I have quite a nifty backlog of films I've seen in the past couple of weeks just begging and screaming for reviews, but I also have one last burst of actual work to get done and not nearly enough time to do it. To reassure everybody that I'm not dead, I offer these one- and two-sentence thought capsules that will at least let you know what I thought of the new Star Wars, in case that was somehow something you were waiting on. Full reviews of all of these are coming sometime before 2016.
Room
Vacating my memory at a shocking rate, but Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay are both as good as you've heard. The script's structural problems go deep, and it's less insightful than it thinks it is about human behavior, but it's certainly never even a little dull. 7/10
Carol
I am, at last, never going to fully "get" Rooney Mara, an actress I find prickly and chilly in everything she's done outside of The Social Network, but even she's still pretty great in the best romantic film of this year, last year, and I imagine a couple of years before that. Gorgeous, purposefully wintry, and it earns the hell out of an ending that doesn't seem like it could possibly work. 9/10
Sicario
A visceral morality play centering on Emily Blunt in the absolute best performance of her career; the supporting cast lets me down, relatively (one has high expectations of Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin), but Roger Deakins's sandblasted cinematography does not. 8/10
James White
An unheralded barnburner of domestic turmoil that announces Christopher Abbott as a fully-formed New Actor To Watch For In Everything and gives him and Cynthia Nixon simply devastating material to tear into as a self-destructive son and terminally ill mother. 9/10
The Pearl Button
Patricio Guzmán's latest isn't the intellectually transcendent work that its counterpart, Nostalgia for the Light was, but it's still a challenging and more than rewarding consideration of nationality, human identity, and historical responsibility. 8/10
Bridge of Spies
I'm starting to wonder if Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kamiński have run out of things to say to each other. Tom Hanks, at least, is in peak form as the Embodiment of American Idealism run through a surprisingly bitter realpolitik wringer, with enough zingers that you can tell the Coen brothers weren't sleepwalking through this one like they did with Unbroken. Still, this is awkwardly close territory to Lincoln, and it's not nearly as good. 7/10? 8/10?
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
"The Star Wars Original Trilogy: The Greatest Hits" is, I think, to the film's benefit more often than not - J.J. Abrams's inability to have an original artistic thought makes for an awfully tasty plateful of comfort food - though the familiarity of the third-act conflict is some real bullshit any way you slice it. Equal to or better than Return of the Jedi, but I'll remind you that I don't value ROTJ anywhere remotely near the first two films. 7/10
20 December 2015
34 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
So, are you still planning a more in-depth review of TFA, but you're really pressed for time (finals season) and you just wanted to get some quick thoughts down?
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think I've been refreshing the page every hour since Friday night?
ReplyDelete"I am, at last, never going to fully "get" Rooney Mara"
ReplyDelete"Sicaro[, a] visceral morality play"
This is a vital piece of the puzzle I've been trying to put together for the past three years, since I found Antagonie: namely, you're about the smartest movie dude I know, yet we agree (even broadly) only about 30% of the time.
We do agree on The Force Awakens, sort of, kind of, I think. (It sort of sucks in many ways, but is fun in others, right?) However, you're just wrong about Jedi. Like, objectively. In your defense, however, everybody else is too.
Anyway, congrats on (just about) finishing your first semster of grad school! My girlfriend just finished her first semester and I know how much work it is. Good luck with everything, Tim, and happy holidays.
Third -best Star Wars film is still better than you predicted.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that The Force Awakens was sort of generically entertaining in the moment but completely fell apart as soon as I left the theater and started going over it with my friends (and in my brain) makes me wonder if I'll ever truly enjoy a movie ever again.
ReplyDeleteBridge of Spies should get an extra point simply because of that spy plane sequence in the middle.
ReplyDeleteWeirdly enough, I've been finding more and more things to like about TFA the longer it's been--I wanna wait until I see it again this week before nailing my thoughts, but I actually found it one of the most thematically interesting of the films since Empire, with a rather fascinating relationship to the original films (it repeats a *lot* of stuff, but notice how everything is deliberately altered or skewed to offer a different perspective, kinda putting you at a distance from the initial tropes and iconography. Not for nothing is "wreckage of iconic ships" the dominant visual motif of the first half of the film).
ReplyDeleteEmpire will always be my favorite, but this is currently in close running with the original for my second favorite (though even at this point I acknowledge it as the weaker of the two films). It's really growing on me, I have to say.
T. Hartwell - agreed. I'm going to save most of my thoughts until Tim's full review, but I thought the way it evoked the originals without copying them was a terrific way to pay homage to what we love about Star Wars while still ushering it into a new era. I could probably have been more satisfied without the "attack the superweapon" finale, but compared to the stink of the prequels it was sublime.
ReplyDeleteI think FA is an example of how remakes should be done. Maintaining the feel and emotional beats of the original while never just directly copying any of them.
ReplyDeleteI went to see it with zero expectations, and left on a really good high. Better than what I came in with.
Star Wars is fun again, you guys! Isn't that awesome?
I kind of didn't like this one. There was a lot of stuff I did, a whole lot of new stuff at that. And yet, somehow, it doesn't quite feel like Star Wars. It has, in fact, made me retroactively fonder of the prequels. Maybe I just miss George Lucas.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you've got reviews of Sicario and Bridge of Spies. Carol has yet to screen in Des Moines, and I've been looking for it. Hadn't heard of James White until now, and I feel compelled to look for it. I'll confess to curiosity about whether or not the last Hunger Games film is in your backlog; while knowing that the third book isn't your preferred installment in the trilogy, I'm really interested in hearing your detailed thoughts on the cinematic wrap-up of the series.
ReplyDeleteAlmost always entertaining, but rarely memorable.
ReplyDeleteDo Krampus as well please!
ReplyDeleteOf course, I can't wait to get your take on TFA, but I second the wish that you'll review Mockingjay Part 2 as well. Because I'm a completist, and I know you are, too.
ReplyDeleteFirst ever post! Firstly thanks for the great blog Tim; I've been an avid reader for a while and have learnt so much about what to appreciate when watching movies beyond the obvious 'do I like it' feeling. Good luck with the studies!
ReplyDeleteSaw FA last night and my immediate impression was that the first half was a great movie and the second half was a remake of a great movie. A pity it wasn't the other way round if we can't have more originality, but as I hated JJA's take on Star Trek I'm glad it was fun at least!
Forget Star Wars, give the people what they want: a Krampus review!
ReplyDeleteI third the request for a Krampus review, as well. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but everyone who is saying TFA "evokes the original film without copying it" really have blinders on. It absolutely copies it (and good chunks of the other two) but remixes the elements, kind of like the last third of Into Darkness. I still had a good time with it, especially the first half, but the lack of anything fresh was a little disheartening. Abrams is so talented at crafting exciting action and getting great performances from his casts-- it confounds me that he won't stray out of his comfort zone with his plots.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Matt, %100.
ReplyDeleteThough they had many awful moments, as Tim's reviews remind us, the prequels had their share of GREAT moments (Duel of the Fates, Across the Stars, Podracing, Darth Maul's makeup). TFA had no bad moments (maybe), but there was nothing great or memorable about it either, even the score sounded bored. Return of the Jedi may be sloppy, but again - Jabba, "It's a Trap!," "Many bothons died to bring us this information." and the whole Luke/Vader/Emperor showdown are burned into the cultural memory for all time. I don't even remember the name of the lead villain from TFA (Ben? Ren? Guy wearing a mask for no particular reason except to remind us of the other guy who wore a mask because he was MORE MACHINE THAN MAN!)
Which brings me to the absolute worst sin of TFA (Oh God, I told myself I wasn't going to nitpick like this, but damn it I saw AOTC five times in theatres I've earned it!), it completely negates Jedi, and the movies that came before it, by pressing the reset button. Everything went back to the way it was when Luke was on Tatooine (but now you don't need training to perform Jedi mind tricks, because Jedis are now basically X-Men).
I'm with you on Room though. I would rank it lower, because it bungles most of what made the book interesting, but boy do people love it.
You've gotta be planning a more in-depth TFA review like your other SW reviews right?
ReplyDeleteI hope you're not just trying to play down the movie by giving everyone a small snippet and make like it's not an important film to review right now because you think it's "just meh". Because that's like borderline trolling...not high-quality critiquing.
Seriously? Read the header "full reviews of all of these are coming before 2016"
ReplyDeleteSo I have three lists right now:
ReplyDeleteFilms I've seen that I want to write full reviews for. That's this list.
Film's I've seen that I'm definitely only going to bother writing those 450-word short reviews for, probably right after Christmas. Nobody has mentioned any of the films on that list so far.
Films that I've seen and might/should write full reviews for, but in the interest of time, and the fact that I don't really have all that much to say about them, might end up with short reviews. Mockingjay 2 is on this list, so is Youth, so is Spotlight. It's the shortest list.
And then there's the fourth list, films that I haven't managed to see yet. I am very sorry to say that Krampus is on this list.
What about those American Cancer Society reviews? :P
ReplyDeleteI was surprised at how much JJ Abrams seems to have watched Hayao Miyazaki movies before making TFA.
ReplyDeleteI also wasn't prepared to find the best parts of the movie before Han and Chewie show up.
Will- I'm picking back up with those the Monday after Christmas, and I hope to get through a nice big chunk of them before school resumes and starts to get awful again.
ReplyDeleteWell, jeez,Tim, what the heck are you doing trying to better yourself when we're all sitting here waiting for your reviews? Man, the nerve of some people!
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, I hope it's all going well, and you get everything you wanted out of it. Me, I'll just be sitting here hitting Refresh and procrastinating. Merry Christmas.
SPOILERS
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was disappointed that the back half felt so much like a remix. (Honestly, the leads being a woman and a black guy gave them some wiggle room with regard to the feeling of over-familiarity, but not much.) The movie really nailed its own flaws with the "It's like a Death Star!" "No, it's this size!" "So it's like a Death Star, but bigger!" conversation. After that, everything was so by-the-books, the tension just evaporated.
Overall, though, still had a really good time at this movie. It's just so *agreeable.* In retrospect, I feel like its main function is to serve as a confident springboard toward what we're going to be getting next year--as well as a showy re-establishment of, "Okay, look, we can do good movies again." Just to restore our faith before taking more risks.
So, if VIII is what I'm hoping it'll be, which is something weirder, riskier, and 0% "Greatest Hits," I'll be happy to forgive the well-trodden feeling of FA.
But if we keep going like this, the obvious capitalizing on nostalgia thing is going to wear out its welcome real quick.
Now, I'm going to go back over here to mourn.
All right. I was going to wait for the full review to put my thoughts in, but I once planned to wait for the full review of Big Hero Six before submitting my defence of that movie, and I'm still waiting (sorry Tim, but be flattered. You are my movie guy, and if it isn't here, it isn't anywhere). So here it is: my defence of the Force Awakens.
ReplyDeleteSome would say it's nothing but a retread. If you look at it in the broadest of strokes, it seems that way, but only if you accept "A droid carrying sensitive information on a desert planet..... yadda yadda... X-Wings attack the super weapon moments before it destroys the rebel base" as a plot description. Oh, and there is a bar full of aliens and weird music.
But that discounts so many amazing things from this movie. A defecting stormtrooper(!). A deeper Han Solo, plagued both by bitterness ad optimism that he appears more three-dimensional than in any of his other three appearances, and does a fantastic job (for me) of erasing his boorish idiot from ROTJ from memory. The characters of Rey and Finn are no cardboard cutouts of Luke, Han and Leia, but unique new characters, each with their own very real and very deeply held reasons to choose not to be heroes, but who do so anyway.
And then there's Kylo Ren, who wears a mask not to remind US of Darth Vader, but to remind himself. He's a twisted, deeply broken character who wants desperately to be more like his hero but knows he'll never quite be there. Vader was cold, cruel, and when angered would kill without thought or mercy, but never lost control. Kylo Ren throws lightsaber tantrums when things don't go his way, and when he takes off his mask it isn't evil under there, but confusion. It almost seems like Abrams personally calling out the prequels by saying "THIS is how you turn an entitled dickwad to the Dark Side successfully, George". He's scary because he's that powerful AND that out of control.
Do i wish there wasn't a superweapon to battle at the end? Yes, but then again, superweapons are as much Star Wars as stormtroopers who can't aim. The Extended Universe of novels (and this is the last time I'll mention that black hole, a vortex so strong it can trap entire virginities for all time) is lousy with superweapons. At least Starkiller Base is the most impressive.
And all of the retread elements deal with the character of Po Dameron. His arc follows the "Star Wars remake" thread most closely, leaving the other characters to do what they will. He is the one to entrust his vital information to his droid before being captured by the enemy, and he is the one to make the "trench run" at the end. It's like he's there, doing classic Star Wars stuff that we all love, while Finn and Rey are running around doing new, 2015 shit, like having gorgeous lightsaber battles in a winter wood at twilight. Which is probably the best lightsaber fight of the series, maybe excepting Empire, but I don't think so. It's vicious, and physical, and so, so beautiful.
This is Star Wars. Like I never thought it could be again. It isn't perfect. But God Damn if it isn't close.
@Brian: I'd wait till the full review, too, but you make a good point.
ReplyDeleteThe lightsaber battle is the best *and* the worst part of the whole movie. It's the only part where the action matches anything close to OT; yet (for my money) it's awfully unearned. People keep saying TFA's a remake of A New Hope, and that's true, but it goes beyond that; that lightsaber battle is what happens when you try to remake Star Wars and Empire at the same time, and then fit the beast into only a 135 minute runtime. One of the important omissions from Star Wars '77, after all, is that Luke does *not* fight Vader in a lightsaber duel; maybe the *most* important part of Empire is that Vader is barely trying and still beats Luke easily. (And of course, poor neglected Jedi doesn't get the credit it deserves for the impact of witnessing Luke finally meet his dad as an equal, then completely surpass him, both in terms of skill as well as moral fiber.)
Or, basically, what Alison already said far more upthread, which I really wish I'd said, because it's just about the pithiest way I can imagine to put it.
Sorry about the ACS jab Tim, didn't mean that as anything more than a joke, haha.
ReplyDeleteAll the great action scenes involved the Falcon, Tie Fighters, and whatever bit of awesomeness that Stormtrooper was wielding to fight Finn. These scenes were flawless, thrilling, and all happened in the first leg of the movie. It's a crying shame Abrams didn't attempt even one scene with elements we haven't seen before, like Empire's walkers and Degobah, Jedi's Jaba and speeder bikes-- even the prequels feebly attempted it with the pod race and the arena. I always thought it was a requirement to wow us with something completely new and technically dazzling. Maybe he thought the little Estelle Getty looking alien was a game changer?
ReplyDeleteOn a positive note, Han was fantastic. Nice to see Ford with a pulse again. Makes up for his lackluster turn in Jedi for sure.
Aw thanks, Hunter Allen. I had to look up "pithy" just now.
ReplyDeleteI would rate Sicario higher, to be honest. I thought Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro acted far better than you're giving them credit for, and the film itself is probably the best drug film ever made, a genre full of formulaic boring movies in spite of the very serious topic at hand. The criticism of the War on Drugs and US policies on the matter was fantastic, as it was the recognition of violence in Latin America, what with the Middle East having become the proverbial "most violent place on Earth", something that human rights organizations and even the UN itself would heavily dispute. I don't know, I probably love this movie more than I should since I'm a Latin American who is familiar with all of this.
ReplyDeleteAs for Episode VII, I loved the film. Yes, John Williams' score is lacking, something even the prequels (or at least Episode I) did better, and yes, it feels like an unoriginal remake at times. But damn is it a good remake, filled with characters you instantly fall in love with, gorgeous cinematography and exciting action scenes. Also, you have to love the subtle references to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I was disappointed Rey wasn't a pacifist like Nausicaa, but I still love how the writers of this film got a lot of characteristics from her, like her innocence, sweetness and strong will. She instantly became my favorite character in the movie, even more than Poe Dameron, who thanks to Oscar Isaac's excellent performance, steals every scene he is in.
What is it with you and JJ Abrams, anyway? Did he beat you up and steal your lunch money or something?
ReplyDelete