Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Dir. Rian Johnson
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I'm scared to write this review. Irrationally scared. Star Wars has become more than a series of fun sci-fi movies, it has become a cult. What started as, let's face it, a kids movie, has been adopted by grown men and women into some kind of sacred religion, and anyone with opinions against it are blasphemers. Online comment threads are battle zones. The mouth-frothing began when Star Wars announced its "comeback" a few years ago, taking the reins away from its original creator, George Lucas, and continuing the story that left off in 1983. That return, The Force Awakens, was met with such blind praise and adoration that as someone with mixed-to-low opinions on it I now live in an underground doomsday bunker just to avoid the fanboy fury. Now, The Last Jedi, the official sequel, is getting even higher praise from critics while I'm looking left and right, wondering if there's something not wrong with me.
I was really hoping Poe, Finn, and Rey would join up eventually - as I thought those characters had a lot of promise in The Force Awakens - but they spend nearly the entire movie on their own separate "b-plot" adventures. Isn't one of the best aspects of the original trilogy the camaraderie between Luke, Han, and Leia? In this new series, even the original three hardly ever speak to each other! Luke never learns about Han's fate from the last film, and neither Chewie nor Leia seem like they care. This is the same exact problem I had with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Vol. 1 was great because we like the characters together! "We Are Groot!"
Despite the fact that the previous two Disney-produced Star Wars movies were disappointments for me, I remained excited for The Last Jedi as a fan of the director, Rian Johnson. His time-travel movie Looper landed on my Top Ten of 2012 list, and I've always been impressed by his ability to tell unique, genre-based stories. But The Last Jedi doesn't seem to bear his directorial stamp at all. It feels yet again like a "safe" commercial product. I've seen many reviews touting otherwise, as it alters some ideas about the Force, but I think Johnson was painted into a corner by having to answer to the dozens of incomplete plot threads offered by JJ Abrams' Force Awakens. By the time all these bases are covered (such as the incredibly dull "big bad" Emperor Snoke), Johnson has little opportunity to inject new plot ideas, and those that are there feel half-baked - such as an extended excursion with Rose and Finn with some kind of strange animal rights plot line.
As frustrated as I am with the story, I did enjoy certain elements of the film. The first was its welcome sense of humor. Especially after the super-serious Rogue One, it was nice to see some characters let loose a bit (there's even a Star Wars version of a prank phone call). I also think the creature design remains on-point. On Luke's island there are these nun creatures that look like something from The Dark Crystal, as well as amazingly cute puffin-looking things called Porgs. There's a sequence set on a casino planet that, while being a direct homage to the "Cantina" scene in A New Hope, was bursting with life.
At least this movie is innovative visually. Details like one planet having a blanket of white sand with red rocks underneath it was an amazing touch to bloodlessly convey the danger characters will face on the battlefield. There's also a shot of a starship colliding with another at light speed that was unlike any action beat we've seen in a Star Wars movie. The level of craft in the design-work, brilliantly balancing practical effects with CGI, helps flesh out this world and makes it feel real.
But just because Rian Johnson and crew made a polished film with fun details doesn't justify its lack of momentum towards something compelling. Although I wasn't a huge fan of The Force Awakens, at the very least it made me excited to see where things were headed. We got a taste of some interesting new characters and it left us in a place wanting more (that Luke reveal - who is Snoke? - what will happen to Finn?). Some of these questions were answered, but by the end of The Last Jedi, I seriously did not care about this universe any more.
Rating: C+
NOTE: I was feeling under the weather watching this movie. Admittedly I forced myself to go because I had non-refundable IMAX tickets and I needed to see it opening weekend as a movie geek. I can't believe that wouldn't have affected my overall enjoyment of the movie, so I am definitely open to re-evaluating this one!
The Disaster Artist
Dir. James Franco
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The Room is commonly referred to as one of the worst movies ever made. It's a badly scripted, poorly acted, cheap-looking melodrama written, directed, and starring a strange, long-haired, heavily-accented Eastern European man named Tommy Wiseau. Released in 2003, the movie has slowly but surely accrued a cult audience that embraces it for its weirdness and earnestness. In 2013, a non-fiction book about the making of The Room was released by one of its stars, Greg Sestero, and the story behind the movie ended up being as insane as the movie itself. The enigmatic outsider Tommy Wiseau made The Room through questionable methods, and obviously the movie wasn't received how he had originally planned. Bringing the book to life is director and star James Franco, and ironically enough, The Disaster Artist turned out to be a great movie about a bad movie.
The story is framed as a kind of a dramatic buddy comedy between Tommy (James Franco) and Greg (Dave Franco). Even though Tommy is clearly off his gourd, the film does a great job showing how and why Greg would follow him and help him make his movie. Tommy is a wild card and doesn't let people's opinions shake his determination, which Greg found inspiring, even if his ambition outweighs his talent. In a role that could easily have been a straight spoof is actually handled extremely humanistically by James Franco. While the film does poke fun at Tommy, it's always sympathetic towards him. Both the real guy and Franco's character are impossible to look away from, always spouting off hilariously unpredictable and frustrating tangents, but you can understand how these seemingly crazy comments provide Tommy some security.
Although The Room is objectively terrible, it's almost like the art project of a 3-year-old. Tommy Wiseau poured his heart and soul into it, and that passion comes across. There are thousands of bad movies every year, but this one has remained relevant for 14 years, still continually screening in major cities with fans reciting lines and participating a la Rocky Horror Picture Show. Although there are a lot of amazing moments left out from the book (which is one of my favorite books about filmmaking I've ever read), The Disaster Artist is a hilarious and heartfelt ode to dreamers that feels like an off-kilter La La Land. I loved it!
Rating: A
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Dir. Martin McDonagh
Three Billboards tells the story of Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a mother who buys three billboards to call public attention to the unsolved murder of her daughter 7 months prior. She's pissed off about the lack of progress in the investigation, squaring her message directly to Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). The conflict with law enforcement only gets exacerbated when Willoughby's second-in-command, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a momma's boy with a violent streak, gets involved.
I was hotly anticipating this movie, as it seemed like the perfect story for today's angry world. I think we're all frustrated by the lack of progress in America, either on a big scale like our country, or a small scale like Ebbing, Missouri. However, the script here took that concept and threw a little too much at the wall without first considering logical sense. While the performances were pretty great all around (hell hath no fury like Frances McDormand), the story definitely felt uneven at times with a lot of "huh?" moments. Characters do terrible things with no repercussions (such as throwing a man out a window), we're supposed to forgive a violent racist because the movie tells us he's changed, and perhaps worst of all - Peter Dinklage is completely wasted!
As I left the theater, I had a positive reaction to the movie. It's filled with great moments and rousing bits of dialogue, but I think the big picture holds up less upon further reflection. Still, its palpable sense of rage results in a darkly comedic and seriously tragic film.
Rating: B
Darkest Hour
Dir. Joe Wright
Darkest Hour is basically the flip side of Dunkirk, giving us an inside look at Winston Churchill's turbulent time rallying his country against the Nazis while the major British excavation was happening in France. Replacing Christopher Nolan's epic battlefields and expansive beachfronts are claustrophobic, crowded hallways and corridors. Instead of the mostly visual storytelling of Nolan's action-driven film we have countless rousing, inspirational speeches.
I don't think there's another movie this year trying harder to get an Oscar. Gary Oldman totally transforms into the role, unrecognizable as the passionate Prime Minister under some amazing make-up (although it honestly reminded me a bit of Mike Myers as Fat Bastard in Austin Powers). He's giving it his all in the role, although his constant yelling and inspirational speech-making got tiresome. This doesn't feel like a nuanced, humanizing performance - to me it was unlikeably melodramatic and one-note. I actually thought John Lithgow in Netflix's The Crown was a better Churchill.
It's probably just because I'm an ignorant millennial, but I found this movie excruciatingly dull. It's shot beautifully and the production design is fantastic, but in my opinion did not provide an interesting, humanistic take on Churchill. There's a scene where Churchill is riding a subway train with the "common people" and literally everyone is fawning over him. A mother and her daughter, a blue collar brick-layer, even a poetry-reciting black man. This scene was incredibly manipulative and unbelievable, and sort of sums up my problems with this movie. Everything feels calculated, rote, and inauthentic, despite being gorgeous and bombastic. It actually gives me a whole new appreciation for Dunkirk!
Rating: C
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