Movie Review: Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Less dense than its already thin predecessor, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For feels like a vast improvement nonetheless. Almost a decade ago, Sin City seemed almost revolutionary in the way it capitalized on then innovative digital technology that allowed directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller to shoot their movie on virtual, green-screen sets. Based on Miller's own graphic novel series, the film carried a certain irony. It was a black-and-white film noir homage with a stripped down, DIY sensibility despite hosting a cast of hip actors and utilizing cutting edge filmmaking techniques.

Movie Review: A.C.O.D. (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Stuart Zicherman's directorial debut, A.C.O.D., is a pleasant enough, undemanding film that has the whiff of the autobiographical. When I turned to my wife after we were done watching it, I asked, "So what'd you think?" "It was alright," she said. "I thought it was okay for an indie," I said. "Oh, it was an indie? Yeah, it was pretty good for an indie." And then we went to bed. It's kind of sad, actually, when a movie with such a powerhouse comedic cast that includes the likes of Adam Scott and Amy Poehler (both from Parks and Recreation), the great Richard Jenkins, and the singular Catherine O'Hara can only muster a wordier version of "Meh!" from a film critic and his wife.

Movie Review: The Killer Inside Me (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

Filmed once before in the seventies with the more imposing Stacy Keach in the role, Michael Winterbottom's new version of Jim Thompson's novel, The Killer Inside Me, feels creepier because of the casting of the relatively slight and soft-spoken Casey Affleck as the sociopathic Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford. True, the vacant-eyed Affleck played a murderer pretty effectively before as Robert Ford (no relation) in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). That film's killer, a weak-willed worm with a serious case of hero envy, is driven by emotional problems which are quite easy to quantify. What distinguishes Lou Ford is the lack of emotion behind his congenial nature. This is the coldest nice guy in cinema since Martin Sheen's skinny Kit in Badlands (1973).