Serenity

Serenity

We'll start off with this recommendation: if you are seeking an enjoyable movie experience, then go see Serenity. This movie features everything a good popcorn movie ought to have; a variety of fun and interesting characters, hair-raising action sequences, an intriguing mystery (or two) for the characters to unravel, a challenging villain, adequate special effects, and a great story to be told.

Aboard the Serenity, a reconditioned space freighter that is the home of a crew of eclectic misfits, are a brother and sister pair sought by the ruling Alliance powers. The sister is an escapee of a genetic engineering program, who because of her physic powers has inadvertently learned the secrets of the ruling class. Her brother breaks her free of the lab where she is being held, and they are given shelter on the Serenity.

From there they'll have to deal with subhuman space pirates, the Alliance military forces, a wonderfully erudite villain, several not black and white situations, and inter-party conflict.

That's all we'll reveal about the plot. It wouldn't do to ruin anything for you. We will add this; if you suffered through Star Wars III this summer, then go wash your eyes out with Serenity, a far better science fiction movie.

We approach movies and books (for better or worse) from a writer's perspective. We find ourselves judging the story, the dialog, the choices the writer made. It takes something really good (like Batman Begins or any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) to takes us out of the writer and into the viewer. Serenity shut the writer in us up and brought out the moviegoer.

We don't review movies like Ebert or others of his ilk. We wouldn't know a good performance by an actor from a ham sandwich. That said, every actor in Serenity did a great job. The three main roles, the ship's captain, the sister who escaped from the lab, and the villain, were superb. We hope every one of those actors finds work in other quality productions.