Tag: Film Review

The Last Jedi (Review)

The Last Jedi (Review)

This movie did not go the way I thought it was going to.

I’m a nerd, if that wasn’t clear enough.  I love Star Wars.  I’m always quick to point out the prequel’s faults but I’m just as quick to point out the prequels strengths and what they did right (which are few but they are there if you pay attention).  I remember my heart soaring when I heard the John Williams score booming in my ears when The Force Awakens started.  While I enjoyed that movie, I also recognized that it tried too hard to stay close to the Original Trilogy instead of trying to be something new.  I could understand the reasoning – after all, the last time someone did something new with Star Wars we got Jar Jar Binks –  but at the same time, this was a brand new trilogy of Star Wars films.  They needed to be different.

The Last Jedi is a very different film.  At the beginning, it starts to feel like The Empire Strikes Back, portraying the Resistance as on the run and on their last legs trying to regroup from an unending force of destruction.  Towards the second act, though, it starts to feel different.  Emphasis on emotion and loss become more prevalent as Daisy Ridley’s character Rey explores why Luke Skywalker went into exile.  Then John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran have to go to a planet seemingly ripped straight from the prequels to move the plot along.  Things get more desperate as Oscar Issac disagrees with Laura Dern with how to run the Resistance.

As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but feel like the film was meandering around from plot line to plot line.  Even when the film finished, I left the theater still thinking about the film.  There was so much about the film that felt familiar but turned on its head and sent in a different direction.  This is ultimately what has divided fans so much about the film.  It’s a film that knows your expectations and then willingly subverts them.

Questions that were raised in The Force Awakens are not only left unanswered but also made to feel unimportant, like they were not the questions you should be asking.  So I left the film wondering what questions should I have been asking?  Eventually, I stopped wondering what questions I should have been asking and instead wondered what exactly was the film trying to say.  I could go on about my thoughts on the film but in the end, this is a review so I should step away from spoiler territory.

The film does meander but it all comes together in the third act.  The seemingly multiple themes spread throughout do merge into one idea that the film does portray rather well.  It is a very well put together film, but it is definitely a film that is intentionally subversive.  Rian Johnson knew fan’s expectations going in and decided to toss them on their heads in order to force the audience to think.  To think about what, well that’s up to you.  All I know is that this is a very amazing but very different Star Wars film than I was expecting.

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Fury (Review)

Fury (Review)

At the recommendation from an Army Captain.

David Ayer doesn’t really have the best reputation in recent years, though by all accounts, how Suicide Squad turned out wasn’t directly his fault.  He had one vision on the project and the studio had a different vision after the reception of Batman v. Superman.  So I was surprised to learn that Fury, a movie that was very well received (and for which Shia LaBeouf reportedly pulled out one of his own teeth for the role, instead of, you know, acting like he had a tooth missing.  You know, like an actor), and by all accounts, accurate, was also directed by David Ayer.

The first thing that struck me is that this film feels more like a movie set in modern times.  It doesn’t dwell on the heroism of WW2, it focuses on the mud and dirt.  The PTSD, the blood.  The parts of war that we more associate with modern war movies for our modern sensibilities.  The characters in this film are enlisted men, who are introduced fixing a broken tank while their old friend’s corpse is rotting in the seat next to them.

What also struck me about the film was how accurate it seemed about living in a tank.  The close, almost claustrophobic living conditions with no sense of privacy.  Privacy does not exist in this world.  That’s how it is portrayed.  The tank are these soldiers world, their country and everyone else outside the tank are outsiders and/or enemies.  This is the mentality of the movie.

At times the story seems to bog down and force a plot development that we’ve seen a million times before but I ignored that part just because everything about the scene before was fascinating to me.  Even the prolonged dinner scene during the middle of the movie was interesting to watch in order to see where these characters are coming from.  They may act terribly but their work is terrible.  In essence, the more people they kill, the closer they get to the end of the war.  Morality and ethics don’t play into their lives.

I didn’t care much for the plot of the film.  It seemed to be more or less what you would expect from a war movie.  What I was fascinated by was the interactions between these people and getting to know them for who they are as soldiers.

Thor: Ragnarok (Review)

Thor: Ragnarok (Review)

I think someone likes Led Zeppelin.

The Thor trilogy might be the weirdest trilogy in the MCU.  Iron Man pretty much stays the same in terms of style but slowly goes downhill in terms of quality.  Captain America jumps up in quality by the second movie and becomes the best trilogy overall.  And here’s Thor with a pretty-good movie, a meh movie and a crazy over the top movie.

The one thing that comes to mind when I watched this movie is that the characters of Thor and Loki have significantly changed from what they were.  I believe that the director – Taika Waititi – wanted them to act like how they are depicted in the actual norse myths.  So Thor is more of a buffoon than you might be used to, quicker to act than to think.

Thor and Loki are also less antagonistic than they were in previous films.  They actually act more like quarreling brothers at times, acting more like they do in the myths.  Loki does a thing that gets out of his control and Thor has to force him to fix it.  Not to say that they don’t act seriously.  They still remember the things they’ve done in the past and this informs how they act towards each other, but you still remember that they are still brothers and they still love each other, even if they don’t want to admit it.

When I saw the logo change for the film, I was worried that they had changed it to make it more like Guardians of the Galaxy.  Well, that was exactly what they did but it was rationalized.  The film is basically the way they merge the Thor world with the Guardians of the Galaxy world.  The Nine Realms have always felt strange and like they might not exist in the same dimension as the rest of the galaxy.  This film basically says that yes, the Nine Realms are just one part of the galaxy.

It’s definitely the funniest Marvel movie, in my opinion.  Funnier even than Guardians of the Galaxy and the laughs just keep coming.  The film is never too serious for too long.  If a serious moment goes on for a few minutes, you know that something funny is going to happen to lighten the mood.  Which is a shame at times because they bring up some interesting ideas and themes that they don’t go anywhere with.  It suffers from a problem most Marvel movies have in that they never stray from the movie being about good vs evil.

Cate Blanchett as Hela the goddess of death is a blast but also suffers from Marvel’s penchant for boring villains.  Her motivations are pretty much the same motivations for Loki; she wants the throne because she was denied it.  That’s about it.  Thankfully, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie is a breath of fresh air, with a backstory and character arc that is interesting and different from others.  I found myself liking every scene she was in, making her in my opinion one of the highlights of the film.

Another highlight is the Hulk.  And when I say Hulk, I mean Hulk.  Bruce Banner is in there for a bit, but its the Hulk that has more to do.  This time around, he actually has a personality and spoken lines of dialogue.  His behavior is like a child that can destroy everything he sees, which is a welcome difference from the other iterations of him.  This time, it feels like the Hulk and Bruce Banner are two separate entities trapped in one body, which is an interesting change.

The film is definitely worthy of all the praise its getting.  It’s funny, it’s epic, it’s heartwarming and it’s just a great, wild ride from start to finish.  It’s never too serious for too long which might be a problem if that’s what you want but most likely, you’re just watching this film to watch Hulk punch Surtr the fire giant in the face.

The Foreigner (Review)

The Foreigner (Review)

It’s nice to see Jackie Chan kicking ass again.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it many times before but expectations can make or break a film.  You’re opinion of a film will be vastly different if a film is marketed as a comedy and you get a horror film than if you got what you expected it to be.  Which is why I absolutely believe the story of a woman suing because she expected Drive to be a Fast and the Furious-esque film and she got a cerebral character analysis of a murderer (or something).  And although the disconnect of the film is not as strong as those movies, The Foreigner also has that same sort of problem.

It’s marketed as a Jackie Chan action film and part of it is that.  Jackie Chan is doing what he does best: action set pieces with awesome stunts.  What’s different this time around is that the story of this movie is more grounded in a serious topic, that of terrorism.  Jackie Chan plays a father trying to get revenge on the terrorists who killed his daughter, a role that he plays wonderfully in a subdued way.  There is a cold callousness to his character that makes you sympathize with him in an immediate way.

This film is, however, not really an action film.  There are absolutely action scenes but it’s a lot more political than the trailers lead on.  Pierce Brosnan is a former member of the IRA (which the terrorists claim to be a part of) and his efforts are to keep the peace.  His motivations are entirely devoted to making sure no more blood is spilled between England and Ireland.  Jackie Chan, however, doesn’t believe him, which leads the viewer to have an interesting disconnect with our supposed hero.  Is he righteous?  Or is he a grieving man grasping at anything that could be connected to his daughter’s death?  The answers aren’t so clear, which is a common theme in this film.

Pierce Brosnan’s own character seems beset on all sides within his own Mob-like political family.  People have their own agendas and they’re working against each other in a sort of Game of Thrones like way.  They’re shadow games are being forced to light through the actions of an old Chinese man who want’s answers no matter the cost.  These actions continue to reverberate and expand beyond to affect even the lives of highest levels of government.

I personally can’t fault this film for being different from my expectations.  I actually love it when a film can actually surprise me.  That being said, I was expecting a Jackie Chan movie and got a majority of Pierce Brosnan with Jackie Chan feeling more like a side-character.  I was expecting an action movie and I got a political thriller tied directly to The Troubles in Ireland, an event in history that I have no frame reference for or background on to see if this film is actually accurate in how it treats the subject matter.

The film is not a bad movie at all.  In fact, I was engrossed by the whole thing.  It’s not really a Jackie Chan centric movie though, which might be off-putting for some viewers.  Even the final act sort of falls flat because it’s trying to wrap up a million different threads and it doesn’t really feel as climactic as it could have been.  Then again, maybe that was the point.

I’m sorry if my feelings of this film aren’t as clear but they’re really not.  For every flaw I find, I find a reason to justify it.  There’s a sense that a majority of the film is kept in a dark from everything else, trying to stay hidden from the world.  It was an enjoyable mystery to watch but at the end, I’m not sure what I took away from it or if anything was really solved in the end.  It was a fun ride but it wasn’t really satisfying in the end.  Again, which may have been the point.