September brought quite a few movies that I didn’t get around to seeing, and several that were disappointing. However, the end of the month brought one of my absolute favorite movies of the year – Serenity. So here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the month:
Transporter 2 – You just gotta love Jason Statham. He is such a kick ass action star. He is so much more fun to watch than Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Steven Seagal. His martial arts style is amazing to watch. Sadly this movie is a little too over the top in spots, and so it’s not as good as the original, but it’s still really fun. Great popcorn movie.
Into the Blue – Jessica Alba looking amazingly sexy in a bikini for an hour and a half. What more needs to be said?
Flightplan – Much as I like Jodi Foster as an actress, this was a very mediocre and predictable film. I wasn’t impressed with this one at all. Panic Room was so much better.
A History of Violence – It stuns me that this film is not only receiving award nominations, but actually winning awards (mostly in Canada, where the director is from – go figure)! This movie was such a disappointment. I’m as big a fan of sex and violence in movies as anyone, but this movie is the definition of “gratuitous.” Okay, so maybe the director was trying to make a statement about the gratuitous sex and violence that’s rampant in our entertainment and our society (that’s what all those idiotic movie critics out there seemed to think). If so, his big, bold statement was lost on me. All I saw was a movie filled with sex, nudity, and violent murder strictly for their own sake. But my bigger complaint goes to story. Being a writer of sorts, I love a good story. As a wannabe filmmaker, I also understand the nature of a good film script – keep the story moving forward, keep the pace steady. Here we have a movie that’s only 96 minutes long (so there’s not much story there to begin with), and yet I repeatedly saw scenes that in my mind had no point being in the movie. They were extraneous distractions that could have easily been removed with no negative impact on the story flow at all. Which leaves you with probably less than an hour of actual relevant scenes. I’m sorry, but if I’m looking for an hour’s worth of nudity and mob violence, I can watch an episode of The Sopranos – and I’m pretty much guaranteed a hell of a lot better story than what I saw in A History of Violence. So my recommendation – if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t waste your time.
Which brings me to the climax of September, the best science fiction movie of 2005 (and easily one of the best overall movies of 2005) – Serenity!! Now, I do have to make one admission – this movie is very much the end cap to the series Firefly, and if you haven’t seen the TV show, then you’re not going to enjoy the movie as much. From an objective perspective (well, as much as I can be objective, considering that I’m a HUGE fan of the show), I would have to say that as a general sci-fi movie, just on it’s own, Serenity is only a pretty good movie (but still very worth seeing). It only becomes a truly great movie when you factor in the character and story development from the series that preceded it. As the theatrical finale to the show, the movie truly shines.
This is probably not going to surprise anyone, but I just can’t help myself – I have to compare Serenity with the other two big sci-fi films that were released this summer: Star Wars Episode III and War of the Worlds (and I have to smile and say that for once the critics and I agree – they also generally feel that Serenity is the better movie over Episode III, and that George Lucas could learn a thing or two from Joss Whedon). Primarily because of who was involved in the making those other two movies (at least as far as I’m concerned), both of them did blockbuster numbers and were huge successes at the box office, while Serenity was a disappointment, to say the least. Which is a shame considering that the first of those other two movies was bad, while the other was downright horrible (I’ve actually read reviews talking about how good War of the Worlds was, which just floors me – what the hell movie were THEY watching?! Obviously there are a few critics out there that figure Steven Spielberg and/or Tom Cruise can do no wrong. Well, sadly they are seriously mistaken). While Serenity had neither the big budget nor massive fan base of the other two movies, it had one thing going for it in spades that the other two films were completely lacking in – a well written script with great dialogue (I’m sorry, but some of the dialogue in Episode III was just painful, and the weak performances that delivered said dialogue certainly didn’t help). Whatever else you may say about Joss Whedon, he is above all the master of fun, engaging, memorable dialogue.
The visual effects aren’t nearly as high-end as those in Star Wars (or War of the Worlds, as far as that goes), but they do justice to the story, which is what really counts, since that’s what they’re there for (George Lucas has a weakness for getting overly focused on the visual effects that I feel hurts his films – a habit that sadly it seems Peter Jackson is developing, but I’ll go more into that once I get to my King Kong review). It’s nice to see the occasional sci-fi movie that has a more lo-tech feel to its technology, as opposed to the shiny, glossy, super-sophisticated hi-tech that’s so common in most science fiction (this was one of the things I loved about Wing Commander, a very highly underrated sci-fi movie in my opinion).
Joss Whedon is just such a master storyteller. His characters have depth and personality, his stories are well thought out, and he combines drama and humor and action and emotional depth together into a compelling tapestry probably better than any writer/director I’ve seen (although I’m sure there are plenty of independent filmmakers out there that are as good; sadly I just seem to watch a lot more Hollywood films than independent films, and I don’t think I’ll get much argument from people about Hollywood’s serious lack of creativity and storytelling ability these days. I mean, my God, just how many sequels, remakes, and movie versions of TV shows can they pump out?).
Well, I think that’s about it. I think I’ve written enough to make it pretty obvious how I feel about Serenity. Bottom line – if you’re a fan of the show, this is a must-see movie without question. If you’re not, but you like well-written, well-acted sci-fi, then this movie is still worth checking out (but maybe not must-see). Of course, if you haven’t seen the original show, I highly recommend it. It is just a fantastic series (it’s just a shame that it aired on Fox, who completely bungled it from word go – not airing the episodes in order, putting it in a lousy time slot, basically giving it no support whatsoever. But that’s a totally different discussion that I could go on about at length, so I’ll just stop now). So until next time (and God knows when that’ll be), take life easy, and make sure to support your local Cineplex.
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