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Sunday, July 03, 2005
Sin City for a Dollar
I'll see a lot of movies this summer, but I'll be damned if I'll pay nine dollars to do so.
Actually, now that I think of it, I've also been pretty picky with paying matinee prices for a first-run movie. The only time I've done so this summer has been to see Batman Begins. The only other time I anticipate doing so again will be to see Fantastic Four.
I'm not sure why I'm so cheap about movies; I mean, Lord knows I'm not nearly as cheap with my Jpop or comics. Part of it is that I don't like crowds: with the exception of the Kill Bill films, I dont' think I've seen a movie on opening weekend in years. Part of it is certainly the package price: the movies are expensive, but the snacks are outrageous. And for some reason, a movie without snacks is hard to avoid - especially with my wife, who has to have her popcorn and mochi. Another part is, there's so much to watch on DVD, I can usually wait and not even notice that I've missed something on the big screen before I see it on my small screen.
Last but not least, we live real close to a second-run dollar theater - it's on Restaurant Row and used to be the art cinema theater before art apparently died - so we go there with some frequency. If a movie looks interesting but not nine dollars interesting or even five dollars interesting, we'll wait and see it for one dollar (or fifty cents at matinee). We saw Hostage a couple weeks ago, and just today - after a nice beachside barbecue with friends - we saw Sin City.
Hostage was real good - I would've paid five bucks to see it. And Sin City was worth that dollar. I don't think it'd have been worth much more, but at least I feel I got my money's worth.
What made me want to see the movie wasn't that it was based on a comic book - more often than not, that's reason enough to avoid seeing a movie (Constantine, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Elektra...). No, what intrigued me is that the movie is supposed to be a panel-by-panel recreation of Frank Miller's comics - an artistic decision which prompted director Robert Rodriguez to name Miller a co-director in the film.
The result was a story that felt like noir parody more often than actual noir. Actors had to sputter lines that no human being would ever say, not even in a movie as stylized as this. The limited jobs available at Sin City - all women are whores, strippers, or waitresses, and all men are crooks or cops or crooked cops - was hard to swallow, even given the setting. The extreme violence was okay, and it would've been more shocking if the special effects and prosthetic body parts weren't so obvious. Many of the serious moments actually felt more like humor of the blackest sort, and audience members would sometimes laugh at what seemed to be inappropriate moments.
I also noticed that since it's based directly on the comics, the sudden jumps in plot would often throw the pacing of the movie way off. Movies and comics aren't the same, after all, and each does certain things better than the other. Jarring narrative leaps are apparently much easier in comics. At a couple of junctures - but not very many, all things considered - I found myself wondering about the problem of recreating all panels to fit the same size on the screen, whether a splash page or a small inset frame.
The actors who played one-dimensional roles filled those roles well enough, including Elijah Wood as a bespectacled cannibal murderer. Those who had to take it further, though, were also surprisingly good: Bruce Willis (who also starred in Hostage!) was the best of the lot, though Jessica Alba and even Mickey Rourke did a nice job of it too. And I've finally developed a soft spot for Devon Aoki, who always looked too kewpie doll for me but was wonderful as the ninja hooker Miho. She doesn't have the same charm as, say, Kuriyama Chiaki, but her silent killer was still pretty cool in its own femme fatale one-dimensional way.
So, yeah, if you get a chance to see Sin City for a buck, I recommend doing so. And hell, I'll even see the sequel for another buck, whenever it comes out.
Actually, now that I think of it, I've also been pretty picky with paying matinee prices for a first-run movie. The only time I've done so this summer has been to see Batman Begins. The only other time I anticipate doing so again will be to see Fantastic Four.
I'm not sure why I'm so cheap about movies; I mean, Lord knows I'm not nearly as cheap with my Jpop or comics. Part of it is that I don't like crowds: with the exception of the Kill Bill films, I dont' think I've seen a movie on opening weekend in years. Part of it is certainly the package price: the movies are expensive, but the snacks are outrageous. And for some reason, a movie without snacks is hard to avoid - especially with my wife, who has to have her popcorn and mochi. Another part is, there's so much to watch on DVD, I can usually wait and not even notice that I've missed something on the big screen before I see it on my small screen.
Last but not least, we live real close to a second-run dollar theater - it's on Restaurant Row and used to be the art cinema theater before art apparently died - so we go there with some frequency. If a movie looks interesting but not nine dollars interesting or even five dollars interesting, we'll wait and see it for one dollar (or fifty cents at matinee). We saw Hostage a couple weeks ago, and just today - after a nice beachside barbecue with friends - we saw Sin City.
Hostage was real good - I would've paid five bucks to see it. And Sin City was worth that dollar. I don't think it'd have been worth much more, but at least I feel I got my money's worth.
What made me want to see the movie wasn't that it was based on a comic book - more often than not, that's reason enough to avoid seeing a movie (Constantine, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Elektra...). No, what intrigued me is that the movie is supposed to be a panel-by-panel recreation of Frank Miller's comics - an artistic decision which prompted director Robert Rodriguez to name Miller a co-director in the film.
The result was a story that felt like noir parody more often than actual noir. Actors had to sputter lines that no human being would ever say, not even in a movie as stylized as this. The limited jobs available at Sin City - all women are whores, strippers, or waitresses, and all men are crooks or cops or crooked cops - was hard to swallow, even given the setting. The extreme violence was okay, and it would've been more shocking if the special effects and prosthetic body parts weren't so obvious. Many of the serious moments actually felt more like humor of the blackest sort, and audience members would sometimes laugh at what seemed to be inappropriate moments.
I also noticed that since it's based directly on the comics, the sudden jumps in plot would often throw the pacing of the movie way off. Movies and comics aren't the same, after all, and each does certain things better than the other. Jarring narrative leaps are apparently much easier in comics. At a couple of junctures - but not very many, all things considered - I found myself wondering about the problem of recreating all panels to fit the same size on the screen, whether a splash page or a small inset frame.
The actors who played one-dimensional roles filled those roles well enough, including Elijah Wood as a bespectacled cannibal murderer. Those who had to take it further, though, were also surprisingly good: Bruce Willis (who also starred in Hostage!) was the best of the lot, though Jessica Alba and even Mickey Rourke did a nice job of it too. And I've finally developed a soft spot for Devon Aoki, who always looked too kewpie doll for me but was wonderful as the ninja hooker Miho. She doesn't have the same charm as, say, Kuriyama Chiaki, but her silent killer was still pretty cool in its own femme fatale one-dimensional way.
So, yeah, if you get a chance to see Sin City for a buck, I recommend doing so. And hell, I'll even see the sequel for another buck, whenever it comes out.
