The classic measure to the Musketeer movie is, of course, the 1973 version with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, etc. That one gets 10 for 10 for following the storyline, great casting, great pacing, and wonderfully choreographed sword-play.

Since then, there have been several excretable versions of this classic tale, most of them having nothing to do with the original.

The Three Musketeers (2011) is not a bad little version. I wouldn't want to see it with literate friends but it's fun enough. Its a rather steampunky affair (the 1973 version had a spring dagger in the hilt of a sword and wonderful glass daggers filled with acid). Now we have underwater armored suits, multi-barrel pistols, amazing spring-loaded, tumble spinning locks, and airships. Yes, airships.

I'll give that it was entertaining - Porthos, Athos and Aramis all looked and acted like I would expect them to be (I actually prefer this Athos (described by Dumas as a giant of a man) against his foppish 1973 version). D'artagan comes off a little too cocky (I suppose he is the character the teens in the audience are suppose to relate to, and you can't have him as the shy version of legend and 1973). Milady is an action figure. Lord Buckingham comes off as a greasy pompadoured villain. The jury is still out on Cardinal Richelieu - he looked the part, but how can such an ordained figure say, "Yep"?

It was interesting, though. They vaguely followed the plot - I found myself thinking that if the book (and '73 film) were filet mignon, this was like a stew with chucks of that meat floating in it. The diamond studs? Yes. The frenzied ride to London? Yes. The wonderful meeting of the four (where their duel is interrupted by the Cardinals' guards). Yes. But for that last scene, instead of eight guards against three musketeers ("Nay, four, for I am a musketeer in heart!"), this time it's forty mooks who get polished off embarisingly fast.

The swordplay (especially the end battle between D'artagan and Rochefort) was very well staged and placed far enough back to allow us to appreciate the action. Points for that.

I had to smile at the blatant Star Trek II  rip-off - a small airship is being chased by a larger one into a thunderstorm. Athos looks back as they exchange chasers. "I'll give him this: he's persistent". The good guys actually use the "Z vector" to beat the villians.

Anyway, overall, fun flick, but give up the idea that this one is going to add anything significant to the Musketeer legend. This is just a Sunday afternoon flick - just toss your memory of it into the trash with the popcorn bag and drink cup.

Before Dollhouse and Firefly, even before Buffy (on TV) there was the movie Buffy, the one my wife and I saw back in 1992 and rather liked. Anyway, she found the disk on the cheap, so it served as our Friday Nite Flick.

What a difference nearly 20 years makes.

I'd remember this being slick, stylistic, happening and hip. I remember it being so cool - Modern Vampires! In L.A.! I remembered really liking it.

It came to me while Buffy was training, and in some of the early fight scenes. Everyone seemed... slow. Everyone looked like they'd just walked into the studio, spent a few hours in makeup and then walked onto the set, where the director said, "Okay, in this scene, you make a roundhouse swing and hit him. Action!"

I guess I'm just CGIed, or jaded that every shot must be perfect. Here, actors shift or go over tables in clumsy falls or throw stakes with less conviction than Mifuni at the end of Yojimbo (even with the wire, it was better). In old B&W flicks, I'm used to seeing clumsy action scenes, with those punched jutting their chins ceilingward like a breaching whales, yelling, "Ugh, you rat!" But in the 90s? The 90s? This is after the wonderful edited action of Back to the Future. No blood, no guts, no clever angles, no dim lighting, no CGI, nothing. Everyone stands six feet from the camera and goes into their tumbles.

Sad, really.

Oh, there is good acting, all things said. Kristy Swanson does a wonderful job maturing in the role, growing up before our eyes. Donald Sutherland, as her strange olde-worlde trainer, plays it just right. Rutger Hauer camps the Vampire Lord with the perfect sense of pomp. And Paul Ruebens goes over the top with his lengthy death scene. I think Luke Perry is in it too, but I wasn't impressed then and care less about him now.

Anyway, I found it more interesting to watch this was an eye towards where we, the audience, have come from than to concern myself with a prom being wiped out by the unconvincingly-acted damned. Fun to watch, but don't put a lot of faith into it. Meh.

I first became aware of Rutger Hauer in a Miami movie theater in 1982, watching Blade Runner. When Roy (Hauer), an android with a very limited life-span remaining, glides like a leather-clad punk cloud towards his manufacturer, Tyrell, and says, "I want more life, fucker", it was a "frankly, Scarlett" moment for me. And later, when he slowly pushes his thumbs into Tyrell's eye-sockets, releasing a horrific ooze of blood, I was sinking into my seat while the camera cut away to an imperial owl, its eyes reflecting the light while the screams went on.

Hobo with a Shotgun is at the other end of Hauer's long life. Now he's old, late-60s, and his face is as characteristically wrinkled as his Blade Runner face was smooth. It's been 30 years; he's moved on, I've moved on, and movies have moved on.

Hobo was made from a fake-trailer for that unsuccessful Grindhouse effort a few years back, expanded into a movie length feature (yes, the fake trailer begets the real film). Really, the only reason I'd see it was to see Hauer again, just to see him in action. And here, there is nothing but action.

In short, a Hobo drops off a train into a city so evil that it's skyline is perpetually afire and that casual crimes are taking place - my favorite (if it could be called that) is the fake Santa driving past, chortling evilly, while a small child bangs on the back window trying to escape. Yes, its messed up.

The Hobo has one dream, that of idyllically mowing a wide green lawn (impractical, but aren't all dreams?). To move towards that goal, he has his sights set on a used mower in a pawn shop, $49.95. He panhandles, enduring puke and much, much more, to finally grubstake up the cash. However, when he goes into the shop, a trio of screaming, whacked out, gun-toting maniacs come in. They want the meager contents of the register and will kill to get it. Hauer, standing over his beloved mower, feels the dream  slipping from his dirty hands. But there on the wall is a shotgun, also for $49.95. He chooses his path. Rachat! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

And that's why I made all the comparisons between Young Hauer and Old. His use of "Fucker" was surgically inserted, his act of sadistic violence brutal yet short. This movie is pretty much both those things, all the way through. People get their willies blown off. Doctors are hung. People get their hands shoved (with gruesome cinematography) into whirling lawnmowers (yes, it does play a part).

But let's stop there. I'm not going to state the obvious, that movies change, tastes change, that things move on. As a student of film, I understand that. But I'll admit, as we waded through the pointedly gratuitous violence and the clever lines (Headline: Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change), I couldn't help but notice the Morlockish hoots and bellows echoing in the cinematic gloom. I had to wonder, did these children around me realize they were being teased along by the director, their base lusts pandered to? Or was I the one who didn't get it, looking for art and meaning where it was never intended to be? How many times can irony be folded back on itself, and what happens when parody is layered so deeply its bedrocking reality is lost?

Yes.

But I'll admit, it was fun.