The Dark Knight Rises (2012) ***

Not nearly as impressive as "The Dark Knight", but still a superior "Batman" film. Its first half is a bit weak, but the impressive second half offers a surprising retelling of Dickens' "Tale Of Two Cities", complete with timely denounciations of the Occupy Wall Street mob, class warfare, and Solyndra bankrupcy. The film's unambiguous right-wing sympathies might surprise some Hollywood-bashers on the right, and might explain why in the aftermath of the Aurora massacre, the political controversies focused mainly on the issue of gun control, and largely spared the film itself (the rare condemnations of the film's violence coming mainly from leftist critics already offended by the film's politics).