In Theaters: SERENITY (2019)

SERENITY
(US/UK - 2019)

Written and directed by Steven Knight. Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Rafael Sayegh, David Butler, Charlotte Butler, Garion Dowds. (R, 106 mins). 

Steven Knight got an Oscar nomination for scripting 2003's DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, and his many other writing credits include the 2007 David Cronenberg film EASTERN PROMISES. He also earned significant acclaim for 2014's LOCKE, which he also directed. In addition, he's the co-creator of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? and the creator of the Netflix series PEAKY BLINDERS. He's done hired gun writing gigs on commercial fare like 2015's SEVENTH SON, 2016's ALLIED, and 2018's THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB, but SERENITY, his latest auteur effort, is the kind of shit-the-bed clusterfuck that can completely derail an otherwise successful career. Just ask Martin Brest, the director of BEVERLY HILLS COP and MIDNIGHT RUN whose final film to date is GIGLI. Shot in 2017, SERENITY's release date was bumped a couple of times in the fall of 2018 until upstart Aviron Pictures yanked it from the schedule and saved it for January, an almost certain indicator that something was amiss. Trailers made it look like a BODY HEAT-type noir throwback, which unquestionably would've been preferable to the bait-and-switch that Knight haplessly tries to pull off. The end result feels like an homage to the heyday of the erotic thriller borne of a doomed alliance between James M. Cain, Joe Eszterhas, M. Night Shyamalan, Charlie Brooker, and Jack Daniels, populated by an overqualified cast clearly more intrigued by a paid vacation to scenic Mauritius and South Africa than containing whatever the dumpster fire was that Knight cobbled together on the page.

On Plymouth Island, a tiny, off-the-grid fishing island presumably somewhere in the Caribbean, local fisherman Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is obsessed with catching a legendary giant tuna that he's named "Justice." When he isn't on his boat with his long-suffering first mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou), he's downing shots at Plymouth's one dive bar and having sweaty afternoon hookups with wealthy divorcee Constance (Diane Lane), who pays him for his services since he's perpetually short on cash. Plymouth is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone's business, and it isn't long before they've all noticed a well-dressed mystery woman who's arrived to meet Baker. She's Karen Zariakis (Anne Hathaway), his high-school sweetheart and ex-wife who knew "Baker Dill" when he went by his real name, John Marsh. She left him when he was serving in Iraq a decade earlier, taking their now-13-year-old son Patrick (Rafael Sayegh) with her. She married the shady and obscenely wealthy Frank Zariakis (Jason Clarke), a violent, vulgar lout who regularly beats and forces himself on her and demands she call him "Daddy." Haunted by PTSD and still bitter that gold-digging Karen abandoned him when he needed her most, Baker, who was so desperate to run from something in his past that he fled to an island in the middle of nowhere and adopted an alias, isn't interested in his ex's sob stories and wants no part of her very lucrative offer: $10 million if she takes Frank out on a fishing excursion and throws him into the shark-infested waters. He declines--for a while, at least-- even after she informs him that Franks's abuse is so relentless that Patrick, a savant-like genius, has locked himself in his room and spends all of his waking hours immersed in a computer game.

In any other movie, the notion of Diane Lane playing a woman who has to pay a man to sleep with her would easily be the most absurdly implausible plot detail. Or that McConaughey (born in 1969) and Hathaway (born in 1982) are supposed to be high-school sweethearts. But Knight is just getting started. What's with the weird, eccentric, persistent salesman (Jeremy Strong) who keeps anxiously running around Plymouth looking for Baker, even turning up outside his shack at 2:30 am in a torrential downpour to sell him fishing equipment? How does Baker have a telepathic communication with Patrick ("He hears you through his computer!" Karen tells him)? How does everyone know Frank is a wife-beater before he even gets to Plymouth? Why is everyone's chief reason for being seemingly to remind Baker "You gotta catch that tuna that's in your head?" You could actually make a drinking game out of every time someone says "Catch that tuna!" which actually might've made a better title than SERENITY (it's the name of Baker's boat). Hathaway makes a convincingly breathless, cooing femme fatale, even with the insipid dialogue Knight's written for her ("We're both the same," she purrs as she seduces Baker, "...damaged but in different ways," as if Knight doesn't trust the audience to draw the same conclusion). All of this is merely foreplay for what's almost certain to go down as the dumbest plot twist of 2019 or possibly even the history of narrative cinema. It might've worked if Knight hadn't telegraphed it so clumsily so early on, but anyone paying attention will figure it out long before Baker does, even if you initially dismiss your gut feeling, thinking "There's absolutely no fucking way an Oscar-nominated writer like Steven Knight is gonna pull something that stupid out of his ass." Oh, but he does! With its gaping plot holes, its jaw-dropping resolution guaranteed to leave you somewhere between thoroughly dumbfounded and utterly enraged, its idiotic dialogue, its squandering of Lane in a frivolous supporting role that's far beneath her, and the ludicrous amounts of self-indulgent McConaughey nudity and his third-act, Nic Cage-channeling histrionics, SERENITY is so bad that it almost demands to be seen with a large and increasingly hostile audience collectively losing its patience. I didn't get to experience that, as I had the entire theater to myself for a Monday matinee screening. Apparently, the word's gotten out.

In Theaters: KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD (2017)

KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD
(US - 2017)

Directed by Guy Ritchie. Written by Joby Harold, Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram. Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Eric Bana, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillan, Mikael Persbrandt, Neil Maskell, Freddie Fox, Greg McGinlay, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Peter Ferdinando, Bleu Landau, Annabelle Wallis, Geoff Bell, Poppy Delevingne, Jacqui Ainsley. (PG-13, 125 mins)

Already a costly flop and the first bomb of the summer, Guy Ritchie's extremely revisionist, $175 million KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD is reasonably entertaining if taken strictly--and I do mean strictly--on its own terms. It's an approach not unlike his excellent, steampunkish take on SHERLOCK HOLMES, though not as consistently solid as that or his underrated THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. a couple years back (but it's better than that second SHERLOCK HOLMES movie, which was pretty terrible). Ritchie throws everything but the kitchen sink into his Arthurian world, which is bound to not go over well with purists--indeed, the Three Stooges short SQUAREHEADS OF THE ROUND TABLE might be more faithful to the legend--but it's perfectly acceptable escapism that probably would've done better if released in March or September. John Boorman's EXCALIBUR remains the last word on this subject as far as big screen adaptations go, and I really feel sorry for any corner-cutting junior high and high school students who watch this instead of doing their assigned reading, because giant elephants, snakes, rats, and bats and an Asian martial arts master named "Kung Fu George" are certainly not elements discarded from rough drafts of T.H. White's The Once and Future King or Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Equal parts early Ritchie crime movies, LORD OF THE RINGS, and GAME OF THRONES, KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD has King Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) and Queen Igraine (Poppy Delevingne) being killed in a supernatural, Mordred-abetted uprising instigated by Uther's treacherous younger brother Vortigern (Jude Law). Their toddler son Arthur is put on a small boat and sails into the night, where he's found by the denizens of a brothel and raised in the red light district of Londinium, where he grows into adulthood and is played by SONS OF ANARCHY's Charlie Hunnam. Arthur is unaware of his heritage and lives as a disreputable but affable con man and peacekeeper at the brothel, making sure the prostitutes who raised him aren't abused by the clientele. One such abusive customer is sinister Viking warrior Greybeard (Mikael Persbrandt) who's humiliated by Arthur, the future hero unaware that Greybeard and his soldiers are under the protection of King Vortigern. Vortigern has been rounding up age-appropriate young men all over England and having them herded to his castle to attempt to pull Uther's sword Excalibur from the stone so he can find his nephew. Once Arthur's true nature is discovered, Vortigern tries to have him executed, but he's rescued by a band of rebels led by Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou) and Goosefat Bill (GAME OF THRONES' Aidan Gillan), who have enlisted the help of a nameless mage and protegee of Merlin (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) to defeat the tyrannical and despised Vortigern and enable Arthur to assume his rightful place on the throne.

Fast-moving and frequently amusing, KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD looks terrific most of the way, with some eye-popping 3-D visuals and the kind of hyperkinetic, flash-forward/flash-back structure that Ritchie used in LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH. He's more or less a big-budget journeyman at this point, but this is the first of Ritchie's hired-gun assignments that actually has significant stretches that, for better or worse depending on whether you're a fan, feel like vintage Ritchie. While mileage may vary as far as one's acceptance of a King Arthur being given snake venom to enhance his vision and perception, or stranded on a de facto Skull Island where he's forced to battle giant snakes and bats to prove his mettle after being trained in combat by the aforementioned Kung Fu George (Tom Wu), the film works as mindless fun most of the way. That is, until Ritchie lets the blurry, quick-cutting shaky-cam take over for the mess of a climactic battle where Arthur finally takes on Vortigern, who's transformed into a demon knight and starts sounding like Dr. Claw from INSPECTOR GADGET. Law is enjoying himself as an appropriately hissable villain, while Hunnam doesn't really have to stretch much outside of his Jax Teller persona, getting to use his natural British accent but faring much better in James Gray's recent THE LOST CITY OF Z. The mage, an obvious reinterpretation of the sorceress Morgan Le Fay (Morgana in EXCALIBUR), functions as a stand-in for the barely-seen Merlin, who here is credited with the forging of Excalibur. Spanish-French actress Berges-Frisbey (ANGELS OF SEX) has an intriguing presence that's reminiscent of a young Isabelle Adjani, while two-time Oscar nominee Hounsou, once again cast in a thankless sidekick role, continues to be arguably the most insufficiently-utilized great actor in Hollywood. The origin story (the Round Table is seen under construction at the end) in what was planned as a six-film series in a Warner Bros. King Arthurverse that's most likely now joined the ranks of THE GOLDEN COMPASS in being whittled down to a series of one, KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD will exit theaters very quickly but should play well on streaming and on cable for the next decade or more. It's enjoyable and filled with rousing action, but it can't stop itself from stumbling when it matters most. And as entertaining as it is most of the time, the $175 million price tag does seem a tad excessive.

In Theaters: SEVENTH SON (2015)

SEVENTH SON
(US/China - 2015)

Directed by Sergei Bodrov. Written by Charles Leavitt and Steven Knight. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Djimon Hounsou, Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Olivia Williams, Antje Traue, Jason Scott Lee, John DeSantis, Gerard Plunkett, Kandyce McClure, Luc Roderique, Zahf Paroo. (PG-13, 102 mins)

Filmed way back in 2012 and bounced around the schedule since its first announced release date of February 2013, the $100 million SEVENTH SON has finally arrived with some of the lowest expectations this side of 47 RONIN. The original release date was postponed after one of the film's primary companies in charge of the visual effects went bankrupt. After that was sorted out, the first official trailer appeared in theaters in July 2013, followed by numerous release date shuffles pushing the movie into 2014. Some time later, Legendary Pictures ended their partnership with distributor Warner Bros., setting up a new deal with Universal, who bumped SEVENTH SON to February 2015, likely to afford it a reasonable opportunity to distance itself from the 47 RONIN debacle of Christmas 2013. The train-wreck potential on this one is pretty high, but its primary offenses are shoddy visuals, sloppy writing, and a strict adherence to a stale formula. Despite the buckets of money thrown on the screen, SEVENTH SON doesn't look any better than one of Uwe Boll's straight-to-DVD IN THE NAME OF THE KING sequels, with some alarmingly unimpressive greenscreen backdrops and the daytime exteriors given the same kind of blurry, smeary soft focus that ABC News uses on Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer.

Based on Joseph Delaney's 2004 novel The Spook's Apprentice (retitled The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch in the US), the first part of the "Wardstone Chronicles" (UK)/"Last Apprentice" (US) medieval fantasy series (now up to 13 books, plus several spinoff novels), SEVENTH SON deals with Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges), a wise old warrior fighting the supernatural. Known as a "spook," he's the last of his kind, the sole survivor of a legion of warriors defeated by evil. Now a mercenary witch hunter, Gregory is called back into action when Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), a nefarious spellcaster he imprisoned in a mountain dungeon decades earlier, escapes and kills his apprentice Bradley (Kit Harington). Mother Malkin, who frequently shapeshifts into a dragon, is set to reclaim her throne and unleash her evil over the world upon the rise of the Blood Moon, a once-per-century lunar event that happens to be a week away. Gregory needs a new apprentice, a seventh son of a seventh son, which leads him to earnest farm boy Tom Ward (Ben Barnes). Tom leaves his family to join Gregory in his quest, falling in love with Alice (Alicia Vikander), the half-witch niece of Mother Malkin. As Gregory trains Tom in the ways of being a spook--of course they initially butt heads but come to a mutual respect--they're joined by Gregory's faithful servant Tusk (John DeSantis) and prepare for battle against Mother Malkin, who's assembling her army of fellow shapeshifting witches and warlocks in order for evil to reign supreme at the coming of the Blood Moon.

No stranger to planned franchises that stall after one film, director Sergei Bodrov--well-respected in Russian and, since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakh cinema--is best known to arthouse audiences for his Genghis Khan epic MONGOL (2008), the first installment of an announced trilogy whose second chapter has yet to materialize. It's hard to say what drew the 64-year-old Bodrov to a mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster-type project 40 years into his filmmaking career (he also directed PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS, a 1996 Oscar-nominee for Best Foreign Language Film), but the look and feel of SEVENTH SON is purely that of a B-grade LORD OF THE RINGS knockoff, from the inevitable swooping, circular aerial shots of the heroes walking along hills and mountaintops to the sage old mentor instructing a naive, impulsive pupil. The bland Barnes, who's seen whatever momentum he had going from being THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA's Prince Caspian derailed by films shelved for anywhere from two (THE BIG WEDDING) to three (this) to even five years (LOCKED IN), was 31 at the time of filming and looks a good decade too old for his role. Barnes, currently the British guy you go to after Andrew Garfield, Jim Sturgess, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Alex Pettyfer turn you down, is largely indistinguishable from his CGI surroundings, and in many scenes, he and the supporting cast appear to be looped in a way that's just ever-so-slightly off, giving a certain slapdash feel to the proceedings. It's especially noticeable with Swedish Vikander and German Antje Traue (as Mother Malkin's witch sister), who are clearly dubbed with different voices in some scenes, and speak with their own audible accents in others. This, along with some later scenes where Barnes' hairstyle and Bridges' hair color have changed, are obvious indicators of hasty reshoots.

Even Moore flubs it at times, using a comically regal tone most of the time and occasionally slipping into her normal way of speaking. She goes through rants and raves with a look on her face that indicates she's well aware of how dumb all of it sounds, but she trudges through like a pro, as does the great two-time Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou, who deserves better than a stock henchman role as one of Mother Malkin's supernatural cohorts. It's hard telling what's up with Bridges, who really seems to have stopped trying after his CRAZY HEART Oscar. Bodrov obviously just let Bridges do whatever he wanted to do, which apparently involved playing Master Gregory as a some sort of bizarre mash-up between Gandalf and Karl Childers. Enunciating oddly through a jutted-out lower jaw, Bridges is mannered and hammy, much like he's been since his Oscar-nominated turn as Rooster Cogburn in TRUE GRIT. That was a fine and fun performance in 2010, but a coasting Bridges has just kept delivering it over and over again since. Jeff Bridges is one of the greats and while we all love The Dude, maybe it's time for him to start giving a shit again.

Earlier Warner poster art reflecting just
one of the film's many bumped release dates.

Bridges does get a couple of funny one-liners, but the script--credited to BLOOD DIAMOND screenwriter Charles Leavitt and LOCKE writer/director Steven Knight, who separately rewrote an earlier draft by Matt Greenberg (REIGN OF FIRE)--is all over the place, often feeling like we're watching the sequel to something that doesn't exist, arbitrarily pulling new rules and stipulations out of its ass when it gets backed into a corner, and not even following its own logic: why does Master Gregory even need an apprentice?  He has Tusk, a more than formidable sidekick. And the only time Tom comes to Gregory's rescue is after the pupil's stupidity causes the mentor to be captured in the first place. If Gregory has a week to stop Mother Malkin's Blood Moon-abetted reign of terror, he and Tusk seem more than up to the task--why take all the time to train Tom, who's obviously dead weight until the script needs him to be the hero? Ultimately, all of this "seventh son of a seventh son" malarkey does nothing other than make you wish Iron Maiden was handling the soundtrack duties. On the plus side, SEVENTH SON moves quickly, Bodrov deserves some credit for getting Jason Scott Lee (DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY) back on the big screen again even if it's a brief role as a warlock who shapeshifts into a giant bear, and I'm sure Bridges and Moore had a great time between takes reminiscing about THE BIG LEBOWSKI. It's just too bad that SEVENTH SON doesn't end NEWHART-style with The Dude waking up from a hazy dream and trying to explain it to an incredulous Maude Lebowski.

In Theaters: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (2014)

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
(US - 2014)

Directed by James Gunn. Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman. Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Rooker, Djimon Hounsou, Karen Gillan, John C. Reilly, Gregg Henry, Peter Serafinowicz, Christopher Fairbank, Sean Gunn, Tomas Arana, Krystian Godlewski, Laura Haddock, Wyatt Oleff, Alexis Denisof, Ralph Ineson. (PG-13, 121 mins)

In keeping with the recent tradition of Marvel installments being tailored to the stylings of their directors--Shane Black's IRON MAN 3 and Anthony & Joe Russo's CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER--James Gunn fashions GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY as very much his own film in the guise of a Marvel production and the results are fantastic. Starting his career by scripting Troma's TROMEO & JULIET (1996), Gunn moved on to Hollywood and penned the two SCOOBY-DOO movies before making a name for himself by writing Zack Snyder's surprisingly good 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD. That got Gunn his first feature directing gig, 2006's tragically underappreciated and wonderfully oozy and slimy SLITHER. Never the most prolific of writers or directors, Gunn resurfaced five years later with the dark-humored indie SUPER and again with a segment in last year's awful MOVIE 43. Gunn seems an unlikely choice for Marvel, but really, it's that kind of outside-the-box thinking--turning IRON MAN 3 into a smartass Shane Black movie or CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER into the superhero version of a '70s paranoia thriller--that's made much of their recent run of films so successful. As someone who's not a comic book guy, I take these kinds of films at face value for what they are in and of themselves, not where they fit in the Marvel universe or how faithful they are or whatever. That said, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is the best Marvel movie I've seen.  It's the best movie of the summer.  And it may very well be the STAR WARS of its generation, a film that helps shape a childhood with its spectacle and imagination. Yeah...it's that good.

Moviegoers of a certain age--I'm 41--look back fondly on the films of their youth, sometimes inducing sentimentality that's not really warranted. Let's face it, folks: not every '80s movie is a "classic." But to be someone who saw the STAR WARS movies, and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T., and a lot of those timeless blockbusters in theaters, on their first runs when they were kids--it shaped you. You don't forget the first time you experience those movies. Seen-it-all-cineastes who have a sort of multiplex misanthropia--I include myself in that category--often sound like bitter old men lamenting how today's special effects-heavy blockbusters just aren't like they used to be. People still talk about those older movies today. Who's going to be talking about the fourth TRANSFORMERS movie or the second AMAZING SPIDER-MAN three decades from now? My point is this: watching GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY took me back to that time in a way that no film in recent memory has. It's a genuinely great crowd-pleaser of the classic sort: it's clever, it's funny, it's filled with action, and it's made with affection. This wasn't a job for Gunn--it was a labor of love. You can feel it in every scene. You can see a committed cast rallying behind their director, believing in his vision. Today's blockbusters have lost touch with that sense of commitment, and people have grown accustomed to the clock-punching soullessness and predictability of most of them and continue to see them out of...obligation? I'm not aware of a single person who was enthused about THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 a few months back, and yet it still grossed $200 million in the US. Enough people flocked to TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION for it to gross nearly $1 billion worldwide so far, but has anyone really enjoyed it?  With any luck, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY will remind moviegoers of how things used to be and how they still should be, but you can't help but wonder if today's audiences have become so conditioned to accept mediocrity that they'll fail to appreciate what Gunn has accomplished here.

In a sequence that's an obvious nod to the opening of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, mercenary Ravager Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who's given himself the name "Star Lord," acquires a mysterious orb for blue-skinned Ravager leader Yondu (Michael Rooker).  Said orb is also desired by Kree supervillain Ronan (Lee Pace), working in the employ of the feared Thanos (voiced by an uncredited Josh Brolin). Ronan dispatches Thanos' daughter Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to intercept the orb. Quill and Gamora have an epic scuffle that ends up involving bounty hunter Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a cynical, genetically-altered raccoon with anger management issues, and his plant/muscle Groot (voiced and motion-captured by Vin Diesel), a tree whose vocabulary is limited to "I am Groot." All four are rounded up and sentenced to The Kyln, a space prison, where they meet vengeance-obsessed and metaphor-impaired Drax (Dave Bautista), whose family was killed by Ronan. The quintet of outcasts and misfits form a classic unholy alliance as they very slowly learn to trust one another, taking on Ronan's forces and working to keep the orb--which has the power to destroy worlds--out of the hands of both Ronan and the greedy but good-natured Yondu, and returned to the galactic leader Nova Prime (Glenn Close), where it belongs.

Filled with nods to Lucas and Spielberg, and some blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos (in addition to the requisite Stan Lee appearance, you'll also spot Troma chief Lloyd Kaufman and Gunn pal Nathan Fillion, and stick around through the end credits for the best one), GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is the summer movie to finally remind everyone what a summer movie should be. Funny without being snarky, using hit '70s singles without being ironic, and demonstrating some sincerely heartfelt affection for its characters, the film sends up the superhero/comic book genre while recalling the spirit of wonder and adventure that captivated moviegoers when STAR WARS became the phenomenon that not even 20th Century Fox was expecting. Laugh-out-loud funny but never slapsticky, GUARDIANS succeeds in working for both children and grown-up audiences (listen to all the adults in the theater laugh when Gamora tells Quill his ship his filthy and he says under his breath, "She has no idea...if I had a blacklight, this place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting"). Even the referential bits--so many films today think that just making the reference is good enough--are thoughtful and legitimately creative and funny: it's one thing to have the requisite "ragtag group of badasses walking in slo-mo" shot set to a classic rock tune (in this case, The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb"), but Gunn's take on it has Gamora yawning and Rocket adjusting his nutsack.  The leads are perfectly cast, Pratt is a smartass without being grating, and Cooper's vocal delivery of the hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside Rocket is spot-on (Gunn's brother Sean filled in as Rocket during filming to provide sight-lines and a model for the actors to look at; similarly, Krystian Godlewski was the surrogate Groot on-set until the effects were completed and Diesel's motion capture work was CGI'd in). Everyone else, from the supporting actors on down--even Gunn regular Gregg Henry--gets a moment to shine, and the film is so good that you don't even mind that the great Djimon Hounsou is saddled with a stock henchman role when he could've made a terrific Ronan himself.

Hollywood needs to take note. The summer blockbuster has lost its way. The budgets are too big and the results are too bland. Too much blurry CGI and too much shaky-cam. A movie needs to gross $200 million before it's not considered a "flop." And regardless of how popular it is, it's still out of theaters in three weeks. Remember when movies played at first-run theaters for months? GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and James Gunn are like curious visitors from another time and another place, arriving just in time to save the summer blockbuster from itself. You won't see a more infectiously fun, witty, and smart "big" movie this summer, and it's the best time I've had at the multiplex all year.

On DVD/Blu-ray: SMALL APARTMENTS (2013) and SPECIAL FORCES (2012)

SMALL APARTMENTS
(US - 2013)

Just how aggressively quirky is SMALL APARTMENTS?  In the first five minutes, we're introduced to hairless hero Franklin Franklin (Matt Lucas) in his filthy apartment, wearing tighty-whiteys, pulled-up tube socks and clogs, blowing into an alphorn and getting a package in the mail consisting of a cassette tape and toenail clippings.  And yet, somehow, I kept watching.  Designed as a vehicle for LITTLE BRITAIN star Lucas,  SMALL APARTMENTS eventually becomes more of an ensemble piece, with a large cast of depressed, sad-sack eccentrics and misfits in and around a shithole Los Angeles apartment building.  Franklin has a brother (James Marsden) in a psych ward and mostly spends his days spying on an aspiring stripper across the way (Juno Temple), drinking Moxie soda and eating pickles.  He accidentally kills his scuzzy landlord (Peter Stormare), who forces Franklin to fellate him when the rent's overdue.  Franklin tries disposing of the body by setting it on fire, which attracts the attention of a cynical, alcoholic fire inspector (Billy Crystal).  Other characters include Franklin's angry next-door neighbor (James Caan); a stoner convenience store clerk (Johnny Knoxville) trying to build the perfect bong in his spare time; his religious-nut mother (Amanda Plummer), and his girlfriend (Rebel Wilson); Saffron Burrows as Temple's mother; David Koechner and David Warshofsky as detectives investigating Stormare's murder; Rosie Perez as a psych ward nurse; DJ Qualls as a masturbating convienience store clerk who gives Temple free smokes in exchange for letting him cop a feel; and Dolph Lundgren, sporting slicked-back, jet-black hair and a terrible fake tan as a self-help motivational speaker. 

Directed by Jonas Akerlund (SPUN, and a ton of music videos, most notably Madonna's "Ray of Light" and The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up") and scripted by Chris Millis (from his own novel), SMALL APARTMENTS kept reminding me of Wim Wenders' THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL (2000) mixed with bits of John Waters, Wes Anderson, and post-Farrelly Brothers grossout comedy.  It's a complete mess that careens wildly from quirky to garish to disgusting to sappy and uplifting, never really establishing a tone or a purpose.  It feels very disjointed and haphazardly chopped down (Burrows is barely visible, and I don't even recall her having any dialogue) and Lucas is offscreen for much of the somewhat improved second half when the focus shifts to Crystal, who's actually quite good here in a relatively straight role.  The bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime cast makes it an interesting curiosity for movie nerds, but with that many name actors, you know something's seriously wrong when the only theatrical exposure SMALL APARTMENTS could manage before its DVD/Blu-ray dumping after two years on the shelf was a small handful of one-off screenings through web-based event promotion service Tugg.com, a move that was no doubt spun as "a bold new experimental distribution model," which is a polite euphemism for "no interest from any real distributors."  (R, 96 mins)


SPECIAL FORCES
(France - 2011; 2012 US release)

The fact that it's a French film with mostly French dialogue immediately puts something like SPECIAL FORCES in the arthouse, but it's a pretty standard, by-the-numbers commando action film that just happens to have subtitles.  Directed by Stephane Rybojad with the same kind of hyperactive camera movement that made some of Tony Scott's films so distinctive yet so frequently headache-inducing, SPECIAL FORCES has French journalist Elsa Casanova (Diane Kruger) abducted in Kabul by Taliban insurgents led by Ahmed Zaief (Raz Degan).  The French government and the military (represented by the ubiquitous Tcheky Karyo) send an elite Special Forces unit led by Kovax (Djimon Hounsou) to rescue her.  That happens fairly quickly, but what starts as a combat shoot 'em up morphs into a surviving-the-elements drama as Kovax and the unit--Lucas (Denis Menochet), Tic-Tac (Benoit Magimel), and Elias (Raphael Personnaz), among others--and Elsa are left behind when they don't arrive at the meeting point in time and are forced to journey through the harsh terrain of Afghanistan, with Zaief in hot pursuit.  Essentially a French ACT OF VALOR, SPECIAL FORCES pays tribute to French soldiers and journalists who put their lives on the line and that's great, but don't these people deserve a better movie than this?  From the shaky-cam battle sequences to the predictable character arcs (is there any chance the Special Forces guy with a kid on the way is making it to the end of this mission?) to the approximately 138 times Rybojad cuts to a circular aerial shot of the characters walking along a narrow mountain top, SPECIAL FORCES, once you factor out the novelty of it being a foreign language film (though there is a badly-dubbed English audio option), is really no different than 20 other straight-to-DVD titles of the same sort.  That is, unless you consider that it features one of the most anti-climactic and unsatisfying comeuppances for a villain in recent memory. (R, 109 mins)