The Dark Knight

Superhero films have been getting increasingly sophisticated and decidedly darker as they become (for better or worse) a full-fledged genre. With "The Dark Knight," the second film in Christopher Nolan's character reboot, the cinematic superhero spectacle comes closest to becoming modern myth. Christian Bale dons the cape and cowl once again as the masked avenger who hides his identity behind the image of a playboy millionaire, and the late Heath Ledger's Joker, a self-proclaimed "agent of chaos," is a volatile psychotic far removed from Jack Nicholson's showboating exhibitionist in Tim Burton's 1989 film, "Batman." Nolan delivers the expected set pieces for a big-screen superhero spectacle, from a sharp bank heist executed (in every sense of the word) with impersonal efficiency by a masked gang, to a high-speed ambush chase through an underground tunnel, to a busy rescue operation in which the good guys are working at cross purposes. But it's also a tighter, smarter, more focused film than "Batman Begins," pulp tragedy with costumed players, elevated stakes and terrible sacrifices. It sets the bar for superhero noir.

The single-disc edition features both full-screen and wide-screen editions but no supplements. The two-disc special edition includes "Batman Uncovered: Creation of a Scene," a collection of more than an hour of featurettes on the making of key scenes (like blowing up the hospital – for real! – and a real-life stunt jump from a skyscraper that's more thrilling than the finished scene) and versions of the six scenes shot in IMAX format presented in their original aspect ratio. Also includes six episodes of the fictional news show "Gotham Tonight" with Anthony Michael Hall, galleries of art and stills, and a digital copy of the film. The Blu-ray edition presents the IMAX version of the film (the IMAX scenes fill the entire wide-screen TV frame) and offer optional "focus points" access to the "Batman Uncovered" featurettes while watching the film. It also includes the exclusive hi-def documentaries "Batman Tech" and "Batman Unmasked" (each runs about 45 minutes but is pretty rudimentary) and more galleries of concept art.