300 (2007)

Spartans, prepare for glory!

Based on a Frank Miller comic. Pretty good but not as compelling as Sin City. Fantastic visuals, especially the ravishing colour palettes used, and the gorgeous highly contrasted graphic scenarios, clearly owing a great deal to the powerful vision of the comicbook artists.

Some excellent action scenes. Good sound. Good performances by all. The casting is spot on, with Gerard Butler doing a Russell Crowe-alike performance as King. Lena Headey is very credible as the queen.

All in all, pretty good, it's just that it was all so macho and testosterone-charged and glamorous in its way, with much display of men's naked torsos and muscled stomachs and in general a great deal of rippling male muscles. Homo-erotic? Sure.

• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 3 Oct 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Sin City (2005)

There is no justice without sin.

Fantastic film version of a strong artistic vision of a dark, violent, sexy version of our world.

When Xanthe and I saw this in the cinema on release, after a steady diet of kids' films, this was a massive shock to the system which left us gasping.

The visuals are gorgeous and so well realised with the limited colour palette and the stunning from above night time snow and rain shots, so iconic.

Of course it can be seen as offensive in its gender stereotyping but it's all tongue-in-cheek, no?

Awesome performance by Mickey Rourke as Marv and by Bruce Willis as cop Hartigan.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 29 Oct 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: added actor tags: "Jessica Alba, Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.