The Dark Knight Rises

After a tremendous amount of hype and expectation for this film, and then a lot of mediocre reviews, I was a bit wary. But this was a good movie. It is a good story with good characters. One of my big disappointments is when a serial film or book is clearly a setup for the next film or book (best recent example is the second book of the Matched trilogy). In these cases, the film itself is not actually very good, but ties together the previous story with the supposed next story as a necessary bridge. I understand the nature of graphic novels and that you have to always set up the next, but you also have to tell story and you have to have some resolution. Otherwise you are just jerking the audience around. I must say that Nolan does an excellent job of avoiding this common pitfall. The story is complete (I don't remember much from the earlier installations and didn't feel lost), the story resolves and the door is open for the future. My only complaint is that I had a hard time understanding Bane much of the time. It seems like you could have developed a different device to satisfy the same physiological purpose without covering the mouth. Hathaway is an excellent CatWoman and I really like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in pretty much anything he does (see 50/50). This is an entertaining conclusion to the current Dark Knight trilogy.
4 stars (out of 5)