Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Well, Marvel officially has conquered everything, it would seem. If The Last Jedi is any indication, the superhero juggernaut has eclipsed even Star Wars, the arguable patient zero for modern blockbusters and nerd culture, as the biggest influencer of film today. For, you see, this eighth episode in the space saga practically is a Marvel movie.

No, none of the Avengers show up, but it’s got its sister Disney franchise’s constant banter and humor punctuating every moment, even the serious ones. It also goes to bright and colorful worlds with zany alien beings more reminiscent of Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Ragnarok than the dirty, lived-in aesthetic of the franchise previously. All that’s missing is a post-credits teaser and George Lucas goofily popping in like Stan Lee.

The film picks up immediately after The Force Awakens. The Force-sensitive Rey (Daisy Ridley) has tracked down the aging Jedi Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), only to discover that he’s a disillusioned old cuss instead of the legendary hero the galaxy knows. Meanwhile, the remaining fleet of the Resistance attempts to make a daring escape from the evil First Order. First Order defector Finn (John Boyega) and Resistance fighter Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) make an escape from the escape to find help (this makes sense when you see it, I promise). While this is all going on, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) confronts his inner conflict about which side he’s on.

The narrative is rather narrow in scope this time around. There are some unexpected and original story touches that are inspired, including a subtle political bent that adds some greater resonance to the whole thing. The focus, though, isn’t so much the larger conflict, but the smaller moments, where the characters get to shine. We get some gripping and moving turns from both the new players and the old, particularly the late Carrie Fisher, whose scenes are rendered emotionally wrenching by circumstance. At times, this the best writing in the saga since The Empire Strikes Back.

But mostly, the movie plays like Return of the Jedi, in that some great, captivating story turns and character moments are cluttered alongside goofball slapstick and kiddie stuff. Thankfully, those space Furbies the Porgs aren’t as pervasive as the Ewoks or Jar Jar Binks, and that Marvel-esque humorous tone mostly serves the picture well. However, at two-and-a-half hours, it goes on rather long, and is so overstuffed that it drags quite a bit in the middle. About 20 minutes could have been shaved and it would have been of no lower quality. Also, the prolonged escape plotline that frames the whole narrative starts to strain believability the longer it goes on.

But, these are trifles, not fatal flaws. It’s the big moments that stick with the viewer, and The Last Jedi’s got those in spades. There are some fantastic battles as well as heavy emotion. That last act especially—looking at first like a retread of Empire’s walker battle before building and building into something awesomely thrilling and gorgeous to look at—is terrific, ranking alongside classic Empire's snow battle and the Death Star trench run in the original. The final scene is even damn near a tearjerker. Yes, it’s just as much the series congratulating itself for having so many fans as it is expressive of the storyline's themes, but man, does it play.

Up to this point, the Disney-helmed Star Wars films have been more about nostalgic fan service (the last half-hour of Rogue One, and pretty much all of The Force Awakens). The Last Jedi hasn’t completely shed that; indeed, there are a few moments that are just crowd-pleasing applause moments, rather than necessary to the narrative. However, there’s much to like. True, much of it comes from aping the successful Marvel formula, but there's also stuff that's exciting and new.

Justice League

The off-screen turmoil that's beset the DC film universe franchise (box office disappointment, critical lashings, seemingly endless second-guessing of the dark and brooding tone) has mostly overshadowed what's on the screen. But on this movie, things took a turn into the tragic. Credited director Zach Snyder left after shooting was finished due to the loss of his daughter, and two-time Avengers director Joss Whedon was brought in for post-production. And also, rewrites and reshoots, as Warner Bros. apparently had second thoughts about Snyder’s take on the DC universe after the brutal reception of last year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

So just when DC finally seemed to connect with a wide audience, Justice League—the big screen motion picture debut for the iconic superhero team, a film built toward as a major (at one-point, two-part) event—arrives as another big mess. It’s not only the worse one yet in this particular continuity, but probably the worst film ever starring these characters (that’s including the Joel Schumacher Batman movies and the one Superman sequel with Richard Pryor).

There are two mains reasons this is rock bottom. One is that it has no bearing on what it wants to be, due to the late-stage change of course and director. Most often it resembles the first Avengers movie with DC characters, from the attempts at humor and clever pop culture references, to the very plot being almost identical but for the costumes. Other times, it’s merely an exposition dump, like one of the middle episodes of a continuing series between the ones that people remember. Said exposition is mostly pointless, too, offering little context for events involving returning characters, letting new ones go unidentified to viewers who aren’t intimately familiar with DC lore or watching with a cast list on hand, and dropping a few leftover details of Snyder’s proposed vision that we now might never see.

Jason Momoa and Ray Fisher aren’t especially bad as, respectively, Aquaman and Cyborg, but since we haven’t spent any time with them until now, it’s impossible to get invested in them enough to care in the amount of time they have here. Then again, Ben Affleck’s Batman and even Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, who we have seen before, don’t manage to muster much interest or charisma, either.

Ezra Miller’s Flash takes on the Marvel-esque joke-cracking wiseass role decently well, for what little help comic relief does. But shockingly, the one who manages to really light up the screen is…Henry Cavil as Superman (I’m not spoiling anything, am I?). Yes, after two movies of failing to even grasp the basics of the character, Cavil finally seems to get the hang of it. In scenes here, resolutely projecting squared-jawed righteousness and authority, he’s—dare I say?—almost Reeve-like. Sadly, this comes too late, when it seems most are starting to give up on this series, including its own studio.

That leads me to the second reason Justice League is the worst DC picture: it doesn’t even try, and it shows. It plays like a total burnoff, as if the studio chose to cut their losses and told Whedon to turn the footage they had into something halfway watchable and at least get some of their money back. And it doesn’t even clear that low bar. It’s a dark, murky, ugly picture, made even more garish by the obviously-after-the-fact color accentuation. The action is incoherent. The locations look like empty beta versions of video game levels, and Ciarán Hinds’ villain Steppenwolf looks like a game cutscene from last century.

The Snyderverse may ultimately go down in comic book movie history as a failure. But though I didn’t care for Snyder’s super-dark interpretation of the DC universe (mainly Superman), I don’t get the feeling that his narrative and aesthetic decisions were out of some profound dislike for the material. This studio-altered Justice League, however, takes no pride in these classic characters and shows nothing but contempt for the audience.

Thor: Ragnarok

For a corner of the Marvel Universe full of gods, Vikings, and magical worlds and beings, the Thor movies are rather…small. The first Thor seemed more like a tie-in for The Avengers than a complete picture. The sequel The Dark World gave him a proper whole film, but only just so, and seems to be regarded as one of the lesser Marvel movies. Chris Hemsworth’s thunder god gets to participate in The Avengers movies, at least, but still has yet to experience as strong a character arc as some of his fellow heroes.

Now the series is a trilogy is with Ragnarok, hardly as epic as the name suggests. Oh, it’s as still big and technically solid as the rest of the Marvel films, and as bright and colorful and full of visual delights as the Guardians of the Galaxy entries. But the stakes of the picture never seem high, even if they are a lot of fun.

The picture catches up with Thor at the onset of Ragnarok, the apocalyptic event in which his long-banished sister, the goddess of death Hela (Cate Blanchett), returns to destroy the realm of Asgard. But our hero is cast away early and spends most of the running time on the planet Sakaar, enslaved and forced to fight as a gladiator by the ruling Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum). From here he must escape with the aid of his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the Asgardian exile Valkyrie (Tess Thompson), and a surprising old acquaintance: The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who made his way to the planet since we last saw him.

The best part of the Thor series has been its humor, so knowing what works, this one gives the audience what they want. The scenes on Sakaar are never too serious, making jokes out of everything from plot exposition to the (standard Marvel exciting) action scenes. The interplay between the Marvel veterans is as charming as ever, and new players—particularly Goldblum and a minor character one might described as “Drax-lite”—fit right in. Also, the cameo game is on point, one-upping the last Marvel film yet again.

Back on Asgard it’s a different story. Surprisingly, the dark storyline here and the lighter one following the title character don’t clash too starkly. But despite what the narrative tells us is happening, none of what plays out onscreen ever seems like an apocalyptic event that earns the name “Ragnarok.” It all seems much smaller, rather insignificant. And Blanchett never gets enough screen time or scenery to chew. When her plotline merges once again with Thor’s in the final act, it results in an anticlimactic final battle and denouement.

Ragnarok is still a great time, probably the most entertaining of the Thor movies. Just…still kind of small, when the title suggests something so big. And Thor is still yet to have a great, gripping emotional moment we’ve seen for Iron Man, Captain America, and even Star-Lord in the tenderer moments of the Guardians series. Hope Infinity War has room for him.

Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 is certainly the best film in this recent trend of many-years-later sequels to popular movies or franchises. That’s not much of a bar to clear, admittedly, but unlike so many of those, it doesn’t settle for simply riding audience nostalgia. This is a work of big ideas that meaningfully expands and deepens the mythology and character of its predecessor, and is a worthy successor to it in every way. If the original Blade Runner is science fiction’s The Godfather (and many sci-fi fans claim it is), 2049 can be called the genre’s The Godfather Part II.

The original created a sprawling, jaw-dropping future Los Angeles that is iconic and influential in sci-fi. The picture took things pretty slow, allowing the viewer to drink in all the upfront wonders and the subtle but highly imaginative trappings in the background of this world (it’s still impressive even though we’re now only two years from catching up with the film’s date). 2049 returns to this setting thirty years later. It’s a much grimmer future, with a harshly askew climate that adds a faint sense of real-world urgency. Yet it’s still gorgeous to look at.

Between the two movies, we’re told, replicants, the humanlike artificial persons that were forbidden on Earth in the original, have since become more advanced and are now legal. The narrative follows the replicant K (Ryan Gosling), a “blade runner” who hunts unstable older models for the LAPD. During his most recent case, he uncovers evidence suggesting that replicants have gained an ability that makes them even more human than previously thought. While tasked with destroying all evidence of this finding, K takes it upon himself to uncover the truth about it, which involves grappling with his own existence as well as seeking out the long-disappeared blade runner Deckard (Harrison Ford).

The film likewise takes its sweet time, but it feels more deliberate this time. There’s not as much time to simply sit back and look at the future’s dystopic beauty (not that there aren’t some cool new touches and environments). It makes up for that, though, by unraveling its mystery in a way that’s both captivating and contemplative. Denis Villeneuve’s direction finds exactly the right storytelling pace, never stalling and never revealing too much. And though the picture doesn’t stop as often to look around, it does set aside some time for some quiet, moody scenes that reveal much about the characters.

The performances are terrific from top to bottom. Even the small supporting roles—Robin Wright as Gosling’s martinet superior, Mackenzie Davis as the “pleasure model” who’s revealed to be a figure of greater depth—are of high quality. In the villain department, Sylvia Hoeks is an efficiently scene-chewing menace who upstages even her superior Jared Leto, nonetheless great as a divinity-complexed industrialist. Also a standout is Ana de Armas as a holographic relationship program, whose arc eventually becomes affecting and pushes the central theme of what makes a soul to a new extreme.

But, it’s the two blade runners who take the crown amongst the cast. Gosling convincingly plays spiritually burned out. Not cynical like the standard hero, but completely without hope and numb. But his findings over the course of the plot imbue him with a sense of purpose and humanity, and he becomes palpably overwhelmed. It’s a tremendously emotional performance, made even more impressive because Gosling exhibits such feeling while never quite breaking the cold, not-quite-human façade. And Ford is probably the best he’s ever been on film, not his normal lovable gruff or earnest righteousness, but a truly broken man. It’s a little touching. 

2049 seemingly doesn’t really offer any points of ambiguity like its predecessor, so fans don’t have the fun element of watching for clues which may or may not mean something (although, it also doesn’t definitively answer the question of the true nature of Ford’s character that fans still debate). But it offers plenty of other stuff to chew on: about playing God, about what’s real and the nature of memory, allegory for racism. And, of course, what it truly means to be human. This is an excellent film.

It

Stephen King’s nearly 1200-pager from 1986 might be the author’s best work, and his most terrifying. Despite being fairly iconic for its nightmarish clown antagonist (likely due to Tim Curry’s performance in the 1990 TV movie, an adaptation which frankly holds up poorly upon revisitation), It is by no means simple monster fare. Rather, the evil of the novel is an all-enveloping, inescapable presence that takes many forms, something from which the characters can’t simply run away. Nor can the reader, for King’s prose creates a suffocating atmosphere of fear that even putting the book down for a while hardly alleviates.

The long-gestating big-screen adaptation takes the same approach. But instead of an ever-constricting air of pure terror, director Andy Muschietti opts for a more playful kind of scary. The picture is like a big funhouse (for the older kiddies, mind you), full of creative and colorful frights, with the sinister clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) half-comically playing host to the proceedings like the Cryptkeeper. It's the Poltergeist-like haunted house horror that takes the audience on a fun, shock-filled ride that satisfies their scare fix, but lets them go to bed at ease that very night.

The setting is King’s oft-used fictional town of Derry, Maine. Once every quarter-plus-century, this locale is besieged by a mysterious entity that snatches up kids. Little explanation is given besides the fact that it manifests as people’s worst fears, almost always accompanied by Pennywise. Taking place during the latest coming of “It” in the late 80s, the film follows a group of pubescent outcasts dubbed “The Losers’ Club” (Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, and Chosen Jacobs) who are haunted by the evil being.

The screenplay pares down half of the book (the other half, following the Losers as adults, is in production) into a two-and-a-quarter hour movie. So, many things are simplified, and whole backstories and memorable sequences are left out. Yet, it still feels complete, like all the important stuff is there. Also, in some ways, condensing the material works in the movie’s favor, necessitating a subtlety that strengthens a couple elements. In particular, the arc of Lillis’ character is improved, her personal horror now more implied and much more disturbing. And surprisingly, it’s the moments between the horrors where the writing seems strongest. The relationships between the protagonists feel real, funny and even a little sweet. These scenes are bolstered by the young cast, who is uniformly excellent, and gel remarkably well with the scarier parts of the picture.

There admittedly comes a point where the scares start to diminish, and the picture falls victim to that old adage about how the more they show the monster, the less scary it gets. One can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers have anything left to frighten with for Part 2. But for now, this first part is a great time. It doesn’t exactly stick in the viewer’s mind for days after like something truly haunting and terrifying, but damn if they won’t enjoy themselves while watching it, between their fingers, perhaps.

Wonder Woman

Up to this point, it was hard to tell if the DC Universe films were getting better, even by the smallest of increments, or if it just seemed that way because each successive entry further lowered expectations. Ironically, this troublesome state of affairs turns out to be a plus for Wonder Woman, the first unequivocally good picture in the franchise.

Story-wise and structurally, it’s not much of a mold-breaker (except for the rancid, grim, overlong, unfun mold of the DC Universe prior). And yet, it remarkably feels…fresh, which is something for a genre that’s flooded the market for over a decade. Although, this feeling is not just a result of being better by comparison. At least as much of it is due to its notable firsts: the first big-screen starring turn for the character Wonder Woman, and the first woman-fronted superhero film of the extended franchise era (and arguably the first one ever made that the studio was serious about).

It’s a heavy role to fill, and Gal Gadot is certainly up to the task. She exudes a “no-sweat” certitude throughout, playing into the fish-out-of-water comedy, and alternately earnest or passionate in the serious scenes. And when embroiled in a big battle or one-on-one fight, she looks pretty damn super.

The film tells of the first adventure of Wonder Woman, real name Princess Diana of the Amazons. A prologue details Diana’s childhood and warrior training on her island home of Themyscira, populated only by women warriors and secluded from the world of man. But when American World War I pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes on the island, it becomes clear the Amazons no longer can ignore the outside world.  Diana and Steve then make their way to Europe to stop a German general (Danny Huston) from releasing a new nerve gas that could prolong the war.

So, the film hits a lot of the familiar beats of a standard superhero outing and origin story (also, the predicted similarities to the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger are rather apparent). And while Gadot makes the movie and Pine is a solid comic opposite of a sidekick, the supporting cast doesn’t get a lot of screen time to develop beyond bare bones archetypes, although an assembly of good actors (Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright on Themyscira, Huston and David Thewlis in the outside world) perform admirably. Also, while the action scenes are (FINALLY!) well-executed, the big final battle only seems about as weighty as a mini-boss fight.

Still, Wonder Woman is fun, thanks mostly to Gadot, and to an overall technical competence and visual decipherability that has, until now, eluded the DC films. Most surprisingly, this time the attempts at greater thematic meaning have a disarming sincerity. The mythic elements actually seem wondrous instead of pretentious, the “war is hell” imagery of the trenches fairly poignant instead of strenuous like Man of Steel and Batman v Superman’s 9/11 allegory. The state of the DC film Universe as a whole is still suspect, but it’s got its first quality standalone entry. Fourth time’s a charm, I guess.

Alien: Covenant

2012’s Prometheus was presented as an arm’s-length prequel to the Alien franchise. But in execution, it was more like Ridley Scott was remaking his original Alien, or at least the first half of it. Except that the creatures found on the distant planet were nowhere near as scary and impressive as H.R. Giger’s iconic monster, it was burdened by unnecessary character arcs, it added pondering on human existence that didn’t come off as profound as the filmmakers likely hoped, and its effort at filling out the franchise mythology raised more questions than it answered.

It was…not great. But it was lightyears better than Alien: Covenant. Turns out viewers who complained about the lack of an appearance from the Xenomorph in Prometheus should have counted their blessings, for its entrance more than halfway through this glossy trash is bereft of any positive vibe, thanks to preceding plot exposition we were better off not knowing.

Once again, the film treads close to an Alien remake. There’s another starship (this time a colonization vessel which shares its name with the picture’s title), another blue collar crew awakened from suspended animation, and another mysterious message that diverts them off course to an unknown planet. Only this one is shockingly earthlike, and occupied not only by hostile lifeforms, but also the sinister android David (Michael Fassbender), who’s been keeping busy since the last time we saw him in Prometheus. 

I’ll leave it at that, for any more detail would not only risk spoiling this movie, but contaminating even the good entries of this series. Suffice to say we finally get some backstory on where the Aliens come from, and it’s profoundly disappointing. To use an intra-genre comparison, as disappointing as it was for old-school Star Wars fans to find out that the origin of Darth Vader was the whiny, emotionally fragile kid we saw in the prequel trilogy. It’s totally unworthy of the legacy and classical status of this series (well, the first two entries, anyway), and more immediately, it sucks the tension out of most of Covenant's scenes with the monster.

This is a great-looking film (successful or not, Scott does not do half-assed productions), and a great cast—among them Fassbender in two roles, Katherine Waterston solidly filling Sigourney Weaver’s shoes, Billy Crudup playing desperate and out of his depth, and Danny McBride, who it turns out is pretty good at serious acting—plays their roles as admirably as the similarly strong-but-stifled ensemble in Prometheus. There’s also some decent creature action in the spirit of James Cameron’s Aliens, against the familiar Xenomorph as well as some nasty new star beasts. But, the film thinks the story of Fassbender’s David and his search for meaning is way more interesting and insightful than it is, which is not much at all. And it’s not just a hindrance to all the good parts of this picture; it severely dilutes the mystique and terror of the Alien in all its predecessors. Also, obviously, these characters have never seen Alien because...well, they're in the prequel to it. But they make some mistakes that are boneheaded even from people who have never seen a single horror movie, to say nothing of those trained for interstellar travel.

For a brief window in the middle of it all, it looks like Covenant is going to be the best Alien movie in 31 years (which isn’t saying much). Then David shows up, and it ends up being the worst one since Alien 3. No, Alien: Resurrection and the two Alien vs. Predator films weren’t quite good, but at least underneath the gore viewers might find a few schlocky cheap thrills, rather than this picture’s pretentious tedium.