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Movie review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The Rise of Skywalker Poster

The Rise of Skywalker

On Christmas Day, Dara and I did our annual “go see a movie” thing. And, as should surprise exactly none of you who follow me and my postings, that movie was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

It’s taken me a few days to get a post together because I’ve been mulling over my thoughts on it, hardcore. The picoreview: I liked several things about it, and actively hated a few other things. Overall I found it a serviceable finale to the Skywalker saga, but only serviceable, which was a disappointment to me. It didn’t engage me emotionally nearly as much as I was hoping for.

I’ve seen reviews that have described the movie as unimaginative. That’s… kind of where I am with it. It makes some plot choices that feel utterly predictable, and presents them in a way that doesn’t reach the level The Force Awakens did to make them fun anyway.

That said, I’m still glad I saw it, and at least after my first viewing, I’m pretty sure I found it more enjoyable than any of the three movies in the prequel trilogy. I will probably need to see it again to find out whether my current overall opinion holds.

Follow the wayfinder to the SPOILERS behind the fold! As always, if you’re coming over to this post from anywhere it’s crossposted (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn), please comment here to try to keep spoilers in a contained area. Dreamwidth readers, your comments section is fair game. (But if any Dreamwidth readers haven’t seen the movie yet, be warned that the comments ARE a spoiler-friendly zone!)

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Joint movie review: Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (ALL THE SPOILERS)

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame

Last year when Infinity War dropped, I put up the post that has my non-spoilery review. Y’all may have noticed that I never got around to posting a full review of the movie. Sorry about that!

But now Avengers: Endgame has dropped. And when my household along with long-time friend Mimi went to see it, Meems asked me whether I liked Infinity War better than Endgame. She preferred Infinity War and was a trifle stunned that I liked Endgame better, hands down.

I told her at the time that this was because for me, even though Marvel backed off of doing these two movies as a Part 1 and Part 2, they really do still function for me as one great big story. And Endgame delivered on concluding what Infinity War set up, beautifully.

So this post is going to be a combination of “review of Endgame” and “discussion of Infinity War and Endgame as a unit”.

Spoiler-free picoreview of Endgame first: I haven’t cried this hard at the tail end of a movie since Return of the King, you guys. There are parts of it that I like less than other parts, and some parts that I feel don’t stand up to close scrutiny, but by and large it was a very, very worthy conclusion to the entire MCU story arc.

Let it also be noted for the record, in case it isn’t obvious: if you haven’t seen Infinity War yet, rent it and get it watched before you see Endgame. And if you haven’t been keeping up with the MCU in general, BOY HOWDY is this not the place to come in.

And in order for this movie’s emotional beats to carry the proper weight, you really, really need to have been keeping up with the MCU. Hell, for a lot of the plot points to make general sense, you really need to have been keeping up with the MCU. I don’t think you absolutely need to have seen every single film in the Infinity Saga (as it’s now being called). But you’ll get the most out of Endgame if you’ve seen most of the saga already.

Now let’s get into the heart of this post, shall we? ALL THE SPOILERS will be behind the cut tag. If you’re reading this directly on angelahighland.com or on my Dreamwidth account, be advised that the comments are also spoiler-friendly territory.

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Movie review: Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel

My household went to see Captain Marvel this past Thursday night. We’re not normally an opening-weekend movie-viewing type of household, but this time I wanted to make an exception. And I was deeply delighted that we did.

Because, spoiler-free picoreview: CAROL DANVERS IS MAGNIFICENT AND I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE AGAIN.

Behind the cut you will find ALL THE SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and care about spoilers, come back and read this later.

Coming over from Facebook or Twitter? If so, please be mindful about what replies you may give me on those sites.

If you’re reading this either directly on angelahighland.com OR on my Dreamwidth account, spoilers in the comments are fair game.

Now with all the caveats out of the way, let’s talk Captain Marvel. 😀

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Movies

Movie review: Solo: A Star Wars Story

There’s been a lot of dubious buzz over the last several months about Solo: A Star Wars Story. A lot of folks have been concerned about the change in directors, and about whether the movie would deliver a cohesive story. It’s only been out a week, and there’s buzz now about OHNOEZ DID IT FLOP, apparently because it hasn’t made quite as gigantic a pile of money as The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have done.

With all this negative buzz going around, you could easily conclude that the movie sucks. I am delighted to report, Internets, that this is not the case.

As y’all know I’m a lifelong fangirl for Harrison Ford in general, and for Han Solo in particular. So I was absolutely expecting to come into this movie all Judgy McJudgypants. Because of my Ford fangirldom, but also because of my longstanding love of the Han Solo backstory novels by Brian Daley and A.C. Crispin. The Crispins in particular are near and dear to my heart, as I relied upon them heavily for inspiration when playing Han on Star Wars MUSH back in the day.

Happily, while this movie’s story is of course different in the minor details (while getting the major ones generally right), its spirit felt entirely like those novels. It was just generally fun in a way we don’t usually get with Star Wars flicks. By which I mean, we’re not dealing with galaxy-shaking stakes here. This is an origin story, a heist-flick-in-space, with the Empire only a background presence rather than the main point.

And while Alden Ehrenreich isn’t Harrison Ford, I am now happy to accept his take on Han. Also, Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian is absolutely glorious, and so is the droid L3.

All in all, if you’re a Star Wars fan–and especially if you’re a Han fan–go see it!

Now let’s have a swing past the Spoiler Mines of Kessel, shall we?

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Movie review: Avengers: Infinity War (no spoilers)

My household doesn’t usually see movies on opening weekend. But a couple of days ago Dara informed me that spoilers were falling like rain on her social media feeds! So yesterday evening, we scampered off for a viewing of Avengers: Infinity War at one of our local theaters.

I was deeply amused that said theater was running the film on almost every single one of their screens. I was equally amused, on the way out, to see that one of the ticket takers was dressed up like Loki. So they were clearly milking the Marvel money cow for all it’s worth.

As for the movie itself? This post will talk about it in a general non-spoilery fashion. I’ll do another post with in-depth spoiler-laden commentary.

Pacing and cast

I’ve seen multiple headlines of reviews talking about the movie being overstuffed. These reviews are not wrong. Almost every single character we’ve had introduced to us in the last ten years of the MCU shows up. Some get more screen time than others, as is inevitable with a cast this large. But with so many characters in play, the film has very little time to do much with any of them, except for the ones specifically involved with the biggest plot points.

And, given that the film’s running time is 2 hours 29 minutes, that’s a lot of time to be juggling so many characters.

Fight scenes make up a lot of the two and a half hours. Dara and I talked about how in some ways the pacing of this movie felt like The Battle of the Five Armies, in that it was almost non-stop fighty fighty fighty fighty. Because of this, some of y’all may find the film kind of exhausting. I personally didn’t; despite the long running time, I mostly felt like it moved well. I felt only a time or two that things were dragging a bit, and those moments were fleeting.

So very much in media res

I cannot stress this enough: this film expects you to know what happened in the films that led up to this one. If you haven’t been heavily invested in the MCU up until this point, this is so very not the place to come into the storyline. This is the cinematic equivalent of trying to come in on the Harry Potter books with book 7, or The Lord of the Rings with Return of the King.

For me, this was just fine. I have been heavily invested in the MCU. But I can definitely see that a casual moviegoer, someone who may have missed one or more of the previous movies, could come into this movie and be very, very lost.

So what I’m saying here is, brush up on previous MCU plots before you go see Infinity War. Go read Wikipedia plot summaries of them at the very least, if you don’t have time to watch the actual films. You don’t need to know every single previous MCU film well for the important plot points of this one to make sense. But you should brush up on Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, and Thor: Ragnarok.

Comic book cosmology, oh my yes

One more important point I want to make: we are now well and thoroughly into the territory of some of the wackier aspects of comic book plots here, people. In particular, we’re getting into the cosmology of the Marvel Universe, with the entire notion of the Infinity Stones, and what Thanos wants to do with them.

A lot of the action is in space, or on worlds that aren’t Earth. Some of these sequences are handled more realistically than others. Dara told me after we came out of the film that certain parts of it knocked her right out of the story, because of her immediate “uh, no” reaction. You’ll want to break out the industrial strength cables for the suspension of your disbelief here, y’all.

There are multiple on-screen deaths, be warned. But more than one of them failed to hit me with the Feels that I think the film wanted out of me, specifically because I knew that this was a comic book plot and that deaths are almost never final in these sorts of storylines. Knowing that we’re into the wackier cosmology of the Marvel universe at this point distanced me in a way some of the earlier films didn’t do, because of their better grounding in realism. (Notably, the first two Captain Americas.)

That said: I did totally tear up at certain points during the climax of the story.

Thanos

Last but not least, Thanos, our Big Bad. How well he’ll work for you will, again, depend upon how well you roll with wacky cosmic comic book plots. Arguably, Thanos’ motivations are shaky at best. But given that, Josh Brolin played him well. We get into some of Thanos’ general backstory, as well as the backstory of how he took Gamora off her home planet when she was a child. That helped make me buy his direct interactions with Gamora and Nebula, at least, if not his overall motivations.

And I’ll say this: the big guy was legit scary in battle. So were his minions, generally referred to as “the Children of Thanos” on screen. (These characters do actually have names; I looked them up on Wikipedia. But I don’t recollect hearing any of them called by these names in the movie.)

All in all, Infinity War definitely entertained me. One more warning, though: this movie ends in a dark cliffhanger-y sort of place. The real resolution isn’t due until the next Avengers flick drops in May 2019. So if you’re not a fan of cliffhangers, consider whether you want to see this film in a theater now, vs. watching it much closer to when the next one comes out.

Stand by for the spoiler-y post, wherein I will talk about this flick in a lot more depth. 😀

Movies

(A quite belated) Movie review: Black Panther

This is of course a super late post given that Black Panther came out a few weeks ago at this point. But I wanted to get this written up anyway, since I did like this movie immensely, and wanted to document my thoughts. 😀

I’ve been seeing discussion posts all over the place about it, but notably on The Mary Sue and Tor.com, both of which have had multiple interesting commentaries on various aspects of the film. They’ve ranged from the overall joy of fans of color for this film, which is massive, to the rightful and eminently correct praise of the multiple awesome women in the cast.

Now, while I’ve been a solid fan of the MCU since the first Iron Man film came out, I’m also of course squarely in the White Chick bracket of fandom. As such, I cannot by definition have the same sort of gut-deep reaction of joy to this film that a fan of color could. But I will say this: given how much joy I got out of seeing Wonder Woman, I can totally extrapolate. I am delighted that this film exists, and that fans of color get to rejoice in it. The opportunity to support it by giving it my theater-going money has pleased me, and I did in fact have enough fun seeing it that I’m strongly considering seeing it again.

For the more in-depth details of things I loved, have a look behind the fold!

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Movie review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (spoilers)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

This is the second of two review/reaction posts for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might want to go look at my non-spoiler post first, and come back to this one later. Because this is the one that has all the spoilers!

Overall, I’ll note in summary what I said in the other post rather than going into general commentary again here. Namely: the movie’s long but didn’t feel overly long to me. Several characters stood out for me with shining performances. And this was very much a “middle movie of a trilogy”, with considerable darkness of plot and galaxy-spanning stakes and ramifications. If you’re going to see this in a theater, be prepped for length.

Now then, let’s get into the SPOILERS.

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