SICARIO Hits Hard

SICARIO Review:

- A gritty, brutal, bleak, and very badass film - SICARIO features a couple of oh-damn performances and a searing look at the messed-up world of Mexican drug trafficking. If it wasn't already a done-deal before, post-SICARIO there can be no doubt that Emily Blunt is now, officially, the queen-bee reigning badass champion of the world. And while it was sealed and written many years back that Benicio Del Toro was in the badass hall-of-fame, SICARIO is a timely reminder that Del Toro is capable of super badassery on a level that few others have or will attain. Suffice it to say, when Del Toro says "welcome to Juarez," well, you know that stuff is about to go down. And go down it does.

SICARIO casts Blunt as Kate Macer, and FBI agent who is selected to join a government task force assembled to covertly ramp up the drug war against the Mexican cartels. In the name of plausible deniability, Kate enters a world filled with smoke, mirrors, and mysterious characters. One such enigma is Del Toro's Alejandro - a deep-cover operative with a past, a guy whose casual, detached manner just barely masks a rage that burns within. Whereas Kate is a by-the-book type who lived and died by the FBI, Alejandro represents the shady element that the covert border-wars embrace. Kate's increasing disillusionment with the task force's take-no-prisoners tactics run in parallel with her increasing mistrust of Alejandro and his agenda.

Director Denis Villeneuve crafted a moody, atmospheric, and very grim film with his last movie, Prisoners - but Sicario really feels like a step up. The action is gripping and uncompromising, and he helps to craft a story with a number of jaw-dropping twists and turns. What I like about Sicario is how the film doles out character beats around Kate in a way that fleshes her out without ever getting too soapy. But what we do see is how the trauma and stress of her FBI job can follow Kate home - in more ways than one. As Kate journeys further into the heart of darkness, she experiences a crisis of faith in which the people and institutions she trusts seem to each, in turn, betray her. Similarly, we slowly learn more about Alejandro, and go along for the ride as his true mission reveals itself to us in bloody and violent fashion.

There are some other notable performances in the film - namely, Josh Brolin as a good ol' boy government operative who leads Kate's mission. Brolin also recently appeared in a similar role in Everest, but he's better here - as it's a more nuanced role that uses the actor's natural charm as a smokescreen for his anything-goes ruthlessness. There's also a small but crucial role for The Walking Dead's John Bernthal - one which takes full advantage of the actor's unhinged intensity.

Blunt turned a lot of heads in her fantastic, iconic performance in Edge of Tomorrow. Now, she takes that same sort of raw toughness and seamlessly transfers it to a more grounded, real-world setting. In some ways, Blunt's performance here reminds me of Jodie Foster's in Silence of the Lambs - a hard-charging, gets-$%^#-done woman who still finds herself in over her head as she confronts true violence and evil. And Del Toro - the deliverer of much of said violence - is at his best in this one - at the center of at least a couple of jaw-dropping scenes that will forever be emblazoned in my memory.

SICARIO is a hard-boiled look at the drug war and the high price it takes on cities like Juarez that have, because of it, become complete hell-on-earth ground zeroes for violence and death. It's also a look at how far we as a county and as a people are willing to go - how over the line we're willing to step - if those breaches can remain covert and away from the public eye. In the haunted eyes of Blunt and Del Toro, we see, poignantly, the scars. So prepare to be disturbed and maybe a bit shaken by this one - but also prepare for a hard-hitting, ultra-intense action/drama that is a must-see of 2015.

My Grade: A-

INHERENT VICE Is a Long, Strange Trip

INHERENT VICE Review:

- Paul Thomas Anderson seems to be in the "I'll damn well do what I please" stage of his career. Okay, so maybe he's sort of always been there, in his way. But INHERENT VICE continues what Anderson's previous film, The Master, started. It feels like a free-form meditation on ... something, with Anderson mostly content to just play with his eclectic cast of characters and see what happens. Should nothing in particular result? Fine by him. That's a big difference versus the thunderous statement of purpose that was There Will Be Blood - still, to me, one of the greatest films of the last few decades. Anderson is still absolutely at the top of his game in terms of craftsmanship. INHERENT VICE is so thick with smoky/hippie atmosphere that it's practically a cinematic contact high. And certainly, the film's plot - an adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel - is a neo-noir journey down the rabbit-hole that lends itself to a loose, more free-form sort of storytelling. It's The Long Goodbye meets The Big Lebowski. It's 1970, and it's the last gasp of the free-love, free-dope hippie community of Los Angeles before the times they go a'changin'. And Anderson paints this world in vivid, smoky hues - in 70 millimeter film, it all looks amazing. But while the scene is brought to life, and the shaggy-dog noir story rife with moments of tripped-out brilliance, I still wonder whether the movie is missing a certain something that could have tightened it up into an out-and-out classic. Again, it's that feeling that Anderson is content to sort of just play in this world, not so much concerned with taking the parts and fashioning them into a cohesive and thematically-impactful whole. There's a lot to love about INHERENT VICE, but it also feels like it could have offered more beyond leaving the audience feeling like they've just lived through a crazy fever-dream.

Let me preface by saying that not only am I a huge PTA fan in general, but I also have a huge affinity for sun-soaked neo-noir. I love this genre, and I love the ability it affords a storyteller to tell a free-roaming yarn where part of the point is that nothing quite adds up. INHERENT VICE falls squarely in that tradition, sending its protagonist - doped-out private detective Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) on a strange, spiraling search for a real-estate mogul at the center of a SoCal crime conspiracy. Along the way, Doc encounters all manner of shady characters, corrupt cops, femme fatales, false leads, dead ends, and people who just plain want him dead.

On paper, and as I'm writing this, it all sounds pretty fantastic. And it's true, sort of: INHERENT VICE is rich with great moments and memorable individual scenes. The raggedy narrative takes the form of the film's barely put-together anti-hero PI - loosely cobbled-together, eccentric, and hard to get a read on. The film's scenes often work wonderfully as self-contained vignettes, as Doc has mesmerizing, strange, and often hilarious encounters with a motley crew of weirdos, burn-outs, and bottom-feeders. But the film also takes on a sort of self-indulgent quality, stretching out scenes long past their ideal expiration dates, and letting Phoenix sort of go off the rails in his portrayal of Doc.

Phoenix is one of the best actors working today. Maybe *the* best. But what made his performances in films like The Master and Her so powerful and effective was that his natural weirdness and eccentricity served as a layer behind a facade of normalcy, of being an everyman. In The Master he was the wounded spirit of American soldiers home from war. In Her he was the emotionally crippled soul of modern man in a world more about connection with things than with other people. Here, his Doc is just Doc - there's no pretense about who this guy is. He's a larger-than-life noir character in the vein of Philip Marlowe or The Dude. And playing that sort of character seems to give Phoenix license to just go all-out, balls-to-the-wall nutty. And PTA indulges him, lingering on long takes of Phoenix just sort of muttering, squirming, squinting, and smoking. Lots and lots and lots of smoking, with long, lingering drags aplenty. Don't get me wrong, Phoenix is great here, in his way. He's very funny. And he has the uncanny ability to say so much with just an arch of the eyebrow or a grimace. But the film perhaps goes *a bit* off the rails by indulging all of it. If you're into the whole brevity thing, then you might leave wondering if the movie's two-and-a-half-hour running time could have been cut short, for the better, had Phoenix been reigned in ever so slightly.

The movie's cast is populated with a litany of great actors. The best is Josh Brolin as square-jawed, straight-laced (at least on the surface) cop Lt. Detective Christian "Bigfoot" Bjornsen. Brolin absolutely kills it in this role, portraying Bigfoot as a guy who wants so desperately to be the man's-man ying to Doc's hippie yang that he comes off as oblivious to all of his own eccentricities. Brolin and Phoenix have an endlessly entertaining rapport, and the two play off each other brilliantly.

I was also really impressed by Katherine Waterston as Doc's ex Shasta - the trouble-courting hippie whose perilous relationship with shady mogul Michael Wolfmann (an entertainingly zonked-out Eric Roberts) is what initially lures Doc into launching his investigation. Waterston's Shasta is sort of the classic "out of the past" enigmatic woman, who waltzes back into Doc's life only to screw it up. Waterston does a fantastic job of making Shasta into a worthy motivator for Doc to get off his couch and back into the fray - making her into the hippie chick of a man like Doc's dreams and a man like Bigfoot's worst nightmares. There are a lot of other great actors who turn up in the movie. I wish we got more of Michael Kenneth William's black-power convict Tariq Khalil. We get a lot of Owen Wilson's recovering-addict rocker Coy Harlingen, and man, the scenes between Wilson and Phoenix are so thick with drugged-out haze that you may find yourself coughing afterwords. Wilson is always fun to watch, and though his character at times feels like a bit of a distraction, it's a welcome one. Also excellent is Benicio Del Toro as Doc's lawyer and confidante Sauncho Smilax, Esq. Martin Short pops up in a hilarious extended cameo as a loony co-conspirator of Wolfmann's. And Hong Chau is a scene-stealer as an affable young woman who happens to run a "special" massage parlor that's also part of Wolfmann's master scheme. Also of note: Jena Malone as Wilson's ex-addict wife, and Reese Witherspoon as a put-together Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball - who carries on a mismatched affair with Doc that seems to fill her with self-loathing.

Characters like Witherspoon's Kimball and Brolin's Bigfoot seem to tell a tale of a post-hippie world, in which a true-blue doper like Doc finds himself in a society that's generally become just as weird as he is. The film is set in 1970, and the hippie movement has already peaked. Doc and his ilk are soon-to-be an endangered species. The 60's are giving way to the conservatism of the 70's and 80's. The hippies have been demonized post-Charles Manson - Doc and his ilk are derided as cultists by the cops. And so Doc, with his enduring commitment to living out his days as high as possible, is the walking symbol of a dying breed.

Well, at least that's what I'm extrapolating. As in The Master, Anderson seems to sort of circle around these big themes in INHERENT VICE, but doesn't quite seem to decide what it is, exactly, that he's trying to say here. I've seen some reviews that further expand on some of the ideas I lay out above. But I think going much further is to read more into the film than what's there. Anderson, I think, gets caught up in putting forth an overall vibe of lingering, languid, stoned-out trippiness that he loses track of the big picture storytelling. The result is that the movie ends, and there's a feeling that the movie never quite came together so as to form a cohesive whole. The best noirs have a clockwork precision that informs the surface-level chaos. There are moments here where you can't help but smile at what Anderson's doing (and I haven't read the book to comment on how it works as an adaptation). You can see puzzle pieces falling into place in unexpected and funny ways. Sometimes. Sometimes the pieces just don't seem to add up. When they do, it's great. As with the slowly-unraveling revelation that Wolffmann is involved in a circular scheme, in which a cabal called the Golden Fang deals drugs and then profits from the rehab centers that the addicts inevitably end up in. But some elements of the film - like most everything involving Wilson's rocker, or the verbose, seemingly unnecessary voice-over narration - have too many moments that are head-scratchers.

I like a lot about INHERENT VICE, and it's a film that has a lot of greatness to soak in that's scattered throughout its sprawling running time. What keeps it from total greatness though is that the movie has a lot on its mind. It doesn't want to be pure, Lebowski-esque farce. Anderson seems to want to say a lot about the 60's, the 70's, hippie culture, cop culture, business culture, and the push and pull of liberalism and conservatism in modern America. I'm just not sure that he ever says exactly what he wants to say though. For that reason, INHERENT VICE can feel like a long strange trip without a true light at the end of the tunnel. At the same time, it can't be discounted, because the voice telling us this tale is one of the best damn filmmakers we've got.

My grade: B+

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR Is A Fun Return to Frank Miller's Twisted Comic Book Universe

FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR: Review:

- Here's where I go against the critical conventional wisdom and say that the second SIN CITY film is actually good. Over the last several years, critics and fans, for whatever reason, have turned against Robert Rodriguez. Maybe he made one Machete movie too many. Maybe people are waiting for him to get serious as a filmmaker. Whatever the case may be, Rodriguez remains a filmmaker whose work I largely enjoy, and whose Sin City remains, in my eyes, a great film. The movie came out at a time when every comic book adaptation strove for realism. But Sin City, with its ripped-from-the-graphic-novels aesthetic, was a huge breath of fresh air. Finally, a film that seemed to honor not just the skeleton of the source material from which it was adapted, but one that actually took care to translate the stylized visuals of the comics to the screen.

Meanwhile, Sin City creator Frank Miller's reputation among the geek elite has also been steadily plummeting. Once, the man was a comic book god - the guy who crafted game-changing masterworks like The Dark Knight Returns. As time went on, Miller's extreme style went out of favor, and he didn't do himself any favors with oddball works like All-Star Batman and Robin, or with his spectacular crash-and-burn directorial debut, The Spirit.

However, going into SIN CITY 2 merely as a fan of the first film, I think it's fair to say that this movie exists in a sort of comfort zone for both Rodriguez and Miller. The fact is, this one is not a huge departure from the first film. If you liked that movie, there's nothing not to like here. You get the same gorgeous-to-look-at black-and-white comic book aesthetic (touched up with strategically-placed shocks of red or blue or yellow) - now even more eye-popping in 3D. You get the same gritty yet over-the-top neo-noir-on-acid storytelling - the same motley crew of thugs, vigilantes, dirty cops, strippers, and femme fatales. This is, quite simply, a return trip to the world of Sin City. If you dig Sin City, then you'll dig this.

And what is Sin City? I read so many critics who try to compare this film, and this world, to legit film noir classics and declare it lacking in comparison. Yeah, no kidding. Sin City is film noir, comic book superheroes, 80's-era nihilism, and escapist adolescent fantasy rolled into a blender and spit out and stomped on. Miller's work is over-the-top, unsubtle, and everyone - men and women both - are basically bad apples. To complain that this isn't Out of the Past or The Killing seems to be missing the point entirely.Yes, these movies and this world are completely ridiculous. Sometimes though, there's merit in that.

Now, if you like the world of Sin City, and don't inherently find it offensive, then you'll most likely find some things in this sequel to get excited about. One thing that's fantastic right off the bat is that the great Powers Boothe, as sinister Senator Roarke, figures heavily into the film as it's biggest bad - and as you can probably guess, he's friggin' awesome. I mean, this is Boothe in full-on evil bastard mode, and nobody does it better. Second thing to be excited about is new cast addition Eva Green. Green has been absolutely killing it of late - she wowed in the 300 sequel, and did Emmy-worthy work this past year on the Showtime series Penny Dreadful. Green is similarly great in this film, playing the classic femme fatale, as filtered through the scratchy, cracked lense of the Sin City-verse. It's now clear that Green is the best in the biz at doing these sorts of over-the-top characters. She nails the sort of pulpy, hammy tone that this sort of role requires, mixing old-Hollywood glamor with just the right hint of self-aware winking.

The rest of the cast is pretty uniformly excellent. Mickey Rourke again shines as the lumbering brute Marv. And he's got some great moments with Josh Brolin's hard-luck Dwight. Brolin acquits himself very well to the Sin City-verse, and does hard-boiled like he doesn't know any other way to be. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also quite good as Johnny, a pushing-his-luck gambler who runs afoul of Boothe's Roarke. Also a stand-out is Christopher Meloni as Mort, an initially by-the-book cop who, in true Sin City fashion, compromises his integrity as he falls under the spell of Green's seductive Ava. Oh - there's also a weird but sort-of-cool Christopher Lloyd cameo.

I suspect a lot of people will point fingers at Jessica Alba as a weak point. I agree that Alba hasn't historically had the sort of forceful presence to fully pull off the role of troubled stripper. But I also think that Alba has grown as an actress, and she is good here. In particular, I really enjoyed her climactic confrontation with Roarke. She doesn't quite match Green for sheer screen presence (few do), but I also wouldn't call her a blatant weak link.

The movie's biggest weakness, I think, is its jumpiness and overall pacing issues. Pacing undeniably feels just a bit off, with fairly abrupt jumps between the film's intermingling but separate storylines, and certain sections that feel overlong and draggy. The movie has some solid action, but it is, overall, a bit slower-paced and more methodical than the first film. And yes, as much as I dig the overall Sin City aesthetic, there are, certainly, moments where it feels pushed a little too far - moments where the movie seems a little too caught up in self-seriousness to realize it should be having fun. But I think that's where Rodriguez's love for pulpy grindhouse filmmaking ultimately steers Miller's grim excesses away from the cliff.

Overall, I really enjoyed SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR. It may simply be more of the same, but it's a lot of fun to just watch these actors go all-out in the service of bringing Frank Miller's twisted world to life. If nothing else, you get to watch Eva Green vamp it up, Mickey Rourke bust heads, and Powers Boothe go full-evil - all in grand, highly-stylized fashion. Not a bad time at the movies.

My Grade: B+

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Is One Rocking Cosmic Comic Book Jam

 GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Review:

- Here it is. What we've been waiting for. Now ... we get to the good stuff. I said it back when I reviewed Thor: The Dark World, but I'll repeat: Marvel is boldly going to some very weird places with its big-budget movies, and I'm lovin' it. Think about where we've come from. When this whole big-screen superhero renaissance started with movies like X-Men, the colorful comic book heroes of Marvel made it to cinemas in a whitewashed, scrubbed-up fashion. "Yellow spandex" was a punchline. Black leather was the order of the day. The characters were mostly intact, but the sci-fi grandeur and acid-trip visuals of Kirby and his ilk were all but gone. Now, slowly but surely, Marvel Studios has brought the weird and cosmic aspects of its comic book universe to its movies - and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is the apex of that evolution, a loud-and-proud color-burst of a movie that feels like a statement from Marvel: the Marvel universe has officially been cracked open, and there really are no more limits to what can happen in these movies.

The man who makes it all happen is director James Gunn. Just saying that is sort of weird and sort of awesome. Until recently I knew Gunn as an outside-the-system director of genre movies that were, by and large, insane. I saw an opening-weekend screening of his movie Super a few years ago, featuring a Q&A with Gunn. Super remains one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. And Gunn seemed like the kind of guy who'd perhaps be happiest doing these oddball, limits-pushing, low-budget movies filled with his usual cast of go-to actors. But here's the remarkable thing: GUARDIANS is very much a Marvel movie, but, no question, it's also a James Gunn movie through and through. The movie revels in its own weirdness, much like Super and also Slither. It features the oddball, oddly-perverse sense of humor that Gunn is known for. It's got his brother, Sean Gunn, appearing in a supporting role, as he always does in James Gunn films. It's got other Gunn regulars like Michael Rooker. Gunn's movies push boundaries and go to unexpected places, and this is no exception. This is rock n' roll filmmaking like we haven't see yet in the Marvel cinematic universe.

However, what keeps all of the cosmic craziness of the film grounded is the real humanity at its core. As out-there as things get, even the movie's strangest characters have surprising depth. At the center of it all is Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord. Quill is a classic, swashbuckling rogue in the grand tradition of Han Solo and the like - but Gunn (along with screenwriter Nicole Parlman) also give him a tragic backstory and a real warmth. Also credit the gifted Pratt for making Star-Lord into a character both empathetic and hilarious. Pratt - so good for years on Parks and Recreation - is a natural at this sort of action/comedy leading man role. The guy has the bravado for epic adventure, but also the dude-next-door affability that makes him easy to root for and care about. He nails it in this film.

I can't say enough about the rest of the film's eclectic cast. It's no major surprise that Zoe Saldana is fantastic as the traumatized adopted-against-her-will daughter of Thanos, Gamora. Saldana is now a multi-franchise sci-fi superstar, but Gamora is an interesting new twist on her usual badass persona - a woman hated and feared because of her father, out to prove that she is, in fact, nothing like him. Gamora is also the moral center of the movie's ragtag team - the only one who, from the outset, has an altruistic agenda. What is more of a surprise though is that wrestler Dave Bautista is actually really, really good here in a scene-stealing role as Drax the Destroyer, a muscled-up alien hellbent on revenge for his wife and child, killed at the hands of the power-mad Ronan. What is also a surprise is how a character that I assumed would be pretty awesome - Rocket Raccoon - is not just awesome, but also the emotional center of the movie. I would never have expected that the talking raccoon would have some of the movie's most emotionally-charged moments, but James Gunn and co. go all-in with the Bradley Cooper-voiced creature. Rocket rules, but he's much more than just comic relief. Same goes for talking tree-man Groot, elegantly voiced by Vin Diesel. Groot is funny and weird, but also the source of several moments of awe, wonder, and emotional resonance. Give both Cooper and Diesel some major, major props here for their voice work. Cooper is the lovable, fast-talking, Brooklyn-accented, chip-on-his-shoulder badass we all hoped and wanted Rocket to be. And Diesel pulls an Iron Giant with Groot, making the lumbering tree-creature somehow full of pathos.

I could go on an on about the cast. Michael Rooker is just great, in a distinctly Michael Rooker sort of way, as the blue-skinned alien outlaw Yondu. Yondu is a perfect example of how Gunn just flat-out embraces the craziest aspects of these characters and goes all-in. Yondu isn't *just* a badass blue alien who talks like a southern-fried redneck, you see. He's also got a deadly blowing-dart that he controls by whistling, which he can use to take out armies of enemies simply by whistling a tune. Holy $^&#, people ... James Gunn isn't messing around. That same wholesale embrace of comic book insanity is evident in the film's chief villain, Ronan The Accuser. Played by Lee Pace - of late the master of over-the-top genre movie grandstanding - Ronan is a straight-from-the-comics cosmic bad guy of epic proportions. There's a similarly otherworldly sheen to Karen Gillan's Nebula, another daughter of Thanos, whose metallic blue skin and cybernetic enhancements make her a truly alien creature. We caught a glimpse of Benicio Del Toro's enigmatic Collector at the end of Thor: The Dark World, and the character is yet another that is just plain nuts, in the best way possible. And of course, the mighty, mad titan Thanos lurks in the background of the film - menacingly voiced by Josh Brolin and looking straight out of a Jim Starlin-drawn comic book page - waiting to stake his claim as the Marvel Universe's most-wanted.

In fact, the comic book literalism in GUARDIANS is pretty crazy. There's a clear reverence for the architects of Marvel's weird and cosmic corners - Jack Kirby, Jim Starlin, etc. - and I don't know if I've ever seen a comic book adaptation that so faithfully reproduces the costumes and colors of its source material. As others have pointed out, the movie is not just visually jaw-dropping, but also bursting with color in a way that the dulled-out modern superhero movies have mostly avoided to date. Star-filled cosmos flooded with neon-colored splashes. Gleaming alien cities filled with colorful locales. Space-bars to rival the Mos Eisley cantina. A legion of Nova Corps agents wearing their trademark gladiator-helmets and Kirby-ringed uniforms, riding around in a battalion of starburst-shaped attack ships.

Gunn shoots the film in a classical manner that calls to mind 70's and 80's sci-fi films. The movie's action is fast and furious, but also well-staged, easy-to-follow, and impactful - littered with character moments both funny and poignant. The film's exotic alien locales are all unique and memorable and teeming with detail and motion and easter-eggs. And the movie's various depictions of the vast reaches of the cosmos are both awe-inspiring and fit for framing.

The film is also very funny. Sure, other Marvel movies have had quippy humor and self-referential gags, but GUARDIANS is the first true Marvel action/comedy. The movie's got a plethora of extended comedic scenes that go for big laughs. Comedy vet Chris Pratt anchors the humor with his great timing and delivery. And, despite its massive kid-appeal, Gunn sneaks in plenty of scandalous little moments that may go over the heads of the younger set, but that are guaranteed to get a chuckle from adults. But what's really remarkable is that the movie can switch gears and deliver epic action, romance, and space-opera - all while being very funny and light-on-its feet. In that way, it really is a throwback of sorts to the classic sci-fi cinema of the 70's and 80's. Action, humor, and moments that kids will later look back on and wonder "how did they get away with keeping *that* in there?".

The movie packs in so much that it does, inevitably, leave you wanting just a bit more. While an opening prologue nicely establishes some backstory for Quill, other characters' origins are often only briefly alluded to, left to be further fleshed-out in future sequels, tie-ins, etc. Certainly, I would have loved to have gotten some additional history around Gamora - to really get a sense for what her childhood must have been like under the thumb of Thanos, and what it was like to be raised alongside his other "children" like Nebula. There was also plenty of untold story with Rocket and Groot. Some mystery is good, but having just a bit more to chew on for the non-Star-Lord characters would have made things feel a bit more substantive. Same goes for chief villain Ronan. I know some of his background from the comics, but here he gets only minimal screentime to properly explain his sinister motivations.

Overall though, what James Gunn and his team have accomplished here is pretty remarkable. They've brought the Marvel cosmic universe to the big-screen, and they've taken characters and concepts that were long thought too weird for the mainstream and made them work - not by watering them down, but by going all-in and just fully embracing the awesome. For many months I've heard speculation that GUARDIANS would bomb, that Marvel movies worked because of a particular formula, and  that any deviation from that formula would spell box office disaster. But this is a new dawn, a world where weird is accepted and where comic book adaptations can let their freak flag fly high. It's funny, because in this film alone there are several concepts that have clear DC Comics analogues, that Marvel has now beat them to the punch in doing right on the big screen. As Marvel has done Thanos, DC could do Darkseid. As Marvel has done a pretty epic take on the Nova Corps, man, that's how DC could do Green Lantern. Seeing the visuals on Groot made me realize how cool a Swamp Thing film could be in 2014. And seeing Marvel embrace its comics' weirdest corners on the big-screen made me realize that there are no more limits. Because as a young comic book fan, sure, I loved the big heroes and the iconic stories, but most of all I loved the way that these comic book universes seemed to expand across all of space and time, filled with an endless collection of characters and concepts that ran the gamut of genres and artistic influences. With GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, the Marvel cinematic universe now feels ever closer to the kind of place that made comics so cool to generations of readers. The kind of place where Steve Rogers can rub shoulders with The Hulk, who can pick a fight with Thanos, who can run afoul of the Kree empire, who might tangle with Spider-Man, who might just share an adventure with Howard the Duck. The beauty of these organic fictional worlds is that anything is possible. And GUARDIANS - complete with an off-the-wall end-tag that serves as a sort of exclamation point for this idea - confirms that this is now true of the movie-verse as well.

It's fitting then that the iconic object of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY turns out to be Peter Quill's mix-tape cassette - a memento from his mother - that provides the soundtrack for his adventures, and for much of the film. The tape jumps from "Hooked on a Feeling" to "Cherry Bomb," a diverse playlist of pop  favorites that somehow adds up to Peter Quill, in miniature. So too is the film an anything-goes mix-tape of pop-art - a color-soaked genre mash-up that evokes the same anything-goes spirit of the comics it adapts. Those books were rock n' roll. This movie is rock n' roll. And it delivers one awesomely groovy space-jam.

My Grade: A-