Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

From Zanecorpwiki

This movie is all about the psycho-visual aesthetic, and that's good enough. DVD and Blu-Ray

Summary

You could take literally any frame in this movie and you'd have a picture you could drop into a graphic novel. Really, a stunning achievement, and that's what this movie's about.

It's a concept movie: make a 1940's live action comic book with modern special effects techniques. The movie succeeds (unlike the other concept movie I just watched) because they don't mess with the concept, they just do it.

Notes and Details

Special effects don't mean anything any more. Even better special effects aren't impressive, because they're expected. In 5 or 10 or however many years, there'll be a film that completely replaces live actors and filmed scenes entirely and so completely that you won't be able to tell the difference, and it won't mean all that much because it's already guaranteed to happen sooner or later.

Even so, this movie is worth watching for the visuals because it's not about "better special" effects, it's about how you use digital rendering and other techniques to create a certain look. For all it's budget and flash and mass appeal, this is really an art movie in every regard.

"Comic book" movies are fairly common now-a-days, but as far as I know, this is the only one that attempts to look like a comic book. As mentioned before, you could freeze any frame in this movie and you'd have a perfect image for a graphic novel panel. But taking the comic aesthetic goes beyond just making highly polished, filtered images. There's a certain ineffability to what's been done here.

Needless to say, I am both very impressed and very much enjoyed this movie.