On the surface, White Bird in a Blizzard is another book turned into a movie that stars Shailene Woodley, the go-to young actress to adapt the lives of several tortured teenagers on paper to the big screen. But, it doesn’t take long to realize Gregg Araki’s film is different.

Somehow (because Hollywood), Shailene Woodley became a young, up and coming actress to someone I was tired of just three years after her breakout role in The Descendants. She’s the star of Divergent, Fault of Our Stars, The Spectacular Now and was Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, yet somehow I still don’t know what I think about her as an actress.

Oftentimes Hollywood crowns its stars too easily or prematurely, or force feeds us actors until their career demands an E! True Hollywood Story. After watching White Bird in a Blizzard with absolutely no preconceived notions (I had never read the book by Laura Kasischke; I didn’t even remember who was in it beyond Woodley), I’m finally ready to embrace the idea of Shailene Woodley, movie star.

As Kat Connor, a freshly boobed high schooler who isn’t getting enough from her stoner boyfriend Phil (Evil Dead’s Shiloh Fernandez), and only enjoys herself when she’s complaining about others, Shailene Woodley is as real, genuine and unlikable as a 17 year old who discovers that her repressed mother just up and disappeared from her life, maybe forever. To many of us, such a moment would be devastating. Instead, Kat just can’t wait to move on and seduce the sexy cop assigned to her Mom’s missing persons case, Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane, meet perfect casting). It was easy, she says to her friends in the mall or the record store or the basement in the small town that never changes, and we start to believe her.

This movie truly plays off the fact that a sex-obsessed adolescent is a wholly unreliable narrator. Kat is as self-absorbed, ignorant, and bored with her life as we all were in high school, and that’s why she’s so blind to what’s been in plain sight all this time. It’s what helps make White Bird in a Blizzard so surprising, so disturbing and so effective.

As I’ve already harped on, the casting in this movie is brilliant. Just imagine Eva Green as a misanthropic housewife, someone who would be jealous of her daughter’s looks, because she’s getting old. This is a woman whose boobs were too hot for a Sin City 2 poster, and that’s precisely why it works so well. Eva Green embodies Eve Connor, the miracle homemaker turned miserable, listless drunk, with a husky voice and a sliver of the possessed version of her Vanessa Ives character in Penny Dreadful, and it’s arguably more terrifying to find her in 1980’s suburbia. Eva Green is as magnetic an actor as there is working today (is there a more interesting one? Envision a movie that costars Green and Adam Driver), and her absence is felt as much as her overwhelming presence in this one. Good thing, too, because Eve Connors disappears in the second scene of White Bird in a Blizzard. Thankfully, she haunts Kat and us in flashbacks throughout the film.

On the other side of the coin, picture the gruff, built Christopher Meloni as a wimpy doormat of a husband (replete with caterpillar mustache), the reason for Eve’s sexual frustrations. It’s hilarious to even consider. White Bird in a Blizzard expertly plays with your expectations with its casting decisions, one of many misdirection tactics skillfully utilized by writer-director Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin). I haven’t even mentioned the presences of Angela Bassett as a purposefully cliché therapist, Gabourey Sidibe and Mark Indelicato as versions of the romantic comedy “best friend” staple, and Dale Dickey as Phil’s blind mother.

White Bird in a Blizzard is a movie filled with tropes from such varied genres as coming-of-age, romantic comedy, mystery/missing person and the American Beauty school of marital strife. We’ve seen versions of this story several times, but never quite mangled together like this before, which is precisely why I was so captivated, uncomfortable and surprised by this movie. Even its setting, in 1988-1991, filled with hilarious 80’s-isms, were almost a distraction from what was really going on. I went in knowing nothing about the plot of White Bird in a Blizzard, so instead, I relied on my preconceived notions about genre and similarly themed films, which is exactly what Araki and company wanted. The result is a movie that shocked and impressed me, mirroring Kat’s life-shattering and long-awaited realization in White Bird in a Blizzard’s final moments.

Magnolia Pictures will release WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD on OnDemand September 25, 2014 and in theaters October 24, 2014.

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.