Sin City
Robert Rodriguez literally brings Frank Miller's Sin City to life. Miller's graphic novels already provided the storyboards and the dialogue—all Rodriguez had to do was provide the actors and make the images move. The result is a very successful experiment in filmmaking shot entirely on a soundstage at Rodriguez's studio in Austin, Texas. The melding of black and white film, color imagery, and CGI effects creates a whole new chapter to the long, storied history of film noir and reaffirms Rodriguez as the radical genius he is. The only drawback to Sin City—and it's a significant one—is the screenplay, or lack thereof. The stilted comic book dialogue at times betrays the film's efforts to make these surreal, ultra-violent characters human and other times is simply undeliverable by real-life actors. Bringing in someone to punch it up could have provided an extra layer of depth, similar to the way William Faulkner's dialogue in Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep not only drives the action but almost becomes a character of its own. Nevertheless, Rodriguez ably manages guiding multiple storylines and dozens of characters through the violent streets and dark underbelly of Basin City.