Depression is no laughing matter. It can make you feel sick, ruin your day, put a big stall in your daily activities and worst of all ruin your train of thought. For Detective Downs, his worst enemy is not the kidnapper who just took a small child, or a job that is paying him very little, but a huge amount of depression that’s ruining how he thinks on the case. This is the most important case of his career, and this depression is ruining his chances in solving it.
Tag Archives: Noir
Sin City (2005)
Cannibal teens, psychotic hookers, talking dead bodies, yellow skinned child rapists, and a disfigured psycho with an affinity for trench coats. The third corner of hell? No, it’s all mundane in Sin City, thus is the oddities presented in the Frank Miller created series of graphic novels. Miller set forth a legacy in 1991 when he created a series of incomparable visionary graphic novels called “Sin City” which had no superheroes, no intergalactic madmen, and no demonic entities, only the horror of mankind and the back alleys of the worst city in the world.
Femme Fatale (2002)
When a heist goes awry, Laure Ash poses as a woman, stealing her identity and sets out to live a straight life while attempting to dodge two of her ex-partners out for vengeance and a photographer who wants her picture for the tabloids. I was literally stunned by DePalma’s (Carrie, Blowout) visually engrossing direction that so eloquently depicts every action of the story he is trying to tell. He is the master of the split screen which he uses to emphasize character motive and personality. At times, there were scenes so incredible, I just had to rewind and see it all over again. He pays attention to every small and seemingly adequate detail from the largest of street settings to confined spaces such as hotel rooms. One of my favorite scenes is where the character Bardo sits along his balcony top watching Ash from across the street; though he doesn’t know what he’s in for yet, he’s oddly intrigued, and another of the best scenes where Bardo fights off an aggressive pursuer of Ash where Bardo steps in begins to fight him. DePalma doesn’t show the fight except relies on sound and imagination as we watch the silhouettes of Bardo fighting off the attacker while he slowly closes in on Ashe’s face who is reacting to the entire scene like a snake watching her prey fight over her.