Together they’ve created a vivid dystopia of severe black and white with dramatic splashes of color.Ĭreated entirely on green screen, it features 1,800 effects shots, many of which are extremely, cartoonishly violent. Robert Rodriguez took his inspiration from three of Frank Miller’s books and even went so far as to share directing credits with the author. N "Sin City" (2005): A comic-book adaptation that dares to do more than simply recreate the panels of a comic book rather, it immerses you in a highly stylized world and makes you feel as if you’re living inside of it. A physical rendering of an existential crisis, one that’s painfully dreamlike and wistfully surreal. Sets get built and then expand into eternity. Actors stand in for him, his family and his colleagues, with other actors eventually playing those actors. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theater director whose latest production morphs into a theatrical manifestation of his life.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND ROGER EBERT MOVIE
I don’t love this movie the way a lot of people do - Roger Ebert declared it the best film of the decade - but I can’t deny how much I admire the ambition of its structure and its willingness to challenge its audience. N "Synecdoche, New York" (2008): Another from Charlie Kaufman, only this time he does the directing honors for the first time as well as writing the typically intricate script. Of course, we’ve all seen it a million times by now but that first shot, when Dorothy hesitantly opens the door after the tornado, still provides a thrill. Most films were still being shot in black and white back then so seeing this major transition for the first time must have been extraordinary for viewers.
The transition was so dramatic and so unprecedented. N "The Wizard of Oz" (1939): For that moment alone when it shifts from the sepia-toned idyll of a Kansas farmhouse to vibrant color as Dorothy and Toto enter the land of Oz. Individual visual moments are stirring in director Michel Gondry’s film as he explores the hazy area between what’s real and what’s imagined: a flooded house, a frozen pond at night, an empty, snow-covered beach. As a decidedly low-tech medical crew (Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood, among the strong supporting cast) enters Joel’s brain to hunt down his memories, he realizes too late that he wants to keep them. Jim Carrey plays against type as an uptight, jilted lover who tries to have flaky ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) erased from his memory.
N "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004): From the fertile mind of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman comes this wildly imaginative and deeply melancholy story of love, loss and longing.