It has been almost 10 years since the release of the first Sin City, which was on the forefront of digital film making. Director Robert Rodriguez fully embraced the film to digital transition early on jumped at the chance to use HD digital cameras and green screens to make the world of the graphic novel Sin City come to life on screen. Equal parts eye popping and absurd, Sin City made a big splash when it was released in 2005.

So here we are 9 years later with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. It took Rodriguez and company a long time to get the sequel into production and finished. The movies are very similar. They both adhere to the black and white artwork with pops of color of the graphic novels. They both contain and shuffle around the plots of three Sin City stories (“Just Another  Saturday Night”, “A Dame To Kill For” and “The Long, Bad Night”. “Bad” was never published and is far and away my favorite piece of this collection). There are a few returning characters (some of whom have been recast) and a fair portion of these stories take place before the first movie, so it can get a little confusing if you haven’t seen it in some time.

Now visually, this movie is often a technical marvel (just like the first). There is are some crazy looking scenes and transitions here. It’s often times a gorgeous piece of work. The characters are heavy, the violence almost poetic. I dig noir material, so I just smile at the super corny lines.

Now content wise, if you didn’t like the first movie, this won’t change your mind. It’s more brutal stories. Sin City is filthy. It’s full of horrible people. There’s no way around it and that’s the point of this world. Some of them get off being so awful, others are awful because that’s how they have to survive. Men and women are both the villains, the victims and the heroes. Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) is the definition of a scumbag politician. Ava (Eva Green) is a scheming, conniving, stone cold, manipulative, black widow. Johnny (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is completely bad ass and awesome.

I had a good time watching this, although I think that Johnny’s story blows away the other two by a mile. I always wanted to see what was happening to him and the conclusion of his story is super gnarly. The population of Sin City is a memorable one and is a trip to see. It was nice to return to a place that I’m really glad doesn’t actually exist (at least I hope it doesn’t).

I came into Hercules not expecting much. One of those movies you consider watching when it hits home and you forget about it until one day it’s knocking on your door. I typically like this genre of movie and I gotta say I liked this the more it went on.

Hercules is a man of legend. He’s essentially a mercenary who travels about looking to help people out, saving his coin to eventually retire somewhere quiet. Through his adventures he’s made a few friends that fight by his side. We are introduced to them in the first scene where they are finishing up a job. In their downtime, they are approached by the daughter of the King of Thrace, who is looking for help to fend off a warlord from taking over their kingdom. But all is not what it seems!

So what did I like? First and for most, Dwayne Johnson. The guy just has screen presence. He’s just fun to watch and he plays Hercules well. He’s got the size for it and he’s got the look and chops to be able to oscillate between being a likable hero to a ferocious hero that crushes skulls. The supporting cast is very good too, Hercules is surrounded by some cool characters. It’s a well produced movie as well. Big battle scenes, cool interiors and exteriors, good fight choreography. I watched the unrated version which was rather odd as this is a pretty bloodless movie. Any real carnage isn’t shown on camera. There’s some great CG work as well, there’s a lot of stuff that integrates so well you’d never know it wasn’t real without watching the special features (I’m really impressed by the wolves). I didn’t know Brett Ratner directed this until the credits. It’s competent direction, nothing special or terrible.

I also liked their take on Hercules. His legend is really in his stories. They grounded everything in reality where his tales of killing giant town leveling beasts and a 5 headed hydra are actually exaggerations of what he did. What people thought was a monster, was just men wearing elaborate armor for example. Hercules is still an accomplished hero with amazing strength, but the lore surrounding him just adds to his name (and he doesn’t let it go to his head).

I think the movie starts off a bit to typically, but as it goes on it just gets better. You get to know the characters well, the scenes build well and the end is really satisfying. Feels like you’re watching an adventure unfold right in front of you. I can’t ask for anything more from a movie!

I Saw the Devil is a brilliant Korean crime/drama movie that mixes in horror elements to up the intensity to fantastic heights. The cop/criminal relationship gets a new twist here which makes this story one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

A serial killer, Kyung-chul, is on the loose and when he attacks police officer Kim Soo-hyeon’s pregnant fiance, the hunt for this man becomes personal.  While the typical plot line for this type of movie means we watch the cop chase the killer for the entire movie, in I Saw the Devil, the killer is found in the beginning. Kim is on an obsessive mission, going rogue and uses his own channels to quickly find Kyung . He stops him in a green house as he is preparing his next kill. Kim saves the woman and beats the stuffing out of Kyung, then surprisingly let’s him go. Kim wants to the predator, to draw out Kyung’s punishment. That proves to be a very bad idea.

Flipping the script on this genre with such a fresh idea makes for one hell of a ride. Kyung is an absolute psychopath and each encounter he has with Kim gets more and more brutal. The cat and mouse chase these two have is just an escalation in chaos. By putting Kying on his back foot, Kim ends up making the monster worse. This movie is not for those with constitutions, there is a ton of blood and violence. As gruesome as it can be,  ISTD is just as beautiful. Kim Jee-woon is a fantastic director. The framing, the lighting and the grimy-ness of this cinematic world is expertly crafted.

I keep wanting to compare this to Silence of the Lambs in terms of tone. Mad men sweeping others into their darkness, leaving bodies in their wake. Such a great movie, I highly recommend it (warning: subtitles).

After making a few movies with budgets in the 9 figure range, writer/director/producer extraordinaire Jon Favreau scales things down to his indie film making roots. Chef is a fun little movie about man who puts his life back together one sandwich at a time.

Favreau plays Carl Casper, a well known chef who’s been headlining a popular restaurant for the better part of a decade. When he gets called out by a food critic for becoming a burned out star, Carl publicly confronts him and the meltdown goes viral on the internet. Spun further into a loop, he retreats and struggles with where his life is going.

Chef is an easy movie to digest and enjoy. It’s a cute personal growth and redemption story shown in a unique environment. Favreau went to great lengths to show the love and craftsmanship for the culinary arts. There are many food montages sprinkled throughout the movie, usually shown as Carl’s safe retreat from life. By figuring out food, he figures out himself and the people he loves.

Beyond the work that consumes him, is his family. Ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) and his 10 year old son, Percy (Emjay Anthony, who is quite good). He often puts his fatherhood aside in favor for work and as a result, doesn’t really know his son. Carl losing his job and looking for a new one turns out to be the best thing to happen to him as it gives him a change to get connect and teach Percy for the first time.

Chef is a nice return to simple, straight forward movie making for Jon Favreau. He knows how to tell a good story, cast it with great people and make it look really good regardless with how much money he has to work with. Fair warning though: have a good meal before you watch Chef. Getting hungry while watching is a serious issue otherwise!

I heard Edge of Tomorrow was really good, but like most people I never went out to see it. Tom Cruise in a action/sci-fi movie is usually a good bet, plus this movie was directed by Doug Liman who directed and produced three of the Bourne movies. The guy knows his action movies. With that pedigree, this movie is awesome! Right up to the end.

Tom Cruise plays Cage, a military officer doing PR for the military during the alien invasion by “Mimics”. These large, vicious, shape shifting quadrupeds are devastating the human population. It takes an advanced exo-skeleton suit for mankind to have even the slightest chance of killing more than one. Cage gets thrown into the thick of combat and through a fight with one, gains the ability to reset time every time he dies. He’s brought back right when he wakes up in boot camp. Confused at what’s happened and what to do, he meets Special Forces Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) in the field. When he describes his new powers, she tells him to find her when he wakes up again. When he does, she explains what happened and how they can stop the invasion together.

So time travel is the main hook of the movie and it’s handled really well. Cage is the only one who remembers each day, so he gets to know everyone he meets really well over the course of his resets (I figure he does it at least 300 times). So while they don’t know Cage as they only know him for a day or so, he comes to know them as friends. I’m really impressed by the structure of the script and editing as they repeat things just enough to set the stage and wisely show straight continuity (the farm house scene being the best example) to keep things moving and interesting. There’s some great action scenes, some good laughs, great characters (Rita especially), everything you could want in a movie like this. And then the last five minutes happen.

It’s atrocious. It makes no sense whatsoever with how the teleportation ability is established. It breaks the rules and robs everything the characters were working for. The characters essence is completely thrown in the garbage after all of the hard work and planning  of the production. It simply creates a Hollywood happy ending for the sake of having a trite Hollywood happy ending. With how good the movie is up to the ending (I’ve never read the book either), I can only assume a stupid, redundant studio executive trying to justified his/her job forced this asinine ending upon the film makers.

I had a blast with this movie until the end. It completely mars the experience. The true ending is there too, just roll the credits after the final explosion and you have the perfect beginning, middle and end. I would love nothing more to throw nothing but praise at Edge of Tomorrow, but the end annoys me beyond belief, it’s horrible writing. I still think you should see it though.

I heard the buzz about Snowpiercer quite some time ago. It was making the festival and comic/sci fi convention rounds and getting a lot of praise thrown at it. I made a note to see it and forgot about it until it came up on my list. My only regret is not seeing it sooner.  Full of great ideas and execution, Snowpiercer is one to remember.

A climate change experiment goes horribly wrong sending Earth into an ice age. A man named Wilson knew it was going to happen and spent his time and resources on an elaborate train system designed to keep its passengers alive. Not many people make it onto the train (around 1000, I think. The train is about 60 cars long,) and a class system is in place to keep order. It’s broken up between First Class, Economy and what could only be called “cargo”. The closer to the front of the train you are, they better off you are.

Snowpiercer is a really great sci-fi/thriller/action hybrid that rolls up social, economic and environmental issues all into one thought provoking, narrow ecosystem. We join the people in the back of the train on the cusp of the 18th year anniversary of the great freeze. This train has been running on it’s expansive global track for that long and it’s a really rough existence. Through out the movies’ two hour run time we learn how everything works and why the systems are in place. Curtis, who got on the train when he was 17, is the leader of the revolution. The back of the train has had enough of being treated like cattle and come up with a plan to get to the engine to take over train.

To say anymore would really give away the great moments and reveals of this fascinating world. There is a great international cast of characters that make this movie work so well. The production is fantastic with amazing car designs that range from ghettos to factories to luxury businesses, living quarters and entertainment areas. They really sell this unique world through its design. It’s a wonder to see how the only people on the planet left alive live in a segregated and physically narrow (maybe 30 feet across?) existence. There’s some truly great action scenes as well and great care in the  direction (I tip my hat to Joon-ho Bong) make it a pleasure to watch. There is  a remarkable sense of claustrophobic expanse (that might make more sense after you see the movie) from beginning to end.

Clearly you can tell I loved Snowpiercer. It asks you to suspend your disbelief quite a bit though, so a lot could bother some people. While a good amount of detail and answers are given by the end, it doesn’t spell out everything for you. There’s no mention on how this thing was built, where it started and how anyone even got on it. How does this train stay in perpetual motion and where do all the resources come from? The ending is rather divisive as well. Personally, I think it works and really fits with what was going on. The movie really just gives you enough to go on and hopes that you go along for the ride.  I was on board pretty much from the start so it worked for me.

The more I think about it, the more parallels I see between Snowpiercer and the first Matrix movie. If you are up for jumping down a rabbit hole like that again, by all means follow my lead and go ahead feet first and with eyes wide open.

Some quick hits for season!

Fun Size is a cute Halloween movie. Wren is forced to take out her little trouble maker brother, Albert, out for Halloween (so she misses a very important party). For some reason Wren isn’t popular in high school (despite looking like a super model) so that party is a really important one for her social life. Cue crisis when she loses track of him and spends the night looking for him. It’s an easy watch with some weird set ups (Albert makes friends with a convenience store clerk, played by the great Thomas Middleditch, which is odd, but they do mention it so it kinda works anyway). I liked it more than I thought I would. Rated PG-13 because “shit” is said a few times.

Final Destination 5 tries to keep Death in business and it sort of succeeds. These movies are really like the Supernatural Saw franchise so it’s really hard to get this formula fresh. There’s only so many times you can make bolts and other restraining equipment magically loosen and still be scary. They came up with some good kill scenarios, but a heavy reliance on CG effects make them less effective (it came out in 2011, smack dab in the 3D craze so you get a lot of cheesy things flying at camera too). I really liked the end though. Cool idea to tie it into the franchise and it’s really brutal. Effective finale.

Deliver Us From Evil was disappointing as far as horror/scares go, but it was a good, well told story. I like Eric Bana, he’s often a great lead and he can pull of being a new NYC cop. The haunting scenes are surprisingly tame and the last encounter is pretty disappointing. The case itself is fun to watch unfold though. Nice way to start the Prime Evil with a domestic abuse call which leads to a few other odd cases that string things together. Some quality direction, make up work and a solid cast make this a good, but not great movie.

Why anyone thought they needed to remake 2004’s District B13 is beyond me. I guess Luc Besson found a few days to churn this out for someone who had a few bucks to spend. They reeled in Paul Walker as the lead and invited David Belle back for another round (there was a sequel in 2009).

Brick Mansions takes place in Detroit. A large slum has been walled off from the rest of the city where crime runs rampant. An undercover cop (Paul Walker) gets help from an ex-con (David Belle) to try and stop a crime lord’s plan to level downtown Detroit. District B13 is most notable for introducing the world to parkour. David Belle is one of the pioneers of the sport and the free running stunts and choreography gave action fans something new and exciting to watch. The same is on display here with Belle strutting his stuff, something I’m sure Jackie Chan is impressed with.

If you’ve never seen DB13, then what’s here could seem pretty fresh to you. It’s an average action movie in general and RZA being cast as the main villain doesn’t do the movie any favors. While not his worse performance, RZA isn’t a good actor so there’s not a big well of praise to dip into for him. There’s some great stunt work and fight choreography here and there but there’s not much else to raise this movie to its above average status.