Sherlock Holmes the Movie, 2009
Sherlock Holmes, the recent (2009) Robert Downey / Guy Ritchie movie, isn’t good for much, even if Downey was given some award nomination (he is good, and art direction did deserve some credit as well), but the end titles are great. I would have liked it slowed down a little actually. And the music is only okay. But the visuals are very well done — they fit well with the movie.
In general the titles are among the best parts of movies these days, like the opening guitar riffs in many rock songs, and then it is downhill from there. The design capabilities displayed in this minor “titles” craft in movie making, done by dedicated separate small workshops, shows a real advance — more so than the movies themselves. In this case they are using that color wash spreading in absorbent paper effect that is now used on a number of commercials. This gives lie to the cliché that “it was about as exciting as watching paint dry.”
YouTube link to see it larger.
The movie is a karate-brain, video game looking, magic realism enthralled, karate kicking, story challenged, comic book derived, karate chopping, mixed up mess. The Netflix rental DVD said RENTAL on it. It forced you to watch 10 minutes of what are now old movies. You just let them run through while you try and get back whenever the movie begins, which is guesswork. I don’t think it actually did ever begin.
Wiki says,
A. O. Scott of the New York Times was … reserved: he noted that the director’s approach to films was “to make cool movies about cool guys with cool stuff” and that Sherlock Holmes was essentially “a series of poses and stunts” which was “intermittently diverting” at best.
The studio that made the titles is Prologue. They deserve applause.
