THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

The Dark Knight Rises, as you've perhaps heard, is the concluding chapter in Christopher Nolan's series of grandly scaled, intensely serious-minded Batman adventures that began with 2005's fittingly titled Batman Begins and continued with 2008's The Dark Knight. It is also, as you perhaps hoped, a terrifically satisfying wrap-up to the trilogy - flawed, at times distractingly flawed, but powerful and resonant and deeply emotional. After my lukewarm responses to The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, I would've been relieved to exit this summer's latest superhero blockbuster merely content. Instead, I left Nolan's 165-minute comic-book epic simultaneously jazzed and sated, and more than ready to see it again.

TO ROME WITH LOVE

After Woody Allen's rather staggering success with Midnight in Paris - personal-best box-office, the man's first Academy Award in 25 years - I guess it was inevitable that critics, as a whole, would greet the filmmaker's follow-up project with a collective "meh." And that's certainly happened with Woody's new To Rome with Love. (Not that it matters, but the comedy is currently sitting with a "45-percent fresh" rating - i.e., "not fresh at all" - at the review aggregator RottenTomatoes.com.)

MAGIC MIKE

Walking into the auditorium for a nearly sold-out, mid-afternoon screening of Magic Mike - "nearly sold-out" and "mid-afternoon" being phrases that rarely go together at the cineplex - I gauged the audience of obviously ecstatic patrons and said to my friend, "This is gonna be fun." Man, we had no idea.

THAT'S MY BOY

Lord knows I don't want to encourage him, but if Adam Sandler absolutely must continue to star in comedies released under his Happy Madison Productions banner, could the rest of them at least have the good sense, and bad taste, to be rated R?