Bigger is not necessarily better. Like a juice-head chugging protein shakes and injecting steroids into his butt, Christopher Nolan’s films have been puffing themselves up. The muscles get larger and larger but the subtlety and nuance disappear.

I’m starting to revise my opinion of Nolan’s Batman trilogy. I’m no longer sure that The Dark Knight is the best film in the series - I’m starting to think that Batman Begins was the apex. Of course Begins has horrible fight choreography and Katie Holmes is woefully miscast, but it also has warmth, heart and excitement, qualities that the other films only sporadically recapture.

Nothing in the second or third films can match the intensity and sheer coolness of the demon Batman flying over Gotham, and nothing in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises has the emotional weight of Bruce Wayne recalling memories of his father. The two sequels, in comparison, are rather hollow affairs.

Just take the big twist in The Dark Knight Rises, that Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend Miranda Tate is secretly Ra's al Ghul's daughter. She seems to be on Bruce Wayne’s side and then with ten minutes to go she does a 180, stabs Batman and then promptly dies. It’s like the Two Face story thread in The Dark Knight, but [deploy Jeremy Clarkson voice], on speed!

There’s nothing satisfying about the execution of this. It was so late in the game that I immediately rolled my eyes. Maybe if I were smarter or if I’d read the comics, I would have seen the twist coming and see all the subtle nuances and betrayals, but I had no idea and therefore it felt like it was too little, too late.

And the twist also kills the Bane character. For most of the film he’s this double hard bastard with a prissy voice and then all of a sudden he’s acting all subservient to a little French girl. He doesn’t seem so tough anymore. And they could have at least developed the relationship between Tate and Bane. We get a flashback showing that Bane helped her when she was a child, but other than that there’s very little between them. If they’d spilled the twist sooner, there might have been room for development. I mean, what do a couple of nutters like Bane and Tate get up to in the bedroom? Seeing as he’s a burly bastard, you’d think Bane would be in charge, but I bet that Tate gives him a good pegging in private.

And I disliked the Tate twist because it killed my metaphorical boner (sorry mum, forget you read that)! Throughout the whole of the film Batman’s been getting the shit beaten out of him and now he’s absolutely hammering Bane. I was almost bouncing up and down in my chair like a demented one-year-old. And then Batman does his really cool, gravelly screaming. Yes! Yes!! YES!!! Finally Batman has his balls back!!

Oh, but now he’s been stabbed... [metaphorical boner deflating]

And what a disappointing way for Bane to get finished off. Does Batman rip off his face mask and pummel him to death? Does he get thrown off a high building? No, Catwoman turns up on the Batpod and shoots him. It’s so quick that it’s almost off screen. You’ve built up this almost invincible villain and he’s killed as an aside. Yep, not really satisfying.

Elsewhere though you have a pretty solid movie. It’s nice to see that Bruce Wayne isn’t an invincible superhero and that the years have taken their toll - he has to hobble around on a cane and he’s grown a beard to communicate his inner grief. Most superheroes become tiresome because they’re so resilient - here Batman feels like Rocky, a plucky underdog who really should know better.

And so the first fight between Bane and Batman is much like the first fight between Rocky and Mr T. in Rocky 3. Batman tries his best but he’s completely impotent. He’s lost his eye of the tiger - he’s grown soft; weak. And then in a direct reference to the comics, Batman gets his back snapped. It’s an excellent way of raising the stakes - you really do find it hard to imagine a way that Batman’s going to defeat Bane.

Which makes the finale and Bane’s quick and easy dispatch all the more disappointing. Batman/Bruce Wayne spent all that time in a dark prison and he put his life at risk to climb out of a hole just so that Catwoman could turn up at the last second and shoot Bane? There’s no satisfaction to be gleaned from that.

And it’s especially galling because Bane is actually a pretty interesting villain. Like the Joker, he’s an anarchist, but he plays the role of a revolutionary hero. He’d have you believe that he’s here to liberate Gotham from the tyranny of capitalism. We see rich people being forcibly evicted from their homes and if you have any kind of resentment towards the establishment, you can see how easy it would be to be swept up by such evil. Why should I struggle when there are the few that have so much and help so little? Wouldn’t it be nice to level the playing field. Well, Bane does that quite literally...

And so the siege of Gotham and the phoney show trials are excellently done. Again, it’s about raising the stakes.

But yet again, Christopher Nolan drops the ball. The revolutionary forces and a large horde of cops do battle in the streets of Gotham. Considering that Bane’s force has tanks and machine guns, how would you decide to take them on? Through guerrilla warfare? Or would you all just walk down the middle of the street and allow them to open fire on you? Moronically, the cops decide to do the latter, giving rise to the utterly ridiculous visual of two bands of combatants charging each other down a single street with automatic firearms - Gangs of New York this isn’t.

The end of the movie tries to convince us that Batman died trying to save Gotham, but I’m sure that most people didn’t believe it. A nuclear explosion isn’t going to destroy the Bat! But the film does actually succeed in having a fairly moving conclusion. The film does its darndest to sell the death and who can resist a sobbing Michael Caine? The man is such an ugly crier that you can’t help but be moved to tears yourself. And some footage from previous films helps to sell the feeling - the scenes from Batman Begins, as always, being the most evocative. And even though it’s not a big surprise to see that Bruce Wayne did indeed survive the explosion at the end, it’s satisfying to see a peaceful, content Bruce Wayne enjoying a drink in the sunshine. After many beatings, he certainly deserves it.

But where to place the trilogy as a whole? It’s certainly not some sacred cow. The films are littered with faults and annoyances. But the good certainly overcomes the bad and it can hold its head high. It’s a trilogy where the quality is consistently strong - there isn’t one film that’s significantly weaker than the rest. And it’s nice that the story comes full circle with the League of Shadows (although the last minute Miranda Tate revelation still bothers me). So there’s certainly a continuity there. But anyone who wants to hold this up in the pantheon and declare it as the best movie trilogy ever is seriously deluded. These aren’t untouchable masterpieces of cinema - they’re just good entertainment and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found it almost impossible to restrict my best drama list to five movies. Therefore, for this final category, I’ve decided to expand it to a list of ten flicks.

Top Ten Dramas

10. The Piano Teacher


Still waters run deep. In other words, quiet people are probably tortured perverts. Well, at least that’s the case in The Piano Teacher. Dark, twisted and with no hint of redemption for any of the characters involved, it’s a brilliantly bleak film that shows that the most loathsome people aren’t those who have sexual desires that deviate from the norm (the protagonist here is someone who secretly enjoys S&M), but those that punish people because of their proclivities.

9. Hunger


Hunger surprised me a great deal. With Steve McQueen directing, I was expecting a visual feast, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so heartfelt. Focusing on how the conflict between the IRA and the British government dehumanised those involved, it manages to be both brutal and tender. No judgements or sides are taken; we just see that this conflict is a cancer that eats away at everyone involved.

8. American Psycho


Far superior to the novel that it’s based on, this adaptation dispenses with most of the more ridiculous violence and instead focuses on the black humour. Patrick Bateman is a man stuck in a nightmare of conformity and no matter how desperately he tries to break out, no one is listening and no one cares. He’s trapped. Christian Bale’s performance is amazing and the writing and the direction are impeccable, showing that even the most ‘unfilmable’ books can be transported to the big screen if the filmmakers are talented enough.

7. The Lives of Others


At the beginning of The Lives of Others one of the characters states that people don’t change. However, we get to see that exact thing occur – we get to see a Stasi officer have his blind faith eroded and in the process regain his humanity. It’s a very tight film with great performances and Hitchcockian direction. It also has a terrifically moving and understated ending.

6. Downfall


It’s ridiculous that people criticised this film for ‘humanising’ Hitler. Newsflash motherfuckers, Hitler was a human being! Yes he may have been among the shittiest human beings of all time but to reduce him to a cardboard cut-out monster is extremely dangerous – it makes it harder for people to learn from the mistakes that Germany made when they allowed this madman to seize control. But Downfall goes some way to reversing that – it’s a film that allows you to get a small idea of what this lunatic was really like. It never makes you sympathise with Hitler but it does flesh him out to some extent, making the horror of his regime even more palpable.

5. Auto Focus


No other film depicts the desperation of male sexuality as accurately as Auto Focus. Portraying the exploits of Bob Crane and John Carpenter, it shows that there’s nothing as disturbing, pathetic and blackly comic as grown men who are stuck in adolescence. Unable to focus on anything but themselves they’re constantly looking for their next orgasm. In fact, their need is so desperate that they even masturbate in each other’s company while watching their own homemade sex tapes. But as lurid as the film is, it manages, in the end, to achieve a note of melancholy. Still, for women I imagine this must resemble a horror movie – these men (duplicitous horny bastards who have no moral fibre) must be their worst nightmare.

4. Dogville


At first it seems like Lars von Trier’s film might amount to nothing more than a gimmick – there are no real sets and the actors mimic the actions of opening doors and performing other actions. But I found it very easy to forget this artifice and it actually ends up helping the film – there are scenes where horrific events occur and you can still see people in their buildings getting on with their lives; you can visually see the way people turn a blind eye to abuse. And although the brutality in the film is exaggerated, it does have a serious point – if you treat people like animals, you shouldn’t be surprised when they treat you like one.

3. There Will Be Blood


It’s easy to just remember There Will Be Blood as a film about milkshakes, but there’s a whole lot more going on in this film. Deep down it’s a horror film about how we’re all beholden to capitalism and the insatiable greed of big business. Daniel Plainview is a man who uses his wealth to build schools and roads and irrigate the land, but while this would suggest he’s a decent human being, he’s actually a murderous monster. And instead of ushering in an era of freedom, he helps usher in a monetary-based class system – no longer will society be controlled by nobility; it’ll be controlled by big business. But the film also illustrates the uneasy relationship between religion and capitalism (America’s two biggest obsessions). And if There Will Be Blood is anything to go by, should the two sides of America fight to the death, capitalism will win.

2. United 93


Few things are as scary as religious mania. Otherwise decent people can be driven to perform atrocious acts. This is what United 93 manages to capture so superbly. These people aren’t evil – they weren’t destined to do this from birth. They’ve just become warped. And like loyal soldiers, they execute their orders faithfully. The last few moments are among the few times that I’ve become anxious while watching a film – the passengers frenzied attempt to cling onto life is gut-wrenching.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


One of the most remarkable films ever made, The Assassination of Jesse James is a beautiful film about the hollowness of celebrity. Robert Ford is a man who thinks that some of Jesse James’ stardust will rub off on him if he kills him and thus follows the soul-destroying realisation that fame for the sake of fame doesn’t bring happiness. It’s a very modern film in the body of a historical drama – it might as well be about Mark Chapman or any of the losers that appear on programmes like Pop Idol. The final twenty minutes are especially good and are amongst the best cinema I’ve ever seen.

Ten Worst Dramas

10. Into the Wild

You might as well just give up trying to see another decent Terminator film. It just isn’t going to happen now. With Rise of the Machines, Jonathan Mostow made a jokey parody of the first two films and now with Salvation McG has made Transformers. The straight-ahead, gritty, blue collar, white-knuckle thrills of the first two films have given way to tedious, humourless, colourless robot mash-ups. All the life has been drained from the series.

The film opens with a prisoner on death row called Marcus Wright talking to a bald Helena Bonham Carter. She has terminal cancer and wants him to donate his body to science after his execution. He resists a little but eventually gives in. And then if you haven’t already figured out that he’s going to become a robot when Helena gives him a form with a Cyberdyne Systems logo on it (a name familiar to fans of the franchise), it’s really rammed down your throat with a gratuitous crucifixion pose – when he’s given a lethal injection, he’s briefly raised, while strapped down, just in case he has any final words.

So this guy is going to be resurrected, right? And is he going to suffer and have to give his life so that he can save mankind? You betcha.

He even has to suffer another crucifixion pose just in case people didn’t get the subtle symbolism at the beginning. See, Marcus doesn’t know that he’s a robot and eventually hooks up with a resistance pilot. She leads him back to the resistance base and he steps on a mine. But it doesn’t kill him. You know, which on the one hand is nice, but on the other hand it’s pretty bad because humans don’t like robots much. So poor Marcus gets strung up in another crucifix pose and people shoot guns at him. But because he’s flesh with a gnarly robot skeleton, it doesn’t hurt him. It just makes his skin look bad.

Marcus is different from other characters in the Terminator series because while he has a robot skeleton, he has a human brain and a human heart. Arnie in the other films was just a robot with skin over it – the brain and everything else was mechanical. But making Marcus part human seems like terrible thinking on Skynet’s part (Skynet being the evil supercomputer made by Cyberdyne Systems that nuked the world and decided to kill every human). Why give Marcus free-will? Apparently it’s so that he can be a mole and gather information on the resistance for Skynet, but wouldn’t it be easier to have him kill John Connor? Or maybe you could have a bomb implanted in him and the second he sees John Connor, it activates. But that would make too much sense. A super-intelligent, super-ruthless supercomputer would never think of that.

So what ends up happening is that Marcus meets the resistance, gets found out to be a robot, escapes and then helps John Connor find Skynet’s head quarters – John wants to go into the lion’s den because his daddy Kyle Reese is being held prisoner there along with loads of other people. And when Marcus goes to Skynet he wanders into a room with a big screen. All of a sudden Helena Bonham Carter’s face turns up. She then tells him he’s a mole and lets him in on Skynet’s retarded masterplan to have Marcus lead John Connor to them. Fucking hell, just have Marcus turn into a giant cheese grater when he meets John Connor and have him grate Connor to the bone. It would make more sense.

Something else that would make sense is for Skynet to kill Kyle Reese when it spots him. You kill John Connor’s daddy and then John Connor can’t exist. Right? But no, even though Skynet identifies Kyle Reese, it decides to put Reese in a plastic cube cell rather than rip his head off. The poor guy has to sit there as a T-800 watches him through the glass – the shot of it watching him is filmed in such a way that it looks like the robot is peeping at him; if the robot had a cock it would be jacking off like crazy and squirting white oil all over the cell.

But anyway, how the hell does Skynet know who Kyle Reese is? How did it find out that he was John’s daddy? It doesn’t make any sense. Are the robots psychic? Did John get drunk one night and tell Skynet? Did he phone them up?

But back to Helena Bonham Carter’s face turning up on a computer screen. The filmmakers have completely missed the point about Skynet. It’s a faceless intelligence. There’s no personality to it. Once you plop Helena Bonham Carter’s face on it, you completely eliminate the dread of a faceless, unstoppable foe that you can’t speak to or reason with. And Bonham Carter’s acting is atrocious in this scene. She mugs and overacts like crazy. And to make it even more risible, her face even morphs into other characters. Even the scene in Matrix Reloaded with the Architect wasn’t this bad. Well, actually, thinking about it, maybe it was. But it’s close.

One of the most remarkable things about this scene, though, is Marcus’ reaction to the news that he’s a mole for Skynet. He reaches into his head and removes a chip and then goes and helps John Connor fight a CGI Arnie. What the fuck? How stupid is Skynet? It’s going to make it that easy for Marcus to disobey them? It would be like someone putting a sock on me and saying, ‘Now while you’re wearing this, you’re not allowed to do anything naughty.’ And then I’d just take the sock off and go mug some old grannies.

Arnie’s appearance is pretty pointless and once again demonstrates the limitations of computer graphics. As good as it looks, it doesn’t look very good. The skin looks plastic. And before you can get used to it, Arnie’s face and skin are burnt off and he’s just a metal skeleton. It’s a pointless homage to the previous films.

Speaking of pointless homages, there’s a bit where John Connor captures a robot motorcycle by using a Guns ‘n’ Roses song (‘You Could Be Mine’ from T2). It’s kind of amusing but only serves as a reminder of how much better the first two instalments are.

Other pointless homages include the use of the lines, ‘I’ll be back’ and ‘come with me if you want to live’. Again, it didn’t make me want to cheer. It just reminded me of the first two films.

I also want to know why Skynet would create massive walking robots. What’s the point of that? You have aircraft that can hover. Why do you need the Iron Giant?

Another gripe is how fucking loud the film is. The film started and then towards the end of the first scene the projectionist turned it up to eleven. I swear I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. I mean, my brother and I talk about an action sequence in Die Another Day (the hovercraft scene) that had the cinema vibrating and shaking it was so loud. Well, Terminator Salvation is like that throughout the whole of the movie. Maybe McG thinks he can bludgeon us into submission with sound effects and make us overlook the fact that his film is a colossal piece of shite. Unfortunately for him his ploy doesn’t work.

The Dark Knight is an improvement on Batman Begins, but it’s not the giant leap that people would have you believe. It has too many flaws. The final sequence, for example, is a gigantic mess. Every attempt is made to ensure that it’s exciting, but the editing is all over the place and its not even clear what’s going on.

Then there’s Two-Face. What a horribly tedious creation he is. Basically his girlfriend gets killed and he goes a bit nuts and then he goes on a killing spree. Sounds kind of interesting, doesn’t it? It’s not. The stuff with Harvey Dent previous to this is enjoyable, but Two-Face himself sucks the life out of the movie. And that’s probably because it’s over too quickly. All Two-Face gets to do is whine, toss his little coin and then fall out of a building. It’s over in a flash and you’re left wondering why create this villain at all if you’re going to do so little with him.

And the make-up and CGI for his disfigured face is abysmal. The film goes to such lengths to create a realistic environment for these fantastical characters that the cartoony effects stick out like a sore thumb. I can remember reading somewhere that Nolan thought that a realistically scarred face would look too horrific, but he could have at least gone for something that didn’t look like it was on an anatomy page in Encarta. It's thoroughly distracting and completely out of place. Whenever he appeared I could only think 'Crap CGI. Crap CGI.' And I'm not quite sure why Nolan suddenly got squeamish about having realistic effects. So we can have a mobile phone stitched into a man's body and have it explode, and we can have people tortured, but he thinks that some realistic scarring would be too horrific? It's by far the biggest misstep.

A smaller distraction was Batman’s cowl. It has a very weird shape, like Bale’s head is the teat on the end of a condom, albeit it a black condom with bat ears. It’s nowhere near as good as Keaton’s costume in Batman Returns.

And like Keaton, Bale does that strange voice thing where it sounds like he’s been chugging gravel. But unlike some people, this didn’t distract me. How else is Batman supposed to talk? Is he supposed to talk in his normal Bruce Wayne voice? That would be awfully intimidating, wouldn’t it? And it would be a great way of hiding his identity. But although I find the Batman voice perfectly logical, there was once or twice where Bale suddenly started lisping. In these instances he became rather camp.

It’s mind-numbingly predictable to point to Heath Ledger’s performance as the highlight, but it’s most certainly true. His Joker makes Nicholson’s look like a slightly eccentric, rather cuddly uncle. Ledger blows him out of the water. The best thing about Ledger’s Joker is that there’s no reasoning with him. He just wants to play his games and have fun. However, he has a very strange sense of fun. Fun for him is playing with the Batman and turning Gotham’s citizens into criminals. He’s a guy that gets nothing out of money. Therefore it’s impossible to squeeze him.

The only problem with this is that it weakens Batman’s character. You go through the whole of Batman Begins to establish how strong he is and suddenly you castrate him. In this film he’s remarkably impotent. And I should also point out that the Joker is smart to a ridiculous degree. His plans are incredibly complicated and they all go off like clockwork.

But that being said, the character is still enormous fun. One of my favourite Joker moments has to be the pencil trick. And what about poor Brian the fake Batman? Not only does he get to star in his own video, but he also gets to smash into the Mayor’s window. Nice. But there’s also the bit where the Joker turns up as a nurse. I loved the smile he gave Two-Face. And I like the fact that Nolan makes the Joker reprehensible enough to blow up a hospital.

But this is child’s play compared to the Joker’s plan to blow up Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes at the same time. He makes Batman choose which one to save and then Commissioner Gordon goes after the other one. Naturally, Batman goes after his old squeeze Rachel, but the Joker plays a trick on him and the location he’s given is Dent’s. So therefore just before Rachel dies she gets to hear that her beloved Bruce Wayne has ‘chosen’ to save Dent and that he’s forsaken her, making her last few moments on the planet extra miserable. And Dent gets to hear his love’s final few moments and gets to feel the guilt of being saved. You’ve got to admire how wonderfully twisted the Joker is and how easily he has everyone wrapped around his little finger.

But it’s also the small moments that make Ledger’s performance great. I like it when he arrives at Bruce Wayne’s party, looking for Harvey Dent. He begins interrogating the guests and grabs a bald guy by the head, asking him if he’s seen the DA. The guy doesn’t respond and the Joker widens his eyes and goes, ‘No.’ It’s a great bit of acting. And I also loved it when he sarcastically applauds Gordon’s promotion.

The rest of the cast don’t get to have anywhere near as much fun, but they all do a good job. Bale is solid as always, as is Caine, Freeman and Oldman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is a massive improvement over Katie Holmes. But better than all of these is Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. He’s cocky but believably decent as the incorruptible DA, and like Bruce Wayne you’re seduced by him. But while you feel that the film is building up to something special with his tragedy as Two-Face, it never happens. Suddenly the script lets Eckhart down and his fall provides zero emotion. There’s just not enough time invested in it. Plus all he goes on about is Rachel. 'My Rachel!' 'My Rachel!' Shut the fuck up.

Fortunately, though, there are many wonderful distractions to ensure that you don’t dwell too hard on this disappointment. The action, for instance, is superb. And once again Nolan excels with a wonderful car chase. The sequence where the Joker is trying to get his hands on Dent is marvelous. With its use of a juggernaut and other heavy vehicles, it reminded me of the chase at the end of T2. And I really dug the Batpod. And then there’s the opening bank heist. Nolan has said that he was inspired by Heat and it really does capture the same sort of feeling. It’s not quite as epic, but it’s a fantastic bit of cinema. Everything from the amazing stunt that opens the film to the school bus crashing through the bank works a treat.

However, my favourite bit in the whole film is a very small moment. Right after the Joker escapes from police custody we briefly see him hanging his body out of a squad car. There’s no sound and the music is no more than a hum, but it’s incredibly cinematic and says more about the character than almost anything else could. This is what makes the Joker’s life worth living; running rings around other people and playing games with them.

And Nolan must also be commended for some of the film’s subtext. The Joker’s videos kind of resemble the sorts of things Al Qaeda would make and the whole film asks how far would you go to try and re-establish control. Do you destroy everything you believe in just so that things can be the way they used to be? Of course this is the crisis that America faces where civil liberties are eroded in order to try and make the country ‘safer’. The Dark Knight just takes it to an extreme.

So while Nolan must be commended for the ambition of the project and for most of the film’s execution, it’s by no means the instant masterpiece it’s been touted as. Yes it’s the best Batman film that’s been made, but it’s not even close to being the best film of all time (IMDb Top 250 rot in hell).

Fear gets mentioned quite a few times in Batman Begins. In fact, it gets mentioned about a hundred times. 'I seek the means to fight injustice. To turn fear on those who prey on the fearful.' 'Now you must journey inwards, to what you really fear.' 'There is nothing to fear but fear itself.' Etc. Etc. And then the whole of Gotham gets The Fear and tries to rip itself apart. It's almost as if the filmmakers are trying to say something. Is it a comment on paranoia in the Bush era? Or is it an insight into how ordinary people are running scared from real and imagined criminality? Or then again, is it just a bunch of cool stuff in a big Hollywood blockbuster? It's probably a combination of all three, although, as you'd expect, the cool stuff takes precedence.

And it’s certainly cool to see Batman back on the big screen after he was gang raped into a coma by Joel Schumacher and everyone else who was involved in the last two pieces of shit. You can’t keep a good money-spinning cash cow down for long.

But you have to wait a while for Batman to make an appearance – unlike Burton’s film where his presence is immediate. Therefore you have to endure the dreaded back story, which is quite often the death of many a comic book film. I mean, the origin story is often like the first couple of hundred pages of a biography. Yeah, I don’t give a shit that Barry Big Bollocks was born into poverty and that he had to take coal sandwiches to school. I want to read the bit where he makes it big and fucks some slut with a mud shark. And so with a comic book character you often just want to see them in action.

But the build-up in Batman Begins is well handled, even though the ninja training is a tad dull. Yeah I know we have to see how Bruce Wayne gets his skills, but still, it’s rather ho-hum. Neeson’s mentor comes across as a bland, slightly malevolent Apollo Creed or a less interesting variation of the old git out of The Karate Kid. Thrilling cinema it isn’t.

However, other stuff in the build-up is superb, especially the scenes dealing with Bruce’s childhood. They have real heart and feeling, which reminds you that this isn’t some bland product churned out by some easily intimidated hack, but a film made by someone who genuinely cares about the characters.

At the same time, though, you have to marvel at how gosh darn great Bruce’s dad is. Like a superhero he saves Bruce when he falls down a hole. Then he carries Bruce to his bedroom and takes care of him. Then he provides Gotham City with a cheap public transport system. What a wonderful guy. No wonder, then, that his death would fuck Bruce up to such an extent that he dresses up like a giant bat.

The appearance of Batman himself is wonderful. Some hoods are conducting a drug deal down at the docks and then suddenly they begin getting picked off one by one. It’s like something out of a horror film. And then our first full glimpse of the Bat Man sees him dangling upside down behind a criminal. It’s a joy to finally see Batman trying to scare thugs rather than give them hard-ons by flashing bat butts and bat nipples.

And Bale has the perfect voice to intimidate people with. His Batman growls and screams. There’s no messing around. In particular I like the scene where he drags a bent cop up by his ankles and then interrogates him. One second you’re having a nice snack and the next you’re upside down being screamed at by a giant bat. I think anyone would be well within their rights to shit themselves.

And it’s also pleasing that the film is quite scary for a mainstream blockbuster. A large part of the story revolves around a hallucinogenic drug that makes people freak out. Cue then lots of cool visuals of people seeing scary stuff. My favourite is probably the satanic Batman that people see flying over the city. But the demon Batman that Dr Crane/Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) sees is really cool as well. Oh, and I also like the Scarecrow’s horse – it has glowing red eyes and breathes fire.

As far as the villains go, Dr Crane is easily the best. Excellently played by Cillian Murphy, he has a cold, slimy, sleazy vibe to him. He might not be physically threatening, but his eyes are as cold as ice. Therefore it’s a huge disappointment that he plays second fiddle to Liam Neeson’s colourless Ra’s Al Ghul. Honestly, when he returns, you kind of sigh. You just want to give him a drink to loosen him up. Maybe if he had a laugh he wouldn’t feel so compelled to destroy society and be such a pompous downer. At least you felt Crane enjoyed being evil. He even makes a Roger Moore-style quip when he sets Batman on fire: ‘You need to lighten up.’ Excellent.

And the whole League of Shadows thing is silly as hell. Apparently they’re a group of vigilantes that keep the world in check by destroying societies when they become too corrupt. According to them, they sacked Rome and burnt London to the ground. What the hell is this, The Da Vinci Code? Are they the Priory of Sion or something? For a film that tries to drag Batman back into a sense of reality, this stands out as pure silliness.

Something else that doesn’t really work is the casting of Katie Holmes. She doesn’t embarrass herself and she’s not annoying in a Vicki Vale type of way (although at least Kim Basigner and her acres of hair gave me confusing trouser rumblings as an innocent youth), but she’s ridiculously out of place as a DA. She has no authority. She has no screen presence. She’s amorphous.

Thank fuck then that the rest of the cast, Liam Neeson aside, is superb. Michael Caine is excellent as Alfred, Morgan Freeman does a good job as Q (er, I mean, Lucius Fox), Tom Wilkinson shines in the short amount of time he has and Gary Oldman does a decent job with the thankless role of Gordon – although for some reason the way he says ‘Kevlar’ at the end makes me laugh; just listen to the way he says it. And of course Christian Bale is excellent as Batman. He might not look as deranged as Michael Keaton, but he's far more convincing.

But Bale actually isn’t the best thing in the film. The best thing is the Tumbler. The car chase here is magnificent. The Batmobile flies over roofs, crashes through walls and blows shit up, yet it feels completely authentic. Quite a feat if you ask me. And it’s certainly one of the best action scenes in recent years. And it makes up for the rather bland fight scenes that pepper the film. They try and ape the ones in the Bourne movies but they’re even more blurry and hard to watch.

But even though I have reservations about certain things, the film isa massive success. The serious treatment of the characters has to be applauded and the film itself is engrossing and exciting. Here’s hoping the next one is even better.

I guess one of the main debating points when it comes to American Psycho is whether the murders are reality or fantasy. Before I read the book, I was firmly of the opinion that everything was in Bateman's head. But after reading the novel and watching the film again, I've swung the other way. Everything is very real. After all, the whole point of the film seems to be that Bateman exists in a society that is so overwhelmingly self-absorbed that it doesn't even listen when he's begging to be caught. No one believes him and no one cares.

A factor that initially clouded matters was the way that everyone confuses the identity of the people they associate with. Bateman gets confused for other people, he pretends to be other people and no one seems to have a clue who they're really talking to. It's a nice little dig at the conformity of the 80s – people are homogeneous – but it also ensured, when I first watched the film, that I wasn’t sure whether I could believe what I was seeing. I mean, at the end of the film Bateman talks to his lawyer, but his lawyer doesn't even know who he is. Yet his lawyer apparently had dinner with one of the people he killed. But this is easily explained. In a world where people are continually lying and name-dropping, and a world where people are so conformist that their identities are interchangeable, mistakes are easily made. Therefore Bateman is a psychotic murderer trapped in a personal hell where no one believes him and where there's no one to put him out of his misery.

But despite the lack of clarity as regards the reality of the story, the film is a resounding success, maybe more so than the book. The book is pretty good but it's self-indulgent and excessive. And while that's the point – the 80s were shallow, get it? – I can only take so many descriptions of suits before I want to hurl the book across the room. "He was wearing a…" Plus the film gets rid of most of the gory killings. And while I'm sure there were a few nutters out there that got themselves riled up about that, focusing more on the satire of things benefits the film immensely.

But whether you prefer the novel or the film, the message is the same: contrary to Huey, conformity is bad.

A couple of times Bateman says that he wants to fit in, but in actuality he has nothing but contempt for the people he works with. All the time he's competing, trying to outdo everyone with his business card, his suit or his haircut, but no one even knows who he is. He's not really a person. So his anger at being a non-person that's overlooked and outdone spills over into murder. It's one of the few releases he has.

Sex is another release. The scene with the prostitutes is hilarious. It's more like masturbation than anything. For foreplay he demonstrates his understanding of Phil Collins and during the act itself he's continually looking at himself and narcissistically flexing his muscles. It's the American Dream, baby – sex, a buff body, hookers and, er, 'Sussudio'.

But on the subject of the music, I like the Whitney Houston speech even more. I love how emotional he gets – it's like he's reciting some pretentious music review he's read – and I like the way that you cut from his tears to him having vigorous sex with a drugged woman.

But speaking of Bateman's speeches, I also like the way he quotes restaurant reviews. There's no original thought at all. He's just a suit, a haircut and lots of second-hand opinions. The latter is best illustrated in the Espace scene where he gives off a long speech about how American society has to return to traditional values. The audience is well aware of the irony, but Bateman isn't.

But Bateman's a perfect embodiment of Reagan's America. He's fearful of homosexuals, hateful towards the underclass ("Why don't you get a job, Al?") and he earnestly spouts empty platitudes ("Just say no") while taking lots of drugs and having lots of sex. He's a hypocrite and a liar but he's 100% all-American.

And like some American males he has a strange idea of masculinity. He's a misogynist, a racist and he's oversexed, but he pampers himself like a woman. But although he takes a lot of care over his body, his mind is left to rot. But then again, when you're a privileged young man whose work consists of going to lunch, reading Playboy and listening to 'Lady in Red', perhaps your mind is best left well alone (maybe his choice in music is what drives him to insanity – listen to Collins and DeBurgh and be damned forever). But I also like his childish need to impress. If only he could get into Dorsia… And I also love Bale's reaction in the scene where one of the prostitutes asks him how much his apartment cost. He snaps that it's none of her business but then smugly says that it cost a lot. Along with Whitney Houston, it's the funniest moment in the film.

And it's the humour that makes the film worth repeated viewings. Sure there's a lot of fun to be had in the preposterous violence, but I keep coming back for lines like, "Huey's too black sounding for me."

Now if you don't mind, I've got to return some videotapes...