visually very well-done; i wasn’t too sure how they were going to animate Marjane Satrapi’s art, but what they arrived at was perfect. that said, it’s a bit…French. definitely a much different feel to it than the graphic novels. less hopeful and raw, more…French. but again, i suffer when i read the source material first.
exceptionally well-crafted and acted, with the BEST age effects i have _ever_ seen (in both directions). everything about it is beautiful and gently done.
awesome! visually gorgeous, well-paced and with great music and voices.
really pretty creepy, not necessarily appropriate for younger kids. the 3-D didn’t do much for me, but your mileage may vary.
plays like Zack Snyder only felt confident in his direction after he got halfway through – it’s a little uneven, especially through the first hour, but you know what else is uneven? the graphic novel.
i support pretty much all the story/detail changes made, and for all its initial awkwardness the movie really gathers steam by the midpoint and commits, turning out actually pretty awesome.
Rorshach and Nite Owl are virtuoso performances, startlingly identical to the source characters, visually and spiritually. Jackie Earle Haley, HOLY SHIT; that is a talented motherfucker.
(Malin Akerman: also spot on, although i never did like that character so i care less about her great acting.)
The Comedian isn’t as strongly acted as i’d have liked, and i feel Ozymandias was played in a way that might ruin an important plot suspense point that occurs late in the game.
TERRIBLE MUSIC! *PTOOIE*, they should be ashamed of their shitty music! i can’t decide if the awful music was artfully intentional, and therefore a tragic misstep, or just a mark of an incompetent music department. decent music would have brought this up at least half a star for me, if not more. it’s hard to describe how lame and jarring the music is – shitty, shitty, shitty.
there is one great thing about this movie, and his name is Tom Felton.
why do they insist on making these movies without having read the book? i get that things must changed and omitted in an adaptation, i DO, but they truly don’t seem to understand what the IMPORTANT parts are, and they end up gutting the dramatic peaks in favor of pointless diversions that don’t further the plot. it’s as though the producers are so offended that the books are good that they’re determined to take every high point of the story and re-do it from scratch with no regard for how it affects the story as a whole – or toss them entirely. what kills me is that the story they abandoned was clear and simple, and they replace it with something convoluted that doesn’t have dramatic power.
there’s no funeral?! they could have wrung that theater like a washcloth, but nah, skip it. instead of having an exciting final quidditch match at the end of the year where harry finally gets to smooch ginny, they remove that in favor of a 15-minute practice at the beginning, slip that kiss in there quickly and randomly, no big whup.
i admit that all these movies are strongly hampered for me by Daniel Radcliffe and Micheal Gambon. Radcliffe is a pretty young man but has never been right for Harry, and at this point is just not a good actor – stiff and fakey with an emotional range consisting of vague amusement or PMS. Michael Gambon lacks that je ne se Dumbledore, always playing him as just some old guy, no impishness or hidden power. and how far can you go when your 2 protagonists are so lame?