Sin City
Out of context: Reply #22
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NYT: "I bring up E.C. because "Sin City" has been made with such scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences that it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore. In recent years, Mr. Rodriguez has been a careless craftsman, but he went to great lengths to honor Mr. Miller's vision, even quitting the Directors Guild because it wouldn't allow the two men to share the directing credit. But in an effort to make a faithful adaptation, Mr. Rodriguez put his own movie sense on hold, not even bothering with a real script. He didn't just try to make his "Sin City" look like a graphic novel: he tried to replicate the private experience of reading one too, slowly turned page after slowly turned page. The problem is, this is his private experience, not ours.
The soporific vibe isn't helped by the fact that "Sin City" has the muffled, airless quality of some movies loaded with computer-generated imagery. The film feels as if it takes place under glass, which makes conceptual sense, since the characters don't bear any resemblance to actual life: they don't have hearts (or brains), so there's no reason they should have lungs or air to breathe. At the same time, Mr. Miller and Mr. Rodriguez's commitment to absolute unreality and the absence of the human factor mean it's hard to get pulled into the story on any level other than the visceral. When stuff goes blam, you jump like someone who's landed on a whoopee cushion. But then you just sit there, wrap yourself in the dark and try not to fall asleep.: