Sucker Punch

Snyder is fantastic with visuals and music (anyone who has seen the brilliant but sadly underrated Watchmen knows this), but for God's sake, never, ever let him write his own scripts! If I were to rate only the composition of shots, the imaginative details, the spectacular slow motion (which, I don't know how Snyder does it, I don't mind it in his case) and the the soundtrack (“Army of Me” by Bjork made me foolishly believe I would love the film), it would be worth a full score. But the decadent pop-cultural, cringeworthy, scripted ballast, which also pretends to convey some higher message, was impossible to digest even with a full brain shutdown. Snyder is a great craftsman, but he needs a permanent whip over him and a humility within himself, which, on the other hand, was not lacking in his almost reverential adaptation of Moore's “Watchmen”. (02/04/2011)

Perfect action sequences in a story about girl power that is only held together by the main protagonists’ makeup. Snyder shouldn’t write screenplays. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I won’t put up with this type of video game anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I always used to want to see scenes like where the dragon is chasing the airplane with the medieval battle raging beneath them or where the Nazi cyborgs are fighting in the trenches against a gang of scantily dressed young ladies (and that machine gun really suits Abbie Cornish). But since then, my movie priorities have changed. (18/06/2011)

The action scenes were all over the place to me, but I wasn't going to talk about that. It was more about how I absolutely loathed the way they alternated between a Hollywood-esque triumph over evil (or when Amber et al. were fighting) with scenes that were shockingly cruel, dirty, and "real". It didn't make me feel good, and considering that this was happening throughout the entire movie, I didn't have a lot of fun. But for the other sex, there are plenty of babes here, each different, so maybe you can even pick one to watch. Plus, the babes here carry guns too: every teenager's dream... and the second star is for the soundtrack. (30/05/2011)

It's you... Nazis, zombies, robots, dragons, and samurais versus a group beautiful girls. In other words, six reasons why Sucker Punch could never succeed globally. It has everything you can imagine when you want in a big, opulent, bombastic blockbuster, yet the world couldn't handle such an explosion, because having all those winning strokes in one movie is just too much. Zack Snyder is clearly fulfilling a number of fantasies and despite a few reservations, I have to cheer him on. I could do without the somewhat forced contrast between the makeup-laden fantasies and the depressing reality (the latter of which, ironically, I actually liked more), but in the end, it's because of where the story is headed that the ending almost knocked me off my feet. Not only will I never see such a one-of-a-kind romp this year, I doubt I ever will again. And now, grab a katana and Baby Doll can start dancing. (18/06/2011)

An incredibly crazy film, full of parodies, references, and captivating visuals. It’s a film made only for film enthusiasts and lovers of “fantasy” action. For bores and rational scientists, it will be a completely wasted hour and a half, followed by a feeling of WTF. Zack Snyder does whatever he wants and in his own way, it's also charming. (09/07/2011)