300.

I want to go read the “300″ graphic novels now, just to see how close this movie is to the artwork. I get the feeling that, just like Sin City, you can find an accompanying panel for every shot in the film. Each one has that perfect framing, lighting, and composition that makes it feel like a graphic novel come to life. And on those grounds, as well as all the other technical qualities, the movie is a resounding success.

Let’s start with the visuals.. the screen drips with style. The dried out sepia tones that the majority of the movie is colored with makes it feel ancient and historic, like the images are leaping out of a parchment scroll. The Spartans’ capes are a deep, lucious crimson only matched by the constant blood splatters. The shields and helmets glisten in the harsh light with a rough, frosted texture that’s scraped and dented with old battle damage. The bare chests and arms of the soldiers look like they’re chiseled out of stone. The millions of flying Persian arrows fill the sky like a swarm of bees and blot out the sunlight. As the battle rages on, the bodies of slain enemies are stacked on top of one another and rise like a mountain range against the sky.

Then, there’s the fight choreography to accompany these striking visuals. Each one is perfectly executed as the 300 Spartans fight as a single entity. The camera angles are just perfect so you see the glint of their eyes in the darkness under their helmet. They wield swords and shields with a precision that harkens those ancient frescoes and sculptures of greek warriors captured in the heat of battle. Spear after spear sink into Persian flesh and Middle Eastern scimitars clash against Spartan shields. It’s a visceral experience, but my only complaint is the movie is a little too liberal with the slow motion. I would have loved to see more scenes kicked up to full speed.. but then we may have missed some of those perfect battle poses that were most likely lifted off the comic panels.

Visual details aside, we’re treated with some serviceable acting by a cast of little-known actors, which I think is a good choice. The characters seem fuller and more believable if you don’t recognize the face, but it’s also a compliment to the cast.. they do a great job of bringing fairly shallow and one dimensional characters to life. We have the fiercely noble, defiant-to-the-end warrior King Leonidas that you can’t help but cheer for; his stalwart second in command as the captain of the army that executes every command from his king with a boisterous enthusiasm; his beautiful and strong Queen Gorgo who is simultaneously regal and sensuous; and many faithful battle-hungry soldiers. On the other side of the battle we’re treated to a disturbing, exotic, gold-encrusted King Xerxes who has a demonic voice (that disappointingly sounds heavily overdubbed) and has proclaimed himself a god among men and dresses the part; his legion of soldiers, barbarians, slaves, and a horde of particularly fearsome masked elite soldiers called “The Immortals”. Each character proclaims those quasi-eloquent, grandstanding one-line phrases like “Tonight we dine in hell!” and “Immortals? Tonight their name will be tested!” In context they work, thanks to the conviction the actors have, but writing and dialog is not where this film is going to win any praise.

Similarly, the storyline and pacing are not great works, either. The story is told in flashback sequence, but the story doesn’t seem to arc very much. It’s essentially the story of 300 soldiers outlasting wave after wave of Persian forces, starting with the regular army, followed by barbarians, heavy horses, elephant battalions, and finally the Immortals. Again in style it may recall those epic poems by Homer but cinematically it doesn’t work very well. The 300 drive back each wave with very few losses each time. Predictability begins to set in as these seemingly flawless warriors continue the fight while the days roll by. Finally, a pretty weak, anticlimactic betrayal that opens up a second path for the Persian invaders brings the fight to a desparate conclusion. By the time minute 117 rolls by, you wish there was more. I would have loved to see that 10,000 strong Spartan army, inspired by the brave 300, crush the Persian invaders in one last great battle, but the film sadly cuts it off just as things get started.

On a visual and technical level, I think it barely edges out Sin City. It’s a fantastic looking and sounding film, and does an even better job than Sin City at bringing a graphic novel to stylized life. We get some choice historical-sounding dialog and some convincing acting that gets us closely involved. Beneath the surface, though, there’s not a whole lot here, and I think Sin City greatly surpasses it in storytelling. Still, it’s big, loud, violent entertainment that shouldn’t be missed on the big screen.

Zodiac.

David Fincher continues to impress. Of all his movies… Alien 3 (highly underrated, in my opinion. I think it stands shoulder to shoulder with the two before it, the two that follow aren’t even worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence), Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, and Panic Room, this one is the most procedural and deliberate. It doesn’t have the gritty and foreboding atmosphere of Se7en (but then, how many movies do?), the tightrope suspense of The Game, or maddening compulsiveness of Fight Club. But it does have a smattering of all of it that seeps into this film and makes it so much more. In the hands of a different director, this would have been a straightforward police procedural. With Fincher at the helm, it rises above the ordinary and becomes everything that his previous movies were: a complete cinematic experience.

The most distinctive part of a Fincher movie is the visuals and atmosphere. He recreates a climate of fear and skepticism of a 1960’s through 1970’s northern California, caught in a stranglehold by an elusive mass murderer that has struck three separate towns over the span of months. Without modern-day conveniences like cell phones (and fax machines, demonstrated in one amusing scene in which San Fran police personnel must coordinate with three different local departments with the US mail the only apparent method of communication available), this is a much bigger place for a killer to hide. The SF Chronicle, decked out in goldenrod furniture and wood paneling, buzzes with activity as more and more cryptic letters from Zodiac arrive. Political cartoonist Robert Graysmith and stoned reported Paul Avery meet in dark, crowded bars and cramped coffee shops to exchange notes. The two SF inspectors assigned to the case prowl the streets dressed in tan trenchcoats and bowties and driving a mint-green dodge sedan. They’re all small details, but mixed together they evoke a definite time and place that is engrossing. It’s all shot with the skill, visceral energy, and detail that you’d expect from Fincher.

The acting is equally top-notch. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Graysmith with subdued obsession that eventually spirals out of control into a compulsive frenzy as he chases after names, dates, times, locations, any clue that could bring him closer to solving the Zodiac puzzle. Robert Downey Jr plays Paul Avery in an deliriously sublime performance in which he disappears into the role of a stoned, smooth-talking reporter. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards play the two cops on the case and bring a true sense of worn familiarity to their roles that makes you feel instantly at home with them helming the case as they overturn clue after clue that eventually leads them to what you’re convinced is the ultimate conclusion to the mystery. Aside from the leads, we have great small roles inhabited by the likes of Brian Cox, Philip Baker Hall, Adam Goldberg, and Donal Logue. And then there’s the prime suspect in the case, who enters the interrogation room and holds the audience in the grip of fear with one of the creepiest understated performances this side of Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter.

And then there is the story, which I think should be a strong contender for best screenplay this year. The cops, reporters, and audience wade through a dizzying array of clues handled by four police departments in four separate towns, visit grisly crimescenes and many many other sharply-drawn locations, and even dip into some of the personal lives of the people involved to involve us with that obsession, fear, unrest, disappointment, and frustration that a mass murder investigation that spans the years gives us. A surreal storytelling device, the caption that tells us how many months and years have passed since the last scene, simultaneously breaks and rachets up the tension as the film navigates the sprawl of the investigation, marching deliberately towards the final conclusion.

By the time the 160 minutes roll by it’s a complete cinema, a work of pure craft in which great characters played by great actors present a compelling story in a memorable visual experience.

Little Miss Sunshine.

Spoilers herein. You’ve been warned.

Ok, this one perplexed me. It was funny, well written, and well acted but Best Picture? I dunno.. the fact that it was nominated alongside The Departed for BP yet BORAT! was not nominated for anything besides Best Adapted Screenplay (itself a stretch, since it was based on previously created television show characters, not a book or play or anything like that) just doesn’t seem right.

And What The Hell, may I ask, is up with Alan Arkin winning Best Supporting Actor for this role? He was only in the movie for the first hour, and he had some nice choice dialog and a handful of funny scenes, but it’s nowhere near the masterful performance of Djimon Hounsou in Blood Diamond, one of the most frighteningly passionate performances I’ve ever seen.

Oscar complaints aside, I did enjoy the movie quite a bit. I do like me some road movies, because you’re never quite sure where you’re going to end up next, and in this movie it’s one zany setpiece after another, all starting with the family dinnertime around the fried chicken bucket on the formica kitchen table in a house that appears to consist entirely of wood paneling. A call comes in that the regional winner for the Little Miss Sunshine contest has to back out at the last minute, leaving the Olive the youngest, a pudgy, plain-looking girl with pair of eyeglasses half the size of her head, the soul representative for Albuquerque. She has a talent routine that the audience will not be able to enjoy till the last half hour of the movie (and in the fine tradition of Napoleon Dynamite, it’s a surprise dance routine that must not be missed), practiced up at the instruction of her profane, heroin-snorting grandfather. The always fidgety and stressed-out Greg Kinnear is the dad who’s trying to get a 9-step book to success published and can adapt any situation to a maxim on winners and losers. Steve Carrell is hilarious as Uncle Frank, at one time the top Proust scholar (huh?), who after a string of bad luck is home from a visit to the mental hospital due to an attempted suicide. Paul Dano is Dwayne, a disenfranchised teenager who’s taken a vow of silence while he reads Nietzsche and literally sits around waiting to become old enough to join the Air Force. Toni Collette is the kind of Roseanne-inspired mom that throws a box of popsicles on the table and proclaims “dessert.”

The movie is definitely all about the characters as they move from one hairbrained situation to another, packed like sardines in an aging yellow VW Microbus with a broken clutch as they traverse the desert towards California and the Little Miss Sunshine contest. The van provides a running joke in which the family has to push it up to 20mph before Dad can float the gears up to 3rd. Along the road, Frank will have a chance meeting with his former gay lover at a gas station while buying straight porn for Grandpa, the family will have to deal with the prospect of illegally transporting a dead body across state lines, Dad uses an unorthodox method to defuse a potentially disastrous traffic stop, and Dwayne suffers a complete breakdown when he learns that he’s colorblind and won’t be able to join the air force. All this before we get to the surreal fiasco that is the Little Miss Sunshine talent show itself.

All in all, a very different kind of comedy that’s skillfully directed, sharply written, and expertly acted. Good, but not BP material in my opinion.