blackpanther04 Reviews

Sin City (2005)

good adaptation of graphic novels

[9/10 · 20 August 2005]

SIN CITY

Frank Miller holding the credits for the story and co-direction for the movie actually is graphic novel ( a rather more honored term for comic books ) writer since past 20 years or so. His novels portray characters in black and white with some splashes of color on the paper. The movie SIN CITY is actually an adaptation of three of such novels/comic book by Miller , namely "The Hard Goodbye" Marv-Mickey Rourkey and Goldie's-Jamie King story, "The Big Fat Kill" ,Dwight-Clive Owen and other ladies, and "That Yellow Bastard", Hardigan-Bruce Willis and Nancy's-Jessica Alba story).

the movie has just brought together these three stories together , all three having no relevance with each other only for the BAR scene where three heroes of the three separate stories come to have a drink . Marv comes there to have a drink after he runs from the police, hardigan comes there in search of Nancy and Dwight is there just to have a drink n meet Shelly . otherwise the movie goes separately for the three stories.

however in these stories each hero has a severe problem and he has to fight both his personal problem and attain his objective of killing others. in case of Bruce Willis , it was his heart , which pounds and pains when he is in excitement or whenever he has a rush of adrenalin in his veins. he has to overcome his age problem and fight with the fat yellow bastard. Marv or mickey Rourke has a problem with reality , he sometimes fails to understand whether whatever happening with him is real or it is just his dream, he can't make decision whether he should kill people or not because he is not able to judge if the reason for which he is killing people is genuine or just dream generated , if its not real then his acts will eventually make him a psycho killer going and killing people for no good reason . he fights his problem and tries to overcome them throughout the movie . Clive oven / Dwight on the other hand has a grotesque feeling that he can talk to corpses , what actually happens is he is so afraid of dead bodies that he himself talks to himself , a case of portraying himself as a talking corpse.

The entertainment ability of the movie lies in the direction and screenplay of the movie , how it has been adapted from a B/W paper work to a 32mm projection material. If you might have noticed,throughout the movie no object in the background is in the motion , its only the characters and the objects they are involved with , not even a single leaf moves in the whole movie . this is because the whole movie was done indoor and the background implanted using the technology after wards. the movie has been directed so that it seems it is an adaptation of a comic book , the action used in the movie is cartoon style , people flying on explosions or car hits etc. the whole movie has been kept B/W and only some object have been shown in color just it is in the case with the comic book.

the whole movie is cold,violent,raw,rough and grotesque, the way nowadays US guys enjoy the entertainment to be. a proof of the fact is huge number of fans of the movies like PULP FICTION, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, KILL BILL etc. this new revolution in the movie making can be attributed to Tarantino , whose PULP FICTION came to be a great hit in US.he was invited as a guest director in the movie as well , where he directed the scene where Goldie's sister rushes the car over Marv.

direction and screenplay wise movie is good . people seem to enjoy such movies nowadays , its ranking of 91 on IMDb says a lot about that.

Sylvia (2003)

The Life of an incredible poetess

[6/10 · 17 December 2004]

The movie shows the life of the American poetess Sylvia Plath who committed suicide under extremely grim situations. The movie starts with gregarious, young, boisterous Sylvia very enthusiastic about poetry. She presents her first creation to the world which unfortunately is read by a very few and she gets disappointed by just one review of her writings which comes from Ted who himself is an aspiring young poet. Soon the couple falls in love and within four months stitch to bonds of marriage. Sylvia realizes that her husband is rising high in the sky of success and she remains a housewife. This thought aggrieves her but she takes it to be her fate. Her life goes on without any sort of creation and she gets entangled in between the children and housekeeping. Just when she starts realizing that this is not the life she wanted, there comes a women in her husbands life thereby afflicting her so much that she starts thinking of suicide. She splits with her husband whom she considered the love of her life. She becomes solitudinarian and craves for someone who can take care of her. She tries to call her old friends but everything goes worthless, she even pleads to her husband to leave the other women but in vain. Finally she commits suicide in her room.

For the story part it is pretty simple and the dialogues too weren't effective. The actors too were not much impressive except for Gwyneth Paltrow, who has shown her acting skills in the movie very well. It is she who takes the responsibility of carrying the movie on her shoulders. The soundtrack is an average one. The director has not been able to show the intense aggrieving feelings of Sylvia which led her to the drastic decision. The movie goes on slow and is not able to catch viewer's perception. For those who have been great fans of Sylvia Plath this movie can have some meaning but the others will find it quite boring and waste of time. The visual appeal of the movie was good and director is successful quite often in providing good visual perceptions. However nowhere in the whole movie will you be able to get hold of the idea that Sylvia was under extreme pain. No incidences as such of her pain are shown except for her husband shown getting intimate with the other woman. Her loneliness has not been depicted anywhere in the movie and only some good viewers can imagine what she had in her mind. I think the viewers must not be given too much load to understand things by their own. A bit or some of such things can be handled but not to the extent that the audience gets bored by the idea of thinking again and again to understand things in the movie.

The movie could have been the director's work if it would have been able to show Sylvia Plath's heart but the whole credit for the movie goes to Gwyneth Paltrow for being able to try to show the things director could not have a hold of. The number of characters in the movie is less and it revolves solely round Paltrow so the whole movie does become cumbersome at times.