The praise just keeps rain­ing down on our lat­est Gotham adven­ture, here are some cred­i­ble sources to add weight to the plethora of Dark Knight accla­ma­tions that keep rolling in. Mr Nolan may be onto some­thing here, don’t you think?

Justin Chang, of Vari­ety, has posted his review of The Dark Knight movie,

“An ambi­tious, full-bodied crime epic of grat­i­fy­ing scope and moral com­plex­ity, this is seri­ously brainy pop enter­tain­ment that sat­is­fies every expec­ta­tion raised by its hit pre­de­ces­sor and then some .… Using five strongly devel­oped char­ac­ters to anchor a drama with life-or-death impli­ca­tions for the entire metrop­o­lis, the Nolans have taken Bob Kane’s comic­book tem­plate and crafted an anguished, elo­quent med­i­ta­tion on ideas of jus­tice and power, cor­rup­tion and anar­chy, and, of course, the need for heroes like Bat­man — a ques­tion never in doubt for the viewer, but one posed rather often by the cit­i­zens of Gotham.”

Kirk Hon­ey­cutt of Hol­ly­wood Reporter also has is say, once again the review just oozes praise, now with com­par­isons to Scorsese:

“The Dark Knight” is pure adren­a­line. Return­ing direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan, hav­ing dis­pensed with his intro­spec­tive, moody ori­gin story, now puts the Caped Cru­sader through a decathlon of explo­sions, vehi­cle flips, hand-to-hand com­bat, midair res­cues and pulse-pounding suspense.

Nolan is one of our smarter direc­tors. He builds movies around ideas and char­ac­ters, and “Dark Knight” is no excep­tion. The ideas here are not new to the movie world of cops and crim­i­nal, but in the con­text of a comic book movie, they ring out with star­tling clar­ity. In other words, you expect moral­is­tic under­pin­nings in a Mar­tin Scors­ese movie; in a Bat­man movie, they hit home with renewed vigor.

Rope of Sil­i­con Review:

Heath Ledger presents him­self as The Joker in a role that defines a career. It is unimag­in­able it would come to the point that a film based on a comic book char­ac­ter could actu­ally have such an impact on one per­son. On a gen­er­a­tion. Ledger’s decent into what is, and has become, The Joker makes Jack Nicholson’s inter­pre­ta­tion look like noth­ing more than a sim­ple clown. “Wait until they get a load of me,” says Jack… Wait until you get a load of Heath says I.

Mori­arty of AICN:

You’re talk­ing about an $85 mil­lion film for HELLBOY 2, and about $100 mil­lion more than that for THE DARK KNIGHT. These are gigan­tic invest­ments for the releas­ing com­pa­nies, and it would not sur­prise me in the least to see them diluted or dumbed-down. That’s just the nature of this indus­try, and we’ve come to expect it. So when you see films that truly seem to rep­re­sent someone’s per­sonal take on such gigan­tic arche­types, it’s brac­ing. It’s not just enter­tain­ment for a few hours in a the­ater… it’s an affir­ma­tion that there is room for great­ness in this busi­ness, and some­times, it’s allowed to hap­pen, or even encour­aged to flourish.