The Movie of 2005
I was all ready to write a review where I said that Kill Bill may as well be the best movie of the year, because jack shit happened in the cinema for the entire year and I may as well give a nod towards the best movie of 2004, instead--especially since I just picked up the Volume Two DVD and sat and watched both volumes, back to back. I even had a lot of the review planned out, in my head, hailing the visionary talent of Tarantino and so forth, and so on. Then . . .
Then, I remembered Sin City.
I forgot that Sin City was a 2005 film. In fact, it was only thinking about Kill Bill that reminded me, because I had this train of thought in my head: "It's only when directors like Quintin Tarantino have such strong visions of what they want to have in a movie that they can execute it so brilliantly, that they're such a vividly imaginative and mindful of cinematics, theatrics, dramatics, all the important 'ics. You get directors like Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aranofsky: people who usually not just direct, but write." And, I thought, "Although, adaption isn't evil, so long as you're adapting good material. Look at Robert Rodriguez and how adamantly truthful and accurate to the material he was with Sin City . . . "
"Shit, Sin City came out this year, didn't it?" I checked the DVD box, couldn't find a conveniently visible year of release, so I went to imDB. "Yes. There's no fucking way I can say there was nothing memorable in the theatres in 2005."
Also, I just remembered, right now, that Serenity was also most definitely a '05 picture. Saw II was great, and I loved it, about as much as I did the original Saw, but I didn't like how it ended: I wished it hadn't been left obviously open for a sequel, because I think a franchise will kill the novelty of it all and I highly doubt a third movie will live up to the first two (third time, in filmmaking, is not the charm). MirrorMask was also a visually stunning masterpiece and a great, surreal work of vintage Gaiman, but, honestly, the story and characters were a bit too lacking for me to ever award it Greatest Movie of the 2005. All lovely movies, yes, but . . . Sin fucking City.
The hype behind Sin City was monumental; generally, I avoid hype and I don't follow entertainment news or anything like that, but I got all the hype there was from a friend at college who went on and on about the film; honestly, I've never read any of Frank Miller's Sin City comics, so I had no big reason to be all excited about anything being adapted to screen for them. But, I am, in the end, a sucker for going to the movies with friends, because I can't think of anything better to do than catching a flick with friends--not that my life is in a sad state of affairs, I genuinely think experiencing movies with friends at the theatre is damn fun--so I followed the crowd into a showing of Sin City when it came out and I may have shat my pants. (The same, exact thing happened with Serenity: never watched Firefly, but a buncha friends went and I tagged along, and I believe what I said to my ex-roommate afterward, verbatim, was: "About halfway through this movie I was about ready to cum my pants in glee. I really want to find Joss Whedon and just hug him and thank him for existing." This is why I trust my friends, most of the time, for movie taste, these days.)
Few films have I watched where my jaw literally dropped, but, ooh, it happened quite a few times in Sin City.
The movie was brutal, violent, sex-ridden, dark, brooding, angry, passionate, and beautiful. It was a Film Noir-esque endeavour, but hardly a Film Noir: maybe Film Noir if you put it on a speeding train heading towards Hell itself. I'm a sucker for inner monologue and gritty material, so I am biased--everyone's biased--and it delivered in spades. Best of all, the stories weren't predictable: I did not see the sheer amount of brutality coming that I got shovelled in my face. Mind you, I am not glorifying the idea of violence and brutality in a movie as being the mere ticket to cinematic genius in my book, no, not alone.
Sin City made you want the people who died to die. It put you in the shoes of the individual stories' protagonists, and you saw the world through their eyes, through their smoke-stung, bloodied, bruised, shaking eyes. The movie swept you up in its emotionality and gripped you, making every punch satisfying, every gunshot gleeful, every visceral act of violence very much vindicating. It wasn't about violence, it was about survival, hard and cold lives full of death. It was sick, but the alternative was sicker. Basin City is a land of desperate hopelessness and despairing antiheroes, doing what has to be done to make right what can never be made pure.
If you can't handle this shit, get off the bus. Nobody wants you here, anyway.
Rodriguez made me want to read Frank Miller's comics. I haven't, yet, but that's because I'm a lazy, procrastinating bastard. It's the kind of visionary work that makes directors like Rodriguez and Tarantino truly geniuses. Maybe it's not always the most deep, soul-searching material on the market, and it's not mind-bending or world-inverting, but I like it. Because it's unique, and stylistic, and new. Even intellectualism can get dull, if you see too many films with world-weary characters doling out philosophy after philosophy over slow scenes of coffeeshops or bus-stops. I can't deal with another Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind: the originals were great, but I don't need you to produce eighty thousand more like 'em, Hollywood. Thanks but no, alright?
Tarantino movies, and Rodriguez's one, at least, are about setting up the mythos of a world and, then, placing a set of characters within them to play around inside the movie-world. Their worlds are full of stylised beauty and interesting things. Sin City wasn't just a movie, it was the devotion of a director to extending a mythos from the pages of graphic novels to the movie screen. Kill Bill wasn't just a revenge movie, it was a revenge movie placed in a world as birthed by Tarantino's mind: unique, bloody, and beautiful. Maybe I don't always need to think hard and long about the existence I have, sometimes it's good to just invent a new existence, and I like the existences that are presented by Rodriguez and Tarantino. They're highly, highly engrossing, engaging and entertaining, and, ultimately, emotional and impactful.
Yeah, Kill Bill was the film of 2004, but Sin City definitely took 2005, handsdown.
Tarantino: Modern Day Existentialist . . . Maybe?
Then, I remembered Sin City.
I forgot that Sin City was a 2005 film. In fact, it was only thinking about Kill Bill that reminded me, because I had this train of thought in my head: "It's only when directors like Quintin Tarantino have such strong visions of what they want to have in a movie that they can execute it so brilliantly, that they're such a vividly imaginative and mindful of cinematics, theatrics, dramatics, all the important 'ics. You get directors like Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aranofsky: people who usually not just direct, but write." And, I thought, "Although, adaption isn't evil, so long as you're adapting good material. Look at Robert Rodriguez and how adamantly truthful and accurate to the material he was with Sin City . . . "
"Shit, Sin City came out this year, didn't it?" I checked the DVD box, couldn't find a conveniently visible year of release, so I went to imDB. "Yes. There's no fucking way I can say there was nothing memorable in the theatres in 2005."
Also, I just remembered, right now, that Serenity was also most definitely a '05 picture. Saw II was great, and I loved it, about as much as I did the original Saw, but I didn't like how it ended: I wished it hadn't been left obviously open for a sequel, because I think a franchise will kill the novelty of it all and I highly doubt a third movie will live up to the first two (third time, in filmmaking, is not the charm). MirrorMask was also a visually stunning masterpiece and a great, surreal work of vintage Gaiman, but, honestly, the story and characters were a bit too lacking for me to ever award it Greatest Movie of the 2005. All lovely movies, yes, but . . . Sin fucking City.
The hype behind Sin City was monumental; generally, I avoid hype and I don't follow entertainment news or anything like that, but I got all the hype there was from a friend at college who went on and on about the film; honestly, I've never read any of Frank Miller's Sin City comics, so I had no big reason to be all excited about anything being adapted to screen for them. But, I am, in the end, a sucker for going to the movies with friends, because I can't think of anything better to do than catching a flick with friends--not that my life is in a sad state of affairs, I genuinely think experiencing movies with friends at the theatre is damn fun--so I followed the crowd into a showing of Sin City when it came out and I may have shat my pants. (The same, exact thing happened with Serenity: never watched Firefly, but a buncha friends went and I tagged along, and I believe what I said to my ex-roommate afterward, verbatim, was: "About halfway through this movie I was about ready to cum my pants in glee. I really want to find Joss Whedon and just hug him and thank him for existing." This is why I trust my friends, most of the time, for movie taste, these days.)
Few films have I watched where my jaw literally dropped, but, ooh, it happened quite a few times in Sin City.
The movie was brutal, violent, sex-ridden, dark, brooding, angry, passionate, and beautiful. It was a Film Noir-esque endeavour, but hardly a Film Noir: maybe Film Noir if you put it on a speeding train heading towards Hell itself. I'm a sucker for inner monologue and gritty material, so I am biased--everyone's biased--and it delivered in spades. Best of all, the stories weren't predictable: I did not see the sheer amount of brutality coming that I got shovelled in my face. Mind you, I am not glorifying the idea of violence and brutality in a movie as being the mere ticket to cinematic genius in my book, no, not alone.
Sin City made you want the people who died to die. It put you in the shoes of the individual stories' protagonists, and you saw the world through their eyes, through their smoke-stung, bloodied, bruised, shaking eyes. The movie swept you up in its emotionality and gripped you, making every punch satisfying, every gunshot gleeful, every visceral act of violence very much vindicating. It wasn't about violence, it was about survival, hard and cold lives full of death. It was sick, but the alternative was sicker. Basin City is a land of desperate hopelessness and despairing antiheroes, doing what has to be done to make right what can never be made pure.
If you can't handle this shit, get off the bus. Nobody wants you here, anyway.
Rodriguez made me want to read Frank Miller's comics. I haven't, yet, but that's because I'm a lazy, procrastinating bastard. It's the kind of visionary work that makes directors like Rodriguez and Tarantino truly geniuses. Maybe it's not always the most deep, soul-searching material on the market, and it's not mind-bending or world-inverting, but I like it. Because it's unique, and stylistic, and new. Even intellectualism can get dull, if you see too many films with world-weary characters doling out philosophy after philosophy over slow scenes of coffeeshops or bus-stops. I can't deal with another Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind: the originals were great, but I don't need you to produce eighty thousand more like 'em, Hollywood. Thanks but no, alright?
Tarantino movies, and Rodriguez's one, at least, are about setting up the mythos of a world and, then, placing a set of characters within them to play around inside the movie-world. Their worlds are full of stylised beauty and interesting things. Sin City wasn't just a movie, it was the devotion of a director to extending a mythos from the pages of graphic novels to the movie screen. Kill Bill wasn't just a revenge movie, it was a revenge movie placed in a world as birthed by Tarantino's mind: unique, bloody, and beautiful. Maybe I don't always need to think hard and long about the existence I have, sometimes it's good to just invent a new existence, and I like the existences that are presented by Rodriguez and Tarantino. They're highly, highly engrossing, engaging and entertaining, and, ultimately, emotional and impactful.
Yeah, Kill Bill was the film of 2004, but Sin City definitely took 2005, handsdown.
Tarantino: Modern Day Existentialist . . . Maybe?
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
12:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home