We saw "The Dark Knight" a little over a week ago, and bottom line, it’s not only the best movie I’ve seen this year, it’s also the best Batman movie ever made.

Without spoilers, here are some of the pluses:

• No origin story for the Joker. I’ve said before, these things work when not bogged out with origin stories. By presenting the Joker as "an absolute" (the filmmakers’ words), just there, it’s perfect.
• Speaking of the Joker, Heather Ledger’s interpretation: yeah, amazing.
• The way they handled Harvey Dent was really, really, really well done. I won’t say more because of spoiler issues, but if you know the source material, well…
• Like "Batman Begins," they keep everything (more or less) grounded in reality, which is such a breath of fresh air after the horrible, horrible Joel Schumacher Batman films.
• It’s freaking awesome.

One of the reasons it’s the best Batman movie ever made, I think, is that they treat the material seriously and have devotional respect to the character—and they assume an intelligent audience, rather than a theater full of nitwits who want to see nipples on the Batsuit.

Now I just wish someone would come along a reboot the Superman movie franchise and make it as good as Batman. (No, I haven’t seen "Superman Returns", nor do I want to.)