Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

Aroview: Christopher Nolan directs with bombast and brilliance this long-awaited finale to the "Dark Knight" trilogy, in which Christian Bale's aging Batman returns from self-imposed exile to counter a new terrorist threat to Gotham, lead by the monstrous villain Bane (Tom Hardy).

While there's no denying the size and spectacle of Nolan's vision, as well as the feat of conflating numerous subplots, character arcs, and logistically challenging action sequences, as far as blockbusters go, this is as unwieldy and overstuffed as it gets. Still, there's much to be said for the bold new characters (Anne Hathaway's Catwoman a surprising highlight), timely undercurrent of social anger and unrest, and Nolan's earth-shaking set-pieces, which although maddeningly edited and scored, prove that real collisions and mayhem will always trump the shorthand of computer-generated special effects.

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