I just got to watch The Dark Knight on DVD last night. It's the fifth time I've seen the movie and I loved it just as much as the first.

I was a film student for a year and a half, so here's some critique.

I think one of the most underrated aspects of the film has to be the soundtrack. It's simplistic, but it hits all the right moods at the right time. Hans Zimmer is quite simply the best composer in film. I'm a fan of Danny Elfman and John Williams, but they cannot compete with the amount of emotion that Zimmer adds to a flick. Check out The Last Samurai for another great example of his work.

Actually, there are so many good things about the movie that I can live with the negatives. It's been criticized for poor dialogue by some of the characters like Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes, but for a movie of this magnitude and buzz when it came out, along with the complexity of all the characters in it and its overall length, I think it was necessary to have a simpler dialogue to help translate the story to the audience.

One other small thing that bothers me are a couple of cuts that happen during some of Bruce Wayne's scene in the makeshift bat cave early on. The camera cuts to Bruce who's not speaking while some of his dialog is still playing. It's subtle but it stood out to me like a sore thumb, and anything that detracts from the movie experience is a big setback for any filmmaker. Nothing should interfere with your sense of immersion in a film. Nothing.

Like I said, I can live with the negatives.

Batman has been characterized so many different ways over the years in comics and other forms of media. I think Christopher Nolan's vision of Batman, its city, its heroes and its villains perfectly reflects today's society. Without elaborating, I'll say that every filmmaker should aspire to connect with an audience like The Dark Knight does.