My butt hurt!

Rating: 9/10 (20 July 2012)

With a running time of two hours and forty-five minutes, my butt really hurt. I remember the same situation happened to me with The Dark Knight and Inception. This seems to be common law with Nolan movies with me. Man, his movies sure are long!
With that being said, I really did enjoy The Dark Knight Rises. Bane was a great villain and definitely earn his place in a league of Batman villains. It's good that they did that because they sure destroyed him in Batman and Robin. Another thing that I liked was the performances. This isn't anything new with these movies. All three of these movies had great performances (Heath Ledger, anyone?) but here it really shines because the actors even had to convey emotion. That's no small feat. There's a scene between Michael Caine and Christian Bale where I almost felt the tears. It was that powerful.
A few minor nitpicks though. As much as I liked Anne Hathaway's performance as Catwoman, they never really say that she is Catwoman. I was hoping they would refer to her as Catwoman once but it never materialized. But then, they never told her origin either. She just BECAME Catwoman and that was the end of it. Maybe it's because she's a cat burglar. Who knows. Also, I never really got how Batman always knew where there was danger. There's a scene where two people were in trouble at the same time and somehow Batman just manages to save them both. What did he have the script handy or something? Also, for those of you who didn't like his voice in the first two; get used to it. It's back.
But hey, this is an incredible movie. The action scenes are top notch and the fight scenes between Batman and Bane are nail-biting. Bane is a powerful foe and very intellectual. Seriously, this film is a very good send off to the trilogy and fans should be flocking to see it. The only sad part besides it being over is that Warner Bros. is just going to reboot the franchise yet again. I feel sorry for whoever is going to fill Christopher Nolan's shoes. Those are some big shoes to fill.