Imagine, if you will, the following three scenarios:

1. Batman inspires citizens to take up vigilantism, but they don’t share his discipline for not using lethal force (We'll ignore "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" from Batman Begins for now).

2. An accountant thinks he has sussed out Batman’s true identity after studying Wayne Enterprises’ R&D financial records and tries to blackmail Bruce Wayne.

3. Lucius Fox inadvertently develops a technology that allows Batman to eavesdrop on the entire city without anyone’s knowledge and has ethical qualms about it.

I could see any of those intriguing situations being the basis of an entire comic book issue or an episode of an animated series. All three occur within the runtime of The Dark Knight but take up maybe less than 5 minutes of screen time each. But really, that's the greatest strike against the film: too many good ideas battling for attention. I think this is especially true of the film's last half-hour, particularly how Harvey Dent's story resolves just as it's getting interesting.

I'll skip the plot synopsis and just say, yes, the film is quite good. I don't agree that it's "#1 on the iMDB Top 250" good, but it is very good indeed. Director Christopher Nolan grounds Batman even further in a realistic setting, making The Joker's wave of terror feel less like comic-book excess and more disturbingly in tune with post-9/11 paranoia and despair. Nolan's also improved as an action director. I wouldn't call any of the fight scenes in Dark Knight brilliant, but at least you can tell what's going on this time. Heath Ledger's Joker is in a class of its own, even in a film packed with as many good actors as this one. He really seems to be conjuring the character as he goes, like he refuses to read from the script that every other actor in the film has been given. I realize that's an absurd statement, but that's the effect his Joker has on the film, to make you stop thinking about movies and acting and facepaint and comic books every time he appears onscreen and simply fear whatever he'll do next and dread that you can't predict what that is.

My last critique would be that Christian Bale's Batman voice still doesn't quite work, especially when he's given more than four words to say at a time. But still, how great is your movie when a silly voice by your main character in no way diminishes the impact of everything around it?

ANDROMETER: ****

I borrowed this from Judy and just beat it, and yes, it actually does a good job resolving the dangling plotlines of the series. Of course, the plotlines of Metal Gear Solid are so absurd, trying to make sense of them serves to underline the craziness even more.

You know exactly what to expect from MGS by now. Cool gameplay, great graphics, amazing attention to detail, a bizarre and sometimes juvenile sense of humor that clashes with the serious themes being explored, and cutscenes that are compelling but always seem to take much longer than they should (Minor Spoiler: The game's very last scene has to pose a record for the most prolonged death scene in any visual media). Frankly, if MGS2 wasn't enough to turn you off the series forever, nothing will. If you're still a fan, I can easily give MGS4 a solid (ahem) recommendation.