Saw two completely different movies yesterday: 300 and Bridge to Terabithia.
I was fairly excited to see 300: I'm a Frank Miller fan, they'd managed to pull off the movie adaptation of Sin City perfectly, and I'd heard some good rumblings on the net. Alas, I came away fairly disappointed.
First off, I don't think that this was as close an adaptation to the original 300 as Sin City was, and it wouldn't really matter except that I felt that something was lost in the translation.
Let's start with the visuals: everything looked absolutely gorgeous, but after two hours of that limited color palette, my eyes were crying for something different. And while the long battle scenes may have worked on the page with Frank Miller's succinct visual style, it too just became excessive on the screen. Perhaps I'm just getting older, but it felt like there was too much fighting, too much gore -- much more than necessary for the story.
Even more disheartening is that Frank Miller's distinctive, stilted dialog rang a little hollow from the actors. There were a few moments where it became very obvious that the actors were just posing to hit a specific frame from the comic. The combination of these two issues seriously undermines the emotional thrust of the movie -- that the Spartans sacrifice was worth something/meant something.
Like I said in the beginning, there's no denying that the movie looks good. It just works better as an extended trailer than a feature length movie. The one scene that stole the show for me was the Oracle's dance.
I have no clue how they shot the scene, but it was just breathtaking.
I'm a little torn on how to rate the film, but in the end, I can't give it more than 3/5, and a 2/5 for those who are gore averse.
And for something completely different, I also watched Bridge to Terabithia. About the only thing I knew about it going in was that it's targeted at kids and has some fantasy elements in it. Unlike 300's trailers, which accurately depict what you get in the movie, the trailers for Bridge to Terabithia are totally misleading. This isn't a Narnia-wannabe. It's a story about friendship and the power of imagination.
I have to say though, I'm not sure how many kids out there who will actually appreciate the underlying themes of the movie. I guess that's for the parents. It's sort of a coming of age movie dealing with loss. That's about all I can say without giving anything away. It's a gentle, subtle movie that's (amazingly) carried by the performances of the children. When I was watching, Bailee Madison, who plays May Belle, consistently got all the "Aaaaw"s from the parents.
Worth watching: 4/5.
