Word: comical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this, set to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," is revealed in an opening-credits salvo that's among the zippiest, most thrilling assemblages in modern movies. The rest of Watchmen--which Zack Snyder, of 300 fame, directed from the wildly admired comic-book serial written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons--can't match this Mach 2 ride through alternative history. Nor is the movie likely to live up to the hype it and its source novel have generated. Derisive laughter was heard at a critics' screening, and a Hollywood Reporter review predicted that...
Moore's story, which was published by DC Comics in 12 monthly installments in 1986, was conceived back when Ronald Reagan and the Russkies were still swapping dark threats, and few imagined the Soviet Union could collapse under its own deadweight. This was the pre-Internet age (Moore pounded out his scripts on a manual typewriter), when most comics had an afterlife only in the back-issue bins. But Watchmen soon attained the status of legend and literature; in 2005, TIME cited it as one of the 100 best novels since 1923. (See page 54 for our book critic...
...know Snyder is in no way an actor's director. (The two self-starters are Haley, who does right by his grizzled role, and Morgan, a Robert Downey Jr. knockoff who chews the scenery and his stogie with equal aplomb.) And while the climax is unusual in a comic-book movie--bad guy does very bad thing, then escapes his comeuppance by persuading folks that what he's done is really kind of a good thing--it lacks the kick of apocalyptic retribution the mass audience expects and deserves...
...only reason not to see Watchmen. There are aesthetic grounds aplenty. The book doesn't lend itself particularly well to film. It's a long, many-threaded serial narrative that's not meant to be forcibly administered in one dose. Its content is also not easily extricable from its comic-book form. The fifth chapter, "Fearful Symmetry," unfolds symmetrically, the panels at the beginning echoing the panels at the end, with a grand mirror-image spread at its heart. Palindromes, reflections, symmetries--Watchmen teems with them. Look at Rorschach's face. They give visual life to the tensions that animate...
...performances in David Lynch's Dune. It's just, mostly, inert. (The two self-starters are Haley, who does right by his grizzled role, and Morgan, a Robert Downey Jr. knockoff, who chews the scenery and his stogie with equal aplomb.) And while the climax is unusual in a comic-book movie - bad guy does very bad thing, then escapes his comeuppance by persuading folks that what he's done is really kind of a good thing - it lacks the kick of apocalyptic retribution the mass audience expects and deserves...