House of Wax (2005)

Lately, it seems like Hollywood has been running out of ideas. Everything is based on a true story or seems like it's just reprocessed material from another movie. As such, I'm not exactly surprised when a remake goes into production. Remakes are twelve for ten cents nowadays, but when Dark Castle Entertainment announced its intentions to remake a certain horror classic, I was intrigued. Dark Castle, a company founded by Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver, and Gilbert Adair to make horror movies for Warner Brothers, is no stranger to the idea of remaking classic horror movies. After all, their first two movies were remakes of William Castle's House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts.

But the reason I was so intrigued by their third remake is the fact that the source material is a remake itself. Any horror fan worth their salt has heard of the 1953 horror House of Wax, starring the legendary Vincent Price. The movie's one of the highest grossing 3-D movies ever made, but I don't know how many of you readers know that it was a remake too. Yep, the original House of Wax is a remake of the relatively obscure 1933 movie The Mystery of the Wax Museum, which itself was based on a play written by Charles Belden. So what we've got with Dark Castle's House of Wax is a remake of a remake of movie based on a play. Got that? Good.

The movie follows a group of friends on a road trip from Florida to Louisiana for a huge college football game. We've got good girl Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), her criminally-inclined twin brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray), her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki), her best friend Paige (Paris Hilton), Paige's boyfriend Blake (Robert Ri'chard), and camcorder-carrying dork Dalton (Jon Abrahams). They have a confrontation with a trucker while camping, and when they awaken the next morning, they discover that the engine of Wade's car may or may not have been tampered with.

To avoid being stranded, they accept a ride into the secluded ghost town of Ambrose so they can hunt for a new fan belt for the car. Once they arrive in Ambrose, they find themselves drawn to the House of Wax, a museum filled with remarkably lifelike wax figures. However, they soon discover that the House of Wax and the rest of the town has been populated by the wax-coated corpses of unlucky visitors. The five friends must find a way to avoid murderous twin brothers Bo and Vincent (Brian Van Holt in a duel role) and escape Ambrose before they too become permanent exhibits in the House of Wax.

Apparently Dark Castle Entertainment adopted the same idea of remaking a film that the producers of the Dawn of the Dead remake had: to take a famous horror movie and the barest skeleton of its plot, and go in a far different direction than its predecessor. House of Wax bears little resemblance to its source material, with the titular wax museum serving as the only link between them. Dark Castle labeled it a "re-imagining" instead of a "remake," which is essentially their way of saying "we just took the name and basic plot, and made a totally different movie."

The movie also seems to borrow bits and pieces from What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, which they even reference by name in the movie itself. House of Wax owes much more to recent movies like Wrong Turn and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake than to Vincent Price's classic, right down to Elisha Cuthbert wearing an outfit similar to the ones worn by Eliza Dushku and Jessica Biel in said films. The movie is simply your typical backwoods slasher movie, only without cannibal rednecks, the antagonists are demented twins that like to make wax figures with their victims.

The movie, written by twin brothers Chad and Carey Hayes, is absolutely chock full of genre clichés. Let's take the characters, for example. There's Final Girl, the boyfriend, the token black guy, the angsty one, the dork nobody really likes, and the slut. How many times have we seen those characters in a horror movie? There's also instances of the characters breaking some of the cardinal rules of horror by splitting up, snooping around strange places, and running up the stairs when the front door is easily accessible. You also never really get a chance to know the characters, or even like them. The handful of brief attempts at making these lame characters seem real are just weak, and the dialogue is stilted and disposable. There's also have a subplot that the Paige character might be pregnant, but it's both badly written and barely even mentioned at all. The script also left me asking how a building made of wax could survive in the very muggy south. And is it even possible to make a building made entirely of wax in the first place?

Moving on, the cast is kind of a mixed bag as well. I liked Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, and Brian Van Holt, but the rest of the cast did nothing to make them stand out. Honestly, the movie could have easily been made without Robert Ri'chard or Jon Abrahams, and neither of them would have been missed. And how about Paris Hilton? Casting her got a lot of heat from critics, who argued that filmmakers really shouldn't be casting someone whose only discernable claim to fame is being an insanely rich floozy who videotaped herself having sex with Shannon Doherty's ex-husband. While I agree that she got famous for doing absolutely nothing, I applaud her for trying to do something with her fame. But the thing is, I've seen more believable acting from brick walls. It seems like she downed a handful of Valium before each take. I know the movie isn't supposed to be Shakespeare, but she could have at least tried harder. But in her favor, at least she can run and scream like a champ.

However, where the movie succeeds is its direction and special effects. Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra makes his motion picture debut with House of Wax, and his experience directing music videos shows. The movie is slick and stylish, with some very inventive camera angles and great jump-scares. He also manages to make quite a few sly references to One Night In Paris, though I don't know if they were intentional or not. If they were, it makes sense. Why not play to what we know Paris is good at?

Anyway, the makeup effects are also great, another brilliant job by KNB EFX Group. Thanks to KNB's work, the movie has its fair share of disturbing moments. From knives to Achilles' tendons and throats, to fingers getting chopped off and lips getting super-glued together, what the movie lacks in characterization is made up for in violent savagery. The wax creations themselves also look absolutely outstanding, and those who worked to put them together get a big thumbs-up from me. We also have an exciting score composed by John Ottman, which made the movie that much more fun to watch.

I know I complained about it a lot, but House of Wax was actually pretty entertaining at times. Unfortunately, the movie seems like there's a "been there, done that" feeling. The lyrics may be different, but the song still sounded the same. I liked Wrong Turn, and I liked the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Did I like House of Wax? I didn't love it, but I certainly didn't hate it either. I'm going to give it two and a half stars, which sounds about right to me.

Final Rating: **½

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: *****