Monday, April 11, 2005
Sin City
I mentioned that I saw Sin City in my last post, so here's a quick summary of my thoughts on the movie...
We took in a 2:15 Saturday matinee at AMC Whitby. Previous to seeing the movie, I had bought a copy of and read Sin City: The Hard Good-Bye. It was quite impressive, and I was really looking forward to seeing Big Ugly Marv on the silver screen. I will say that I have not read any of the other books. So here goes...
Stylistically-speaking, the black-and-white with bits of colour really did it for me. From a style perspective alone, the movie gets my appreciation. Additionally, the stories are excellent, but the credit for that goes to Frank Miller. The Hard Good-Bye segment was largely unchanged, so I can only assume the others are bang-on, as well.
The first segment with Josh Hartnett was interesting. Believe it or not, I didn't see the end of that one coming. Then things went bad. The second segment turned to the start of That Yellow Bastard, with Michael Madsen and Bruce Willis taking their cues. Unfortunately, the acting was so bad that I visibly cringed. Madsen is an excellent actor, but it sounded to me like he was just reading off his lines and not putting any emotion behind what he said. Maybe he was pissed off to be a small part in an ensemble cast or something, but the guy should've been fired for his terrible acting.
Aside from some of the awful acting, my biggest complaint has to do with pacing. Early in the film, the pacing was off. It just didn't flow right. Also, the breaks between scenes were too quick and jarring. Does nobody use fade-outs and fade-ins anymore? I think they would've fit much better in a noir-ish piece like Sin City than the hard cuts.
Now either the pacing and acting got better as the film continued or I got used to it and didn't notice it as much, but just for the early pacing and acting issues, I can't say the movie was great. I'm not even sure I'd say it was good. It was mediocre. Like others, I was blown away by the style. However, after that, my reaction was mediocre to poor.
Still, seeing Big Ugly Marv up on screen kicked ass. Too bad Mickey Rourke wasn't able to really show the audience that Marv was mentally unstable. His "condition" was mentioned a couple of times, but it didn't really come across very well in the acting.
Overall, Sin City was a movie with some fun points, but the film could've used a lot more work that didn't involve making it look like the graphic novels.
We took in a 2:15 Saturday matinee at AMC Whitby. Previous to seeing the movie, I had bought a copy of and read Sin City: The Hard Good-Bye. It was quite impressive, and I was really looking forward to seeing Big Ugly Marv on the silver screen. I will say that I have not read any of the other books. So here goes...
Stylistically-speaking, the black-and-white with bits of colour really did it for me. From a style perspective alone, the movie gets my appreciation. Additionally, the stories are excellent, but the credit for that goes to Frank Miller. The Hard Good-Bye segment was largely unchanged, so I can only assume the others are bang-on, as well.
The first segment with Josh Hartnett was interesting. Believe it or not, I didn't see the end of that one coming. Then things went bad. The second segment turned to the start of That Yellow Bastard, with Michael Madsen and Bruce Willis taking their cues. Unfortunately, the acting was so bad that I visibly cringed. Madsen is an excellent actor, but it sounded to me like he was just reading off his lines and not putting any emotion behind what he said. Maybe he was pissed off to be a small part in an ensemble cast or something, but the guy should've been fired for his terrible acting.
Aside from some of the awful acting, my biggest complaint has to do with pacing. Early in the film, the pacing was off. It just didn't flow right. Also, the breaks between scenes were too quick and jarring. Does nobody use fade-outs and fade-ins anymore? I think they would've fit much better in a noir-ish piece like Sin City than the hard cuts.
Now either the pacing and acting got better as the film continued or I got used to it and didn't notice it as much, but just for the early pacing and acting issues, I can't say the movie was great. I'm not even sure I'd say it was good. It was mediocre. Like others, I was blown away by the style. However, after that, my reaction was mediocre to poor.
Still, seeing Big Ugly Marv up on screen kicked ass. Too bad Mickey Rourke wasn't able to really show the audience that Marv was mentally unstable. His "condition" was mentioned a couple of times, but it didn't really come across very well in the acting.
Overall, Sin City was a movie with some fun points, but the film could've used a lot more work that didn't involve making it look like the graphic novels.
// posted by Chris @ 10:20 AM 
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