Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014)

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (R) Review

"Not a Film to Kill For"

Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn) and Frank Miller (Sin City) hit the bricks once again in a return to the gritty monotone ultraviolent world of sin and sex.  Unfortunately no one seems really up for another round.

So what can we blame this misfire on?  Almost ten years have passed since the original's translation onto the screen, and it must be admitted that most of the choicest comic material was put into that version.  A Dame To Kill For is sadly not anywhere near the best Sin City story, and neither are the ones Frank wrote anew for the screenplay.  The untapped potential is a bloody strike against.  The Hollywood type "prequel"/"sequel" is confusing timeline-wise (not to mention full of plot holes if you try to line it up with the previous incarnation).  The ghost of Hartigan (Bruce Willis, in a boring cameo) is present just because it increases star power and a sequel demands a return of the first's stars (supposedly).  Marv, as played by Mickey Rourke, was the enigmatic star of the first movie, and so gets shoehorned into every place possible frame here which hurts the overall story.  There is no equivalent of  the excellent Yellow Bastard to give us a breather from his bizarre man-tics.  He's always popping up to ask "how you doin babe," or "hey kid" to the other new or recurring characters as if to say yes, I approve of this addition.  But does the audience?  These new kids (Eva Green baring all, Josh Brolin showing off his orbital sockets, Joseph Gordon Levitt as a cocky gambler) do well but unfortunately it's the ones behind the production that just don't seem to have the spark.  Miller's inks and Rodriguez's camera (with some help from Tarantino) brought the manic fury and razor-sharp Noir of the original to the screen almost a decade ago, and just don't seem to have the drive to fully return.  There's a lot of machismo posturing but not much conviction.  The visuals aren't as unique, the brand isn't as obscure, the story isn't as diverse or convincing, and with some of the best stories left behind for iffy new material or perhaps to fuel a future sequel that probably won't ever happen, it's a damn sin (even with it's harder "R" rating).

3 Who Shrunk Marv's Nose out of 10 (BAD)

Nebraska (2013)

Nebraska (R) - Review

"Drive, He Said"

An elderly father by the name of Woody Grant, who is either on the verge of absolute dementia or just plain rotten stubbornness, receives a letter in the mail that he has won a million dollars and becomes enamored of the idea. Despite his family's warnings and condemnations about the fraudulent letter he is resolute to get to Lincoln, Nebraska to claim his prize, even if he has to walk the whole way from Montana. Only his youngest son David is willing to give in and drive him, and thus begins a long overdue bonding over the road and a couple of beers. But when his old home town and extended family hear of his new found fortune, old friends and foes have a thing or two to say to the Grant family.

Alexander Payne (The Descendants, Sideways) makes another bid for Oscar gold with this fabulously small yet heartfelt Midwestern comedy that, like it's protagonist Woody, doesn't have a mean bone in it's body. Bruce Dern plays the old codger Woody with mesmerizing genuineness. The veteran actor's face is a mask of disheveled hair and confused expression, but whether its senility or just old plain orneriness is one of the many things to be discovered here in Dern's Oscar Oscar caliber portrayal. Woody's opinion about Mount Rushmore?  "Just a bunch of unfinished rocks.  Only one that has any clothes is Warsh-ington," This type of  humor works in mysterious ways, is family friendly (except for one needed F-bomb that probably earned Nebraska it's R), and is very welcome. David, his son, is nicely downplayed by SNL alumni Will Forte (thankfully without all his usually stuttering or gaffing). David wishes to spend more time with his father, and along the way he really gets to know the man his father is, where he came from and who he wants to be.

That is Nebraska's true joy, that of organic discovery of a person, the shifting of opinion over time. This is most noticeable in the script with Woody's wife, at first shes seen as an abrasive shrew that he constantly complains about (with apparent due cause), and yet as the film goes on we get to know her as truly caring for and protecting Woody (she's just believes in tough love). It shows a grand mastery of screen time and it wraps itself around nearly all the characters, even those redneck yokels that must surely appear in any small town America film. It is a pure delight to have it come off so natural and unforced and still maintain reality (which is almost solely due to Dern's amazing performance) something I could not say for The Descendants.
Filmed in a delicious black and white, the film is an old family photo album filled with images and stories that no one ever bothered to explain.  Now opened it's bursting with photos of half remembered faces and names just on the tip of your tongue (better ask Mom), but when it all comes rushing back there is that priceless warm feeling of remembrance, of family.

8.5 Lincoln's Ears out of 10 (GREAT)

Sin City (2005)

Sin City (R) - Review

"Family Values"

A city populated by criminals, victims, prostitutes and macho men.  A neo-noir slugfest of questionable morals exploding onto the screen in black and white (and red and yellow).

Brought to life from the pages of comic-book legend Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) directs the maniacs and femme-fatales into a whirlwind of bloody knuckles and smoking barrels.  Based mostly on The Hard Kill and That Yellow Bastard, the film is almost a panel for panel, shot for shot translation instead of adaptation.  The dedication to the look and feel works tremendously, especially with Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis fleshing out the iconic roles of Marv and Hartigan.  Mickey's role is the linchpin as Marv, a pyscho with a hell of a jaw.  Rourke is perfect for the tremendous tough guy, and the prosthesis bring out his jawline and his brow wonderfully, much like Perlman's make up on Hellboy brought the character to true life.  Meanwhile Bruce is the prototypical sacrificial good cop Hartigan, chasing a demonic politically-protected pervert (one of the most unique villains ever put to paper and somehow brought to screen perfectly by actor Nick Stall and a lot of yellow tinting).  The rest of the cast supports them to a great degree, Elijah Wood playing against type as an unstoppable killer, Rosario Dawson as a S&M leather clad enforcer, Rutger Hauer as a sinful bishop, Benicio Del Toro as a dead sleezeball, the cast really is terrific.  Even Quentin Tarrantino got in on the fun, stepping in to direct a scene or two without breaking style.

A couple of duds should be mentioned however.  Sometimes the green screen limits the action and creates some awkward compositing, and not every member of the cast sparkles.  There can be a wish for more of an intercutting between the stories than the existing one-at-a-time framework.  Having to wait through the half-slog of Clive Owen's Dwight to see the conclusion of Hartigan is a bit of a drag, slipping through the series' true star Marv so early on is a bit of a let down.  As direct of a translation as it is most of the mysoginy and strange femme-power from the book makes it onscreen and won't be everyone's cup of teeth. Still, the rapid highs overshadow it's lows, and Sin City has no place for grey area.  Either you are all in or you are out, and damn the consequences.

8 Hatchet Noses out of 10 (GREAT)

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Carnival of Souls (UR)

"Fresh Organ"

A young woman driving to a new town to start her new job as a church organist (!?) is besieged by visions of waterlogged figures, ghostly ghouls who pursue her through abandoned boardwalks and on streets of her newly adopted home.  What secret could be revealed in their dead gaze?

Shot on a microscopic budget, the movie achieves much with its moddy organmusic score, rich black and white photography and a plot structure that either for intelligence or budgetary reasons is not spoon fed to the viewer.  Carnival is similar to the best of the Twilight Zone TV series, though predating those and lacking some the series inappropriate humor.  Souls obviously inspired many future horror films (not the least of which being Romero's Dead films), but sitll could teach us all a thing or two about small town exuberance, working miracles withing your means and comes wrapped in brilliant outsider-industry charm

7 Empty Merry-Go-Rounds are Creepy, who knew?  out of 10 (GOOD)

Eyes Without A Face (1960)

Eyes Without A Face (NR)

"Got no human grace"

Esteemed French horror tale of a Father and Plastic Surgeon who serially kidnaps young damsels in order to remove their faces to restore the destroyed one of his only daughter.  Tame by today's standards, most of the scares are implied or not shown (a relief for the squeamish).  The little daughter generates a lot of sympathy and is the star of the piece (there is quite a bit of overacting in the other roles), but nothing can prevent its own pretentious high-handedness and simplistic plot from spoiling its graceful mood.

5 Least there's no Nic Cage/Travolta out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)

The Innocents (1961)

The Innocents (NR)

"Cold was the wind"

A grandiose mansion is in need of a Governess, and upon arrival she is filled with dread and suspicions regarding her new young wards, a brother and sister, and the horrific history of the house's former tenants in this creeky old 1960s ghost story filmed in a beautiful black and white.

Filled with paranoia and a psychological creep that pushed the envelope of it's time, The Innocents seen today is a gorgeous yet restrained fable about family secrets;  where the worst is often left unsaid, leading to them getting worse in the viewer's imagination.  So is the nanny seeing these things or is she crazy?  That really doesn't matter, as it is the crux of the tension.  The ambiguity may enrage, or creep out, most of the audience.  Yet those with short attention spans or those unable to span the generations of cinema to it's time of creation might be rather well off watching cement set.  Still the cinematic aptitude of the production and the influential nature of its legacy lead to it's relevancy today, and still an interesting watch even if it is mostly is hugely outdated and retains only a smidgen of it's creep factor due to it's derivative descendants.

5.5 Man that Lady Has To Be Crazy out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)

Shock Corridor (1963)

Shock Corridor (UR) - Review

"BZZZZZT"

As always director Samuel Fuller was way ahead of the curve with this one.  It predates the film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by almost a decade.  Its the story of a journalist who decides to go undercover at a mental hospital to get to the bottom of a murder that was committed there.  Johnny is his name and he succeeds in getting himself committed by convincing the psychiatrists that he is sexually deviant and incestuously in love with his "sister" who in reality is just his stripper girlfriend.  She's afraid that being among all those lunatics will rub off on Johnny, and so it does to great shock value and melodramatic effect.  Old fashioned acting and cornball antics aplenty here, patients who are mad as hatters and speaking in tongues )all very taboo subjects in the early 60s I'm sure).  It's the undertone, the implied horrors and the grim mood that Fuller captures here effectively.  When one inmate (who thinks he is a Civil War Rebel) breaks through his mental fugue and starts to spill the beans on the murder we see his mind open and his secrets about being a POW and tortured in the Korean War is exceptionally chilling/captivating (impressive with such an over the top performance and role).  This is Fuller at his pulp crime best and for its time it must have indeed been shocking to have a film be so frank about race and the treatment of the mentally ill, even if its used for over dramatic purposes.  Schlocky need not always have such bad connotations.

6.5 Loony Bins out of 10 (GOOD)

The Lower Depths (1957)

The Lower Depths (NR)

"Japanese Blues"

Gorky's famous Russian play about the lower class living in squalor is transposed to Edo period Japan by master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.  It is an interesting juxtaposition, especially considering it was written right before the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, and Kurosawa handles it's transition without a conflict of interest.  Keeping the play structure intact by using a lack of camera angles and a flat set design allows for long acting takes with his cast.  Chewing through the material with gusto is legendary screen actor Toshiro Mifune but many of Akira's frequent collaborators have a part in the drama.  The slum-tennants are at odds with their betters and landlords, and despite their innante humor and obvious mental illnesses they function as a family and survive as a unit.  That is until Mifune's thief falls in love, but not with the lord's wife who he has been having an affair.  Soon there is murder and accusations and misinterpretations among the upper and lower classes, and while some of the drama may be over the top among the interesting cast of characters, the laughter they emit can be genuine and Toshiro's leading charisma is full force.  And if Akira's camera is restrained in order to revere the source play, the choices of setting and set design only go to enhance both Gorky's and Kurosawa's legacies.

7 That One Old Dudes out of 10 (GOOD)

Stray Dog (1949)

Stray Dog (PG)

"Hot Dog"

Master director Akira Kurusawa casts his greatest star, Toshiro Mifune, against type as an idealistic rookie police officer in 1940s Tokyo.  Mifune is distraught at the prospect of losing his position when he loses his police issue pistol, become frantic when it is discovered the gun has been used in a recent.  Mifune is subdued yet boiling under the surface, but the real masterstroke of Stray Dog is the image of post-war post-surrender life in Japan.  The slums, the people, the empty streets, the real life locations; they all echo ghost like and sadly angry from the past in stark black and white photography.  Other pleasures are the vintage Japanese baseball footage, the above-the-law attitudes of the underworld denizens,  Mifune has done better police procedurals (High and Low), but Mifune's wise old partner provides the humor and Toshiro provides the struggle between law and order and the law of the wild:  Kill or be killed.

8 Somebody install some Sony Air Conditioning out of 10 (GREAT)

Cul-De-Sac (1966)

Cul-De-Sac (NR) - Review

"No Outlet"

Two wounded hoodlums stumble upon an ancient English castle and decide to hold up until help arrives.  Unfortunately for them it is owned by a retired businessman and his new French wife, and their strange relationship is the doomed keystone to this psychological thriller from then relative newcomer Roman Polanski (China Town).

Moody yet humorous, Cul-De-Sac places its characters in a dead end and reports on their actions (much like Polanski's earlier film Knife In The Water, the exception is the bursts of humor).  This time what characters they are, providing incredulous laughs and demented mannerisms.  The American hoodlum, Dickie, is played by former blacklisted character actor Lionel Stander (the voice of Kup from the animated Transformers movie, if you can believe it).  Donald Pleasance (Halloween) is his eye-popping bald self as George the husband and his emasculatingly playful wife Teresa is played by Francoise Dorleac.  Even the location is quite a character, a small medieval fortress perched on a hill that is sometimes isolated by the sea (depending on the tricky tides).  Dickie is a gruff charmer, immune to and sickened by the impropriety displayed by George's wife, whose promiscuous and precocious nature drives George to obvious neurosis. It's the kind of movie whose pleasurable details are in the quick glances and body language, the acting is the voice of the script, and this uniquely European exercise in tension is an early example of Polanski's deft touch.

7 Albie Needs A Drink out of 10 (GOOD)

Underworld U.S.A. (1961)

Underworld U.S.A. (NR)

A street-wise kid witnesses the murder of his father in a shady alley on New Years Eve, and some twenty years later is finally seeking a cold blooded revenge that can only exist in Sam Fuller's gritty old fashioned crime story Underworld U.S.A.

Tully Devlin (played with machismo by Cliff Robertson) is low rent hood that has spent his youth in orphanages/reformatories and jail.  Knowing only one of the four men who killed his father by name, Tully gets himself arrested again when he finds out the killer, Vic, is dying in prison.  Tully begins to exact a "Yojimbo" like vengeance, setting the criminals on themselves yet Tully is no anti-hero.  He is a street rat through and through, violent and selfish and beyond redemption.  Only a former-prostitute caught up in his ring of deception can melt his hell bent heart in a sad grey-widow kind of way, but will it lead to his destruction?

Old fashioned in all the right ways (feels much more 50s than 60s), the writing is punchy and over stylized, the cinematography graphical and stark, the acting sweaty and grim.  It's all the hallmarks of a good Fuller film, a man whose earlier career in criminal reporting really lends itself to the material.  In his hands Tully's character doesn't resort to the same old tropes to be a likeable thug, he is a full-on hardened criminal without regrets and yet his revenge kick is completely relatable and the under handed way he goes about it is somehow commendable.  Even when he laughs at the idea of marrying Cuddles the whore, or tricking the police into getting his enemies killed, he's still a likeable lout that is still without a redeeming quality.  Perhaps since he's a paragon of virtue compared to the real bad guys, sunglasses wearing assassins in Cadillacs with no conscience about feeding heroin to school girls on bicycles.  Tully meanwhile is the perfect Fuller prototype "hero," a raw knuckled down on his luck everyman who despite a lifelong commitment to crime, its all by circumstance and he still has a few veins of pure gold in his scarred black heart, leaving him perilously just a few steps away from getting greased for his humanity.

7.5 Rolling Drunk Punks out of 10 (GOOD)

12 Angry Men (1957)

12 Angry Men (NR)

"Deliberate deliberations"

Sidney Lumet's riveting back-of-court drama finds Henry Fonda in top form as he tries to sway his fellow juror's to the supposed innocence of the accused.  Filmed in Black and White with limited sets, the film follows the humanisitic back and forth as opinions are made and broken in a sweaty juror room where a conscensus must be made.  What looks boring on paper is lit up on screen by fantastic performances and direction that is more experienced that watched, featuring an all star cast of the days best character actors slugging it out with words and logic, debating such heavy subjects as race, the death penalty and the age gap..  12 Angry Men will leave you no reasonable doubt in it's greatness.

9 Switchblades Experts out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)

M (1931)

M (NR) - Review

"M is for Masterful Filmmaking"

A hypnotizing look into the desperately sick mind of a kid murdering psychopath, told with the 1-2 visual punch of silent-era storytelling and starkly beautiful German Impressionsim.  Fritz Lang (Metropolis) directs Peter Lorre (The Maltese Falcon) as the depraved regret filled Hans, preying on
the children of Berlin.  The killings are implied, the acts unmentioned, leaving one's mind to macbrely fill in the blanks.  The visuals are designed to shock without showing, a child's plaything left unattended, her balloon tangled in the telephone lines, it is your subconcious that shows you the terrible things that have happened.

Lorre is fantastic, scuttling and evading the authorities on his tail, which are shown generating and following almost present day police procedure (an almost B&W Law and Order).  He is unable to control his urges, and must continue killing, but when a blind man recognizes the whistled tune that always follows the crime, Hans is chased and tracked down, culminating in a vigilante courtroom in some slum basement where Lorre pleads to the townsfolk that he did nothing by choice, that he is a victim of his own sick brain.  Once again we are only hinted at the outcome, but the victims mothers grief and suffering  are not shied away from.  They look into the camera and weep for us to take better care of our children as the film ends.

Lorre's courtroom speech is star making, the images are masterful storytelling and masterpiece photography in the same frame.  As mundane as serial killer movie plots have become in our national media, it is refreshing to watch a film made in 1930s do it better, do it more shockingly and with more emotional punch while at the same time having realistic non-demonizing psychological study of a killer and a difficult moral judgement about those who think in black and white about criminality.  Even in photography, there are shades of grey

10 Watchful Mothers out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)

Blow Up (1966)

Blow Up (NR) - Review

"Enhance... Enhance..."

Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni effortlessly directs this 60's crime mystery revolving around a woman's murder and what the lens of a camera shows us.  Visuals are key here, but the acting is also exceptional.  The mod culture of 1960s London is the backdrop, with a swinging fashion photographer as the hero.  A photograph he has taken reveals a mystery, and upon closer and closer inspection sinister forces are starting to close in upon his discovery.  The film is perfectly visualized, symbolic and philosophical, peering back from the trippy sixties where human perceptions were being perceived to be opening.  Of course who can say what is real and when looked at close enough what don't we see?  Blow Up's fiercely held reputation as both a horribly tense new wave suspense movie and hip surrealist art film are correct.  Here we have evidence of postmodernism need not be a hindrance to narrative and coherence and beauty.  When the camera lens is pointed at the subject and the shutter clicks with finality, it is up to our mind what the resulting image means.

10 Broken Guitars out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)

Ikiru (1952)

Ikiru (NR) - Review

"Old man take a look at my life"

Akira Kurusawa is primarily known in the west as the top Japanese Samurai period film director.  However, when you delve into his catalog it is movies like Ikiru that can really let you understand him as a film maker and a person.  The film (the title translates to "To Live" in english) is a little post WWII drama about an elderly government official who revels in his bureaucracy.  When he is diagnosed with cancer he recognizes the waste of his life and the waste of red tape and focuses on prioritizing the building of a  playground for local and unprivileged children.  Ikiru shines a spotlight on the Japanese government's inefficiency and waste, his society's inability to deal with the trauma of the postwar period and the fractured society of Japan itself.  Perhaps a bit hard to access for Americans (Japanese acting can appear over melodramatic) and being so early in his career it is dry and without much visual artistry, nevertheless Kurusawa's Ikiru is a simple masterful film made by a simple master.

7.5 Radiation Fears out of 10 (GOOD)