My Review: 300: Rise of an Empire (6/10)

"Better we show them, we chose to die on our feet, rather than live on our knees!"

I was a huge fan of Zach Snyder's 300 when it was first released, but was later disappointed by Sucker Punch as well as other recent adaptations, so I wasn't expecting much from this sequel considering the novelty of these violent graphic novel adaptations had warn off a bit. Sin City still ranks as my favorite, but I did really enjoy 300 and Watchmen as well. In 300: Rise of an Empire there are some great scenes and strong visuals, but nothing we haven't seen before. The violence is once again stylized but after a while it feels repetitive and I felt the pacing began to drag despite all the action scenes. The characters weren't as interesting as the Spartans in 300, but the villain is much better here. Eva Green's performance is was ultimately makes this film worth a watch and I think this is one of her best roles yet. She is perhaps the best developed character in this film and gives an inspiring performance which allows us to forgive the sense of empty stylized violent action scenes we are overloaded with in this sequel/prequel. The writing also could have used some of those memorable dialogues from the first film that many of us still haven't grown tired of quoting. This film doesn't live up to the original, but it is entertaining enough to give it a mild recommendation. 

In 300: Rise of an Empire we get an extension of the events that occurred in the original film which focused only on one of the Greek states: Sparta. This time we get a glimpse of what is going on with the other states and the film opens with a narration from Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) of the Battle of Marathon when the Persians invaded Greece for the first time. The Athenian general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) manages to defeat the Persian king, Darius, by killing him from a distance with an arrow. Before he dies, he warns his son Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) that no human should ever attack Greece again. Darius's commanding naval officer, Artemisia (Eva Green), tells Xerxes that what his father really meant was that in order to defeat Greece he would need to become a god king. And that is how the legend of Xerxes actually begins. Ten years later Xerxes attacks Sparta (the events that took place in the first film), while Artemisia prepares her fleet to face the Athenians. The two brilliant naval officers, Artemisia and Themistocles, prepare their men for the bloody battle.

Sullivan Stapleton is no Gerard Butler, but thankfully the film relies heavily on the villain and Eva Green excels in her role. There is one strange scene she shares with Stapleton that sort of comes out of nowhere and felt out of place. The film does drag by abusing too much on the stylized violence, but the production design does make the film interesting and fun to look at. Director, Noam Murro (who also directed the 2008 drama Smart People), didn't seem to have a firm hand in the direction and some of the scenes didn't feel right either. It still manages to be entertaining and fun for the most part, but one can't help and wonder about how empty it really is and how little we know about the actual characters. It doesn't matter though because we get cool enough visuals and slow motion action scenes to make it enjoyable enough. It is yet another example of style over substance, but if these graphic violent action scenes are your thing you might enjoy it. 

My Review: Man of Steel (7/10)

¨You just have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be, Clark. Whoever that man is, he´s going to change the world.¨

There is no doubt in my mind that Man of Steel is a far more superior movie than its predecessor: Superman Returns. The franchise has gotten a positive reboot with director Zack Snyder at the helm and Christopher Nolan as one of the producers. I know this isn’t a perfect film, I thought it had several flaws, but compared to Superman Returns this is a masterpiece. What surprises me is that even though most critics acknowledge the fact that this is a superior film, in Rotten Tomatoes this film was only recommended by 57% of critics, compared to the 75% that recommended Superman Returns. For those of us who have seen both movies we know that is a tremendous flaw and most critics would agree that they gave too much anticipated love to Superman Returns which was a really mediocre movie. I can understand why they disliked this film because I think the film suffers from an action overdose. There is just way too much action in this film and it grows repetitive and tiresome. Snyder goes overboard with the action sequences and there is just way too much destruction that goes unaccounted for. I mean the entire city of Metropolis gets completely destroyed in this film and there are far too many 9/11 references here. That is the major issue I had with this film. Other than that I thought the movie had a great cast. Henry Cavill made for an exciting and near perfect Superman, Amy Adams nailed her role as Lois Lane, and Michael Shannon was a convincing villain as General Zod. Besides the cast, I also thought the flashback scenes involving the young Clark Kent were the strongest moments of the film. It was those quiet moments that I enjoyed more than all the loud action scenes in which Clark Kent was struggling to find his new identity. Those scenes worked really well for me and I thought Kevin Costner and Diane Lane were wonderful playing his Earth parents. I wasn’t a big fan of the opening sequence in Krypton, but thought Russell Crowe also was convincing as Jor-El.

The film opens in Krypton where we see Jor-El (Russell Crowe) help his wife give birth to his son, Kal-El, the first natural birth in the planet in a long time. The planet is at the verge of being extinct and Jor-El finds hope in his son, although General Zod (Michael Shannon) has different plans for his people. Despite Zod´s efforts to stop Jor-El, he manages to send his son to Earth where he can survive. At Earth he is adopted by Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha (Diane Lane) who find him in their field in Kansas. The film centers on Clark (Henry Cavill) as he struggles to find meaning and purpose for his life. With the help of his parents he begins to deal with his powers, but is reminded that he should use these abilities as little as possible because the world isn’t prepared for someone like him. The scenes involving Clark´s childhood and his upbringing with his parents is told through a series of flashbacks as we see a much more mature Clark searching for the meaning of his existence in one place after another. He finally finds some answers when an ancient craft from Krypton is located on Earth and that is when he also runs into journalist, Louis Lane (Amy Adams) who discovers Clark isn’t a regular human being. His secret life is shattered when General Zod makes a theatrical entrance in his spaceship along with his crew and asks mankind to surrender the alien. Of course Zod has other intentions for the planet and doesn’t really settle for Kal-El. This is where the battle and destruction on Earth begins, and Clark Kent ironically remains the only hope for mankind.

Man of Steel delivers and fans of blockbuster action films will love this film. I thought the action sequences suffered from too much overload and repetitiveness. The scenes are extremely exaggerated and they grew tiresome after a while. I loved most of the film, but the last 45 minutes took a toll on me and made me enjoy this film less and less. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like this and of course I would rather sit through this than watch Superman Returns again (a film that critics seem to have enjoyed more). The problem is that after so many great superhero films, Man of Steel does fall short to other films like The Dark Knight or even Iron Man. It is probably at the same level as Thor, but I wouldn’t say this is a great superhero film because it is inferior to the bar that the Batman franchise set. I even think Iron Man 3 was a better movie than this, but Man of Steel did have its moments and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people really like this blockbuster film considering the excellent cast and the wonderful performance from Henry Cavill as the new Superman.

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My Review: Sucker Punch (3/10)

¨ Who teaches us what`s real, and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live, and what we'll die to defend? Who trains us, and who holds the key to set us free? It's you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight! ¨

Zach Snyder has adapted various graphic novels into films in the past and I enjoyed his movies very much; I was a big fan of 300 and Watchmen and I thought those movies were terrific. In Sucker Punch Snyder tries something new; he wrote the story instead of adapting another novel, but still tried to give it the same feel and look his other films had. The look of the film is also stylish, full of CGI, and the graphics make us think we are playing a videogame instead of watching a movie. This style worked for me in the past because Snyder`s stories were interesting. In Sucker Punch I just couldn’t get into the story, I didn’t like any of the characters, and thought the plot was just ridiculous. The approach was also very hypocritical because the movie tries to preach about female empowerment and girl power, but the entire time the movie is targeted towards a male audience; we have girls fighting in short skirts, and the male characters have little screen time. I can see how this movie might be enjoyed by a young male audience, but it just didn’t work for me. Comparing it to 300 and Watchmen this movie doesn’t even come close, but even before watching Sucker Punch I had lowered my expectations with the trailer. I understood the metaphor and ideas the story was trying to get across, but it was just meaningless with these characters since they weren’t even developed at all. There was not one interesting character, they were all one dimensional. The screenplay was adapted by Snyder himself and Steve Shibuya, but the entire movie relies only on the CGI.

Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is sent to a mental asylum by her stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) after her mother dies and she accidently kills her little sister while trying to protect her from her abusive stepfather. She was aiming at him, but she missed and her little sister suffered the consequences. Baby Doll is institutionalized and in five days the doctor will perform a lobotomy on her so that she forgets everything her stepfather has done. Blue (Oscar Isaac) receives an important amount of money from the stepdad to make sure the doctor signs the ok for the lobotomy. Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino who also starred in Watchmen with Snyder) never signs the petition because Blue falsifies the signature and so everything is set for within five days when the Doctor (Jon Hamm) comes back. Baby Doll isn’t alone in the asylum. She befriends four other female companions: Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and her sister, Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung who was recently seen in The Hangover 2). Baby Doll decides to create an alternate reality in order to avoid her pain and guilt. In this fantastical world she becomes a sort of warrior and with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn) she comes up with a plan to escape the mental facility. Along with her four friends they go on a mission to retrieve the five elements they will need in order to escape. In this fantastical world they have to face ninja robots, Nazi zombie`s and different kind of monsters. The lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur as they try to collect the items and break free from the asylum.

The characters are so poorly developed that I really didn’t care whether or not they escaped the institution. Even the fantasy clips in which all the main action and cool effects take place felt more like music videos due to the loud music and videogame style graphic. The movie is empty; simply eye candy and I couldn’t see anything philosophical or deep about it. I really was disappointed with this movie, but I know Zach Snyder will bounce back. He should stick to graphic novels. As for the performances there was nothing remarkable about any of them, but the cast isn’t to blame because the entire movie relied only on the special effects and not on trying to develop the characters. The effects are interesting at some times, but we`ve seen them all before and there is nothing new to Sucker Punch. This will definitely be on my list of worst films of the year; it was a huge disappointment for me. Everyone has the right to make a bad film; even Pixar came short with Cars 2 so I don’t think Zach Snyder should be worrying about how things turned out in Sucker Punch. Some young males might want to check this movie out, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

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