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Both are mandatory viewing, but we recommend ever-so-slightly higher, due to its having a bit more mass appeal. Romance! Intrigue! Stunning fight scenes! Sexy love scenes! Sparkly dialogue! Surprising fatalities! It's pretty much everything we were hoping a Whedonesque movie would be. You don't have to have seen "Firefly," the TV show on which the movie is based, to jump right in; with some clever flashbacks and a Touch-of-Evil-esque introduction, everything is set up: crazy girl on the run from evil government, hiding on a run-down ship in a time that resembles post-Civil-War reconstruction but is set 500 years in the future. Someone scary is chasing our heros for secrets they don't even know they have; and in this movie, evil really IS everywhere, from a psychotic government agent to space-cannibals to horrible secrets embedded in a graceful 17-year-old girl. It opens pretty much everywhere in town today.

Serenity