This film is hilarious. I would put it up there with some of my favorite comedies like last years’ underrated Office Christmas Party and the Will Ferrell classic Old School. Though it has more in common with American Pie. With Blockers I felt like I was watching an instant classic. The film has a great innocence to it mixed in with plenty of full frontal dudity. Not the nudity we were expecting but comedicly perfect.
We don’t get paid (yet) for writing the L & D but let’s say we are a known quantity at the movie theater. From the moment we entered until we took our seats, we were asked several times what we were watching tonight. And I will speak for myself when I say that I blushed. It’s just the word cock. There, I said it, cock, cock, cock.Even when you just have to say Blockers, cock is implied. Even sometimes, you know, I live on Hancock Street and sometimes I feel funny when I have to spell it out for someone. I mean, self-conscious.“Sir, did you say Hancock?” “Yes, H. A. N. C. O. C. K.”
So what happened is that neither one of us would say what we were going to go see and just sort of walked away. But they knew. They knew. And would yell to us, “It’s supposed to be really good!” And really good it was. I laughed out loud and knee slapped like there was no tomorrow. It seemed to capture this zeitgeist and generational gap flawlessly and easily, while taking side steps to ask a few profound universal questions —in between bouts of anal abuse and projectile vomiting.
I want to congratulate the filmmakers and actors on a smart, inclusive, funny, irreverent and enjoyable work. I look forward to watching it again sometime. And that is rare.
This is a split decision on the L and D report. Not putting words in my colleagues’ mouth but I got the impression he had seen all this before…and better. I myself enjoy the Western genre as much as the next person but have never really gotten that into it. To me it’s so cliché as a filmmaker to answer the question, “What would you like to do next?” with “A Western.” It’s like you must say this or the Directors Guild of America will swoop in on horseback, six-guns a-blazin’ and take away your filmmakers card. In my life I’ve definitely mostly watched and made what I liked: foreign film, indie film, art films, documentaries. In fact, only recently did I catch Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which is an amazing movie. Another Western I really enjoyed was Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington and Mila Kunis. My point is that not everyone has seen everything from every genre. So here we are at Hostiles. After The Revenant, it’s tough to go back to standard fight scenes in Westerns. But Hostiles has no problem with that. The filmmakers might even celebrate it as an homage to the old style of filming action. Also, it seemed that there was a lot of crying in this film for Christian Bale. He cried more than most of the women in an any Almodóvar film combined. Nothing wrong with your protagonist crying. But that is certainly not part of the old school Western genre. It really pushes the audience when every difficult situation calls for a close up of Christian Bale with lots of deep breathing like Tom Selleck on Blue Bloods and then a few big crocodile tears. I will say this though, like Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, Christian Bale is one person on set I would not like to sit next to at lunch. He is so intense onscreen that I can’t imagine him in real life, just cracking a goofy joke or talking about the weather — that would terrify me. In this film, like every Tom Hanks movie, Christian Bale’s character starts out great, does great things and ends well, you guessed it, great. His evolution from a person who hates the Other to a person who can forgive stretches your disbelief. In other words, nothing happens on this journey to cause this change in him that would not have already occurred in his many years as a soldier. He would have seen Indian nation fight against Indian nation, he would have seen treasonous and criminal soldiers acting badly towards everyone and anyone and he would have experienced random acts of kindness on every side as well.
I did have an issue in that a lot of the heroic acts of the protagonist are told and not shown. That gets to be trying. I also thought it was weird that Chief Yellow Hawk (played admirably by Wes Studi), who they were transporting back to his original sacred land, didn’t have a tribe there anymore to greet him. This was the seeming set-up when the return of the Chief was a front page newspaper headline in Act I. So visually and story wise, these were let downs. What I really enjoyed about the film was the pace. It was unafraid to linger on moments. The performance by Rosamund Pike was powerful and memorable. I also liked that the film dealt with a lot of existential issues. Westerns are great for dealing with philosophical questions wrapped up in the simple justice of the wild and a six shooter. I thought that the script employed flowing and authentic language, including Native dialect which was enjoyable. If I wasn’t necessarily wowed by the story, I thought the dialogue itself was strong and believable. I would like to give a nod to Director of Photography Masanobu Takayanagi, whose widescreen landscapes and night exterior photography were beautiful and something to write home about. If you are into ontological pondering, excellent performances, enjoy historical stories and groove on truly epic Western vistas I would recommend this film. On the other hand, if you know this genre back and forth and are looking for an original Western story shot in a groundbreaking way you won’t miss not seeing Hostiles.
We were about 45 minutes into this latest Paul Thomas Anderson piece when I realized I was completely transfixed by a movie about an uptight dressmaker who lived with his very measured sister and was making a lot of dresses for a young waitress. Not exactly Thor for a plot line or for action. I also realized I was pretty excited because I had no idea where this was headed.
The movie is set in 1950s London, and focuses a lot on gender roles and who gets what in a relationship. The central tension is between the dressmaker, Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), and his love interest / model / protege / partner, Alma (Vicki Krieps). The other major player is is Woodcock’s sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), who is subtly managing the board to keep her brother on the straight and narrow. In the deeper background is Woodcock’s mother, Woodcock is a mama’s boy, and the questions of matrimony and maternity are paramount throughout, even if the movie doesn’t ever come right out and say it.
So what do you need to know here? First off, the movie is ostensibly about an insufferable male tyrant type, the type of guy who simply cannot start the day with a confrontation because he has no time for confrontations — if he has a bad breakfast, he may never recover. The one who commends his own “gallantry” for eating asparagus that is not prepared the way he likes it. Were you sent here to ruin his evening?
Second off, the movie is actually about the women around him. One set is predominantly populated with the Woodcock label’s army of skilled seamstresses, who spend their days watching Woodcock eye up his dresses, and then work their magic with the needles and thread. This group is skilled but lacks agency. Cyril lets them know when to come and she lets them know when they can go.
There is another group of women with various levels of authority based on either their wealth or their social status — indeed, the Woodcock empire is built on draping wealthy women with unimaginably beautiful clothing. These women purchase Woodcock’s attention.
The third group is Woodcock’s love interests, including Alma, and there is some dissection of how a woman can move into a different social strata based either on her position or her money or on Woodcock’s interest. There is some fluidity here between groups, and in the clumsiest exposition in the film, a competitor for Woodcock’s attentions dutifully (and annoyingly) attempts to undermine Alma’s claim on Woodcock’s affections.
And, finally, we have his sister, Cyril, who represents the meritocratic & perhaps nepotistic element. It is Cyril who enables, encourages, Reynolds’ single-mindedness and surliness, and one suspects that without her machinations, Reynolds may well have gone the route of Bartleby the Scrivener. Cyril evaluates her brother’s potential companions like the second in command looking out for the alpha dog. Indeed, when Cyril first encounters Alma, there is a prolonged scene where she sniffs her, up close like, and susses out why Alma smells the way she does, and then the Woodcock siblings literally take to sizing her up. It is ridiculous and unsettling and evidently as normal as can be in the land of Woodcock. I’m pretty sure I could make the case that she is playing the role of a protective mother, though I think there is something else going on here. At any rate, Lesley Manville is both beautiful and marvelous in this role.
The bottom line is that you can take the movie at face value and you will find it beautiful and possibly that it has a lot to say about cut-throat competition in human interactions. The dresses are certainly astonishing. I’m no fashionista — I leave that to my colleague — yet I enjoyed the sartorial splendor for the women and for the men. Krieps, Manville, and Day-Lewis are all phenomenal. It is straight up quite the show.
But I would urge you to have an open mind about this being a comedy, because the movie is seriously hilarious. After all, the main character’s name is Reynolds Woodcock, a name with tremendous comedic potential. If you don’t agree, I mean, what is wrong with you? Reynolds Woodcock?!? That’s not an accident. Consider this: this is the same filmmaker that brought us Tom Cruise saying unspeakably filthy things, gave us Boogie Nights and all that entailed, and built an entire movie around Adam Sandler arbitraging coupons off of pudding cups. We also have the sniffing scene, Daniel Day-Lewis ordering breakfast like he was expecting a table full of lumberjacks, Daniel Day-Lewis wearing purple pajamas and a tweed sport coat, and a running joke about how annoying toast butterers can be. And then there is the wedding dress for the princess. If you are watching this as a comedy, you are laughing at this dress. Indeed, L&D laffed out loud throughout, and there was audible cackling from all corners the theater. Overall, I can pretty much guarantee that there are more laugh out loud moments in this than you will find in the film actually called Mr. Woodcock.
I encourage you to check it out because it is beautiful, awesome, hilarious, and may well be Daniel Day-Lewis’ last role. As a P.T. Anderson junkie, this is way over the $5 bar for me. L wasn’t completely sold on it, but I don’t think he had buyer’s remorse over his $5. I can see his point and will admit that I was a bit disappointed in the final half hour and don’t think it was tied together as a masterpiece (like, say, There Will Be Blood), but it was certainly thought provoking — we had a good discussion about the differences between Wes Andersen and P. T. Anderson, the parallels to Mother!and The Beguiled (and here) and a bunch of other stuff. I bet L would even put this over the $6 Thursday bar.
Producer / Actress Margot Robbie’s ice skating vehicle is a Rashomon-like tale that will exact a worthwhile toll from anyone who watches it. What is the truth here? The truth is which lie would you like to believe. It may be simpler to figure out who killed Kennedy. But the answer as the song goes is always the same,“♫ You and Me ♫”. Sports pundit Jim Rome likes to opine — often in reference to the New England Patriots — “The cover up is worse than the crime.” Her cover up cost Tonya Harding the one thing she truly loved, the ability to skate professionally. The crime may have cost Nancy Kerrigan and the US an Olympic gold medal. As for who knew what, when — and how it got out of hand…at some point you realize that in terms of a narrative, the story itself, unless told from multiple points of view in repetitive chapters or in a 4 way split screen (you may recall the Mike Figgis masterpiece Timecode), can only be told in one way…in this case with a plethora of disclaimers, caveats and plenty of fourth wall breaking. The narrative device employed by the filmmakers is documentary. Or here, pseudo-documentary. It’s a perfect 1990s Postmodern reference to itself. Using an original cinematic form that in its pure expression is intended to tell the truth —warts and all— in the end only exposes how each individual believes their own truth.
I am going to shift gears now to mention the outstanding Cinematography. It was as flawless as a patented Tonya Harding triple axel. A mixture of Stedi-cam plan-séquences with seamless cuts a la Birdman, combined with insanely graceful and controlled skating montages that would make Hitchcock choke a dinner guest at a cocktail party combined with gritty handheld work of Tonya getting the shit kicked out of her and her kicking everyone in the balls right back. A truly virtuoso performance for Director of Photography Nicolas Karakatsanis.
As for Tonya…At least in this characterization, she shifts blame for every event onto others or her circumstances. Her basically superhuman athletic prowess could keep her above the fray of her sordid life for only so long. Eventually events, and some of those events caused by her own hand and her own negligence come back to haunt her.
Sports is filled with cheating and cheaters. It’s almost built into the competition…the idea of winning at all costs. Take one look at the Russian Olympic program which is almost entirely banned from this coming Olympics for the systematic and state sponsored use of performance enhancing steroids. The story of Tonya spins out from here as a Shakespearean sideshow. Errors were made. The poison was accidentally taken. The sword was mistakenly plunged. The note was naively jotted, with Kerrigan’s practice arena, and practice times, by Tonya Harding, and tossed thoughtlessly away to become the concern of only the FBI and then the world.
What’s amazing about Tonya Harding is that she is simultaneously a victim, a superhero, a felon, blessed and cursed, you can always root for her and ultimately be disappointed in her choices. And you can be certain that at the same time that she is giving you the finger she also sincerely wants your admiration and respect.
This seeming Dunkirk prequel is mesmerizing in its cinematography, set and costume design and concept — the power of the written and spoken word. As Viscount Halifax says of Winston Churchill, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Its fatal flaw, like watching an Olympic high diver do a belly flop in super slo-mo, is the story. Darkest Hour is in an uphill fight the entire way in that we all know the outcome. Britain neither negotiated nor capitulated with the Nazis— “NEVER” as a little girl says to Churchill in the London Underground. The film does have many worthwhile and powerful moments. However, it also has something in common with a film we saw last week, All the Money in the World in that the story gets going and then hovers in an endless holding pattern, like Frontier Airlines trying to land at JFK on Christmas Eve. And so we watch helplessly as the brave Elizabeth Layton, played sympathetically by Lily James, tries to spur on a man who doesn’t really need pushing. It becomes tedious watching her float around the periphery of this story. It reminds me of another film we saw recently, The Lost City of Z, where Nina Fawcett, wife of explorer Percy Fawcett, is introduced and a sincere attempt is made to include her but it’s strained in that it is obviously not her story. I think it shows an earnestness on behalf of the filmmakers to be more inclusive in their storytelling but it falls to mere tokenism when the story is actually about someone who is an overpowering character. Theoretically we are supposed to see Churchill through the eyes of his assistant Elizabeth Layton but the story of Churchill is the story of a solitary man who is just as likely to have an epiphany in the W.C. as he is dictating a memo to her. The flat dimension of peripheral characters drag the narrative down to a repetitive, snail-like pace.
I still thought this film was okay. It captures a specific and critical moment in time spectacularly. If you are a history buff or are simply interested in all things WWII, it’s a must see. Also, if you are someone who really grooves on great acting, it is certainly on display here and worthy of acknowledgement. Gary Oldman will undoubtedly get an Oscar nod. Ultimately, Darkest Hour does provoke a lot of feelings about war, the toughest decisions and courage in the face of evil.
All the Money in the World is a fine example of what can go wrong if you don’t actually have a story to start with. Considering this, it is shocking that Ridley Scott Produced and Directed this film. It’s almost like he got carried away by the chance to shoot in remarkable locations, with an A-list cast and tell a story that in parts could inspire real horror and empathy. Yet there is no core to All the Money in the World. No one to sympathize with. No stakes to get raised. Furthermore, to the detriment of the narrative, the film continues to refer back to J. Paul Getty’s (played convincingly by Christopher Plummer) immense and constantly growing wealth. This serves to deflate the thin tension that exists in the story in the first place. Meanwhile, as contemptible as they are, you almost feel bad for the goofball peasants who kidnapped grandson Paul III. They just want to eat their pasta, play their music and expand their good quality knock-off Gucci bags empire. (Who doesn’t appreciate a good knock-off Gucci?) This is another slap in face to basic storytelling. Make your bad folks really bad. So the villains, though criminal, ultimately aren’t that villainous and the heroes, if you can call them that, aren’t that heroic. It seems like they are all just having a bad case of the Mondays that goes on for a few months.
You know that sooner or later the Getty’s will get back to those antiquities, paintings and villas. There is no psychological drama, no Stockholm syndrome, no real connection among anyone in the film. I started making up obstacles like, “Will Paul III fall in love with that home made gravy from the one lady cook who all these kidnappers seem to always have around?” Or how about the relationship between Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams? This would have been a perfect place to invoke artistic license and build up a strong fictional yet meaningful relationship. But the relationship here remains about as superficial as the flesh would Williams delivers to Wahlberg with the handset of a faded mustard yellow telephone. The telephone in the film becomes a main character, another storytelling faux pas breaking the show don’t tell rule. Yet the actors did do an admirable job in spite of having so little to work with story-wise.
Is the movie based on a true story? Yes. Loosely based. Instead of human relationships though, the film decides to fictionalize a Keystone Cops style chase in ACT III. It’s almost impossible to suspend disbelief in this case. The only thing this film does make me want to do is watch a survey of Patty Hearst movies like the 1979 made for TV classic, “The Ordeal of Patty Hearst.” Or any other kidnap movies for that matter. Taken comes to mind. Maybe Die Hard, since it is Christmas. Or since it’s minus 5 degrees out and more of a heist than kidnap movie, some egg nog and Dog Day Afternoon, you know, just to warm up a little. Like the lives depicted, All the Money in the World certainly left me cold.
When I lived in Hollywood I’d occasionally stop in at a cafe that was frequented by Guillermo del Toro. There were always tales of Guillermo sightings before he would go back to his office across the street. Everyone knew that the great Spanish Director of Pan’s Labyrinth was cooking up something good and The Shape of Water was well worth the suspense.
This morning I was listening to NYC news on internet radio and during the entertainment report just about every other new release for this week was mentioned: Perfect Pitch 3, The Greatest Showman, Jumanji 2 but not The Shape of Water. I think this is mostly because its premise is so absurd on its face that it’s not considered mainstream. Yet the film is inspired by the 1954 classic, Creature from the Black Lagoon. That said, The Shape of Water takes an original spin and is unafraid to deal with aspects of sexuality that society in general feels uncomfortable seeing portrayed on-screen. Not only that, as a period piece from 1961, it calls out segregation and fear of the other — of anyone or even in this case anything that is different. It’s ironic that The Greatest Showman is about the circus itself and yet The Shape of Water has more in common with Tod Brownings edgy 1932 big top classic Freaks than Jackman’s sanitized vehicle.
With some incredible special effects The Shape if Water is unfettered in its ability to go deep into fantasy, early on paying homage to Dorothy’s ruby slippers and later a full blown black and white Golden Age of Cinema musical number. And like Dorothy, the amphibious creature will do a song and dance here and now but knows that ultimately there is no place like home.
Octavia Spencer, as Zelda D. Fuller, here easily slings the best laugh out loud zingers of 2017. However, as D. noted after the film, her character disappears for a large chunk and then sputters out at the end. Though I will say that the main characters all do have multidimensional lives and concerns. We follow the mute protagonist Elisa’s (an Oscar nomination worthy performance by Sally Hawkins) only friend, Giles (the masterful Richard Jenkins who was incredible in the vampire thriller Let Me In) get rejected from a big illustration gig and then also, in humiliating fashion, from a possible romance. We also follow Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg, star of the Coen Bros. A Serious Man), his intrigue with Moscow lackeys and his personal conflict in putting science over politics. Then there is government contractor Strickland, who captured and hates the creature. He wants to eviscerate amphibious man before the scientists even get a chance to fully examine him. Strickland is played by Micheal Shannon in what has to be one of his greatest performances. It. Is. Creepy. Shannon made me squirm and alternately made my stomach turn in every other depraved scene he is in. He makes the audience ask, “Who is the real monster here?” Ironically Strickland wants to kill the one thing that could save him.
Thematically, the film resembles E.T. as a misunderstood being with unimaginable powers is tossed around a lab like a frog in Freshman Bio. Aesthetically, the film draws from Amélie and City of Lost Children with its stylized camera set-ups and movements, oxidized color palette and steampunk sensibility.
The general openness of this film will play much better worldwide than here in the States, where it can’t even make the entertainment section on the radio. However, I think it will become a cult classic and be appreciated when all the other more commercial titles from this week are long gone and forgotten. The Shape of Water gave me chills and may even have opened my mind…just a little.
L&D headed out for The Shape of Water Thursday night and boy are we glad that we did. It’s Beauty and the Beast for the Cold War set, only with a lot more egg imagery and masturbation. The protagonist is a solitaire, semi-beautiful mute woman, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who lives in an apartment above the movie theater next to her neighbor (Richard Jenkins), an erstwhile commercial artist, closeted lonely guy, cat lover. They watch a lot of movies and spend their time being lonely together. Elisa takes the bus to her work at a top-secret government site, where she works on the cleaning staff alongside Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who provides a running stream-of-consciousness one-way dialog throughout the day. The site is supervised by Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), a candy-chomping shitheel who was responsible for transporting an amphibious creature up to Baltimore, and is now in charge of securing the creature for whatever it is the US military and/or its Soviet rivals are going to do with it.
That’s the basic setup, but the movie really isn’t about the story, it’s about a lot of other things. It’s shot beautifully, with a really cool color scheme. The acting is brilliant — it’s hard to imagine Hawkins, Spencer, Jenkins or Shannon being better cast or providing better performances. It has some great writing and some memorable lines (“There is no profit in last week’s fish”). It is laugh-out-loud funny in spots. It is uncomfortable and disturbing in others. It has scenes so excruciatingly painful that I had to cover my eyes, and scenes so beautiful that I forgot how ridiculous the whole thing was. It reminds me of The Purple Rose of Cairo with its running homage to the great movies, and a main character who can’t help but find herself lost in them.
So, this should be on our top movies list for the year, but that ship has sailed. I’m pretty sure it’s not for everybody, but for us it was over the $6 bar for sure. I might even see if the misses wants to check it out. I’m better looking than the leading man for a change.
L&D attended a special preview of The Last Jedi Thursday evening, and – we aren’t making this up – they waited for us to show up before starting the movie! We entered to a packed house and a blank screen, and when we sat down they got things going. Our charmed lives continue.
The movie is actually more of a movie than a commercial and cultural obligation that we often see, with a plot about a zillion times better than the galactic trade tariff squabble nonsense that stupefied an entire generation of fans. There is also a brazen effort to beef up the moral ambiguities that pervade warfare that involves large-scale killing of the other side and its people. There are moments where the film heads toward moral nihilism, though it generally puts on the brakes before it gets there.
The action is pretty good, but there is no drama to it. There isn’t much left to be done with the star fighter dogfight that we didn’t see in the first eight movies, but it’d be hard to have a Star Wars movie without these scenes. The film makers seem to acknowledge this by opening with a comedic twist and somewhat unconventional blasting away, though it quickly devolves into a full-scale dog fight that looks increasingly awesome, but has all the suspense of watching a dog eat a bowl of food in the morning. The film is replete with Star Warsian Boilerplate: The pod race is now a horsie chase. The bar scene is a casino scene (has anyone ever written on the pervasiveness of gambling in the Star Wars universe?). The walkers are back, not nearly as deadly, but with some sort of big cannon thingie with them (where do those bad guys store all this hardware? Damn).
The action isn’t great, but we do get some drama. The big story here, is that maybe, just maybe, the Jedi aren’t such good guys after all. This has been a rather obvious dissenting view for some time now (even among us non-Straussians) but the dissent in Episode VIII comes from none other than Luke Skywalker questioning the whole Jedi order. It wouldn’t take much to forward some “what about” hypotheticals that are far worse than what is purportedly bothering Luke, but that’s probably unfair, since at least 15 years of the series was all about trying to sell action figures to pre-teenage boys. I liked the Rashoman sequences, which explored the idea that heroes aren’t without their flaws. Well, I liked the idea better than the execution, but it was still a big plus here.
The main plot pairs intertwining stories concerning the Rey character (Daisy Ridley), who we last saw tracking down Luke Skywalker and get him to rejoin the rebellion. With Mark Hamill back as Luke this line of the story certainly pays homage to the great western, Unforgiven. The other part of that story is the weird interface of Daisey with Kylo Ren, and this one seems to have the legs that will carry us through Episode IX. Ridley is pretty great in her role and the movie would pretty much suck if she hadn’t been.
My biggest beef is that the villains are weak, and the writers just dropped the ball here. The enormous head of Snoke is bigger and wrinklier than the now-deposed Emperor, but his motives are as transparent as they are uninteresting. His masked red henchmen lack the intrigue of, say, Darth Maul (the most grotesquely underutilized asset in the history of the series), though the Reds do have these cool, bendy light sabers that are seen but not heard, really. Indeed, the whole Snoke angle is so underdeveloped that you wonder why they bothered. Oh, man, is that guy evil! That leaves Kylo Ren to take up the mantle of this generation’s Darth Vader, but Kylo Ren is no Darth Vader (then again, who is?).
A couple of other notes:
Benicio del Toro gets to play an unrepentant mercenary, and he is exactly as good as his script allows. The film makers would be fools to leave him out of the series finale.
Wait, isn’t Carrie Fisher dead? You wouldn’t know it from watching this film. There is definitely something weird going on with that.
Laura Dern is dashing and decisive as the next in command, though she didn’t get the best the script had to offer (although she did use the term “cockpit”, emphasis on the first syllable, to malign testosterone-fueled bravado). The yin to her yang is the Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) character, and this plays out tolerably.
The story line involving Finn and Rose was disposable, and the would-be bromance between Finn and Poe Dameron will have to wait if it is to blossom. Finn was the big loser as far as the script goes.
The days of non-humans as principal characters has mercifully come to an end. There are smatterings of non-humans, but mostly they are relegated to the more traditional status as non-humans. Chewie is the big exception and he is a very bit player here.
And, keeping up the great westerns, there is even a homage to the final scene Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
This is probably the funniest Star Wars yet. Not a high bar, but still
The verdict is good, but not great (see L’s review for the same verdict). If you see it you will probably enjoy most of it, though it’s at least 20 minutes too long. Maybe 30 minutes too long. Maybe more. It’s way too long. The story winds up pretty much exactly where you think it will, but not quite in the way that you are expecting. There are also a couple surprises a long the way that will cause even the most hardened among us to crack a smile and shed a tear.
Here at the L & D we put our top picks for 2017 on hold, eagerly awaiting the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. We needn’t have. Last Jedi is a film that is very much in love with itself. And honestly, how can you blame the producers, director or editor. Each shot, a technical marvel. Each set-up, costing the GDP of various small island nations. However, it’s exactly the job of the editor, the director and the producers to make the tough choices that keep a story moving along. If this 2 hour and 33 minute behemoth had been more tightly spun and less concerned with literally looking at itself in the mirror, it would have been a lot stronger. However, with no one there to stop John Williams, the band played on…and on. At one point Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) says to Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) that nothing really dies. The irony escaped no one that she actually was (RIP Carrie). Unless you are a totally enlightened monk, many things can die, including the attention span of the audience. Like so many action films, this one went on at least 20 minutes too long. You could feel it lumbering along, trying to establish relationships for the next episode and getting away from the filmmakers with every drawn-out, self-important gaze.
The biggest stars of the film are these Gremlins type creatures found on Luke’s island. It’s no coincidence Kathleen Kennedy also produced that film is 1984. And like Gremlins, a lot of the action, music and shot selection in Last Jedi feels like it’s directly out of the Spielberg playbook. Spielberg, another Gremlins producer. I almost expected space ships to fly in silhouette across a moon (or several moons since it is Star Wars) with ET perched on a bicycle basket.
All that said, the acting was great, including star Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Kelly Marie Tran, with a solid turn by Benicio del Toro. Though as D mentioned, Laura Dern picked the short stick when it came to cool Star Wars characters. The plot itself was strong and original taking some well deserved cracks at arms dealers and also at those who sit on the fence. The Cinematography and special effects were outstanding and I realized I could watch a feature length film of simply Star Wars landscape shots. If you are a fan of this franchise (and by the size of the audience this opening night, who isn’t) this is a must see installment. For everyone else, firing up the original aka A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back will give you the same thrills and chills.
L&D attended a special preview of The Last Jedi Thursday evening, and – we aren’t making this up – they waited for us to show up before starting the movie! We entered to a packed house and a blank screen, and when we sat down they got things going. Our charmed lives continue.
L&D Report 