*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Directed by Garth Jennings
Written by Douglas Adams (book and screenplay), Karey Kirkpatrick (screenplay)

Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) never could get the hang of Thursdays. He's not awake for ten minutes before he's laying in the dirt of his garden in the path of an oncoming bulldozer; finding out that his best friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) is not from Guilford after all, but actually from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelguese ("That would explain the accent"); getting teleported on board a rather skanky-looking interstellar spacecraft; learning that the Earth has been destroyed; and having a fish shoved in his ear. And all this before the movie starts in earnest.

This being one of the three movies that I was looking forward to seeing most this year (of the other two, one has already been released and reviewed on this site, the third is not coming out until September, and YES, that means that none of the three were Episode III!), expectations were, of course, running rampant, and I have to say that, for the most part, I was not disappointed.

I’m not going to run a laundry list of every single frakking difference between the novel and the film here (no, Prosser does not lies down, and yes, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, so integral to the fabric of the texture, or texture of the fabric, of all in the novels gets only a passing and forgettable glance here. Towels also.) – if you want that sort of review, this guy can accommodate you. But, as a fan of the books, this review cannot help but be colored by a little comparison.

What I liked: The opening musical number (of course). The fact that they left in the dolphins and the whale, not to mention the bowl of petunias. Marvin. The Heart of Gold, though not looking the least bit how I pictured, was still quite cool. The improbability drive effects were appropriately (and hilariously) old school, both in execution and sensibility. Zaphod’s second head was handled imaginatively. The controversial-among-fans-of-the-novel romantic subplot, which I didn’t like at first, I thought paid off okay in the end. The Magrathea factory floor. Oh my god, the Magrathea factory floor.

The acting was almost uniformly good, the casting note-perfect. Martin Freeman, though skewing a little younger than the famously middle-aged Arthur Dent, is a no-brainer, as is Zooey Deschanel as Trillian (the girl who really, really got away), Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin (duh), and the inimitable Sam Rockwell as the inimitable Zaphod Beeblebrox. The casting of Mos Def as Ford Prefect was controversial, to say the least, but his performance so captures Ford's off-hand debonair that I will never be able to picture anyone else in the role. Bill Nighy doesn't waste a second of his screentime, and Simon Jones even comes out to play. Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide finds the perfect tongue-in-cheek (read British) tone to match those brilliant visualizations (or vice versa, I don't know).

Which sort of leads into the things that I didn't so much like: there really wasn't nearly enough of the Guide in the picture - it provides a tiny bit of exposition and a lot of humor, but you never really got the sense that its existence really meant a thing (okay, the Guide was always a bit of a MacGuffin in the novels anyway, but still, come on). The catch-22 is that as much as I wanted more of the Guide, the Guide's narrations, interludes, and interruptions, so organic to the novels, were unfortunately, unavoidably a bit disruptive here (to their credit, the Guide effects and animations were not only top-knotch, but utterly hilarious, completely keeping in the spirit of Douglas Adams’ original penchant for the complete non-sequitur (is there any kind of non-sequitur? Can there, by definition, even exist a partial non-sequitur?) reference).

Also affecting the pacing was an overlong exposition of the Arthur Dent/Trillian meeting.

The whole subplot with Humma Kavula (John Malkovich), born of the very definition of a throwaway gag in the novels, is mysteriously inflated to be an important subplot in the film before it is more or less abandoned entirely (the removal of Zaphod’s second head also receives no payoff whatever). Speaking of throwaway gags, the Magrathean POV-gun felt like something that the writers of Red Dwarf thought up on a Tuesday morning (and was thoroughly forgotten by lunchtime), and the payoff was way too pat (defeat the Vogons by making them feel like Marvin? Not like the Vogons were the picture of mental health to begin with...).

And about those Vogons – I suppose the film needed something by way of actual villains, but the idea of our heroes being pursued across the stars by a league of inefficient bureaucrats (and bad marksmen to boot) is an idea which works much better, I think, in theory than in practice. That said, however, the Vogon city is a site to behold.

I mourn for all geekdom if I am the only one who caught the cameo of TV Marvin.

People who don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of (mostly) useless Adamsiana will likely find the film cute, even diverting. Fans of the book, I think, will have an experience tantamount to mine: enjoyable, but not quite the sublime experience that, whle I was not exactly expecting, I somehow believe that I deserve.

*Save the Green Planet!

Directed by JANG Jun-Hwan
Written by JANG Jun-Hwan

You may have heard some people talking about how Korean cinema is either gonna be or is the next big thing, but if you've seen most of the recently widely-released (stateside) offerings from the Land of Morning Calm, you may be left wondering what exactly the big deal is.

I mean, as shlocky as recent and semi-recent offerings such as Oldboy, Shiri, and Tell Me Something are, they are at least slowly chipping away at the perception that Korea is a land of saccharin (The Way Home), provincial (Memories of Murder, A Tale of Two Sisters) Buddhist monks (Spring Summer Fall Winter...and Spring, Hi, Dharma!) and/or sex maniacs (Bad Guy, The Isle, Samaritan Girl, hell, basically anything directed by KIM Ki-Duk) whose stories always seem to take place in, like, the 16th century (Chihwaseon, Chunhyang, Scandal). The perception which movies like the severely overrated Oldboy do not fight, however, is the one of Korean directors being nothing more than technically capable rip-off artists of more creative Japanese, Hong Kong, and even Hollywood filmmakers.

But then, there exists another level of Korean film, on which stand truly well-made, affecting, original, and (most importantly) distinctively Korean films, such as One Fine Spring Day, JSA, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, 301/302, Memento Mori, Take Care of My Cat, and the subject of this little review, Save the Green Planet! Films that see little to no distribution here in the states, in my opinion, exactly because they don't so easily fit into what has become the stereotypical view of Korean films.

You know how when you see real blood you think to yourself that it doesn't look real, because it doesn't look like movie blood?

[I am, of course, being completely unfair and hyperbolic in my argument. The fact is that, other than Oldboy, The Way Home, and two of the KIM Ki-Duk films, none of the movies I mentioned saw much, if any, play here in the States outside of the festival circuit. (It is also a fact that both Memories of Murder and A Tale of Two Sisters are among the best films I've seen in the last few years, Korean or otherwise.) But, enough about my issues. On with the review!]

According to Byung-Gu (SHIN Ha-Kyun, who's been in everything), aliens are invading Earth. According to Byung-Gu, the aliens are already here. Unfortunately, his "proof" consists of old B-movies and the kind of books you usually find yellowing in the windows of that weird store that nobody ever, ever goes into. Somehow convinced that this invasion is in fact being led by an alien disguised as corporation CEO Man-Sik (BAEK Yun-Sik), Byung-Gu and his girlfriend Sooni (HWANG Jeong-Min, well-known stage actress making I guess her film debut), a tightrope walker in the local circus, proceed to kidnap and torture the poor guy in the basement.

Then, somewhere along the line, as the torture proceeds, as the two men begin to play their subtle (and some not-so) mind games with each other, as we follow the detectives who are tracking Man-Sik, as we learn more and more about the disturbed Byung-Gu, director JANG Jun-Hwan casts his spell us, and our emotional allegiances, like the mind of poor Sooni, become utterly tangled before we begin to understand what's going on, what this is really all about. And then we become afraid, thoroughly afraid.

For reasons that will remain one of those great cinematic mysteries of the ages, the powers that be decided to market Save the Green Planet! as some sort of a wacky screwball comedy upon initial release. Audiences, charmed by the goofy posters and website and expecting a good Sunday afternoon guffaw got instead (assuming they didn't walk out halfway through) a completely unique and organic blend of tragedy, pitch-black humor, shocking violence, and utter mind-fuck. It's no wonder that the picture bombed. It was just too good for this Earth.

So good, in fact, that the last two minutes can't help but feel like a bit of a cheat. Not a bad ending, just unnecessary, just too easy for the journey (and it is a journey) on which we've just been taken. But then, just as you're ready to scoff, JANG pulls one final rabbit out of his hat, the credits begin to roll, a cracked television screen appears, and you start to cry all over again. In the economics of human emotion, I guess a questionable ending really isn't that big a deal, really.

Save the Green Planet! is playing at Film Forum (and possibly elsewhere - check local listings) through May 3. Find it, watch it, share it with someone you love.

The Cat Returns

Directed by Hiroyuki Morita
Written by Reiko Yoshida, Aoi Hiiragi (comic)

Okay, The Cat Returns actually came out in Japan a few years ago, but was never released into theaters in the States, so far as I know. It was just released here on DVD in February, and I had never seen it before, so I am going to consider this a “new” movie and review it anyway, for the reasons stated above and also because you can’t stop me.

A few years back, when an old friend and fellow anime-freak whose name I can’t even remember offhand, but whose picture is in my photo album, and I will probably wake up at 4 AM tomorrow morning shouting his name, told me that Studio Ghibli was making a follow-up of sorts to Whisper of the Heart, dramatizing a short, sort-of-story-within-story from it, I was pretty damned curious what it would be like.

Whisper of the Heart, if you haven’t seen it, is a great movie in ways which cannot even really be put into words. It’s one of those movies that you describe to people, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like, “Okay, so that’s the first fifteen minutes, what about the other hour and forty?” Carla Speed McNeil, in the endnotes of her fine book Finder: Talisman, describes it thusly: “Whisper of the Heart [is] a beautifully plotted exercise in serendipity and ‘real’ magic. If you can get past the John Denver song that serves as a theme, it’s amazing.”

Maybe Disney should have put some money into bringing that movie to the states. Bundled it as part of the two-disc set, perhaps? After all, if you haven’t seen (or likely have never even heard of) Whisper of the Heart, you’re probably going to be confused by the title. To which cat does the title refer? And to where is he returning, exactly?

I love John Denver, by the way. I also love cats, always have. Weird thing is, cats seem to like me as well. Like they can sense if someone is a cat person or not. Weird. And I wanted to like this movie. I really, really wanted to like this movie. But I didn’t. And that makes me sad.

Here’s the story: one day, young (though, notably, not as young as your typical Ghibli heroine) Haru saves a cat from getting hit by a truck. Later that night, a royal cat procession arrives at Haru’s house to formally thank her – turns out the roadkill-bait was the prince of the Cat Kingdom. In gratitude, the cats bestow all sorts of little cat-gifts on Haru (catnip in her pockets, locker full of live mice, you get the picture) before revealing that they plan to kidnap her away to the Cat Kingdom so that she can marry the prince. The only way to stop them, for some reason, is an appeal to the Cat Bureau, the sole member of which is a living cat statue called The Baron (who, in inanimate form, was featured prominently in Whisper of the Heart – the cat returns, get it?). Before any plans can be made, however, Haru is kidnapped, and it’s up to the Baron, along with his helpers a very fat cat named Muta (also from Whisper of the Heart) and another living statue, a crow named Toto, to get her out. Add to this the complication that Haru is herself turning into a cat and must leave the kingdom by dawn, and there you have it, a heavily watered-down version of Spirited Away (which was, in turn, a heavily watered-down version of…well, water, I guess).

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like about The Cat Returns. The animation on the cats, before and after anthropomorphization, is quite detailed (my favorite are the secret service cats, though the camo-colored ones are a hoot) and realistic, obviously the work of cat lovers. There are little surprises all over, particularly in the Egyptian-inspired decorations and all the little fish-motifed accoutrements (watch for the calamari-thrower). The obligatory climactic dive/fall is spectacular, and its resolution clever at least.

Still, as a whole, it just wasn’t as textured and rich as I’ve come to expect from a Ghibli production. Add to this a run-time of a hair over an hour fifteen, and you’ve got all the earmarks of a rush, rush, rush production. The plot and characters, meanwhile, didn’t really do anything, or mean anything. For all its many, many faults, Spirited Away at least was emotionally true. Nothing resembling anything here. A few moral-ish pronouncements are made (“Believe in yourself”, “Speak your mind”), though basically they seem to be put in to belie the messages within the plot itself (“Don’t stick your neck out for anyone”, “Helping others just leads to trouble”).

Overall, a disappointing effort from the usually dependable Studio Ghibli, an unworthy follow-up to a great (or at least very, very special) movie. Pity the children (inner and otherwise) if this is what the “new generation at Studio Ghibli” (as to which it is frequently referred in the admittedly enlightening “making of” feature on the DVD) have in store for us now. I fairly live in fear of Howl’s Moving Castle, which arrives stateside this June. In the meantime, see if you can get any of your cooler friends to lend you Whisper of the Heart. Failing that, neither My Neighbor Totoro nor Kiki’s Delivery Service should be hard to find at your local video store in one form or another.

EDWARD! That was his name! See, you didn’t even have to wait until 4 AM.

Fever Pitch

Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly
Written by Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel, Nick Hornby (novel)

"Can you name a single thing that's been important to you for 23 years?"
"23 years ago, I was 7."

There’s a scene about halfway through Nick Hornby’s memoir Fever Pitch where Hornby buys a house right next to the Arsenal pitch, thinking this the ultimate tribute to his love for the home team, and naturally assuming that all of his neighbors would be as into Arsenal as he was. He quickly finds out, however, that all of his new neighbors are fairly indifferent to football, and are in fact quite annoyed by their proximity to the field.

In the little-seen (at least in this country - it pops up on IFC every once in a while) first film version of Fever Pitch, however, everyone in the neighborhood is in fact all over Arsenal, and when Arsenal wins the big championship at the end of the movie, all the neighbors bust out of their homes in full team regalia and face paint and have a wild, impromptu party right in the middle of the street. I was always bothered by this, as the neighbors’ complete indifference was a very important, revealing detail in the original story that was subverted for the film entirely - how could such a telling thematic detail be completely upheaved just for the sake of giving the film an easy, sappy, big ending? That Hornby also wrote the screenplay for the film is something that I still find a bit bewildering.

I mention this at the very beginning of my review just so that I won't have to talk about either the book or the first film version of Fever Pitch again - this new version of Fever Pitch bears pretty much no relation to either, other than basic plot outline (woman falls for a sports-obsessed-but-otherwise-nice guy) and yet another dissertation on the archetypal Hornby male (aHm).

Hornby has made a career out of talking about obsession, particularly male obsessions, particularly the many (many many many) ways in which men use their obsessions to fill voids in their lives until the very things which served as their entry into the world, the very things that let them feel a part of something greater than themselves, ironically become the very agents by which they shut others out, not move on, remain in their safety zones, totally excluding the possibility of any meaningful fulfillment in their lives, then falling into deep existential melancholia about the facts that a) their lives are meaningless; b) they feel unfulfilled; c) nobody “gets” them; d) their only moments of fleeting quasi-happiness come from indulging in their obsessions (football, pop music, religion, no-strings sex, “stuff”, what have you); and e) every day, for the rest of their days, will be just as boring and meaningless as today, or yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that, or the day before that. Add to this an overly well-thought-out philosophical and vaguely poetic justification for said obsession, not only in their personal lives but in the “grand scheme” as well, and a deep fixation on personal history, in particular on trying to uncover the very day, the very moment, the very encounter where “everything went wrong”, and there you have it: your archetypal Hornby male.

If you consider yourself an aHm (regardless of your own gender – I know probably just as many women who fit the mold as men), watching Fever Pitch will probably just depress you because a) Jimmy Fallon is much cuter and funnier than you are, and b) Drew Barrymore is much cuter and smarter than anyone who will ever love you (and even if they were, they still wouldn’t really “get” you, and your life is meaningless, and you will still feel completely unfulfilled, and every day, for the rest of your days, will be just as boring and meaningless as today, or yesterday, or the day before – that is, until the next game, the next party, the next big DVD release day, the next new episode of Lost, what have you).

If you, however, find yourself falling for someone who is an aHm, you should, early on and often, ask the aHm two questions: a) Do you expect me to be as into (Star Trek, Lenny Kravitz, hockey, metasyntactic variables, what have you) as you are; and b) Would it be an actual problem if I was not as into (comic books, 70s r&b, Halo 2, complete sexual independence, what have you) as you are. There actually exists a subset of the aHm who really doesn’t mind if you don’t share in, or even understand, their obsession, just so long as you do not interfere with said obsession, and never, ever make the comment, “But it’s only a (dog, pair of shoes, first edition JM Barrie, OOP VHTF MOMC Obi-Wan Kenobi with vinyl cape, what have you)!”

One gets the sense that Jimmy Fallon's Ben (nice, normal guy six months out of the year, nice “normal” guy the remaining six months out of the year) would probably have told Drew's Lindsey (stressed-out workaholic who doesn’t even realize that she wants to meet a nice, normal guy until she meets him) that no, he wouldn’t really mind that she does not share his obsession (baseball, especially as played by the Boston Red Sox). Fallon doesn’t seem obsessed so much as overly enthusiastic. You would believe that John Cusak and Hugh Grant, who have played perfect aHms in the past, truly would have removed anyone from their lives who stood between them and their respective obsessions. Fallon, by virtue of his winsome cuteness, can’t quite take the pivotal you-made-me-miss-the-big-game scene to the insanely pathetic depths for which it calls, even after Lindsey utters those four words that she should, absolutely under no circumstances, but especially this one, ever, ever say: “It’s only a game.”

(By the way, if you know what “OOP VHTF MOMC” means, you just may be an aHm.)

The Farrelly Brothers seem to be following in the footsteps of the Weitz Brothers, trying to transition from youth-centric grossouts to semi-serious comedies adapting Nick Hornby. Unlike the Weitzes (and their very excellent About a Boy), however, the Farrellys are not so quick to let go of their past formulas, subjecting us to early scenes of vomit humor and work-out shenanigans, and at one point a dog gets his teeth brushed by what appears to be one of those overpriced Sonicare toothbrushes they sell on television – I don’t know what I find more disturbing, that Ben is using Lindsey’s toothbrush to brush her dog’s teeth, or that Lindsey has in fact purchased an expensive toothbrush from the television specifically for her dog, and has set it up in her bathroom with a label clearly indicating as such.

Fever Pitch is certainly not a bad film, it just doesn’t add to the discussion, or even really inspire one. It’s a cute, but largely forgettable, affair with a few moments of honesty which too-infrequently hit home. You’re definitely better served waiting for the video. But since you’re going to the store anyway, pick up High Fidelity and About a Boy as well, both of which you will probably enjoy more.

The ending of the movie had to be reshot in order to fit into the events of Boston’s momentous 2004 post-season. Presumably, the film would have originally ended on a bit of a downer. Strange how reality can sometimes out-Hollywood Hollywood, i’n’it?

*Millions

Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce

I’m not a fan of Danny Boyle. I’m just not. I thought Shallow Grave was just plain shallow, I never spotted any of the supposed brilliance in Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later felt 28 days long. The only film of his that I’ve seen that I find entertaining is A Life Less Ordinary, the one that even his staunchest fans hate (or at the very least have completely forgotten about). Sacrilege, I know. Writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, meanwhile, is better known for his far edgier collaborations with Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People, Code 46), to all of which I am almost without exception completely indifferent.

So, you can understand my trepidation going into Boyle and Boyce’s much-hyped foray into family filmdom, Millions. Saint-obsessed Damian (Alex Etel) and his brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) have recently lost their mother. Their father (James Nesbitt, whom you will recognize from all those Murphy’s Law movies on PBS) moves the family to a new house in a tract community in the suburbs. One day, while Damian is having a conversation with St. Clare (the patron saint of television), a huge duffel bag full of cash drops from the sky at Damian’s feet. Knowing that their father would only turn it over to the police, the boys are left on their own to decide what to do with the money. Damian searches the neighborhood for poor people to help (“The house prices keep them out,” Anthony points out), while the older Anthony has slightly more conventional plans for the cash (watch for his pre-pubescent secret service – hilarious). Unfortunately, England is changing over to the euro within days, and the boys must spend or exchange all the money before the changeover renders all the nation’s pounds sterling notes, including the boys’ new windfall, useless (the whole exchange-the-money-before-the-currency-handover-deadline plot device also worked to great effect in last year’s Goodbye, Lenin!).

But…where did this money come from? Where is it leading them? Could someone else be after it? Could it really have been a miracle that brought them the money? And what exactly constitutes a miracle, anyway?

The plot at this point plays somewhat like a non-violent Shallow Grave with kids (there’s even a reprise of the hiding-out-in-the-attic thing). One of many amazing things about this film, however, is the way in which most of the usual trappings of your typical coming-of-age movie (moving to a new town, brothers growing apart, dad's new girlfriend, etc.) unfold and play out in the context of not only the money, but on the discourse on miracles as well, all leading to the predictably happy, yet subtly (and wonderfully) ambiguous, conclusion.

There are also more bright, sunny days in a row in Millions than ever before recorded in English history.

In making a film about (potential) miracles, Boyle has created a minor miracle of his own. Millions possesses a childlike straightforwardness, but is never pedantic. The film is surreal, but not weird (very much resembling that which used to be referred to as magic realism); spiritual, but not sanctimonious; clever, but not snarky; realistic, but not cynical; cute, but not cutesy. And, for the most part, it is almost shockingly subtle for a filmmaker whose quietest previous moment was having Cillian Murphy roaming the empty streets of London screaming, “Hellllooooo!! HELLLLOOOOO!!” for THREE MINUTES STRAIGHT.

But is Millions really a family film? Is it even possible to have a family film today that has neither CGI nor a single fart joke? Not unlike Heidi or Pollyana or Old Yeller, Millions is a film that will undoubtedly be shown to thousands of children, but one which will go unappreciated by every single one of them (hell, even the edgy-for-the-70s Freaky Friday had to be amped up with emo girl bands, motorcycles, and potential MILF-sex in order for the remake to fly with today’s youth). Honestly, what is today’s youth (or today’s anyone, for that matter) to make of the young, angelic Damian? Likeable, sure. Admirable, absolutely. But relatable? The world should be so lucky.

*Sin City

Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino (special guest director)
Written by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller

The only thing I knew about Sin City going in was that the comic was written by Frank Miller and that an action figure from the series got Todd McFarlane on many a Christian-right shitlist back near the turn of the century (I'm sure Todd was heartbroken about that). You'd have thought that would have been enough to get me excited about this film, and I was at least interested. Until I saw the trailer.

A lot has been made of the visuals in the movie - in fact, I'm hearing a lot of the same people who hated the flat, plastic, alien, frosty look of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (and how quickly have we all forgotten Radioland Murders?) praise how amazing and innovative essentially the exact same look is here. I really don't get the disconnect. (And I really hate it when people use "disconnect" as a noun.)

Sin City is a long-running, and I suspect continuing, series of novels, every one of which director Robert Rodriguez claims to want to bring to screen. For this first go-round, however, we are only given three storylines. In the first (which is split into two segments, which bookend the film), a grizzled cop (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a creepy pedophile, then reunites with her eight years later to protect her again. In the second, creepy Marv (Mickey Rourke) scours the city to violently revenge the death of the woman he loves, a woman he hardly knows. In the third, an argument between two rivals (Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen) circuitously upheaves the shaky truce between the police and the working girls of Old Town. The three stories are not connected, are not quite even related other than by setting or by the odd character from one story making an appearance (if not actually taking part) in one of the others.

Seeing as how Rodriguez tries very hard for and succeeds in delivering what is essentially a direct translation of Miller's graphic novels to the big screen, both in dialogue and in visuals (the countless Web sites and magazine articles devoted to providing frame-by-screen comparisons of any given scene in the film can attest to this), Miller very much deserves the co-directing credit for which Rodriguez had to drop out of the DGA in order to let Miller receive. (That Quentin Tarantino receives an enigmatic "Special Guest Director" credit seems irrelevant, given that Rodriguez and Quentin are the same person anyway.)

So, that's what Rodriguez has done. He has succeeded in projecting a giant, moving comic book onto the big screen. As for whether or not Sin City is a successful, that is, satisfying film hinges on exactly two things: 1) whether the audience realizes that they are not watching a movie so much as they are a giant moving comic book on the big screen, and 2) whether the actors take their performances (and the requisite pulpy, neo-noir dialogue) unironically enough to project that they are in a giant moving comic book rather than, say, an incredibly goofy experiment, or an incredibly bad joke (Brittany Murphy, I'm looking directly at you).

Taking point number 2 first, I have to say that the performances, with few exceptions, are uniformly good. The stories are played out by a sprawling cast of various A- and once-were-A-listers, all (with the possible exceptions of Rosario Dawson and Bruce Willis) quite surprising, and all (with the definite exception of Brittany Murphy - how in hell do you keep getting work?) surprisingly effective. Clive Owen, action star? Jessica Alba, fragile? Nick Stahl, creepy badass? Carla Gugino, topless lesbian? Mickey Rourke, still alive, and (most surprising of all) actually good? Josh Hartnett, period?

As for point number 1, I must confess that the enjoyment I got out of the film came from the stories, the performances, and the dialogue, but most definitely NOT from the "look" of the thing. That is to say, I think this film works in spite of the whole green-screen gimmick. As I sat in the theater for the length of the picture (two hours and change, by the way) I kept thinking how much more interesting it would have been had it been given a straightforward noir treatment (serious-mode Coen Brothers?), something that didn't have to scream COMIC BOOK !!! at every possible moment. But, I suspect that I am missing the point.

Like I said, in spite of all this, I found Sin City to be amazingly, almost absolutely absorbing. Just imagine what they could have accomplished had they gone and made an actual movie.

Take a drink every time someone gets it right in the groin.


Trailer watch:

Domino - smear all the action dirt on her you want, Keira Knightley ain't nothing but a skinny, 15 year-old British chick.

The Skeleton Key - which is based on a novel by the same guy who wrote the original Japanese novel Ring, and which has a script written by the same guy who wrote the scripts for the American versions of The Ring and The Ring Two as well as, coincidentally enough, the forthcoming John Carter of Mars, for which Robert Rodriguez had to drop directing duties after leaving the DGA; directing duties for John Carter were eventually handed to...what's the opposite of ironic?...Kerry Conran, director of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In any case, The Skeleton Key looks like crap.

Mindhunters - apparently serial killers have become so cliché that now even the profilers are killing each other.

Apropos of nothing, I had jury duty this week.