Sin City

I saw "Sin City" this weekend with a pretty decent crowd. Thank god for R-rated movies. They keep the teenage riff-raff out along with the kiddies and their yuppie parents. Anyway, the movis is really good, way better than I thought. "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" was such a mess, I didn't think writer/director Robert Rodriguez had it in him to deliver something so consistently stylish and entertaining. This is very confident filmmaking. I think Frank Miller provided the vision for Rodriguez to execute, and Rodriguez made some very good technical decisions to pull it off well. The cast does a great job, especially the male leads -- Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro -- and Brittany Murphy, who was just so damn perfect in her scared waitress role, and Nick Stahl, kick-ass as the Yellow Bastard. Given that the dialogue is real short, staccato, film noir speak, it's really easy for an actor to sound stupid. But almost the entire cast pulls it off. The exceptions are Josh Hartnett and Michael Clarke Duncan, which shouldn't surprise anyone. The stories all involve tough guys trying to save beautiful girls from a bunch of bad men. The violence is insanely over-the-top, a little like "Kill-Bill," but more gruesome, and harder. The look of the film is incredible, especially when you compare frames from the comic book to shots from the movie -- they're friggin identical. Rodriguez has said that he didn't want to adapt the Sin City books for the big screen, he wanted to take cinema and make it into the books. So the movie is more of a comic book than a film. And I think the choice to shoot on digital and use animation not only saved money, but it lended towards creating a more comic-book-art look.

The movie's not perfect by any means...there's a few missteps here & there -- it sometimes feels like people putting on a play and is a little too cartoony/Dick-Tracy-like -- but it was one of more invigorating cinematic experiences I've had in a while. And I want to see it again.

3.5/5.

Other than that, all I did this weekend was yard work, and regular work in preparation for a meeting tomorrow morning. Oh, and my dad and I watched "Do the Right Thing." It was the first time he'd seen it, and he liked it. Damn straight.