DVD The Dark Knight Rises: Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises aims to be nothing less than the be-all, end-all of the comic-book genre, a movie that encapsulates all the superhero movies that have come before it, and renders all that might follow a tad irrelevant. The film has dozens of characters, an epically complicated vision of good and evil, and a score that rises up every few minutes. It's hard not to admire the scope of the storytelling, and the director's sheer determination to make us take it seriously. What is missing, though, is the sense of anguish, perversity and danger that gave such weight to this film's predecessor, The Dark Knight (2008). That movie showed us a man coming apart at the seams, unable to distinguish any longer between guilt and innocence. This one just puts us through the familiar paces of a reluctant superhero who must dust off his cape and accept his fate as a peacekeeper. Instead of looking like no other comic-book movie you've ever seen, it ends up looking like dozens of other films, only on steroids. A little more heart -- and a lot less bombast -- and this movie might have been the game-changer its creators so desperately wanted it to be. On DVD, Blu-ray, and 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo.
-- Christopher Kelly
Also new: Hope Springs; Beasts of the Southern Wild; V/H/S; The Odd Life of Timothy Green; World Without End; Finding Nemo (Collector's Edition); Butter; Ai Weiwei (Never Sorry); Angry Boys; We Can Be Heroes
