Caligula

Avoid Roman Charges

Caligula
Directed by Tinto Brass
Additional scenes by Bob Guccione
1979 Italy/USA
Penthouse Films

Warning: I guess this technically has spoilers.

So the first question you may ask yourself is... why am I reviewing a film like Caligula?

I have to confess, I never had much interest in seeing this particular movie, for sure. The thing is, Severin released a wonderful little boxed edition of two Caligsploitation movies a while back and, although I wasn’t that much interested in the subject matter, the way it had been packaged appealed to the graphic designer in me. A nice sturdy box with an inset Roman coin bearing Caligula’s head on one side and, on the other (once gently prized from the box), the Severin Films logo (apparently the packaging of this set was nominated for an award, at time of writing, which I’m guessing it probably won). So I wanted this but then figured, before I watched the actual exploitation films inside, perhaps I should finally get around to taking a look at the film which these were trying to bandwagon. So here we are...

Caligula is perhaps one of the top four or five most notorious movies ever made. Initially directed by the great, erotic movie director Tinto Brass, the film does not apparently represent his vision of it and he was effectively shut out from the editing process (quite literally locked out, from what I can tell) and the film was recut by Bob Guccione with new hardcore scenes inserted, fairly seamlessly it has to be said, within the re-ordered assembly of footage. Despite this, it’s not as much of a mess as you might think... just incredibly dull.

Many people have tried to distance themselves from this movie right from even before it got released. Famous writer Gore Vidal, for example, who made large contributions to the script and original screenplay, wanted his name removed (before he was given a princely sum for keeping it on there). The film stars various actors and actresses, the most notable being Malcolm McDowell as the titular roman, Peter O’ Toole as his grandfather Tiberius, Sir John Gielgud as Nerva (both he and O’Toole’s characters are dead way before the first hour is up) and Dame Helen Mirren as Caesonia, the most promiscuous woman in Rome and wife of Caligula. I think of them all, the only one who doesn’t really mind being associated with this movie is Helen Mirren (good for her). In fact, all the actors refused to loop their dialogue until the various hardcore sex scenes (and they are seriously, proper hardcore... I know because I imported the full length cut from Italy for this review*) had been excised. Guccione obliged and the actors re-recorded their lines... not realising Guccione would just reinsert the scenes back into the cut soon after.

The film follows the rise and eventual downfall of the famously mad Roman Emperor and it was a big hit in the playground when I was at school when I was 12. All the kids talked about it and described the scenes they remembered from watching illegal video pirates of the movie. I was never much interested but famous sequences such as the Roman guard being forced to drink huge amounts of wine only to have his bladder punctured by Tiberius’ sword, the lady getting a massage with freshly ejaculated semen, the various Romans buried up to their neck in sand while a slow moving platform consisting of whirling blades comes along to chop their heads off, the castration scene and copious amounts of male and female nudity etc... were all well known to me from my school days so, I think it would be safe to say there were no real surprises left for me when I finally came to watch this, rather disappointing movie, truth be told.

What I will say is that it’s not a terrible film on a technical level. In fact, it looks quite splendid. Tinto Brass knows how to design a movie and the cinematography combined with the surrealistic sets is very much like a constant dose of eye candy throughout. So, yeah, Caligula is nothing, if not a spectacular film.

And that extends to the acting too. Everyone does a fantastic job in this. McDowell is especially good as Caligula and seems to be almost channeling his Alex role from Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange for this... in a ‘highly stylised, grand sense of thuggery’ kind of way although, it has to be said, this film is not nearly as ‘Monty Python’ as Kubrick’s opus, for sure. Plus, the styles of acting on display by some of the cream of the UK’s talent does, bizarrely, give this Italian/American co-production a distinctly British flavour too.

On most other levels though, the film seems to fail and, unexpectedly, also fails to be in any way erotic, despite exactly what (and who) is on show here. 

Take the music for example. Most of the movie is left unscored, even though it had two composers write two different scores for it, which were both rejected. Instead, on the opening, pre-credits scene of Caligula frolicking and fornicating in the woods with his sister, Khatchaturian’s famous Spartacus music is heard loud and, profoundly out of place, on the score (indeed, the scene itself was chopped in half and relocated here, contrary to the use Tinto Brass filmed it for). Then a credits sequence follows with a background of a mashed Caligula coin (bleeding from the eye), which obviously inspired the Severin packaging for their beautiful ‘knock offs’ box set and, as the distinguished cast are heralded, the famous balcony music from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet plays. Then, when any music is needed during the rest of the film (not that often deemed worthy of music, it would seem), the Khatchaturian music keeps swelling up in the foreground... again, completely inappropriately. I can’t help but think that if the producers had stuck with a commissioned score, the film would be a lot more watchable... or at least considerably less yawn inducing.

And that’s more or less all I have to say about Caligula other than, the movie is still quite successful and popular and I’ve no idea why. I remember, as a schoolboy, walking past the poster for the movie at my local cinema for a considerable number of weeks. Also, it was quite influential right out the gate. The comic 2000AD loved to beat upcoming movies to the punch and this one, with all its hype and publicity, was a target... so they managed to get their fantastic (and much cooler) Caligula homage out in 1978-1979, in a long multi-part Judge Dredd serial entitled The Day The Law Died, which depicted the crumbling of the hierarchy of the Hall Of Justice after mad Judge Cal rose to power (even making his pet goldfish a Judge, Judge Fish, in one issue... I believe Caligula made his horse a high up ranking Roman at one point in his reign). Another thing influenced by the movie, I suspect, is Frank Miller’s comic 300, specifically in the scenes where the mutated, freakish humans are depicted (and in the subsequent movie adaptation), which seem almost ripped from the Tinto Brass film.

So, yeah, that’s me done on Caligula. I wouldn’t recommend this to pretty much anyone. It’s not a terrible movie and there’s a lot of talent behind it... it’s just not very good and, perhaps, doesn’t even quite live up to its notoriety. A bit meh!

 *Please note, this is not the new Director's Cut which was released in cinemas yesterday (and already disowned by said director, it seems, who had nothing to do with it).

Thelma

Scam, Bam,
Thank You Ma’am

Thelma
Directed by Josh Margolin
Switzerland/USA 2024

Not to be confused with the famous identically titled Nordic horror infused sci-fi movie from 2017 (reviewed here), Thelma is a movie starring 95 year old actress June Squibb as the 93 year old title character, Thelma Post. She’s actually based on the director’s grandmother, also Thelma Post, who is currently 103 and who is also seen in the movie in a mid-end credits scene. Thelma Post is the widow of Ted Post, the famous Hollywood director, who is in family photos in the movie. Which would make sense because the location used for Thelma’s apartment in the movie is actually the real Thelma’s actual apartment.

Joining the actress in the film are her character's grandson Daniel (played by Fred Hechinger) who she has a very good relationship with... and his parents played by the wonderful Clark Gregg and the always brilliant Parker Posey (is she still regarded as the queen of indie film-making these days?). One day, Thelma gets a phone call with someone pretending to be her grandson in jail, who puts her onto a ‘lawyer’, and she falls for the scam, posting ten thousand dollars of bail money to the PO box given. The rest of the family, apart from her brilliant grandson, think she should be put in a home but, while they are procrastinating on stuff like this, she makes up her mind to track down the scammers and get her money back... inspired by Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible films she watches with her grandson.

So she goes to collect an old friend, Ben, played by the late, great Richard Roundtree in his final film (he died a few months before the premiere and it has an ‘in loving memory’ tag to him at the end of the credits). He has a new, two seater scooter and the two go a long way to find the scammer, after collecting a loaded pistol from another of Thelma’s old friends.

The film also has a nice touch where the main scammer at the end of their quest is also an elderly guy and, in some ways, much worse off than they are. He’s played here pretty well by the fantastic Malcolm McDowell (wow... Roundtree and McDowell, two 1970s cinematic icons in the same movie).

And it’s a nice, gentle comedy which explores what it means to be very old and the differences between people and the way they accept ageing, or don’t. Ben, for example, is perfectly happy in his elderly residence, where he is playing Daddy Warbucks in a version of Annie they’re putting on for the other residents... but, since the death of her husband two years prior, Thelma is more of a loner. In one scene, which I thought was a really nice touch, her grandson asks her what her plans for the day are... and we next see her sorting out all her pills for the next week and putting them into their respective compartments. Sadly, I am now at the age where I can totally sympathise and understand that... and not just from watching my folks do the same thing, alas.

Now, the film isn’t as pacey as I thought it would be but it is quite heartwarming and I think it also doesn’t make the kinds of turns I thought it would, so there’s a lot to keep things entertaining and surprising. The music by Nick Chuba is pretty good too... leaning into the action themes from the kind of movies which inspire Thelma but with a more modern take. Sadly, Schifrin’s Mission Impossible theme was, presumably, too rich for the budget but the score has a nice vibe to it and, at some point, I’m sure I heard one of my favourite musical instruments, the cimbalom, on one of the cues.

By the end of the film, everything seems to be maintaining the status quo of the central character (I thought it would go down a different route) and, my only real criticism is that Thelma, as old as she is, maybe doesn’t seem to learn too much from her experiences in the movie (or at least not unless certain things were left on the cutting room floor). But it’s a nice enough ending and, as I said, the real life Thelma pops up halfway through the end credits. This one is nothing spectacular but it is a heart warming and fun time at the movies so, yeah, definitely worth a watch.

Star Trek - Generations

Buying The Farm

Star Trek - Generations
(aka Star Trek VII)
USA 1994 Directed by David Carson
Paramount Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilers, of course.

Star Trek - Generations is not a great film.

Unfortunately, neither is it a very good film, either. At least it isn’t a bad film, which is I think the best you can say about this one... and providing you are able to suspend your disbelief at some pretty major plot holes.

Star Trek - The Next Generation had finally been cancelled and this was the year of its final season. So the number crunchers at Paramount obviously decided it was time for a next generation crew movie... something everyone wanted, to be fair... and decided to bring some of the 'classic series' cast back to bridge the gap and do a handover. Of course, the problem with that is that the two series’ take place over 70 years apart from each other so there was always going to have to be some way of bridging the time gap with a sci-fi concept. Whether that works in the film’s favour or not is best left to your personal response to the movie.

The film was originally supposed to have William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley returning as Kirk, Spock and McCoy for the opening sections of the movie but, alas, Kirk is the only one who returned along with a couple of other high profile, classic series crew members... who all did a grand job. Nimoy had apparently declined because he felt the script was not up to scratch and, it’s said, the majority of his lines were given to James Doohan as Scotty. DeForest Kelly was in such ill health by this point that, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to acquire the necessary insurance required to be on set... so his lines were given to Walter Koenig as Chekhov. Although some of these lines and actions don’t make sense coming from Chekhov, due to their medical orientation, Koenig does a terrific job of selling it to the audience and I suspect most people didn’t notice the tell tale signs that he and Doohan were delivering lines which weren’t, necessarily, originally written for them.

Now there are a lot of bad things about this movie, to be fair, but the spirit of Star Trek is still intact. Before I get to the bad stuff, though, I’d like to highlight the good stuff first.

Okay, so we have the opening title sequence which focuses on a bottle tumbling through space in slow motion. It looks pretty great and when it finally breaks on the side of the new Enterprise (that’s NCC1701 - B for anyone who’s keeping count) we realise that we have just witnessed the journey to a ship's christening. It’s a really nice sequence and not what you are expecting from a Star Trek movie. The other good thing about the movie is... the entire next twenty minutes. The antics of Kirk, Scotty and Chekhov leading up to Kirk sacrificing himself so that the crew of the new Enterprise can survive is absolutely great Star Trek. We then jump totally unexpectedly to 78 years later on board a different Enterprise... a version of it which is an old galleon at sea, in the holodeck of the Enterprise NCC1701 - D, getting us up to speed with the next generation crew who bowed out on TV the same year this movie was released.

And... that’s it for the good stuff.

No really. The movie gets pretty terrible from hereon in but with likeable performances from the majority of the new crew and a standout one from Malcolm McDowell as Professor Sauron, who gets to quote a piece of poetry with the best line of the movie: ““They say time is the fire in which we burn.” And, apart from Marina Sirtis as Counsellor Troi, who is easily the loveliest and sexiest person in the Star Trek universe... the rest of the movie is pretty... watchable but average.

And there’s a load of bad stuff to even out the good stuff, I’m afraid.

When Spock’s death was bound to be widely publicised back in 1982 for Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, the directors gave him a kind of fake death at the start of the movie so that audiences could possibly be more hopeful when he’s back on his feet and deliver the killer blow at the end of the film, to try and get as much dramatic weight out of it as they could. Here, the writers try the same trick with the death of Kirk, killing him off early in the film so that, when they bring him back after he has been transported in time, the audience can be hopeful he’ll live after all. Unfortunately for the studio, the trailers clearly showed Kirk in later segments of the film so the early scenes were robbed somewhat of this dramatic weight and the later scenes were pretty much what you would expect. In fact, Kirk’s demise at the end of the movie was reshot after test screenings because the audience didn’t consider it dramatic enough.

There’s another reason why Kirk’s initial demise in this movie is quite badly approached, too. Before this movie, James Doohan had already appeared in a Star Trek The Next Generation episode called Relics, in which he had been trapped as a transporter pattern for many decades and is re-energised into the next generation timeline. When he is ‘brought back to life’, so to speak, he mentions something to the effect that he thought James Kirk himself would be leading the rescue party, as it were. However, in this movie, which can only be set earlier than when Scotty was trapped in the transporter, he cleary sees that Captain Kirk has died, from his point of view in history. So how would he not remember this incident years later when he is returned from limbo? This is a terrible continuity glitch and I remember getting really annoyed in the cinema when I saw this movie because it’s such an obvious, glaring fault. Absolute rubbish.

Another thing the writers/producers do in this to give the public a grand spectacle of 'the first next generation movie' is... destroy the Enterprise... again. Even though we’d already seen that happen in Star Trek III - The Search For Spock (reviewed here). This time it’s the NCC1701-D that gets the treatment of being irreparably damaged, with the separated saucer section crashing on a nearby planet. For an encore, they blow the planet it landed on up and kill everyone on board... but that loses any dramatic weight when you realise there’s time travelling shenanigans going on, to be honest. You know the crashed saucer section and her crew will be back before long.

Okay, thing number three. About that time travelling Nexus Ribbon, as it’s called, which has an ‘echo’ of Whoopi Goldberg’s regular series character, Guinan, in it. Once Captain Pickard stumbles upon Captain Kirk at his farm house (in real life, William Shatner’s farm house) he talks him into coming out of the ribbon and helping him. He’s told by fake pseudo-Guinan that he can go back to whatever time he likes so they choose... um... just before everything was really going down hill and which caused a lot of everybody’s problems anyway. A point where the Enterprise saucer has crashed but the planet has not yet blown up. But at no point does anyone stop to say how this can be done... the ribbon has already moved on. How in heck do you leave it and come out at a time and space specific to where you want to be on the planet you left earlier? Also, since Sauron’s plot is partially a reaction to not being able to just fly a ship near the ribbon and get picked up by it without being destroyed... how the heck did Captain Kirk manage it? Well... the writers ‘get around’ this point by way of some creative editing which doesn’t actually show Kirk and Pickard leaving the ribbon and... um... just not talking about it very much again afterwards. So much for the ‘science’ of science fiction. This movie makes no sense.

Right... thing number four. Most people’s favourite character in Star Trek The Next Generation is Data, the android who wants to be human (think Pinocchio in outer space) and he is a brilliant character, lovingly portrayed by Brent Spiner. I’d personally still rather spend all my time with Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi but... lets get back to my point here. One of the appealing things about Data is his constant, level headed demeanour coupled with, often unintentional, dead pan humour. However, the writers decide to ‘up the game’ in this movie and he installs the emotion chip that he acquired during an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. So in this movie, we have a Data who is trying to grow and learn how to deal with fear, humour, anger etc and... it’s just not Data. Worse... he’s irritating in it. Yes, before you all start waving your arms about at me, I know he’s certainly supposed to be really annoying in all the obvious scenes here but... well, Brent Spiner’s really good at it, as he always is with the character. Which means I just didn’t want to spend anymore screen time with him than I had to, in this movie. This film is a waste of a really good character due to the decision to progress that character emotionally, which I suspect Spiner might also have had a hand in when negotiating his appearance in the movie (although that’s honestly just me speculating here).

And one last nail in the coffin for this movie, as far as I’m concerned... Dennis McCarthy’s score. Gone is Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek The Motion Picture theme, which was re-acquired specifically for the TV series Star Trek The Next Generation. Instead the only linking things with previous episodes here is Alexander Courage’s original TV show them from the 1960s referenced in the score and the fact that a regular composer from the contemporary TV show, McCarthy, was brought in. Now I’m not saying McCarthy isn’t a good composer... I suspect he’s excellent. However, I never really got on with the Next Generation scores on TV and, years later, I found out it was alleged that the instructions from the producer of the show (and this movie) were for his composers to basically write wallpaper music without any strong content which could detract from, or lift, the visuals. They may have gotten away with that, to an extent, on the TV show but, as far as I’m concerned, they didn’t get away with it here. This is a bland and mostly unmemorable score. Not inappropriate, for sure, just not something that really catches the emotions and gets the pulse thumping like some of the other composers in the franchise had managed to do, to be honest. At least not for me... I know there are some fans out there who like this score a lot... I’m just not one of them.

So there you have it. Star Trek - Generations is a handover film which really, in all honesty, wasn’t necessary. I know a fair few were disappointed with this movie and I personally thought it was a shame to see Kirk go out like this. Not one I’d recommend anybody start on as it’s a bit tepid but, like I said in my opening, it’s not a bad movie... it’s just not a good one either. However, the crew of the NCC1701-D weren’t down yet... even if their ship was beyond repair. As it happens, when they returned to our screens in their next adventure, they did so in one of the best of the Star Trek adventures ever put on film. So I’ll be rewatching that one again sometime soon and you can be sure I’ll be putting the review up fairly promptly after that.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Silent Hill: Revelation

A History Of Silents

Silent Hill Revelation
France/USA/Canada 2012
Directed by Michael J. Bassett
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: From early on there will be at least one big spoiler lurking in the fog of this review to allow me to discuss the movie properly. You have been duly warned!

The original Silent Hill game was always a dark and scary experience, but just too subtle in terms of game play (not mood) for someone like me to be able to stick with for any length of time (that goes double these days... I can’t remember the last year that I played a console or computer game, too busy writing this blog). I was never a one for survival horror games like this or Resident Evil because they involved stealth and subtlety and, in all honesty, just not enough damn ammo to do what I wanted. I wanted to shoot things in a gory hail of steel tipped ballistic carnage, not sneak around quietly when a zombie (Resident Evil) or newborn baby with a carving knife (Silent Hill in its original pre-censored version) wasn’t looking in my direction. This is why I stuck to first person shooters like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem. Or platformers like Tomb Raider, Lego Star Wars and Lego indiana Jones... the other stuff just wasn’t my cup of freshly ground pixels.

Ironically though, I quite like the movies which are based on these games.

The first Silent Hill movie came out in 2006 and it was actually pretty good. It managed to capture the surreal... oh heck... just ‘plain bugnuts crazy’ atmosphere of the most imaginative evil coming your way to take you to a fate far worse than death, which is consistent with the source material. It starred Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell and ended on a pretty big down note... with Radha Mitchell and the daughter of her character trapped in the alternate reality of Silent Hill while Sean Bean is left in the real, physical world.

And then everyone waited for a sequel...

And they waited...

And they waited...

And then recently there came news of another movie based on the game, this time called Silent Hill: Revelation and I have to say that the publicity that I saw from this made it look like a reboot. Although Sean Bean was touted as being in it, it certainly didn’t look like it was, in any way, a sequel to the first shot at it and even Bean’s character name on the IMDB is different (there’s a fairly good reason for that, which is sorted out within the first ten minutes or so). Since I know this will make a difference to whether people will bother with the new one or not, let me just say that Silent Hill: Revelation is definitely a direct sequel to the 2006 movie... but I would add that, if I hadn’t played the game a little or seen the first movie in the series... I probably would have been a bit lost or at least, would have been less understanding of what was going on in this one.

Silent Hill: Revelation is a film which, because the marketing campaign seems to be a little dishonest, to say the least, doesn’t go out of its way to explain the various elements which make up the town of Silent Hill. It’s got a fairly basic plot, which relies on what is presumably the ‘revelation’ of the title as to the true identity of one of the characters from the first film (although it’s less a revelation and more a “ho-hum, whatever” kind of moment, it seems to me), and you won’t need to be doing much thinking about what’s happening on screen... unless, of course, you are unfamiliar with the dark and twisted territory which is Silent Hill. If anything, the plot kind of resembles the first Transformers movie, but with a mystical symbol replacing the ‘all spark’ of those films.

It’s good that you don’t have to think too much about the plot, though, because Silent Hill almost lives up to its name in that the majority of the running time is almost treated like a silent movie... but, you know, with “scary as ****” sound design. That is to say, once the basic set up is out of the way, the film becomes one long series of extended horror explorations/set pieces folding into each other like a set of Russian dolls. There’s very little let up as you are asked to pay witness to one dark, surrealistic vision after the other and, in some ways, this is the movie’s main flaw. A lot of horror or action directors will realise that to enhance the emotional weight of the action/horror sequences... you need fairly frequent breaks between these kinds of set pieces with which to contrast against. There are a few short breaks between horrors, especially near the start of this movie, but mostly it’s just 'eerie' followed directly by 'spooky', 'bloody' and “what the buggery ****” all piled on top of one another.

There’s no question the film makes you anxious and dread filled for the majority of its running time, and after all that’s what a good horror film tries to do, but I felt that a lot of the scares in this one could have benefitted by a few more scenes of ‘down time’ to make them seem even more potent when they happened. Still, it’s hard to argue that too much when the pacing in this one is so blistering.

The acting is kinda bizarre and wooden in places. I can’t work out if it’s a deliberate ploy by the film makers to echo the typical style of a standard computer game ‘cut scene’, or whether it’s just badly written dialogue in places. There are actually some real, animated sections typical of 'in game' footage shown interacting with the live action at a couple of points in the movie, so maybe that’s why. It’s kind of strange but seems to work in its own way. I just hope the animated sections weren't dropped in because the director didn't have all the footage he needed to make sense of the edit, though.

The girl playing the grown up ‘daughter’ from the first movie, played by an excessively cute actress called Adelaide Clemens, is especially likeable in the role and someone you can easily cheer for when it comes to it. Major acting talents such as Martin Donovan and Malcolm McDowell turn up in what amount to extended cameos and Sean bean has a little more to do in this one. Not loads, but he comes out better than he did in the first movie. Radha Mitchell and Deborah Kara Unger are also back in cameo scenes, reprising their roles from the first film... so you are in good hands most of the way.

The dark twistedness that is a trademark of the series is handled pretty well, including an amazing chase through a stockroom full of dolls where a tremendous CGI’d ‘pseudo-stop-motion’ animation chases the main protagonist around for a bit... although the ‘scary but sexy’ nurses from the first one are neither as sexy or scary as they were the last time around. The big knife guy seems to be treated as a less important player in this one too, although he is still quite intimidating at times. He’s pretty much similar to the big knife guy in the last two Resident Evil movies... so it’s not as effective as it could have been perhaps. I don't know which of these two games used that kind of character first.

The 3D works well in this one, the cinematography is clean (even while roaming designer grunge and decay) and the score by Jeff Danna is as effective as his score for the last one was, again drawing on themes and elements from the series of games on which the films are based. There’s also still the odd nods to sci-fi and horror genre buffs in terms of names used for places which aren’t as blatant as the last film but are still there to bring a smile to the face.

If you want a scary night out at the pictures and you were a fan of the first movie, or if you’ve played some of the games, then Silent Hill: Revelation probably won’t disappoint you too much... if however, you’re not in familiar territory walking those foggy streets, you may want to rent or buy the first movie from 2006 first in order to get a better understanding of the underlying plot references. A good little entry into the series, however, and I hope we don’t have to wait as long for the sequel to appear this time around.