Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

The Rise of Skywalker, the end of a beloved multi-generation saga of folks who love the Skywalkers in a galaxy far, far away, is a muddied mess of fan service and forced nostalgia that sacrifices the joy and ingenuity that makes Star Wars great. It is often blatantly reactionary, repeatedly attempting to comment on and even undo the magnificent strides of its game-changing predecessor, The Last Jedi. Instead of allowing artistic integrity or even quality storytelling to rule the day, Episode IX retreats to a sense of cringeworthy sentimentality and often downright sloppy craft to produce a film that means well but ultimately reveals dangerous ideological impulses.

The plot is pretty bewildering, and all amounts to just about nothing. We begin with the opening scrawl, telling us that a broadcast message has announced the return of Emperor Palpatine. To determine the truth, Kylo Ren mows down soldiers on Mustafar and retrieves a Sith artifact called a Wayfinder. Guess what it does? He finds his way, then, to a mysterious planet called Exegol, where he encounters the decrepit old man. Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid doing wonderful things again) reveals that he is the architect of everything that has happened, including creating Snoke and initiating the First Order. Fittingly, he unleashes the Final Order, a legion of new Star Destroyers each with the power to destroy planets (Death Star tech again, because we clearly haven't had enough of all that).

Then we get tossed into a chase as we follow our heroes Poe and Finn on their mission to deliver new intel to the Resistance: the same damn info we've already got twice by this point. Rey, honing her Jedi skills under Leia's guidance, joins them and they embark to yet another new desert planet to find Lando, who supposedly can help them. After a mini-adventure, they discover a Sith dagger that tells the location of -- guess what? -- another Wayfinder to help them find their way. But then they go to a snowy planet to get a mechanical device from apparently the only person in the galaxy with one, then they use that device to crack the Sith dagger code and travel to another moon of Endor where the wreckage from the second Death Star fell. In the ruins, Rey finds her way. Excuse me, I meant she finds another Wayfinder to help her find her way.

The whole affair is laughably bizarre and confusing at this point, and they still planet-hop at least three more times before the movie ends. Though some may have criticized The Last Jedi for having such a straightforward "chase in space" and an odd but thematically crucial side-plot to Canto Bight, I would take that any day over this nonsense. The Wayfinders are MacGuffins by definition, and would be interesting as such if we had other things going on like character development, world-building, or even fun action. Consider for comparison Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which plotwise is very similar to this: we didn't mind the weirdness of needing a drawing of a key to get the key to open a chest we had to find in order to stab the thump-thump and save the oceans because there was so much quality character development, humor, drama, mythmaking, and generally awesome storytelling.

Instead of those things, we often get the opposite. Much like in Lucas's original trilogy, we get very little -- if any -- understanding of secondary characters or locations. Keri Russell appears (sort of, we only hear her voice and see her eyes) for a hot second, as does Naomi Ackie. Dominic Monaghan shows up in a couple scenes for some reason. Richard E. Grant plays a new First Order (Final Order? Who knows) commander, which is thankfully about all we need to know. All these folks and more are suddenly introduced and just as suddenly ignored. As if the cast wasn't big enough.

Rose Tico, the most exciting new character since Poe, is basically unwritten in this movie. Two new female characters are put in for the sole purpose -- I defy you to give me one shred of evidence to the contrary -- of proving there is absolutely "no homo" between Finn and Poe. Finn doesn't even get a fitting arc, after all his amazing development in the previous two episodes, and he is here relegated to being a stock action hero. There's a truly baffling twist from General Hux. And while seeing Billy Dee Williams again as Lando is fun, he does so unbelievably little in this movie I'd have preferred him to not even show up. Maz Kanata shows up for like three scenes, and yet we still have absolutely no idea who or what she is, what she does, why she's important, or really anything interesting at all.

Most cruelly, Rey is here revealed to be as flat and boring a character as ever I suspected. Just when things were getting really cool in The Last Jedi, when we learn she is completely self-made, even in the Force, and that she came from unremarkable parents, The Rise of Skywalker has to screw it all up. Lo and behold, the granddaughter of Palpatine. Don't get me wrong, I think that's freakin' awesome. But when the main character has been set up as a pretty great feminist icon (remember the way she took control of every situation in The Force Awakens?), it should be artistically criminal to suddenly pull back the curtain and reveal that she is only what men make her to be. In this movie especially, she is stripped of any agency. Her story, her actions, even her identity are forced on her time and again by men. Even in her rare moments of strength, she is seeking answers, advice, and labels for herself from men.

And then there's Leia, whose presence in this film is just unfortunate from top to bottom. Granted, the filmmakers had an impossibly hard job on their hands after Carrie Fisher's untimely death, especially since it seems clear that Leia was supposed to be the last O.G. hero standing. But I can't help but wonder if they should have just killed her off in the opening crawl of this new movie, because her scenes are so deeply uncomfortable. Her presence makes me think of the uncanny valley, and her image is often drenched in so many aggressively drawn visual effects that she doesn't always look real. The scenes in which she's featured -- sometimes made up of deleted scenes from the other films, sometimes simply shot behind her and using a body double -- are disjointed at best, often with dialogue so vague it makes no sense.

Apart from the plot and characters, I can't help but shake what I read as the film's core ideological problem. The film essentially suggests that, if we put this into context, Hitler survived and resurfaced 30+ years later to join forces with the Soviets and turn the Cold War into an apocalypse. That's fine, I guess, except that this film attempts to cultivate nostalgia from the original generation of fans, which is annoying even if it makes sense from a business perspective. The problem is that it's a generation that has twice allowed a Palpatine-like war criminal and egomaniac to take control (George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively) and, each time, failed to rise up and challenge him. How about instead of stroking those egos and making that generation feel so safe, we try confronting them with the realities of their sociopolitical choices and its fallout for subsequent generations?

I don't want to belabor the point any longer, but I was just so utterly disappointed in The Rise of Skywalker. It spends too much time retconning the previous movie, which might be the only work of consummate art in the entire franchise. This tendency dissolves any cohesion in the sequel trilogy, making the episodes incoherent at best and conflicting at worst. These anti-developments in this final chapter result in denying the sequel trilogy its own artistic reasons for existence, unless you count the considerable interest in visual effects, which feels rather masturbatory for Disney at this point.

The Little Stranger (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Dr. Faraday has been summoned to Hundreds Hall, an old mansion suffering from decay and neglect, to attend its inhabitants. A young housemaid seems terrified and complains of mysterious pains. The Ayres family -- aging mother and two adult children -- exist more than live in the house, though they strive to maintain a facade of aristocratic normalcy. As Faraday attempts to aid them, frightening and bizarre incidents increasingly occur as we simultaneously learn about the history of these characters.

Though Gothic films are few and far between, The Little Stranger makes a powerful case for the genre's lasting allure. It's a slow-boiler to be sure, and until a little girl is attacked by her sweet dog I wasn't sure this movie was going to be scary at all. Instead, it sets itself up like Agatha Christie's Crooked House, and I expected it to essentially be a psychological mystery-thriller until a murderous, explosive ending. Not so.

Hundreds Hall is haunted, there can be no doubt about that. It carries unmistakable trappings of ghostly activity, from creaking footsteps in empty rooms to servant bells ringing and doors violently shutting and shaking. Interestingly, these could all be explained away by more or less practical means; that is, we don't actually see any ghosts, nor do things pop out from dark corners as they might in Crimson Peak or The Woman in Black. Here we instead have something closer to The Haunting, wherein each spooky event could be paranormal and just as easily a manifestation of the psychological.

In an age where The Haunting of Hill House becomes a fabulous Netflix series, it's amazing we haven't seen more films like this. It requires patience, dedication, and watchfulness; it requires your full attention. You have to think about what's happening and why, you have to tie together characters and backstories and vague hints at what's happening just beyond the frame. It also plays with your expectations, luring you in with long shots you examine for ghosts that aren't there before switching to extreme close shots in which the lead players drift in and out of focus.

I don't want to spoil much more, because the beauty of this film lies in teasing out all its little significances. Literary in the best way, the film's characters do not steal the show so much as its weighty themes about trauma, wealth, sanity, family, love, and loss. And while Domhnall Gleeson tends to play eccentric, impotent male characters, do not underestimate him here as the seemingly-benevolent doctor. My pet theory -- SPOILER ALERT -- is that he is in fact responsible for the fall of the house of Ush- oops, I mean Hundreds Hall. Earlier in the film he makes a strange reference to the fracturing of conscious and subconscious self. Considered along with the repeated image of his breaking off a piece of plaster on a mirror, I can't shake the idea that his identity has spawned the malevolent spirit in the house. Think less Fantastic Beasts and more Beloved.

And while the ending more or less inspired my theory, it also made me want to instantly watch the movie again to keep unraveling the mystery. Unfortunately, the film is too long and slow and disturbing to actually watch again immediately, and so I'll suffer the haunting memory of it in the meantime. Lenny Abrahamson, you clever bastard.

IMDb: The Little Stranger

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I will spoil the movie for you. You've been warned.

The first thing you need to know about The Last Jedi is that it is infinitely superior to The Force Awakens. That film was a rehashed "Best Of Star Wars" scrapbook of fan fodder, expertly executed but lacking in any substance. Well, beyond its cast of fabulously diverse newbies. It was also a mess of plot holes and unfinished storylines, and by the end of the film we still didn't know much about any of the new characters or the new mythos of a galaxy far, far away.

Rian Johnson, however, has crafted one of the better Star Wars movies with Episode VIII. It's a deeply emotional movie with real stakes, troubling moral ambiguity, and complex relationships. For a two-and-a-half hour movie, it's also incredibly tense, even when the pacing tends to lag. People get hurt. People die. A lot of people die. Hope is ever-fading. It's a strangely apocalyptic vision of science fiction not unlike Revenge of the Sith; whereas that film ended with a comparatively safe sense of nostalgia and hope, The Last Jedi is far more bleak. That's partly due to our utter ignorance as to where this franchise is going. Disney holds all the cards now. Let's just hope the Force is with them.

Speaking of the Force, let's dig right in. We pick up the saga not long after the end of The Force Awakens. The Resistance fleet is on the run, pursued through space by the First Order, which was apparently not seriously set back by the destruction of Starkiller Base. General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) have developed the ability to track their prey through hyperspace, and most of this film concerns what is essentially a car chase with spaceships. The Resistance fleet (...of three ships?) is low on fuel and doomed unless Finn (John Boyega), BB-8, and newcomer Rose (an excellent Kelly Marie Tran) can hire a computer pirate (Benicio del Toro) to save them. It's a bizarre little side adventure through a casino populated by war profiteers, slavers, weapons manufacturers, and people who brutally race alien horses. All is for naught, however, when the pirate sells out to the highest bidder, and the Resistance is forced to hide at an old outpost. Almost all of them die, including (probably) their second-in-command Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern, who really deserved more screen time), but General Leia Organa survives. Unfortunately, and ironically, that is one of the most heartbreaking things about this movie.

Thankfully, this movie provides her with much more screen time than the previous episode. I'm a bit concerned about what will happen to Leia now. She could have died at least three times in this movie alone, and I find it troubling that the filmmakers didn't account for Carrie Fisher's death. We'll have to wait and see how they fashion the next installment. Han is gone, and as of the end of this movie, so is Luke. Mark Hamill gives a riveting performance as a haunted rogue Jedi, and we get a fair amount of backstory on him and his failed Jedi revitalization project. He trains Rey (Daisy Ridley), sort of kind of, and is forced to face his own shortcomings. There's a great scene when the ghost of Yoda appears to him, still instructing him, saying that failure is the greatest teacher. But in his final moments, after expending his life force to save what's left of the Resistance, Luke disappears and his empty cloak floats off into the wind.

Which brings us to another point. I'm not sure about this sequel series playing fast and loose with the mythology. Kylo can stop a blaster's laser in midair? Leia gets blasted out into space and can survive by pulling herself back into an air lock? Yoda's ghost can cause a lightning strike? Luke can astral project?! I had some misgivings about the directions this franchise would take when Disney took over, but things are getting a bit wild. Similarly, while this film answers plenty of questions from the first and fills in some extra plot holes -- the most fabulous being that Rey's parents are nobodies; she is a strong independent woman and she don't need no fancy bloodline -- it keeps us in the dark about just as much. Who is Supreme Leader Snoke? He has a glamorous golden bathrobe, but we still don't know who or what or why he is, and now we may not. Kylo kills him in an otherwise really cool scene (he and Rey fight together against the guards and a burning backdrop). Who was Max von Sydow's character in The Force Awakens? Still don't know, probably doesn't matter. What's Phasma's story? No idea, and she (also probably) dies too. There is a new canon book about her, so hopefully that helps.

Despite my meandering thoughts, I cannot deny the sheer beauty and power of this film. It's a visionary masterpiece, pushing the Star Wars limits in ways I never expected to see. It's a tapestry of color and light, gorgeous special effects and dazzling storytelling. Its menagerie of alien species gets a little weird at times, but it all works together to create a nearly perfect escapist experience. Even moments that could be a dangerously close throwback to The Empire Strikes Back are quickly altered to be novel: The climactic battle on salt-crusted Crait isn't just snow and AT-ATs like it was on Hoth; arresting red dust billows from the ground and none of the enemy's weapons are destroyed. The infiltrating team of Finn, Rose, and DJ the pirate don't shut down the tracking device like Old Ben did on the Death Star; they get caught and almost killed.

In this way, the movie is a (successful) meditation on failure, its price and its cost as well as the lessons it teaches. It's a thematic work of genius, and I can't wait to watch it again. Sure, there are some awkward comedic moments, some earned and some not, but nothing caught me off guard so much as little moments of insight and affection between characters in intimate proximity. I wept openly through lengthy sequences, and choked up so much I could barely breathe. After saving Finn at the potential cost of her life, Rose tells him that's how we win: "Not by fighting what we hate, but by saving what we love." Take my tears and my life, why dontcha? Other than Rogue One, it is the most dense Star Wars yet, and if that's any indication of the franchise's future, I am HERE FOR IT.

PS: For those of you who are as in love with Oscar Isaac and Poe Dameron as I am -- just kidding, no one rivals my affection -- you will be pleased to know that he has some great moments in this film. He connects with all the major players in heartfelt ways, he leads a mutiny, his hair is on point. And he gets a new leather jacket.

IMDb: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Goodbye Christopher Robin concerns the true story of Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne and his family and is told in three parts. In the first, Milne (Domhnall Gleeson), traumatized by his experiences in World War I, moves his wife Daphne (Margot Robbie) and son out of London into a gorgeous country house where he hopes to continue writing in peace. Their nanny (Kelly Macdonald) joins them and has primary -- indeed, almost exclusive -- contact with you Christopher Robin Milne. In the second, Milne begins to bond with his son by creating the world of Winnie the Pooh. His writing about this childhood fantasy catapults their family to fame, though the boy can hardly bear it. In the third, Christopher Robin grows up and goes off to World War II, but not before condemning his parents for appropriating his childhood.

I wanted to like this movie. The trailers were so sweet and emotional I teared up every time it played. I hoped for a nostalgia-inducing fantasy and a compelling family drama. I admit, I knew nothing about the source material except that it came as a balm after the "war to end all wars." I should have done some research.

This movie is as bleak a family drama and coming-of-age tragedy as they come. Milne and his wife are unspeakably wicked parents. Self-absorbed and disgustingly selfish, they utterly neglect their only child and abuse his nanny. Milne staggers around like a Frankenstein creature, shouting and shaking every time a balloon pops, and wastes time scouring the woods when he should be writing to support his family. Daphne doesn't do much of anything apparently, except hang laundry out to dry and sit around speaking daggers at anyone who approaches. Once, fed up with Milne's inability to write, and instead of helping his trauma or fostering any creativity in him, she abandons the family to go party for weeks in London.

Of course young Christopher Robin grows up attached to his nanny, but his behavior is hardly any better. Are we supposed to excuse him because he's a child? Perhaps, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch such a spoiled, willful child whining his way through a nearly two-hour movie. His greatest crime, though, is when he spies his nanny -- on her night off work, mind -- going out on a date with a gentleman caller. He immediately tells his parents that she's getting married (implying perhaps immoral sexual relations, dereliction of duty, and attempting to leave her position), and so they confront Olive in a heartbreaking scene of absolute cruelty. Olive, easily the only sympathetic character in the entire movie, finally quits, and the next morning the boy runs around calling for her as if he forgot the whole episode was his own damn fault. He's old enough to know far better.

Am I being too harsh? I think not. While the story may in fact be true to real life -- I don't know, and frankly now I don't care -- that does not excuse the filmmaker's portrayal of events. Given this icky domesticity, they persist in making the film look like an idyllic family fantasy deep in a hundred-acre wood. Look at the movie poster I've attached down below. That slightly foggy, sun-drenched look with light, amberish tones is the entire film's aesthetic. They drag out scenes of people crying and skate over the scenes of abuse and neglect. The problem, most simply, is this: The director, editor, composer, and cinematographer want to do one kind of movie, while the screenplay is clearly a different kind. The former set want a touchy-feely sentimental fantasy, while the latter is patently a heavy domestic drama about the failure of one's coming-of-age. In this irreconcilable conflict of artistic visions, the film languors and dies much like the nostalgia it hoped to evoke.

IMDb: Goodbye Christopher Robin

Brooklyn (2015)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Brooklyn so completely transports its audience into another time and place that we feel a rapturous catharsis with a young woman who discovers herself and, more importantly, achieves what she wants for her own life. It's a beautiful excursion, with detail and culture oozing out of every surface, intent on realizing the journey of an Irish immigrant in the middle of the last century. And realize it it does, though perhaps in less effective ways than some of us might have preferred.

First things first. Bravo to yet another strong woman-led drama this year, showing us (as Carol did) exactly how to properly center a movie around a woman with real emotions, real strength, and who faces real issues. Also like Carol, this film's production design is transcendent, intricate, and detailed in the best possible ways, given a perfect amount of attention so that it neither distracts from the story nor lies ignored in the background.

Saoirse Ronan is dazzling as the lead woman, Eilis, who leaves her home in Ireland to find a new life in America. We see her grow from a frightened girl to a confident and autonomous woman, and Ronan's nuances and subtlety is a marvel to witness. She is never less than pure, a performance that is always vulnerable, raw, and honest, so much so that in our age of dark and duplicitous antiheroes, she reads almost like a heroine from a bygone age of children's fairytales. Emory Cohen matches her almost perfectly, and his slight Italian inflection casts as romantic a spell on the viewer as it does Ronan's character. No other performances in the film really matter, though most are fairly solid, and the couple of scenes with Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters steal the movie away. Domhnall Gleeson shows up near the end as a pathetic excuse for a dangerous plot device, but thankfully his poor presence is short-lived and ineffectual.

I've made a few references liking Brooklyn to the other big romantic drama this season, but unlike Carol, this film has little in the way of intrigue. In fact, I was distinctly disappointed as I left the theater because I felt as though I had just sat through a glorified Hallmark special. A sort of high-caliber, polished-for-awards-season sticky-sweet romantic melodrama with no complexities, no novelties, and no reason to remember it after the fact. The story is rote, the characters broad (except our lead), and we've seen the period before. I'm not really sure, then, why this film was necessary, nor why it has received the acclaim it has. I can't deny the aesthetic power of the film, and frankly its unrelenting optimism and hope is infectious (and distinctly rare in dramas, to my knowledge), but I found the script to be weak, the performances both hit and miss, and the themes to be so watered down that every time Brooklyn tried too hard to pull at my heartstrings, I slapped it back with a guffaw and waited for it to get smart. It didn't.

IMDb: Brooklyn

The Revenant (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

It's everything we hoped it would be.

A daring, dazzling adventure-revenge-thriller, The Revenant marks a magnificent triumph for a director who has already challenged our ideas of what a film can be. Much like he showed us in Birdman, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu shows us his flawless execution as a master of the art, fusing realism and fantasy together in a brutal, poetic epic that sweeps away other contenders in this year's Oscar race. He also, and much more to his credit, allows audiences less attuned to the technical excellence of his film to take profound pleasure in the rich material, atmosphere, and effects he presents. I heard screams, laughter, and sobs in the theater during the entire two-and-a-half hours -- I may have participated -- until the lights came up again and everyone left in stunned silence. This isn't just a film. It's an experience.

The otherwise thin narrative serves the film all the better, eliminating any unnecessary plot devices by streamlining our focus to the two leading men. The lack of meandering plot threads allows our awareness to spread not to extraneous characters but to the beauty and thematic powers at work, facilitated by the actors' performances and by the impeccable cinematography.  The latter, perfectly handled by master Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity, Birdman) is perhaps the most engaging I've ever seen. Finding uncanny relations to the characters, plot, and theme in nature, his images of snowy mountain ranges, stark winter forests, and even fog on the water are so perfectly suited to the film that I felt as though I were there (and I suspect the film would be even more immersive in 3-D, one of the few times I would ever suspect that!), suffering in the frigid cold and basking in awe of nature. The lighting is also hauntingly good, all the more so with the knowledge that there was no artificial lighting in this movie; all shots feature completely natural lighting. Moments in firelight, watching embers against the night sky, dawn breaking through the fog, torches through the trees. It's breathtaking.

And that's to say nothing of the action sequences. The movie is a thrill ride, from one disaster to another, and each presented by a beautifully fluid camera, weaving in and out and around the action but never straying far from the actors' faces, allowing us to experience the horrors of the frontier while remaining firmly anchored to their effects on the terrified men. Lengthy action shots -- not as lengthy as Birdman, though -- keep things taut and raw, and the special effects cast each shot in magic. I don't know how any of the effects were done so convincingly and seamlessly, and obviously the winner of that cake is the bear attack scene. But there are others that aren't getting as much attention, and I'd like to highlight the opening battle scene as well as the one in which our protagonist flees attacking natives on horseback right over a cliff.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are the secondary heroes of this movie, and both are fierce in their portrayal of rough frontier life. DiCaprio's All is Lost or Cast Away performance will likely win him the Oscar this year, and though it may not be as emotionally articulate as in The Wolf of Wall Street or The Aviator, it accomplishes something even more profound here. Having had his throat ripped open by the bear, he makes it through the film mostly in groans and grunts, relying mostly on physicality and endurance to embody the man who becomes so much more than a man. And, even more intriguing, he somehow lets his eyes do all of the dramatic work in the film, and through some arcane power he projects his inner turmoil out from his eyes and onto the screen, brilliantly highlighting the pain, fear, hatred, and love his character experiences until he finally becomes an extension of the brutal forces of nature around him. His eyes mirror the flames, the starlight, the snow drifts, and ultimately the soul of man in the face of impossible odds. Howl, howl, howl, howl!

The real surprise for me here was Tom Hardy. Not because I don't think he's good  -- on the contrary, after Leo, he's one of my favorites -- but because the movie is basically Leo's and he's been getting all the hype. But here, Hardy matches Leo in flawless marriage of talent to physicality, and of intelligent character work to poetic strength. His eyes are no less telling than Leo's, wide and glassy, darting to and fro in shifty guile, lapping up greed and weakness like a wolf in the wild, ever calculating his heinous crimes. His voice work is also stunning, arrestingly effective, at once both calming and wicked, calculated and fierce, the stuff of nightmares while also slightly singsong in its lilting rhythm. I don't know how he did it, but it's brilliant. Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is his story to a young companion (Will Poulter) of finding God in the forest. I wish I could recall the exact quote, but essentially suggesting that when you're starving, maybe God is a squirrel, meaty and spry, and you can shoot and kill and eat him. Hardy is entrancing and cruel, and his moment of contemplation after relating the story is one of the most chilling shots on film this year.

I could go on and on about how much I loved this movie. You may notice it's earned a place on my top 20 favorite films list. I would compare my pleasure upon seeing it to the pleasure I found in Gravity two years ago. It's one of those rare films that I feel has inextricably grafted itself to my soul, one that I will never tire of watching or contemplating. It's hard to watch, painful even, in moments both emotionally violent and physically brutal. Do yourself a favor and go see the best film of the year. You'll remember that come Oscar night.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The score is amazing, too. Actually, I'll compare that to Gravity as well. Never overstepping its bounds, it swells and drifts in flawless union with the film and echoes the operatic grandeur it accompanies. I'll be buying this soundtrack soon. Bravo, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto!

IMDb: The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Score: 3 / 5

**Fair warning: I don't care about spoilers for myself, so I won't worry about censoring my thoughts here. If you haven't seen the film, and get violent when someone else reveals plot points, stop reading now. You should also probably just avoid the Internet until you've seen the movie.**

The most obnoxiously advertised movie event of the year, the new Star Wars regime opened with great fanfare and packed auditoriums. If you had the pleasure (?) of seeing it opening weekend, you no doubt shared with the enthusiasm of the multitudes as I did, and cheered aloud at appropriate points. It's undoubtedly a fierce spectacle, dazzling in its precision and flair, encouraged by the sentiment and nostalgia brought to it by both filmmakers and audiences.

There isn't much I can say specifically in praise of the movie, because technically it's pretty darn fabulous. The effects are killer, the score is lovely, the production design is interesting, and the camerawork is fine. There are some sizable holes in plot and characterizations, but as a part of a planned trilogy, I can't really fault the film for that; we can certainly expect to know more with the next installment. That said, I always prefer films (as sequels, prequels, and trilogies too!) to be able to stand on their own. I'm not so sure this one does. There's almost no exposition and new ideas pop up without preparation or, sometimes, merit. For example, early in the film, villain Kylo Ren uses the Force to stop a blaster's fire in midair. When has that ever been a thing? And apparently a renewed Empire (the obtusely named "First Order") has taken charge, led yet again by a mysterious Sith, though we don't know anything about what happened after the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi. I guess time will tell. But in most of these respects, The Force Awakens is very reminiscent of A New Hope.

Of course, it's also reminiscent of A New Hope in ways that aren't so admirable. In fact, a few times I wondered if I wasn't just watching a remake of that iconic first film. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I felt thoroughly disappointed at least half a dozen times in this movie. I mean, where's the creativity? If I wanted to see a poor orphan on a desert planet looking for adventure, a masked magic man with a sinister artificial voice, a superweapon the size of a planet, or a mysterious alien whose short stature belies supernatural knowledge, I could have watched the originals.

And before you start saying, "Well, it's better than the prequels," think again. I've never had a serious problem with the prequels, and I've not heard many sound arguments against them, other than personal preference. Sure, Jar Jar Binks is the worst, but so were the Ewoks. Sure, Darth Maul dies in the first movie, but so did Alec Guinness. No, I think the real reason people like the prequels less is because the script and its themes are far more complex and aloof; in having to rapidly expand the galaxy and its denizens, the prequels have precious little of the raw humor and "realistic" sense that defined the originals. Which is fine in my books, but not so with everybody. But that humor and grounded awareness is what J. J. Abrams's new film has in abundance, thereby winning over so many original fans. For example, when one tough pilot is dropped before the intimidating figure of Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), he glances up and asks who speaks first. It's the little moments like this that present us with a believable sense of humor, one that sparkles with wit amidst operatic galactic warfare.

In any case, it's not this film's (lack of) creativity that's winning anybody over. For all their editing faults and effects-heavy spectacle, the prequels matched the originals in sheer imagination and creative output. The Force Awakens just looks like Abrams's scrapbook of images and sensations from the original movies, recycled in order to win over doubters. I might add that, as a fan of the original expanded universe, there were extensive plotlines established before, after, and during the films' plotlines, written in both novels and graphic novels. I love reading the books, so it's a little hard for me to swallow that virtually all of them are suddenly irrelevant. That's a barrier I'll have to overcome on my own, but it certainly made me bitter while watching this new movie. Of all the brilliant stories and characters in the expanded universe, to have the filmmakers here just pirate plot points and images from an old movie is pretty irritating. But I suppose that's just a matter of personal preference, not unlike the disdain some feel toward the prequels.

Maybe I'm harping on something that doesn't matter much. Maybe the new Empire (Disney?) is planning on making the second and third films (plus more, apparently? God, I hope it's not overkill) wildly novel and imaginative, so they had to make this one familiar. I guess we'll have to wait for episode eight. For now, it's a nice excursion, and one that promises even more boons in the coming years. And speaking of boons, let's praise the amazing cast ( and casting director) here for a moment. Yay, the movie isn't only full of white people! Yay, we have a badass female protagonist! Yay, Oscar Isaac is my favorite! But seriously, the cast is great and their work is great, especially the newbies. I'll happily follow any mainstream sci-fi adventure with a cast that can impress me this much this quickly. Focal point: My favorite scene in the film is when Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) are attempting to fix the Falcon, and BB-8 is withholding the location of the Rebel base. It's a fast and charming verbal dance between the three, and one that had me giggling for minutes afterward. It's scenes like that that won me over. Let's hope Abrams has more of those up his sleeve.

Here's a list of other objections some have had with this new film. Some are far more problematic than others, but generally I felt most of these ideas while watching the picture. Check it out: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/274463/episode-vii-sucks/.

IMDb: The Force Awakens

Ex Machina (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

Easily the most surprising thriller in recent memory, Ex Machina stylishly welcomes us into what is sure to be a summer movie season for the record books. Though its cool facade never seeks to approach blockbuster status, its pristine gloss and wildly intelligent craft far surpass most of the crap going through our cinemas in the last two months. What we have here is a concept-driven meditation on humanity, technology, and their increasingly ambiguous relationship. In fact, I would consider this picture to be the dark sister of Spike Jonze's 2013 Her; in each, we see a human man develop his understanding of an artificial intelligence (not insignificantly coded as female) before his attachment becomes romantic.

But it is, to be sure, the Gothic version of that tale. We have a futuristic haunted house, an ambiguous host with bizarre idiosyncrasies, bodies stuffed in closets, guests-turned-prisoners under observation and study, and even a particularly disturbing murder. So who's who? Okay, the lonelyheart oddball is played with striking vulnerability by Domhnall Gleeson, who is certainly one to keep on your radar (he is a busy rising star, with roles in Calvary, Anna Karenina, and the upcoming The Revenant and Star Wars: Episode VII). He is matched by the pitch-perfect Oscar Isaac (a personal favorite, bringing to mind his other recent triumph in A Most Violent Year) whose buff machismo is almost as subversive as his character's plans. And Alicia Vikander steals the show with her incredible movement work as the Artificial Intelligence robot called Ava. Most importantly, first-time director Alex Garland controls his film with a measured, contemplative eye and a calculated grasp on a lot of abstractions. Here he presents a gripping thriller made all the more important with its theological underpinnings, to say nothing of its technological, sociological, or even sexual dimensions (the romantic/erotic drive of this film lies most potently in what we don't clearly see: Ava "undressing" her previous incarnations, Caleb's voyeurism, Nathan's sadistic control over his servant and even Caleb (thinly disguised as flirtation)).

Ex Machina is slow but never ponderous, and its examination of human existence is almost unbearably precise, if suspiciously broad. Garland's camera (rather, cinematographer Rob Hardy's camera) lingers over exquisite but sparse sets, forcing us to consider factors of wealth and materialism in Nathan's world. Gorgeous shots of clouds passing over mountains are juxtaposed with sessions between Caleb and Ava, serving as a breath of fresh air out of the confining artificial light of Nathan's underground lair and reinforcing an unspoken conflict of interests between nature and artifice, God and man. It is not by mistake that it is outside that Caleb receives almost divine inspiration to question Nathan's motivations and behaviors, and where he ultimately decides to betray Nathan. In one outdoor instance, Caleb asks if Nathan ever feels like God, and in an indoor scene not long after, Nathan declares himself to be like God.

If you're thinking that this movie sounds all over the place, I promise it's not. But it does suggest a wide range of hot discussion points for you to immediately hop on as you're walking out of the auditorium. It's intimate but abstract, and its power lies in its almost fantastic quality: Like a parable, it presents us with archetypes and Big Picture themes, lets them do damage to each other, and forces us to make our own interpretive conclusions about what happens. All while we sit on the edge of our seats.

And you thought you were just going to relax at the movies this summer.

P.S. - If you were wondering, I think this film brings a harsh focus on the more common concept of deus ex machina ("god from the machine") specifically in the absence of deus in the title. I found the film's theological themes particularly stimulating as a result of the conspicuous lack of a "god-force" in the film. But that might be a discussion for another time.

IMDb: Ex Machina