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The Dark Knight is easily the one of the best movies I’ve ever even thought about seeing, and seeing it the second time was just as pants-wetting. However, when the previews were over and I was still only looking at normal movie screen, I realized that my second experience with the film would hardly do justice against the previous viewing with the eight-storey tall IMAX version. The beginning of the movie wowed every soul in the theater as a collective gasp came over the audience during the opening shot of Gotham city covering the entire screen. The first six or so minutes consisted of straight IMAX-filmed movie that made everyone realize how absurdly large the screen actually is, only to be followed by the best 146 minutes anyone will probably ever experience in a movie theater.

If you’ve not seen the movie yet, I’ll do the honor in telling you to stop reading this and order your tickets now (then come back of course…). It lives up to everything you could ever want from a Batman movie and completely obliterates and puts to shame everything Batman up to this moment. At no point whatsoever during the film did I feel as though something could have been done differently. Every shot, camera angle, or word spoken was gracefully executed by some of the best film crew and actors Hollywood could possibly throw at a script with such high expectations.

Ledger’s performance as the Joker is absolutely golden, and unfortunately can never be looked forward to in a future title. When I originally heard of Ledger’s selection as the character, I was somewhat disappointed that other prospects were not chosen. As anticipation of the movie increased, and footage and understanding of the character slowly seeped from the set, I’ve grown to admire the staff’s choice of Ledger as the infamous Joker. In some ways I’d wished his laugh was a bit more maniacal and/or breathy, but in seeing his performance for the second time I caught on to, and admired much more, the sarcastic outlook on life and philosophy Ledger managed to pull off so effortlessly.

From what I’ve read in the reviews, this movie is extremely underrated. Usually, a movie being rated as low as this one means two things: A) the reviewer really didn’t understand what the movie-makers were trying to do or convey, or B) the movie just really sucked.

So here we have Speed Racer, the newest film by the creators of the Matrix movies and fictitious world. A flick highly anticipated by myself and some colleagues, and quite frankly advertised as two hours of eye-candy.

I’d like to point out first off that if you’re wondering what the movie is like if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s basically 120 minutes of trailer-esque cinema; pumped full of anime-related humor, dialogue, and cinematography. Basically, if you liked what you saw in the trailer and you were any sort of fan of the show, be it a religious watcher or in passing, go see this movie. I went into it as someone who used to watch the seemingly endless re-runs on Cartoon Network over a decade ago and always thought it would be cool to see it live action.

Here’s where my complaint about bad reviews comes in. I’m not going to sit here and tell you why “Speed Racer is the best movie ever made!”, or rave up and down how cool it was like some lame-ass fanboy groupie. Instead I’ll just tell you straight up that if you admire, at all, the style of anime from the ’60s and ’70s and have any sort of imagination of how it could be conveyed in live action (or any imagination at all…) that this IS the best movie for that. I sat through the entire film laughing my ass off at how amazingly simple yet complex everything about the movie was and how well the Wachowski brothers were able to bring this depth-less show to life.