#

I’ve seen a couple of movies in the last two days, so I’ll write a bit about them.

Oldboy
I initially heard about this movie from an article on Slate. The movie is all in Korean, and is about a man imprisoned in a room for 15 years. Once he gets out, he needs to not only find out who imprisoned him, but why. The movie combines elements of mystery, action, and eventually a good psychological plot at the end. The action, though not as technically impressive as some of the other films in the market, does have an important element of authenticity. One fight scene, with about a dozen people fighting, lasted a couple of minutes without the camera stopping. I wonder how many takes that took.

The action isn’t especially graphic, however there are scenes of torture that might exceed things we see in American movies. Funny how people always blame our violence on our movies…

Moving along, I have to mention that there was a scene where a guy eats a raw octopus on camera (for real, it seems). It’s so disgusting it makes me laugh, even though I hate Fear Factor with a passion.

I wasn’t sure how much I liked the movie when I was about 2/3 through, but by the end I liked it, I was satisfied with how the plot was resolved… it was worth seeing.

Apparently it’s also being remade. I wonder how that will be.

Sin City
Now for the movie you may have heard of…

I’m not going to describe the basics about this movie, read about it online. I really enjoyed this movie. I liked the noir-style voiceovers, the acting was good, and the scenery was beautifully comic-like. The stories were really engaging, creating characters that the audience could like inside the dark world of Sin City. I think my favorite acting was from Clive Owen (Dwight), he just seemed to fit the style so well.

Although it’s not a comedy in itself, the movie has some very funny parts and plenty of witty dialogue. This kept the movie from being dragged down too much by the darkness of the city and kept me laughing.

While Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was filmed in a similar way (in front of a green screen, mostly), the characters in Sin City didn’t seem detached from the scenery like the ones in Sky Captain. I’m not exactly sure why, but it just worked.

Slate has a really good review of the movie

If you’re offended or bothered by violence, don’t see either of these movies. Neither are Battle Royale, but I figured I’d note that in case it wasn’t obvious already.