Author: Tim Lilly

I am a videographer and editor based out of the Washington, D.C. area. I write movie reviews and occasionally host a podcast with Mason Manuel of MasonMD.org. I currently work as a Live Event Operator at Verizon.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Review)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Review)

Ah, Star Wars.  One of two iconic sci-fi properties to ever grace our cultural mind.  Regardless of how you view the Prequels or the changes made to originals, you can’t deny that Star Wars, as a phenomenon, is here to say.  And now with the return of Star Wars last year with Episode VII: The Force Awakens, it seems we are going to be getting more and more Star Wars in the years to come.  This year, we got Rogue One, the first of the Anthology series of Star Wars films, covering side stories and the backgrounds of famous characters.

Rogue One is the story of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a career criminal who is taken and forced to join the Rebel Alliance to find her father, the unwilling architect for the Death Star.  She is forced to accompany career Rebel Alliance Soldier Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and repurposed Imperial droid, K-2SO.  Along their journey, they are joined by recently defected Imperial Pilot, Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), blind warrior and believer in the Force, Chirrut Imwe, (Donnie Yen) and his partner, Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen).

The first thing I have to give props for is the diversity of the cast.  Not just diverse in the sense of their racial background (I’m still very happy about their casting choices), but also in how different the characters are.  Although I was not able to remember their names (not because they were unmemorable but because they were in no ways as easy to remember as Han, Luke or Leia, this being set in a galaxy far, far away), I could instantly recognize each character.  When the camera flashed to a shot of one of the characters, there was no way I was going to confuse who it was.  I knew exactly who it was.

This just makes it even more of a shame that character development really took a back seat to the plot.  There is a lot of pathos going on for these characters that doesn’t really seem to go anywhere.  Things do come to a head in the film between two characters, but it never really feels resolved.  It just happens and then you’re off to the next set piece.  This happens to Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera, an extremist who has been broken by the war.  His whole character appears to be to show just what a war can do to a person but in the end, we can’t spend too much time on this without sacrificing the rest of the movie so what we’re left with is a character with a weird rasping voice.

Speaking of, there are quite a lot of references to previous films.  Either characters that appeared in previous films (like Grand Moff Tarkin in a CGI role that is a little hard to get used to for the first few minutes), or places that are revisited (one location actually made me go “oh, hey, we’re back here again” in the theater).  There are so many references that I started to wonder if any of them were actually necessary.  Where do you draw the line between a reference that is there because it would make sense story-wise for them to be there, and a reference that is there just for the sake of a reference?

One thing that I will appreciate is that this film is by far the darkest Star Wars film of the franchise, because this is absolutely a war film.  People die, sometimes not for victory but for the chance of victory.  This is not the time frame of A New Hope because in this time frame, hope doesn’t exist yet.  This is the edgier side of Star Wars that hasn’t really been seen in a while, and I appreciate that.  It makes the franchise feel more alive.

I truly enjoyed the film.  From start to finish, I really did enjoy it.  With that said, I can’t help the more I think about it, the more problems I find.  The characters aren’t as developed as I would have liked, though this is a much larger cast than in previous films.  Everything just moves from set piece to next set piece.  Having said all of that, at the end of the day, it was truly a story worth telling and I’m still glad I went to see it.  Plus, the final scene with Darth Vader (it’s not a spoiler to know that Darth Vader is in this movie, the trailers showed that he was) was well worth the price of admission.

Moana (Review)

Moana (Review)

Directed by Disney duo Ron Clements and Jon Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin), Moana follows the titular Moana (Auli’i Cravalho), the daughter of the chief of a Polynesian tribe, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with a goddess.  She sets sail in search of the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) as she hopes to save her people.

I was really excited for this movie, mainly because the Polynesian culture is a culture that is very rarely seen in films.  And the film did not disappoint. Right from the start, the film immerses you in Polynesian culture, to the point that I am still humming and listening to “We Know the Way” even days after watching it.  Though, I guess I could say that of every song in the film as each song is catchy and powerful, and the soundtrack as a whole is more focused and thematically linked than Frozen, which suffered from a soundtrack and sounded like it was written by fifteen different people.

Everything from the music to the design of the characters instantly makes the film stand out from other similarly animated films such as Frozen and Tangled.  I make those comparisons mainly because the animation style (or at least the style of the characters) reminds me a lot of them.  Though I guess it’s no surprise considering that they are all animated by the same team.  It’s by no means a problem nor is it a distraction, though I almost wish the art style was different in order to differentiate the movies from each other artistically.  I remember how Mulan was animated to almost appear like a Chinese painting and I wish Moana was more Polynesian in style as well as story.

That issue is just a minor one for me, however.  While I was watching I didn’t care about the style because I was wrapped up in the story, the characters and the music.  While the story suffers in certain places (the beginning sort of drags and meanders while a character’s return at the end feels abrupt), it is the characters that sell it.  Moana is strong-willed but also unsure of herself.  In fact, it is her internal struggle that ends up being more interesting than her external struggle and I will always love movies like that.  It gives the film it’s center, it’s heart and it’s how we latch on to a character.  I don’t care who you are, at some point in your life you struggled with the age old question of “who you are.”

This theme of identity also extends to Maui, who at first appears to a somewhat charming yet brutish and selfish warrior, changes towards the end as we explore where he came from and why he is the way it is.  His struggles never overshadows Moana’s struggles, however, and the focus always remains on Moana and her adventure.  I say ‘adventure’ and not ‘story’ because this film really is an adventure form start to finish.  The common sentiment with this film is that Moana is Disney’s first action princess and they are absolutely correct.  She knows what she needs to do and she rarely hesitates.

Moana was an absolute joy from start to finish.  It’s funny, it’s endearing and I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.  You should absolutely watch this movie.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Review)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Review)

I, like most of the known world, have been a fan of Harry Potter since I started reading it as a child.  My relationships with the movie adaptations, on the other hand, have more or less been hit or miss.  While I enjoy them overall, I never like how much they cut out of the books.  I understand the need to fit the film into a manageable viewing time, but I always felt that certain scenes that were cut from the book were sometimes necessary to understand not only the characters but the story overall.  I’ll never forgive the fact that they completely cut out the final conversation between Harry and Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and condensed it down to a few scant lines that barely cover anything.

Still, one can’t deny the cultural impact that Harry Potter has had on a generation and with the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was content with the journey and I moved on with my life.  I guess I moved on too well because Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released and I still haven’t read it.  And to be honest, I wasn’t that excited to hear about five new movies.  Perhaps in my mind, Harry Potter is over and done with so it’s hard to accept anything new.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them follows the adventures of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a wizard who studies and takes care of magical creatures, as he travels to New York.  When he bumps into Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a down on his luck no-maj (muggle for the British), magical beasts from Newt’s briefcase are released and they, along with former Auror Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein (Katherine Waterson), must go through the city collecting them before the Wizarding World is exposed.

Right from the get-go, this film feels like the last four films of the Harry Potter films, due, no doubt, to David Yates’ direction.  So, right from the get-go, this film feels a lot darker than the early years of Harry Potter, which makes sense because while the film still has the magic and whimsy that befits the Wizarding World, this is still the world of adults who have to deal with adult issues.

This is the source of the problem that I feel the film has.  There are two distinct storylines that are running through the film.  One deals with Newt and Jacob’s efforts to recapture the creatures that escaped.  This is the story that is filled with wonder and joy.  The other deals with Tina and Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) attempting to find a creature that wreaking havoc through New York.  This is the story that is filled with some of the darkest material I’ve ever seen in the Harry Potter universe.

How can you reconcile a fun and upbeat story about capturing unique and fantastical creatures with a story of witch-hunts and child abuse?  Plus, this new series has to introduce a completely new side of the Wizarding World (the culture of the Wizarding World in America), so the beginning of the movie meanders around, making Newt’s storyline feel unimportant in the face of the true story, of an invisible beast of rage killing and destroying New York.  And in the middle of it all, there’s Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), an adopted son of a witch-hunter who is frequently beaten with a belt.

Speaking of which, there are several actors who simply excel as their characters.  Dan Fogler is simply delightful as Jacob, allowing us to see a no-maj viewing magic for the first time with the same love that us fans had when we first saw it.  Ezra Miller draws so much sympathy for his struggle.  Even Colin Farrell is interesting if only to see a view of magic that isn’t really expressed, the view that the law hurts more people than it helps.

Even with these wonderful characters, though, it can’t help the fact that the film just feels like events transpire only to set up events in the sequels because films today aren’t interested in being good films, they’re interested in setting up franchises.  How one character’s arc ends was extremely bold and surprised me (I always love it when films surprise me), but it also left me wondering what the point of it was?  It didn’t make sense in this film but I have the feeling that it will make sense in the next films.

Having said all of that, I want to see what happens in the next films.  Maybe it’s the magic of Harry Potter but even with all the problems I see in the film, I still want to see where this series takes me.  I probably enjoyed it much more than the original movies, which is probably because this isn’t based on a book and there was nothing cut out of it that I felt shouldn’t have been cut. In the end, it is a fun film to watch, and despite all the problems I found with it, I still enjoyed my time visiting the Wizarding World again.  And I believe this will probably be the film that makes me finally read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Trolls (Review)

Trolls (Review)

Where do I even begin with this film?

Trolls are about the Trolls, those toys that you had as kids with small bodies but long hair, who live in the forest singing, dancing, making scrapbook and generally being happy all the time.  They have a predator, a race called the Bergens, who can only be happy by eating Trolls.  When Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), throws a loud party, it draws the town to the attention of the bergen, Chef (Christine Baranski), who kidnaps Poppy’s friends.  She forces Branch (Justin Timberlake), an unhappy and sarcastic troll, to accompany her as they go off to rescue their friends.

To say that I was confused throughout the whole movie is an understatement.  Nothing in this world makes sense.  It’s all topsy-turvy with strange animals and even stranger settings.  It almost looks like a world straight from a Dr. Seuss book.  I have to say, though, that I found myself ignoring the strangeness and just going along for the ride.  It has a charm which is probably due to their awareness that this is all crazy.  They know how insane this is, but just go with it.

While I can enjoy the movie and the music, I worry that the music will eventually become dated.  Every song seems to be a rehashed version of a Top 40 song which just makes it easier to date.  The songs are catchy though and serve a purpose of moving the emotional plot along.

The animation is interesting in its own right.  Everything about the world, from the trees to the animals, are designed to look like they’re made out of scrapbook felt and paper.  If anything, this whole thing was designed to look like it was a book made by a child (which, even the craziness of the world, it probably was).

The characters are your typical kids movie stereotypes.  Anna Kendrick is the happy go lucky one while Justin Timberlake is the sourpuss and they have to work together to do the right thing.  This whole film does have the feeling of a corporate paint by numbers movie.

Still, I found myself enjoying it, even though the movie is predictable.  The songs are catchy, the visuals are ridiculously bizarre and the characters are funny.  The best analogy I can think of is that this movie is like cotton candy: it’s sweet, fluffy and colorful with not much substance, but if you can enjoy it for what it is, then it’s a good time.

Arrival (Review)

Arrival (Review)

Twelve alien spacecrafts appear all across the world.  With no way to communicate with them, the military hires top linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to find a way to communicate with them and to discover the answer to the big question: why are they here?

Right from the beginning, you know the movie isn’t going to be about the aliens.  It’s going to be about Amy Adams’ relationship with her daughter, who died at a young age due to cancer.  This event seems to permeate throughout Adams’ world, making everything a subdued gray.  This is no doubt thanks to the awesome cinematography of Denis Villeneuve, who directs every shot with such intensity that I found myself awed by the framing of every shot.

Amy Adams subdued performance steals the show where she proves once and for all that yes, she is a better actress than Batman v. Superman made her out to be.  There’s a subtlety that runs throughout the whole movie that just makes sure that the audience is invested, even when all she’s doing is looking up at the towering ships in awe.  From frame one, we are with Adams.  Everything that happens and everything that we see only happens because Adams is there to see it.  This is truly a movie with only one point of view and that is our heroine.

A movie that springs to mind is Interstellar except it is by far not as flashy.  Not only are the stakes just as big but the emotional impact is gut wrenching.  There is a spirituality that permeates throughout the film that I can’t really go into detail about for fear of spoiling the movie.

I almost don’t want to say anything more for fear of ruining the movie for people who want to see it.  It’s one of those movies where the less you know about it the better.  What I can say is that I guarantee that we will be seeing this film at the Oscars or on people’s Top 10 lists of the year.  If you love science fiction, go see this movie.  If you love movies that stick with you well past when you’ve driven out of the parking lot, go see this movie.  For me, this was probably the most important film of the year.

The Accountant (Review)

The Accountant (Review)

The Accountant is an action-thriller that is honestly hard to describe.  It’s not a movie that’s about a plot or story but is more about introducing this character of Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant who was trained by his military father to defend himself with any and all means necessary.  That means martial arts and gunplay, making him one of the deadliest people on the planet.

One thing that surprised me about the movie was how much time they spent explaining what autism is.  The movie also seems to serve as a way to explain autism to the masses and then hiding the public service under an action-thriller movie starring Ben Affleck in a rare role where he proves that he does have the ability to act.  Up until this point I had assumed that he was a better director than he was an actor but he actually does a pretty good job in this movie.  As to whether or not his portrayal is an accurate representation of autism, I’m not the person to ask.

One interesting side story is JK Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson, who are members of the Financial Crimes for the Treasury.  They are the ones who are trying to discover Wolff but they’re not really the main threat that Wolff has to deal with.  In fact, they never really interact with each other throughout the movie.

The one way that I would describe this movie is that a lot of the plot lines are scattered around.  It’s trying to be several things at once and it almost suffers.  Even JK Simmons’ story towards the end of the movie is all over the place.  Anna Kendrick is there in the movie but she’s barely a footnote, simply being the token damsel in distress.

That said, the action is solid and fun and the story has twists and turns that kept me invested throughout.  I’m simply not surprised that the movie felt a little longer than it probably should have been.

Doctor Strange (Review)

Doctor Strange (Review)

Doctor Strange tells the origin story of the titular Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a famous neurosurgeon who loses the use of his hands in a car accident.  In his desperation, he seeks the help of a group of mystics and sorcerers led by the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton).  As he learns the mystic arts, he must battle with Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), a rogue sorcerer who is trying to find a way to bring eternal life to the people.

There was a lot of controversy around the film regarding the casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One and the stereotypical tropes that Doctor Strange relies on (the exotic East as a source of mysterious power).  People who know me know that I was pretty upset by these things but what they probably don’t know is the reason why I was upset.  It wasn’t because I thought the movie would be terrible before I’ve even seen it and that nobody should enjoy this movie because of these reasons.  Its because it’s a problem that somehow still continues to exist in the movie industry today.  Hollywood would always rather hire a white actor over an asian actor because they sell.  The common audience don’t often go to Asian countries to see what it’s actually like there, so they don’t ask questions when these stereotypes crop up again and again.  If it seems like I’m targeting this film in particular, it’s simply because it’s the most recent example of these problems.

Did any of these problems stop me from enjoying this movie?  Hell no.

The movie reminds me a lot of the original Iron Man movie with it’s smaller, simpler narrative.  Dr. Strange also reminds me a lot of Tony Stark, though, regrettably, Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t quite have the same charisma that Robert Downey Jr. does.  Benedict Cumberbatch is a brilliant actor, though, and he does his job as Dr. Strange incredibly well.  In fact, this entire cast of characters was surprisingly well put together.  Tilda Swinton plays the part of the Ancient One with grace and poise but also with ferocity, making her one of my favorite characters in the movie.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is both charismatic and harsh as Mordo, Strange’s ally in arms.  Even Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius garners some sympathy, but only in the one scene he gets to be sympathetic, which continues the trend of Marvel villains being boring.

The only actress to really get the short end of the stick is Rachel McAdams, who is relegated to being the token girlfriend.  Even though she has her own life and is an accomplished nurse, her whole role in the movie is to be the representation of Strange’s former life.  Maybe I’m being too harsh because, to be fair, they used to be lovers but they broke up after the accident, which makes her more of the token friend.  Still, I hope that if they plan to use her again in the future, that they actually give her more to do than patch up Strange.

The main issue with the film is that it relies on so many tropes that this movie feels more like a paint by numbers Marvel movie.  The only part that was different is in how Strange deals with the issues.  He might very well be the only one in the entire MCU whose first instinct isn’t to fight or kill anyone.  As a doctor, he’s tasked with saving lives, not taking them and it was nice to see him solve problems through bargaining rather than killing.

I’ve listed numerous problems the film has but I still enjoyed the movie.  People seem to forget that you can both enjoy a movie immensely and still be aware of the problematic things that exist within it and by contrast to other movies, the problems in this movie are small in comparison.  Tilda Swinton is fantastic and ended up being my favorite character.  All in all, it’s a fun movie with some of the trippiest visuals I’ve ever seen.

Kubo and the Two Strings (Review)

Kubo and the Two Strings (Review)

If you must blink, do it now.

These are the words that started the movie and I have to say, I honestly cannot remember if I blinked.  I do remember doing my best to keep my eyes open so I didn’t miss a thing.  From the first frame, I was instantly engrossed in this epic of a story, unlike anything I had ever seen.  And yet today, I can say that thinking back, I still missed some key details that almost certainly require a second viewing.

Set in Ancient Japan, the film tells the tale of Kubo (Art Parkinson), a one-eyed boy who makes a living as a storyteller, bringing origami figures to life to enact the tales and exploits of his samurai father, Hanzo.  Every night, he must return home to his mentally handicapped mother before the moon rises or else his mother and grandfather will find him and take his other eye.  One night, however, he stays out too late and is forced to run away and find his father’s old armor, as it is the only thing that will protect him.  He is accompanied on his quest by Monkey (Charlize Theron), a stoic and harsh wooden charm brought to life by his mother and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), an amnesiac samurai cursed to take the form of a beetle.

Right from the beginning the movie is not about a quest to find a father’s old armor.  It’s about a young boy’s quest to discover who his parents are and about family and that is evident from the very first scene.  A mother caught in a storm at sea, capsized and cracking her skull on a rock and crawling desperately to protect her crying baby is an image that I was not prepared to witness at the beginning of a kids movie.  There are some very intense moments in this film that made me wonder if this movie should really be rated PG.

Then again, I’m not a kid anymore and I should remember that kids can handle quite a bit.  I remember as a kid watching a chinese cartoon where a child slits his own throat in order to save his father’s kingdom from 4 dragons.  As a kid, I didn’t understand that he was committing suicide.  I understood that he was sacrificing himself to save the kingdom (by the way, the movie in question is called Prince Nezha’s Triumph Against Dragon King).

Movies have a unique way of transporting us to another world and Kubo and the Two Strings is no exception.  It is a world steeped in Japanese fairy tale, mythology and folklore.  It is rare to find an American movie that is based in a different country’s culture and it is also refreshing to find a movie that is so unique.  The only complaint I have about the film would be the ending which seems more like the ending to an American fairy tale over an ending an Asian fairy tale would have.

Ultimately, the movie is about the journey and probably more about beginnings.  It’s touching, its intense, its funny and its everything I ever wanted from a movie.