Movie – American Beauty (1999)

American Beauty won five Oscars, including four of the five major ones, capped off by Best Picture.  It only missed for Best Actress.  Annette Bening was beaten by Hilary Swank’s performance in Boys Don’t Cry.  Unlike most Oscar winning movies, which are very dramatic and heavy, this movie had enough humor in it to be called a comedy/drama.

Movie – Sunset Boulevard (1950)

This movie is an absolutely fearless look at Hollywood and the stars it leaves behind.  Gloria Swanson is a former silent film star who is now living out her days in her house on Sunset Blvd.  William Holden is a younger man “kept” by Swanson.  Erich von Stroheim plays the butler, who is also so much more.

Swanson’s character is semi-delusional, “knowing” that director Cecil B. DeMille is going to call her any minute to revive her career.  She lives in excess and eccentricity, doing things like holding a funeral for a chimpanzee she had owned.  The people around her feed her delusions and psychosis.

Movie – Sin City (2005)

This movie is a set of four interconnecting stories based on three graphic novels and a short story by Frank Miller.  The director, Robert Rodriguez, felt it was so important to ensure that Miller’s vision was correctly translated to the screen that he made him a co-director on the movie.  The result is an incredibly faithful visual translation from the graphic novels to the screen.

These stories are homages to the noir films of the 1940s with dangerous women and tough-as-nails men.  It is set in the fictional Basin City, but its police corruption and Old Town section populated with tons of lowlifes and criminals gives it its nickname of Sin City.  Even the heroes are pretty dark.

Movies Narrated By Dead People

“And if you’re reassuring yourself that I’m going to make it through this since I’m talking to you now, quit being such a smart-ass!  Hell dude, you never seen Sin City?  Sunset Boulevard?  American Beauty?” – Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass

Movie narration is something that comes and goes over the years.  Some movie critics consider it such an affront that they rip the movie to shreds simply for having narration.  Personally, I rarely even notice it, and when I do I usually appreciate it.  For me, it rings really hollow when you have a character speak his thoughts out loud to other characters because those people treat it as the most natural thing, and it’s not.  The better alternative is to have the character speak only to the viewer.

This category is not a spoiler for these three movies.  Both Sunset Boulevard and American Beauty tell you right at the beginning that the narrator is dead.  Sin City consists of multiple interconnected stories, with multiple narrators, so you don’t know which one(s) will end up dead.

I could have included a couple of other movies I have seen, but those would definitely have been spoilers.  You don’t find out until the end of those that the person you have been listening to is dead.

You can find my posts for these movies here:

Sin City
Sunset Boulevard
American Beauty

On to the reviews…