Directed by: Zack Snyder
Other Movies he directed: 300, Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Notable Cast:
Emily Browning: Baby Dall. She was in: Sleeping Beauty, The Uninvited, but most notably, she’s the main girl in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, yes, she’s all growed up.
Jena Malone: Rocket. She’s been in a bunch of things, The Soloist, Pride & Prejudice, Saved, and Donnie Darko.
Vanessa Hudgens: Blondie (who, is not blond). You might know her from all the High School Musical movies.

Whoa, where do I begin. This is one of those genre bending movies, where, although it’s a pretty dang good action flick, it’s more than that. It has deeper themes and it’s much more complicated than “look, there’s the bad guy, shoot him in the face.”

I’m actually having trouble wrapping my mind around this one, I might just have to buy it and watch it a few more times. Yes, it’s that good (in my opinion). Now, I will concede that it will likely not win any academy awards, unless they get listed for the visuals, which wouldn’t be unlikely. But for an action flick, I found it refreshingly creative and new.

With a PG-13 rating, it was VERY adult, much the same way Dark Knight was. There are lots of very pretty women not wearing much, a few rape attempts, and several scenes where violence against women happens. BUT, if you can handle this, the women DO fight back...sometimes with sub machine guns, swords, helicopters, and martial arts.

The “bad guys” include dragons, nazi zombies and male chauvinistic creeps. No I’m not kidding, yes it’s as awesome as it sounds.

Without giving the whole thing away, there are several realities at play in this film (yes, I call it a film ‘cus it’s just that dang good). But the main point is that we need to fight for our freedoms and what we know is right, even if we think the odds are impossible. Sometimes the freedoms we fight for are very literal, and sometimes these freedoms are less tangible, but no less important.

The acting is pretty good (not particularly amazing, but good), the directing is very good (wouldn’t expect less from the dude who brought us 300 which was shot in a warehouse in Canada). But what really makes this film shine is the cinematography and the script (plot). If you like heady, action flicks, this one is for you.

This is where Nate goes off.

Sometime in the future I’ll share more about my feelings about violence towards women, and women’s rights in general, but as far as this movie goes, I fully appreciate the fact that women are fighting against a system that uses them. This isn’t really a “go, power to the ladies” movie, since the focus is more on the action than on the very real issues of women inequality and violence. But maybe that’s what we need. Movies should invoke emotion in us, sometimes we just want to be entertained, but every once and a while they should ask us hard questions and perhaps get us to change the way we think and act towards each other.

And let’s face it, we’re not all watching very important documentaries like Blue Gold, Food Inc, Wallmart: the High Cost of Low Prices or Capitalism: A Love Story. So, we need these blockbusters to not only entertain us, but to push us and encourage us to be better human beings...while fighting dragons and nazi zombies with sub-machine guns and helicopters, and mechs (oh yeah, there’s a mech in Sucker Punch too.).