Serenity

Sadly, I missed Serenity on the big screen just like I missed Firefly on television. Fortunately, the miracle of DVD technology has enabled me to catch up. Firefly really was a fantastic show, too good to be on Fox apparently, but there you have it.
The movie Serenity take up not long after the show leaves off. The same characters are around with the exception of Inara and Shepherd Book, both of whom have left the Serenity though not without retaining some contact with the ship (and do appear in the movie). We learn a lot more about the particulars behind young River's ordeal at the hands of the Alliance as they pick up the pace in their search for their wayward experiment. Specifically, a skilled and ruthless Alliance operative gets on their tail as River's outbursts of violence grow in intensity. Pushed to the wall, Mal and the crew decide to get to the bottom of River's problems once and for all and uncover a very powerful secret.
The characters are the same as in the TV show and played just as well as ever though a couple of them still remain enigmatic. Humor is sprinkled about, though the general subject matter, as the movie rolls on, is more grim and the characters more under strain and stress. The level of work and artistry that went into the TV show is well matched in the movie, and the transition is virtually seemless (though I'd say there is evidence of a bigger budget in the movie, and that's not a bad thing).
Viewers who haven't seen the TV show might have a little trouble figuring out all of the characters at first, but the movie does stand on its own reasonably well.
My grade for this movie is an A.

The Aviator

As one of the most highly acclaimed movies of any year, The Aviator has a heck of a reputation to live up to. It does so admirably. The life of Howard Hughes is a very interesting topic to cover, not the least because he was such a quirky personality, but also because he was such an economic force in the airline industry and, though not part of the time covered by the movie, the Las Vegas gaming industry.
This movie features Leo DiCaprio at his best, portraying the obsessive-compulsive Hughes with a lot of intensity, particularly when his personality goes through a severe breakdown that sends him into a seclusion broken only by the need to testify in front of the Senate. There are other excellent performances by Alan Alda and, especially, Cate Blanchett as Kate Hepburn (the Oscar is well deserved). Again, I marvel that the Oscar didn't go to Martin Scorsese (if any man deserves life-time achievement, it's him) but at least he lost to another excellent director in Clint Eastwood.
As far as the direct subject matter goes, The Aviator focuses on Hughes's life between his making of Hell's Angels, a WWI aviation movie, in the 1920s through his 1947 test flight of the "Spruce Goose" (a nickname he didn't like). They portray his relationships with Kate Hepburn and Ava Gardner, his building of TWA and breaking Pan Am's monopoly on international passenger flights, and his love of experimental aircraft, including a near fatal crash of an prototypical recon airplane. And of course, they also show us the private Hughes with his dubious mental health.
I give the movie an A.

Alexander

Alexander is Oliver Stone's epic biopic about Alexander of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great. It stars Colin Farrell as Alexander, hair significantly bleached, as we trace his life from youth horse-riding prodigy to driven conquerer of Persia and other places east. Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie play his parents, the loutish Philip and poisonous Olympias.
The story the movie portrays is framed by an elderly Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals, played by Anthony Hopkins. He is dictating the story of Alexander to a scribe and interjects summaries of things that happen off screen as we jump about through Alexander's life. While this does allow Stone's screenplay to cover larger stretches of Alexander's life, it leaves the movie feeling disjointed. We don't even cover Alexander's first steps as a conquerer, putting down rebellion in Greece and then taking Asia Minor and Egypt. We go right into his big showdown battle with the Persians. While that certainly is a seminal event in the young conqueror's life, we don't build to it at all. It's just there.
From that point, the movie alternatively races and drags with very uneven pacing and a lot of scenery-chewing acting. I just don't think Stone was working at his best during this movie.
There are some things that are pursued in this movie that I think are good choices to cover: his homosexual love for Hephaistion, his grumbling army as they are called upon to conquer and conquer and conquer (all the way to India) without getting a chance to go home, his odd choice of marriage to Roxane rather than a more important Persian princess. The trouble is, none of this seems all that well executed (except maybe for the near mutiny of his army). In the end, I was pretty disappointed with the movie even though it's clear that a number of the actors in it clearly worked their asses off, notibly Colin Farrell, who seems to have kept a low profile (in movie roles) for most of the year.
I give the movie a C-.