It Came From The Cineplex: Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

Sin CIty: A Dame To Kill For (or A Dame For Which To Kill if you're a grammarian) was, like the first film, written by Frank Miller and directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez.

Like the first movie, it's filmed in a hyper-exaggerated style based on Miller's minimalist comic art. It's filmed in stark black and white, punctuated by the occasional burst of vivid color, such as a woman's red lips or green eyes. Nothing looks the least bit real, but that's the point– it's a comic book come to life. If nothing else, the look of these films is unique.

Unfortunately this installment is more of the same, with very little new to offer. The stories aren't all that compelling either. Strip any of them of their trademark style and you're left with little more than standard film noir cliches that were old news back in the 1940s.

SINFUL SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
Just like the first film, this one is divided into several segments:

Just Another Saturday Night - In which we catch up with ex-con Marv (Mickey Rourke) on a typical night out.

The Long Bad Night (Part 1) - A cocky young gambler named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) challenges the evil Senator Roark (Powers Booth) to a high stakes game of poker.

A Dame To Kill For - the titular segment, in which psychotic femme fatale Ava (Eva Green) tricks her former lover Dwight (Josh Brolin) into killing her husband.

The Long Bad Night (Part 2) - Johnny's story gets wrapped up in a predictable manner.

Nancy's Last Dance - Exotic dancer Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) seeks revenge against Roark for causing the death of her friend Detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis) back in the first film.

Thoughts:
• As with the first film, all of the segments are based on the various Sin City comics, with two exceptions. The Long Bad Night and Nancy's Last Dance were written specifically for the film.

• The film is a confusing combination of both prequel and sequel to Sin City. The Just Another Saturday Night segment features Marv, so it obviously has to be a prequel since he was executed in the first film.

The A Dame To Kill For segment is also a prequel, set before the Dwight story in the original.

I'm not sure exactly when The Long Bad Night segments are taking place. 

Nancy's Last Dance is set after Hartigan's suicide, so it has to take place post Sin City. But this segment also features Marv, meaning it's set before his death but after Hartigan's. Confused yet?

This flexible timeline was par for the course in the comic books, but it's going to flummox the hell out of the casual viewer (and maybe a few dedicated fans as well!). Do yourself a favor and just don't worry about what's happening when and just go with the flow.

• In Sin City the various segments flowed together pretty seamlessly. Here, not so much. These are very obviously stand alone stories, crudely linked together in a flailing attempt to form one coherent narrative (which given the fractured nature of the timeline, is impossible).

• It was great to see Mickey Rourke again as fan-favorite character Marv. Rourke was definitely born to play this role. Unfortunately Marv really didn't have much to do and contributed little or nothing to the overall story. The movie needed a lot more Marv.

• In the first film, Old Town was run and protected by an army of deadly hookers– even the police knew to avoid the place. Dwight McCarthy was the only male allowed inside Old Town who wasn't a "customer." I always wondered why Dwight enjoyed such special treatment.

In this film they offer an explanation– he saved ninja hooker Miho from a violent john, which I guess is why he enjoys the run of the place.

• The A Dame To Kill For was my least favorite of the various segments. It was slow moving, cliched and worst of all, just plain dull. Naturally since I didn't care for it, it made up the bulk of the run time.

• There's a lot of recasting going on in Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, which I suppose is inevitable when you go nine years between movies. 

Most notably Josh Brolin replaced Clive Owen as Dwight. Reportedly Owen's schedule didn't allow him to return. This worked out OK I suppose, as Dwight gets plastic surgery in the film to change his appearance (although he doesn't quite end up looking like Clive Owen).

Dennis Haysbert replaced the late Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute. Haysbert is better known as the All State Guy, and is totally unrecognizable here.

Jamie Chung replaced Devon Aoki as Miho, and Jeremy Piven filled in for Michael Madsen as Detective Bob.

Actress Brittany Murphy was supposed to be in the film, but was written out due to her untimely death a few years ago.

• Stacy Keach plays the Sontaran-like mob boss Wallensquist under several pounds of latex makeup. As my movie-going pal KW Monster said, they needn't have bothered casting a known actor in the role. They literally could have used anyone under all that makeup and it wouldn't have made any difference.

• Christopher Meloni plays Mort, a Sin City detective who's seduced by Ava. Meloni is no stranger to playing detectives, as he starred for several decades on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

• As the film reaches its final segment there's unfortunately no real ending. It just sort of... stops. It's almost like they realized they were running out of film and had to wrap up the story in less than a minute.

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For has bucket loads of style, but sadly doesn't add anything new to the mix. I give it a B-.

This Week In Movie Posters

This week Dimension Films debuted yet another character poster for Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, the sequel to 2005's Sin City. This one prominently features a sultry image of actress Alexa Vega (or PenaVega, as she's billed here).

You may remember Alexa Vega from the Spy Kids films. Yeah. Carmen Cortez and the woman in the poster are one and the same. Sigh... excuse me while I go take my rheumatiz medicine.

Oddly enough, earlier in the year the MPAA (the ultra secret film organization that knows what's best for all of us) banned this poster for the film, saying it was too risqué.

I'm honestly not seeing much of a difference. They both feature half naked women in provocative poses. I'm having trouble seeing why one's OK and one's not, especially since the new one contains even more bare skin. I guess that's why I'm not part of the MPAA. 

So for the record kids: Gauzy boob = bad. Shadowy crotch and ass cheek = just fine.

This Week In Movie Posters

Check out this character posters for the upcoming movie Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, featuring actress Eva Green. Va va va Voom! Unfortunately the MPAA, that ultra secret rating organization that knows what's best for each and every one of us, has banned this poster, claiming it's too risqué.

Because god knows if the general public ever caught a glimpse of a gauzy boob on a movie poster, this would happen.

In the words of the MPAA themselves, they banned the poster "for nudity-- curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown." Mercy, their description of why they banned it seems more R-rated than the poster itself. 

Note that typically they have no trouble with the fact that Green is holding a gun; their beef is strictly with her breasts.

Dimension Films, distributer of the film, has decided to rework the poster to meet with the MPAA's standards. Pussies.

Next we have the poster for the soon to be released Nicholas Cage film Left Behind. A few things here.

First of all, didn't Super-Christian Kirk Cameron already make the hell out of these movies back in the 2000s? Didn't he do a whole series of them? Left Behind, Left Behind 2: Even Behinder and all those? So why are they making them again already? Because bible movies are hot this year? Because these literary masterpieces demand a proper Hollywood budget?

Second, why do so many of these religious films involve the end of the world? The entire Left Behind series is about the Rapture and the End Times. Earlier this year we had Noah, another religio-disaster film. Cage himself even starred in 2009's Knowing, a disaster of a disaster film with ill-advised religious overtones. Jesus, why are Christians so obsessed with the destruction of the world? Aren't there any nice stories in the bible?

Lastly, take a good long look at Nicholas Cage's face on this poster. What first day on the job graphic designer picked that headshot to paste onto someone else's body? His befuddled expression makes it look like for all the world like someone ran up and snapped his photo while he was waiting in line at the bank.

If you've ever wondered what someone would look like if you hit them in the face with a fish, look no further than this expression right here.

Chad Michael Murray, seen behind Cage, looks similarly confused by his presence on the poster as well.

DVD Doppelgangers: Sin City Vs The Spirit, Max Payne And The Cutoff

Hey kids, it's time for another installment of the feature that's sweeping the internet by storm: "DVD Doppelgangers!" The post in which I call out deceptive studios and lazy designers who mimic more successful DVD covers in hopes of getting you to buy theirs!

First up, we have Sin City. One of the better comic book adaptations to come down the pike in the past few years, and one that proves you don't have to deviate from the source material in order to make a successful movie.

Oh, Sin City, DVD cover designers just lovvvvvve you. What would they do without you? Whenever they need to design a cover for a dark and gritty movie about urban violence and decay, all they have to do is take your cover and plug in a new title and stars.

Take The Spirit for example (please!). Same angled, hand-lettered title, rendered all in blood red. Same black background. Same desaturated, gun toting cast members, standing at an angle (although in a burst of creative originality, here the cast is angled in the opposite direction. Bravo!). And there're those muddy splatters along the bottom again. I guess the designer misheard grindhouse as grimehouse, and thought the layout needed some mud.

Frank Miller wrote the Sin City comics, and here he adapts Will Eisner's excellent The Spirit comic. The Sin City comic was drawn in a minimalist black and white style, while The Spirit was rendered in a more standard style, and in color. Stylistically they couldn't be farther apart. So I find it odd that Miller filmed The Spirit as a virtual clone of Sin City - high contrast, black and white with occasional spot colors. It's almost as if he wants the public to think it's a sequel. But Hollywood wouldn't stoop that low now, would they?

Then we have the cover for Max Payne, based on the popular video game series. Again, it's a violent and gritty urban saga, so of course we have the obligatory black background, tilted red title (typeset this time, instead of hand-lettered), and desaturated hero. This one even throws in some rain or sleet or some kind of weather to further mimic the rain-soaked Sin City cover.

One other thing-- this cover contains a typo. Right there under the title where it says "Unrated?" That should read "Unwatchable." I'm just saying.'

Hey, not so fast, we're not done yet! Next we have Cut Off. I haven't seen this movie and know absolutely nothing about it. The cover's not quite as blatant as the others, but there's an undeniable Sin City-ness about it. Probably something to do with the angled text yet again (yellow this time) and the desaturated, almost black and white femme fatale. This designer actually did get a little bit creative here, as he substituted a horizontal rain of bullets for the vertical downpour of the Sin City cover.

The Cut Off cover's DNA becomes a little more clear if we take a look at one of the alternate Sin City covers (there were five different ones - collect 'em all!), and one of the theatrical posters.

At this rate, I predict that by 2015 (if video stores are still around) a full 85% of all DVD covers will be variations on Sin City's.