Batman Begins

Just saw Batman Begins for the first time, and I was more than blown away, I was moved. Comic book movies are one of the trickiest things to execute effectively; how can you make a movie that captures the boyish appeal, the emotional complexity, and the overall atmosphere that comic books can simultaneously create? Most movies can't strike a balance, either they go too much to the fun side to the point of stupidity (see Fantastic Four) or they go to the psychological with no foundation to support it (see The Hulk). In any case, rarely can films come alive on screens like comic books can off pages, as directors utilizae CGI to the point where we feel lost from what we no and not too impressed with what we see.
Batman Begins, on the other hand, is gorgeous in the most terrifying way imaginable. Christopher Nolan, who has emerged as the most adept stylistic filmmaker of our generation, let's the psychology of the film permeate the mis-en-scéne, and unlike other comic book movies, it has the complexity to back it up. Never has the mindset of a comic book been so brilliantly portrayed and with enough of a comic book feel to not let us get lost. Tim Burton's quirky view on Batman seems like checkers to Nolan's chess, as he paints Batman as a man who is simultaneously terrified and motivated by his past, present, and future. It nails everything a comic book should be, and is the most balanced comic book movie that has as of now been created.
While there is a certain element of cheese that could make some scoff (and a certain snarky pundit at The New Yorker couldn't seem to get past that), it's the victim of necessity of a genre that has depended to some degree on camp since its creation. Never before has a comic book movie been this brilliant of a film and maintain the power of its roots. It would be easy to say it is a groundbreaking film, it's hard to imagine other directors matching the skill and artistic vision that Nolan has displayed here. Only now is the academic world beginning to recognize comics as an art, something that happened to film in the last decade. Batman Begins serves as a perfect reminder to the world, using two mediums that have been called "trash" more than once in their day, just what we mean by "art."