My kind of town

I think we can agree that, although it is standing in for a wildly corrupt city overrun with violence, Chicago has never looked better on film than it does in "The Dark Knight."

It was a little bit a of a thrill to see the city digitally bestowed with a monorail in "Batman Begins," but it's downright adrenalizing to see it pure and unadulterated in "TDK." Thanks to Christopher Nolan's desire to bring more than a touch of authenticity to his comic-book movie, Gotham City looks and feels real for the first time -- even if everyone who lives around here knows it's not Gotham.

I can't say it any better than Walter Chaw, a notoriously hard-to-please critic who writes for Film Freak Central, and who called "The Dark Knight" the best American film since "The Godfather Part II."

Chaw writes: Nolan's Gotham City is a beatification of Chicago: the city's glass and metal elevated into holy relic and presented in such grand, panoramic vistas that the little things done in spite of it or on its behalf seem like so many futile pittances -- the dreamlife of mice in their sterile maze that is this sprawling microcosm of all of the miseries and suffering of the world.

That's the kind of effect this movie is having -- it's showing the rest of the world the uncompromising beauty of the city we love, the city that we flock to on the weekends to get away from our teardowns and our strip malls. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in crime sagas, caped crusaders and killer clowns, the movie is worth seeing for a chase that begins with the haunting vision of a burning fire truck on Upper Wacker, continues with gunfire on Lower Wacker, and ends at LaSalle and Monroe with one of the most astounding feats of stuntwork I've ever seen.

That scene, along with the police funeral procession earlier in the film, are great examples of Chicago on film. My other favorites:

• Dr. Richard Kimble disappears into the St. Patrick's Day Parade in "The Fugitive"

• Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston meet at Wrigley Field in the only good scene in "The Break-Up" (A later scene where Jen goes to the Riviera Theatre and it has assigned seating in the balcony is just embarrassing)

• Madeleine Stowe has a brief encounter with Jim Shorts himself, Kevin Matthews, on the El in "Blink"

• Keanu Reeves runs through the Smithsonian in Washington -- which happens to actually be both the Field Museum and MSI in the otherwise-terrible "Chain Reaction"

• Ferris and pals explore the Art Institute in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

What are your Chicago movie memories?