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Sin City reminded me of only one other film I've ever seen: Kill Bill, vol. 1, which ranks as one of my all-time favorites. The founding mythologies of the two movies are completely different, and I prefer Tarantino's Shaolin legends to Miller's noir graphic novels--but not by much. There's an awful lot to fall for in Sin City, from the ridiculous cars to the even more ridiculously alluring women.

The best thing about the movie, though, is the three leading male heroes, two of whom are just as cold-blooded as their depraved and just-as-memorable foils, who gleefully inhabit depths of the human soul usually only hinted at by movies. Willis, Rourke, and Owen each give memorable performances that force you to accept the moral logic of Sin City, which despite the consistent displays of gore shines through every scene of the movie. As with Kill Bill, anyone who tells you that this movie is itself morally bankrupt or meaningless simply wasn't paying any attention.

If you've got the stomach for it, and are willing to suspend your disbelief and accept Miller's gritty universe, you absolutely won't regret spending your $9 to see Sin City in the theater.

If you possess an especially smug view of history's finality, this film may not do a great deal to impress you. For the rest of us, however, Errol Morris presents a truly complex picture of a clearly complex man.

Many of the reviews I read of the film complain that there doesn't seem to be a main point that emerges from the film or its eleven "lessons," which are admittedly too cute by half in many cases. The point, though, is the complexity itself. The point is that history is bigger than its main players, and inscrutably difficult to judge in a definitive moral sense. I don't think I will ever forget McNamara's probing, clearly emotional questioning of the rules of war or the lack thereof, when he discusses how one evening he and general Curtis LeMay decided to burn to death 100,000 people in the Tokyo firebombing. The portrait of McNamara, as well as the two presidents he served, is one of human beings through and through, with all the fallibility and conflictedness that entails. The central quandary of war emerges for the viewer to see: it is the business of killing people, and that means that mistakes cause people to die needlessly.

As I said, this film, taken in the right spirit, is deeply challenging. I would recommend it to anyone who has grappled with the enormity and awfulness of the history of the twentieth century.

Heist is not a movie that can be taken as a representation of reality, but that's not its point. Every single line in this movie sounds like it is being spoken by an actor in a David Mamet movie. Gene Hackman, Rebecca Pidgeon, Sam Rockwell, Delroy Lindo, and Danny DeVito all deliver memorable performances, but the show-stealer is Mamet's consistent collaborator, Ricky Jay, who has several lines as good as any I can think of. This movie is up there with Resevoir Dogs in the vanguard of movies made for their own sake. It has enough great lines and surprising plot twists to make it worth everyone's time.