Myriam Nys A successful homage to the great adventure and fantasy movies of the 1930's and 40's. The visuals reach artistic perfection, moving smoothly and seamlessly from a black-and-white to a sepia palette and back. (Or perhaps I should say "pseudo black-and-white" and "pseudo sepia", as there are clever touches of a more icy or a more naturalistic color scheme.) The visuals are not only beautiful, inventive and evocative, they are also well suited to the material, resulting in an excellent marriage of style and plot.Paltrow, Law and Jolie possess just the right kind of matinée idol looks, artfully accentuated by some very flattering costumes. Do you want to see miniature elephants, doomsday machines, giant robots, submersible airplanes and amazon fighter pilots ? Do you want to hear tales of ungodly experiments and A Knowledge Man Was Not Meant To Pursue ? Do you want to travel through snow-covered Lands Of Mystery ? Yes, YES, yes ! YES ! Of course you do - admit it !

BA_Harrison Steven Spielberg and George Lucas laughed all the way to the bank recycling elements from old '30s serials with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), while maverick director Robert Rodriguez has shown how hyper-stylised comic-book action, shot almost entirely on a 'digital backlot', can be a success with Sin City (2005).Writer/director Kerry Conran, on the other hand… A retro-futuristic, pulp comic-book science fiction adventure set during an alternate late-1930s, Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow can't be faulted for trying: it has giant robots, miniature elephants, ray guns, weird aircraft with flapping wings, planes that can turn into submarines, hovering aircraft carriers, a trip to the legendary paradise of Shangri La, a clean-cut hero, a pretty heroine, a scientific genius sidekick, and more cool art deco production design than you can shake a Bakelite radio at. It SHOULD have been a blast…Unfortunately, despite boasting such promising ingredients, the film proves to be a disappointing dud. Much of the film's lack of success can be put down to its glut of unconvincing CGI: as innovative as it was to construct all sets digitally, it's impossible to believe for a second that the performers are anywhere other than in a film studio, acting in front of a blue screen, which makes it hard to connect with the action. The film also suffers badly from poor casting (Jude Law, as Sky Captain, is a bland hero, Gwyneth Paltrow is a bland blonde, and Angelina Jolie is wasted in a forgettable supporting role), while the whole is definitely much less than the sum of its parts, the unengaging and messy plot a load of hackneyed old tosh about missing scientists and a mad megalomaniac bent on world domination.B for effort, but D- for attainment. That's 3/10 in IMDb terms.

miss_lady_ice-853-608700 Although it purports to be a homage to thirties adventure serials, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow is strangely cold. The film was entirely computer generated and as a result, it feels robotic. The actors do not interact convincingly with the environment; the marrying of CGI with reality is what makes CGI effective.Unfortunately the visuals aren't even particularly appealing. The soft focus effect is overdone and makes the actors look very fuzzy. Jude Law is obscured in shadow so much that we hardly ever see his face. In concept it's a nice idea but it was just taken to too much of an extreme. Some of the robots Sky Captain (Jude Law) battles are cool, such as the robots with wavy arms, but others are risible (the planes that flap their wings like birds). The film is only ten years old but already it feels dated. The short that the film is based on is actually visually accomplished; it was a bad idea not to release the film in black and white. Instead the film was shot in black and white and then like in colourised films of the past, layers of colour were added.There is a faint story: reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) teams up with old flame Sky Captain (Jude Law) to solve the mystery of famous scientists that are disappearing. Can they defeat evil German Dr Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier in hologram form)? And can Polly cope with Sky Captain's past love affair with Captain Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie, looking very odd and masculine)? All the CGI in the world cannot compensate for a weak story, which this unfortunately is. It's thin but the film spreads it even thinner. Essentially it's just Law and Paltrow running around in front of a blue screen, feigning fear at various robots that they can't see. There is the odd moment of humour- Omid Djalili is very funny in a cameo role as a friend of Sky Captain's and Angelina Jolie's 'British' accent that sounds Australian is certainly something to see. To be fair to Jolie, she adds some campness; however the film takes itself too seriously to allow for campness.I wanted to like the film because I love many similar films to this: Rocketeer, Dark City, Captain America. Dark City is particularly similar- a sci-fi film that has a strong thirties feel but is not literally set in the thirties (there's enough anachronisms in Sky Captain to make it a very alternative thirties). Whilst that film is not perfect, it has much more flair and imagination than Sky Captain does, without needing a blue screen for every shot.If entirely computer-generated films really are the world of tomorrow, it's a sad day.

Steve Pulaski "Sky Captain" Joe Sullivan (Jude Law) is a free-lance fighter pilot who works to protect New York City. When a series of heavily armed robots begin to attack the city, Joe winds up working with Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), a newspaperwoman who obsessively searches for the next best thing. The robots attack Lower Manhattan by flying through the skies before making strong landings on the ground below, smashing through the streets and destroying everything in sight. The robots are a product of Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Oliver), a World War I scientist who has been working towards the ultimate goal - the fabled idea of world domination. His robot henchman are looking to take every civilian out who doesn't comply with his plans; Sky Captain is assisted by Franky (Angelina Jolie), a sexy fighter pilot who looks to assist him in tough predicaments as well as Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi), the head of research and development for Sky Captain's many planes.Such is the wacky premise of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which would've made for a fantastic pulp novel about fifty or sixty years ago. This is one of the quirkiest but most charming films to released in the 2000's, as it's the kind of film that needed to catch lightning in a bottle several times to even be made. However, thanks to writer/director Kerry Conran's persistent drive to shop the film around, finally coming in contact with producer Jon Avnet and then the production company Aurelio De Laurentiis to finance it, Sky Captain evolved into a $70 million studio gamble that was, to be fair, lucky to see the light of day.This is the kind of film that seems destined for critical and financial disaster (and only the latter became slightly true). Sky Captain is one big homage to the action serials of yesteryear, being shot with monochromatic sepia filters to replicate the feel of a grainy, pulpy adventure being shown through a shoddy film projector. It was also the first major film to be shot almost entirely on a digital backlot, which has actors acting before greenscreen sets (now a pitifully common practice), with Sin City following a year later. Sky Captain is not a known commodity either, not stemming from any line of comics (although it could've fooled me by its look and story) nor any preexisting media property. With that, this film was a gigantic leap of faith that turned out modestly well.To begin with, I absolutely love the look of the film. The monochromatic filters, the blatantly artificial backgrounds, and the action serial-feel in the pacing and suspense all pay a cheerful homage to a genre we don't see anymore. I'd shell out money for a film like Sky Captain much faster than a contemporary action property, where scenes don't even last three seconds and camera angles muddle the action to make the chaos indistinguishable. This is a film with a beautiful look, assuming the looks of a city-based 1920's film like Metropolis, the perilous quick-cuts of a 1930's action films like King Kong, and a gritty 1940's film noir like The Maltese Falcon throughout its one-hundred and six minute runtime.Law and Paltrow also drum up likable chemistry throughout the film; they assume their roles nicely, with Law probably being the only actor who should play a fighter pilot by the name of "Sky Captain" and Paltrow really nailing the news-obsessed reporter taken along for a ride by the coattails of a masked crusader of the sky. With the visual feast and the enjoyable banter between the leads taking place, it's hard to initially see Sky Captain's core issue. To be fair, I was gearing up to write a positive review up until I realized something gravely troubling.For a film decorated with classic special effects and a nostalgic look, despite using new technology, the story here is stunningly simple and unengaging. Some may claim that it's adhering to the story of the simplistic page-turners from decades gone past, but in the modern age, there should be at least a bit more meat and substance to the story. And if not, a basic plot line like the one used here could work as a satire of the genre. Yet, through all its silliness and its routine plot, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is serious in its story and that's a frustrating thing when the story is lacking as it is here.At the end of the day, though, it's hard to clamp down on Sky Captain too much. It does something that's totally brave and foreign to contemporary cinema; the fact that this film got past the talking stages is an unprecedented achievement for present-day Hollywood and Conran himself, who wasn't working off any nepotism whilst pursuing his dream to get this film made (he shot a cheap short film in his living room to shop to producers). If you can forgive a fairly weak story and embrace the acting and the visuals, there's no good reason to skip Sky Captain - there's your recommendation within a kinda/sorta nudge in the other direction.Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, and Laurence Oliver.