Cinema Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Hype: it's a blessing and a curse. If a film receives a lot of it, it must be onto something good. But it can also be cruel, building up expectations that no film could hope to meet. When the hype reaches fever pitch levels, as it has for The Dark Knight Rises, there's an even greater height from which to fall, and an even greater potential for backlash from a disappointed fanbase.

The Dark Knight Rises surpasses the hype.

Cinema Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

As a general rule, the current average cinemagoer likes to know exactly what they're getting with any given film. Anything that's slightly challenging or unexpected tends to face a backlash and invariably slumps at the box office, a few Christopher Nolan-flavoured exceptions notwithstanding. That's a big reason why sequels are so popular - basically, audiences just want the same thing over and over again. The Amazing Spider-Man takes this to the extreme, because it is essentially a remake of a ten-year old film. It retells the same origin story that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man did, covering many of the exact same beats - spider bite, learning new powers, school bully, Uncle Ben, yada yada. The fact that it still manages to feel fresh and interesting is almost a miracle, and is mostly down to the excellent cast and director Marc Webb's more realistic take on the material.