One day, two films. Yesterday I took a risk on the Forgotten and went with eager anticipation to see Sin City and had two very different reactions to two interesting, imaginative but flawed films...
The first, The Forgotten, I watched with the girls, Mum and Adam and though I'd read bad reviews I was in the mood for something entertaining and undemanding. Maybe it was because I had such low expectations that I was so pleasantly surprised.
As always Julianne Moore performs beautifully in the role of a Mother morning the loss of a child. As the plot twists and turns around her journey you're drawn deeper and deeper into a story of conspiracy, fear, control and the supernatural. The invisible enemy never reveals himself and could well be entirely imagined but there are incredibly good moments of shock and surprise.
It's not perfect, there are moments of real predictability and oh-know-now-you've-said-that-you're-so-dead-in-the-next-scene, but it provides enough intrigue to hold your attention. Don't watch th trailer as it gives nearly the entire plot away and it raises some interesting questions that it then ignores but all in all it's quite good and undeserving of the poor reviews and reception it got at the cinema.
Sin City is a whole different kettle of fish. I was really excited about this film so jumped at Steve's idea to catch a late showing last night. The trailers and comic look of all the publicity has had me intrigued for many months. As we sat and watched the film though I had two very different reactions to what I saw...
The film lover in me enjoyed the look of the film and a few interestingly shot sequences (I'd be curious to find out which bit Tarentino guest directed - I think I can guess). It is ultra violent, think Natural Born Killers in a 50's Mob movie style, and follows three interweaving stories of the inhabitants of Sin City and how they battle the forces of the underworld on mini crusades avenging death, saving damsels in distress and covering there backs with as many corpses as they can get their hands on.
The stand out performances for me came from Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood (he doesn't say a word, he just uses his angelic face to chillingly good effect), Bruce Willis and Nick Stahl. If you can cope with violence and nudity then you'll be intrigued by this highly styalised, if not totally original film.
My second reaction was kind of different. I felt quite sick watching it. It wasn't so much the killing as the torture that I couldn't cope with. The justification of taking life and enjoying the process because your cause was 'noble'. It really messed with my head and I didn't like it. Steve described the film as a characature of the male fantasy. Every male character is strong, dangerous, attractive in some way, noble by their own world view, willing to kill and be killed, respected and feared. All the women are stunning and dressed in bondage gear, there's not a fully dressed woman in the whole film. There's very little actual sex but the image of violent sex seeps out of every shot, every costume, even most of the relationships. It's horrible. I hated it. It really unnerved me and I felt quite sick to the stomach afterwards.
This probably sounds weird but I believe and want the complete antithesis to what it protrayed but really struggled to get the cruelty out of my head afterwards. The film is about a seven out of ten and if this stuff doesn't really affect you then go see it, but, if your suseptible to anything I've described then give it a miss and see Star Wars again. xc