The Dark Knight Rises 7/10
Some mixed feelings about this one.
There was a significant move away from the horror element in the previous two outings and Bain, despite his place in the pantheon of Batman baddies felt fairly generic - certainly not frightening in the way that Scarecrow or the Joker were frightening. I also struggled with the character sounding more like Deckard Cain from Diablo rather than someone hell bent on destroying Gotham.
Ahh... Gotham - much changed in this outing. I know that Gotham had just had 8 great years but it was looking implausibly tarted up when compared to the previous two films.
One reason for Gotham looking different was, I think, that so much more of this film took place in daylight. I imagine that was so we could better appreciate the grand scenes constructed by the film makers but I felt that was out of place. Batman is a creature of the night.
There was a definite drift away from reality (!) and towards doing thing because they looked cool rather than because they made sense e.g. the "batcopter" being chased by the missiles.
The twists (knife and ending) were too crudely telegraphed and there were no surprises in the ending.
The film was also just too long and consistency with the previous outings was somewhat iffy.
So, none of the above sounds very mixed.
What went well?
The emotional arc of the key characters worked far better than the plot that got them there. There was an ending and it didn't feel like a cheat.
And there was no denying the excitement of several scenes - they were a bit generic and could have come from any old action adventure but they were very well done and genuinely exciting.
Michael Caine turned in a fine performance as Alfred, perhaps overdoing it a couple of times but the intensity of the emotion was convincing enough.
Although possessed of manifest deficiencies, this one passes the "Will I buy the Blu-ray?" test.