Babylon 5: The Lost Tales - Voices in the Dark

BABYLON 5: THE LOST TALES - VOICES IN THE DARK is a direct-to-video movie, but I'd apply the term "movie" rather loosely. It's more like a couple of episodes stitched together. Your tolerance for this will depend, in large part, on your tolerance for B5 in general.

If you like B5, you'll find plenty to enjoy in VOICES IN THE DARK. Some of our familiar friends got back in shape and it's always nice to see them again. The dialogue they're forced to recite still has that charming combination of earnestness and pulpiness. The CGI got an upgrade, and who doesn't love those wacky alien hairstyles?

If you're not a fan, there isn't much for you here. This movie assumes familiarity with the series and, though the stories are straitforward enough to understand, you'll spend at least some of your time thinking, "They're alluding to something, but I have no idea what."

I like the B5 universe. I like its optimism, and I like its makeshift qualities. Although VOICES IN THE DARK seems unlikely to win over many new fans, I do hope it sells well enough to merit further DTV outins for these fine folks. I'd like to keep tabs on what they're up to.

Vacancy

So this is how the career path goes: break out with an international success, accept an invitation to Hollywood, and make your bones as a commercial director in genre fare such as VACANCY.

At least, this is how it's going for Nimród Antal, the Hungarian director of 2003's remarkable KONTROLL. Where KONTROLL was haunting, dreamlike, and rather puzzling, VACANCY is a straightforward horror thriller whose every beat will seem familiar to anyone who has ever seen a picture that begins with someone saying, "Why didn't you stay on the interstate?" That said, VACANCY is a very professional "Don't Get Off The Interstate" horror thriller: a step up from MOTEL HELL, though not in the same league as PSYCHO (which it recalls through clever use of 60's-style opening and closing credits).

Here's the setup: Kate Beckinsale wakes up in the passenger seat of a car driving through the toolies in the middle of the night. She turns to her husband (Luke Wilson, who's been going heavy on the electrolytes) and says, "Why'd you get off the interstate?" Things go downhill from there.

And that's it, really. The rest is in the execution, and it's here that Antal proves himself an able craftsman. He finds novel ways to build and maintain suspense, though we all know what's coming next and who'll still be on two feet when the credits roll. He manages to create suitably creepy villains, alternates well between jump-scares and slow burns, and even manages to work in a bit of subtle comedy. In other words, the guy takes a familiar subgenre out of the garage, puts some gas in the tank, and takes it for a fun spin.

But this is Nimród Antal, the guy behind KONTROLL, we're talking about. Next time, I hope they let him get off the interstate.

Safety Last!

While GRANDMA'S BOY may be funnier that SAFETY LAST!, there's no topping the latter's dazzling combination of comedy and acrophobia.

Harold Lloyd is off the Big City to make his mark and earn enough to marry his best girl (Mildred Davis), but things aren't working out so well. He's just getting by and, when Mildred shows up, he needs to find a way to make good on his empty boasts of success. If you care about movies, you know that, somehow, this will end up with Harold dangling from a clockface, high above the city. How he gets in that predicament, and how he gets out of it, is great fun.

And there's plenty of fun to be had throughout SAFETY LAST!. Lloyd's character is so gosh-darn charming that you can't help but root for him, and you love to see him come out on top. From a well-executed boarding-house sequence to a near-riot in a department store to Lloyd's vertiginous climb to that clock face and beyond, the comedy, both situational and gag-oriented snaps.

Most impressive, perhaps, is that famous climb to the clock and beyond. It manages to walk a line between scary and funny, and it had me both chuckling and wincing with acrophobia from start to finish. What a treat.

SAFETY LAST! is out on DVD, and the print looks fantastic. Put this movie at the top of your queue.

Babel

THE TRANSPORTER 2 is a better moviegoing experience than BABEL.

BABEL teaches us that guns are bad: look for a young Moroccan boy destroying a gun in a climactic fit of fury, sadness, and despair. THE TRANSPORTER 2 teaches us that guns are for losers: real men use car-fu, firehose fu, bead curtain fu, sword fu, lead pipe fu, axe fu, coconut fu, boat fu, and Gulfstream IV fu, just to name a, er, few. BABEL features heartbreaking turns from a brilliant cast featuring Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, and some cat from SNATCH. THE TRANSPORTER 2 features evil foreigners, anorexic models, and some cat from SNATCH kicking people in the face. BABEL features a girl in a schoolgirl outfit flashing her Britney at random Japanese schoolboys. THE TRANSPORTER 2 featurs a girl in a schoolgirl outfit who jacks cars with a gang of cartoonish thugs. And speaking of girls, all BABEL can give us is a clothing-challenged girl weeping on her father's shoulder, while THE TRANSPORTER 2 delivers a clothing-challenged girl in heavy mascara wielding dual automatic weapons and laying down the aforementioned bead curtain fu.

All kidding aside, BABEL is two hours of the anticipation of horror, horror, and despair. Its painfulness is outweighed only by its heavyhandedness, with self-absorbed first-worlders weighed against salt-of-the-earth second-worlders. Not only did I feel that this film was trying to manipulate me into a decidedly unpleasant emotional place, but I thought that it was doing so dishonestly. And really, enough of these "hyperlink films." I liked SHORT CUTS as much as the next guy, but there's no joy in discovering the connections the film lays out before us. Just tell me a story, goshdarnit. Entertain me. Teach and enlighten me if you can, but don't preach at me. And if you can manage it, try and mix in a little cocounut fu. Coconut fu does wonders for any film.

Serenity

I watch very little TV. "Baseball Tonight," "The Daily Show," and "The Colbert Report" are pretty much it. When it comes to narrative entertainment, I prefer films - they're a fully self-contained experience.

So I never saw "Firefly" when it aired. I never saw it on cable. I saw it only when a friend was certain I'd like it that he drove to my home, dropped off the series DVDs, and told me to call him once I'd seen them all. And you know what? I liked it. I really liked it.

I liked the creatively imagined solar system of "Firefly." I liked the blending of American and Chinese argots. I liked that fact that, finally, here was a show about transport guys!

So I was happy to fire up SERENITY when it arrived at my door. I'm sorry to report, however, that it found it to be, well, just pretty good. While the movie tickled my imagination, it didn't quite capture it. There are too many "big moments." The resolution of the mystery surrounding the kung-fu psycho chick wasn't particularly satisfying, and I thought that these people had gone to all this trouble merely to uncover the scandal of the week.

Hey, "just pretty good" isn't all that bad. Catch SERENITY when it shows up on cable. But don't go out of your way for it.

The Transporter 2

The Transporter 2 takes direct aim at your inner child and gives it everything it could possibly want. If, that is, your inner child is a 15-year-old boy.

Fortunately, mine is: I had a great time with TT2. It's basically action porn, with a paper-thin plot just moving us from one set piece to the next. It pays minimal attention to character development or motivation, but it does spend a lot of time lovingly filming cars in various states of speeding, sliding, flying, rolling, and getting shot at. This is a movie that goes easy on the dialogue and heavy on the kicking of people in the face, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Bring on The Transporter 3!