Dark Knight Dazzles

Dark Knight swoops into cinemas tomorrow and critics say the hype is more than justified. "This is not merely a Batman movie," Amy Biancolli writes in the Houston Chronicle. It is one of the year's best films "and far and away the most hypnotic chiller." The bleak Gotham tale is "audacious and unnerving while consistently being fun and entertaining," writes Claudia Puig in USA Today.

At the movie's pitch-dark heart is a stunning performance from the late Heath Ledger as the Joker—"more explosive than any of the bombs or crashes his character unleashes on Gotham," writes Bill Goodykoontz in the Arizona Republic. "The irony of his loss is that in this, his biggest and best role, his character, while demented beyond repair, is so alive." (More Christian Bale stories.)