Category: Action/Adventure

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

By Marc S. Sanders

James Bond is murdered in a murphy bed!!!!

Thereafter, he ventures off to Japan to uncover who is capturing American & Russian spacecraft in an effort to pit the two countries in a global war. 007 already has his suspicions. Could it be SPECTRE?

In Sean Connery’s 5th outing as the super spy, Roald Dahl (yes, the same guy who wrote James & The Giant Peach and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory) pens the script for You Only Live Twice, a story that finally reveals the architect in charge of the terrorist organization. His name is Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Donald Pleasence appears as the man with the white cat, long before he chased after slasher Michael Myers every October 31st. “Austin Powers” films have taken all of the shock & awe away from this Blofeld. You can’t help but see Dr. Evil when Pleasence appears.

Still, there is so much to be impressed with. Producers Harry Salzman & Albert Brocolli throw all the money into this film with a hidden fortress beneath a giant volcano, plus gorgeous footage of the Orient, as well as in simulated outer space and underwater, for the secret agent’s funeral.

The first two thirds are fast paced storytelling as Bond encounters one informant or enemy after another. He even gets into a great brawl with the grandfather of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. A large sofa makes a great battering weapon.

Regrettably, the movie languishes very unnecessarily into a silly subplot where Bond has to disguise himself as a Japanese man (Mickey Rooney may have looked better in Breakfast At Tiffany’s), learn how to be a ninja in four days (ummmmm…why????), and get married to a Japanese woman (again…..why?????). This apparently is all necessary to raid the hidden volcano fortress. Yeah. It’s ridiculous and you can almost see how ridiculous Connery thinks this is. One of Dahl’s everlasting gobstoppers might have been more useful.

Fortunately, the film redeems itself very well in its ending with an explosive battle between ninjas and henchmen. Bond serves the biggest henchman to some quick eating piranhas. That’s pretty fun.

You Only Live Twice is a gigantic production of grand indulgence largely thanks to the success of 007’s four prior large screen adventures. It’s got big moments, cool gadgets like “Little Nellie” and some unexpected surprises too.

It’s good entertainment.

THUNDERBALL

By Marc S. Sanders

Director Terence Young returns to direct the most auspicious James Bond adventure yet, Thunderball from 1965.

SPECTRE’s Number 2 officer, Largo (Adolfo Celi) captures a British jet carrying two nuclear bombs, and demands England pay 100 million pounds or he will destroy a location in Europe and the United States. Bond is on the mission heading to Nassau, Bahamas to stop Largo (complete with evil voiceover and eyepatch), and recover the plane with the bombs.

The crystal blue sea of the islands allow for a huge undertaking of underwater footage complete with sharks and fight scenes with fists, knives and spear guns. It remains dazzling how well the footage is. Bond (Sean Connery, actually underwater) is there, easily disarming countless SPECTRE agents.

A great centerpiece scene occurs when Bond gets trapped in Largo’s swimming pool with a thug and three sharks to contend with. All this while Largo covers the surface of the pool with a steel sheet. The moment seems inescapable, and Young shoots a memorably suspenseful action piece.

Connery maintains that smooth, suave composure that audiences became accustomed to in his three prior outings, even if his hairpiece is noticeable and his girth is a little wider. On the beach, Bond takes out a bad guy with a spear to the chest and utters the line “I think he got the point.” It’s perfect delivery for 007.

The girl this time around is Domino (Claudine Auger). She is not the most memorable. A beautiful redhead who is not given much to do, even with Bond.

While the underwater camera work is marvelous, Thunderball is not ranked near the best in the series. It feels a little long even when the action scenes are occurring.

Still, Bond continues to hold up as does the curiosity of SPECTRE. Just who is the man with the white cat? We’ll just have to wait and see I guess.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

By Marc S. Sanders

Terence Young returns to direct the second installment in the James Bond franchise, From Russia With Love.

Sean Connery is back as 007 and he is assigned to escort the beautiful Russian Tatiana Romonava with the Lektor, a secret Soviet computer.

Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi, one of the most beautifully charming Bond girls) claims to be wanting to defect, but she is under duress from the terrorist organization SPECTRE to trap Bond (revenge for the demise of Dr. No) and cause a conflict between England and Russia.

Ian Fleming’s story is deeply rooted in the Cold War climate of the mid 1960s. It only makes sense that SPECTRE, with leadership from the mysterious Blofeld, would become a formidable opponent to Bond. Moments like the Cuban Missile Crisis and other events of the time were on everyone’s mind. I imagine it was easy to relate to in this film.

The story primarily takes place in one of Fleming’s most favorite known locales, Istanbul, Turkey. Young has great shots within enormous cathedrals and museums and even underground in 16th century tunnels, as well as outdoors on the ferry. It’s a fascinating, scenic tour.

Connery is at his best here. He looks great in his fitted suits, letting the suave and dry humor of Bond come naturally. 007 even disapproves of one ordering red wine with fish. Yet he’s also a great player, as his chemistry with gadgets like his quick assemble sniper rifle and trick briefcase (complete with explosives, gold coins, and dagger) really works well. A great fight scene aboard a train against Red Grant (Robert Shaw, in a great toughie role, nowhere recognizable compared to his later portrayal as the shark fisherman Quint in Jaws) is brutal and bare knuckled; well choreographed within the close quarters of a small train compartment.

Another killer comes in the form of Rosa Kleb (the miserly Lotte Lenya) with the shoe knife that’ll kill you in 12 seconds. She’s a lot of fun.

From Russia With Love is the most unusual of the Connery/Moore films. There’s no giant fortress for a villain, or global domination plot that is speechified to Bond over dinner.

The film is more like a Hitchcock interpretation as a pursuit is the driving force. People turn up dead just feet away from Bond and he doesn’t confront or acknowledge the villains himself. He knows they are there, but he doesn’t pick them out of the crowd. Young’s film relies on the suspense that Hitchcock introduced time and again as in North By Northwest, for example. A great scene pits Bond against an aggressive helicopter dropping grenades.

The gadgety playfully exists however, as does Bond’s chauvinism for great puns and tongue in cheek material.

The future of the franchise was looking even more promising here thanks to Connery and EON productions upping the stakes in action and more forthright innuendo.

Bond was going to be here to stay for quite a long time.

DR. NO

By Marc S. Sanders

Sean Connery introduced the iconic James Bond, Agent 007, with a license to kill the way he should be (sorry Woody Allen); handsome, highly intelligent and perceptive, quick with fighting techniques and even faster with a beautiful woman.

However, one hero who gets overlooked is director Terence Young who must receive credit for changing the movie landscape. In 1962, sets like Dr. No’s Crab Key fortress were not often conceived in movies. Dr. No is a mysterious villain with limitless resources who serves a Dom Perignon ‘55 while revealing his sinister intent to Mr. Bond. To make him even more unnerving he is bestowed with a handicap of black steel hands to intimidate the hero. This is a scary villain.

Terence Young deserves much credit for a lot of this imagery. It would change how we see action/ adventure films for the latter half of the 20th century and thereafter. Bond’s first cinematic mission set a standard in adventure formula. Set up the threat or mystery, assign the hero to the job, cross him with an ally or two, give him a damsel in distress, interfere him with one bad guy after another. Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Riggs & Murtaugh, Batman and even The Goonies follow this path time and again.

Dr. No doesn’t look so sophisticated a film these days in its cinematography and effects (a car chase consists of going around the same curve 3 times), but it’s storytelling still holds up and even managed to get my 10 year old daughter interested. That’s proof of its staying power.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

By Marc S. Sanders

A story of mistaken identity becomes one of the grandest adventures on film with Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. The movie plays at such a fast pace, moving from one locale to the next and it all feels convincingly possible.

Before James Bond, there was the dashing Cary Grant in his sharp, fitted light grey suit (the best suit to ever be shown on film) portraying advertising executive Roger Thornhill who simply raises his hand in the air while meeting some colleagues at The Plaza Hotel in New York and is suddenly mistaken for a man named George Kaplan. Soon he’s forced into a car by two men and driven to an estate property belonging to someone named Townsend (James Mason) who implores “Mr. Kaplan” to cooperate or else. Suddenly, Thornhill who continues to insist he’s not Kaplan is on a cross country journey while escaping the authorities who want him for murder while he tries to prove his true identity and exonerate himself.

Cary Grant is dashingly fun with Hitchcock’s camera. It’s refreshing for a change to watch an innocent protagonist not lay on the heavy drama and panic so much. Hitchcock with Grant were going for a sweeping story of cat and mouse play.

What Alfred Hitchcock does best is put the viewer right in position of Thornhill. For the most part (definitely through the first forty minutes) the viewer only knows what Thornhill knows. We know he’s been mistaken for someone else and we are only given the opportunity to put a few names with faces and get a hold of a crumpled photograph. That’s all we and Thornhill have to go on.

Later on, it’s only fortunate that Thornhill comes upon one of Hitchcock’s celebrated blond actresses he was always reputed to cast. This time it is the incredibly striking Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall who becomes a willingly helpful train companion for Thornhill. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint make for a spectacular on screen couple. Their chemistry is so natural together.

Not much else should be said about the story of North By Northwest. The entertainment comes from what each new scene reveals. Hitchcock incorporates all the expected twists and makes sure to use a MacGuffin, of course. This time it involves a statue and microfilm. What’s on it? That does not so much matter really. It’s the need to pursue it that’s important. The pursuit is what drives the picture from New York City to the United Nations, all the way to a curious auction house for fine art and then on to the four famous faces of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

Naturally, Hitchcock is the master once again as he points his camera up close on Grant, Mason and Saint and then quickly will cut to one of their points of view to lengthen the suspense. Running after or away from something in the moment is where Hitchcock is very strong as a storyteller. It keeps you alert as a viewer. Very alert!!!

James Mason makes for a terrific villain as Townsend, or could he be someone else? He’s got that sneaky inflection in his voice and short build that makes for a great antagonist against Cary Grant’s tall stature. Mason’s sidekick, Leonard (a mysterious looking Martin Landau) is also a spooky guy to keep your distance from.

The most celebrated scene probably also contains one of the best captions caught in film. I speak of the very surprising crop duster chase. As Roger Thornhill finds himself in a quiet, Midwestern dirt road intersection, an airplane crop duster turns into a frightening menace. The best shot occurs as Grant runs quickly towards Hitchcock’s camera and the plane flies overhead rapidly getting closer in the upper left side of the screen. As Grant runs and runs, he fills more of the screen, but so does the crop duster. The editing alone is spectacular, as an oil rig eventually comes into play with Grant about to get run over. Story wise, I adore this scene as somehow the life of a man who routinely gets in taxicabs and hob nobs through New York City on a daily basis suddenly has found himself in a dusty field running for his life. What was never expected is suddenly all that matters to this ordinary man.

Hitchcock plays with what’s around to play with. Other than a quick gag in Superman II, l don’t recall many films incorporating Mount Rushmore as such an important element to its picture. Every crevice or ledge or finger hold is important to the edits of the climax in North By Northwest. When Eva Marie Saint is holding on for life, I truly believed she could actually fall. [SPOILER ALERT] Actually, Hitchcock wanted you to believe that as the very last scene doesn’t even truly reveal the solution to her predicament. I like his method of editing this way. Hitchcock seemingly offers no option for survival as Grant and Saint’s hands barely hold on to one another. The editing is just so damn good here.

I’d be remiss if I also didn’t recognize one of the greatest orchestral scores in film. Bernard Hermann’s stirring, fast paced rhythms keep the running man theme in play. The movie seems to play by the beats of Hermann’s conduction. Action films of the future seemed to adopt some measures from he did with this film.

North By Northwest will always remain as one Alfred Hitchcock’s best films. There is not one error in the picture. Every shot is done with deliberate intent to sustain the mystery of suspense. Humor is included even at times on a risqué and subtle measure. Alfred Hitchcock again invites the simplicity of storytelling to introduce the complexity of fear and mystery and outstanding suspense. Not many films compare to North By Northwest.

ETERNALS

By Marc S. Sanders

Was I dozing on and off during Marvel’s latest film, Eternals, or was I becoming interested and uninterested during a bloated running time of two and half hours?

As an avid comic book reader during the 70s and 80s, especially Marvel comics, I must admit I don’t know much about the team of gods known as The Eternals.  So, I went into this film kind of blind.  Reader, I don’t feel any more educated having seen the film.  These expressionless number of characters arrive on Earth 7000 years ago and apparently, they are assigned with protecting the planet’s course of events through history by fending off CGI monsters knowns as the Deviants, and that’s all they are supposed to do.  Allow the dinosaurs to perish.  Let Hitler do his thing.  Have Thanos snap his fingers.  Just take care of the Deviants. 

You know what the Deviants look like to me?  An early stage of computer graphics that we would see on a behind the scenes DVD documentary contained on the second disc of a Jurassic Park 25th anniversary edition.  The geeky visual effects wizard would show this deviant on his lap top as an early concept of a raptor or T-Rex.  I dunno.  Maybe it was the screening I saw at a Regal Cinema that soured me on the visuals in Eternals.  Everything seemed so dim and unlit at times.  When the Eternals are taking refuge in a woodsy campsite, that looks as simple as the Honey I Shrunk The Kids playground in Disney World, and a dino like Deviant roars and picks up a character with it’s tentacles only to toss the person into a wood shed, I felt like I was watching one of those 3D amusement park rides.  The computer animation blended with the human actors never flowed convincingly in this film.  This is maybe the worst looking special effects film in Marvel’s library of films. Nothing looks natural here. 

A small sect of the characters is interesting.  Most are quite boring actually.  Take Ikaris for example.  This guy, played by Richard Madden, flies and shoots powerful yellow laser blasts from his eyes.  Otherwise, there’s nothing I can say about his background.  He’s so unentertainingly morose and blah.  Sersi (Gemma Chan) is just the same, and yet she’s supposed to be more optimistic.  Almost twenty-four hours later and honestly, I forgot her powers or what she’s about.

Angelina Jolie is here too.  Moving on.  Salma Hayek is here as well, and yeah, moving on.

The most interesting character is the one causing controversy in the news over being the first Marvel super hero to have a gay kiss.  That’s only a fleeting moment and truly unworthy of causing any kind of uproar.  (Find something better to get pissed about people! Men fall in love with one another.  This is nothing new.) Brian Tyree Henry plays Phastos, who specializes in advancing technology over time that somehow becomes knowledge to the humans of Earth without him taking credit for it.  Phastos has a funny situation as he balances being a god on the planet for the last 7000 years, while also being a current day family man.  More so, he’s a tragically sad character.  The best moment (not scene, because regrettably it is not explored long enough) depicts Phastos gazing upon Hiroshima in 1945 following the dropping of the atomic bomb.  He can not help, as a god, to feel responsible for this outcome, while being consoled that this is not his responsibility to accept.  Remember Phastos, you’re just here to fend off dumb looking, unfinished monsters.

The other good character is Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) – the god who eventually goes on to be a conceited and well-loved Bollywood actor/director.  Nanjiani is best used as the humor factor of the film with his tag along assistant cameraman (Harish Patel) who films all of the ongoing action for a possible documentary.  This is a good setup for a joke that doesn’t materialize well enough.

Marvel lent too much responsibility to its director Chloe Zhang, who to my knowledge does not have much experience with the big budget extravaganza films that’s expected of these installments.  Zhang was a large contributor to the script.  I’m going to take a guess and presume she’s not the comic book expert that say, Sam Raimi or Kevin Smith are.  She’s an Oscar winning director (Nomadland) who is a master photographer, but a film like Eternals tells me that if you take her out of the natural environments and put her in fantasy land computer graphics, you are not going to get the same thing.  This is like asking a guy who flips burgers at McDonald’s to prepare a $200 well aged Filet Mignon.  With Zhang directing this film, reader you are just not getting your money’s worth.

Everything seems very flat in Eternals.  The script is repetitive.  The narration of the story is that the team gradually reunites with one another following the unexpected death of one of their members.  When the characters do meet up with each other though, they explain the same news again and again and again.  This might be the way it is in real life when your 99-year-old grandfather kicks the bucket and you make one phone call after another.  However, in a film that luxury is not necessary to move the picture along.  Audiences are much more intelligent than this film gives credit.  They’ll make the safe assumption that when Phastos comes on the scene, he’ll have been caught up to date.  Yet, the picture ignores that opportunity of convenience, and just needlessly stretches the running time.

Eternals is not The Avengers.  These guys are boring.  They are written boring.  For the most part, they are acted boring.  There’s no sarcasm or biting insults among them.  There’s hardly any affection among them either, or even hate.  Think even beyond the Avengers for great team ups. Consider Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint in the first Harry Potter film, or Han, Luke and Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy.  There’s a chemistry to those characters that’s not in the Eternals; a love/hate relationship of jabs and hugs among the peers.  Even when they sit around a table for dinner, the most interesting thing the Eternals can talk about is who is going to take over the Avengers now that Iron Man and Steve Rogers are no longer around.  These folks have been separated from themselves for the last couple of thousand years or so.  Don’t they wanna catch up with one another, and maybe talk about themselves and what they’ve been up to?

The other issue with the film is the constant time jump from the times of B.C. to present day back to B.C. to early 20th century to present day and on and on.  This isn’t a Quentin Tarantino film where the fun is in piecing these moments together.  These time jumps have no impact.  I’d argue that it might have been more effective to just begin at the Eternals’ arrival on Earth and go through time chronologically.  Take me on a 7000-year journey.  Let me see what I can uncover.  For an observational director like Chloe Zhang, this is a missed opportunity here.  She could have demonstrated how the Eternal characters develop over time and get mixed up in side stories like becoming a private school teacher, or a loving dad or a film maker.  Then you have an arc to each of these misfits.  You’ll even have an arc to the planet Earth, and that could be very cool.  Don’t know what I mean?  Look at Zhang’s Nomadland from last year or Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life, or even Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Eternals could have better demonstrated how history has an impact upon itself.

Within the Marvel lexicon, this is not a necessary film.  It quickly dismisses the biggest story that came down the pike with the Thanos character causing all kinds of trouble, and then settles into its own mire.  In other words, who asked for this picture?  I have to wonder if Marvel films are finally jumping the shark or crawling from under the dumpster (remember Glenn from The Walking Dead).  Have they used up all of the hot properties, that Disney owns at least, and are now settling for these minor characters?  Maybe or maybe not.  After all, the best parts of Eternals, for this comic book reader at least, were the post credit scenes.  Still, I didn’t pay $12.00 to wade through two and a half hours of sleep-inducing material just so I could catch a glimpse of two vague teaser moments either.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 88% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A young wizard (Radcliffe) finds himself competing in a hazardous tournament between rival schools of magic, but he is distracted by recurring nightmares.


[DISCLAIMER: This review will more than likely contain spoilers, as well as Potterhead references galore.  I apologize in advance.]

When I first saw this movie, I grieved over how much of the enormously entertaining book had been sacrificed on the altar of box office viability.  Why not make two films out of it?  (Which they did later on with the final book, of course.)  What happened to Winky?  What on earth is going on with the tournament scoring?  (Seriously, try to keep track of it…it makes no sense in the film.)  Where’s the subplot about how Rita Skeeter obtains her inside information?

Watching it again years later, for perhaps the 6th or 7th time, I think I’m a little mellower.  Comparing a movie to its source material is a fool’s errand.  There’s a great story about how, years ago, someone complained to Raymond Chandler how Hollywood had ruined his book, The Big Sleep.  Chandler calmly pointed to a bookshelf, and said, “Well, there’s my book right there.  Hollywood didn’t ruin it.  It still exists.”  (I’m paraphrasing, to be sure.)

So.  Movies and books, apples and oranges.  To quote Carl Weathers in Predator: “It comes with the job.  I can accept it.”

Having said all that, I think the best way to give my impression of the film of H.P.a.t.G.o.F. is to list what it gets right and what it gets wrong.

RIGHT: The second task, involving hidden treasures in the Black Lake.  I loved the look of the mermen and mermaids and the hinkypunks.  This scene managed to captured almost exactly what I saw in my head when I read the book.

WRONG: The first task, involving retrieving a golden egg.  We see FAR too little of how the other contestants fared in their attempts, jumping right past the first three just to see what Harry does.

RIGHT: “Mad-Eye” Moody.  I’ll never be able to read the books again without seeing Brendan Gleeson’s magnificent performance in my head.  That amazing enchanted eye, the facial tics, the glee with which he transforms a student into a ferret…it’s perfect.

WRONG: The Yule Ball.  As it appears in the film, it literally brings the movie to a halt.  It’s all about the interpersonal relationships between Ron, Hermione, and Harry, but nothing happens to move the plot forward.  I can’t help thinking there was a better way to stage this pivotal event.

RIGHT: The events in the graveyard.  I can recall vividly the moment when I read the words, “He was dead” in the book.  I sat up on the sofa, my eyes grew wide, and I exclaimed out loud, “Holy s**t!”  The movie gets this entire sequence right.  As I recall, the graveyard covered two or three entire chapters in the book, and the film condenses it nicely into a 10-minute sequence.  (Approximately.)  It’s the moment, in both the books and the films, when the franchise became much more than “kid stuff.”

WRONG: Snape’s role in the film.  The movie curiously omits the incredibly relevant moment in the book when, after Dumbledore observes the Dark Mark on Snape’s arm, he tells him, “You know what to do.”  And Snape nods curtly and leaves the room.  That comes into play to a GREAT degree in the latter stages of the franchise.  Ah well.

And I’ll leave it there.  I could go on.  All in all, it’s a good film, a great spectacle, and a turning point for the series.  They could have called it, Harry Potter and the Advancement of Maturity.

ZATHURA: A SPACE ADVENTURE (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 75% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two young brothers (Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo) are drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is hurled through the depths of space by the magical board game they are playing.


If only all family movies were like this.

Too often, so-called family films are mealy-mouthed cream puffs that appeal to the short attention span of their target audience, leaving the parents either bored to tears or fatigued from sitting through 90 minutes of explosions.  The scripts are subpar and tend to treat kids as if they’re not all that bright.

Not Zathura.  With his third film (after the forgettable Made and the Christmas neo-classic Elf), director Jon Favreau proved that he’s the real deal.  Here’s a REAL family film with something for everybody: comedy, family drama, peril, thrills, a killer robot, fearsome aliens, and nostalgia.

The nostalgia part is especially notable.  The board game at the center of the film is constructed to look like something made in the ‘50s or ‘60s, which, to the kids in the film, is practically ancient history.  But for me, I found the film nostalgic in the way it captures the kind of fun I used to have at the movies.

Not that I don’t still have fun, mind you.  It’s just that, when I was a kid, sci-fi and fantasy films felt more real, you know?  It was so easy to imagine myself as a resident of the Goondocks, or discovering an alien in the cornfield behind my house, or building a spaceship in the backyard with my two best friends.  Zathura captures that kind of feeling like few other modern family films can.  It’s a movie that has the potential to live on in the imagination after countless other films have vacated your consciousness.

And the VISUALS.  I don’t know what kind of budget the movie had, but it looks like a $100 million movie.  The killer robot is absolutely convincing, as are the aliens.  Which brings up another great element of the film: danger.  The bad guys in this movie may occasionally look a little cartoony, but they are not to be trifled with.  That’s something a lot of kid’s movies tend to get wrong.  The filmmakers lose their nerve in creating real villains, for fear of pissing off too many parents.  In reality…dude, kids can handle it.  Give the bad guys fangs and spinning saw blades.  It just makes it that much more satisfying when the bad guys LOSE.

Zathura barely made its money back, and that’s including domestic AND worldwide grosses (okay, I looked it up).  I could be wrong, but I’ll bet too many people thought it was a Jumanji ripoff.  It IS based on a book by the same author as Jumanji (and The Polar Express, as it happens).  But it is possible, I think, to see Zathura in its own light.  It’s a fantastic movie that will please all ages.

QUICK TAKE: Serenity (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, Chiwetel Ejiofor
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The crew of the ship Serenity tries to evade an assassin sent to recapture one of their members who is telepathic…and perhaps something more…


In a perfect world, Han Solo would still have shot Greedo in cold blood, not self-defense.  Universal would have stopped with Jaws 2.  Heath Ledger would still be around for at least one more Dark Knight film.

And in that perfect world, Serenity would have spawned two more films, each better than the one before, for a trilogy that would be in the conversation for greatest science-fiction franchise ever.

I do not say this as a fan of Firefly, the short-lived, devoutly-worshipped television show upon which Serenity is based.  When I first saw this movie in 2005, I had no idea why the pilot had dinosaurs on the cockpit dashboard.  I didn’t know why it was such a big deal to see River Tam, this wisp of a girl, performing intricate fight scenes right out of a Jackie Chan movie.  I didn’t know why the characters sprinkled Chinese or Japanese phrases in the middle of their dialogue (sometimes cursing in those languages).  Or why they talked like it was the old West instead of hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

Know what?  It didn’t matter.  Serenity is so well-made and well-written that, after the two main opening sequences, I rolled with it.  I had an immediate sense of the vast history of this “used” universe and the characters within it.  In this world (taking a cue from “Star Wars”), the good guys fly rust-buckets, not sterile starships.  It’s a pure visual pleasure from start to finish.

The great story, screenplay, acting (from actors who are clearly enjoying themselves), effective usage of visual effects, genuine surprises, and one bona fide shocker that had audiences gasping and yelling at the screen…it’s all here.  Shiny!

TRANSPORTER 2 (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 51%

PLOT: An extremely skilled mercenary driver (Statham) is implicated in the kidnapping of the young son of a powerful USA drug official.


When an action film includes a shot of the good guy flipping his car off a ramp so a dangling crane hook can clip off a bomb stuck underneath the car mere SECONDS before it goes off…you either laugh and roll with it or scoff and leave the theater.  I laughed.

Transporter 2 is an example of a movie not really intended for American audiences.  From top to bottom, this is a European action movie, made in the States with the kind of budget unknown in foreign studios.  It was produced by none other than Luc Besson, director of cult classics like Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element.  Here he farms out directing duties to Louis Leterrier, a genre specialist known for Jet Li’s Unleashed, the original Transporter, and, later on, an honest-to-God entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk.

This movie is utter junk food.  It aspires to the kind of delirious cartoonish heights that would later be achieved by Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), but it fails due to too many breaks in the action.  And if you have too many breaks in a movie that’s barely 80 minutes long, something has gone wrong at the screenplay level.  In a movie like this, adding depth of character just gets in the way of the action.

The action itself, while mildly stunning visually, is too sparse.  There’s an extended fight scene in a basement that’s imaginative and well done, making creative use of a fire hose.  There’s a one-sided gun battle in a doctor’s office.  The lone car chase in the film sees the infamous building-to-building car jump from Lethal Weapon 2 and raises it.  And, of course, the bomb-removing flip to a crane.  (I can’t even discuss the finale aboard a plummeting private jet without wincing.)

Other than that, not much here, folks.  For me, this is an all-too-obvious guilty pleasure, something to toss into the player and jack the volume up so the gun battles rattle the walls.  The absurdity of the action allows the movie to flirt with camp classic status, but I usually just fast-forward to the parts where stuff gets blowed up real good.