Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

The saga comes to an end as a disappointing adventure and questions of what could have been. Disney became so afraid after the meta-cognizant marvel that is The Last Jedi that divided audiences but actually stood for something. They desperately wanted to please the internet trolls, bigots and misogynists to gain back their precious coin. By doing so they sold the soul of Star Wars in order to make a quick buck. And to all the JJ defenders out there claiming that he was blindsided by the final cut and it was a terrible working environment, spare me. The Rise of Skywalker was a spitting image of where Abrams wanted to go in The Force Awakens with only a few acknowledgments to the turns that Rian Johnson tried to make in The Last Jedi. He chose this project, he wrote this project and he was proud of this project. Just because it is now getting blow-back, doesn't mean he can suddenly plant sources saying it is not what he envisioned. Is it hard to work for Disney? Sure. But every drop of this movie oozes of JJ Abrams. With that out of the way, let’s get into a final review of the last film (hopefully?) in the Skywalker saga.

THE DEAD HAVE SPOKEN!! as we are told in the opening scrawl of the film which looks nothing like any scrawl we have seen before. Palpatine is resurrected as some sort of zombie puppet without even a mention as to how. and that is only the beginning where we get a half-moment to breath before we are off on one of the fastest paced, messiest adventures ever to be created. From one scene after another we are given either important plot points that don't make sense or JJ gives us a trip back 4 whole years to correct criticism that he faced from the force awakens. When a film maker reacts to the audience in universe to the point where you can obviously see the criticism he is trying to correct, be it his own or from a previous saga, you know there is a problem. Did we really need to be pulled out of the movie to see Chewbacca get a medal that he didn't get in A New Hope? Absolutely not. Did we need to see Chewbacca over react to the demise of a character after he didn't give it a thought when his best friend Han Solo eat it in The Force Awakens? No. And if we are not correcting mistakes then we are getting nostalgia slammed down our throats at every chance they get. From Palpatine to the Death Star, from Luke's A New Hope medal to the space chess in the Millennium Falcon, it is all a terribly chose trip down memory lane instead of any kind of in-depth step forward. A surprising highlight of the film is the unabashed sass that C-3PO brings to the film. It is almost as if her himself can't believe the incredibly absurd things that are happening around him.

While i is not the worst Star Wars film ever made, Attack of the Clones and Phantom Menace have those two spots locked down, it is not the saga ending masterpiece that Disney wants you to believe. The fact that you have to learn important details about the film from the essential readers guide and not the work itself tells you the cluster of a film and that bit off way more than it could chew. A number of the story-lines in the film could have been cut to give us more time with the characters we already know. The fact that Rose gets pushed to the side so we can be introduced to a figure from Poe's past that has little bearing on the plot is a travesty that should not be forgiven soon. 

I will give the movie credit for a couple of moments that were quite powerful, most of them involving the women, but there are far too many missteps to call it a fun and satisfying end. 

This earns a C- as it is a below average blockbuster 

Darkest Minds

Disclaimer: I have not read the darkest minds trilogy. I have gotten a brief overview so I know what happens but did not get emotionally invested in the novels. Having said that, and knowing the move differs greatly from the novel, it still boggels my mind how people can hold certain YA movies to such different standards than others. This is a perfectly serviceable film, it is not great but neither is it awful as many have described it. It is a perfect shot at it's target audience, YOUNG ADULTS!! Of which I am not one, so when this film doesn't hit exactly where I want it too, I remember it is not specifically aimed at me. This is also a great case of a young woman of color taking the forefront of a movie series that everyone claims to want but then trashes when it' s not perfect. Why give the Twilight series or the divergent series such good will when they are not very good and The Darkest Minds could easily stand about e any of those films? Is it because it those films had a bigger following as books? Or they are backed by bigger studios? All I can say is we adult critiques seriously need to look in the mirror when we are smashing an attempted at something new before it even gets out of the gate. The one criticism of Darkest Minds is that they criminally under use Gwendoline Christie. She could have been so much more than a random bounty hunter. She's Captain Phasma for goodness sake!!! I digress. A fine movie for a fine afternoon. B-

P.S. A+ for the of Mice and Men Lenny rabbit schene that most of the you get generation won't understand but for us English enthusiasts was a horrifyingly aweso.e delight

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Mission Impossible: Fallout, let's see how many cool stunts Tom cruise can do and call it a movie.

Unpopular opinion alert, I did not like the new mission Impossible. How can everyone be taken by a series do extreme stunts that are tied together I a loose plot that tried to be clever but is constantly falling all over itself. While it is impressive the amount and type of stunts that Tom cruise performs, a good movie they do not make. Seeing cruise jump out of a plane and high pressure skydive is cool, but it would absolutely not happen when they are jumping into a thunderstorm, no matter how important the objective is. It actually shows how dumb the government is if they are not keeping track of the weather and are suddenly surprised by incliment weather. And another cool stunt is when he so climbing a rope to get to a flying helicopter. When he reaches the copter, just to ad tension, he falls all the way back down to the bottom of the rope so he can climb up again. This is all despite there being a timeline on how saving the world. There seems to be a running theme with this set of films where the directors simply ignore basic passage of time and how long it takes for people to do things. It is also impossible to maintain the suspension of disbelief when the overall theme of this movie is that Ethan Hawke is THE ONLY person who can ever save the world. If he is not around, bad things happen. But the true question is, how many times can the government disavow a man and then take him back after he goes against their orders. I am sorry but that is not how government works. Maybe they do it once or even twice but eventually he would be viewed as expendable and let go. You can't just be Tom Cruise and constantly be given the benefit of the doubt. While this would be a fine action film if you looked at it as a stand alone film with no past or future, one cannot discount all of the baggage the previous films bring into the film. Sadly can only give Mission Impossible a C and hopefully it will be the last of the series.

Adrift

Adrift: 

Marketing at its best. Shailene Woodley again shows off why she is becoming one of Hollywood's most underrated actors of her generation. Just like her performance in The Spectacular Now, she undersells the magnitude of her emotions. While the viewer can look at her and see a simple young girl who doesn't truly understand her emotions, Woodley secretly demonstrates how powerful she feels and how it gets her through the emotion trauma of being Adrift on a damaged sailboat for 40 days. Based on the true story about Tami Oldham Ashcraft, who began sailing from Haiti to the San Diego with her boyfriend Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin) when they run into a hurricane. Tami then has to survive on her own with Richard incapacitated and find a way back to land with a broken boat and no electricity. This is one film that skillfully uses the flashback feature that had been beaten to death by Hollywood. The movie opens with Tami awakening with the hurricane over, her boat in shambles and Richard nowhere to be found. It then proceeds to flash back and forth between what lead to her crossing to Pacific and how she is surviving with so little. If Shailene continues with performances like this she will be a staple in Hollywood for years to come.

A

Skyscraper

Skyscraper: It's no Die Hard but is worth the climb.

 While many will get hung up on the physics and believitability of Dwayne Johnson jumping from a crane and him being able to climb 100 stories and not be out of breath, they are all forgetting one important thing; He's DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON!!! He can do anything and make it look easy. Any movie he touches automatically starts with a 2 star rating solely based on his innate magnetism. Everything he touches turns to gold. Try to name one movie that he has made that is truly awful. Go ahead I'll wait ... That's because you can't. Sure there are flaws in Skyscraper, mainly almost every scene without Johnson, but so does every blockbuster movie these days. If your looking for a fun exciting crowd pleaser, Skyscraper is for you. 


B

Dunkirk

I'll be the first one to admit that Dunkirk is a beautiful film and is masterfully shot but I can't say that I liked it. Christopher Nolan has a knack for playing with people's minds and he and Dunkirk is no exception. He begins the film with three different locations at three different time periods ranging from 1 week two three hours from the evacuation complete evacuation of Dunkirk. It is really interesting to watch how he combines the three different timelines to end the film at the exact point in each timeline. While interesting it is very confusing and took more than 20 minutes to understand that there he was using different timelines to tell the stories of the people who were on the beach, flying planes, and The Little Ships coming to the rescue. The performances are astounding throughout the film with the likes of Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance, even getting an acceptable performance out of One Direction singer Harry Styles. If you did not have the background of the film and even with it the film drags on and on trying to instill the idea of hopelessness felt by the soldiers but it is difficult to comprehend when the only German combatants that the audience sees are airplanes. There are also a number of dramatic scenes that appear to be instilled in the film to get an emotional response when they are completely unnecessary. One would think that the from the great mind of Christopher Nolan that he could come up with a better emotional gut punch then to easily debunked character deaths that have not had the proper character development for the audience to really care. Another disappointing aspect of the film is its portrayal of the French throughout the evacuation of Dunkirk. There are only two brief moments when it is acknowledged that the British did not care and actively resented the French while those same soldiers defended the rear lines and made it possible for the British to evacuate. And with a throwaway line at the end of the film by the Admiral commanding the beaches it is acknowledged that the British shoes original plan of abandoning the French is not right. It is simply acknowledged as a fact of war and only the strong survive. The ending of the film is also a disappointment as there is a masterful shot of Tom Hardy's pilot character performing a heroic gesture which would be the perfect ending only for Nolan to cut back to the soldier we have been following sitting on a train four five seconds with no more dialogue and a fade to black. The film was described to me as more of a documentary and I wholeheartedly agree except for the portrayal of survival is most important and not the lives of all. C+ rating

Spider-man: Homecoming

We all must leave home in order to discover ourselves but sometimes I'll return home is just what the doctor ordered. This is exactly what Spider-Man has done returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man was one of the best parts of Captain America Civil War and his character is built on in magnificent ways throughout homecoming. His witty charm, his lovable ignorance, and his comic book nerd like innocence is a breath of fresh air to the Marvel franchises. The one and only downside to the film is Tony Stark's inclusion, which to be fair was much less than anticipated. This film reiterates the problem with Tony Stark's Iron Man in all Marvel movies. In all films before Civil War he has been the Maverick or The Lovable Rebel to The Avengers but ever since Civil War Marvel have been trying to shoehorn him into the Now Noble hero. Instead of making him completely Noble they try to flirt with the line of keeping him Rogue like but also authoritarian. This comes off terribly when he scolds Peter Parker for going off and doing things on his own and blaming him for when things go wrong on plans he does not tell Peter about. Luckily Spider-Man is able to carry most the film on his own with his comedic dialogue and his new guy in the chair John something or other. Refreshingly his love interest is neither Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane and can be given a fresh take on prepubescent crushes. There an awesome Easter egg to his other love interests near the end of the film leaving it open for Marvel to either take a big leap from the comics or walk it back in the next film. This film critic cannot wait for the next film with Spider-Man and that is coming from someone who has become disillusioned with the idea of Marvel's Universe. A- rating