What Would You Like Me To Review?
W I love getting feedback. If you have a movie you want to suggest for my review, please let me know. If I have not seen it, I will add it to my "To View" list. And if I have seen it I will move it up on my "To Draw" list. Most recent postings are on top.
from William L. Brown, "Citizen Bill"
Mark, since you gave Sin City a mindboggling NINE, I can only conclude that you have become a middle aged guy of the sort who looks in the mirror and convinces himself "Yeah, I might have a few lines and sags, but I'm still a babe MAGNET! I could just snap my fingers and get me some hottie nineteen-year-old tail - especially if I had saved her life when she was eleven" -- in other words, you must be a guy like Frank Miller!
W What kind of guy is that? For starters, he must play a lot of paintball ("Paintball City" would have been a more apt title), because people in this movie are always shooting at each other and instead of bleeding, the victims get spattered with globs of various-colored paint (the white looks like gigantic pigeon droppings) AND, just as in paintball, nobody dies when they get shot! Characters take multiple, point-blank hits from fat revolvers, swift samari swords, stuttering machine guns, and even speeding automobiles, but few suffer ill effects. In an early scent the chief villian, a child molester, takes a number of bullets, including one which severs his hand (a repeated motif, along with crotch shots, and I don't mean the pornographic kind -- calling Doctor Freud!). At the end of the movie, this character has GROWN BACK HIS HAND! He's also grown back his manhood, due to reconstructive surgery and a mysterious medical treatment that has turned him mustard-yellow and made his ears stick out very much like a Farengi from Star Trek, but - I don't think any kind of surgery or mysterious treatment is going to grow back a hand - no matter what color it is.
W So Miller is the kind of guy who has a great deal of faith, though not too much in the way of facts, about medicine - about as much as he has of law. Sin City has a curious legal code. It seems that if you refuse to confess to a crime you will be locked up, as the hero - a past-retirement-age cop - is, for 9 years in solitary. But, if you confess to the crime (after a scene of gratuitous torture - but don't worry, as in the case of bullets, there are no lingering after-affects, and a gratuitous half-naked woman) THEY LET YOU GO! The past-retirement- age hero goes from prison straight into the arms of the nineteen year old legal student/stripper who loves him despite the mere 50 years difference between them - because, after all, he saved her life. In the process of saving her life, of course, he caused her to witness up-close enough carnage to severly traumatise an ACTUAL eleven-year old who has just narrowly escaped a particularly nasty rape: hand-severing, crotch-shooting, and his own near-death by several rounds to the guts (don't worry, cough, cough, it's only paint!). Whereas any eleven-year old I've ever met would run screaming from a scene of bloody horror and loud bangs, this little girl wades into the ooze to give her hero - this complete stranger with a gun - a big hug!
W So, MIller is the kind of guy who has no actual knowledge of children, other than to know that cute little girls will soon grow up to be hottie strippers. Keep this creep away from my daughter! (ironically, the villian in this story is a child-molester - I wonder if Miller is trying to tell us, or himself, something)
W Miller is also the kind of guy who loves film noir. He loves the LOOK of film noir, anyway, and he sort of gets the idea that film noir characters talk and act tough. What they say is of no importance to Miller as long is it sounds hard-bolied, so he doesn't bother with believable dialog. Actor Bruce Willis sounds like he's half-awake, reading off a ceral box. Dialog or characters with nuances such as plausibililty, development, or depth are beond Miller's abilities. So is the fact that what made films noir was gritty realism. There is not one iota of realism in this entire movie. There is grit by the shovelsful. But, what is the point of grit for the sake of grit without realism? This is the kind of grit small boys play at in the backyard, acting out their favorite macho movie role.
W So, Miller is the kind of guy who is still a small boy at heart (a nice way of saying he suffers from arrested development), playing at being a gritty gangster without the least understanding of the pain, misery, poverty, cruelty, trauma, death and loss involved in such lives. He just likes the style, posturing, and cool lighting effects, and that's what this movie is ALL about - style. It's utterly, totally concerned with visual style. Compare "Sin City" with "City of God," another movie about gansters in a lawless, corrupt, metropolis (Rio de Janeiro). In almost documentary style "City of God" goes about showing how children from the slum turn to crime and violence as a means of survival and advancement, The cruelest of them all shoot their way to the top, only to be mortally deposed by the next ruthless generation. The biggest difference between these two "City" movies is that in "City of God" the characters are like real people, people you care about, so when their young lives descend into deadly tragedy, you care, and you sit on the edge of your seat, dreading what is to come. The only thing you dread in Sin City is what gratuitous, bone-crunching, graphic violence the director is going to throw at you next. "City of God" highlights how fluffy and empty "Sin City" is.
W Last of all, Miller is the kind of guy who thinks women really look like those perfect Photoshopped models on beer posters. All the women in this movie are prostitutes, by the way, except for the little girl (who becomes a stripper/law student), and one parole officer with a model-perfect body -- a lesbian who likes to parade naked in front of her male parollees -- the sort of character, just like stripper/law student, that one encounters in real life all the time, I'm sure. There are many ludicruous images in this movie but one of more howlingly ridiculous ones (I spent a lot of time in the theatre stiffling guffaws of disbelief) is the "army" of skimpily and kinkily (and expensively) clad, buff, young actresses playing an adolescent male's idea of prostitues (uh, what's my motivation, again?), posing prettily with automatic weapons as they mow down the opposing army of mobsters who have impausibly walked into their trap in the alley below.
W So, based on this movie, my conclusion is that Miller is the kind of guy who has never met a real woman, child, gangster, prostitute, lesbian, parole officer, or anyone else. Somebody do this man a favor - go over to his house and show him where the door is so this socially deprived man can get out and meet people! But, as I said, keep him away from my daughter - or anyone else's daughter!
Dear Bill
W I am sensing you did not like Sin City. True, it is not the type of film that I would want to see with my mother, but, neither is Silent Night Deadly Night. Next thing you will be telling me is that movie lacked any social graces. Well, yeah, but it was still a good movie. As far as rampaging murderous Santa killer movies go it is right up there with Tales from the Crypt. Likewise, Sin City achieves extremely high marks for Graphic Novel brought to the screen. But please note that I do not place it in the same category as Comics brought to the screen. As far as capturing what Frank Miller had on paper and putting it on the screen, I think the filmmakers did a superb job. That and I think the stories of stripper law students need to be heard.
from John Schmelzer
W While I enjoy reading your positive movie reviews. I have yet to see you review a very poor movie. How about giving us a movie you consider a 1.
Dear John
W When I think of truly awful stinky movies, one
noxious
bubble always burps to the top. Everyone should be warned that Humanoids from Atlantis is the worse accident of a movie ever squeezed out of the cheeks of a would be film producer. It rates a very lowly 1. And if I could fudge the rating chart it would be a -2. I gave it a truly scathing review.
from Matt Thomas
W Have you ever seen the Chinese film Inner Senses? I think it would be worth your while to check it out.
Dear Matt,
W Oh yeah! I did see Inner Senses. It was pretty cool. I have done one of my favorite strips doing its review.
from Denny Osthus
W An oldy but a goody, would you please consider reviewing Jaws? It is a movie very near and dear to my heart.
Dear Denny,
W Jaws is a movie which is very near and dear to my heart as well. I have so many fond memories associated with it. Jaws recieved a most excellect review from me.
|
