I was the perfect audience for this movie. I’ve loved Katharine Isabelle in Being Human and Hannibal; she’s an actress who routinely subverts expectations based off her diminutive stature and friendly small-town waitress good looks to play angry, damaged and dangerous women. On the surface, her role as Gwen in 88 is another perfect part for the actress known for indie horror franchises like American Mary and Ginger Snaps. And who doesn’t want to see an all-time favorite like Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), in the villainous gangster role? I wasn’t expecting greatness, but I was hoping for fun.

There was hardly any of it, as 88 unfortunately loses all of its goodwill within the first few minutes. Thanks to an opening defining what a fugue state is, we can assume that Gwen is in one. A new persona, a disambiguation from one’s identity, triggered by a dramatic event and accompanied with hallucinations, has fractured from Gwen, throwing herself into a $#*! storm and series of nonsensical events.

Gwen snaps out of the fugue state (or into one?) at a local diner, and before you know it, she’s “accidentally” shot a waitress, has stolen a car, and is on the run from the cops. Gwen’s terrified, has no idea what’s going on, is missing a finger and has no recollection of why gumballs, a hotel key (room…88), and a loaded gun are in her backpack in the first place. Yet she somehow continues to elude the police, who are flimsy placeholders for conflict throughout. 88 snaps back and forth between Gwen and “Flamingo,” her badass (?) peeing in a gas station convenient store alter ego, until both timelines and personalities converge, and the truth emerges.

All we truly know is that Gwen worked for Cyrus (Lloyd), a crime boss collecting stereotypes like Beanie Babies, and tried to get out, along with her lover Aster (Kyle Schmid, another Being Human alum). Instead, Aster’s dead, inspiring the Kill Bill routine, as Gwen/Flamingo embark on revenge: to kill Cyrus.

88 tries way too hard to be cool, with its schizophrenic flashes to Aster and Gwen, blood, spilling milk (SO MUCH MILK; more on that later), shadows, exhaustive red lighting, and the result is a movie that is 88 minutes too long (yes, 88 is 88 minutes long).

The movie throws in insane characters here and there like a student trying to cook a stew for his college girlfriend. There’s Ty (Tim Doiron, the film’s writer), a one-man cop killing machine, who happens to be one of the few characters with any sort of personality, even if it’s obnoxious (“This is gonna be awesome,” he says, in regards to mass murder). He luckily has the same mission as Flamingo/Gwen, to kill Cyrus, and does a helluva lot more to make that happen than Gwen does, certainly. Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers) is a lone bright spot as the town’s sheriff, openly wondering what the hell is going on (“Some of this crap doesn’t make sense”). Speaking of confusion, there’s Lemmy (April Mullen, the film’s director), some wacko taxidermist lady who’s there to supply arms for the kill, I think. She has alternating signs designating “Leisure Time” and “Business Time” in her office that are used to humorous effect, one of the few Don Coscarellian flourishes that worked.

But let’s be honest, Lemmy is there as another excuse for a ridiculous and boring shootout. 88 is filled with laughable shootouts, where either the cops, gangsters or even our heroes learn all ability to hit a target. This is an action movie tradition, of course, but this didn’t feel intentional (and wasn’t ha-ha funny); instead, it sapped credibility from the proceedings, not that there was much to begin with.

In Kill Bill, we’re rooting for Uma Thurman’s Bride. It’s a revenge story with almost as much pizzazz and personality as blood spatter. 88 tries to follow the same blueprint, but it’s a hollow attempt in every way. Cyrus is a one-note villain who isn’t particularly imposing, intelligent, dangerous or interesting. Aster is apparently the love of Gwen’s life, but we never glimpse more than a few seconds at a time with the character, all in annoying flashbacks that we see over and over. It’s hard to get onboard the revenge train if you don’t buy the engine for it, especially when the “heroine” is either a clueless blank slate with no discernible characterization, or worse, a psychopathic killer whose only discernible characterization involves a weird obsession with using shampoo dry and LOVES wasting milk. I lost track of the number of times she orders milks, steals milk, takes a sip and then shatters the bottle/glass on the floor, as 88 substitutes character development with disturbing tics. 88 exists in a town when people still buy milk out of glass, a more intriguing mystery than anything else we’re forced to pretend to care about.

88 is out on DVD, Blu-Ray and VOD now.

For those who grew up in the 90’s, Macaulay Culkin was our childhood. I could care less about Ri$hie Rich, but he made me cry in My Girl, laugh in Uncle Buck, and want to be him in the Home Alone series. When I saw him at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood last year, I almost collapsed, afraid that I couldn’t exist in the same space-time as a guy who helped me grow up. Say whatever you want about Culkin’s life as a child actor and beyond, we all owe him a debt that will likely never be paid.

The evidence is in The Pagemaster, one of the most underrated animated treasures of the 1990’s, a film that is currently enjoying its 20th anniversary.

Richard Tyler is a scaredy-cat loser who won’t even go up into the treehouse Stan Sitwellhis Dad builds for him. He probably emptied out a Sports Authority’s safety equipment section just to ride his bike home. He was me; I was always shit with bikes, and terrified of new experiences. I wouldn’t be comfortable playing sports, games or anything until I was reasonably confident that I’d be one of the best in the class at it. I’m still that way with Pool. Risk was a board game, not something you actually took.

In the midst of a massive storm, Richard finds himself in The Library. Watching it now, the idea of a kid ever going to a library seems quaint, so much more magical/surprising than it was in 1994. Nowadays the library is where the homeless keep warm, or a place where the desperate seek free WIFI and glumly pay to print their resumes. Why else would you be in the library? Shamefully, society reads books on Kindles and iPAD’s, and if we succumb to actual paper-bound books, we order them from Amazon. Why read books for free when we can pay for them? The Pagemaster makes you want the world of your childhood back, when your class would take “field trips” to the library and force you to sign up for a library card, a quasi-religious experience that felt like you were signing up for a cult/skeevy daycare.

The Pagemaster grasps onto the power of books, of reading, of the Library, and paints it as a fantastical realm, with books that are as Alive as you or I. Books are (literally) our friends. Anyone who’s ever had a lonely afternoon reading Harry Potter knows this to be unequivocally true. The Pagemaster trumpets the power of reading, be it Adventure, Fantasy, and even the misunderstood genre of Horror. You could lose yourself into a world, embrace danger, daring and learn about yourself in the process. Pagemaster showed losers you could be a heroic sword-wielding knight who could take on a dragon, even if you looked like Macaulay Culkin, who looked like a big time dweeb in this movie, animated or otherwise:

What do I do with my hands?

And:

But by the end, thanks to his Bookish friends, Richard Tyler wasn’t afraid anymore. I said, “I’m not afraid anymore!”

The Pagemaster stars the holy triumvirate of sci-fi actors: Patrick Stewart, Christopher Lloyd and Leonard Nimoy. Or if you want to broaden it to the Mount Rushmore of Sci-Fi, you could throw Whoopi Goldberg in there (Ghost, dudes!), and you’d be wrong. Interestingly, Pagemaster not only stars Captain Picard and Guinan (Whoopi on TNG), but also Robert Picardo (The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager). It’s not hard to see the Star Trek DNA strands weaving throughout Pagemaster.

Patrick Stewart wonderfully plays against type, against his persona and the genre expectation that he’s cultivated, by being Adventure, a Pirate ruffian of a book. Leonard Nimoy similarly subverts our supposition, by being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a memorable scene:

Whoopi is Whoopi/nobody’s Fantasy, while Christopher Lloyd is Mr. Dewey (get it?), the Librarian AND the Pagemaster, the wizard overlord of Richard’s literary journey that includes Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Moby Dick and Alice in Wonderland. You kind of wish the boy had traveled in more unique worlds; even in 1994 those four were overplayed. Regardless, the Pagemaster is a role that only Christopher Lloyd can play, and one that he probably still could. Like Culkin, Christopher Lloyd was an inextricable link to my childhood, the perfect choice to play the gatekeeper of Magic.

Until recently, Back to the Future was my answer for favorite movie of all-time (now it’s Galaxy Quest). Lloyd’s excitable, brilliant Doc Brown was a massive part of that. But the man was also Uncle Fester in Addams Family and Addams Family Values, Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Boss Angel in Angels in the Outfield. He was even Rasputin in Anastasia. The guy has his fingerprints all over the most important films from the 1990’s and is the man tasked with showing us the power of imagination, the kind of groan-inducing maxim that I still can’t get enough of.

I could talk about Pagemaster forever. Its unparalleled cast, its shitty animation, that the incomparable Phil Hartman voices Tom Morgan (above), one of Long John Silver’s pirate cohorts, but I’m getting thirsty, and I suspect so are you. So…on with it:

DRINKING RULES

1. Drink whenever Richard Tyler and company jump inside a book.

2. Take a sip for every reference to a storm, and every stormy scene.

3. You gotta drink for every dragon scene. This video is admittedly awful quality, but highlights one of the coolest/creepiest moments from the movie:

4. Whenever we see the library’s “Exit” sign, or Tyler draws it in the sand or something equally pathetic/poignant, drink.

5. Drink whenever Richard is scared.

6. Sip on the drink of your choice whenever Richard wields a sword.

7. Drink whenever we meet a new book.

8. If you ever find yourself reading the title of a book, or recognize a book’s spine, drink, you snob.

9. You best be drinking whenever there’s a book pun. You’ll know it when it happens.

10. Whenever Horror (voiced by Frank Welker) unleashes his dumbass laugh, drink. Also, watch this loving tribute to the most underrated Book in the film:

11. Drink whenever Richard/Culkin adjusts his glasses, or loses them, or all the different things that happens to nerds who wears specs. Consider this the Giles rule, a permanent staple when any character wears glasses. Because they never stop fucking with them.

12. Whenever cartoons and reality exist in the same scene, drink. Consider this the Space Jam rule.

EXPERT EDITION: Just drink for Christopher Lloyd. Every time. He deserves it.

It’s easy to forget, at least for me, how awesome the first Sin City was. It came out back in 2005 and blew everyone’s minds due to its visual flair that was a game-changer in Hollywood, and showed how to loyally adapt a comic book into a movie with style. 9 years later, and we’re finally getting a sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

As Geoff Boucher says, Sin City was a synthesis of film and comic, and Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez come to the stage, to discuss their latest collaboration.

Robert Rodriguez tells us all that he wasn’t trying to make a movie based on Sin City. He was trying to turn a movie into a living embodiment of Frank’s work.

Frank Miller talks about how comic book movies are getting better, because they’re staying closer to the source material. Not that he’s biased or anything.

The tale “Another Saturday Night” opens the movie, and is the clip that we see, with Mickey Rourke’s Marv getting into trouble again, trying to piece back his memory, while beating the piss out of people. It’s the same beautiful style from the last movie, and even seems like the same plot.

The rest of the panel arrives: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson and Josh Brolin. An impressive trio, but it’s hard not to get a little bummed that Mickey Rourke could’ve been there.

The thing that people are most excited for in this movie is Alba’s transformation and coming into her own as Nancy, who has turned into a warrior for the next movie. Everyone raves about her performance throughout the panel, and she even collaborated on the story (which is an original one, not based on any Sin City tale). I remember after Dark Angel and the first Sin City, that Jessica Alba was probably the biggest crush I had in all the world. Then Fantastic Four happened and her career has suffered. I hope Sin City 2 corrects her course.

Josh Brolin jokes that he wanted to play Nancy, but settled for working with 2 iconoclasts.

Apparently when making the movie, they would go to Frank after every shot, determined to make Frank happy, which is a hard thing to do. This panel was basically a Robert Rodriguez worships Frank Miller and so should you hour.

For being absent, Eva Green’s talents are all over Comic-Con this year. She’s the best part of Penny Dreadful, and apparently owns as the alleged Dame in which people kill for. Like you had any doubt.

Rodriguez says that everyone’s performances are 100 times better, as they get use to the technology.

Josh Brolin never met Mickey Rourke while working on the film, even though they were in several scenes together. Does that make sense? Not really, but that’s the beauty of green screen and the crazy process that Rodriguez uses to make these movies. And according to Brolin, “it works,” as he’s forced to balance the scene out, as he sees Mickey’s work and then reacts to it, completes it. It sounds weird and impressive and sounds like a pain in the ass. Brolin calls it a “bizarre, alien experience.”

Rosario Dawson wasn’t allowed to cut her hair for the movie because of a conflicting contract on another movie, but after arriving on set, she went home and cut her hair anyways, because she didn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t giving it her all. Rosario Dawson rules.

Alba stunned everyone, setting the bar (she was the first to shoot her scenes). She was in character on set, and connected with the dark side of Nancy, and it was hard to disconnect until after the movie. Alba admits she was more mature, comfortable and wanted to kick ass.

Eva: “She is a scary woman.”

Alba calls Powers Boothe a “scary mofo.”

Miller apparently drew an impossible action pose for Alba, knowing she couldn’t do it, and then he was amazed to see her actually do it.

80% of the film’s score was written on Robert Rodriguez’s phone.

The film doesn’t really have a script; they go by Frank’s storyboards.

Fan questions are awful, so I dozed through the end of this one.

Apparently Robert Rodriguez has his actors draw portraits of their characters before they start filming, to get the creative process going. What an awesome idea.

Robert shoots the film in color, then they strip it of color, then they add in colors afterwards. The colors will again be another character/element of the proceedings, like in the original.

Is Frank planning to write more Sin City graphic novels? Yes, as he has loads of story ideas, but he has no idea when he’ll get to them.

Frank’s also asked about a movie adaptation of Martha Washington, to which he responds that he’d love to, but “this time I’ve going to be a prick…do it my way.”

RIP Michael Clarke Duncan, who played Manute in Sin City. Dennis Haysbert is taking over the role from his friend, and studied the film from the first movie, to honor MCD.

Frank Miller is already talking Sin City 3, clearly excited with the second one, promising that they will be returning to Hall H a lot sooner next time around than 9 years. Here’s hoping.

Imagine if this film brought together its whole cast. It would’ve been the biggest collection of talent this side of Avengers. Seriously, can we have Mickey Rourke at Comic-Con? Or Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alexa Vega, Juno Temple, Stacy Keach, LADY GAGA, Jamie Chung, Jaime King, Ray Liotta, Powers Boothe, Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD, Jeremy Piven, Dennis Haysbert/Allstate? Um, yeah, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is going to be fun.