Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow | ||||
Kerry Conran Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Gambon, Bai Ling, Omid Djalili, Trevor Baxter, Khan Bonfils, Julian Curry, Laurence Olivier 2004 |
The stilted name, homage to the Saturday matinee serials of a more innocent time, is the tip-off. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a fantastic feast of visual and textual references to warm the heart of any sci-fi, horror and adventure fan or comic-book aficionado. It was assuredly a labor of love for its writer/director Kerry Conran, and as close as you can get to a fully animated cartoon while still featuring flesh-and-blood actors no less than Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Gambon and Bai Ling. Nodding to old cliffhangers such as "Buck Rogers," and producing sequences that look straight out of Fleischer Studios' classic "Superman" cartoons, the films of George Pal, the visually stunning movies "Things to Come," "King Kong," "Lost Horizon," and more, Conran fashions a retro-futuristic New York of the '30s with swarms of flying robots and flapping-winged fighter planes overhead. "Sky Captain" takes off from there when a mad scientist's master plan threatens to destroy the world. Only Joe Sullivan (Law) and his aerial troops can stop him ... as long as feisty gal reporter Polly Perkins (Paltrow) stays out of their way. Besides its pulpy, computer-generated magic, this spiffy production even uses digital wizardry to resurrect the image of the late Laurence Olivier in what may be the first dramatic performance by an acting legend from beyond the grave. Amazing! | |||
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