The Walk (2015)

Phillipe Petit's wirewalk between the World Trade Towers is something I knew about but never thought much about and in fact I tended to dismiss whatever he did as the work of a serial pest like a streaker at a football game, but to watch him here progress his idea from fanciful notion in a dentist's waiting room to a death-defying feat high above an awe-struck America, is - even after so much maudlin, cringeworthy faux-Frenchness - extremely moving...and especially moving given the way the film juxtaposes Petit's contribution to history with the contributions of certain others.

★★★☆☆

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The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

No Batman movie has ever taken itself quite so seriously as this third episode of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, a long and deadly earnest superhero opera that grows increasingly loud and monotonous as it goes on and on with a booming soundtrack that for almost three hours sounds like it is heralding the rise of the valkyries - your patience will be tested and you'll want to give it all away when suddenly towards the end a final act revitalises things.

★★★★☆

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