Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

You can hardly go wrong telling a story with great characters. The strength of this series has always been its stable of astonishingly vibrant and memorable characters, from the original core set to the additions to the team in the second and now third installments--they have all been outsized, wildly entertaining and profoundly likable. That even applies to the computer generated personages, who really shine in this sequel. Rocket and his enhanced animal friends, in flashbacks to the past, bring such emotional depth and honesty to the story’s key points that their example opens up whole new vistas of consideration about how movie audiences can connect to characters, ideas and other facets of the movie-watching experience. Maybe even the dreaded AIs have something to offer the medium, something that those who grew up strictly on human-centric cinema would never have expected to be possible. Then again, maybe it’s all just a standard comic-book movie hoot and a half, with laughs and fun stuff and “did that look cool” sprinkled throughout a well-formed big-screen joy ride. You can just take it as the latter and leave all the deep thought stuff to others, if you like. This outing certainly serves up plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and a host of trademark flourishes that the franchise fans will expect to see. Yes, there is a certain amount of absurdity to the main storyline; if you think about it (not recommended), the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense. But such concerns have quibbling written all over them. This is just plain movie fun, and if you don't get regular helpings of that, you're doing it wrong.

Detroit

This is a film that tests your patience, then rewards it. It's hard to know where it's going at first; the mixture of documentary style presentation along with dramatic scenes of the 1967 Detroit riots makes the direction of the work seem general and unfocused. Early sequences are more of a pastiche of scenes rather than a cohesive narrative--and yours truly has never been a fan of the pastiche approach. But stay with it: the very disparate threads eventually come together into a long examination of the events at the Algiers Motel, and that's where the unfocused film turns riveting. (Bigelow's strength as a director seems to be in presenting intense interactions.) Once the movie gets rolling there, it's an absorbing story all the way to the end. Definitely worth a look, and worth thinking about after the credits roll.