Sin City – A Dame to Kill for: Stunning To See And Somehwat Fun to Listen to

Directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez deliver a second installment of the Sin City franchise with a series of intense, but intriguing stories. Ripe with stunning visuals and that same charming, anachronistic banter, A Dame to Kill For is a fun time.

Premise: Three stories that track some of Sin City’s more colorful characters in trying situations. Result: Beautiful and often entertaining although too long with noticeable drag

The three interlocking vignettes begin en media res with Marv (Mickey Rourke) walking away from the aftermath of past events. Rendered amnesic, he wanders off into the night and eventually, at some point, into his favorite striptease watering hole to ogle young Nancy (Jessica Alba).

300 – Rise of an Empire: Pretty, Fun.

300 was a fun movie. It was beautiful, intriguing, “ab-y”, and ultimately mesmerizing. Thus, it was inevitable that a sequel should surface, despite the looming and obvious issue (spoiler alert!): the main characters from the first film died. Director Noam Murro not only overcomes this problem but actually makes a different yet intriguing film that doesn’t get bogged down in simply being another 300.

Premise: Greek general Themistokles leads the charge against invading Persian forces led by Xerxes and Artemisia, a vengeful Persian navy commander. Result: A lot of the good we remember, a few cool additions; better than expected but not as good as the first film.

Rise take place in various time periods but mainly not long after the inevitable death of King Leonidas from the first film. But it begins with the background to the whole ordeal as delivered by Athenian Admiral and warrior Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton).

In a prior battle, he had killed King Darius (Igal Naor) and thus emotionally ruined his son Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), a handsome, bumbling fool. But his favored adopted daughter Artemisia (Eva Green) takes nothing lightly, and in a vengeful rage against Athens for past wrongs, she appropriates the death of Darius and Xerxes’ grief, coercing him into retribution. But first, she has him transformed into the creepy, molten colossus that made each of us so dreadfully uncomfortable in the first film.

Dark Shadows: Some Fun, Some Strange, Mostly Mediocre

Collaborating once again with Johnny Depp and wife Helena Bonham Carter, Director Tim Burton has cultivated in Dark Shadows some unexpected results. The first half of the film is surprisingly fun, energizing and coherent, a feat thought largely impossible from the trailers alone.  However, this results in a downside as well: the success of the first half creates higher than average expectations for the latter and sadly, these expectations, victimized by plot incoherence and some shockingly poor decision making, are far from fulfilled.

Premise: Imprisoned by a jealous witch, vampire Barnabas Collins is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection. Result: A film that starts out strong only to end at the bottom of a cinematic ravine.

Based on the cult-classic 60s television series, Dark Shadows spans several centuries to cover the afflicted life of a Mr. Barnabas Collins (Depp).  The heir to a Maine Seafood Fortune cultivated by the British Collins family, Barnabas grows up in Collinsport (named for the family) in an American castle, known as Collinwood, in the late Eighteenth Century. Everything works wonderfully for Barnabas until his affair with the lovely housemaid Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) is cut short by his failure to reciprocate her love.

To Barnabas’s great misfortune, Bouchard turns out to be a powerful witch and uses all sorts of sinister sorcery to not only murder his parents and his true love Josette (Bella Heathcote), but also turn him into a Vampire to prolong his suffering for all of time.  She then has the townspeople bury the creature, never to be heard from again.

Of course, he is heard from again when a construction team happens upon his coffin and unwittingly releases him (note to reader: should you ever stumble upon a coffin that not only has been chained closed but also happens to move violently, run, don’t walk, away). Here Burton does a wonderful job of balancing humor and horror: in one moment Collins is joking, in another he is killing a half dozen people, and then back to joking again.  The moods switch quite frequently but also deftly, keeping the audience invested despite the emotional roller coaster.

Collins then reports to Collinwood, now in ruins, to resume the life that had been stolen from him. Here he stumbles upon a ragged Elizabth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is the de facto head of the crumbling household.  Within the 1972 Collinwood dwell some of the more bizarre creatures Burton has coinsured (and this not including the witch or vampire.)

Brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) is half deadbeat dad and half petty thief, daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) who looks desperate to take a mouth full of high-Octane meds, nephew David (Gulliver McGrath), who is supposedly crazy for seeing visions of his dead mother, and Dr. Hoffman (Bonham Carter) who juggles caring for David’ psychosis and her own alcoholism. Of course, there is also the help, consisting of old lady mute-pants Mrs. Johnson (Ray Shirley), Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) who seems to have just escaped from Shawshank Prison, and, of course, the new and not a minute too soon Governess Victoria Winters (also Heathcote).

Ultimately, the film follows several key storylines, some better than others.  At the forefront are Barnabas’ actions to turn Collinwood into an inhabitable castle once more and the business into the pride of their family.  This, of course, invites the ire of the villainous Bouchard who seeks to both destroy and (lovingly?) ensnare Barnabas.  There is, of course, the third plotline that reunites Barnabas with a supposed ancestor of his former love.  As these plots build, there is significant humor intermingled with trademark Burton darkness that makes the film both entertaining and exciting.

But as the film nears its second half, the novelty has largely worn off.  This is due to some mind-boggling errors from Burton and his team.  At first, there is only an inkling that the bright lights of this film are flickering: a few bad jokes here and there, but not enough to distract from what is going well.

However, then, like some sudden phantom, the calamity is upon the audience and the echoes of screeching wheels overwhelms.  Scene after scene becomes more absurd than the last; some moments are just silly, taking their tolls as the story builds, but some just come completely out of nowhere (why is there a werewolf?  Why the ghost screamer?) As the chaos subsides at film’s end, we are left with a resolution that is rushed, clumsy, unfunny, and disappointing.  Unacceptably, it appears somehow like Burton lost interest in the film by the mid-mark and was replaced by a local grade school prose assignment.

The acting in the film is strong, however.  Depp, as always, manages to make this character memorable, fully embodying the creature, letting himself seep into every pore.  While at times the character clearly becomes a bit absurd and the even annoying, this is mostly due to the script he had to work with than the delivery. Green is also quite strong as the villain, swinging like a pendulum from seductive to maniacal. Pfieiffer is also quite strong, perhaps the most consistent along with Depp, as a shrewd but tired matriarch, embodying loth, exhaustion, and creepiness.

Haley and Bonham Carter are additional treats in the film; Bonham Carter is awkward and eerie as always, embodying the true aesthetic her husband has cultivated so assiduously.  Haley, for his part, is ten parts creepy, twenty parts filthy, and all the rest pure comedy.  His glassy eyes and slack-jawed musings are comedic gold and help to keep some scenes moving that otherwise would have sat in squalor.

Overall, Dark Shadows exceeds only expectations that were painfully low to begin with.  The film is enjoyable for a significant amount of time, but ends poorly, ebbing from cringe-inducing to just plain boredom.  Nevertheless, Burton does manage to do enough with the film to keep Dark Shadows from being a failure.  Instead, the film is a fair representation of the series and an equally middle of the road entertainment experience. Considering the final scenes, this is quite the compliment.

Rating: 6 – A mediocre Prosecco that a cute bartender served you

Perfect Sense: An Occasionally Interesting Film about the End of the World

Occasionally, a film comes along that defies conventional focus on bombs and general violence and instead returns to T.S. Eliot’s view, that, in fact, “The world will end with a whimper, not a bang.” While director David Mackenzie does not ignore violence or chaos as aspects of Perfect Sense (certainly not in his film-making style), he chooses to focus on an intriguing premise about the world’s demise, that while inconsistent in delivery and approach, does manage to make some impact.

Premise: As the world experiences an unexplained epidemic that relieves them of their senses, a chef and a scientist fall in love. Result: A fairly interesting film that might keep people thinking after the film much more effectively than it does during the film.

The film focuses on strange, sudden circumstances: it appears that large swabs of people across the globe -and most importantly, with unclear ties- are experiencing the same intense and debilitating affliction: a sudden bout of temporary, agonizing grief, followed by the complete loss of the sense of smell. While the rest of the world is alluded to in abstract conversation and the occasional picture, the true plot seems to be taking place in Glasgow, Scotland.  It is here that epidemiologist Susan (Eva Green) begins studying a phenomenon that seems to have no explanation in modern medicine.

It is not long before the “disease” spreads and greater populations are enveloped by the loss of smell.  Through narration, a strange but intriguing technique employed by Mackenzie to give the film an ethereal quality, we discover that the sense of smell is in fact great loss, a loss of memories and connections that had once been triggered by the scents all around us.  But now, more and more people are subject to this loss of connection to their past and their world. 

It is also strange that all appear afflicted in the same manner: an intense emotion followed by the loss of one of the five senses.  As the world at large appears to have lost its sense of smell, and adjusts to it, there is a second wave that suddenly afflicts random people with debilitating fear that then causes sudden maniacal hunger and the loss of the sense of taste.  Two senses, gone, suddenly, inexplicably, somehow connected in our brains with  sudden fits of unspeakable misery.

During this madness, Eva finds Michael (Ewan McGregor), a chef, who happens to work in a restaurant below her window.  It is not love-at-first site, nor any such cliché, but it is possible to understand the love that grows between them as connected to the unexplained events affecting humanity.  And just as the world does, they learn to grow even beyond their loss, and move forward.

The rest of the film marks humanity’s descent into hopeless obscurity, with each new affliction changing both the attitude of the people as well as the way Mackenzie approaches his story.  There are sudden silences, coupled with great visuals, but also complex sequences designed to mark the chaos of it all.  In some ways there are ocasional triumphs to Mackenzie’s odd style, after all, he is talking about a unique premise and must communicate it in distinctive ways to help the audiences truly understand.  However, there is also a sense of amateurish experimentation, with wobbly shots, dizzying angles, and unnecessarily bright bouts of illumination.  This coupled with a narration that while sometimes poignant, also crosses over often into cringe-inducing melodrama.

The acting in this film is good, although the roles never really allow the actors to stand out beyond the basics.  In most times, delivery is mundane, calm, effective but just enough not to distract from the rest of the film; during catharsis, the film itself is so strange as to either undermine or discredit their performances or simply overshadow them, leaving even actors like Green and McGregor as extras in a field of chaos.

Ultimately, the premise of Perfect Sense is enough to lift this film from obscurity to mildly thought-provoking.  Why the order of the senses?  Why the connections of emotion to a certain lost sense?  And even more profound thoughts based on what the loss means to one’s deeper sense of self, connection to the world and life, even beyond inconvenience.  These questions are certainly delivered, occasionally ad naseuam, but never with deep enough answers to rob audiences of their own conclusions, a flaw in most films, but here, a part of its charm. 

In the end, Perfect Sense is worth watching and wading through the lulls to reach the climax.  While there is no great impact, the final moments of the film do leave a sense of connection between observers and the story. While there is much that could be improved in its delivery, Mackenzie does a good enough job to make audiences think, a feat all too uncommon in film today.

Rating: 6 – A mediocre Prosecco that a cute bartender served you