*300

Directed by Zack Snyder
Written by Frank Miller (graphic novel), Lynn Varley (graphic novel), Zack Snyder (screenplay), Kurt Johnstad (screenplay), Michael B. Gordon (screenplay)

Two notes:

1) In an episode of Futurama, the head of Pamela Anderson once noted that the fictitious Baywatch: The Movie was the first movie to be shot completely in slow-motion. A damned fine honor, that one, and history may prove that 300 comes in at a pretty close second, at around 85% slow-motion.

2) Where can I attend the Dr. Orpheus school of making every statement into a Proclamation For The Ages?

I kid, because I love. People complain that 300 is short on plot, but I disagree. It’s not that there’s not enough plot, it’s that it’s a simple, straightforward, exceedingly efficiently-handled plot. The Persian army is out to conquer the world, but when they reach Sparta, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler, ripped) and 299 of his most loyal soldiers say no. And so, at one geographically strategic point, we have wave after wave of battle after battle – Persians invade, Spartans defend. Persians invade, Spartans defend.

Not a ton in terms of character development, which is obviously Frank Miller’s point. The Spartans are soldiers. That’s it. That’s their character. From birth they are conditioned and trained to be soldiers. To act as soldiers. To fight as soldiers. In this sense, the wave after wave of battle after battle IS character drama, IS character development (to argue otherwise would be the same as saying that Sophie’s Choice had no character development, because at no point do we see Meryl Streep pick up a rocket launcher and blow up Nazi tanks).

And along the way, we have bombs, elephants, rhinoceri, too many jaw-dropping moments and images to name here (I gasped audibly the first time I saw Xerxes' (Rodrigo Santoro, absolutely unrecognizable from his as-yet walkon role on TV's LOST) “walking temple”). And a subplot involving the Queen (Lena Headey) trying to convince the Spartan high council to send more troops (mileage varies).

With his surprisingly watchable Dawn of the Dead remake and now 300, Zack Snyder is definitely proving himself as a broody-action-thriller filmmaker. One has cautious hopes for his Watchmen adaptation, though one would imagine that story would call for a more naturalistic, less stylized (and much less CGI) treatment, and anyway how anyone is going to cram that whole story into just two hours is beyond me.

*Black Snake Moan

Directed by Craig Brewer
Written by Craig Brewer

One day, the wife of grizzled blues man Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) decides to leave him for someone with "more life" (Lazarus’s younger brother – ouch!). Isolating himself with pain, hurt, and drink, Lazarus one day happens upon the half-dead form of town trollop Rae (Christina Ricci). He decides to take her in, to try to save her, and in doing so save himself as well.

Not nearly as trashy as its ad campaign would have you believe, Black Snake Moan is actually kind of sweet – as sweet as a movie involving a nymphomanic chained to a radiator can be, anyway. It’s actually a lot like A Walk to Remember, if Shane West was a girl and Mandy Moore was a grizzled old blues man, with anger issues rather than cancer, and instead of Christian shame there was a chain, a radiator, and...well, more Christian shame. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same movie.

You know the drill – first they hate each other, then they kind of like each other, then they have setbacks and breakthroughs and more setbacks and more breakthroughs, family members are confronted, roots of problems are discovered, the two go from liking each other to depending on each other, lessons are learned, and in the end everyone is happy (or, at least, a better person).

So why the recommendation? The story is entertaining, the acting engaging (though the sight of Christina Ricci’s emaciated form is disturbing to say the least, especially in light of recent developments), there’s an excellent soundtrack, and the ending was satisfying. I was a happier person for having seen the movie. Much like how I felt after watching Brewer's earlier (and much better received) Hustle & Flow (which you KNOW would have been festooned with a similarly lurid marketing campaign had studio execs thought that film would have any kind of audience to begin with).

Like I said, sweet. If you can get past the idea of a nymphomaniac chained up to a radiator.