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Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Better than all the Prequels and Return of the Jedi
First off, I haven't done a lot of reviews on IMDb, nor have I felt a compelling need to, especially since the internet - about 2005 - devolved into a pit of "I'm smarter than you are, no I'M smarter than YOU are" childishness.
Second, there's no accounting for taste, so I have no desire to fight with people's legitimate perceptions of this movie, but I can detect trolling from miles away.
Third, ALL of the Star Wars movies suffer from a root of 'sword and sorcery' simplicity that even many of the stars who have been in the movies feeling there's something left wanting. I think the very first movie benefited in a major way by John Williams' musical contributions. Without the music, if replaced by contemporary synthetic music of the times, would have left Star Wars on the heap with Logan's Run, even with the visual effects. The music vastly upgraded the overall material.
So, as far as this movie goes, it's right up there with the best. ESB will probably always be my favorite, and I'll be pleased if it moves down the list as VIII and IX roll out. But it now is a bit of a puzzle if ANH or TFA is at two, and I certainly can buy recency bias toward the new movie, so the jury is still out between the two.
Next is RotS, even as a part of the prequels, I've like it better than RotJ - the Ewoks, to me, were Jar Jar 1.0. Hated them pretty much through and through. But RotJ is next after RotS, probably due to the fact that TPM and AotC were poor. The acting and dialog in those movies were terrible.
So, I suppose, my analysis comes down to this - I'm no J.J. Abrams fan boy, but he's got Lucas beat. I've always had a problem with the first trilogy (IV-VI) as being poor to mediocre Tolkien rip off - just too color by numbers sword and sorcery for my taste. And the second trilogy (I-III) was a bad Frank Herbert rip off - an attempt at the complexity and vision of Dune transformed into C(GI)-SPAN. Combining the two reveals to me that Lucas has a second rate imaginative mind. Abrams isn't (at least doesn't appear to be) trying to unfold some great new EPIC with all the pretense and conceit that Lucas chained himself with.
Abrams' production is vastly more engaging - I felt I was being pulled through the movie and felt a part of the action like no other Star Wars movie before. Granted, effects are four decades on from the first movies, but the prequels were TOO much special effects - you always felt this was happening on a screen and had little feel of realism. Throw in Lucas' sterile interaction with actors throughout his time, and it's easy to see how removed most Star Wars movies have been. If Lucas can't engage the actors, to make THEM feel engaged, how is an audience supposed to feel engaged by the final product. Probably Lucas' only "warm" movie he ever made was American Graffiti, and that probably was because the whole thing was a love letter to his own teen-hood.
Further, Abrams (and Kasdan's?) dialog - while not giving Bill Shakespeare a run for his money - wasn't stomach turning bad (I hate sand...). Let's just say that - between the dialog and cold direction, there's a TON of bad acting (due to the direction) throughout I-VI. I don't think this movie had Oscar performances either, but the actors seemed into their roles and delivered proper dialog given the root material.
So, if you want a movie you'll want to see again, this has what it takes. As a middle aged man who has many cares and concerns that beset him, to be completely taken away from the now into two hours of entertainment, it was wonderful. Certainly something none of the prequels came close to doing (and I was obviously younger and had fewer cares then). So, in short, this movie was - as cliché as it might be - was captivating in its most literal sense. Not life changing as the best art is, but much better than watching Dune-lite nonsense that has me checking my watch and thinking about the work stress in store for me the next week.
Finally, Abrams etc have a steep incline ahead of them to be sure. They did have the luxury of plenty of back story to inhabit, and they pretty much not only borrowed from ANH, they condensed a large portion of the first three movies. Now they have to chart their own territory from here. And, again as not a fan boy, if I'm checking my watch and dreading the next week while watching VIII, I'll be the first to admit it.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Really doesn't know what it wants to be.......
Being a Libertarian wherein one debates the proper time and place for Force, dismayed at the level of government interference in people's lives, but also willing to do what is necessary to survive through defensive forms of Force, this movie does provide fodder for thought. Also, as a believer to some degree in the theories of French Absurdism as an avenue to proto-nihilistic philosophies I can perhaps understand that real life does not some up to an easily digestible whole, but a movie that is primarily entertainment should take you to some endpoint intellectually.
Does the prior paragraph make much sense? To initiates, it probably does, for people looking for some action and a bag of popcorn maybe not. And that's the problem for TDK for me. It purports to be one thing, executes something much different, and become unsatisfying as either. If I'm in the mood for a shoot'em up popcorn movie, I'd like a little complexity, sure, but I want the good guys to be good guys and bad guys dead. If I'm looking for a treatise on the absurdity of life and also how man wrapped up in fear, real or imagined, will resort to all sorts of Force that is misplaced and misused, I'll watch something else. I can even at least see a movie that leaves you hanging quite a bit as the use of Art to prove a point, not only as the message but the medium as well. But I certainly don't want an examination of existentialism bound up with my popcorn movie. It just ends being a waste of two and half hours.
Basically TDK can't be both a pleasant diversion and a deep philosophical movie about the death penalty, righteous Force, blind fear of the masses, thugacracy, and even more. A movie that has fast action fight scenes, with breaking bones and baddies being dumped over railings to some unknown end, a movie that maintains its limited view of action and consequence (like these baddies being taken off to a hospital for care or some such instead of being simply gone) and yet be a piece to evoke philosophical debate. Basically it can't have its cake and eat it too.
The movie basically creates a character of pure nihilism in the Joker and then doesn't know what to do with it. What point is trying to be made? It almost seems the creative team didn't know either, or nothing they'd admit to. So I don't mind being philosophically open ended, but such doesn't in any way make for a satisfying action movie. And yet it still pandered to the action movie template far too often to believe that it was a serious philosophical movie.
Basically it was a mess that more or less wasted two and a half hours.
The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation (2005)
A last shot before slipping into irrelevancy......
The people that shaped the "revolution" (the replacement of 50's Statist Conservatism with 60's Statist Progressivism) are now in their 60's and approaching their 70's. Who can blame them for yet another regurgitation of how wonderful they were before they are shuffled off to homes and forgotten? One more shrill yowl about how they were so right about everything, unleashing new forms of Force hither and yon.
And the old "whoops, I guess we were wrong about the whole drug thing". Well, drugs weren't the only thing you were wrong about. Being preachy, left statist idiots doesn't enter on the correct side of the ledger. The revolution for REAL freedom we needed was rolling back the tide of unfunded entitlements. YES, shake off the shackles of repugnant Statist laws that impinge on human action, but don't rot the culture with socialism and non-accountability. Being free comes with responsibility, not passing the bill to someone else. The 30's and 40's forged making everyone's pocketbooks part of the treasury, any net earnings were merely a loan callable at any time. This MIGHT have been fine, noxious as it is, but when good behaviors declined and bad behaviors were encouraged in the 60's, the societal cost was massive. All I get from the 60's revolution is everyone got to do "their thing", "whatever your bag is, man" yet the responsibility was collective. THE TWO CANNOT GO TOGETHER IN ANY WAY.
So, YES, end brutish State interruption in personal behavior but make the responsibility for bad choices fall on the individual, not the collective. Any subsidy from one to another to mitigate the other's bad choices has to be completely voluntary.
The 60's were a selfish, spoiled child period of having to get your way and hang the cost on everyone else.
Caligola (1979)
Must have something.....
How many movies with a rating of 4.7, from nearly 30 years ago, have such robust commentary and message boarding? Right there the movie's got something very few, if any, movies have.
I saw it (the uncut version) for the first time last night, and it's not that bad. Of course Guccione did some mangling of the continuity, but really, who watches it for continuity? And I'm not just talking about the nasty bits, it's just surreal all around. Now setting aside debates of just how promiscuous ancient Rome would have been, it certainly captures realistically how it would have been if those who decry the times as decadent were right. IF there were huge orgies taking place, wouldn't they looked mostly like it was portrayed in the film? Granted it was staged, and true reality likely would have had much more awkwardness and less grace in the execution, it stands that various thrustings and what not would have been the order of the day.
I have not seen any of the commentary included with the disks, so perhaps some of the conjectures I have are answered, but one has to wonder if those who ultimately distanced themselves from the film felt that they had to in order to stay respectable (and employable). One also would like to know if Guccione was simply trying to be a peddler of his wares or was he REALLY trying to make an artistic statement and wasn't going to let "the suits" detract him from his goal. Who could really know, even with commentary. Did Guccione ruin an artistic creation to make it high class porn, or did he really have a unique vision and dared to do what no one else would dare? Regardless, the output it singular, and that in itself goes a long way toward making art Art.
IF Rome was like this and not just some revisionists puritan views of the time as a cautionary tale for their modern era, this is how I imagine it looked and sounded. It's like you are there, and if groups of people were getting busy, this is how you'd expect it to look. As someone else commented, it was much more realistic than what safely filmed "depravity" looked like in films up to that point.
Also, one would need to put the movie in a modern context too. The movie came out well before the internet became fixed in most people's lives. One can surf the net and pretty much see whatever they want in a minute's time (to a point where it quickly becomes dull). The hardcore elements of the movie are therefore much less shocking to modern sensibilities. Softcore sexuality permeates the airwaves every day. Anything hardcore is available at the snap of the fingers on the internet. Seeing such scenes in a modern, and the relatively near future, seem almost TAME and have more artistic merit than the average smut out on the internet. I can see a time in the not too distant future, as the younger set become the middle age set, and barriers fall, that the uncut version will be broadcasted. People are simply becoming much less inhibited and the paradigms will shift enough where the uncut version will not be seen as horrific.
In the end, I can see that many of the name people involved had some rarefied sensibility about what the movie should be. Meanwhile Guccione made an earthier epic that sucks the viewer in (no pun intended) versus previous Historical Epics that have great costumes and blowing horns and big sets and clattering horses etc etc, that are staged and bereft realism of any kind. This was a unique experience without a doubt. The viewer had a human's eye view of antiquity versus the bird's eye view common to most movies.
I gave it a 5 simply so as not to skew the existing rating.