Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

Started by MacGuffin, May 19, 2005, 07:07:27 PM

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picolas

*vague spoilers but you really don't care*

this is easily one of the dumbest movies i've ever seen. key examples:

- everyone who plays poker against powers boothe is tortured on principle. every character knows this will happen. so why the fuck would anyone ever play against him??? there's always four or five people playing. it makes NO SENSE.
- rosario dawson's plan to take down the big boss's lair is to throw a big bomb at it. this works flawlessly. nicely done rosario. checkmate.
- mickey rourke approaches josh brolin and tells him "i hope you don't mind me sayin... that right there... is a dame to kill for." brolin doesn't react to this at all.
- jessica alba keeps pointing a loaded gun at powers boothe, often in a very public setting with a look of resentful anger on her face, not pulling the trigger, then going off to the shooting range and speaking to a grave about how some day she's going to kill that guy. one of his henchmen notices this strange behaviour and tells him about it. "it's like she's building to something..."

the original sin city was fun because it took noir and exploded it, both visually and conceptually. this movie is only the visuals. nothing surprising EVER happens. nearly every line of dialogue brings nothing to the table. it's like "i was a man and she was a woman. i wanted to have sex with her. i did."

the structure is a thoughtless sandwich:

10 minutes of jessica alba's story i don't really care about.
20 minutes of joseph gordon levitt's story i vaguely care about (because he's fucking with powers boothe like nothing's going to happen to him.. how's he going to get out of this??)
a solid 45 of josh brolin/eva green, uninterrupted.
10 minutes of joseph gordon levitt. forgot about that guy. i guess he didn't have any kind of plan after all.
20 minutes of jessica alba, the most boring and predictable story.

i honestly think frank miller has contempt for cinema. or at least considers it a format for dumb people. i know he can write compelling stuff in comic books, but both this and the spirit are so idiotically written and directed. what makes movies so different for him? obviously he doesn't understand how to work with actors, but he's not even writing in the same league as he does for comics. i don't get it.

eva green looks nice.

Lottery

Man, Frank Miller looks like he's dying. Seriously frail and ill in appearance.


Axolotl


jenkins

sounds like this year's furious six, except everyone hates it because they notice it don't seem right. i don't think you gotta seem right, this movie is calling my name from redbox, and imo the curveball here is a potential dame to killer for > transcendence. i was terrified during transcendence, i was rattling in my disinterest. i might hate this, which i think is better than disinterest as a viewing choice. mildly excited. it might equal robocop and i question all of my life decisions

Jeremy Blackman

Picolas nailed it as usual. I would only add a few things...

The Eva Green story is just a tad misogynistic, right? And the whole movie feels lecherous in a way the first one didn't. So I guess I had a gross feeling in general.

It did deliver some stunning sequences and real moments of genius, though. There's 30-45 minutes of this film that I would watch again. Favorite visual was probably the car chase going around Marv's head as he was jogging his memory.

polkablues

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on August 24, 2014, 08:19:53 PM
The Eva Green story is just a tad misogynistic, right? And the whole movie feels lecherous in a way the first one didn't.

It's Frank Miller, so if any part of it didn't feel lecherous and misogynistic, it was a mistake.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: polkablues on August 24, 2014, 10:13:47 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on August 24, 2014, 08:19:53 PM
The Eva Green story is just a tad misogynistic, right? And the whole movie feels lecherous in a way the first one didn't.

It's Frank Miller, so if any part of it didn't feel lecherous and misogynistic, it was a mistake.

SPOILERS

Eva Green's story (and certainly her acting) played like an outright parody of movie misogyny, like Frank Miller browsed tvtropes.org until he found cliches that were sufficiently offensive. So much so, that I was sincerely expecting a twist or at least a moment of commentary. Nope. It was just like the JGL story; you're expecting a payoff or a turn of plot or a climax of some kind, but it just kind of ends, and it turns out it is what it is.

The lecherous stuff is pretty much everywhere. I know that's part of the whole Sin City thing (and maybe I'm remembering the original with rose-colored glasses), but here it feels less celebratory, and more like the expression of a sickness. It makes a couple of the voiceovers unintentionally creepy, when one of our protagonists pauses unexpectedly to go into pervert mode.

It feels like Frank Miller wrote this in a single afternoon while masturbating.