The Dark Knight Rises

3 Paws
Seen recently at Aksarben Cinema

What do you do when it's 106 degrees outside on a Sunday afternoon if you're not a scorpion? You go to the movies.

Christian Bale is the best Batman ever, and director Christopher Nolan sends him out in exquisite style, even though The Dark Knight Rises is too long and too loud and his Gotham populace gives up too easily. My only other quibble - Tom Hardy's Bane. I found him uber creepy in the trailers, but the more I heard him blather on and on in the film, the more he reminded me of the Cookie Monster with an expanded vocabulary.

But, back to the good stuff. The well-known cast members (Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are good. Two unknown cast members - a pair of older prisoners who counsel a beat up and broken Bruce Wayne while he's in the hole - as well as the film's score, are better. And the ending - which neatly ties together a series of clues we've been given but don't recognize as clues at the time - is the best.

An addendum:
Movie houses are my refuge from the world. Watching a security guard patrol through them is supposed to make you feel better, but it doesn't. It only makes you think about the awful thing that happened to an innocent group of people who just wanted to see a film. Don't let guns keep you out of the theater. Keep guns out of the theater.

Bonus Bones: 2
Look for a pair of police dogs during one of the mass hysteria scenes (there are many).