Movie Review Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars The Last Jedi (2017) 

Directed by Rian Johnson 

Written by Rian Johnson 

Starring Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega 

Release Date December 15th, 2017 

The nostalgia is no longer mine when it comes to Star Wars. A new generation of fans has picked up the mantel and while I still have strong feelings for my childhood favorite film series, it no longer belongs to me and my generation. Star Wars: The Last Jedi affirms the fact that the franchise has transcended what George Lucas created and morphed into something new. Does that mean I didn’t enjoy it? No, it just means that all things pass and while Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a fine movie, it’s no longer something I have deep feelings about.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi picks up the story of the battle between The First Order, led by Supreme Emperor Snoke and his apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and the Resistance led by General Leia Organa. As we join the story, the Resistance is in grave danger. A First Order destroyer ship is on the tail of the Resistance and preparing to blow Leia and her army out of the universe. This opening scene is shockingly funny and smart and exciting with an outstanding performance from Oscar Isaac as resistance pilot Poe Damron.

From there, the story will branch out into three narratives. The first is the Resistance eluding the Empire, I mean The First Order. The second finds our former storm-trooper turned hero, Finn (John Boyega), teaming with a newcomer named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) to try to find a hacker who could provide them the key to helping the Resistance escape from the encroaching First Order. The final thread in this triple narrative follows Rey (Daisy Ridley) as she tries to convince Jedi Master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to return to the Resistance.

The third thread of the narrative is the most powerful with Rey exploring the light and the dark of The Force while Luke tries to overcome his fear after having lost Ben Solo to the dark side. Mark Hamill is Oscar caliber, I kid you not, as the wise and conflicted Luke, still impetuous and still with much to learn even as he has become a master. Daisy Ridley brings out the best in Hamill, and I can’t wait to see where this arc goes.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Detroit

Detroit (2017) 

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Written by Mark Boal

Starring John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Lattimore, Kaitlyn Dever

Release Date July 28th, 2017 

Recently I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s incredible podcast Revisionist History and in the very first episode he discussed a fascinating sociological concept called Moral Licensing. Moral Licensing is in essence doing something that is right and then using that right action, essentially a good deed, to justify bad behavior. Gladwell’s example was a painter in 19th Century England, Elizabeth Thompson, whose painting, titled Roll Call, became the first by a female artist to take a respected placement in the Royal Academy of Art. Unfortunately, the good deed by the male dominated Royal Academy of featuring the remarkable painting gave them, in their minds, the bona fides to justify not electing Thompson to become a member of the Royal Academy. They’d done their good deed and had nothing, in their minds left to prove.

I thought a great deal about Moral Licensing as I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s remarkable new film Detroit. This story about the riots that raged in Detroit, Michigan in 1967 and more specifically about an incident of police brutality that resulted in the deaths of three innocent black men, at the Algiers Hotel, led me to wonder if just becoming a police officer—a peace officer, someone whose job in the world is to protect people—gives some lesser officers the notion that they have moral license to do as they please. They’ve proven their bona fides as a good person by offering to protect the innocent, thus how they do their jobs is justified by virtue of having accepted the position.

I am not generalizing here; I respect police officers and the remarkable difficulty of their job. Scientifically and psychologically, however, there is a kernel of truth here. It could happen to anyone in such a position: a doctor, a politician, even a film critic who uses his position as a writer to espouse a point of view and then, if his point of view is well-viewed, he or she can take license to go further and espouse further and potentially do harm because they feel they have a moral high ground that doesn’t really exist.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Pacific Rim Uprising

Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) 

Directed by Steven S. DeKnight 

Written by Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder, T.S Nowlin 

Starring Scott Eastwood, John Boyega, Cailee Spaeny, Charlie Day, Adria Arjona 

Release Date March 23rd, 2018 

Published March 27th, 2018 

Pacific Rim is from that part of Oscar winning director Guillermo Del Toro that we’ve all agreed to ignore, alongside the Hellboy movies and Mimic. It’s not that Pacific Rim is bad; rather that it is a tad undignified compared to the awards caliber work he gave us before moving to Hollywood and now his Oscar winning triumph, The Shape of Water. It will always be better to remember the visionary work of Pan’s Labyrinth and ignoring the time he played with his toys on a multi-multi-multi-million dollar budget.

Pacific Rim Uprising is, no surprise, not directed by Del Toro as he was distracted from his toys by a lovely love story that happened to be about a woman and fish Jesus. Del Toro has leant his name to the marketing of the Pacific Rim sequel as Executive Producer but it is television veteran Stephen S. DeKnight playing with Del Toro’s this time and having a great deal more fun than we are watching him play.

John Boyega is front and center as Jake, the star of Pacific Rim Uprising, taking the mantel from Charlie Hunnam and Idris Elba whose characters have been killed off screen as we join the story. Elba’s Stacker Pentacost was Jake’s father and Jake was his constant failure. Jake was a washout from the Jaeger patrol, Jaeger’s are the giant robots humans pilot in the battle against Kaiju, giant monsters from another dimension.

Jake is brought back into the fold by his adopted sister Mako (Rinko Kikuchi, one of the few returning cas tmembers from the 2013 film) who wants him to train the next generation of Jaeger pilots alongside his former partner turned rival, Ranger Lambert (Scott Eastwood, trying hard to out-squint his legendary daddy). Among the new Jaeger pilot recruits is a young named Amara (Callee Spaeny), who built her very own Jaeger out of scrap.

Also back for the sequel is Charlie Day who was arguably the most entertaining aspect of the original Pacific Rim. Day is also the most entertaining part of Pacific Rim Uprising but not for the right reasons. Day’s arc in Pacific Rim Uprising is so ungodly silly it almost makes the movie a candidate for ‘So Bad It’s Good’ status. Unfortunately, most of Pacific Rim 2 is so clumsy and shambling that even ironic appreciation eludes the movie.

Director Stephen DeKnight, who, it should be noted, did remarkable work on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel, fails to take control of Pacific Rim Uprising. Instead of establishing a tone that is funny and in tune with the silliness of the first film, Pacific Rim Uprising plays everything straight and the thin premise can’t bear the weight of the emotion Uprising wishes it were evoking in audiences.

Note to the makers of giant robot vs giant monster movies in the future: make it funny. We are never not going to laugh at this stuff so lean into the pitch and stop trying to make us take your story or characters seriously. Pacific Rim does try to packs in some jokes, mostly at the expense of Boyega’s Jake’s inflated ego, but the insistent action score and the self-serious performances of everyone else in Pacific Rim Uprising keeps everything flat and mirthless.

It seems impossible that one could watch a giant robot versus giant monster movie and not have fun but here we are with Pacific Rim Uprising. This sequel is at times genuinely unpleasant. The one big laugh the film gets is one that the makers likely did not intend and the fight scenes that were skillful and silly in the original are miserably clumsy exercises in sub-Transformers, derivative, CGI slop.