Guardians of the Galaxy

After a brief prologue, Guardians of the Galaxy kicks off with likable star Chris Pratt basically re-creating the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark while boogieing to '70s soft rock. So far, so good. Then, Michael Rooker shows up as a blue-faced alien scoundrel. This you must know: while the presence of Michael Rooker is not a guarantee of quality, it is a guarantee of awesomeness. Boom. I'm in.

Soon enough, here comes Zoe Saldana, reigning queen of the big-budget science fiction adventure, put into immediate conflict with Doctor Who's Karen Gillan. We are cooking.

Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't squander its early goodwill. It takes its simple MacGuffin chase of a plot and layers it with yet more endearing characters; clever homages to films as diverse as Pulp Fiction, Slither, Footloose, and Howard the Duck; and loads and loads of well-played banter. All of this adds up to a light, fun, and exciting space opera that had my whole family laughing out loud and rocking along for a solid two hours.

As I write about it, however, I find that I'm having trouble sinking my teeth into it.  It's bouncy.  It's fun.  I'll enjoy seeing it again when it hits Netflix.  But it doesn't give me much to think about.  It's the cotton candy of movies.

That said, I like cotton candy.  Guardians of the Galaxy worked for me.

Find Me Guilty

Sydney Lumet’s FIND ME GUILTY didn’t get a fair shake. I’m not going to argue that it’s brilliant, but it’s pretty good: it didn’t deserve its box office death. Perhaps the marketing had something to do with it. Remember all those posters with Vin Diesel dressed up as Willy Loman? At the time, I remember thinking, “How do you take a guy as charismatic as Diesel and throw all that away?

Well, the movie itself doesn’t throw Diesel’s charisma away. In fact, it relies on that charisma to get us through the true(ish) story of a charismatic New York mobster who charmed a jury into acquitting him and all of his friends in one of the biggest RICO trials to date. It works, and it does so because Diesel has the power to get an audience on his side, whether he’s playing the head of criminal enterprise, an alien convict, or a schlubby but funny gangster. I think the movie would work even better if it didn’t try to give some perspective to the proceedings by reminding us that, yes, the colorful mobsters really are bad guys and the vile prosecutors really are on the side of good. If you want to make us root for Diesel’s character, make us believe in his story, then put us in that juror’s box and convince us that he and his buddies are being unjustly persecuted. As it stands, the movie wants to have it both ways, a la “The Sopranos.” But “The Sopranos” had years to get us to know and love Paulie Walnuts. FIND ME GUILTY only has a couple of hours.

Nevertheless, FIND ME GUILTY stands as a reasonably amusing courtroom comedy, featuring a fine turn by Diesel and yet another remarkable performance from the formidable Peter Dinklage, who plays a co-defending attorney (Oh, how I’d love to have seen that Dinklage RICHARD III he did on stage a while back.). It didn’t make me laugh out loud, but it rocked along pretty well for its two hour running time. I suppose a guy could do worse.

The Chronicles of Riddick

(Mild Spoilers)

Here's the problem with THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: by the end of PITCH BLACK, RIDDICK's titular character has reconnected with humanity.

TCR tells us that the guy was never human to begin with, thus negating the point of the first film. Additionally, for a guy who is supposed to be an antihero, Riddick does the right thing again and again and again. How do you root for the bastard when the bastard is, in fact, a cuddly teddy bear?

In TCR, Vin takes on a group called the Necromongers, who are basically the Borg without Alice Krige. Lots of stuff blows up, we learn that Vin is a master of gymkata, and the good guys, ultimately, win, sorta.

I liked PITCH BLACK and I was all set to like the sequel, but this just didn't do it for me. Bummer.

Pitch Black

There's no way I'm going to argue that 'Pitch Black' is a good movie. The editing is amatuerish, the plot's holes threaten to overwhelm it, the monsters behave inconsistently, and the movie goes from horror picture to bughunt with such alacrity that I doubt the creators even knew what kind of picture they were trying to make.

I liked it.

'Pitch Black' starts with a bang, which is just what I was in the mood for. An interstellar transport encounters a meteor shower and lots of things go wrong very quickly, culminating in a fiery crash that pegged my "cool 'splosions" meter right from the get-go. The survivors are your usual lot of deadmeats and heroes, and it's easy to figure out who's going to be which pretty early on. See, here's the problem: there's monsters on this here planet, and our characters have to figure out how to survive. Oh, there's another problem: Vin Diesel. His character, a guy named Riddick, is a killer with a heart of coal who has the one thing the group needs to survive on this planet (where, by the way, the coming night should last about a year): surgically-created super night vision. Do they trust him? Does he trust them?

So, there's your setup, and it's a great way to launch a solid 112 minutes of fun. Yes, this a movie that's supposed to mostly happen at night, but that sports an awful lot of ambient light. Yes, it's the kind of movie in which a character will flick a lighter to look around, and a strategically placed key light will snap on a split-second before the flame appears. And yes, it's the kind of movie that manages plenty of shots down the lead actress's shirt for no other reason than to remind us that yes, she is a woman. It's brainless, it's silly, and it's utterly predictable.

I'm glad I watched it.