High Tension (2003)

From cerebral thrillers to ghosts to zombies to monsters, the horror genre can cover a lot of ground. But perhaps the most controversial of all the sub-genres, however, is the slasher film. Closely related to the Italian "giallo" style of literature and filmmaking, slasher movies have often been reviled by critics as trite, formulaic claptrap serving no real purpose other than to show attractive actors getting killed. But horror fans paid critics no mind, rushing into theaters to see the dozens of slasher movies that were released in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th.

As the 1980s progressed, slasher movies became fewer and far-between, sputtering and wheezing to a slow death. However, things changed in 1996, when renowned horror maestro Wes Craven and Dawson's Creek creator Kevin Williamson teamed up for Scream. The movie was a big fat hit, revitalizing the slasher genre with its all-star cast and self-referential nature. But as good as Scream is, it started a new trend of slasher movies that were intended less for people who grew up watching them, and more for the Dawson's Creek demographic.

The amount of blood and gore was reduced and the violence was severely toned down, becoming much more implied (if not totally off-screen). Whether the toned-down violence and gore was due to an attempt to appeal to the "teeny bopper" demographic or due to MPAA restrictions is anybody's guess, but the watering-down of the genre even saw the release of a PG-13 slasher movie (Cry Wolf, for you trivia buffs). I don't have a problem with PG-13 horror movies or movies where the violence is more implied, but you'd figure that a slasher movie by nature would feature lots of blood and violence.

A lot of diehard slasher movie fans pined for a return to the "good ol' days," which is what they were hoping for in Alexandra Aja's High Tension. Released in its native France as Haute Tension ("High Voltage") and in the United Kingdom as Switchblade Romance, the movie spent two years frightening Europe before Lions Gate Films brought it across the Atlantic Ocean for an extremely short-lived limited release in the summer of 2005. Was High Tension the return to the old-school style that fans were hoping for, or should it have stayed in France?

The plot can be described relatively simply, so let's get to it, shall we? College students Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco) head into the French countryside so they can spend a peaceful weekend studying at the secluded farmhouse owned by Alex's family. Unfortunately for them, the serenity doesn't last long, as a psychopathic stranger (Philippe Nahon) breaks into the house and brutally slaughters Alex's family. While Marie manages to elude the burly lunatic, Alex finds herself tied up and thrown into the back of the murderer's truck, which, judging from its interior, looks to have claimed numerous victims in the past (while appearing as if it were stolen from the Jeepers Creepers prop department, to boot). Before the night is out, Marie must find a way to rescue Alex and avoid becoming a victim herself, following a bloody path left by a madman with a thirst for carnage.

High Tension is one of those movies where, even if you have absolutely no idea what's going on at any given time, you'll still be blown away. It takes two or three viewings for everything to sink in, but each time, my appreciation for the movie grows. Though its seemingly out-of-nowhere twist ending may not please everyone, High Tension is a well-crafted piece of horror art. And while the movie may be filled with gore and violence, it would still be terrifying without it. True horror doesn't come from showing graphic imagery, it comes from the anticipation, from the atmosphere. High Tension understands this, and though it's unabashedly soaked in blood, it also uses an "oh man, what's the killer going to do next?" mentality that keeps the audience on the edge of its seat. And while it may be a foreign movie, High Tension is true to the genre's American roots. We see homages to horror movies from days gone by, from classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and The Shining, to lesser-known gems like William Lustig's gritty 1980 flick Maniac. There's even references to non-horror movies, as evidenced a subtle nod to True Romance towards the end of the movie.

The script, penned by Grégory Levasseur and director Alexandre Aja, doesn't rely very heavily on dialogue. Between the first twenty minutes and the last five, there's only one scene with any extensive dialogue. But you know what? It isn't really needed. The movie isn't about what the characters have to say, it's about what happens to them as their whole world falls to pieces around them. In the early moments of the movie, we see a badly scarred Marie telling her story from a hospital room. With this knowledge, we realize that she survives, but where the suspense lies is seeing how she goes from Point A to Point B. We don't expect the characters to sit down and have nice lengthy conversations, we expect them to face dangerous situations. The script isn't a typical film of this ilk, in that we see touches of humanity within. Take, for example, Alex's mother (played by Oana Pellea). After being horrifically brutalized by the killer, she doesn't ask for help, but merely whispers "why me?" with her dying breath. This proves to be both poignant and disturbing, and is a very effective moment indeed.

High Tension is brilliantly directed by Aja, assisted by tight editing and the gorgeous cinematography of Mahime Alexandre. The movie looks absolutely wonderful, from the luscious greens of a forest, to the dark blues of night, to the drab yellows of the farmhouse. A lot of horror directors forget about how scary suspense can be, but Aja doesn't. We only see quickly-paced editing in a few spots, as Aja instead chooses to linger on certain shots. Aja takes his time, making his film dig itself under the viewer's skin.

Aiding this is the very visceral sound design. High Tension benefits from its stellar use of ambient noise to add to the movie's anxiousness, sometimes even dropping into total silence with the exceptions of the killer's shoes squeaking on a hardwood floor. When the sound design isn't enough, François Eudes's intense musical score is brought in. In an American movie, the music would manipulate you with cheap jump scares (usually through loud stingers, which I call my "going deaf is scary" theory). The music could overwhelm the movie like in American horror movies, but High Tension's music underlies everything. When the score and sound design are combined, High Tension is as terrifying audibly as it is visually.

In a movie such as this, casting can make or break a movie. If you can't feel some kind of connection to the lead hero or heroine, then it will be harder to draw you in. I thought Cécile De France did a wonderful job as Marie, showing us a tough heroine in the same vein as Linda Hamilton in The Terminator or Sigourney Weaver in Alien. The physicality of her role demands a lot from her, and she's up to task, running the gamut of emotions of anyone who would be in her situation. And when the final twist is revealed, it adds a disturbing subtext to her performance upon repeat viewings that really boosts the movie.

Phillipe Nahon, credited simply as "le tueur" (translation: "the killer"), is given nearly no character development at all. We don't get inside his head, we don't see what makes him tick. He's just a malevolent force of nature driven only by his insatiable bloodlust, reinforced by Nahon's disturbing performance. I'll admit I'm not familiar with Nahon's work, but if he's anything like "le tueur" in any of his other movies, I'll have to check them out. Maïwenn Le Besco doesn't get a lot of screen time (nor does any other member of the limited cast, outside of De France and Nahon), but as far as acting really scared goes, Le Besco nails it.

Perhaps most noteworthy is the outstanding special makeup effects supervised by Gianetto De Rossi. A frequent collaborator with the late horror legend Lucio Fulci, De Rossi's effects look realistic and believable, and I give it a thumbs up. And big props to De Rossi's makeup department for making Nahon look like a nasty monster that would rape you, kill you, then rape you again. Nahon is a handsome guy in real life, but with a combination of makeup, wardrobe, and performance, he comes off as someone who'd make you cross the street just so you wouldn't have to pass him on the sidewalk. According to those behind the scenes, Nahon in full makeup bears a resemblance to notorious French serial murderer Émile Louis, and if that's the case, then perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that Nahon is famous for playing loonies and nutjobs in various French movies.

A review of High Tension isn't complete without mentioning its infamous twist. The subject of heated debate across the Internet, many complain that its ending came out of nowhere, believing that it made The Village's much-maligned twist ending look good. Others, on the other hand, didn't mind so much. I really didn't know what to think of the twist at first, but it's grown on me. The movie is a kindred spirit to The Sixth Sense, so to speak. There are a few clues hinting at the twist, but many of them are so subtle that you don't even recognize them until you see the movie a second or even third time. And it didn't help that people got so worked up denouncing the twist that they didn't even stop and think that it may have worked better had Aja simply revealed it differently. Going back to online complaints, some claim that High Tension is heavily inspired by Dean Koontz's novel Intensity (while others claim it's a case of outright plagiarism). I have yet to read the book at the time of this review, so screw Dean Koontz. Rip-off or not, I still liked the movie.

High Tension may be indicative of the stark differences between American horror and non-American horror. Foreign horror is so far removed from its American counterpart, usually shying away from jokes, pop culture references, or even compassion. Foreign horror is dark, moody, and delves deep into the shadows of the human heart, something most Americans don't usually appreciate or yearn to see. There aren't any postmodern wisecracks or anything like that, but unbridled insanity. Aja says on the DVD audio commentary that he wanted the movie to be as tense and suspenseful as possible, and I think he succeeded. The movie, in my opinion, is a nightmare caught on celluloid. I might be overrating it some, but I'd be willing to bet that High Tension is one of the best slasher films since Scream. And for that, it deserves every bit of praise that one can give it.

Final Rating: ****

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Let's fire up the Wayback Machine and head to December 26, 1973, a date that saw the release of one of the most influential and important horror films ever made: The Exorcist. Adapted from William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel, The Exorcist prompted stories of exorcisms to become more and more prevalent following its release. One such story that came to light around that time occurred in Germany, the incidents surrounding a young Bavarian girl named Anneliese Michel. Not long after beginning her first semester at the University of Würzburg in 1973, she began seeing evil visions and hearing demonic voices during her daily prayers, along with suffering violent seizures and convulsions.

A neurologist at Würzburg's psychiatric clinic diagnosed her with "Grand Mal" epilepsy, but Anneliese and her devout Catholic family began to suspect her troubles may be of a spiritual nature. The symptoms of Anneliese's "possession" grew much worse as the years progressed, as she began to eat insects, physically and verbally attack her family, urinate on the floor, engage in self-mutilation, and destroy any religious iconography she could get her hands on.

After keeping an eye on her for several months, Father Arnold Renz and Pastor Ernst Alt were assigned to perform an exorcism. The duo began the procedure in September 1975, performing at least two sessions a week until the end of the following June, a period during which Anneliese often refused to eat (claiming the demons inside her wouldn't let her). Totally emaciated and suffering from both pneumonia and severe exhaustion, Anneliese tragically died from starvation on July 1, 1976. The two priests and her parents (who truly believed their daughter was possessed) were accused of negligent homicide and found guilty of manslaughter, and the case has gone on to become an oft-cited case in the "science vs. religion" debate.

But the discussion has gone on for years. Was Anneliese Michel possessed? Or did she simply suffer from an extremely volatile combination of schizophrenia and epilepsy? Nearly thirty years after the tragic circumstances that ended her life, Anneliese's story was brought to a wider audience with Scott Derrickson's film The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Described by its director as "possibly the first courtroom horror movie," the movie can be also described as an episode of Law & Order centered around the events of The Exorcist, as well as one of the most thought-provoking movies of 2005.

Much of the story is told via flashbacks from a courtroom, where hotshot defense lawyer Erin Bruner (Laura Linney) reluctantly agrees to represent Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson) against charges of negligent homicide following an exorcism that went bad. Up against Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), a tough-as-nails prosecuting attorney who's more rattlesnake than man in the courtroom, Father Moore refuses to accept any kind of plea agreement despite the archdiocese pressuring him to do so.

The padre doesn't care if he goes to jail for a million lifetimes, because his sole desire is to tell the story of what happened. As he tells his tale to his defender throughout the course of the movie, we are introduced to young Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) as she leaves her sheltered rural home to attend college. Things start out well at first, but that's shattered when she has the first in a series of terrifying "incidents," for lack of a better word. She sees bizarre grimaces on the faces of passersby, and much worse, begins suffering from increasingly violent seizures and tremors. Father Moore was called in to exorcise her, and as you can guess from the trial, it wasn't exactly a success. As said trial progresses, Erin finds her cynicism and agnosticism challenged as Father Moore leads her deeper into the horrors faced by Emily Rose before her untimely demise.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is one of those movies that has to be experienced to be believed. While the movie was marketed as a horror film, there's really more going on. As I said at the top of the review, the movie is what you'd get if you lumped The Exorcist and Law & Order into a blender, and it's handled quite well. Scott Derrickson (who, coincidentally, also wrote and directed the direct-to-video demon tale Hellraiser: Inferno in 2000) proves himself to be a credible director, especially during the very stylish flashback scenes. The movie has a very creepy leitmotif where the especially tense moments in the flashbacks are bathed in an odd orange/pink light, which I found to be very effective in setting up a necessary atmosphere, an atmosphere enhanced by Christopher Young's tense, chilling score.

However, I thought Derrickson's direction during the courtroom scenes was almost too simplistic. It was just wide shot, medium shot, and close-up over and over, with maybe a couple of dolly moves across the room to change things up a little bit. I have no problem with simplicity, but it just seemed like he directly avoided doing anything out of the ordinary. On second thought, maybe that was the point. The flashbacks were all about kinetic filmmaking, while the courtroom scenes took a more straightforward approach. But still, the scenes just seemed flat when compared with the rest of the film.

Whatever flaws the movie may have, the acting isn't one of them. Jennifer Carpenter is absolutely amazing as the film's title character. Anyone with even the slightest desire to see this movie should check it out just for her. While it seems she has limited screen time, she leaves a lasting presence with her convincing, physical performance. The terrors Emily lived through are never far from the film's surface, and it's a testament to Carpenter's ability. She draws the viewer in with her incredibly vulnerable demeanor, then proceeds to scare the snot out of them. If you can watch the scene where Emily's boyfriend (played by Joshua Close) wakes up in her dorm room without jumping out of your skin, you're a far tougher person than I.

The other main members of the cast are great as well. Tom Wilkinson brought a sense of humanity and well-received depth to the all-important role of Father Moore (despite some cheesy dialogue at times), while Laura Linney is equally engrossing. And let's not forget Campbell Scott, whose turn as an extraordinarily mean prosecutor makes him thoroughly unlikable but still fun to watch.

However, I do have a complaint. Chiefly, it's the screenplay, written by Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman. Take that "the game is on" line during Father Thomas's testimony, for example. I'm sure that line looked good on paper during the writing process, but when Wilkinson says it, it struck me as just being banal and silly. Another, less groan-inducing line wouldn't have been so bad, but they stuck "the game is on" in there and just made me giggle instead.

And I did find it odd that Father Moore was the only one on trial. Even if the exorcism failed, Father Moore at least tried to help Emily, which is more than I can say for her parents. They're the ones who agreed to cease feeding her. They're the ones who didn't take her to the hospital and get her hopped up on sedatives so they could not only keep her from hurting herself or others, but so they could get some food in her system. All they did was sit there and watch their daughter die. I'm not saying if Emily was or wasn't possessed, I'm just saying that those two yokels were probably more at fault for their daughter dying than Father Moore was. Call me crazy, but that's just how I see it. I don't want to sound like I'm dogging them because they believed God would cure her of her problems, but I'd like to think God could use science to help out if He wanted to. It's like the old "I sent two boats and a helicopter" joke. In any event, I really don't have any other complaints with the script, so that's enough of that.

Though the movie seems to lean more toward the idea of Emily being possessed, it delicately handles both sides of the coin, treating each argument with respect while letting the viewer themselves decide what really happened. Whether you believe Emily (and by proxy, Annaliese Michel) was possessed or if she was a psychotic epileptic, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a well-crafted movie no matter how you slice it. You can tell a movie's effectiveness by how much you think about it afterwards, and if you get absorbed into The Exorcism of Emily Rose like I did, you'll find it stuck in your brain for a while. I'll give it a solid four stars and a definite thumbs-up.

Final Rating: ****

Collateral (2004)

Believe it or not, there was a time when Tom Cruise wasn't absolutely insane. Before he proclaimed his undying affection for Katie Holmes by beating up Oprah Winfrey's couch while shoving Scientology down everyone's throats and declaring jihad on psychotherapy, Cruise was a respected member of the Hollywood community.

He's amassed a large string of blockbusters in his twenty-year career, and ninety-nine percent of the time, he plays a character with the same traits. He begins the movie as a good-looking, stuck-up egotist that, by the film's finale, learns the error of his ways and becomes a better person for it. Cruise isn't a bad actor, he just got stuck playing the same roles over and over.

The same could possibly be said for Jamie Foxx. Sure, he's appeared in serious films like Ali and Ray, but his roots are in comedy. The guy has In Living Color and Booty Call on his résumé, for crying out loud. Sometimes, casting against an actor's usual roles works out in a movie's favor. Such was the case with Michael Mann's crime drama Collateral. With Cruise and Foxx as his stars, Mann brings us a stunning film that proves that there's more to its lead actors than previously thought.

Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) is a Los Angeles taxi driver, striving to be the best at what he does. Dreams of starting his own limousine company dance around in his head, but after being stuck in his dead-end cabbie job for twelve years, Max is beginning to believe his dreams will never be realized. He picks up prosecuting attorney Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith) one evening, and they strike up a friendly conversation. So friendly, in fact, that she gives Max her card (and phone number) upon reaching her destination.

As Max stares at the card in amazement, another man gets in. Introducing himself as Vincent (Tom Cruise), the man asks Max to drive him to five separate places before dropping him off at LAX. Max balks at the idea at first because it's against regulations, but when Vincent produces six $100 bills as payment, he quickly changes his mind. Vincent's first stop takes him to an alley behind an apartment building, where Max waits in the cab as Vincent enters the building.

A few moments pass, and something crashes onto the roof of the car. The stunned Max gets out and is horrified to discover that the thing that landed on the roof was a dead body. When Vincent returns to the car, Max asks if he killed him. Vincent's reply: "No, I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him."

Max offers Vincent the cab, but Vincent takes him hostage, forcing him to drive around Los Angeles and make his other stops. As the movie progresses, we discover that Vincent is a contract killer, hired by mobster Felix Reyes-Torrena (Javier Bardem) to kill certain key witnesses in a federal trial against him. With the FBI and LAPD detective Ray Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) hot on their trails, Max must find a way to stop the nihilistic sociopath he's chauffeuring around the city before he can claim his final victim: Annie.

Fans of film noir will enjoy Collateral, a gritty tale of two men testing each other's limits. No stranger to this kind of film (having directed movies like Manhunter and Heat), Michael Mann has crafted a fantastically gripping story, inviting the audience into his film as part of the ride. The film is the first to utilize a new type of high-definition digital camera, and Mann and cinematographers Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron put it to good use, as Collateral boasts some of the most beautiful camerawork I've ever seen in a movie. The movie smooths the rough edges of Los Angeles with gorgeous nighttime hues, and Collateral's claustrophobia pushes tighter, even though the film is spread over a sprawling urban landscape.

Though the movie has some wonderful camerawork, Mann spends more time developing a taut, tense atmosphere. The movie also benefits from a fantastic use of music and a great ambient score by James Newton Howard. With bits of jazz, Latin music, techno, and rock, the music aids the atmosphere's build, making for a fine soundtrack to accompany the movie.

Stuart Beattie's script is also great, pitting its two leads against one another in entertaining fashion. Though other characters cross their paths, the movie is all about the interaction between Max and Vincent, and the drastic clash of ideals and lifestyles. Vincent is obsessed with improvisation, as evidenced by his captivation with an improvisational jazz solo while he and Max visit a blues club. He often refers back to the idea of constant change, citing that in his line of work, he has to be quick on his feet and be able to make things up as he goes along. Vincent seemingly reveres it, treasuring it as an art form.

On the other hand, Vincent's love of improvisation is contrasted by Max's "by the book" outlook. He's been a cab driver for over a decade, due to his belief that everything must be painstakingly outlined, especially his plans for his limousine service. As the film progresses, we begin to see how one character affects the other as the night wears on. Extraordinary circumstances change Max from a dreamer into a man of action, with Vincent as a catalyst. For Vincent, there is no development. He's the same at the end that he was at the beginning, which is not a problem. We don't need him to develop, we just need him to be him.

But perhaps the best thing about the movie is the cast. Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are both brilliant, and as I said above, the movie is all about them. Sure, we have other actors in the cast, but none are as important to the narrative as Cruise and Foxx. Cruise is incredibly effective as the cold-blooded Vincent, a hitman that is cool, calculating, and manipulative, yet oddly charismatic. Cruise is a fine actor in spite of his crazy antics, and he's definitely on his A-game with his performance here.

But Foxx is no slouch here, either. Max starts the movie as the mouse in Vincent's cat-and-mouse game, but Foxx is up to the task as he slowly becomes the cat while the movie progresses. While his performance here may have been overshadowed by his starring role in Ray (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar), Foxx is no less wonderful in Collateral. While I don't know if I would have given him the Best Supporting Actor nomination that he received, he's still fantastic. And despite being an extremely minor role, Jada Pinkett Smith puts in a good performance as well. I don't know why someone of her caliber would take a role with such low recognition, but she's not unwelcome.

Collateral is one of those movies that should be seen in order to truly grasp how good it is. When I first saw it, I listed it among the best movies I'd seen in 2004. That hasn't changed. Michael Mann has crafted a stellar movie worth all the praise it gets, and I applaud him, his crew, and his cast for their efforts. Collateral is nothing short of excellent, and it's high on my list of recommended movies. If you have two hours to kill and want to see a film noir that's well-made and well-acted, then Collateral is for you. I enjoyed it, and that's why I'm giving it four and a half stars.

Final Rating: ****½

Sin City (2005)

From Johnny Dynamite in the '50s to Ms. Tree in the '80s, hardboiled crime stories have been a part of the comic book world for quite some time. The style has even found its way into horror comics, as seen in DC's Hellblazer. However, that hardboiled noir style is most prevalent in Sin City, a series of stories created, written, and illustrated by comic book legend Frank Miller. First published by Dark Horse Comics in 1991, Sin City can be seen as a continuance of the dark, moody style that Miller used to save Daredevil from cancellation and cast Batman as a truly dark knight.

As one of the most influential writers and artists in the industry, one would figure that his work would have an effect on the cinematic adaptations of comic books. And in a way, he has. His depiction of Daredevil was carried over into that adaptation, and his influence can be seen in Tim Burton's two Batman movies. However, Miller withdrew from Hollywood, vowing to never let his own comics be adapted into a movie thanks to constant unwanted studio interference while he wrote the RoboCop sequels.

Enter Robert Rodriguez. A longtime fan of Miller's work, Rodriguez wanted to make a Sin City movie, but Miller refused to relinquish the movie rights. Rodriguez drafted Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton to appear in a short "proof of concept" film based on the Sin City short story "The Customer Is Always Right," and Miller enjoyed it enough to allow production to get underway. With both Rodriguez and Miller as directors (along with Quentin Tarantino helming one scene as a "special guest director"), the cinematic adaptation of Sin City was met with much fanfare when it hit theaters this past April. But is Sin City worth the hype, or is it just another case of a great comic getting adapted into a mediocre movie?

Our film is set in a fictional locale named Basin City, though its residents rarely refer to it by its given name, instead preferring its shortened form because it characterizes the city perfectly. Nearly everyone in power, from the politicians to the police to the city's religious hierarchy, are corrupt, and Sin City's citizens have become a jaded lot as a result. And in Sin City, hardly any crime is outrageous enough to shock or surprise anyone. As comic writer Mark Evanier once so eloquently put it, "When you live in Sin City, you can get shot fifty times, stabbed in the thorax, and have a few body parts chopped off. And then, if you're not careful, someone might try to kill you."

This wonderful little town is the setting for three interweaving episodes, each anchored around a particular male lead. The movie opens with the first half of the story titled "That Yellow Bastard," where we are introduced to John Hartigan (Bruce Willis). A detective pushing sixty and suffering from angina, Hartigan is an honest cop in a city where guys like him are few and far between. Before he settles into retirement, Hartigan wants to solve one last case and capture a serial-killing pedophile rapist named Junior Roark (Nick Stahl).

However, Hartigan's pursuit of Junior is complicated by Junior's family tree, because his father (Powers Boothe) is a very powerful Senator. The Roarks practically own Sin City, and are like a demented version of the Kennedys. Junior has chosen eleven-year-old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega) to be his latest victim, and despite the protests of his partner Bob (Michael Madsen), Hartigan has taken it upon himself to stop him before he can kill Nancy.

The next story is an adaptation of "The Hard Goodbye," in which we follow a hulking brute named Marv (Mickey Rourke). He's a wee bit lacking in the looks department, so when we first meet him, he's on Cloud Nine because a gorgeous woman named Goldie (Jaime King) has offered herself to him. They spend the night together, getting ripped to the gills and having sex. Unfortunately, Marv's happiness doesn't last too long. He and Goldie fall asleep, and Marv awakens three hours later to discover his companion dead, murdered.

It isn't very long until he hears police sirens, at which point he realizes that he's been set up, because not enough time has passed for anyone but Marv and her killer to know Goldie is dead. Marv flees, swearing revenge as a way to repay Goldie for the kindness she showed him. His search for Goldie's murderer leads him down a crooked path, passing his perpetually topless parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino) on a collision course with Goldie's twin sister Wendy (King, in a dual role), the mute karate-trained cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood), and corrupt priest Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer).

Our third tale, entitled "The Big Fat Kill," begins in the apartment of a frightened barmaid named Shellie (Brittany Murphy), where a drunken former fling is pounding at her door. Shellie is comforted by her on-again/off-again boyfriend Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen), who tells her to let the man and his entourage in while he hides in the bathroom. She opens the door for the drunk man, Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro), who proceeds to smack Shellie upside the head before heading to the bathroom.

As Jackie Boy relieves himself, Dwight steps out from behind the shower curtain and puts a straight razor to his face, telling him that if he ever so much as thinks Shellie's name again, Dwight will see to it that Jackie Boy loses a certain appendage. I'm sure you can guess which one. And to hammer that message home, Dwight shoves Jackie Boy's face into the unflushed toilet. Nothing like a face full of urine to make your point. Jackie Boy and his crew leave, with Dwight following them to make sure they don't hurt anybody.

Dwight tails them to Old Town, Sin City's red light district. Police are only allowed in Old Town if they're off duty and looking for a good time, and the prostitutes that are in charge of the neighborhood are just as armed and dangerous as any army. While Dwight meets up with Gail (Rosario Dawson), one of Old Town's toughest residents, Jackie Boy begins accosting a young girl named Becky (Alexis Bledel). He repeatedly asks for her services and she repeatedly turns him down, telling him that she works the day shift and he should come back in the morning. Jackie Boy doesn't take no for an answer, threatening to shoot Becky if she doesn't get in his car.

And believe me, pulling a gun on a lady in Old Town just isn't kosher. Another hooker named Miho (Devon Aoki) leaps down from a rooftop above them, introducing Jackie Boy and his crew to the business ends of her swords and throwing stars. Dwight and the girls raid their pockets, and that's when Dwight makes a rather chilling discovery: a police badge in Jackie Boy's coat. He wasn't just some goon, he was a cop. Jackie Boy's death means the end of an uneasy truce between the mob, the police, and the hookers of Old Town, so Dwight agrees to dispose of the bodies before the cops discover what happened. A group of mobsters led by the one-eyed Manute (Michael Clark Duncan) has other ideas, kidnapping Gail while sending a team of Irish terrorists after Dwight.

The second half of "That Yellow Bastard" concludes the film, resuming some eight years after the events of the first half. Hartigan was framed for raping Nancy and left to rot in a jail cell for that whole time, only finding relief in the carefully disguised letters he receives from Nancy every week of his incarceration. Once the letters stop, Hartigan begins to fear for the worst, especially when a deformed man with yellow skin and disgusting body odor delivers an envelope containing a severed finger. Hartigan falsely confesses to raping Nancy so that he may be granted parole, and after a little investigative work, tracks her to a ragged saloon where the 19-year-old Nancy (Jessica Alba) is a rather popular dancer. But by the looks of it, I think Nancy went to one of those dance schools where they teach the strippers to leave their clothes on.

Regardless, Hartigan notices the yellow freak at a corner booth and realizes the finger was just a bluff so he'd lead him right to Nancy. Hartigan and Nancy hit the road, with their yellow pursuer hot on their trail. He confronts Hartigan after tracking the pair to their safe house, revealing himself to be none other than a grossly disfigured Junior Roark. He explains that his father went far outside the boundaries of conventional science to heal the injuries his son suffered during his last encounter with Hartigan, but his work resulted in some rather unsavory side effects. Junior hangs Hartigan and leaves with Nancy to finish the job he started eight years prior, but Hartigan survives and heads straight to the Roark farm to save the closest thing to a daughter he's ever had.

I have nothing bad to say about Sin City. Any complaints I have are simply minor at best. The visual effects are absolutely brilliant, and the movie looks so much like the comic, it's frightening. With the original comics as their storyboards, directors Rodriguez and Miller use a chiaroscuro style to resemble the source material, interchanging starkly contrasting lights and shadows to make it look similar to Miller's artwork, and everything about it looks outstanding.

With reenactments of frames from the comics to how the characters look and talk, everything is right out of the comics and I couldn't be happier. Even the movie's harshest critics have to agree that Sin City is one of the most faithful and literal comic book adaptations ever made. Style frequently outweighs substance in movies like Sin City, but Rodriguez and Miller give us a menagerie of heroes, villains, and antiheroes, with the stories being engaging and never growing boring.

The audience becomes immersed in the urban inequity that is Sin City, hearkening back to the old detective movies of the '40s and '50s, but with more bells and whistles. Filtered in with the black-and-white are flashes of color. We see the red of a dress or a woman's lipstick, the blonde of Goldie's hair, the blue or green of someone's eyes, the yellow of Junior's skin. And then there's blood. Buckets and buckets of blood. We see blood either as a translucent white, mustard yellow (in the case of "That Yellow Bastard"), or more frequently, its natural red. To borrow from another reviewer, one could use the old line "black and white and red all over" to describe Sin City, which I find to be a rather astute observation. One may be thrown off by all the stylized violence, but it can get so over-the-top that it actually becomes fun.

I'm also a believer in the idea that a good movie needs a good score. While the song "Cells" by British band The Servant may be most connected with Sin City thanks to its use in the movie's promotional campaign (though it sadly does not appear in the movie), the movie possesses an excellent musical score composed by Rodriguez, with a little help from John Debney and Graeme Revell. The electro-infused blues score casts a brooding shadow over the film, with its use of saxophones and occasional dash of bongo drums evoking the genre's roots.

While I thought the dialogue was silly and borderline pretentious at times, it can be forgiven because it still manages to be entertaining. Besides, there are movies out there with worse dialogue, and this is a film noir anyway. A film noir without pretentious dialogue is like a Road Runner cartoon without Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff. The script, written by God knows who (no writers are credited, though one can assume that it was penned by Rodriguez and/or Miller), presents us with quite a few fun moments and memorable lines straight out of the comics. I'd buy a copy of the screenplay if it were published, but I can just buy the comics instead.

I'd also like to commend the cast for doing a brilliant job. Each of the three male leads are superb, as are their supporting cast. With a star-studded film like this, one would think it would lapse into moments like, "Look, Bruce Willis! Now here's Jessica Alba! And how about that Elijah Wood? Remember him from the Lord of the Rings trilogy?" But the movie is so engrossing, it becomes not an exercise in watching actors, but in watching characters. I will say that I enjoyed everyone, some more than others (did Devon Aoki have any lines?), but perhaps the brightest star in the cast is Mickey Rourke as Marv. I ended up enjoying "The Hard Goodbye" the most out of all the stories, and it was mainly because of him. He's easily my favorite character, all because of Rourke's performance.

I'd also like to give a big thumbs up to Elijah Wood, who gets as far away from Frodo as he can in his portrayal of Kevin. I'll actually go out on a limb and call Kevin the coolest villain since the T-1000 in Terminator 2 and Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy. Wood doesn't have any dialogue, but he still manages to be unbelievably creepy, even downright scary at times.

Though I do wonder, in regards to the cast... am I the only one who thought Bruce Willis looks nowhere near as old has he should have been, or that Jessica Alba didn't look anywhere near as young as she should have been? And am I the only one who wasn't completely buying Clive Owen's American accent?

This is very much a Robert Rodriguez movie, and while one could make the argument that Frank Miller's directorial credit is merely honorary, the film is so faithful to his work that it only makes sense to list him too. In fact, Rodriguez was so adamant about giving Miller credit as a director that he had to quit the Director's Guild in order to do it (since the DGA only allows bona fide teams like Andy and Larry Wachowski to receive co-director credits). No matter who gets credit as director, everyone involved should be proud of themselves for creating a true work of art.

If you're the kind of person that refuses to watch a movie that's in black and white, no matter how good it may be, you're really cheating yourself out of seeing one of the best movies of 2005. Roger Ebert said in his review, "This isn't an adaptation of a comic book; it's like a comic book brought to life and pumped with steroids." And you know what? He's correct. Sin City is a triumph of imagination and filmmaking, and is worth all the praise it gets.

Final Rating: *****

Hulk (2003)

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Marvel Comics writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby collaborated on a number of monsters with silly names. But when the success of the Fantastic Four got their attention, they dropped the monster routine and began reviving the long-dormant superhero genre in what has been dubbed "the Silver Age of Comics." The early '60s saw Lee and Kirby (or Lee and Steve Ditko) churn out dozens of superheroes that are now regarded as classics, from the Avengers to the X-Men.

But in May 1962, Lee and Kirby collaborated on one final monster that seamlessly bridged the gap from monster to superhero: the Incredible Hulk. A version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a dash of Frankenstein's Monster and a comic book spin, Hulk's sales weren't exactly huge. Marvel actually cancelled his comic after six issues in order to clear out some space on the publishing schedule, but after Lee and Kirby discovered that the Hulk had gained popularity among college students, they kept him alive via guest appearances in other comics along with making him a charter member of the Avengers.

Hulk soon found himself as a major supporting character in Marvel's long-running Tales To Astonish, during which Hulk's popularity soon grew so large that Marvel renamed Tales To Astonish to the more relevant The Incredible Hulk. The character went on to inspire the popular live action '70s television show and TV-movies starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, and can even say he had a hand in giving Hulk Hogan his stage name. After the Bixby/Ferrigno show and movies, several cartoons, a handful of video games, various toy lines, all kinds of memorabilia, and even his own roller coaster at Universal Studios Florida, the Hulk finally got his own feature-length theatrical movie in the summer of 2003. Is the movie befitting of the Hulk's status as a pop culture icon, or is it in dire need of a little "Hulk Smash"?

Our story begins at a military base in the California desert circa 1966, where we are introduced to a scientist named David Banner (Paul Kersey). Attempting to instill stronger immune systems and regenerative abilities in his test subjects, he moves from aquatic life to lizards to monkeys, finding progress but no real success. He goes to his superior, General Thaddius "Thunderbolt" Ross (Todd Tesen), and asks for permission to begin testing on human subjects. Ross denies him, and David decides to use himself as a subject instead.

Soon thereafter, his wife Edith (Cara Buono) gives birth to a son, Bruce. David wonders if his experiments have had any effect on Bruce, while his wife is blissfully unaware of what he's done. Four years pass, and General Ross finally discovers David's work on humans. He throws David off the project, prompting David to wreck his lab and trigger the self-destruct system on his equipment. Edith huddles under a table with her son, but the returning David drags her into a bedroom, slamming the door behind them. Young Bruce plays with his stuffed dinosaur, staring at the bedroom door as the voices of his parents rise. The door swings open and we cut to black.

We flash forward to the present day. A brilliant scientist working at UC-Berkeley's biotechnology center, the now-adult Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) has repressed much of his early childhood while being raised by adoptive parents. With the help of his on-again/off-again girlfriend Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) and funding from the local military-industrial complex, Bruce is working with nanobots and gamma radiation to regenerate living tissue. Unfortunately, all Bruce and Betty are able to accomplish is an expensive way to make frogs explode. They could save a lot of money and time by just wrapping the frogs in a roll of tinfoil and throwing them a microwave, but I guess spending government money to do it with far-out technology is more fun. Enter Glenn Talbot (Josh Lucas), an executive with ties to Betty's father, the aforementioned General Ross (now played by Sam Elliott).

Talbot runs a defense corporation and is quite interested in Bruce and Betty's research, making it clear that if he can't hire them away, he'll acquire their technology by some other means. Man, if I knew blowing up frogs was such big business, I'd have been doing that long ago. Anyway, Bruce and Betty's assistant Harper (Kevin Rankin) makes adjustments on a gamma radiation generator inside a sealed chamber in preparation for an experiment. Harper ends up running into some trouble, and Bruce enters the chamber to help just as Harper crosses some wires and sets the generator into motion. Bruce orders Harper to get out of the chamber, but he's too scared to move, cowering directly in the path of the generator. Bruce jumps in front of Harper as the generator fires, taking a full dose of gamma radiation.

Bruce wakes up in the hospital a few days later, amazingly in perfect health. Betty can't figure out why he's still alive, but Bruce doesn't seem too fazed. What he doesn't realize is that the radiation has awakened something deep inside of him, the existence of which he could have never foreseen. One night, Bruce wakes up to see a man with three dogs sitting in his hospital room. Bruce recognizes the man as the lab's creepy new janitor, who reveals himself to be none other than David Banner (now played by Nick Nolte). David tells Bruce who he is and reveals that he's been in military custody for the last thirty years, but Bruce refuses to believe him. Bruce believes his parents had died, so the janitor can't be his father. You know, it doesn't quite have the same effect as it did in The Empire Strikes Back, but what can you do?

Bruce soon finds himself having terrible nightmares over the next few days, flashbacks to an incident at his childhood home. He goes to the lab one night to do some work on the project, when he has another flashback. Bruce realizes that David was telling his truth, and combined with the stressful past few days, it is enough to bring out what was buried inside him. He transforms into what we know as the Incredible Hulk, a gigantic green-skinned brute that goes on an absolute rampage and tears the entire lab to shreds. He rips the gamma radiation generator in half and throws it through the side of the building, where it crushes a police car responding to the ruckus. As he starts to calm down, the Hulk turns and sees a fascinated David watching, peeking from behind a door. David cautiously touches the Hulk's face, whispering, "My Bruce." The Hulk, enraged, jumps through the roof and runs away.

Bruce wakes up the next day, and tells Betty about a very vivid dream he'd had the night before. When Betty asks if he was at the laboratory the night before, he says no, believing that his destruction of the place was a dream. Meanwhile, news of the incident has reached General Ross, who accompanies a team of soldiers to Bruce's house. He orders Betty to leave, then gruffly interrogates Bruce about what happened. Turns out they found Bruce's watch at the lab, and they think he had something to do with it. When Bruce claims innocence, Ross tells Bruce that he had his father locked away and won't hesitate to do it to Bruce if he doesn't cooperate. He asks Bruce about the incident we saw earlier, and Bruce says he doesn't remember a thing about it. General Ross is convinced that Bruce is just as messed up in the head as his father, so he puts him under house arrest, with military-type guys guarding the house from across the street. He also orders Bruce to stay away from Betsy, or else.

Bruce gets a call from his father that night, who reveals that he's performed a very interesting experiment on his three dogs, and has sent them after Betty. As Bruce begins to leave, an angry Talbot arrives and forces his way past the guards. Upset over the destruction of the laboratory, he starts throwing Bruce around. Bruce gets angry and hulks up, throwing Talbot (and his couch) through the front wall. He takes out the guards like it's no big deal, then leaps into the air on his way to Betty's cabin in the woods.

At the cabin, Betty investigates a strange noise that she discovers is the Hulk. Frightened at first, she quickly realizes who he is just as David's Hulk-ified dogs arrive. He places Betty into her car, and the trio of dogs attack. A huge brawl ensues in the forest surrounding Betty's cabin, with the Hulk eventually killing the dogs. He sees his reflection in a puddle, and realizing that he's probably scaring Betty, he calms him down long enough to turn back into Bruce Banner. Betty helps him into the cabin, where he deduces that the gamma radiation triggered something in his DNA that made him the Hulk. Betty asks if he can remember anything, and he just said it felt like a dream in which he was free.

Desperate to get Bruce some help, Betty calls her father the following morning and tells them where they are. Bruce wakes up and steps out on the cabin porch, only to get shot with a tranquilizer dart as General Ross's men move in. He's taken to a high-tech underground military facility and put under surveillance. Betty wants him released, Talbot and General Ross debate on whether he should be killed or cultivated, and David wants something more.

About that same time, David visits the laboratory that the Hulk smashed, putting what's left of the gamma radiation generator back together. He fires it on himself, after which he discovers that he can intermingle with (and assume the properties of) anything he touches. Our narrative leads us from the California desert to San Francisco to another military base, where we learn what happened on that fateful day in the film's prologue and David's true intentions: to use Bruce's power to get revenge on the military that tried to throw a wet blanket on his scientific ambitions.

Like the comic book that inspired it, the movie owes more to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein than its cinematic brethren (Spider-Man, X-Men, et al). There's even overtones of King Kong and Beauty and the Beast. The movie tries to give us a deeper tone, but packages it into a palpable summer action blockbuster. I don't know if one could classify it as a blockbuster because of its financial disappointment (experiencing a seventy percent drop in its box office numbers in its second week of release, the second largest drop ever recorded for a movie that topped the box office charts in its opening weekend), but the thought was there.

The script by John Turman, Michael France, James Schamus isn't too bad at all, though I guess they decided to save some time and combine two villains. Hulk doesn't have any archenemies that the casual fan would recognize, so they simply combined elements of the Absorbing Man and Zzzax into one brand-new villain. It makes sense to me, since I can't think of one Hulk villain at all. I actually hadn't heard of the Absorbing Man and Zzzax until I started doing research for this review.

The duality of Bruce Banner and the Hulk that Turman, France, and Schamus add to the script is intriguing. Bruce is an insignificant wimp, repressing his rage and anger under a façade of just being a simple geek. However, when you uncork that bottled-up rage, he's transformed into a big green earthquake on two legs. We the viewer are able to project a little bit of ourselves onto the Hulk; all of us have just wanted to snap at least once, but won't or can't. Whether it's because of an inferiority complex or simply not wanting to make a scene, we've all been there.

The Freudian nature of the character's dual personality is actually handled well in the movie, a handling that is enhanced by the acting of Eric Bana. An Australian standup comedian with only one earlier American movie on his résumé (Black Hawk Down, for all you trivia fans), Bana brings a certain charm to the role that makes you want to like him, yet want to avoid making him mad. I also really liked Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross. She gives off a warm, soothing vibe that the character so desperately needed for the Beauty and the Beast aspect to be believable, and Connelly is just so charismatic that you can't help but like her. I also thought Sam Elliott and Nick Nolte did commendable jobs as well, with a special thumbs-up for Nolte's performance during his anti-military rant at the end of the movie. Good stuff, the cast is.

I liked director Ang Lee's rather novel approach to framing and scene transitions, along with the occasional paneling to show the action from multiple angles. That kind of filmmaking really gave the movie a charming comic-y look, quite a stretch from his prior work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lee also makes frequent use of the color green, ranging from subtle uses (like the set design, green murky water in a mop bucket, characters with green eyes) to a simple green tint in some scenes. It starts out subtle, but as the movie progresses, it feels like they're trying to beat the viewer over the head with it. Okay, so the Hulk is green! I get it! They didn't have to put that color all over the movie. Daredevil and Elektra wear red, and you didn't see people sticking red all over their movies. But the movie has an enjoyable sci-fi B-movie energy, which I thought was helped by Danny Elfman's engaging score. His music adds to the sci-fi ambiance, while hearkening back to Bernard Hermann's work with Alfred Hitchcock at the same time.

My only real worries with the movie are with the CGI and the movie's darkness. The CGI gets a lot of crap from a lot of critics, but is it really that bad? I actually thought the CGI looked adequate, but my main complaint is that it just doesn't look like it could exist in real life. It's like the animated characters from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where it looks really good, but you just don't believe it's a real person. I'm just not convinced that the Hulk was really there. If the whole movie had been animated, I wouldn't see a problem. I think I'll be able to live with the CGI Hulk, but I'm not sure about those Hulk-Dogs. What's with those? While I understand and appreciate that they were included just to give Hulk something to fight in the second act, I didn't think they were pulled off all that well. Your mileage may vary, however.

And I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like a few of the movie's action sequences were just too dark to decipher. I had to turn the brightness on my television all the way up to make out what was going on. Why would they have big action sequences if they were going to be hidden in shadows? What were the filmmakers trying to hide? The questionable CGI? The fact that the ending was totally nonsensical, even by comic book standards? It could be either or neither, but in any event, I didn't like all that darkness. I want to see what's happening in the movie, not listen to sound effects. If I wanted to use my imagination, I'd listen to old radio dramas.
While almost everything about the movie is sound, my feelings regarding it are mixed. I enjoyed parts of it, but I felt that as a whole, the movie simply cruised along with the bare minimum of effort. It didn't leave me looking forward to a sequel, if that's what it was supposed to do.

Perhaps the best things to come out of the movie are those ultra-cool Hulk Hands toys. I dare you to find me one person who doesn't enjoy Hulk Hands even a little. They're so nice, they had to make them twice (as evidenced by the "Thing Hands" that were made after Fantastic Four came out). I wasn't exactly disappointed in the movie, but I wasn't exactly all that enthused watching it either. But I think I'll be giving Hulk three stars. Perfectly acceptable chaos, Hulk is.

Final Rating: ***½