THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012/ C. Nolan)

[Chris Knipp]

Well, if it's a suckers game we shouldn't wade into it. But I think the valid point you are making is that there's a big difference between the assessments of a weekly or by-weekly print reviewer of new movies and the twenty-twenty hindsight that increasingly canonizes the work of a director now recognized as a master. It can look spineless to keep revising one's assessment of a movie one didn't like, but I have done that. On the other hand I was pretty mean about A Dangerous Method this year. Maybe it will seem I was too hard on it, but I acknowledge that it's polished and well acted, and my review is a valid artifact showing how it struck me on the day. I personally do not see why endlessly rewatching a film and tweaking one's assessment is a good idea. Trust your gut. Study the film if you like, but stick with your gut sense of it if you can. If it was idiotic, change it. But don't bury your original review. The pecking order may be generally revised as the years go on as well. I was "right" on Punch Drunk Love from the start, if it's highly regarded now. People didn't get it, and I saw that it was tough to like, but that only made me want to like it all the more, and I am a P.T. Anderson fan from way back. As for Tree of Life, I don't see the supporting story as wonky. The connecting ideas are wonky, but they are familiar to us from Malick before. There are strong elements in the family narrative. The father's uneasy dealings with the young boys are memorable and very real to me. Such relations have rarely been caught so freshly and intensely. That element beautifully anchors the film against the high flying visual pyrotechnics and cosmological speculations.