Those guardians of the galaxy return

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 boasts both lulls and amusements, but does nothing to tarnish the franchise.

The original Guardians of the Galaxy took the market by storm in 2014, providing a refreshing antidote to the self-seriousness that infiltrates many parts of Marvel's vast comic-book repertoire. Unexpected and slightly bizarre, the movie featured Rocket Raccoon (voice by Bradley Cooper), a snarky animal who delivered the movie's best wisecracks, and a diminutive creature named Groot (voice by Vin Diesel), a mini-tree of an alien who added an element of off-kilter cuteness.

Now comes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 sporting a name that makes the movie sound as if it aspires to find a home in The Library of Congress catalog. Not Guardians 2 or even Part II, but "Volume 2."

This is not to say that the movie, written and directed by a returning James Gunn, mires itself in big themes. Gunn tries to replicate the self-aware attitude of the first installment, something along the lines of recognition that joyfully teeters on the rim of the pop-cultural toilet without falling in.

If that's too abstract for you, let me put it another way: The first movie was fun. The second movie? Sometimes it's fun.

A creative application of special effects and CGI help keep Vol. 2 from tarnishing the franchise, even as it falls prey to a typical second-helping problem, overcrowding in just about every department.

Vol. 2 plunges viewers into a self-referential universe that makes room for musical and TV nostalgia from the 1980s, one of the fascinations of a Guardian played by Chris Pratt; i.e., Quill. The movie's 1980s nostalgia trip also includes a recurring reference to David Hasselhoff of TV's Knight Rider and Baywatch fame.

I'm always amazed at the pop-cultural knowledge that aficionados bring to these movies. Without prompting, they can tell you all about Drax (Dave Bautista), the muscular man with the hearty laugh that always sounds forced to me, like he has to think about it before letting loose with a guffaw.

During this episode, Quill meets a character who claims to be his father. He's Ego, played by Kurt Russell. If you had any doubts, Ego's name serves as a clue about the character's intentions. Ego wants to enlist Quill's help in fulfilling a long-standing ambition. Trouble, of course, looms.

In what amounts to a glut of characters, Michael Rooker stands out as Yondo, the alien who raised Quill.

You'll also find a cameo appearance by Sylvester Stallone, and we meet Mantis (Pom Klementieff), a creature with an antenna that enables her to function as an empath. Mantis touches people and instantly knows what they're feeling.

Zoe Saldana returns as Gamora, who this time faces off against Nebula (Karen Gillan), a cyborg with blue skin who began her life as Gamora's sister. Hey, a little sibling rivalry never hurts.

Additional female power emanates for Ayesha, a golden-skinned character played by Elizabeth Debicki.

One of the movie's better bits involves a character named Taserface (Chris Sullivan), a brutish fellow whose descriptive but preposterous name prevents his victims from taking him seriously. If you're keeping score, Taserface belongs to a group called the Ravagers.

Gunn provides enough explosions to satisfy action-hungry audiences, and after a third-act dip, the movie picks up for an ending that tempers the obligatory mayhem with a bit of emotion that stems from the self-sacrificing act of one of the movie's characters.

You may be getting the impression that the movie virtually bursts with characters, effects, action and amusements. Some hit; some don't. But Vol. 2's mixed bag won't keep it from reaping a box-office bonanza. I can't say that Vol. 2 matches the enjoyment of the first movie, but, boy, can you see it trying.

Bloat hits the 'Furious' franchise

A ridiculous story, lots of action and decreasing amounts of fun.

What started in 2001 as an amped-up and gritty look at the street racing subculture has spawned a total of sevens sequels. Overall, the Fast and Furious movies have done a good job of satisfying action-hungry audiences while also taking on the job of turning an ethnically diverse cast into a popular rogue family.

That was then.

In its latest incarnation -- dubbed The Fate of the Furious -- the franchise finally falls prey to a 21st Century disease: overstated bloat. Not only that, the movie has lost much of its original flavor, resorting instead to a ludicrous story in which the Furious gang becomes a kind of Mission Impossible team that must thwart the ambitions of a super villain named Cipher (Charlize Theron). Cipher wants to go nuclear and take half the planet with her.

Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto faces what passes in such movies as a moral crisis, and the movie drags out familiar characters Jason Statham's Deckard, Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs and Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody. A hodgepodge of a script mixes and matches characters as the ruthless Cipher coerces Dom into working against his old team.

The movie begins with Dom and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) honeymooning in Havana. With Latin beauties allowing their rumps to protrude from skimpy short shorts, a street race develops, really the last time the movie takes a serious bow toward its revved-up roots.

Director F. Gary Gray increasingly yields to the temptation of producing a clangorous noise-machine with lots of computer-generated effects, the most notable occurring when hundreds of cars tumble headlong out of a parking garage as the result of a major hacking that takes control of their computer systems.

By the end, the movie introduces a gargantuan submarine that threatens the car-crazed team. And, of course, many "hot" cars race by, although they all speed so quickly, it's difficult to admire them.

Some of the regulars get short shrift, particularly Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris, who banter with one another in limited but typical fashion. Nathalie Emmanuel portrays the group's tech genius.

A screenplay by Chris Morgan and Gary Scott Thompson includes the kind of macho lines that are supposed to be repeated outside of the theater but most of them prove ham-handed. At one point, Diesel's Dom says that the mad genius Cipher should be wary about taking her foot off the tiger's neck; i.e., him. I suppose that's the movie's idea of sage advice.

Of course, gunplay and explosions are followed by more gunplay and more explosions.

Best thing about the movie: Helen Mirren's cameo appearance.

Second best thing: Statham bringing a bit of winking humor to his role as an assassin.

Third best thing: There is no third best thing.

OK, I'm speaking only for myself here. It should be noted that this installment surely will rock the box office, that two more movies are slated and that, by now, audiences have learned to accept the preposterous and even to love it.

Once a bona fide movie, the real fate of the series is to have become a highly calculated mix of muscle, mayhem, faux menace and canned sentiment. For me, there's more noise than fun in this edition.

'Hateful Eight' : blood, racial conflict -- at length

Tarantino's overlong and, of course incendiary, foray into the West.

A B-movie trying to wear A-movie clothes -- and not always doing a good job of it.

That's part of what I thought about The Hateful Eight, director Quentin Tarantino's three-hour opus, a Western that was filmed in Telluride, Colorado. Like the so-called road shows of yore, Hateful Eight begins with an overture (Ennio Morricone wrote the score) and includes an intermission.

The movie can be seen in 70mm at certain locations, although the necessity of seeing it that way can be argued. The movie's "prestige" trappings struck me as overkill, a phenomenon not unknown to a director whose seven previous movies have been known to go over-the-top.

As usual, Tarantino plays with structure, but he's decided to go against the Western grain. The snow-covered landscapes of the movie's opening suggest a spacious background, but the bulk of The Hateful Eight takes place indoors.

Tarantino's screenplay revolves around a simple premise: More than a decade after the Civil War, bounty hunters take shelter in a cabin during a blizzard. It doesn't take long before these bounty hunters are interacting with strangers in a high-stakes game not all of them will survive.

Before the movie's done, its characters are given ample opportunity to prove that they've earned the movie's title. They're a hateful bunch, several of them steeped in racism stemming from North/South divisions that haven't begun to scar over.

If there's a main character here, it's probably Samuel L. Jackson's Marquis Warren, a savvy bounty hunter who led a group of black fighters during the Civil War.

Early on, a stranded Warren stops a stage coach to ask for a ride. He's transporting two dead outlaws across the snow-covered hills: His destination: the Wyoming town of Red Rock. His goal: to collect bounties.

The stage coach has been hired by John Ruth (Kurt Russell), another bounty hunter who's headed to Red Rock. Ruth is transporting a murderous woman named Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to an appointment with the hangman.

It doesn't take long before another traveler joins the group. Walton Goggins portrays Chris Mannix, a former Confederate soldier and the guy who's supposed to take over as Red Rock's new sheriff.

Once the travelers reach the stage stop -- the oddly named Minnie's Haberdashery -- they encounter more characters: an English hangman (Tim Roth), a cowboy who scribbles in a diary (Michael Madsen), an aging Confederate general (Bruce Dern) and a Mexican (Demian Bichir) who claims to be taking care of the place for Minnie, who's off visiting someone or other.

No one who's familiar with Tarantino's work will be surprised to learn that Hateful Eight includes considerable violence, profanity and racial slurs.

If you thought that Tarantino made his racial movie with Django Unchained, think again. Warren instantly is pitted against southern, racist sensibilities and once again, Tarantino gives the "n" word a workout. Its use here can be piercing, raw and maybe a bit forced: One presumes that Tarantino wants to use the movie's isolated setting to get at what he regards as the ugly, bottom-line truth of racial hatred.

Perhaps, but you'd think by now, Tarantino (who writes his own scripts) would have developed a severe case of "n" word fatigue.

Tarantino and cinematographer Robert Richardson, who has filmed many of Tarantino's movies, don't always find ways to make the depressingly brown interiors of Minnie's Haberdashery all that interesting, and this time, they're stuck in a situation in which talk mostly trumps action -- at least in the movie's pre-intermission segments.

That shouldn't be a problem for Tarantino, whose speciality is dialogue, but there are times when you're a little too aware that the characters aren't exactly talking; they're indulging in Tarantino-speak. Put another way: You can hear the writing.

Now, there are surprises here, so there's not much point saying more about what happens in this God forsaken Wyoming outpost other than to note that Tarantino breaks the movie into five acts, each introduced by a title card.

Know, though, that Jackson seems to be playing a character who's not entirely unlike Jules, the hit man he played in Pulp Fiction; he's whip smart and nasty when he needs to be.

Russell's character specializes in what appears to be misogynistic brutally, punching Daisy when he thinks she's out of line. Leigh spends much of the movie with a bloodied face. Of course, Daisy's no angel, either.

Of all the performances Leigh's feels the freshest, reaching near-demonic proportions. An enraged Daisy is something to behold; she could be a guardian at the gates of hell.

When it comes to color palette, Hateful Eight might be the brownest movie I've ever seen. I'm not sure what that signifies, other than that it breeds a whiff of monotony, a condition not unknown to the movie, particularly as it approaches its intermission.

Intense violence explodes during the movie's protracted finale, generating enough plasma to fill a blood bank before Tarantino brings the movie to its rueful dead-end of a conclusion. These westerners know how to get medieval on one another, to borrow one of Tarantino's signature phrases.

As is often the case with Tarantino, we're not sure whether he's reading reality or commenting, expanding on and sometimes subverting pop-cultural tropes, some of them his own. Put another way, I can't say I really believed much of anything I was watching.

Besides, volatile as it is, even hate gets boring after a while.