Afternoon Baseball

FILM ROTATION: SIN CITY Comparisons

Maybe I posted this before, but it deserves a second look. Just shows the work and detail. Make sure to click on the other links -- it depicts the major storylines of the film and the amazing accuracy from the poses, lighting, brilliant flashes of color (all the blood, but also things like Alexis Bledel's mesmerizing eyes and backgrounds to the dialogue/narration.

Popmatters.com review

The movie, by the way, is an incredible effort. This reviewer for not having redeeming qualities or a higher purpose. Well, it's based off of a comic book, and it's higher purpose is, if anything, to show that Hollywood lies constantly in movies -- these same types of situations have idealized heroes, uncomplicated bad guys, and no in-between, with a moralistic ending. And that's even more unrealistic than anything happening in this film.
Anyways...

As for the acting, if Clive Owen, for instance, doesn't become the biggest star in Hollywood in the next five years, then somebody really screwed up. He dominates the screen every time he appears, both here and in Closer. Not to mention Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, Nick Stahl and a brief appearance by Michael Clarke Duncan.
And then alllll the hot chicks: the wonderfully horrible Brittany Murphy, the way-too-hot Jessica Alba, plus Carla Gugino coming out of nowhere, and for many an introduction to Rosario Dawson, Jamie King and Bledel.

It's violence, sex, revenge, guns, betrayal, seedy settings and characters, the dirty moral code of the underworld, gender sterotypes and overdramatization to the hilt, all done in a way that no traditional movie-making process would have touched -- and it's exactly what this movie needed.
Hell, it's what the whole industry needed.