Life in Black and White

It's extremely unusual these days for a wide-release movie to be filmed in black and white. (Oh, sure, the 2011 Oscar winner The Artist was [and it was a silent film, to boot], but that was a case of the exception proving the rule.) But just this week I've seen two new releases that are primarily filmed* in B&W, with radically different results. So let's take a look at Sin City 2 and The Giver, which actually have more similarities than you might think at first glance.\

Sin City 2 is the prequel/sequel to 2005's Sin City, which first brought Frank Miller's stark B&W neo-noir graphic novels to the screen. While Miller is listed as a director (along with Quentin Tarentino), the film is primarily Robert Rodriguez's effort. Stunning in its faithfulness to the original source material, audiences flocked to the first Sin City, for nothing like this had been seen.

But nine years have passed. Sin City 2 was stuck in pre-production hell for a while and the finished film suffers as a result. Several roles had to be recast - Brittany Murphy (Shellie) and Michael Clarke Duncan (Manute) had both passed away, and scheduling conflicts necessitated a few other changes, including substituting Josh Brolin for Clive Owen in the role of Dwight. Sin City 2 is based on four Miller stories - two of which were written for the film - and that may have been a mistake. (Again, the film is both a prequel and a sequel - if you go, just enjoy the ride and don't try to figure out how "B" could happen when "A" happened in the first film.) Sin City 2 feels stitched together; possibly the result of trying to cover too many stories. Then again, I understand the temptation with a cast this strong. Mickey Rourke is back as stone-cold killer Marv and Powers Boothe chews the scenery as the sociopathic senator Roark (no relation, I'm sure). Jessica Alba's Nancy seems tacked on to the story - I much prefer Miho in this film, but I always had a weakness for that character, anyway. The breakout performance here is undoubtedly Eva Green's Ava, the "Dame to Kill For" of the subtitle, although a strong case could also be made for Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Visually, Sin City 2 is gorgeous. The stark black and white is shot through with pops of vivid color - red lips, a blue silk coat, emerald eyes, and so on, but some of the most memorable shots involve the black and white - look for Nancy curling up in satin sheets - and cigarette smoke hasn't been this sexy in years. The problem is, even as lush as it is, we've seen this before - and the stories are so-so. Ultra-violent in that Miller style (if you haven't read his "Dark Knight" work, do yourself a favor and seek it out), Sin City 2 is stylish and slick, but ultimately, not all that much to get excited about. I saw it in 3D, which just didn't add a lick to the experience. Rental.

The Giver is also shot primarily in B&W, but for other reasons. In Sin City 2, the B&W is a deliberate attempt to harken back to the noir feel of the graphic novels, while in The Giver it serves a narrative purpose - the people living in the "Communities" can't see color. Well, most of them, anyway. It's a very peaceful society; quite the opposite of Miller's (Ba)sin City, but it's just as corrupt at the core. Based on Lois Lowry's best-selling and Newberry Award -winning young adult dystopian novel, The Giver centers around some very basic questions - is safety worth sacrificing emotion? Is it a sacrifice if you don't know any other option is out there? How much control over your life should be entrust to others? Valuable questions to examine, but the film falls flat. It departs substantially from the novel in a few key places and a dream cast is basically left with not much to do. Seriously - Meryl Streep [18 Oscar nominations with 3 wins for Kramer v. Kramer, Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady) and Jeff Bridges [six Oscar nominations with 1 win for Crazy Heart] should be an embarrassment of riches. Bridges gets to sink his teeth into his role, Streep doesn't, and Katie Holmes shouldn't view this exactly as her triumphant return to the big screen. On the plus side, The Giver is a good vehicle for Brenton Thwaites (Jonas) who is breaking into American films. His last role was as Prince Phillip in Maleficent, where he didn't have much to do. Here, he gets to show off his chops and Thwaites comes out of this standing tall.  Keep your eye on him. The Giver isn't bad - in fact, there are some very touching bits that I daresay the target audience will cling to and there was one montage about "receiving strength" that nearly had me tear up. It's just not that good, either. Read the book instead. Rental.


*I suppose it's not quite accurate to use the term "filmed" since most movies nowadays aren't shot on film stock anymore, but rather on digital media. Still, the old term dies hard and I'm so glad the term "talkie" never really caught on.

Women & Myth

This weekend, I watched two very different movies. Knowing that I needed to blog about both, I spun around, trying to find a connection between Seth MacFarland's A Million Ways to Die in the West and Disney's live-action Maleficent. Finally, I hit on it - both prominently feature women in mythic circumstances. Million Ways is trying to poke fun at the genre of the American Western and Maleficent attempts to retell the Sleeping Beauty tale, this time from the point of view of the villain. (Very reminiscent of Wicked, although plenty will point to Disney's recent smash hit Frozen as well.) Face it, both Westerns and fairy tales are tangled up in myth - the West of the great John Ford movies existed in reality about as much as the Grimm tales. Generally speaking, these are both types of stories in which women do very little, aside from get saved, get avenged, and/or get married.

So how do these two films stack up?

 Million Ways wants to be MacFarland's Blazing Saddles, but he's not quite up to the task. To be fair, he tries. Clearly, he's watched and studied a number of Westerns - all the better to caustically mock the genre - and he knows the standards. Look - there's Monument Valley! Running throughout is a Western score and even the credits look like they were taken from a 1950s Technicolor Western. His cast is solid, with Liam Neeson playing a vicious gunfighter from Eire while Sarah Silverman (whose whole schtick to me has always been a variation on "look - I'm pretty, but I can be as raunchy as any guy!") as the town hooker with a heart of gold and a loving boyfriend, Neil Patrick Harris as a dastardly shopkeeper, and Charlize Theron as Anna, the gunfighter's wife who, like MacFarland's sheep farmer, hates the West with all its dirt, filth, disease, and rampant stupidity. Far less about rugged individualism and the pioneer spirit and far more about the triumph of modern plumbing, Million Ways is raunchy and funny in places (very funny in that particular MacFarland vein that made Ted such an unlikely hit and to me, the best joke was a throwaway line about Stephen Foster) but it's a rental. The only thing gained by a big-screen viewing would be the magnificent Monument Valley vistas and for those, go see Stagecoach. Or Blazing Saddles.

Maleficent is worth watching for two scenes alone, although again - this one could easily be a rental. Told with a sympathetic bent for one of the scariest Disney villains ever, Maleficent explains just why Aurora was cursed at her christening. Angelina Jolie is perfectly cast as the wicked fairy although this film makes it clear that there are reasons behind her turn to darkness, while never condoning her actions. (Oh, and the scene where Shartlo Copley's King Stefan is "having a conversation" is just chilling. He did wrong and it haunts him.) The movie is quite pretty visually, with a sharp divide between the "castle country" and the "fair folk moors," but things get kicked up a notch when Maleficent awakens to find she's been betrayed and violated by the one she loved and trusted. And the christening scene is the cartoon brought to vibrant life, even down to the spooky shadow on the wall. Alas, Elle Fanning as Aurora has very little to do aside from smile vapidly - perhaps a side effect of being given the gift of perpetual happiness is to make a person a simpering idiot - but the movie is worth seeing for Jolie. (Side note - one of the Jolie-Pitt children plays the toddler Aurora in a scene that is just marvelous. Apparently, other child actors were either stunned into silence or scared into tears by Jolie's elaborate "hey, I'm evil" getup, but her daughter knew it was just mom.) Is the film reminiscent of Wicked and of Frozen? Sure, but I'll take all the stories with strong, complex women as the headliner that I can get these days.