has mixed reviews. A good film should have mixed reviews. As I've said before what I liked most about the film is that it's challenging and it takes risks - if as a result of that all it got was unanimous praise then it would've failed in what it set out to do and I probably wouldn't have liked it as much.

But just to balance the above, here's what Peter Bradshaw thought of the film:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/25/actionandadventure1

And here's what Philip French wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/27/2

Well done to Philip French for mentioning the Shane reference - one of my favourite moments.

And while we're linking to reviews, here's my favourite ever Philip French review and perhaps my favourite review of all time. In what was either a moment of madness or pure clarity, this is what Philip French thought of Ghost Rider:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/mar/04/horror.sciencefictionandfantasy