Because Everybody Else Has One

And now, for the big movie of the week! Well, OK, considering its abysmal box office numbers, "big" might not be the word I'm looking for... This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Returning once again to the stylish-noir world on Frank Miller's Sin City, we meet old faces and new as their paths cross and criss-cross in often deadly ways. What we thought As I haven't revisited the first Sin City in film in many a year, nor having caught up with any of the comics in even longer, I'm not sure if my luke-warm reaction to Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is a result of my having outgrown the property or if, very simply, this sequel just isn't anywhere near as good as the first film. Either way, though it certainly has its pleasures – even if those pleasures are more often that not on the guilty side – A Dame to Kill For is a definite misfire. To be sure, even if the first film was genuinely good (and I am starting to h...

Ignore the hogwash about Looper being this decade's Matrix... everyone knows it's this decade's Terminator (minus the robots and the Arnie and in reverse, but otherwise...)! Taking its cue from Austin Powers, there's a scene in the middle of Looper where the central character tells his younger self that "I'm not going to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it, we're going be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws," which serves as both one of the film's few truly funny moments and as a smart warning to its audience. Like all time travel movies - especially the great ones, oddly enough - it's better to simply go along with the story the film is trying to tell than to do your head in trying to work out the intricacies of its take on traversing the limits of space and time. And actually, to be fair, Looper's internal logic might not make a lick of sense, but it is at least consistently nonsensi...

And now for the film of the week...   50/50 is that most tricky of balancing acts: a gut-wrenching drama about cancer that also happens to be consistently laugh-out-loud funny. That it's gut-wrenching isn't particularly surprising when you consider that, tragically, the topic of cancer (no play on "Tropic of Cancer" intended, smart asses) has probably ever been more relevant. It's hard to find anyone who hasn't tackled with this most infernal of infernal diseases in their own life, whether suffering personally or watching a loved one struggle with it. What makes 50/50 a truly worthwhile work, though, is its perfect use of well-timed comedy and properly-placed sentiment (a well-worn book in a bathroom, perhaps?) to elevate what could so easily have been an unpleasant, probably mawkish, masochistic viewing experience into something truly humane, uplifting and exquisitely moving. And, yes, at times very, very funny to boot.