The Oscar drums already are beating loudly for Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” the tragically deceased young actor’s swan song. Given the premature Oscar buzz, with the critics’ Heath hosannas already piling up, I was starting to fear overhype. Then I saw the movie.

Pure panic can’t accompany the predictable. Even the worst plans in scare-tactic politics — continuing war, rising gas prices, dying dollars — are, unfortunately, practices to be foreseen and accounted for. But what of those crawling from an abyss of unanticipated evil — fueled not by gain or revenge, but ideology and a chaotic interest to prove decent men cannot exist in indecent times?

Ledger's Joker comes up aces in “Dark Knight.”

If you’re excited about “The Dark Knight,” which arrives in theaters Friday, you should check out an earlier Batman movie that not only features The Joker, but also makes room for The Penguin, The Riddler, Catwoman and Robin The Boy Wonder.

A look at movies currently in theaters.

Cracker has been described as many things over their lengthy career, everything from “roots-rock” to “traditional-rock,” but as frontman and guitarist David Lowery said, “I really sort of just considered ourselves a rock band.”

Jean is on point. Producer 9th Wonder is, too, bringing a little soul to the proceedings. But while there are some great moments, both lyrically and musically, it doesn't all work together as well as it could.

Nobody is going to doubt that Smith can sell a film; just look at his last one, "I Am Legend," and you get the idea. So does it actually matter that "Hancock" is even worse? Does anyone care? Well, with an opening box office take of $107 million, it doesn’t bother Columbia Pictures – you can bet on that.

"WALL-E” has one of the cutest robots on record and enough animated magic to light up the galaxy but, like the machines it makes into heroes, the movie has no soul.

Actress Olivia Thirlby’s latest role as a pensive Upper East Side teen falling for the neighborhood pot pusher in “The Wackness” has critics and audiences buzzing.

Mary Poppins' tape measure indicates she's practically perfect in every way. That description could easily apply to Pixar, though one may be tempted to remove the word "practically."

At first glance, “The Furies” looks like a Western. But when you examine it more closely, it starts to look like other kinds of movies, too.

Consider Guillermo del Toro a cuddlier, friendlier Clive Barker — just as fascinated by monsters’ anthropology and physiology, but far more interested and involved in their search for solace.

At the midway mark of 2008 movies, animated robots and pandas, a titanium-clad superhero, a massive monster and cannibalistic punks with Mohawks find themselves the year’s top 5 so far.