Simply put, The Dark Knight is one of the greatest movies ever made, a black diamond cut with infinite precision and polished to blindingly sparkly perfection. Marvel had its fun this summer with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, but DC's The Dark Knight is in an entirely different realm. It's mythic. It's epic. It's archetypal. It's The Godfather of superhero movies.

While so many filmmakers stumble over themselves trying to make movies that they think (or hope) audiences will like, The Dark Knight's superlative director, Christopher Nolan, has obviously told the story that he wants to tell.

To judge it based on conventional wisdom, the film would be considered too long (at two-and-a-half hours), too dense (giving equal weight to three main characters), and too dark (after all, it's from the same guy who gave us Memento). But as in most instances when conventional wisdom is applied to a great work of art, the criticisms don't hold; in fact, they streak away like raindrops on the Batmobile's windshield.

The Dark Knight is the rarest of treasures: a big-time, big-budget blockbuster that is also a deeply intimate and personal film.

The story, complex but clearly told, sees three extraordinary men battling over the fate of Gotham, not to mention their very souls; it's a love / hate triangle that rises like a towering obsidian pyramid over the city.