The Dark Knight smashes box office records

Is The Dark Knight the best film ever made?

Director Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight toppled box office records this past week, when his Batman movie grossed 155 million in its opening weekend, beating last year's Spiderman 3 record by two million dollars. I was surprised to hear that it was such a slim margin, since every show I tried to see was sold out all weekend long (which must mean that records are getting to be so big that new movie theatres are going to have to be built before we can break more records).

Fans and critics alike are toting the movie as the best of its kind, and Oscar buzz is already . Not surprising, either. All performances were incredible, including the late Heath Ledger's take on the infamous Joker. The Welsh-born star Christian Bale reprises his role as the dark knight himself, and although Bale has admitted himself that he has been known as "box office poison", that is definitely not the case with this one.

And finally, director Nolan shaped his movie more like a crime thriller than a simple comic book movie, insisting that pivotal action scenes be filmed as the real thing, instead of with visual effects and digital tricks.

This means he had helicopters filming a stuntman on an 88-story building in Hong Kong - all to make the film seem that much more gritty and realistic. Definitely the kind of cinema made to attract not just mass audiences, but Oscars as well.

Also, with a budget of over 180 million, it's definitely one of the most expensive movies ever made.

We have yet to come to consensus as to whether The Dark Knight is the best film ever made, but I'm glad at least to see a blockbuster that is finally deserving of the hype. It's probably the only film I would ever skip a bingo game to go see!