Sin City

[Quasqueton]

Saw the movie this afternoon. A good solid piece. Would see it again (and will if I can get the time). There were bits of dialogue that sounded exactly like something out of a comic/graphic novel (I haven't read Sin City), but that actually enhanced the feel of the movie. It felt more like watching a graphic novel than watching a movie.

Holy crap, but Marv could take damage. And I loved Hartigen. And I loved Dwight. All three "heroes" were great.

I liked a lot. Gave it a 9.

Quasqueton

 

[Pants]

Eh.

Just got back from seeing it. Fantastic visual styles, some pretty interesting characters and some genuinely funny moments. Nothing really gruesome, since the whole movie is over-the-top blood being sprayed in every direction, which comes off being somewhat corny at times. Now, I loved the Kill Bill movies, since they really seemed to embrace the corny blood-squirting everywhere style, but... Sin City just didn't.

Also, maybe it's just a nod towards the movie's noir roots, but a lot of the acting and dialogue was... either bad or just forced. The main characters were good, but a lot of the side characters had some really corny acting and dialogue. Not being very knowledgeable about noir, I'm wondering if that's just a staple of the genre.

Also, I've never read a Frank Miller comic, if that has anything to do with it.

I give it a 5/10.

 

[Jeremy]

If you liked From Dusk til Dawn and Kill Bill, you'll likely like this. Tough guy comic book anti-hero's murder their way to the truth in visceral fashion.

We had an appreciative crowd tonight that laughed and enjoyed the spectacle of it and winced along with everyone else at some of the downright painful things they think of. But through out, the flippant humor is all the more funny in contrast to the stylized gore.

Me personally, I loved it.

 

[ValamirCleaver]

It delivers the goods

Without a dobt this is best and most faithful comic to movie adaption I've ever seen. The visual style of the graphic novels is nailed down perfectly. Almost an exact panel to panel translation. You have to be extremely familliar with the source material to note the differences. Other than some slight omissions the dialog is faithful to the original material. Excellent translation of the action.

If you a fan of the graphic novels or film noir, you NEED to see this as soon as possible. If your neither of the above then you should probably pass on this. Most people probably won't get the point. I am impatiently awaiting the sequel.

Tom

 

[Gomez]

I saw it last night. First off I have never read the Sin City graphic novel and I liked Kill Bill and Dust til Dawn. I am a fan of film noir as well. Ok here is my review.


It stank like a week old corpse.

The dialogue and acting was in general pretty bad. I know that it is based on a graphic novel but that does not give it license to have corny or just plain terrible dialogue and acting. There are several different stories in the film like Pulp Fiction. Of the three different stories, I liked the one with Dwight, a killer with a new face helping out a group of prostitutes from the mob as the best of the stories. I can see Tarantino's hand in this part of the movie. I liked the Dwight character a lot. He was cool, tough, and very noir anti-hero. The story with Marv, the huge thug out to find the killer of a hooker he slept is interesting for the first 5 minutes. After that that it gets pretty repetitive with his torturing and killing people to get information. Marv's love scene with Goldie reminded me of Frankenstein and Fay Wray making love on a red heart shaped bed. Very disturbing! The film is a Sadist's wet dream. Lots of torture, heads in toilets, splattering blood, amputations, katana slicing action, hand axe action, breasts, cannibalism, and more torture. Oh and the torture is mostly done buy the heroes of the film. I bet there isn't five minutes of the film without someone getting tortured in this entire film. This film brings blood and guts to a new level. Don't get me wrong I like violence in a film but this is violence just for the sake of violence. The one scene in which a one of the heroes pulling the family jewels off a bad guy with his bare hands and then pounding the guy’s head flat was pretty disturbing.

Visually, I liked the use of the black and white with hints of color. Red on some woman's lips, blue on one ladies eyes, etc. The CGI could have been better. It reminded me of Rodriguez' Spy Kids 3 (a pretty terrible film in it's own right). One scene with a car driving up a winding road looked like a Matchbox car with two stiff Lego made people in it.

I think the movie could have used some more humor in it. There is only one small part of the film in which anyone in the theater laughed at all. It was a pretty funny scene by the way. But it lasted all of 15 seconds.

Also I noticed several things that didn't add up in the film. I will not go over them now, as I don't want to spoil the movie. But the writing could have been tighter.

This film had a lot of promise and potential in my mind. But with three directors I think they messed it up with too many cooks in the kitchen.



I gave the movie a 4.

 

[Quasqueton]

If you liked From Dusk til Dawn and Kill Bill, you'll likely like this.

I never saw DtD, and I didn't like KB, but I liked Sin City.

If you a fan of the graphic novels or film noir, you NEED to see this as soon as possible.

Only read maybe one or two graphic novels, ever. Maybe seen one or two film noir. Still liked Sin City.

I think the audience is broader than y'all are giving it credit.

Quasqueton

 

[king_ghidorah]

Saw it last night. Think it was a painstakingly faithful adaptation of Miller's work and, as such, had many of the same strengths and weaknesses. The whole thing is very stylized, not only visually, but on every level. It isn't noir, but a stylized exaggeration of noir and tough-guy pulp fiction. An absurdist exaggeration built around the style much more than the substance. An interesting experiment. When it works, it's about an excess of all elements, a stark black-and white depiction of the elements of noir and pulp. The men are all tougher than nails, the women all beautiful and dangerous, the villains are excessively evil, the violence numbingly over the top, and lawlessness is the only source of justice. Like the graphic novel, the sylization sometimes comes at the price of dehumanizing characters and situations, as well as stripping dialogue of verisimilitude. As with Miller's graphic novel, style is substance, and visual presentation and stylized tropes are more important than character and dialogue. It's an interesting film, and I liked it, but it isn't an attempt to do more than capture the Sin City stories on-screen.

 

[Jeremy]

I think the movie could have used some more humor in it. There is only one small part of the film in which anyone in the theater laughed at all. It was a pretty funny scene by the way. But it lasted all of 15 seconds.

It's amazing how much the environment you are in can shape a perception of a movie. Finding Neverland had an interesting moment where the success of the play was determined by the presence of people who would understand it, and they in turn brought the rest of the audience into understanding.

Like I said in my post, I happened to have a great and very appreciative crowd. The one-liners all got laughs, the really painful moments all got winces, and some of the over-the-top violence or well deserved pay backs got laughs too. The pez-dispenser section was hilarious. Some of the applications of the hatchet were hilarious. Marv loving him some coats... Marv's reaction to getting a little electrocuted. Harrig--nevermind.

Suffice it to say, depending on the audience you are with, particularly who you bring to the movie with you, the violence can either shock you and knock you out of the enjoyment, or can become amusing in it's impossibility all by itself and further heighten the humor in contrast.

The one scene in which a one of the heroes pulling the family jewels off a bad guy with his bare hands and then pounding the guy’s head flat was pretty disturbing.

That's a perfect example right there. Because we were enjoying the ride at that point, this made sense and got a bunch of laughs. It was so richly deserved by the sick S-O-B, it was the only justice the hero was going to get both for what had come before and for what the hero knew would come after, and it was also release of anguish from the hideously unfair utter destruction of his life. We also found it funny in a kind of, "The first time wasn't enough? Try this on for size!" kinda way. But it's remarkably easy to see how this scene would rattle people who weren't in the right mindset for it or worse, had been put in the exact wrong mindset for it by the preceding bits of the movie.

Can you imagine if they just put that in trailer? The movie would be blamed for everything from serial killers to school shootings for the next 30 years.

Kill Bill did the same thing to some people, they either went with people they didn't want to appear low-brow in front of, or sat in a theatre that was disgusted by what they saw, and had a miserable time of it. That time I was fortunate again, you would have thought the audience was watching Kung Fu Hustle. Talk about hit or miss.

Sorry you didn't get to enjoy the flick.

 

[Tetsubo]

I would have given it a 9.5 if that had been anoption.

 

[Fast Learner]

There was lots of laughter throughout in my screening, too, and plenty of empathetic wincing. And even group shock.

It defnitely is a matter of the particular audience.