Last Jedi an unpredictable adventure

Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Image courtesy Disney.

Star Wars as a franchise has always worked best when hope is challenged by impending darkness. Hope without challenge is meaningless; hope needs to be earned through tribulation to be worth a damn, the bleakness countered by faith in one's friends, allies, and one's cause. Star Wars: The Last Jedi favors that ambiguity, putting its heroes in a desperate situation, with only their hope and faith in one another and their cause to lean on. The film rarely provides assurances that the hope they have is justified, that it will result in a happy ending for all involved. It's also why this movie is the first Star Wars entry in three decades to feel unpredictable.
This is a very good thing. The new Star Wars needs to separate itself from 40 years of cinematic history to be worth anything going forward. The only way to continue producing interesting stories is to take risks, through a few curveballs into the very well-established formula and keep the audience guessing on how the fate of the Star Wars galaxy will go. The nostalgia that carried The Force Awakens (which earns justifiable criticism for aping A New Hope) and influences Rogue One won't last forever; younger audiences need their own characters to like. Instead of recreating what worked before, writer/director Rian Johnson takes a few chances with Last Jedi to take some ownership of the material and ensure this isn't a carbon copy of Empire Strikes Back.
Last Jedi shares a few traits with Empire Strikes Back, notably by showing the rebels in their darkest moment. Hope is really the only thing Resistance members Leia (Carrie Fisher, RIP), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega), Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) have as they try to escape the evil First Order led by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Hope is what pushes Rey (Daisy Ridley) to the ends of the galaxy to recruit the bitter Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to the Resistance cause. Hope comes despite the Resistance being hopelessly outgunned by an impending force of destruction and despite little evidence that the soul of Kylo Ren can be saved from the dark side.
As the film makes clear, hope is a tough thing to hold onto. As the Resistance gets closer and closer to its destruction, its members have to be reminded frequently to maintain their hope and faith, to not succumb to the daunting odds mounting against them. Last Jedi is the rare Star Wars film to not adhere blindly to that sense of hope though; even for characters from a galaxy far, far away that aren’t technically human, it remains natural and vital even to question one's faith. Hope is put on trial, the characters weigh the faith they have in themselves, their friends, and their cause, and the process to a verdict is painful and dangerous.
Johnson does a lot of house cleaning in the two and a half hours of Star Wars time he has to work with. The puzzle box concept J.J. Abrams crammed into The Force Awakens is stripped away, to the great benefit of the franchise and for audiences frustrated by the that movie’s unnecessary ambiguity. The key mystery in that movie is granted a simple resolution that serves as a reminder of how greatness can come from even the humblest of beginnings. The victories earned by the Resistance are always Pyrrhic, good enough to render hope from but still damaging for a cause that can't afford to lose that much. The Last Jedi fights against the supposed goodness of the Jedi as well, doing more to question the wisdom of the Jedi Order than the prequels did in three movies. The Last Jedi makes a very convincing argument for ending the Jedi line; it's only Rey's hope in what the Jedi could accomplish that makes the Jedi Order possibly worth redeeming.
There remains some value in the old ways for Rey and the Star Wars franchise. Last Jedi posits a need for legends and heroes to inspire faith and hope to spur a rebellion against an unrelenting evil. The past is there to serve as a guiding light for the present, to give the new characters a path forward in the darkness as they find their own way toward salvation. As it is for the franchise too, which slowly but surely will separate itself from the past and find some hope of its own.

Review: Four out of Five Stars



Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13
Run time: 153 minutes
Genre: Science Fiction

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Target audience: The legions upon legions of Star Wars fans who will make Disney a whole ton of money this month.

Take the whole family?: Families will bring their kids regardless because Star Wars, but this could bother some of the really young kids. The length might also turn them away.

Theater or Netflix?: The effects are more than good enough to deserve a cinema trip. Whether it's worth paying for the 3D and IMAX is up for debate.

Where does this rank on the Star Wars pantheon?: Last Jedi still doesn't hit the mark of either Empire Strikes Back or A New Hope. I do put it ahead of the prequels, The Force Awakens, and the very good Rogue One, and as an adult I find Last Jedi to be more interesting and complex than Return of the Jedi.

Watch this as well?: Enough of the Star Wars franchise is good enough to merit another watch, especially Empire Strikes Back. Also check out a couple of writer/director Rian Johnson's previous works, Brick and Looper.

Tom Cruise shines in dark comedy American Made

Tom Cruise as Barry Seal in American Made. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

American Made’s Barry Seal (as played by Tom Cruise) embodies the dark side of the American Dream. He is the embodiment of what America can offer to visionaries and dreamers, a life of wealth and fame thanks to hard work, ingenuity, and an otherworldly amount of ambition. It’s the method of attaining those dreams that matters, and it’s the driving force behind director Doug Liman’s pretty excellent dark comedy.

American Made is one of those movies that sports the “based on a true story” slogan, which usually means minor amounts of truth overwhelmed by numerous exaggerations and flat out lies. And this movie is guilty as sin in stretching the truth, with the lies making Barry Seal appear less awful than the real-life counterpart in the early parts of the movie. But even the fantastical aspects don’t mask the truth of what happened completely, as the story itself is pretty close to the insanity depicted in this film. The movie's version of Seal’s life starts with the man as a TWA pilot recruited by the CIA (Domhnall Gleeson plays the mysterious CIA agent who recruits him) to spy on Communist fighters in Latin America in the late '70s. It snowballs into a connection with the Medellin Cartel led Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia), Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda), and Carlos Ledher (Fredy Yate Escobar), and the trafficking of drugs and guns in the early to mid '80s between the US, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Panama. Seal earns an almost impossible amount of money for his effort, enough for his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) and his family can live a lavish life in the boonies of Arkansas, at least until everything inevitably falls apart.

The truth is somewhere in there – Seal definitely had connections with the Medellin Cartel and worked for the DEA – although Liman and writer Gary Spinelli care less about the man and more about how easy it is for a man’s drive to achieve the American Dream can lead him into an impossible situation. The American Dream is connected with exceptionalism, and Seal is an exceptional risk taker and charmer, willing to put passengers in danger to reduce the boredom he suffers as a commercial airline pilot. His desire for a more interesting life puts him into what turns out to be an untenable situation, stuck in the middle of a war between the US government and violent drug runners. Any side he picks is the wrong one; siding with the cartel means he has to evade government officials, while spying for the government makes him a target for Escobar and company. An average man wouldn't end up in that situation; it takes a person with a certain type of genius – the word used most often to describe Seal in American Made – to get stuck that deep into a quagmire.

American Made wouldn't succeed as it does without the dramatic and comedic efforts of Cruise. Although he is a few years too old for the part – to the point that Cruise could be Wright's father – Cruise excels at providing the charisma, charm, and moderate insanity required to sell himself to so many different sides. This is an old school movie star role that requires wattage and the right type of smirk or smile to keep the audience a little far away from thoughts about how truly terrible of a person Seal is. Cruise turns a criminal into a beguiling scoundrel and wins viewers over despite his actions.

That turn in character reflects the surprisingly light tone Spinelli and Liman implement for a movie with this subject matter. Even amid some brutal murders and moments of uncomfortable intensity, American Made finds the humor in the horror and plays it to the hilt. Sequences that could easily be shown as dark are instead mined for a few jokes or an pretty good sight gag involving an impressive amount of cocaine. At least until the end, in which the actual repercussions of Seal's actions come to fruition and the movie pauses for a moment to let the actual horrors sink in. The idea of the American Dream never covers the consequences of unchecked aspirations, making the logical but still shocking ending to this movie more powerful than expected.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 115 minutes

Genre: Biographical

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Target audience: Tom Cruise fans and folks who are interested in the cocaine trade.

Take the whole family?: This is an R movie for several justifiable reasons, so just make it a date night.

Theater or Netflix?: It's good enough to deserve a cinema visit.

Academy Awards odds?: I don't think the movie will get that much, but I can see Tom Cruise getting a nomination for Best Actor. This is the best performance Cruise has offered in a long while – a cliché that does apply in this case – and without him this movie wouldn’t be as good as it is.

Watch this as well?: The 2001 movie Blow, featuring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz, a real-life adaptation of another American connected with Pablo Escobar, is pretty interesting and has a strong performance by Depp as George Jung.

The perils of violating nature

Leonardo DiCaprio stars in "The Revenant." Image courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Nature is a cruel, beguiling presence in “The Revenant.” It’s a being capable of inflicting great pain upon Leonardo DiCaprio's ill-fated Hugh Glass or providing the perfect situation for revenge, and does so while remaining neutral to the conflicts taking place within it. Nature’s fickle and complex, making it the most well-rounded being “The Revenant” has to offer, which is less an insult toward the film than a reflect of director and co-writer Alejandro González Iñárritu's view on mankind's lack of importance in the grand scheme of things.

The men in “The Revenant” aren't exactly the most virtuous of people either though. DiCaprio's Glass, a scout for a small fur trapping expedition in the 1820s, is the closest the audience gets to a likable character. He works alongside his son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) as guides for the expedition, at least until the group is attacked by Ree warriors searching for leader Elk Dog's (Duane Howard) kidnapped daughter Powaqa (Melaw Nakehk'o) and forced to flee for its lives. DiCaprio knows the way to the nearest fort, but is unfortunately mauled by a bear and cannot walk or talk, let alone guide a collection of confused men back to safe territory. Unable to carry him up a mountain, expedition leader Capt. Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) leaves Goodluck, young trapper Bridger (Will Poulter) and malcontent John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) to tend to DiCaprio until the man finally dies. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise when Hardy ends up betraying DiCaprio and leaves the injured frontiersman for dead. Left to fend for himself in his own grave, DiCaprio drags himself out and begins the perilous journey to the fort, facing off against the woods, the Ree warriors roaming the countryside, and his mortality.

“The Revenant” has all the trappings of a man vs. nature narrative. It's DiCaprio effectively alone in the woods fending off the cold, the snow and the vicious creatures thrown at him by an uncaring deity. But any victory Iñárritu shows during the course of the film is very much short term and often detrimental to those who opt to assist DiCaprio in his quest. As Iñárritu frames it, nobody really wins against nature; the best a person can do is survive and find another way to die.

Since a fight against nature is a losing battle, Iñárritu frames the true conflict in “The Revenant” as one among men tainted by the evils of revenge, greed and cowardice. Human nature is the driving force of the main conflict, represented by the triangle of death between DiCaprio, Hardy, and the Ree warriors who are on a quest that could very well be a film of its own. (It has been when the races were flipped in movies like “The Searchers”). Their conflict is fueled by sin and self-righteousness and doesn't end until the last bits of blood are absorbed by the natural world as a sacrifice of sorts for survival.

Blood is almost currency for “The Revenant,” at least considering how much of it is spilled and flowed. Poor DiCaprio gets the worst of it by far – the man grunts and screams in agony more often than he speaks – although a fair number of participants are stabbed, shot, castrated, raped, lynched, strangled and beaten mercilessly in the pursuit of self-preservation and revenge. It's as if the film is built on pain, both the physical sensation inflicted on DiCaprio and friends and the mental wounds inflicted upon the unfortunate DiCaprio. The film is built to hurt and built to cause audiences to squirm in reaction to that pain; the bear attack and its aftermath stirred a few groans and knuckle nips among viewers.

Contrasting all of the brutality felt by the humans is the tranquility of the setting around them. “The Revenant” is often blissfully quiet, with Iñárritu keeping his character’s mouths shut to tell his story through the eyes of the natural world. The ambient noise speaks volumes in this film, as does the images of snow melting and the river running and the reminder that, perhaps, things would be better if the humans weren’t around to trespass on the tranquility.

Sadly, much of the dialogue that is spoken is heavy and absent of subtlety. The messages sent by “The Revenant” are very, very clear, but Iñárritu still insists on having the characters spout it out to hammer home a clear and unnecessary point. For a movie that just breathes mystery and wonderment, a few words less would have said more than anything uttered by the characters themselves.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 156 minutes

Genre: Adventure

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Target audience: Art film fans and anyone who likes watching wanton bear attacks.

Take the whole family?: The bear attack alone is horrifying enough to keep the kids at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Matinee it to at least see why it’s getting the Academy Award buzz.

Academy Award chances?: It’s another solid contender for a Best Picture nomination, and the film will more than likely nab nods for Alejandro González Iñárritu in directing and for Best Adapted Screenplay. Most notably, Leonardo DiCaprio is the (early) favorite to win his first acting Oscar, which isn't too surprising; he is very good, and the competition isn't that deep this year.

Watch this as well?: Werner Herzog's epic “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” shares themes of colonization and the perils of violating nature with “The Revenant,” although Herzog's film is a little stranger and much more complex. Also take a look at “The New World,” Terrance Malick's beautiful and haunting interpretation of the Pocahontas story.

American dreaming

Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen star in "Brooklyn." Image courtesy Twentieth Century Fox.

The version of America depicted in the sensational “Brooklyn” is the one people dream about when talking about the good old days. The streets are clean and tread upon by impeccably dressed men and women, all of whom are searching for the American Dream. Strangely enough, finding that dream isn’t the issue; the tricky part for Saoirse Ronan’s Eilis is deciding if that dream is what she wants, or is it better perhaps to return home and follow the path set for her before she arrived in early 1950s America.

Romance comes into play in the decision making, although it really isn’t a factor for (the magnificent) Ronan before she steps on the boat. Life before the departure is depicted with a yawn, with the lass working at a market part-time for the cruel Miss Kelly (Brid Brennan), going to dances with her best friend Nancy (Eileen O’Higgins) and living with her beloved older sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) and mother (Jane Brennan). The trip across the Atlantic is a little rocky, but she arrives at the eponymous borough and settles into a boarding house run by the fiery Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters) with a small bag, a less than promising job at a clothing store, and an epic case of home sickness. But Ronan toughs out the harsh early going with the help of a friendly priest (Jim Broadbent), who enrolls her in night classes at a local university and persuades her to attend a few local meet and greet events. It's at a rather lame Irish dance that she meets dapper Italian plumber Tony (Emory Cohen), and her life begins to pick up once their relationship blossoms and she falls in love with him and life in America.

That is until Glascott dies and Ronan has to ship back to Ireland to comfort her grieving mother. What started off as a short trip home develops into an extended stay when she takes over her sister’s job as a bookkeeper, which begets plans to stick around and possibly fall in love with handsome rugby player Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson). Everyone around Ronan conspires to keep her in Ireland – Brennan goes as far as to set up her daughter's social schedule beyond her expected departure date – and the woman even starts questioning a possible return to life with Cohen in Brooklyn. It puts her in a tough spot, as each location has its benefits, among them a man hopelessly in love with her.

“Brooklyn” is a rare trustworthy wolf in sheep's clothing, a deep and brilliant Nicholas Sparks film disguised as droll Oscar bait. “Brooklyn” speaks in sadness and elegies for the living and the death of dreams, so crying during “Brooklyn” is very much encouraged and is even necessary depending on which character is broken emotionally at a given moment. But there is very much more to the film than weeping, as screenwriter Nick Hornby – who adopted the film from a novel by Colm Tóibín – writes in some terrific comedic patter between characters that can shift an ordinary conversation into a sparring match befitting films of the era. The best lines are given to the sublimely caustic Walters, who delivers them with vinegar and a knowing smirk.

What's covering the film's fluffy heart is a layer of adulthood far too often ignored in the average Heigl flick; characters opt to reflect and think about their words before saying anything when presented with an awkward moment of romantic doom. Ronan, especially, isn't a woman who needs to grow up – she begins the film at a greater level of adulthood than most people can achieve – as all she really needs is time to weigh her options. The quandary she faces – staying in Ireland or going back to Brooklyn – appears to be an equal one from the surface, with each place offering opportunity and love. But the film definitely favors one route far over the others, and it reveals the preference with a few visual hints – the wardrobe and scenery is much brighter in one location – and through the two suitors. While both men adore the lovable Ronan, the nature of the relationships Ronan has with each differs in one notable way; while one wants a bride to fill an empty house, he other wants a partner, someone to grow alongside him and wants her to better herself in the process. Given that, the decision is easy, but “Brooklyn” knows the heart is a complicated entity, and even a smart, ambitious protagonist like Ronan’s Eilis is tempted to make the wrong decision. That she doesn’t, and that the choice comes with steely determination in one of the best scenes in the film, comes to both the main character’s and the film’s credit.  

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 111 minutes

Genre: Drama

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Target audience: Fans of the book and anyone who can't decide if they want to spend more than 90 minutes laughing or crying.

Take the whole family?: Stick with the PG-13 rating for the mildly adult content and the few kids younger than that who'd be interested in seeing this type of movie.

Theater or Netflix?: Find a nice Saturday afternoon to hit this up if you can find it locally.

What are the film's Oscar odds?: “Brooklyn” is in line for a few nominations, including biggies like Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress for Saoirse Ronan. I hope Julie Walters gets recognition for Best Supporting Actress – she's just so wonderfully caustic – along with a little love for its subtly splendid cinematography.

Watch this as well?: Sticking with the Nick Hornby oeuvre, rent “An Education” and revel in the terrific rapport between Carey Mulligan – another possible Best Actress nominee – and Peter Sarsgaard.