The Dark Knight

Holy sh*t...I just checked out IMDB's Top 250 minutes ago and guess what? The Dark Knight is ranked #1!!!!! The last time I saw the rankings 6 months ago, the Godfather was still tops, followed very closely by the Shawshank Redemption at #2. But now, the Dark Knight is by far highly rated compared to these 2 great films. Here's the latest Top 3 by average score and # of voters (me being one of them):

1) The Dark Knight (2008) - 9.3 (135,443 votes)
2) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - 9.1 (345,543 votes)
3) The Godfather (1972) - 9.1 (295,769 votes)

I spent RM9 to watch the Dark Knight earlier this afternoon (i.e. Sunday matinee) at IOI Mall Puchong. I was glued to my seat from start to finish. Whenever I thought I could catch a breather after an adrenaline-filled subplot, I was being brought into another roller-coaster ride. The overall storyline was good enough to make up for any minor loopholes.

On the acting, Christian Bale and Gary Oldman were up to my expectations. Quite the same as their performance in Batman Begins. On the other hand, Maggie Gyllenhaal gave much more depth to the character of Rachel Dawes. I thought that Aaron Eckhart played Harvey Dent well. The transformation from a passionate champion of justice to a vengeful killer was quite credible. Like everyone else, I will give the most credit to the late Heath Ledger, whose acting as the Joker was out-of-the-world.

My ratings: 9.5/10

Kudos to my favourite director Christopher Nolan, whom I became a fan in 2004 after watching his year 2000 masterpiece Memento (yes, that's where I got the name of this blog). I have been enjoying his subsequent films - Insomnia, The Prestige, Batman Begins and now The Dark Knight. While The Dark Knight is more appealing to the general audience and hence higher-ranked in IMDB, Memento remains as the better film IMHO.