Guardians of the Galaxy, Movie Review

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Stars

Guardians of the Galaxy had an incredible opening last weekend, blowing August records with a $94 million domestic gross, and a 92% Fresh Tomato rating at RottenTomatoes.com.  The fresh tomato rating is right up there with the original Iron Man at 93% certified fresh and Marvel's The Avengers which also boasts a 92% fresh tomato rating.

Guardians is in very good company.

News broke a couple years ago that Marvel would be adapting Guardians of the Galaxy into a feature film.  It seems right, with the success of Thor, and I love a good space flick, but when details about this lesser known Marvel franchise began to circulate, I was a little nervous about the future of Marvel.  A talking raccoon?  Seriously!!??  Guardians was going to either be amazing or a flat out disaster.

This new Marvel film is an amazing, fantastic fun.

Pater Quill, aka Star Lord, played by Chris Pratt, was abducted by aliens at a tender young age.  His only ties to Earth are a couple nick-knacks and an "Awesome Mix Vol. 1" cassette tape, which was compiled by his Mother and covers great tunes from the 70s and early 80s.  It's these tunes that make up the movie score, humanizing Quill, letting us know he's like us, only he gets to romp around space, getting into all sorts of fun trouble.

And amidst all this fun trouble he meets Gamora, a green Zoe Saldana , the alien Drax (Dave Bautista), a walking tree names Groot with an incredibly short vocabulary (Vin Diesel)--"I am Groot" can mean so many things--, and the talking, fighting machine known as Rocket the Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper).

In terms of Space Opera's and adventures, we've seen great imaginings through Star Wars and Star Trek, Star Gate, Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica.  All really fun, interesting takes on what life beyond our own could be like.  Guardians of the Galaxy offers a new take, keeping it fresh with different colored aliens (green, pink, blue, etc) and incredible planets.  The planet where we first meet Star Lord is quite intriguing: The home of a past advanced society, forced to leave due to unstable geysers and other cool geological forces. The visuals and technology spectacular.

The acting is great, though I wish some of the characters weren't so two-dimensional.  The villain Ronan, played by the incredibly talented Lee Pace, felt a little flat.  I don't blame Pace's performance, but rather the writing.  The funny thing is, I felt, out of all the characters, Rocket the Raccoon was the most three-dimensional!  I really felt for the little guy.  I was prepared to be annoyed by Groot, the tree, but was surprised when I ended up loving the character instead.

Guardians of the Galaxy is pure fun.  A great capstone for the Summer movie rush.

Buy a big bag of popcorn and prepare to laugh!

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.

(As a note to the rating, there is a lot of fowl language, more so then other Marvel films.  The bit in the trailer where Peter Quill slowly "flips the bird" and it's blurred out?  It's not blurred in the movie, and lasts for several seconds.)

The Words: Movie Review

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Words attempts to be Inception for book lovers.  Attempt being the operative word.

Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is a successful novelist, and while on a whirlwind book tour he finds himself in New York where he manages to read out loud 2/3rds of his book.  Technically that would have taken quite a long time, but I deviate.  In the middle of his reading Daniella (Olivia Wilde) sits and listens amongst the large crowd.

The Story Hammond tells follows Rory (Bradley Cooper) and Dora (Zoe Saldana).  Rory is a struggling writer, and during a honeymoon in Paris Dora buys him a worn out briefcase.  He's pleased with the gift, but it isn't until he's at home and going through the pockets of the briefcase that he discovers a manuscript.

This manuscript that Rory reads, typed out on yellowing paper, is the story of a young man living in Paris during WWII.  Instead of wondering who wrote the story, Rory is transfixed by the masterful writing, overwhelmed with the need to feel the words through his fingers as he types them, word for word, into a word processor.  One thing leads to another and "The Window Tears" is a runaway success.  What Rory doesn't realize is that this novel is the autobiographical story of "the old man" (Jeremy Irons).

The Words is a story within a story within a story, and we get the chance to see each of these plot lines play out.

The problem with this movie is the way each of these plot lines are developed and balanced.  I was least interested in Hammond's storyline and found myself wanting to watch the other two parts.  And I wish more was shown of "The Window Tears."  That part was enchanting and interesting, but was skimmed over.

Without giving anything away, the ending is a little abrupt if you don't reason how the three stories are connected, leaving a somewhat empty feeling when the credits roll.  But unlike Inception you wont spend months theorizing and arguing over the endings meaning.

I did enjoy many elements of the movie, and I could see it again in the future, but not immediately.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language, smoking . . . and a whooooooole lot of kissing.