Riddick leads pack
Stranger things have happened than for Vin Diesel to appear in a good film. Riddick is a damn good film. Personally I abhor the direction the Fast and Furious franchise has traveled and yet that series just keeps making more money with each release. Likewise the Riddick series (it’s the third feature film to feature the character) looks poised to become a new franchise for Universal.
For the record, Diesel appears in classics like Saving Private Ryan and obscure but acclaimed dramas like Find Me Guilty, however he’s best known for far-flung actioners like FF. Given Diesel’s current shiny head gravitas he could probably re-launch XXX. “The things I do for my country.”
Riddick can be seen as a stand-alone sci-fi extravaganza. Under the solid direction of David Twohy the story unfolds with a minimum of talk for the first half hour as Riddick fights for survival on a distant planet that nonetheless has oxygen and wild space dogs that can be domesticated. If anything this lengthy introduction plays almost like a Jack London adventure with Riddick battling the elements as well as weird carnivorous water and mud creatures. Riddick’s R-rating insures various wounds and face offs to be appropriately bloody.
Riddick must have fucked somebody over big time because he has a wanted dead reward on his head (literally) and soon a dozen bounty hunters have landed on the planet hot on his trail. At this point Riddick morphs into a space opera of sorts with various rivalries breaking out between the bounty hunters. Their characterizations are sharp and defined mostly through Twohy’s (also the writer) dialogue. Not that comparisons really matter but I would take Riddick over this year’s other space yarns like Oblivion, After Earth (which most resembles man versus the elements angle of Riddick), or Elysium.
You say space isn’t your bag but soap is? For you may I suggest Adore, a treacly meller where Robin Wright and Naomi Watts play best friends who start having affairs with each other’s sons. Most women in their 40s do not look as good as Watts or Wright, a pure fact, they are after all movie stars. Ditto, even young hunks don’t look as the two guys who play the sons. I think we know where this is all headed.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents the local premiere of a film that was shot here last year. Bastian Günther’s Houston will play weekend evenings at the museum’s Brown Auditorium. Günther will introduce the screening on Friday with a reception to follow.
Actress Kathryn Hahn usually plays the second banana or the friend (like in We’re the Millers), but Hahn is front and center in Afternoon Delight, opening exclusively at the AMC Studio 30. Hahn plays an upper middle class L.A. housewife that offers a down and out stripper (Juno Temple) a place to stay. Hilarity ensues along with complications. There are a couple of stand out sequences in Afternoon Delight that lampoon people’s reaction to blatant sexual promiscuity.
— Michael Bergeron
