Movie Review: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (J.J. Abrams, 2015)

ECHOES OF THE PAST by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Daisy Ridley and Harrison Ford in “The Force Awakens.”  Photo ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Lucasfilm Ltd.

After the great scholar of mythology Joseph Campbell saw the original “Star Wars” trilogy, he marveled at the series’ villain-in-chief, Darth Vader.  To Mr. Campbell, Vader was not a monster, but a broken shell—a cybernetic creature programmed to uphold an unjust society.  “He’s a bureaucrat,” Mr. Campbell stated bluntly.  “He’s a robot, living not in terms of himself, but in terms of an imposed system.”

             That nifty insight could also describe J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which is less a sequel than it is a parasitic welding of secondhand “Star Wars” tropes.  As in the original “Star Wars,” an idealistic hero rises from a desert; scruffy rebels rush to disarm a planet-annihilating weapon of mass destruction; and (as in the dreaded “Star Wars” prequels) the spark and the spirituality that once made the series so wondrous is transmuted to stale, cinematic mush.

            It’s been three decades since the finale of the first “Star Wars” trilogy; onscreen, that same span of time has passed too.  “The Force Awakens” beings thirty years after “Return of the Jedi” (1983) during a time of crisis—once more, the galaxy far, far away is aflame with war.  Even more troubling, the noble Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has vanished, leaving a vacuum for a Nazi-like regime called “the First Order” to play for power. 

            “But wait!” the movie squeals.  “There’s fun to be had!”  So there is when an orange, rotating robot called BB-8 falls into the hands of wayward youngsters Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega).  BB-8 is carrying a map that leads to Luke, so Rey and Finn grudgingly get into their galaxy-defending groove with a few flights and fights (“Stop taking my hand!” Rey exclaims pluckily when Finn attempts to play her knight in shining armor).

Ms. Ridley and Mr. Boyega are chipper, lively performers.  Yet Mr. Abrams never grants them narrative space to chart the turbulent emotions that must be coursing through these kids as they are thrust into an expansive, dangerous world.  Finn, we learn, was once a First Order soldier.  How did he muster the inner strength to overcome his soul-scrunching training?  The film doesn’t care about such human niceties.  We’re not supposed to care about them either.

So what does “The Force Awakens” care about?  Han Solo, to begin with, the suave, cynical smugger from the original trilogy who is played once more by Harrison Ford.  The film also devotes copious attention to its resident evildoer, Kylo Ren.  He’s portrayed by Adam Driver, who is not quite as terrifying here as he was portraying a hipster, porkpie-wearing documentarian in Noah Baumbach’s “While We’re Young.” 

            Kylo is the embodiment of the slavish, mechanical familiarity that renders “The Force Awakens” so profoundly dull.  In the first “Star Wars” film, Darth Vader made a show of strangling his subordinates; in the new film, Kylo pouts by slicing and dicing the featureless walls of his quarters, frightening his underlings.  His choreography is different from Vader’s, but he’s dancing in an identical show (this shallow mimicry bleeds into the movie’s climax, which dutifully emulates a deep space battle all too familiar to “Star”-watchers).   

            I wish I could say that this lazy Xeroxing was the most spirit-draining thing about “The Force Awakens.”  But it is not.  Near the movie’s end, our heroes charge into an icy fortress to take down Kylo and neuter the First Order’s secret weapon.  Yet the scene is made memorable mainly by the pointless murder of a beloved “Star Wars” character.

The man Mr. Abrams chose to sacrifice for “The Force Awakens” is a charmer whose crinkly eyes shine with tough mischief and weary tenderness.  And now he’s gone, which means that Mr. Abrams failed to understand one crucial thing—the reason that J.K. Rowling knew better than to kill off Hermione or Ron in the last “Harry Potter.” 

What Ms. Rowling understood was that her characters had grown so deeply entwined in our lives that we no longer saw them as figurines on a pop culture chessboard, but as old friends whose life journey we were sharing.  Slaughtering them in order to amp up the drama made no more sense than stabbing Cinderella on her wedding night.

Movie Review: "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" (Richard Marquand, 1983)

JOURNEY’S END by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Luke (Mark Hamill) becomes a true Jedi.  Photo ©Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

The first time I saw “Return of the Jedi,” the rambunctious and reflective capper of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, I was ten years old, and a newly-minted “Star”-fan.  I invited a gaggle of my grade school pals over to my family’s house, and we watched the movie while guzzling some root beers.  It was a grand time, though I don’t want to go back to those days.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m nothing if not nostalgic.  But to see “Return of the Jedi” through my fifth-grade eyes again would be to miss the movie’s determination to not be what almost every other summer blockbuster is: a story of good versus evil.  Yes, as all action extravaganzas do, this one concludes with a hero-villain clash.  Yet final battle of “Jedi” is not about winning—it is about one man choosing to spare the life of another.

            At the start of “Return of the Jedi,” the noble scoundrel Han Solo (Harrison Ford) has been imprisoned by the bulbous Jabba the Hutt, while the ragtag warriors of the Rebel Alliance gear up to challenge the evil Galactic Empire for the last time.  Among them are Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), though Luke’s thoughts keep drifting towards what he learned at the end of “The Empire Strikes Back”—that his father is Darth Vader (who is once more voiced by James Earl Jones), a minion of the Empire and its cackling Emperor (Ian McDiarmid).

            I should point out that in addition to being a father-son story, “Return of the Jedi” offers a smashing hit of cinematic adrenaline (highlight: a scene where Luke and Leia race through a jungle on “air speeders”—vehicles that whip by so fast that passing trees become an emerald blur).  Yet the real attraction of the movie is its heart.  “Your thoughts betray you father,” Luke tells Vader with a calm smile.  “I feel the good within you…the conflict.”

            Those words are among the most important in the “Star Wars” lexicon.  Luke has every reason to believe the worst of his father (it was Vader’s own soldiers who killed Luke’s aunt and uncle back in the first film in the series).  Yet he chooses to believe that beneath the dark armor of this hissing tyrant, there is compassion, enough compassion that he can coax it forth and turn a bad man into a good one.

            Optimism is a hard road, and “Return of the Jedi” understands that.  Yet director Richard Marquand doesn’t leave us with only that sobering thought.  Instead, he closes the movie with an exchange of hugs and handshakes in a forest at twilight, as friends reunite after a long, grueling war.  There are no words but together, Luke, Han, Leia, and all of their friends kneel together in front of the camera, looking like they’re posing for a Christmas card photo.

            In the end, what matters is not that they are allies in star wars, but that they are family.

Movie Review: "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" (Irvin Kershner, 1980)

DARK HOURS, LONG BEFORE DAWN by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Luke (Mark Hamill) is trained by Yoda (Frank Oz) in the second “Star Wars” movie.  Photo © Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

As shadowy as a Grimm fairy tale and as pumped-up as a pricey videogame, “The Empire Strikes Back” (which is the second installment in the original “Star Wars” trilogy) is frantic and moody enough to exhaust even the most resilient filmgoer.  “Right now I feel like I could take on the whole Empire myself!” a giddy pilot squeals in the film’s first act.  In this movie, such flowery innocence rises only to shrivel under the harsh freeze of tyranny.  

            “The Empire Strikes Back” commences on the ice-coated planet of Hoth, where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the noble Rebel Alliance have erected a stronghold.  In the first “Star Wars,” Luke sought the Alliance out of hunger for revenge on the sinister entity known as the Galactic Empire; now, he fights alongside the Rebels righteously (most memorably in an early battle between soaring “snow speeders” and the Empire’s lurching robotic tanks).

            But something is gnawing at Luke.  In a rabid snowstorm, he glimpses the ghost of his old mentor, Ben Kenobi (Alec Guiness).  Luke already knows how to pull the trigger of a laser gun, but Ben wants him to take up the mantle of the samurai-like Jedi Knights.  “You will learn from Yoda,” Ben declares, “the Jedi master who instructed me.”  And so Luke forsakes his friends and steers his spaceship far from the cold confines of Hoth and deep into the forests of swampy Dagobah, where the aforementioned Yoda (a wizened green puppet voiced and nimbly controlled by Frank Oz) makes his home.

            In a poignantly cranky fashion, Yoda guides Luke through a string of challenges designed to sharpen his mental and physical resolve.  Just as importantly, he tells his (rather whiny) pupil of “the dark side”—a powerful force that he says is the embodiment of anger, fear, and aggression.  “Is the dark side stronger?” Luke asks in a sweat.  “No,” Yoda tells him.  “But quicker, easier, more seductive.” 

That’s the crux of “The Empire Strikes Back.”  In the first “Star Wars,” all was a cinch for Luke; he was right, the Empire was wrong, and the destruction of a dastardly super weapon was the key to his happiness.  Yet “Empire” is morally blurrier, as shown by a dreamlike duel between Luke and an apparition of his nemesis, Darth Vader (who is voiced with grandiloquent imperiousness by James Earl Jones).  As lightsabers clash, sparks fly and Vader falls.  Yet when Luke shatters the villain’s skull-like mask, he doesn’t behold some monstrous visage—he sees his own face.  In “Star Wars,” as in life, goodness lurks, even under façades of evil (and vice versa).

            Near the end of the movie, Luke battles the real Vader in a ballet of violence that rips through a steam-soaked chamber and later to the precipice of a wind-buffeted catwalk.  Yet it is not desperate leaps and sword swings that fuel this climax, but something that Vader tells Luke, something that shatters our hero’s delusions of innocence forever, wrenching apart the notions of good and evil upon which the entire “Star Wars” saga was so sturdily built.  The sheen of shock may have rubbed off of Vader’s revelation (especially since the movie is over thirty years old), but its raw power remains. 

            Despite such grim doings, “The Empire Strikes Back” is grand entertainment, thanks especially to the manic (and even sexy) adventures of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), who are fleeing the Empire aboard the famous disc-shaped spaceship Millennium Falcon.  And in the end, the movie’s friendships counterpoint its melancholy aura, especially in the final scene, when Luke and Leia stare out at the galaxy from an airlock. 

            By the time that moment arrives, our heroes have lost much.  Yet there is only one phrase etched on Luke’s calm, determined face as he looks toward the future and his inevitable final fight with Darth Vader and the Empire: bring it on.

Movie Review: "Chi-Raq" (Spike Lee, 2015)

 AN AMERICAN WAR ZONE by Mo Shaunette

Above: Samuel L. Jackson in Mr. Lee’s new movie.  Photo ©Amazon Studios, 40 Acres and a Mule, Filmworks, and Roadside Attractions

“Chi-Raq” is one of the more bizarre mainstream movies I’ve seen in some time.   The movie transplants the Greek comedy “Lysistrata” to the violent streets of twenty-first century Chicago (dubbed 'Chi-Raq' by local rappers due to its intense violence); varies wildly in tone, switching between social commentary, satire, crass comedy, righteous empowerment, and heavy tragedy; tackles hot-button issues like gang violence, gun control, racial disparity, and feminism; and has all the subtlety and delicacy of a brick to the face.

In other words, “Chi-Raq” is a Spike Lee joint—and one of the better ones we’ve seen from him recently.  The movie’s journey may be all over the map, but it know what it wants to do, wears its heart on its sleeve while doing it, and turns out to be pretty fun along the way.

The film is set on the south side of Chicago, where a decades-long gang war rages on between the Spartans, led by Demetrius “Chi-Raq” Dupree (Nick Cannon), and the Trojans, led by Cyclops (Wesley Snipes).  As carnage continues and innocents become caught in the crossfire, Chi’s girlfriend Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) devises her own form of protest: a sex strike.  She and the other girlfriends and wives of the gang members vow to withhold intimacy from their men until peace is reached.  Soon, the strike gains attention, and it isn’t long before all the women of Chicago join the protest, leading to a worldwide phenomenon of celibate solidarity, all in the name of peace in the ‘hood.

Part of what makes these proceedings feel so strange is the stylistic choices Mr. Lee makes to tell the story.  For one thing, most of the dialogue is spoken in verse.  Characters talk to each other in metered, rhyming lines, giving the back-and-forth between them all an otherworldly cadence, which makes it seem as if the world of Chi-Raq is not only a lawless territory separate from the United States, but its own fantastical land entirely.  The downside to this is that it sometimes makes some scenes come off as overlong and self-indulgent, as if Mr. Lee and co-screenwriter Kevin Willmott just wanted to show off what they can do.  However, the upside to that desire is that it gives the actors the chance to demonstrate just what they can do.

By the way, make no mistake: despite being billed third in the film, Teyonah Parris is the real star of “Chi-Raq.”  She owns the film with supreme confidence and power and genuine heart and empathy, making you truly believe that the women of Englewood (and perhaps even the entire world) would follow her into this oath of celibacy.  The “Having the Most Fun” Award, however, goes to Samuel L. Jackson as Dolmedes, the sharply-dressed one-man Greek chorus who arrives every so often to give us a rundown of events, make jokes, and generally have a ball.

Like I said before, “Chi-Raq” tries to take on the biggest hot-button issues of our day, name-checking Sandy Hook, Eric Garner, Charleston, and much more (one imagines that had this movie come out a few months later, the writers would have found a way to work in a few references to Syrian refugees or Planned Parenthood).  You would think this would make the film seem schizophrenic, and at times it does.  However, despite its scattershot approach to spreading its messages, “Chi-Raq” knows what it wants to say—it’s just that what it wants to say is everything it can in a limited space.

How it gets these messages across is a bigger issue. “Chi-Raq” jumps from tone to tone seemingly on a whim, sometimes in the same scene.  A tragic, weighty funeral can become a platform for John Cusack’s Fr. Mike Corridan to preach about gun violence—made all the more bizarre by Mr. Cusack affecting the delivery and mannerisms of a black revival preacher (though this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the character is based on a real person—Michael Pfleger, a preacher and activist in Chicago).

Stranger still is an overplayed comedy scene where Lysistrata seduces and tricks an army major (David Patrick Kelly).  Not only is the major’s office decorated with Confederate memorabilia and portraits of members of the Bush administration, but halfway through the scene he tears away his uniform to reveal a pair of stars-and-bars undies (in case you weren’t sure whether or not this old white man in a Spike Lee movie was a racist).  I’m uncertain what point Mr. Lee was trying to make beyond, “The Confederate flag is and always has been a symbol of oppression,” but whatever it is, it seems to be buried beneath heavy-handed sex jokes and the sight of a half-naked old man.

Still, out there as it might be, “Chi-Raq” is completely earnest in its intentions.  It’s a strange film, but it’s stylized enough to create its own unique flavor of cinema, passionate enough to keep you engaged, and clever enough to make sure you have fun while watching it.  Definitely check this one out.

Movie Review: "Star Wars: A New Hope" (George Lucas, 1977)

BEFORE THE DARK TIMES by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Mark Hamill in Mr. Lucas’ movie.  Photo © Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

The original blockbuster or the infantilizing of pop culture?  Both of those monikers have been stamped on “A New Hope,” the inaugural installment of the indomitable “Star Wars” series (the film was released in 1977, though it takes place decades after 2005’s “Revenge of the Sith”).  Yet the truth is that “A New Hope” is more than that— it’s a scrappy adventure, a spiritual hero’s journey, a proudly bombastic epic, and a gallivanting emotional adventure that rockets, ever so forcefully, into deep space.

            “A New Hope” is set during wartime, as the heroes of the Rebel Alliance battle the tyrannical forces of the Galactic Empire.  Yet that conflict is seen not only through the haze of sci-fi firefights, but from afar by the young famer Luke Skywalker.  He’s played by Mark Hamill who, armed with unabashed sincerity and charmingly messy hair, grounds the movie.  The Rebels versus Empire blowouts, as gorgeously executed as they are (with marvelously realistic stop-motion spaceships twisting through the cosmos) can’t compare with the scene where Luke gazes at a sunset, longing for something more than the proverbial “simple life.”

            Be careful what you wish for.  At the behest of his cranky Uncle Owen (a moving Phil Brown), Luke takes custody of two robots, R2-D2 and C-3PO, to help with the farm chores.  They are, however, property of the Rebel Alliance, and as their presence lures the soldiers of the Empire into Luke’s sphere, he begins to realize that the time has passed to stand idle—he has to join the Rebels, to fight the Empire alongside them.

            “A New Hope” is a popcorn movie packed with hairbreadth escapes, gleeful one-liners (“Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?” Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia blusters as she marches past Peter Mayhew’s hairy Chewbacca), and a climax where slender spaceships soar exhilaratingly through a tight-walled metal trench.  And yet, miraculously, writer-director George Lucas layers the movie with moments that gleam with emotion (like the late image of Luke, Leia, and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo bouncily walking together, their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders).

            For all its hope and beauty, the “Star Wars” saga ultimately turned out to be a grim tale of lost innocence.  But to watch “A New Hope” is to bask in the simplicity of Luke’s early years once more—in his first blush with adventure and the friendships that come to mean so much to him, even as he wades ever deeper into the treacherous ambiguity of war.

Movie Review: "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" (George Lucas, 2005)

FALLEN HEROES by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Hayden Christensen goes dark in “Sith.”  Photo ©Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

With a rage and a flourish, “Revenge of the Sith” concludes George Lucas’ “Star Wars” prequel trilogy.  It is many things—a gleeful action blowout; a glass-shattering tragedy; and above all, a purveyor of conflicted feelings.  When I first saw the movie as an eighth grader, I was angry that it had trashed “Star Wars” with blood, torture, and genocide.  Submerged in “Star”-love, I tried mightily to enjoy it.  I never quite succeeded.

            Like Mr. Lucas’ “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones,” “Revenge of the Sith” swivels its digitally-enhanced gaze toward Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen).  No longer a lowly apprentice, he has, in “Sith,” become a full-fledged Jedi Knight—a super-powered guardian of the distant “Star Wars” galaxy.  This means he has license to slaughter armies of bumbling robots, but also that he must conceal his marriage to Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman).  As a 2002 “Star Wars” poster succinctly put it, “A Jedi shall not know anger, nor hatred, nor love.”

            Would you accept this edict?  Anakin doesn’t.  After the thrillingly bloated battle that opens the movie, his visits his beloved and learns that he’s going to be a father.  (“This is the happiest moment of my life,” he tells Padme).  Yet Anakin is also beset by premonitions of Padme dying in childbirth—shrieking, vapory dreams that make him desperate enough turn to the leader of the Galactic Republic, the slippery Chancellor Palpatine (a splendid, serenely sinister Ian McDiarmid) for help.

            You probably know what happens next (it is pop public record, after all).  But for those who do not, suffice it to say that the pact between Anakin and Palpatine results in a galaxy-spanning torrent of digital violence.  Across planets, men and women are murdered, shot to death by armored soldiers under Palpatine’s rule.  And his new regime, enforced by Anakin, is a clean dictatorship.  “The Republic will be organized into the first ever galactic empire!” Palpatine crows to a crowd of senators.  They cheer.

            When “Revenge of the Sith” premiered at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, that scene stirred allegory-hungry critics (as did a politically-charged declaration from Anakin: “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy!”).  Still, the weight of “Star Wars” has always been personal, not political.  “Together we can rule the galaxy, make things the way we want them to be!” Anakin gleefully tells Padme.  He betrays himself there.  He doesn’t just want power; he wants someone to share it with.

            A compelling idea.  But “Revenge of the Sith” is not about ideas; it is about excessive special effects (a tsunami of fake-looking virtual lava pours over the screen during the film’s climax) and doomful violence (Mr. Lucas goes too far by featuring a scene that shows the bodies of young boys strewn across a marble floor like dead trees). Which brings me to the true tragedy of “Revenge of the Sith”—that it is “Star Wars” darker but not “Star Wars” better.  Oh sure, the movie’s vortex of reds, oranges, and deep-space blacks give you a kick, but even as you sigh at the film’s final shot of a beauteous sunset, you may also find yourself beset by one inescapable thought: thank god it’s all over.

The 2015 Healthy Orange Awards

AND THE WINNERS ARE…. by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Winners listed in bold:


BEST PICTURE

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

“The Double”

“Interstellar”

“Locke”

“Maidentrip”

“Obvious Child”

“Selma”

“The Skeleton Twins”

“Transcendence”

“X-Men: Days of Future Past”

DIRECTOR

Richard Ayoade, “The Double”

Ava DuVernay, “Selma”

Craig Johnson, “The Skeleton Twins”

Christopher Nolan, “Interstellar”

Bryan Singer, “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

ACTRESS

Rebecca Hall, “Transcendence”

Anne Hathaway, “Interstellar”

Emma Roberts, “Palo Alto”

Jenny Slate, “Obvious Child”

Kristen Wiig, “The Skeleton Twins”

BEST ACTOR

Jesse Eisenberg, “The Double”

Bill Hader, “The Skeleton Twins”

Tom Hardy, “Locke”

Matthew McConaughey, “Interstellar”

David Oyelowo, “Selma”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Ellen Burstyn/Jessica Chastain/MacKenzie Foy, “Interstellar”

Carrie Coon, “Gone Girl”

Polly Draper, “Obvious Child”

Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Frank”

Emma Watson, “Noah”

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Matt Damon, “Interstellar”

Michael Fassbender, “Frank”/“X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Jake Lacy, “Obvious Child”

Joaquin Phoenix, “The Immigrant”

Luke Wilson, “The Skeleton Twins”

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

“Frank” by Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan

“Interstellar” by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan

“Locke” by Steven Knight

“The Skeleton Twins” by Mark Heyman and Craig Johnson

“Transcendence” by Jack Paglen

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

“The Double” by Richard Ayoade and Avi Korine

“Obvious Child” by Elizabeth Holm, Karen Maine, and Gillian Robespierre

“Selma” by Ava DuVernay and Paul Webb

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” by Jane Goldman, Simon Kinberg, and Matthew Vaughn

ORIGINAL SCORE

“The Double” by Andrew Hewitt

“Gone Girl” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

“Interstellar” by Hans Zimmer

“Noah” by Clint Mansell

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” by John Ottman

ORIGINAL SONG

“Glory” (from “Selma”) by Lonnie Lynn and John Stephens

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Hoyte van Hoytema, “Interstellar”

Reed Morano, “The Skeleton Twins”

Newton Thomas Sigel, “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Erik Alexander Wilson, “The Double”

Bradford Young, “Selma”

EDITING

Spencer Averick, “Selma”

Chris Dickens and Nick Fenton, “The Double”

Jennifer Lee, “The Skeleton Twins”

John Ottman, “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Lee Smith, “Interstellar”

COSTUME DESIGN

Evren Catlin, “Obvious Child”

Courtney Hoffman, “Palo Alto”

Louise Mingenbach, “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Kasia Walicka-Maimone, “A Most Violent Year”

Mary Zophres, “Interstellar”

ART DIRECTION

“The Double” – David Crank and Barbara Herman Skelding

“Interstellar” – Nathan Crowley and Gary Fettis

“Locke” – Chris Chandler

“Noah” – Nicholas DiBlasio, Mark Friedberg, Romano C. Pugliese, and Debra Schutt

“Whiplash” – Karuna Karmarkar and Melanie Paizis-Jones

MAKEUP

“The Double” – Michéle Davidson-Bell, Kristyan Mallett, and Jan Sewell

“Inherent Vice” – Miia Kovero and Gigi Williams

“A Most Violent Year” – Kyra Panchenko and Kerrie Smith

“Noah” – Jérémy B. Caravita, Judy Chin, and Jerry Popolis

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” – Norma Hill-Patton

SOUND DESIGN

“The Double” – James Feltham and Nigel Heath

“Interstellar” – Richard King, Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo, and Mark Weingarten

“A Most Violent Year” – Steve Boeddeker, Richard Hymns, and Gary Summers

“Noah” – Craig Henighan and Skip Lievsay

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” – Ron Bartlett, Craig Berkey, and D.M. Hemphill

VISUAL EFFECTS

Dan Deleeuw, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

Paul Franklin, “Interstellar”

Nathan McGuiness, “Transcendence”

Ben Snow, “Noah”

Richard Stammers, “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Movie Review: "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" (George Lucas, 2002)

SPACE, SOMEWHAT SUBLIME by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Natalie Portman as Senator Padme Amidala. Photo ©Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

“Send in the clones…there’s got to be clones…don’t bother…they’re….”  Wait a minute—wrong tune.  There’s no such song in “Attack of the Clones,” though the film could have done with a dash of Judy Collins’ luminescence.  But alas, it is yet another dim entry in George Lucas’ “Star Wars” prequel trilogy, albeit one with a rising, tender love theme by John Williams.  It’s a gorgeous musical track.  It’s better than the movie deserves.

            “Attack of the Clones” commences on a foggy morning ruptured by an explosion.  Senator Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), it seems, has become a target of mysterious and bloodthirsty conspirators, and it falls Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker to defend her.  In “The Phantom Menace” (the nullified predecessor to “Clones”) Anakin was portrayed by Jake Lloyd; here, he’s replaced by a scowling Hayden Christensen, who awkwardly kicks the character into the nasty throes of adolescence.  “You are in my soul, tormenting me!” he bellows at Padme, sounding more like a slimy stalker than a gallant warrior enraptured by love’s clasp.

            Luckily, Mr. McGregor, swashbuckling and stuffy (“This is why I hate flying!” he exclaims while steering a spaceship through an asteroid belt), strides through Mr. Lucas’ universe with enviable ease.  As Obi-Wan, he spends the film investigating the mystery of Padme’s attackers—a quest that culminates in a gladiatorial slugfest with magnificent digital beasts (while raucous, bug-like aliens squeal, Mr. McGregor scampers through a dusty arena, pursued by a crab-like creature goofily screeching with hunger).

It’s frustrating that the splendor of that battle is squandered by a surfeit of video-game-style explosions and the clumsy trajectory of Anakin and Padme’s ill-advised romance (if whining was all that it took to woo Natalie Portman, every fanboy would have given it a shot).  Yet there is poetry in Mr. Lucas’ mess of a movie.  Just watch the scene where Anakin and Obi-Wan talk of nightmares while standing before a skyscraper window so smooth that it looks like gauze.  “Dreams pass in time,” Obi-Wan reassures Anakin, though Mr. Lucas’ dreams, however muddled, never seem to quite pass for us.

Movie Review: "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" (George Lucas, 1999)

MENACE TO MOVIES by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Natalie Portman and Liam Neeson wage star wars.  Photo ©Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

These days, if you need a director to work a crowd, your best bets are James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, or J.J. Abrams; they know how to whip adrenaline and emotion into a crowd-pleasing cocktail.  But George Lucas is different.  Yes, his name is synonymous with blockbuster filmmaking, but the rambling rhythm of “THX 1138” and “American Graffiti” proved back in the 1970s that he is odder than most smack-you-in-the-heart entertainers. 

“Odd” could certainly describe Mr. Lucas’ 1999 sci-fi extravaganza “Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace.”  But they are other worthy descriptors—phrases like “majestically dull,” “horrendously written,” and “blatantly racist.”  In interviews, the film’s actors have blamed the rage that greeted the release of “Menace” on adults too cynical to appreciate yet another film determined to unleash fiery explosions in the airless vacuum of space.  But really, that’s just an excuse, a smokescreen calculated to mask a film that remains an appalling artistic and ethical failure.

“The Phantom Menace” (which is a prequel to Mr. Lucas’ original “Star Wars” film from 1977) kicks off in a galaxy guarded by the noble Jedi Knights—a brown-robed gang of monk-warriors with a penchant for blabbering nonsense about “Midi-chlorians,” whatever those are.  Are you bored yet?  Liam Neeson was.  He stars as Qui-Gon Jinn, a bearded Jedi travelling with his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, gamely grinning through a thankless role).  They run afoul with some greedy, planet-dominating merchants, a crisis that requires Mr. Neeson to occasionally whip out his lightsaber (or laser sword, for the uninitiated) and sleepily deliver pronouncements such as, “We’re running out of time” and “I don’t know.”  Who does?

            Of course, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are just one strand of a vast tapestry.  Their quest leads them to Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), a cheery slave who one will one day morph into Darth Vader, the heavy-breathing tyrant of the original “Star Wars” films.  In “The Phantom Menace,” however, Anakin is just a painfully earnest young boy, and the movie aims its firepower at viewers of age group—kids who will crack a grin both at the sight of a swooping spaceship and the gurgle of a gratuitous fart joke.

            Still, such inane goofiness is overshadowed by the film’s infuriating reliance on racist caricatures.  Lest we forget, Mr. Lucas chose to place the pratfall-prone alien Jar-Jar Binks (an animated character voiced by Ahmed Best) in the degrading role of the wise, grammatically-flummoxed servant, making the character a direct descendant of the nauseating stereotypes of African Americans found in the “Gone With the Wind” era.  And don’t even get me started on the fluttery, bird-like Watto (voiced by Andy Secombe), whose elongated nostrils and insatiable lust for cash seem ripped from an anti-Semitic propaganda poster.

            It’s disturbing that Mr. Lucas, a filmmaker whose work often seems to yearn for all-together-now utopianism, would leap so far into the gutters of insensitivity.  But he did, and the result has now been consumed by audiences worldwide for over a decade.  As a “Star Wars” diehard, I have always believed that Mr. Lucas’ magnanimous franchise has positively contributed to the world with its tales of heroism and hope.  But whenever I re-watch “The Phantom Menace,” I am forced to admit that sadly, that has not always been the case.

Movie Review: "Pan" (Joe Wright, 2015)

FLYING WITHOUT TINKERBELL by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Garrett Hedlund in Captain Hook in “Pan.”  Photo ©Warner Bros. Pictures

Worn but shining, director Joe Wright’s “Pan,” a retelling of the Peter Pan saga, tastes like a carefully-cultivated apple just past its prime—soft at the core, but so smoothly juicy on the surface that you gobble it gladly.  The story of the boy who flies and magically escapes the menace of acne may have been hammered into pop culture by a corporate nail gun, but Mr. Wright’s cinematic bravado and passionate optimism keep Peter soaring through the clouds of movie-going Neverland.

            This Peter is played by Levi Miller as a defiant youngster with a hungry grin and a lust for mischief.  Raised in an English orphanage in the midst of World War II, Peter doesn’t mope over his Dickens-worthy porridge—he just schemes to steal the cupcakes hoarded by his crotchety caretaker, Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke).  Mother Barnabas, meanwhile, has dipped her fingers into something more nefarious than butter cream frosting: she’s raking in gold coins by tossing unsuspecting orphans into the leathery clutches of the showboating pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman).

            All too soon, Peter is slaving away in Blackbeard’s mines, ordered to crack open the mountains of Neverland to find some pixie dust (the glittery flecks of it are what keep the elderly Blackbeard looking like Mr. Jackman).  Mr. Wright, however, has no intention of lingering in gloomy tunnels—with the same theatrical panache that he unfurled in his wonderful 2012 version of “Anna Karenina,” he spirits Peter off on a careening adventure with a jolly young Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund) and the blandly wise Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara).

It’s not all a fairy tale gas; “Pan” still carries the moldy whiff that clings to so many childhood adventures resuscitated with manic Hollywood life support.  Yet the film is vastly more watchable than heinous revivals like Bryan Singer’s “Jack the Giant Slayer.”  That’s because Mr. Wright expends his visual prowess so fiercely, thrusting, bouncing, and sweeping his actors through gloriously cotton candy-colored landscapes dreamed up by the movie’s production designer, Aline Bonetto. 

            At times, that’s not enough.  But “Pan” is so spirited, hopeful, and heartfelt that you can’t walk out of the theater without feeling a little lighter on your feet.  You may not feel like flying, but you may be in the mood to bounce as two characters do in one scene—on a trampoline, flailing like acrobats in Mr. Wright’s joyous carnival. 

Patrick Belin Reviews "The Martian" (Ridley Scott, 2015)

“THE MARTIAN,” WITH SPOILERS INCLUDED 
(**½ (two and a half stars) by Patrick Belin

Above: Matt Damon is Mark Watney.  Photo ©20^TH Century Fox

“The Martian” is an enjoyable ride—so much so that at the end of the film, I expected automatic machine support bars lift up, just as they would after a roller coaster car pulls into the platform at Outer Space Land, or whatever it’s called at Disneyland these days.  Yet despite the laughs and moments of excitement sprinkled throughout “The Martian,” there is no denying that it is a two-and-a-half hour stretch of a film that leaves much to be desired.

My biggest problem with “The Martian” is that despite being the story of astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) stranded on Mars, it does not feel like a science fiction film.  This is partly because director Ridley Scott (who also helmed three other futuristic sagas—(“Alien,” “Blade Runner,” and “Prometheus”) doesn’t appear to be interpreting sci-fi in the traditional sense, and instead tries to present the possibility of travel to Mars in a more realistic frame.  

Other films have done similar things (e.g., Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”) while managing to preserve a sense of distant wonder, of witnessing something that is impossible, but not quite.  “The Martian,” right or wrong, moves away from that tenor and into the hyperreal.  It even appears to advocate for a particular vision of global politicking with a subplot about the Chinese space program supplying technology to help bring Watney home.  Perhaps this vision of international collaboration was meant to be idealistic; perhaps the executives behind “The Martian” just wanted to sell more movie tickets in the burgeoning Chinese cinema market.  Either way, I wasn’t very amused, because the latter possibility is certainly more believable than the former.

There are two major plot points in “The Martian” that I found to be highly problematic.  First, there is the ridiculousness of NASA keeping Watney’s comrades in the dark about the fact that their colleague has been stranded on the Red Planet; and second, it is simply unbelievable that the head of China’s space agency would so casually disclose state secrets, to the United States no less.  In real life, the technocrat behind that decision would have been swiftly caught and efficiently replaced (and “The Martian” is supposed to be set in the “real” world, isn’t it?).  Following those two eye-roll exercises, I refused to engage with the story of the film seriously and accepted that, dear me, this roller coaster voyage was indeed going to be a long ride.

Ultimately, “The Martian” is just another example of the recent Hollywood trend (in the post-“Batman Begins” era) of over-producing blockbusters, of making movies whose marketing ambition exceeds the depth of their scripts—by a Martian mile.  Worse still, there is very little new to see in “The Martian,” and little reason to return for another viewing.  Perhaps the title “Saving Private Martian” would have been more appropriate.  However fun the film was as an amusement ride, like Dr. Watney, the whole time I really just wanted to go home.

Seen at The Bagdad Theatre, 11 October, 7pm showtime.