STAR WARS - The Fan-service Awakens

It's been ten years since the last STAR WARS movie, and more than 32 years since the last cinematic adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia Organa. So let's be honest, you already know if you're going to see The Force Awakens or not.

But is it good? Yes. Does it wash the taste of the horribly miscalculated Prequel Trilogy from the galaxy? Triumphantly. Was it worth the wait? Mostly. Is it as good as the Original Trilogy?

Well, maybe. If we're only talking about Jedi.

CREED - Earning a Legacy

2015 has already seen one decades-old franchise revival become a major success, and asking for more than that almost seems greedy. But this year's cinematic cup runneth over, and so yet another 1970's film series is finding new life and (potentially) new audiences. However, where Mad Max: Fury Road was another installment with a new actor but the same director telling the next disconnected mythic story of the Road Warrior, Creed comes from journeyman director Ryan Coogler but still follows Sylvester Stallone as the Italian Stallion as he trains a firey new fighter.

For the first time in franchise history, Stallone didn't write the screenplay (he also directed every other film after the original), but the infusion of both Coogler's passionate cinematic storytelling and the talents of Michael B. Jordan as the titular son of Apollo Creed infuse the nearly 40-year-old franchise with potent new life.

SPECTRE - Of the Past

It's ironic that a film series as long-running and influential as the adventures of James Bond should be defined by how it reacts, but the Bond movies have always been cultural omnivores. Not only do the films play to the tastes of the time (the series has catapulted from spy fiction, "blaxploitation" cinema, and space opera to violent 80's action, digital warfare, outright farce, and grounded rebooting over the years), but has also been a series of reactions to the previous film of the series.

Used correctly, this can lead to a distillation of the character appropriate for post-USSR espionage (see: Goldeneye) or the 00 version of Batman Begins (Casino Royale). Unfortunately for SPECTRE, the 24th entry, the "wisdom" gained from looking outward and inward seems to have gone something like this:

"Hey, people loved Skyfall - let's do all those themes, beats, and stakes again!"

"Yeah, but audiences really like MARVEL movies - let's also rip off big chunks of that Captain America sequel that had a S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-esque organization hiding in plain sight."

"Brilliant!"

...Yeah. It doesn't work out too well.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE EXPECTATIONS

The big news at the box office this weekend is going to be how Fox's newly-opened Fantastic Four (or FANT4STIC, as the posters would have you spell it) is getting its butt kicked by Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation - a film in its second weekend. This is the latest in a string of publicity pitfalls for the superhero picture dating back to reports of production troubles and tepid audience response to the initial marketing materials.

But one of the more head-scratching - and red flag-raising - moments in this debacle was before the review embargo lifted and star Miles Teller remarked that, though the cast hadn't seen the film yet, they weren't expecting it to garner overly-positive reviews from critics because "rarely are films of this size critically well received."

Which is not only laughable in the face of MARVEL Studios' legendarily well-reviewed run, but particularly because this comment was made the very same weekend that the fifth entry in the Mission: Impossible series became a critical darling.

Yes, the fifth film in the "watch Tom Cruise throw himself off of stuff" franchise is legitimately great. How did that happen?

ANT-MAN - Nice Things, Small Packages

Sooner or later, the wheels are going to come off the Marvel gravy train. No one can maintain the level of quality and success that the studio has had since 2008 with the first Iron Man, not in an environment where as many things can go wrong as can go wrong in big-budget film-making.

But seeing as even a film this "doomed" by any conventional wisdom can be as good as it is (which is, make no mistake, quite good), I'm not sure what can derail Marvel.

Because Ant-Man is yet another winner.

INSIDE OUT - The Joy of Sadness

Welcome back, Pixar. We missed you.

JURASSIC WORLD - On the Shoulders of Giants

In 1993, Steven Spielberg's landmark adaptation of. . . you know what? No.

Normally, I'd spend a paragraph or two giving some context to the film, its predecessors, a franchise legacy, or some other nonsense as a lead-in to talk about the cinematic flavor of the week, but no. Not this time. This is Jurassic Park. You know Jurassic Park. EVERYONE knows Jurassic Park. It's one of the most influential films of all time, the definitive 90's blockbuster, a watershed moment in special effects, the modern day grandchild of the legendary King Kong.

And Jurassic World knows you know this. It's embedded this knowledge not just in its callback-happy marketing but in the very DNA (heheheh) of the film's relation to and perception of its audience.

Which is kinda the problem.

. . .Well, one of them.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - We are not things.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a rare gem - part reboot, part sequel (or in-between-quel?), it's another in a long line of Hollywood projects mining 80's nostalgia for box office gold. To date, this trend hasn't turned out to be particularly successful either in making many decent films or getting folks flocking to the theater.

But this one is different. It's almost like director George Miller (Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Babe 2 - yes, really) has apparently been watching Hollywood action movies for the last 30 years and grew so sick of most modern directors being frankly pretty crap at it that he made Fury Road to show everyone how it's done.

This is the real deal.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON - End of an Era

One of the biggest questions on everyone's mind after the game-changing, record-shattering, audience-wowing original was "How do you follow THAT up?"

Well, if the original movie was geek icon Joss Whedon finally showing the full oceanic expanse of the potential in bringing everything lovably loopy and dense and fantastic from the pages of comic books to blockbuster cinema, then Age of Ultron is Whedon diving into those waters head-first and seeing just how deep he can go.

And in doing so, he makes it impossible for the next guy(s) to do the same thing.

FURIOUS 7 - The Flawed and the Miraculous

By all rights, we shouldn't be here at all. It would have been easy to either rest on laurels (or end things completely) after the phenomenally enjoyable Furious 6, but a post-credits tease (casting a long-promised dangling thread in a whole new light) had this series barreling toward all new levels of insanity. However, with the tragic mid-production passing of Paul Walker, who's blond racer Brian O'Connor had been a pillar of the series to this point, this movie could have been unsalvageable.

But the folks behind and in front of the camera pulled off a miracle. Because Furious 7 is flawed and uneven, but damn is it a beautiful - and genuinely emotional - joy.

CINDERELLA - A Perfect Fit

For years now - certainly since Dreamworks threw down the "anti-fairy tale" gauntlet with the first Shrek and arguably since the Disney Renaissance of the 90's - the in thing has been the subversion, revision, or deconstruction of traditional fairy tales. Sequels, prequels, restructurings, stories from the villain's perspective, and other approaches have lead to some great movies (2013's Frozen, for example), some admirable-if-uneven ones (last year's Maleficent) and some truly terrible ones (2010's Alice in Wonderland).

But for this year's live-action Cinderella, Disney took a different approach. With Shakespeare alum Kenneth Branagh (who also directed the first Thor) at the helm, this is a straight retelling of the story, from the friendly mice to the glass slipper. And somehow, whether through the refreshingly upfront nature of the tale or the stylistic approach of the film-maker, the result is a beautifully-told story that manages to feel old-fashioned in all the best ways without feeling regressive.

KINGSMAN: HARRY POTTER AND THE SECRET SERVICE

For a few years in the late 80's and 90's, one of the hottest names in science fiction blockbusters was an eccentric Dutchman named Paul Verhoven (Robocop, Total Recall). Part of the director's appeal - apart from a contagious enthusiasm for splatterific violence - was the way the films balanced wild appeasement of the id while also being a lot smarter than they let on. The mix of genre-savvy idea-driven film-making and biting satire were sometimes so skillfully folded into his movies that some missed the joke entirely (see: the initial reactions to Starship Troopers).

The reason I bring this up in relation to a spy movie from a different director? Because, in short, Matthew Vaughn is playing the exact same sort of game. And doing a damn good job of it too.

Films That Salvaged 2014

This year was a pretty terrible. I mean that in general (lots of nasty stuff souring my favorite hobbies, like GamerGate and the death of some childhood movie icons, not to mention awful, toxic, racist stuff in our legal/law enforcement systems), as well as some personal stuff that hit me hard. But when asked, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the theater?" I at least have a few answers.

Because 2014 was a really really good year for movies. The financial headlines will make hay about how box office was down significantly from the last couple of years, but across the board - from big studio films to smaller dramas and quirky genre movies - this was a great time at the cinema. Considering the total ****-show that this year was, I'll take what bright spots I can find.

So here are the Films That Salvaged 2014 for me - as well as what was awful, what was surprising, and what was just plain awesome.