Buckle that swash, part II: More like F'artagnan

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

A descent into action-adventure sub-mediocrity, Douglas Fairbanks' second swashbuckler needed more than just indifferently-filmed swordfighting.

1921
Directed by Fred Niblo
Written by Edward Knoblock, Lotta Woods, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (D'artagnan), Marguerite de la Motte (Constance), Leon Bary (Athos), George Siegman (Porthos), Eugene Pallette (Aramis), Adolphe Menjou (King Louis XIII), Mary MacLaren (Queen Anne), Barbara La Marr (Milady de Winter), Lon Poff (Father Joseph), and Nigel de Brulier (Cardinal de Richelieu)

Spoiler alert: high

Cardboard Science: When everybody does the dinosaur, everybody should get the dinosaur's affirmative consent first

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Buckle that swash, part I: He's crazy... like a fox!

THE MARK OF ZORRO

The action-adventure genre soars into life, midwifed by a really cut man in a silly mask, jumping and climbing all over every last damned thing he surveys.

1920
Directed by Fred Niblo
Written by Eugene Miller and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (based on "The Curse of Capistrano" by Johnston McCulley)
With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (Don Diego Vega/Zorro), Margueritte De La Motte (Lolita Pulido), Tote Du Crow (Bernardo), Sydney De Grey (Don Alejandro Vega), Noah Beerey (Sgt. Pedro Gonzales), and Robert McKim (Capitan Juan Ramon)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Yippee-ki-yay

SLOW WEST

It's awfully pretentious, like every modern Western must be, but at least Slow West isn't that slow, and it's fitfully beautiful, too, despite the many importune choices first-time feature director John Maclean makes while bringing his vision of the American West to a certain kind of life.

2015
Written and directed by John Maclean
With Michael Fassbender (Silas Selleck), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Jay Cavendish), and Caren Pistorius (Rose Ross)

Spoiler alert: moderate

To protect the property and citizenry of the City of Chicago

THE UNTOUCHABLES

One of the quintessential examples of how the best thing a film can be about is itself, we have one of the 1980s' supreme action-thrillers, brought to your screen by the Master of the Macabre at his most eager-to-please.  Fully in line with the decade's troublesome politics as well as its embrace of the extremes of violence, The Untouchables is (honestly) all the better for it.

1987
Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by David Mamet (suggested by the book by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley)
With Kevin Costner (Eliot Ness), Sean Connery (Jim Malone), Charles Martin Smith (Oscar Wallace), Andy Garcia (George Stone), Billy Drago (Frank Nitti), and Robert De Niro (Al Capone)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Maybe it was always Doomed

FANTASTIC FOUR

Bad in a host of different, seemingly-incompatible ways, Fantastic Four was the fiasco of the summer of 2015, and for once everyone was right: this film is garbage.

2015
Directed by Josh Trank
Written by Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, and Josh Trank
With Miles Teller (Reed Richards), Kate Mara (Susan Storm), Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm), Jamie Bell (Benjamin Grimm), Reg E. Kathey (Dr. Franklin Storm), and Toby Kebbell (Dr. Victor Von Doom)

Spoiler alert: moderate

A graveyard smash

THE MONSTER SQUAD

Amongst the finest kid's adventures of my childhood.  (That, sadly, I didn't get to see when I actually was a child, probably because it was too scary for my parents to reckon with, which is to say, "there's between one and two parts that are mildly startling"—yet they let me watch Temple?  Whatever, dude.)

1987
Directed by Fred Dekker
Written by Shane Black and Fred Dekker
With Andre Gower (Sean), Brent Chalem (Horace), Ryan Lambert (Rudy), Robby Kriger (Patrick), Michael Faustino (Eugene), Ashley Bank (Phoebe), Duncan Regehr (Count Dracula), Tom Noonan (Frankenstein's Monster), Jon Gries/Carl Thibault (The Desperate Man/The Wolfman), Michael MacKay (The Mummy), Tom Woodruff Jr. (The Gill-Man), Stephen Macht (Del), Stan Shaw (Det. Sapir), and Leonard Cimino (Scary German Guy)

Spoiler alert: moderate