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 !

There are films that are at once throwbacks to another age while also looking forward to the future. 2005's Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow was just such as film. As its title may suggest, the film called back to the adventure serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet the way the film was made showed a potential way ahead for filmmakers. The results, while not perhaps as well appreciated at the time, continue to make for interesting viewing more than a decade later.The best (and really only) way to look at the film is something of a throwback to an era gone by. Set in an alternate and more technologically advanced 1939, the film plays with many of the tropes and clichés found from the serials of the era. There's the dashing action hero in the form of the titular "Sky Captain" Joe Sullivan (Jude Law) and plucky female reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) in the lead roles. In aesthetic terms, the film draws much from the era as well from its costumes to World War II era aircraft such as Sky Captain's P-40 to the more science fiction and fantastical elements including mechanical monsters. Elsewhere, there's a number of Easter eggs hidden within the film as well including references to Orson Welles' infamous War Of The Worlds radio broadcast and the 1933 King Kong. For those who are fans of the era, the film is a feast.Indeed the film on the whole is a visual feast. Not only does it back strong use of the diesel punk aesthetics, the filmmakers went to great lengths to give the film the feel of being from another era with its choice of lighting and camera angles that are suggestive of the era. Beyond that, the film is notable for another reason. Shot largely against blue screen, the film was one of the first to make use of the so-called "digital backlot" and the film is heavily reliant on CGI as a result. Most of the time it works though there are a handful of shots where the CGI and live action elements fail to believably work together though those moments are few and far between. It seems ironic that a film set much in an idealized and fantastical version of the past would be so reliant on computers to bring its "world of tomorrow" to life but it's something that makes the film standout.The film is truly visionary, something that can't be said very often. Even after the passing of a decade, I'm hard pressed to think of another film like it. Kerry Conran does a magnificent job as director, especially a first time director, in orchestrating all of the various elements together in a single cohesive whole. For Conran's film combines actors, costumes, props, special effects and Edward Shearmur's heroic score to create a film that pulls from the past yet creates something exciting and fresh. That's no mean feat in this day and age.For all of that though, the film is not without its weaknesses. Drawing heavily on those adventure serials for its inspiration, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow also falls foul of some of its clichés. The characters are all drawn in the most vague and cardboard of terms though its due to the credit of Law, Paltrow, Michael Gambon and Angleina Jolie that they bring them to life as well as they do. That vagueness goes right to the plot as well which, in true serial style, is little more than a series of set pieces tied together with mini-cliffhangers to keep the audience's attention while not making much logical sense. For a film that transcends the low budget nature of many of those serials to present a visually stunning feast, it seems a shame that the script couldn't do that as well.On the whole though, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is well worth watching. It combines together thrills of a bygone age with the visuals of that age and 21st century CGI to create a work that remains unique but also groundbreaking. Despite some flaws, it's a two hour action/adventure feast sure to please fans. Plus, perhaps, it might find the audience that missed it a decade ago and can enjoy it for what it is.

"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.

Sky Captain is a loving distillation of 1930s serials into an enjoyable, beautiful, intriguing, fun film that never takes itself serious but is ultimately mindless. And that's what such films should be. In my opinion this is far and away the best of it's type, far surpassing the Marvel and Transformer spectacles. While adopting many of the plot points and action sequences of serials it still manages to look fresh and surprising.While I haven't the time or energy to review all of the previous posts, it surprised me that many criticized the use of color. One even said it was adopting the colorized look of the 1970s. You'll notice that the only part of the film that had true color was The Wizard of Oz showing on the Radio City Music Hall screen. In point of fact the film was a deliberate attempt to copy the look of two-strip Technicolor which was used up to 1935. As a fan of this look I go out of my way to find such films. Sky Captain succeeded admirably in copying it.Much criticism is lodged about the lack of sparks between the principals. This also is in keeping with serials where the only clinch was the closing scene. Instead, the rivalry between investigator and reporter with lots of wisecracking copies the feel beautifully. While all of this has become hackneyed from decades of use, it is handled well and intelligently.The CGI is used with care and as an adjunct to the plot. Small details keep popping up that will require multiple viewings to assimilate.This is a film for film fans. I consider it a classic.