Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I've fallen behind in my movie reviews for September through November (partly because I've seen relatively few movies during that period, and partly from sheer procrastination), so here's a quick, largely SPOILER-FREE run-through of the films I've seen in the theater lately, starting with the most recent:

I still haven't seen the first movie in this series, "Koi...Mil Gaya", but I loved the sequel Krrish when I watched and re-watched it on DVD at my sister's house in 2008, and I had a rollicking good time seeing "Krrish 3" on the big screen last Friday.

Hrithik Roshan still looks amazingly good, and it was a kick to see him playing the dual roles of the super-powered action hero and his long-lost, lovably dorky scientist father. As with the previous installment "Krrish", it's fun to play 'spot the homage' (or 'what superhero/action movie of recent decades is THAT borrowed from?') in "Krrish 3" -- especially if you're a fan of the first "X-Men" film, and to a lesser extent the most recent "Spiderman" outing! Plus, there's all that lovely spirituality and "I'm Spartacus!" theme of the ordinary person as hero, with colorful musical numbers thrown in for good measure. What's not to enjoy? :)

Two weeks ago, I had a free movie pass about to expire, so I saw "Thor 2" back-to-back with "Gravity" in 2D, and I liked it quite a lot! Of course, Loki was my favorite part of the movie (and I was particularly moved by his close bond with his adopted mother, including the suggestion that he'd learned some or all of his powers of illusion from HER in the first place), but Thor himself is always fun to watch and listen to, and even in scary-elf-from-hell make-up I'm always glad to see Christopher Eccleston on screen.

I didn't like it quite as well as the first "Thor" in 2011, perhaps, or the other Marvel-universe "Avengers"-related films that have come out since then, but it's still well worth seeing again in the theater, for me. Plus, as with "Iron Man 3" earlier this year and the ongoing TV series "Agents of SHIELD", I love getting glimpses of the ongoing lives of all these characters after the traumatic and dramatic events of my favorite 2012 movie, "The Avengers"!

Having previously been assured by missmurchison that a certain character survived to the end of this film (call me picky, but I hate PAYING to see a movie where absolutely everybody you care about dies before the end) and that it really WAS worth seeing on the big screen, I finally got around to seeing "Gravity" on Nov. 12, and I was pleasantly surprised by how thought-provoking and emotionally satisfying it was, as well as being impressive visually. In the unlikely event that you haven't seen it yet, I do recommend trying to see it in 2D on the large screen. (I have no idea what it looks like in 3D, since I can't really see in 3D anyway and never waste my money on the 3D versions of films.)

Back in September, I managed to catch Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's latest comedic gem "The World's End", about a pub crawl that turns into a much-needed group therapy session, while also incidentally trying to turn back an alien zombie invasion of earth. Wickedly funny, and well worth checking out on DVD if you didn't get to see it in the theaters.

It may not have been the universe-spanning epic that "Chronicles of Riddick" was (and except for the shocking waste of Jack/Kyra at the end, I quite enjoyed that film, though I know others might disagree), but Vin Diesel's 3rd outing as "Riddick" was an enjoyable, back-to-basics, trimmed-down return to some of the situations and character traits that made the original film "Pitch Black" such a cult favorite.

In this film, the all-too-briefly-appearing Lord Vaako (played by Karl Urban, currently charming our pants off on TV's "Almost Human" and still looking just as cute as when I first saw him guest-starring on "Xena" back in 1996) has managed to separate Riddick from his Necromonger empire (come on, let's all say it together: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"), and Riddick must rediscover the primal, animal cunning and strength that made him such a bad-ass escaped convict in the first place. There are monsters to be fought (human and non-), Mercs to be out-smarted (and possibly gutted), and a tough-as-nails Kara Thrace (er, I mean, a Merc named "Dahl", making it sound as though her crew boss is calling her "doll" as an inappropriate nickname) for Riddick to match wits and guts with. All things considered, I'd happily see it again for budget theater prices (and hold out hope for a 4th movie someday, in which Riddick and Vaako once again cross destinies and share more screen time).

And speaking of budget movie prices, while my missionary friend from Prague was visiting me for a few days at the end of August, she and I managed to catch the last showing of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" at the budget theater south of town (it seemed an absolute necessity to do so, since she'd only seen it once before, and it was our shared love of the original "Star Trek" that first brought us together as friends back at Princeton Seminary in the Fall of 1983). But, as long as we were driving that far in the first place, it seemed only sensible to take in another film earlier in the afternoon at those same low prices, while we were at it. Which is how we happened to see the surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining "White House Down" with Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum.

The reviews for "White House Down" had been underwhelming, and I'd already seen the over-blown and disappointing Gerard Butler vehicle "Olympus Has Fallen" (also about a terrorist take-over of the White House) earlier this year, so I hadn't had this slightly more recent film on my "Must See" list, but -- especially for a budget price of $2 per ticket -- it really was a fun, interesting, and surprisingly endearing film. Definitely worth a look on DVD or cable TV, even though I couldn't help noticing that apart from the actors portraying the First Family, the cast of the film seemed to be rather uniformly pale-complexioned, which struck me as rather odd and disappointing.