OK, finally saw the new SW money grab. Now I really didn't have high expectations, and I was even willing to forgive the PC stand-ins (Rey and Finn, among others) if it genuinely offered something new ("
renewed energy" per RT) as the dimmer critics are howling. Not even close and certainly no cigar. Just a single (counter)example will do: the movie's most impressive mise-en-scene comes when the First Order prepares for total war against the Resistance as General Hux delivers his big speech before his battalion of stormtroopers, a particularly odious ploy straight out of Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will which the original SW owed no small debt to. In other words the new SW borrows the worst element of the original and turns it up a notch (several in fact) higher. But somehow we're asked to excuse or ignore the movie's worship of power and explicit call for mass murder, because after all it's used by the "good guys" against the "bad guys." Obviously millions of moviegoers have agreed, but I prefer to think even escapism has a certain set of boundaries to keep.
BTW what's up with Max von Sydow? I don't expect the former Ingmar Bergman regular to be choosy all the time and perhaps the guy needs the money, but he seems to be whoring after anything that comes his way these days. His appearance in
Rush Hour 3 (easily the most witless and offensive of the series) was a particular lowlight. (The movie also starred Roman Polanski of all people as the devious Commissaire Revi.)
Have a few thoughts about
The Revenant which I saw just this past Saturday (and of course won the Globe last night), but I'll save those for the
"Best Films" thread. A couple more I saw recently:
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Spanglish by James L. Brooks, which I thought, the reviews notwithstanding, superior to Brooks' Oscar-winning
As Good as It Gets, and by some distance at that. While it doesn't avoid romcom formulas entirely (as critics are wont to point out Brooks got his start in TV) I was pretty impressed by how skillfully it manages to convey foreign (Spanish in this case) dialogue without any subtitles, not to mention its tackling of class and (inter)familial conflicts which is indeed rare in Hollywood. And if Sandler has ever given a more perceptive and touching performance, I've yet to see it. Oh yeah, and Paz Vega is a babe who's every bit the equal of Sandler (pretty amazing she learned all of her lines phonetically). The one downer is Tea Leoni's one-dimensional über-neurotic Deborah, which is more Brooks' fault than her own. Warmly recommended.
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Um século de energia (A Century of Power) by Manoel de Oliveira. This aptly titled 15-minute documentary by the late Portuguese master (before his death the centenarian Oliveira would be referred to as the world's oldest active filmmaker), his very last work, is probably the best film I've seen in the past 2-3 months, or the one that moved me most at any rate. I was particularly affected by its sublime coda where the budding ballerinas dance the sunset away while working tirelessly towards their dreams--suggesting, of course, that the next century is in good hands. You can watch the entire film for free on YouTube here:
