SERENITY

Generally speaking, I'm not that fond of movies made from TV series'. They usually are very lame attempts to compile all the adventure and character depth of the shows into one strip of filmed events. There are always exceptions, of course, and Serenity is certainly one of them.

Probably one of the primary reasons I liked this movie is because of the political overtones. Overpopulation drives settlers from Earth to another galaxy where a new worlds are developed through terraforming. Along with the new worlds, the people are brainwashed so that none are independent thinkers. When one young girl refuses to follow along, she is subjected to rigorous and damaging experiments to harvest her "psychic" powers to be used as a weapon. Her brother sets out to save her and learn the secrets behind her so-called mental abilities as well as instabilities.

The answer lies within her mind, and the authorities don't want their secrets revealed as failures on the Utopian planets.

This movie came from the canceled TV show Firefly, which, regrettably, I never saw. No matter. This movie stands alone in it's action and story line. I found it humorous at times because the crew of the space ship often used old west cowboy terminology, but this helped make the characters seem more like the cowboys they were.