234 – Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

When Sin City was released in 2005 it was widely praised for its innovative visual style and exaggerated neo-noir tone. I was there at the beginning, a 15-year-old watching with a group of friends as part of a birthday celebration. My sister was there too. She didn’t care much for the film, but it worked for me. Sin City was a touchstone for me at the time. It was the first R-rated movie I snuck into. It was a comic series I would leaf through in Borders (RIP), hoping to be titillated. It was everything a teenager could want. But I’m not a teenager anymore, and Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller made the mistake of waiting 9 years to put out a sequel. So if I’m not watching Sin City: A Dame to Kill For for titillation – why am I doing it?

064 – 300 (2006)

THESE! ARE! ABS!

Eight years ago director Zack Snyder had a coming out party in the form of 300, based on Frank Miller’s comic. The swords-and-sandals actioner starred a then-relatively-unknown Gerard Butler as Leonidas, the king of the Spartans, whose country is risking siege at the hands of the Persian Empire.