>"Sci-fi adventures are rarely festive, so Valerian’s

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>"Sci-fi adventures are rarely festive, so Valerian’s evocation of the color-coded meeting of the gangs in Walter Hill’s The Warriors is a good harbinger — it projects egalitarianism into the future of the universe. Besson avoids cautionary foreboding. He adapts the French comic-book Valérian and Laureline (1967) — in which graphic artists Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières first dreamed up the fantastic adventures of a pair of young, romantic cops — by casting the smiley, feral actors Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline (whose flirtatious badinage is just cute enough). Besson flaunts the humanism and sexy satire expected from French pop culture, distinguishing his movie from juvenile comic-book blockbusters."

>"Imagine Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, etc. rolled up in one but corralled by a good director with impish humor. Every scene updates or riffs on a preceding genre but particularly Fritz Lang’s 1925 Metropolis, still the ranking cinematic vision of the future. Besson even spoofs himself when Valerian encounters a slave creature, Bubble (played by Rihanna), who morphs into assorted showbiz and sexual icons from Dietrich to Beyoncé. (She expands on that blue singing creature in The Fifth Element, yet not even Rihanna’s Nefertiti evocation matches Chris Tucker’s hilarious androgyn in The Fifth Element.)"

God damn. How can one man be so BASED?