I just happened to notice I am approaching 800 films on Lovefilm. Add to that all of the cinema visits over the last few years. Easily the most boring, dull, weak film I have seen in all these past years, among all these films, is Inception. Prior to viewing, I had read reports of viewers being left baffled by its complexity, of its complicated structure, and so on. I did end up being perplexed… but at these claims!

Nolan's Batman films do have something, but don't quite make it in the end. His action scenes are the worst, his writing is poor, and the end result is, most importantly, unsatisfying.

But is the excitement we got from "The Dark Knight," not equal to the "comfort" from a picture like "The Artist"? If anything, a "Dark Knight" is easily more ambitious while "The Artist" simply repeats old and tried movie tropes. Don't get me wrong, I loved that film but to call it any more "educational, enlightening, or moving" is sort of disingenuous.

I'd argue the opposite. Inception went through the motions of telling a compelling emotional story but was completely hollow; it was simply too preoccupied in the mechanics of its internal logic to develop Dom (not to mention the supporting cast) to any substantial degree. It doesn't sink the film like some have claimed and I still like it quite a bit but it definitely falls short in certain aspects. As for Roberts, I think the Dark Knight did enough to rise above mere popcorn entertainment. It's messages were messy and extremely on-the-nose but the film worked despite this. Had it been a straight drama trying to make the same statements on our current society it wouldn't have worked, but as a blockbuster (and a superhero film at that) it's clumsiness can be forgiven. That said I do think he's getting at something when he says that 10 films could be made that single film's budget though. Movie costs are simply outrageous. Think about this: Heaven's Gate, which was considered disgustingly expensive in it's day, cost $40,000,000 to make. That's $125 million in today's money, which is how much a mid-range blockbuster costs. I'm not going to go all Roger Corman and say that making a $200 million picture is morally irresponsible but why does EVERY movie have to cost that much? Hollywood is putting all it's chips into a handful of films every year and I don't see how anyone can say they're better off because of it. Maybe financially but they can't maintain this kind of strategy forever; it's practically built around DVD sales and those are already in decline and are shrink exponentially as time goes on and more and more of it's audience consists of people who have never known a world without the internet (shit, have never know a world without high-speed internet).

Now we wait for "The Dark Knight Rises" to arrive this summer and blow us all away!!

I have high hopes for TDKR (though I'm iffy on Catwoman and Tom Hardy is going to have to work REALLY hard to get past that mask). I have higher hopes for PROMETHEUS though.

Sure, they could. But they also would be dumb and wrong.