I've watched it a few times.
Perhaps the pacing when considering the film as a whole is less than stellar, but the pacing within many scenes is extremely impressive. The joker's first encounter with the crime lords is paced well, as is his encounter with Bruce's fundraiser. I would say that the action is paced properly as well - a rather slow, step by step feeling behind each action or punch, but I thought it fit the atmosphere of the movie perfectly. Also, I was actually impressed at the things which were done without CGI - some of the models and of course, the flipping truck, were very nice to see without the CGI feel dragging things down. Dent's face was pretty damn iffy at times, unfortunately, but it could have been worse.
The film's main problem is, as many have said, Bale's goddamn "voice" during Batman scenes - that alone is nearly enough to make me hate The Dark Knight. Oh, how I hate that voice. But I thought that Ledger was fine, Oldman was fine, Eckhart was fine most of the time, and really Bale does okay during his Bruce scenes... Gyllenhaal I'm not a fan of, but I had to hand it to her during the scene in which Dent kisses Rachel before he hops in the truck that leads to the joker's capture. After the kiss has happened, she closes her eyes and makes this face... it's a little silly, but I thought she sold it well. The side characters are all laughably awful, for the most part, which does detract from the overall experience.
I thought it was shocking and out of place considering the rest of the film, and I thought it was lacking in taste when considering the source material. I'd love it if you would explain why you appreciate it.
That's a problem, but the movie did a lot of things right as well.

Just to respond to some of your points briefly:
Dark Knight: LOVED Eckhart as Two-Face, it's too bad they ruined his role with the CGI. Savini is still alive hollywood...
History of Violence: I cannot possibly explain *the* scene (That scene *IS* the point of the movie( better than Cronenberg. Rent/buy the DVD and watch the *entire scene* with the commentary on.
SPOILERS BELOW
I finally watched Martyrs tonight..and I have to say I did not like it at all. The first part was confusing, it was like "High Tension" where we all knew the gimmick from the getgo. Then, when Anna is captured...it's just basically 50+ minutes of pointless torture porn (I thought Hostel was bad....). Finally, when we find out the *point* of the film...MAAAAAAJJJJOOOOORRRRR spoiler below...
You were warned.....
...that the "cult" that organized this torture club is trying to duplicate the ecstasy of Martyrdom in order to get a glimpse into the afterlife, it ends with a stupid "There is no god" statement.
Now, normally every non-religious bone in my body would delight at such a bait and switch...but it really just renders the film pointless. These are terrible misled people, who committed what is IMHO the worst torture and punishment to these girls imaginable. And we find out that basically, god doesn't exist, and the head cultist's entire paradigm shatters, so she kills herself rather than process it.
I have to say, compared to the fantastic (rec) as an example of top notch foreign horror (Or the aforementioned High Tension), Martyrs comes off as both visual, psychological, and philosophical hardcore porn. Nothing more. 2/10.

Recently watched "The Damned United".
Very enjoyable, despite not knowing much about Brian Clough (he was a bit before my time, unfortunately. He was a bit before his time too, in many ways).
Recommended for anyone who likes their football (or "soccer", if you will!), or perhaps has a liking for the late 60s and early 70s!

Wait, what? How did you know that it was her all along? A lot of people actually didn't like how contrived it was, since it would have been fine if it was just a crazy person going around killing.

No, the "Fight Club" ending in HT was a suprise to me, I am referring to the similar technique used in Martyr's with the women with the sewn-shut eyes and mouth acting as a fake assailant.

Just watched "Charlie Wilson's War" (Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman)
Good film, very enjoyable. Given what NATO is up to in Afghanistan currently, it is a nice mix of entertainment and a little bit of history which I would hope will get people thinking.
There was a great sort of documentary bit on the extras, with a mini interview with the real Charlie Wilson, as well as some news clips from the time.
I'd give it a 4/5.
On a side note, the DVD did have an unskippable 4 minute Unicef video before you even got to the piracy threats!
It was to remind people about the problems of HIV/AIDS in Africa (as narrated by Gwyneth Paltrow). However, such things end up as just more hot air, when such a massive problem requires massive global efforts. So basically, I was a bit annoyed at having my time wasted by such ineffective methods.

Watched "Funny Games" recently. Was an interesting film.

Since I recently got streaming on PS3, I've been watching movies at a faster rate than normal. Since Underworld: Rise of the Lychans was new, I decided I'd watch it. It's not so good. The guy that plays the lead vampire does most of his acting by staring into space, trying not to blink so the camera can get a load of his awesome holloween monster contacts. The most interest I got out of it was seeing all that blood and thinking "How can they do all this in a PG-13 movie?" and then checking the menu, which said it was R, which made me switch back to boredom. Are Underworld 1 or 2 any good? I'm kind of curious now, which is never good.

The first was decent enough, what little I can remember anyway.
Funnily enough I watched rise of the lycans a few weeks back, I was thoroughly unimpressed by everyone except Rhona Mitra really. That's mostly cos she's hot though.
As for me, the last film I watched was "Cool Hand Luke" which is an absolute classic, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I watched Slacker last night, and while I am very well aware that it is not for everybody, I don't regret buying it.

Saw Open Range yesterday. Really good, underrated Western that has a lot in it beneath the surface.

Ang Lee is *very* versatile. I mean, the guy directed the Hulk, Crouching Tiger, Brokeback Mountain, and The Ice Storm!
I watched both "Into the Wild" and "Taken" this week.
I really enjoyed Into the Wild, I loved it's pacing, characters, and many of it's themes. I plan on micro-analyzing the film below, so please beware of potential spoilers. I also watched Taken, was was pleasantly suprised at how much OOMMPH they crammed into an hour and 25 minutes.
I loved the structure of Into the WIld (ITW), and felt that the "life stages" format, with each of the stages alternating between Alaska and the journey to, was very powerful. In addition, the music by Eddie Vedder was absolutely haunting. I wonder if he wrote that album with this film in mind, like Tom Petty's amazing underrated gem "She's the One"?
As someone who does a lot of outdoors adventuring/survival stuff, I expected to be moved by ITW, and I was. The strange thing is that what should have been a constant flow of inspiration went dry in many ways after he abandoned his car. Sean Penn did such an amazing job of painting the reasons behind Christopher's self-imposed exile, that all I could feel was pity, not jealousy. Sure, I envied his time in Alaska, but it was in the back of my mind that he was doing it for all the wrong reasons, and that he had already had what he was looking for several times over before journeying to Alaska. His abandoning of the hippie couple, the young singer girl, and the old leather working man all foreshadowed his final crippling realization that he had read all his classic texts from the wrong perspective. His scrawling of "Happiness only real when shared" in the margins was to me, the climax of the film.
Taken gets compared to 24 a lot, due to protaganist Liam Neeson's career, mannerisms, and abilities, as well as the plot revolving around him rescuring his stolen daughter Kim. I actually found a stronger link between the Bronson Death Wish films, mixed with a healthy dose of Jason Bourne. The plot was paced wonderfully, the movie only spends around 30 minutes setting up the *entire* backstory. Neeson (One of my favorite actors) is suprisingly believable in an action role, and apparently his stock has risen considerably in hollywood as a result of this role. Boon's sister from Lost plays his daughter, and she is great in this film. Neeson goes on an ass-kicking, but relatively believable rampage through France trying to track down the Albanian human trafficers responsible for her theft.
The movie is an adrenaline rush start to finish, and clocking in just over an hour and twenty, it could easily transpose into a 2-part 24 episode. The movie does succumb to several "big action movie" cliches, and Liam's character is invovled in 1-2 too many car chases, but on the whole, the film works. Compared to Gilroy's amazingly paced Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum, Taken definitely feels more "by the numbers". Looking at past collaborations between screenwriter Luc Besson and Director Pierre Morel such as the Transporter series, or District B13, one can feel the same sense of style coming through.
Overall, I give Into the WIld a solid 9/10 for solid pacing/structuring by Sean Penn, and Taken a 7/10 for being an entertaining, if flawed, homage to past (And present) greats.

If you enjoyed Taken you should watch Man on Fire with Denzel Washington. The plots although taking place in different parts of the world are fairly similar. This is the movie I first though about whilst watching Taken though and if you watch it you'll see why. I would even call it more realistic and less hollywood action hero.
Also Into the Wild was a great movie I need to watch that again.

I found "Taken" to be more funny than anything else.
I mean, it's a cliche ridden action-fest, which stars Liam Neeson of all people!
Also, he's so single minded about finding his daughter... all the other crime gets pretty much ignored.
Entertaining though, and I'd agree with the 7/10.