Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Alas, poor Kylo! I knew him ...

Grade: B –

Director: Rian Johnson

Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 32 min.

The deepest emotional resonance in Star Wars: The Last Jedi occurs during companion scenes in which Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) engages with Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher). The first features the playback of an iconic hologram once sent by a young princess and freedom fighter, the second being a face-to-face farewell between aging siblings, warriors, and cultural touchstones. If anyone was expecting a truncated appearance by Leia in The Last Jedi following Fisher’s untimely death nearly a year ago, think again. She figures prominently throughout, but no longer as the damsel in distress from A New Hope or the love interest in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. She’s now a rightly revered leader who, after all, was already spearheading rebellion when Luke was still a farm boy and Han Solo a two-bit smuggler.

Leia’s earned stature aligns with a new gender dynamic being formed in this latest Stars Wars sequel trilogy. Women comprise the emerging vanguard—the spotlight shines brightest on Leia and Rey (Daisy Ridley), the new trilogy’s lead hero—while men equivocate, undercut, oppose, and even abuse. When Leia’s vice admiral (Laura Dern) temporarily assumes command of the rebel fleet, she’s immediately doubted and then targeted for mutiny by flyboy Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). When Rey visits Luke’s island hideaway seeking the training and services of the aging Jedi to battle the First Order, a haggard Luke plays Hamlet, dithering and fretting over fears and old regrets. Luke, later visited by an virescent old master, accurately casts the legacy of the (notably patriarchal) Jedi Order as one of failure. Rey is later taken before Supreme Commander Snoke, leader of the First Order and master of Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), where Snoke growls “give me everything” before prostrating and mentally raping her.

It’s a pity that this more woke Star Wars is saddled by a slipshod storyline and scant sense of discovery that’s previously propelled the saga. While the nostalgia is strong in this one, no enduring characters are introduced and precious little is learned about the existing ones—don’t expect much eye-opening info on Snoke’s identity, Rey’s parentage, or anything else you didn’t already know. Of the tri-headed plotline that fills the film’s opening half, one part is the equivalent of a low-speed car chase. Meanwhile, defrocked Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a new puckish partner (Kelly Marie Tran) embark on a related mission that ultimately matters not a whit. They detour to a planet with an opulent casino frequented by upscale arms dealers—the latest update of the Mos Eisley cantina—who’ve made a killing selling to both sides of the galactic war and off the toil of enslaved children. But writer-director Rian Johnson doesn’t spend much time on this populist and anti-colonialism subplot, instead racing away in the blur of a CGI stampede.

Remember how Luke’s Jedi training on a distant locale and his later attempts to turn an evil contemporary away from the dark side of the Force were spread over two movies? Well, Johnson crams the same story arc for Rey into ninety minutes, including a reprise of the Dagobah evil cave sequence that reveals nothing besides Johnson’s affinity for the hall of mirrors scene in The Lady from Shanghai. A burgeoning connection between Rey and Ben carries the promise of gleaning gradations in the Force atwixt its light versus dark extremes. But that, too, evaporates once the characters, and with them the narrative, retreat to their familiar camps in time for a climactic confrontation featuring yet another assault on another rebel compound.

The Last Jedi subsists on its iconography, including ragtag rebels who intone about igniting “the spark that will light the fire” of rebellion, a variant of the same mantra we’ve heard in every previous Star Wars film. The Last Jedi flirts with hope and change, but it’s mostly sound, fury, and force signifying little.

The Wolfman

Example # 137 of what I'd rather do than
have to watch The Wolfman again

Grade: C –

Director: Joe Johnston

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, and Hugo Weaving

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

The Wolfman 2K10 aims to revive the werewolf genre by harkening back to the storyline of Lon Chaney Jr.’s original horror classic. Instead, director Joe Johnston (Jumanji; Jurassic Park III) cranks out a schlocky creature feature occupying Thomas Schatz’s parody stage of generic evolution, paying more homage to B-monster movies than the golden age of horror films.

Borrowing heavily from Curt Siodmak’s 1941 screenplay, the story centers around Lawrence Talbot (Benicio De Toro), a 19^th century American stage actor who returns to his family’s English manse following the death of his brother. Lawrence tries to mend the strained relationship with his father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), but the hunt for his brother’s killer leads to an encounter with a Lycan roaming the countryside. One chomp on the neck later, Lawrence morphs into a werewolf every full moon, which in the film’s fictional hamlet seems to take place every other day despite the fact that they actually occur about once a month.

Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self’s updated script goes to great lengths to document Lawrence’s trouble childhood, including the mysterious death of his mother and his stint in an insane asylum. But, it’s a plot device that holds little import since Lawrence appears to be a well-adjusted adult until werewolf DNA infects his body. Still, that is intelligent storytelling compared to the film’s relentlessly insipid dialogue, most of it monotone mutterings between Lawrence and Gwen (Emily Blunt), his late brother’s ex-fiancée. In a matter of weeks, we’re suppose to believe that Lawrence and Gwen end up falling in love, but for the life of me I cannot fathom when, why, or how it happened. Del Toro and Blunt have rarely been worse; their lifeless line-readings are as silly as they are hollow – “I didn’t know you hunted monsters.” “Sometimes monsters hunt you.”

The Wolfman might have worked as satire except it lacks the essential measure of self-awareness to merit such consideration, with the possible exception of a climactic death scene that elicits (un)intended guffaws. Only Hopkins and Hugo Weaving – as a Scotland Yard investigator on the prowl for Lawrence’s hairy alter-ego – seem to grasp the inanity of it all, and in turn they chew all the scenery in sight. While Del Toro and Blunt brood over every disjointed scene, Hopkins delivers his lines with a wink and a smile. And, Weaving wraps his Agent Smith-best around howlers like, “Rules are all that keep us from a dog-eat-dog world.”

The film only succeeds when the CGI fur – and limbs, heads, blood, and entrails – start to fly; it more than earns its R-rating. Otherwise, as a drama, love story, or thriller, The Wolfman is surprisingly, disappointingly neutered.

Neil Morris