Thursday, November 08, 2007

EMPIRE's The 20 Greatest Comic Books Movies

Screening on Thursday, November 08, 2007

1 Comments:

Blogger Fong Kok Hoong said...

20. CONSTANTINE
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton, Peter Stormare
Based on: DC Comics’ John Constantine: Hellblazer
The fanboys carped that Constantine was blond, and British, and not Keanu – but in a film this stylish, who cares? Lawrence skilfully blends Brit nihilism, LA noir and a decent Reeves turn to create a uniquely cynical gumshoe, the sort to take on Heaven and Hell and give the finger to both. It’s notable for the out-of-this-world design, as Lawrence used his music-video skills to bring Hell to the City of Angels. Devilishly good.

19. GHOST WORLD
CONSTANTINE
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Starring: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi
Based on: Fantagraphics’ Ghost World, created by Daniel Clowes
American Splendor is more artful, but the most authentic reproduction of the rich seam of underground - and distinctly unheroic - American comics so far is Zwigoff’s Ghost World. With a script by Clowes, comic fan Zwigoff nails the deadpan tone with Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson living embodiments of our bored suburban anti-heroines.

18. BATMAN RETURNS
Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken
Based on: DC Comics’ Batman
Tim Burton’s original kickstarted the late ‘80s resurgence in funnybook franchises, but his sequel is darker, more gothic, and all the better for it. This is S&M fantasy as blockbuster, filled with deformed children, leather cat suits and clowns with machine guns. Visually stunning, natch, but Burton brings a psychological edge to the twisted psyches of the villains... and hero.

17. SUPERMAN RETURNS
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey
Based on: DC's Superman, created by Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel
OK, so Bryan Singer’s entry into the Superman cinematic canon is hugely flawed – Lex Luthor’s scheme is the worst arch-villain masterplan of all time – but it’s also a film that deserves to be applauded for aiming for, and achieving, a truly epic feel. There are images here that are instantly iconic – Superman rising high above the Earth to recharge in the Sun’s rays – and seep into the consciousness, while the action scenes are on a scale that no superhero film has thus far been able to attempt.

16. DICK TRACY
Director: Warren Beatty
Starring: Warren Beatty, Madonna, Al Pacino
Based on: Chester Gould’s comic stip
Dick Tracy nabs a place by dint of its stunning design. The bold primary colours – the same shade of red, yellow, blue and green dominate - and thick prosthetics of the villains mean that virtually every frame looks like it came from the strip. Unfairly dismissed by critics, it’s a stylish mood piece with some stellar songs – and a film where movie albatross Madonna holds her own opposite Pacino has got to be worth a look.

15. HULK
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Eric Bana, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Connelly
Based on: Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk, created by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee
Talk about a misunderstood monster. Not grounded in any story arc fans would recognise - Hulk baby, anyone? – and far too silly – are the expanding purple shorts magic? – to pull in the Brokeback Mountain crowd, Ang Lee’s ambitious Hulk singularly failed to smash. However, although the start is deathly slow, Lee’s bold reading of Hulk as family psycho-drama, enhanced by the stylish editing-as-panels, is ultimately as convincing as ILM’s above par CGI. Plus, he throws a tank!

14. MYSTERY MEN
Director: Kinka Usher
Starring: Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria, Geoffrey Rush
Based on: Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot Comics, now published by Image Comics
Given that most comic book movies are inherently offbeat, it’s a brave movie that pokes fun at the genre. But Mystery Men – like its progenitor – isn’t just a scattergun Scary Movie-type spoof. In spirit, and Ben Stiller, it’s an early precursor of the Frat Pack movies, with a nonsensical plot showcasing an inspired joblot of oddball heroes. Very funny.

13. AKIRA
Director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Starring: (voices) Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki
Based on: Ôtomo’s comic, Akira, first published by Kodansha
The film that made the West wake up to anime, Akira may be a cartoon but it’s far removed from the cartoonish, good-vs.-evil comic book norm. Grim and graphically violent, the superpowers in both film and comic were devastating rather than lifesaving, controlled by sinister government projects in a nuclear-torn Neo Tokyo with the heroes possessing a distinctly ambivalent moral code. Beautifully drawn and conceptually mindblowing, this remains a cornerstone in film, and the starting point for any anime newbie.

12. DANGER Diabolik
Director: Mario Bava
Starring: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell
Based on: Italian comic Diabolik, created by Angela and Luciana Giussani
No film, not even Sin City, better reproduces the comic book look than Mario Bava’s groovy 1967 epic about an anarchic supercriminal (John Phillip Law) who steals huge amounts of cash just to strew over the huge bed where he canoodles with his equally stylish girlfriend (Marisa Mell). It’s chic, sophisticated, colourful and callous, with gorgeous costuming and set design lifted straight from the original pages.


11. HELLBOY
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, John Hurt
Based on: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, published by Dark Horse Comics
Monstrous, horned and boasting an arm made of solid rock, Hellboy is the antithesis of almost every superhero you can think of (he’s the son of the Devil, for one thing), which may be why del Toro’s labour of love is so fabulously appealing - by turns spooky, exciting and romantic. Yes, romantic...

10. SUPERMAN II
Director: Richard Lester
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman
Based on: DC Comics' Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster
Superman II should never have worked. In fact, if there had been any justice, it wouldn’t have worked, after Donner was callously fired by producers with around 70% of the sequel in the can. It should never have worked because Donner’s replacement, Richard Lester, had a playful streak that had no right to mesh with Donner’s straight-faced Americana. But it did, creating a multi-layered, multi-toned movie in which Supes falls in love, faces up to mortality, and takes on three evil Kryptonians, each as powerful as him.

9. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, William Hurt
Based on: The graphic novel, by John Wagner
Rising above its pulp roots (the graphic novel is psychologically simplistic) A History Of Violence delivers an intelligent look at a serious subject. As violent events spiral out of the apparently heroic Tom Stall’s (Mortensen) control, and the audience is caught between cheering him on and covering their eyes, you realise that you’ll never see “comic book violence” the same way again.

8. SIN CITY
Director: Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson
Based on: Frank Miller’s Sin City series
With many modern directors - the Wachowskis, say - influenced by the bold framing of comic book panels, it was only a matter of time before someone attempted a direct rendering. For his perfect neo-noir match Robert Rodriguez enlisted creator Frank Miller as ‘co-director’ and even if the movie shares the style-over-substance flaws of its source material, the technical triumph blazed a new trail for greenscreen.

7. OLDBOY
Director: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Choi Min-sik
Based on: Oldboy, by Tsuchiya Garon and Minegishi Nobuaaki
Even if you hadn’t known that Oldboy was based on an obscure Manga, you would be able to tell from the spot-on comic book framing, the exaggerated violence, the otherworldly atmosphere, and the sheer chutzpah of the plot, which sees a man, inexplicably imprisoned for fifteen years, embark on a bloody revenge. Without being as overtly stylistic as Ang Lee’s Hulk, it almost feels like you’re reading the movie as the bleak, bloody storyline unfolds. Park may never make a movie with greater impact.

6. ROAD TO PERDITION
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman
Based on: The Road To Perdition, by Max Allan Collins & Richard Piers Rayner
Sam Mendes tempers the Woo-inspired mayhem of the gangster graphic novel, imbuing the violence with visual poetry — the shootout in the rain is stunning — and finding emotional depths in its nexus of father-son relationships. Road To Perdition is a deconstruction of genre cliche, a meditation on the effects of violence, a moving family drama - and not a cape or tights in sight.

5. BLADE
Director: Stephen Norrington
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff
Based on: Marvel’s Blade, created by Marv Wolfman
The movie that really kick-started the Marvel revival (and which predated The Matrix’s leather chic by a year), Blade is a slamming slice of high-quality action cinema, dripping with attitude and cool. Goyer and Norrington completely reinvented a Marvel D-lister , turning him into a badass vampire hunter with serious kung-fu leanings - the opening scene, in which Blade lays waste to a nightclub full of bloodsuckers, is a bona fide classic.

4. SPIDER-MAN
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, James Franco
Based on: Marvel’s Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
This may be a by-the-book origin movie, but as a newly empowered Spidey faces off against a giggling Green Goblin, you’re with him every step of the way. Raimi suppressed his impish instincts to focus on Spidey’s emotions which, coupled with Maguire’s sympathetic Every(spider)man, hit such a chord with film-goers that it remains the highest-grossing superhero flick of all time.

3. BATMAN BEGINS
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy
Based on: DC’s Batman, created by Bob Kane
Thanks to being beaten with the camp stick the Batman franchise had long died on its arse. But Nolan dipped into the same well of dark malovelence and rugged believability that fuelled Frank Miller’s revamp of the comic franchise with The Dark Knight Returns, and so we fell in love with the Caped Crusader all over again, only with a cooler car, a cracking cast, and staggeringly good use of Cillian Murphy’s freakish stare. Still not sure about the title, though.

2. SUPERMAN THE MOVIE
Director: Richard Donner
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman
Based on: DC’s Superman
Verisimilitude was Richard Donner’s watchword for his adaptation of the most iconic superhero of them all (sorry, Spidey; bad luck, Bats, but the Man Of Steel is THE big kahuna). He wanted a sense that this fantastical story was actually happening, that you could believe a man could fly – and for the most part, he got it right, bringing a great American hero to a USA in great need of post-’Nam cheer. Superman’s effects have dated, and it is overlong with the odd clunker of a scene, but it has the gorgeous feel and look of a Norman Rockwell painting brought to life, and a sense of scale that’s still impressive.


1. X-MEN 2
Pulling off the toughest trick in having the depths of mythos and seriousness to appease hardcore fans, while having enough spandexed spectacle to sate the Ordinary Joe, Bryan Singer’s second stab at the X franchise is perfect comic book fodder: exciting, moving, topical and intimate. Smart, funny, complex, this is geek heaven smuggled into the mainstream, and marked Singer’s mutation from an indie director playing with the big boys.
Based on: Marvel’s X-Men, created by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Brian Cox
Director: Bryan Singer

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 11:15:00 PM

 

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