I can’t really say that I enjoyed Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, but I paid attention all the way through. This was one of those films which proved objectionable pretty quickly, but which was chock full of visual and structural storytelling techniques I wanted to absorb.

I guess my experience was a little bit like stepping up really close to a painting in order to see the paint rather than the picture.

Regarding the picture: the movie earns its R rating with violence, nudity, language, and drug use. The final line of narration tells us that Sin City leaves its stain on everyone, and that pretty much summed up my experience.

Regarding the paint: Structurally, it’s a neat sort of palindrome. Story A begins, Story B begins, Story C begins and ends, then Story B ends and finally Story A ends. Visually, it is brilliantly composed. We move freely from hyper-realistic black-and-white scenes to heavily stylized silhouette animations, and we cover lots of middle ground as well. Each shot works in very strong support of the story. And as stories go it’s horribly dark, and it’s never actually happy, but it’s powerful and well told.

I saw the 3D version, and I think the 3D added a lot. Looking way up as naked Josh Brolin gets blown through a window, and then tracking him down… well, the 3D really sold that for me.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was not really that much fun for me, not in the usual sense, but I reveled in the art. It clears the Threshold of Disappointment, but only barely. I may study stills or scenes from it at some point in the future, but I never actually want to watch it again.

Per my Twitter feed, The Expendables 3 is better than either of the first two installments in the series. The first was goofy and ridiculous, and not in great ways. The second took itself too seriously, and ended up being goofy, ridiculous, overblown, and clumsy. This one, though, struck just the right balance for an action movie. I had fun.

The film does not clear my Threshold of Awesome, however. The predictable dialog really wore on me, especially when a character was pausing for dramatic effect, and I knew what he was going to say next. Also, the final act’s conceit was one of those ridiculous supervillain tropes — in this case it’s the one where our bad guy has lured the heroes into a trap, and instead of just pouring overwhelming force into the kill box, he starts the timer on an explosive.

What follows that countdown is purely predictable, but it also shapes up to be a nice fulfillment of all the movie’s earlier promises. They shoot all of the things and do all of the stunts and we have our huge cast of readily-recognized hitters finally working together.

The stand-outs for me in this film were Ronda Rousey, who made a much better transition from MMA champion to actress than Gina Carano did, and Antonio Banderas, who was hilariously awesome. The Expendables 3 comes in at #15 for me for the year thus far.

Into the Storm had a lot of tornadoes in it, but no sharks.  ZERO. Nary a one.

One of the tornadoes caught fire, and that kind of made up for it. Another one was full of tractor trailers, and several tornadoes filled up on barn components. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that if you can name a common thing (but not a shark) this movie put that thing into a tornado.

Surprisingly, at least two of the tornadoes had Thorin Oakenshield in them, though he was in his six-two, beardless Richard Armitage form. No axe. Pocketknife.

Enough silliness. This movie was far more enjoyable than it had any real reason to be. The “found footage” conceit worked against it, at least to my tastes, but even when they were talking directly to the cameras for posterity, every character on screen was more interesting, more engaging, and more believable than the Megan Fox incarnation of April O’Neil. And I include the four characters who died in the first scene.

In 1996’s Twister our excuse for seeing lots of funnel clouds was that we were following storm chasers, and they were chasing storms pretty effectively. Into the Storm took a different approach, the “what do you mean there’s ANOTHER cell coming?” approach.

Remember that scene in Twister where Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt get to look up into the eye of the tornado? Into the Storm one-ups that moment in a beautiful way.

That said, Into the Storm is very much middle-of the-pack fare. It feels like a high-budget, made-for-TV movie, and I don’t think you have any reason to see it in theaters if Guardians of the Galaxy is still playing, and you still have movie money, and friends who have not yet seen Guardians of the Galaxy.  As of this writing, Into the Storm comes in at #15 for me for the year.