AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (2015)

Metal heavy: Ultron (James Spader) gives Earth's mightiest heroes a run for their money.

Three years after the global box office success of MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, the Earth's mightiest heroes are back and this time the "gathering of the fellowship" stuff is out of the way, so the films drops the audience straight into super-powered action and mayhem. On a mission to the Eastern European country of Skovia, the Avengers take down a Hydra base where the powerful scepter used by Loki in the first film is held by Baron von Strucker and used upon human subjects in experiments intended to generate Hydra-controlled superhumans. Only two humans have survived the testing, twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olson), and they utilize their respective gifts of super-speed and mind-control/telekinesis/magic to hinder the Avengers' efforts and grant Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), aka Iron Man, a horrifying vision of his comrades laying defeated and dying as a fleet of extra-terrestrial conquerors head to the Earth through a wormhole in space. That grim tableau greatly rattles Stark and upon retrieving the scepter and taking it back to the opulent Avengers tower in Manhattan, Stark and fellow uber-brain Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) utilize the alien scepter's advanced tech to craft Ultron, an artificial intelligence meant to act as a preemptive defense system for the planet. That quantum leap in A.I. is arrived at without the knowledge of the other Avengers — yes, it's Stark once again proving himself to be an entitled, arrogant prick and a power unto himself, despite being a member of a team — and in no time flat it manifests as a seven-foot chrome megalomaniac whose twisted agenda does indeed amount to solving all of mankind's security issues, though in a way that Stark and Banner absolutely did not foresee. As all hell breaks loose in several international locales, the Avengers must marshal every bit of their skills, powers, wits, and unbridled badassery to handle Ultron and his army of deadly robotic doppelgangers.

Writer/director Joss Whedon pulls off the seemingly impossible by upping the ante from MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS with wall-to-wall action and sequences that give all of the featured characters solid things to do while allowing each to shine as more than just cookie cutter action figures brought to life. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is fleshed-out into more than just "short guy with bow and arrows and bad haircut," glimpses into the back-story of the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) add a poignancy to her fighting proficiency, Captain America (Chris Evans, in the role he was born to play) once again leads the group while butting heads with Stark, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) remains the resident Viking powerhouse, and Bruce Banner's struggle with his "sulky, kinda bulky, kinda Hulky" rage-fueled other half is given and interesting new wrinkle (that I will not spoil). Wanda and Pietro, though never referred to as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, are a lot of fun, and both War Machine (Don Cheadle) and the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) are along for the mayhem. But the movie is stolen by James Spader's voice performance for Ultron, a character that I never enjoyed in his many comics appearances but whose unexpected interpretation in the movie was a triumph of assured villainy. There have been numerous robotic/A.I. threats throughout cinema history but Ultron comes from out of nowhere to stand among the very best of his antagonistic automaton brethren.

A lot goes on that is best left un-described so the viewer can be caught up in the story's events and surprised by what unfolds, but I will say that it's exactly what I wanted from a super-hero spectacle, and then some. The only complaints I had were with the generic musical score (a problem I had with its predecessor) and the latest design for Iron Man (which all-too-obviously looks like the already available action figure), but those are very minor quibbles that in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. The only other things that I would like to add are the following considerations that you need to know ahead of time:

• Get all bathroom needs out of the way before the film starts. The movie is two hours and twenty-one minutes long and you won't want to miss any of it. And I don't know if this is how they'll handle it elsewhere but the theater I saw it at listed the showtime as 7pm but made sure to tell all of the ticket holders that the movie proper did not start until 7:20 because there were twenty minutes of trailers. They were not kidding.
• Do not waste your money on seeing it in 3D. The 3D appeared to have been added in post and it adds absolutely nothing to the film. There is not one sequence that was designed to be seen in three dimensions.
• Contrary to some early reports, there is an Easter egg at the end of the film, only it comes early during the end credits. Once the list of the cast and the title are out of the way, the Easter egg happens — you can't miss it — and after that you can walk.
• There's the customary Stan Lee cameo but also look for comedy legend Buck Henry among the guests at a party at the Avengers tower.
• I advise seeing it during a screening when it is unlikely that very young children will be present. Parents at the show I attended brought kids as little as a few months old, so there was crying, kids asking loud questions, and many cases of parents and kids walking in and out of the theater for bathroom breaks and distracting the audience in the process.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (2014)

There's a lot to be said about the second in the rebooted Spider-Man series but going into some of the plots specifics would give a lot away, so I'll break it down as simply as possible without spoilers:

As Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) graduate from high school and prepare for college, their relationship is strained to the breaking point by Peter's extracurricular activities as Spider-Man and his guilt over remembering his promise to stay away from Gwen, a promise he made to her dead father (Dennis Leary). While Peter also wrestles with unraveling the mystery of what really happened to his parents, his uber-wealthy childhood friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns after over a decade at fancy finishing schools in Europe to find he is now the heir to both Oscorp — his father's bio-engineering and weapons-development corporation — and  an hereditary condition that sees its sufferers slowly turn scaly and green before death ultimately claims them, so Harry is ruthlessly desperate to find a cure at any cost. Meanwhile, Max Dillon (Jamie Fox), a highly-unstable genius Oscorp employee and victim of too many abuses in life, becomes delusionally obsessed with Spider-Man and gains godlike electrical powers as the result of a lab accident. In short, there's a lot going on in ol' Web-Head's world, and life-changing tragedy looms large for all involved...

All of those threads interweave in ways that made the superpowered soap opera of Peter Parker compelling for over five decades and the film is a very good sequel to the previous installment. That said, the film is not without its relatively-minor issues, though those are offset by a fair number of quality points, so here's how it all breaks down:

• At two hours and twenty-two minutes in length, the movie is overlong by at least a half hour and a tighter edit probably would have been the way to go. However, if the film were shorter it would have lost a lot of its emotional gravitas and from what I hear the finished result is the end sum of some serious trimming already, so any way one cuts it it would have been a tough creative call. What you, the viewer, need to know is that the running time is palpable — though the film is never boring — and the little ones may get restless. And in the name of all that is holy, don't forget to have a pee-break before the film starts. You'll be glad you did!
• Andrew Garfield is superb as Peter Parker and Spider-Man and, much like Christopher Reeve achieved with his portrayals of Superman and Clark Kent, he pulls off making apparent that Peter truly comes alive when masked and in costume. Peter and Spider-Man have very distinct and separate personalities and Garfield flawlessly nails both.
• Though he often looks like a CGI videogame character, Spider-Man's physical capabilities have never looked better. There's a real joy to his plummeting from the tops of skyscrapers like a HALO jumper, only to check his fall by shooting a web line onto another building and flying back up with the aid of is elastic tension. Any time we get to see Spider-Man in action is sheer fun and worth the price of admission.
• The film's 3D is only truly spectacular during the first action sequence involving Spider-Man. After that, it's revealed to be wholly unnecessary, so save yourself from being ripped off and opt for the 2D version.
• From Gwen's valedictorian speech onward, the film possesses an ominous tone and has a slow build to a number of tragedies that come off like what might happen if Shakespeare had a hand in writing a comic book superhero narrative.
• The film features a modernized version of the infamous events of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #s 121-122 (June-July, 1973). Fans of classic comics know exactly what that means, so hit them if they try to fill you in on it.
• I didn't buy Peter's hangdog angst over Harry's situation for the simple reason that while they were tight during childhood, they hadn't had any contact in around a decade.
• Is it just me or was there a concerted effort to make Harry Osborn look not unlike David Bowie circa THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH?
• Electro is very impressive to watch in action  and at times he steals from Dr. Manhattan's playbook.
• The soundtrack is awful. 
• Spider-Man whistles his own 1960's cartoon theme song and also has it as his cell phone's ring tone. It was a painful groaner, to say the least, and it wasn't amusing at all.
• Sally Field is once again amazing.

So, the bottom line here is that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 is well worth your time, but bear in mind that it's a long haul that ends on a note of "To Be Continued."

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

I went to see the latest Batman movie, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES — oh, how I wish someone would call a moratorium on the use of any permutation of the word "rise" in movie titles — at Manhattan's Ziegfeld theater last night, and I was certain whatever merits the film may have possessed would be canceled out by a dire pall being cast over the whole thing in the tragic wake of what is now being rather crassly referred to in the media as "the Batman Massacre" or "the Dark Knight Massacre."

As reported all over the news yesterday (and on this blog), a 24-year-old madman by the name of James Holmes launched a senseless armed assault upon an audience that had settled in for the midnight screening of the film in a mall in Aurora, Colorado, and his attack resulted in the confirmed shooting deaths of at least twelve people (some reports state a count of fourteen) and the injuries of between thirty-to-fifty, some of which are critical. As a reaction/preemptive measure against possible copycat incidents, NYC police commissioner Ray Kelly order deployment of an augmented police presence at theaters running the film in the Five Boroughs (there were two cops in attendance at the show I saw), and as a result the audience entered the theater with the tragedy of the shooting reinforced. The atmosphere was an odd blend of enthusiasm over a new Batman film and foreboding due to the inevitability of considerable gun violence in the narrative, and there was even a fat, bespectacled geek — who, because of his pronounced girth, was referred to by my friend Suzi as "the pregnant guy" — with poor social skills and a borderline-Moe Howard haircut on line behind me who cringe-inducingly attempted to lighten the mood by telling those who were buying to tickets that they could now "get on the line to be shot." Those within earshot all turned to him in stunned silence, with facial expressions that quite clearly communicated, "SERIOUSLY, dude?!!?" (He shut his fucking mouth after that.) Anyway, the audience nonetheless remained enthusiastic as the lights dimmed.

This time around, it's eight years after the events of the previous installment and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse, semi-hobbled by his injuries and making his way around Wayne manor with the aid of a cane. After having defeated the Joker and allowing himself to falsely take the blame for the death of Harvey Dent, Wayne retired his Batman persona and his state of emotional limbo greatly troubles his ever-faithful butler, Alfred (Michael Caine). But Wayne is shaken out of his complacency when cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) ingeniously manages to break into the family safe and steal his mother's pearl necklace. That event ignites Wayne's curiosity as to why Kyle would be after the pearls, and what he discovers brings him into direct conflict with gravel-voiced mercenary/terrorist and extreme badass Bane (Tom Hardy), who engineers one of the most audacious and dire schemes this side of one found in one of the better James Bond movies. But exactly why is Bane doing what he's doing, and what the hell does any of this have to do with anything? I won't tell you any of the whys and wherefores, other than to say that by the time the credits roll, we get to see Bruce Wayne face his greatest challenge to date, one that it is extremely — and I do mean EXTREMELY — unlikely he will survive...

I'm a lifelong fan of the Batman character and his adventures in the comics and on television, but I never had any love for the live-action movies featuring him, largely because I felt they lacked the element of fun, felt far too overblown, and seemed cold in such a way that I didn't give a damn about any of the characters. The Tim Burton installments were super-hyped examples of his usual stylistic masturbation and the two that followed his films were justly lambasted, with the latter of the pair, the infamous BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997), frequently and deservedly cited as one of the worst major motion pictures ever made. Then came Christopher Nolan and his grittier, more "realistic" take on the Batman and his world, and critical acclaim, blockbuster box office success, and audience adoration followed. That said, I know I'm in the minority because I myself found Nolan's Batman films to be over-long and boring, plus once again cold and characterless (though I did like Heath Ledger's take on the Joker), so I approached THE DARK KNIGHT RISES with absolutely zero expectations, seeing it solely so I could join in the inevitable discourse on the film from an informed viewpoint. Thus it is that I'm quite shocked to have enjoyed the film rather a lot, and I proclaim it the only live-action Batman film that I genuinely like. To me, that is a minor miracle.

I would love to discuss the film in more detail but to do so would mean giving away several very major plot surprises, so I'll just have to ask you to trust me on this one. What I can say is that Bane's terroristic shenanigans had me actively wondering throughout the film just why he would give a shit about what he was doing, and after things looked like it was another case of lazy writing that expected us to simply say "Oh, he's just doing this because he's crazy" and just accept it as rote, the final act happens and everything falls perfectly, satisfyingly into place. At the moment when it all finally made sense, I swear it felt like something physically clicked in my head, and that realization made me smile from ear to ear. As a very finite end to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES succeeds quite admirably. I obviously recommend checking it out, but in closing, here are a few points worth noting:

• The script places a distinct emphasis on character and as a result the film engaged me from start to finish.
• Once again, everybody and their dog knows Bruce Wayne's secret, but this time around that knowledge is vital to the plot and is not at all annoying or idiotic.
• Anne Hathaway is terrific as Selina Kyle, who's better known to the world as Catwoman but never named as such here.

I like Hathaway in certain roles, but I had grave doubts about how she would handle playing a character who's sexy, seductive, and more than a bit of a badass in the butt-kicking department. I should not have worried, and I found her version of the character to be the most interesting femme fatale yet seen in a Batman film.

• The sequence where Bane and his heavily armed men pull off a cyber-crime with automatic weapons a-blazin' snapped the audience's thoughts right out of the movie and back to the shootings in that Colorado movie theater. The silence in the Ziegfeld during that sequence was as absolute as the vacuum of deep space, and it chilled me to the bone.
• Months ago, Bane's dialogue as heard in the film's trailers was found to be unintelligible by audiences, so his lines were re-recorded and supposedly fixed. Your mileage may vary, but I found his dialogue to be very hard to understand about half the time when he was in a scene. Fortunately his actions speak for themselves, and at least his line "I am Gotham's reckoning" no longer sounds like "I am Gotham's rectum."
• The film has some bone-crunching hand-to-hand violence, but it is in no way unsuitable for kids. However, it should be pointed out that the movie runs 164 minutes and that's excluding trailers, plus it's very much a plot and character-driven film, so I don't necessarily recommend it for the under-twelves who may expect non-stop action (though the film certainly does not skimp on visceral mayhem). Oh, and be sure to take a pee break before the movie starts. Believe me, you'll be glad you did.

And perhaps the most important point I would like to make is that THE DARK KNIGHT RISES is less of a straight-up Batman film than it's a cops-versus-terrorists summer blockbuster action movie that Batman pretty much incidentally happens to be in. You could eliminate every Batman-specific element from the script and change the hero's name to "Jack Action" and the end result would be the same and no less entertaining. Not exactly a gripe, but worth making note of.

Lastly, after this film there will inevitably have to be another reboot for the batman franchise, and I'm curious to see in which direction the series goes after the audience-pleasing tone set by the efforts of Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, et al. Just don't forget to keep the emphasis on character and keep things fun, Warner Brothers! Don't subject Batman to the cinematic fist-fucking that MAN OF STEEL looks like it's going to provide for Superman. (The trailer ran before THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and, brother, it looked like ass.)

GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD KNIGHTS (2011)

NOTE: The mythos of the Green Lantern Corps has a loooong history and many aspects that need more detailed explanations than I can provide in a simple DVD review, so I'm approaching this hoping you already know what I'm talking about. Trust me when I say that all of this stuff is explained quite well in the film itself, but me doing so here would derail this article onto too many tangents and render it too long for its own good.

At first it seemed as though this straight-to-DVD animated was nothing more than a naked cash-grab to capitalize on the buzz over the upcoming GREEN LANTERN live-action film, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised to find it the perfect prerequisite material for seeing the summer blockbuster. This animated effort is basically several "Tales of the Green lantern Corps" short stories brought to life, and the tales contained herein are entertaining as hell and offer the layman a very accessible crash course on the whole Green Lantern thing. In fact, I'll even go so far as to state that this DVD comes from out of nowhere to be a strong contender for the title of "best DCU direct-to-DVD feature."

Rookie GL Arisia, about to experience some very dire on-the-job training.

The film's framing device takes the audience along with high school-aged rookie Green Lantern Arisia (Elisabeth Moss) as she is thrust headlong into an emergency combat situation on her first day as a ring-slinger, and she's understandably nervous because she has yet to receive any kind of proper training. During the waiting time before the threat is met by the entire Green lantern Corps, Hal Jordan (Nathan Fillion) fills Arisia in on some of the lore of the Corps, and the stories chosen are for the most part winners. Here's what we get:

"The First Lantern"

The story of Avra, a mere scribe who was present to chronicle the birth of the Green Lantern Corps and who became the first GL to figure out the use of the ring's "constructs." The sequence where he implements his willpower as directed through his ring against an armada of heavily-armed star-cruisers is a seriously cool "Holy shit!" moment.

"Kilowog"

Based on the story "New Blood" by Peter Tomasi and Chris Samnee, this one's a look at the boot camp days that forged the Kilowog we know, love and respect. In an interesting casting choice, Henry Rollins gives voice to Kilowog and I'll be damned if his patented intelligent intensity is not exactly the interpretation the character needed.

"Laira"

Based on "What Price Honor?" by Ruben Diaz and Travis Charest and adapted for the screen by DC Comics editor Eddie Berganza, this segment relates how GL Laira, a royal family member from a planet whose martially-oriented culture bears a strong resemblance to imperial China, is sent to her homeworld to determine why the place has become a hostile "outlaw" world for seemingly no reason. I found this segment to be the weakest in the film, but that's not to say that it's bad. It feels like a Shaw Brothers period piece martial arts film transplanted to deep space and I don't think the two stylistic elements really jibe, but the segment scores extra points for Laira's very creative use of her ring's constructs to form weapons that alter their shape as needed during her wuxia-style set-to with her warlord father, including an impressively-choreographed deployment of a rope dart (pictured) made of sheer will.

"Mogo Doesn't Socialize"

Based on the classic short story by Alan Moore (whose name was not in the credits, probably at his request) and Dave Gibbons (who wrote the screenplay) — which just so happens to be my all-time favorite Green Lantern Corps short story — this is a slightly-retooled version that put an ear-to-ear grin on my face. I won't tell you what's it's about so as not to give away the punchline, but this and the Kilowog segment were my favorites in the film. With wrasslin' legend Roddy Piper as the voice of Bolphunga the Unrelenting.

"Abin Sur"

Based on "Tygers" by Alan Moore (again uncredited) and Kevin O'Neill, with a screenplay by superstar GL comics-scribe Geoff Johns, this is another re-tooled version of a classic GL Corps short story that adds Sinestro and a vision of the Sinestro Corps War to the story of Abin Sur's run-in with a malevolent and precognitive entity named Atrocitus.

It's a very solidly-packed eighty minutes and the visual scope is much more epic than I was expecting. The short story format also greatly works in the film's favor, allowing for brisk pacing that precludes any slow spots. I enjoyed the earlier direct-to-DVD GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT, but this entry blows it out of the water in terms of visual spectacle, action, a cornucopia of geek-candy. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, so snag it when it comes out on June 7th.

BARBARELLA (1968)

Poster from the original theatrical release.

"What's that screaming? A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming..."
-Barbarella

The death of John Phillip Law last week, as well as ominous reports of a remake being in the works, got me to thinking about BARBARELLA for the first time in quite a while, and those thoughts were very pleasant indeed.

Back in the days when VCRs were not common to just about every household and DVD didn’t even exist, it wasn’t so easy to see certain cult films unless you were lucky enough to have a movie theater near you that ran such fare on a regular basis, and luckily for me I lived a town over from Norwalk, Connecticut’s legendary Sono Cinema (“Sono” being short for “South Norwalk”). Many a night of my high school and college years were spent in the dark there, experiencing classic and not-so-classic motion pictures on a dinky screen in a smallish setting that brought to mind the intimacy of a homemade, basement screening room, each celluloid treasure accented with often hilarious commentary from the audience and the inevitable contact high achieved from the simple act of breathing the theater's atmosphere. More often than not, the films were run as double or triple features, usually in genre groupings of horror films, rockumentaries — there was a particularly amusing evening featuring THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME that’s great fodder for a post of its own —, and sci-fi flicks, and the oft-run sci-fi sets were guaranteed to feature at least one of the following films: THE ROAD WARRIOR, A BOY AND HIS DOG, DEATH RACE 2000, and BARBARELLA, each with a loyal following that guaranteed a sizable crowd. Being a regular attendee of these shows I saw all of those films several times, but these days the only one I keep going back to when I need a “feel good” movie is BARBARELLA.
Barbarella, as seen in the 1962 source comics. Unfortunately, her romp with Diktor the robot doesn't make the transition to the movie.

One of the weirdest variations on Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey template and based on a 1962 French comic book by Jean-Claude Forest, the 1968 adaptation of BARBARELLA is very much a product of its time, being a campy and lysergic live-action cartoon, a WIZARD OF OZ-style quest story for grownups that revels in the “free love” ethos of the late 1960’s.

Jane Fonda as Barbarella: ready and waiting for her next close encounter.

A thirty-year-old and painfully hot Jane Fonda stars as Barbarella, a more-or-less space-cop of the year 40,000, on assignment to locate missing scientist Durand Durand (pronounced “Duran Duran,” and yes, it’s where the ‘80’s pop group got their name) on the mysterious and balls-out bizarre planet Lythion. But after crash-landing her cheesy-looking birdhouse/party balloon spaceship on the strange world, our heroine finds herself bounced from one crazy and perilous situation to another, running afoul of homicidal children, hollow soldiers made from leather, and a lesbian/dominatrix queen of a city that makes Mos Eisley seem wholesome in comparison.

Barbarella lost in Sogo, one of the sleaziest cities in sci-fi history.

Along the way she also discovers the joys of flesh-to-flesh sexual encounters, a form of contact lost centuries ago in favor of palm-to-palm transference/psychic melding with the aid of pills, and Barbarella takes to Osh-Osh like a duck to water, eagerly jumping at every chance to get her hump on with various available males.

Barbarella makes a new friend.

It’s the sex angle that really earned BARBARELLA its place in film history and in the hearts of moviegoers everywhere, but don’t think for a second that it’s pornographic or prurient in any way; Barbarella herself is a capable woman who happens to be an innocent whose elation upon her sexual awakening is a joyous thing that she’s happy to share as often as possible, and there’s something charmingly sweet about that. She’s definitely a male fantasy of a kindly and beautiful sex goddess, pure of soul and utterly unashamed of her frequent states of nudity and partial undress, rounded with a goofily cartoonish, wide-eyed quality that’s positively endearing, and I honestly can’t think of anyone other than Jane Fonda who could have made her work. People tend to make note of Fonda’s more serious work, but when she’s given a solid comedic role she always makes to most of it — even in the horrendous MONSTER-IN-LAW — and she’s seldom been funnier than in her played-totally-straight turn as Barbarella. But while there’s skin on display, there are no “pickle and donut” shots, making for one of the most sexuality-friendly films ever made. One never feels there’s “dirty” intent in the film — even though some overly-sensitive and PC souls might find the film a bit exploitative — but the fact that it’s Jane Fonda in the part, and clearly in on the joke, elevates the material above its Euro-nudie brethren. Sexy? Hell, yeah! Dirty? I've seen dirtier episodes of TWO AND A HALF MEN, and that show follows nearly forty years after BARBARELLA.

A disappointed Barbarella, just after burning out a torture device designed to kill its victims via orgasms. No, seriously.

The film’s attitude is tongue-in-cheek from the first frame to the last, with not a trace of seriousness in its head, coming off as a slightly risqué parody of the Buster Crabbe FLASH GORDON serials, and its sweet-faced, fun-filled vibe brings a smile to my face every time I see it. I enjoy all of the characters, and the movie is chock-a-block with memorable sequences featuring wild costumes and strange sets, kind of like the insane, knockabout LOST IN SPACE television series if it had somewhat of a budget and weren’t geared toward the kiddies, but had been crafted specifically for hippie stoners instead of merely being enjoyed by them. I mean, check out these images from Barbarella's dreamy-eyed zero-G striptease as the animated opening credits join her in her floating undulations (click on the images to enlarge):

BARBARELLA could almost be described as an underground comic book brought to life, only thankfully minus the off-putting misogynistic rape and violence found in many such works, and director Roger Vadim should be congratulated for making what could easily have been a complete mess work as well as it does, with the contributions of Fonda — whom he married during shooting — being impossible to overestimate. It’s by no means a “great” film, but it’s definitely worth checking out at least once and as anyone who’s seen it can tell you, it has a way of ensnaring you again and again if it turns up on cable. It’s a film that radiates positive feelings, and I’ll take as much of that as I can get.

Poster from the post-STAR WARS re-release, painted by famed fantasy illustrator Boris Vallejo. Question: why is Pygar the angel, the guy in the diaper with a gun, depicted without his wings?

The film was even re-released during the sci-fi craze brought on by STAR WARS (1977), with the stupid poster and promo title of BARBARELLA: QUEEN OF THE GALAXY (which is sadly how it's been known ever since), and re-rated from an R to a PG despite no trimming of its blessed nudity, and I wonder what it would get if reissued today; PG-13 movies have allowed for a certain amount of gore and violence, but that rating is rather stingy when it comes to skin, once more bolstering the idiotic theory that it's okay for the youth of this country to see scads of carnage and harm, but not tasteful depictions of sexuality. I say it's all a matter of context; I wouldn't want my kids to see porno because, with rare exceptions, it's not about a loving, sharing experience between individuals and focuses on closeups of genitalia that John Waters famously likened to "footage of open-heart surgery," but I wouldn't have a problem with them seeing BARBARELLA, especially provided that I was there to responsibly answer any questions they may have (I'd say it's most suitable for anyone ten and up, but that's just my opinion). And as for the announced remake, I'm very curious to see how a story like Barbarella's will be retooled to be acceptable in contemporary America's hypocritically sex-negative climate, especially when she'll most likely be played by one of those nauseating, under-nourished, factory-issued "starlets" with zero talent that currently infest the screen. Mark my words, even with the reported involvement of Robert (PLANET TERROR) Rodriguez at the helm, I have no faith in it. We're sadly past the peace-and-love sentiment of the sixties, much of it killed by post-Viet Nam-era cynicism and the rise of AIDS, so I don't see how a BARBARELLA remake can possibly work work now. Thank Zoad that the original's still out there.

Oh, and here's a bonus for you fellow Barbarella die-hards out there:

From the 1977 graphic novel BARBARELLA AND THE MOON CHILD, Barb and her son, Little Foxy. Hey, with all the "sharing" Barbarella got up to, a kid was inevitable.

And two designs by Jean-Claude Forest from the proposed 1980's Nelvana animated series that never got off the ground: