TheRetroCritic

Turn a corner in Sin City ... Wait about 10 years... Then turn another. Too little too late? The box-office seems to think so. But what of the film itself? Was Robert Rodriguez's sequel to his own Sin City , arguably one of the best comic book movie adaptations of all time, worth the long wait? This time, the film is mostly based on the Sin City stories "A Dame To Kill For" and "Just Another Saturday Night", though the latter is used more as an amusing prologue than anything else. The other two stories were put together by Frank Miller for the film specifically. One of them involves Joseph Gordon Levitt's gambler and the other continues Nancy's (Jessica Alba) story from the first movie. The problem with making a sequel this late is that you'll only be able to gather about a third of the cast from the original at best. And with the sad losses of Brittany Murphy and Michael Clarke Duncan a few years ago, this was never going to be easy. Es

With sequel A Dame To Kill For coming soon, there's no better time to revisit Robert Rodriguez's (mostly) monochromatic film noir comic book thriller. Lately, Rodriguez has been focusing predominantly on tongue-in-cheek Grindhouse flicks so going back to Sin City was something of a breath of fresh air. Now, don't get me wrong, Machete and Planet Terror are tons of fun but there's a refreshing seriousness to Sin City which makes it feel that little bit more substantial. You can tell that the director was putting a lot of heart into this project and wasn't taking Frank Miller's works lightly, not only visually but tonally also. There is, of course, the odd burst of humour and absurdity in there but it somehow doesn't feel forced amidst the semi-earnest way in which the story is being told. There's always jokey touches in Miller's comics, usually rather dark one, and that comes through really well here, Rodriguez never letting Sin City get too

Better late than never!

The first Iron Man took people by surprise in that it was actually pretty darn good. After the catastrophe that was the Fantastic Four franchise, this was nothing short of a miracle. Was Marvel finally ready to take on more challenges? Make more decent superhero films? Hell yeah! With Robert Downey Jr. officially back in everyone's good books after his career tumbled despite taking on the Charlie Chaplin role in Richard Attenborough's critically acclaimed biopic, a decent run in Ally MacBeal and the fact he's one of the most talented actors around,  this sequel was able to give the actor a little more creative freedom and allowed the franchise to go wild and have some fun. Tony Stark goes through quite a few ups and downs in this movie as he starts to enjoy his fame as the self-proclaimed Iron Man a bit too much, even defying U.S. officials in typical cocky, flashy fashion before losing control completely and finding refuge in alcoholism following a bad run-in w