The Fugitive

There are a lot of movies out there that take an old television series and adapt their characters and basic premise into a feature film. There aren’t a lot of good ones, however. But 1993′s The Fugitive, directed by Andrew Davis and starring Harrison Ford, is one of the exceptions to the rule.

Part of this is due to the quality performances of the actors, and the director and his crew. But part of it is probably also due to the nature of the story. The Fugitive, as a TV series, had a certain need to pad out its basic plot with a lot of incidental events. As a movie, the central plot can become the sole plot, allowing for a tighter focus and a story that moves at a fast clip. Though the movie is just a little over two hours long, it feels like a much shorter film due to its pace.

Captain America: The First Avenger

I felt like I needed to watch something a bit more uplifting after yesterday’s viewing of Boyz N The Hood, and it seemed like the right time to go see Captain America: The First Avenger. One advantage of being late to the game is that by this time, word of mouth has gotten around and I had reason to think I wouldn’t be disappointed. The early promotional material — blurbs from the director, hints from the writers — before the trailers hit gave me some mild concerns, but I held onto my optimism for once. Captain America’s been subjected to some very bad movies in the past, but I felt that, handled correctly, a Captain America movie could and should be one of the best of the superhero genre.

I was not disappointed.