We just back from one of those weekends at a hotel with free in-room movies. I don't feel like I watched as many as usual, but did manage to get through a few.

The one I disliked the most was The Dark Knight.

Here's the Netflix synopsis:
"Batman (Christian Bale) teams with Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to continue dismantling Gotham City's criminal organizations in this sequel to Batman Begins. But a psychotic new villain known as the Joker (Heath Ledger) threatens to undo all their good work. The star-studded cast includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Michael Hall, Michael Caine and Eric Roberts."

Starting with the old Batman television series, and through the first couple of Batman movies, it seemed like there was a certain amount of self-parody and light humor to Batman movies. No more. This last film is mean and nasty and frightening. I don't know who they paid off to get a PG-13 rating, but it is definitely not suitable for children or teenagers. I told Mr. Troutbend it should be rated PG-55 because it's too disturbing for any age but at least 55 year olds might be able to put it into some kind of perspective, but mostly they might have sense enough not to go in the first place.

The villain was horribly deranged and in one instance he blew up a hospital after the patients may or may not have had time to be evacuated. It reminded me of the New Orleans hospitals and nursing homes during Hurricane Katrina - there were bound to be helpless people nobody cared enough to try to save. Then, there was a ferry boat full of civilians, women, and children evacuating from New York City and another ferryboat full of prisoners. He gave them each a remote control and said at midnight he was blowing up both boats unless one boat or the other decided to blow up the other one first. The civilians were discussing how the criminals deserved to die (and all I could think about was what if they weren't guilty of the crimes they were arrested for) and the criminals couldn't decide what to do, either. It was very frightening, and I kept thinking about Sept 11, 2001 and how terrorists can kill so many people.

The spirit of the movie was cynical and violent, and any time there were two people talking to each other, they were mean, nasty, and sadistic. Batman was a bully with a big gun and the Joker was mentally deranged and liked to cut the sides of people's mouths open with knives because that was supposedly done to him when he was younger.

There is already a pinball machine out with this Dark Knight theme, and I suspect McDonalds will have Happy Meal toys to help merchandise it. Horrible.

I was so upset when it was over I had to watch some of Sex and the City - The Movie but my heart wasn't in it, and the acting was just awful. Hags, really, overdressed and trying unsuccessfully to act like they were friends. There was no chemistry between these women and painful to watch, so I gave up before they got to the part about the wedding.