Star Wars: A New Hope

At its core Star Wars: A New Hope is a simple swashbuckler film. It's the story of the daring hero rescuing the princess and defeating the bad guy. Whether in Camelot, Sherwood Forest, or the far reaches of space the story remains the same. But while people like Arthurian myths and the legends of Robin Hood nothing has achieved the level of adoration that people feel for Star Wars. In 1977 audiences were drawn in by the promise of special effects unlike anything they had ever seen, and while they were not disappointed, modern movie goers will not be as easily won over by such primitive visuals. No, the reason we love Star Wars is for its characters.

Each character is established the minute they step on screen. The movie does not waste its audiences time with lengthy introductions. In the opening scene we get a clear bad guy. Vader walks onto the set, picks a man up, interrogates him, and kills him. There is no sympathy and no remorse—he is an emotionless mask with soulless eyes. After being introduced to the hulking power of Vader the audience meets it next character in his exact opposite. Where Darth Vader is dark and massive Princess Leia is light and small. One all in black armor, the other all in white robes. One a mouthful of hard consonant sounds, the other an breath of vowels. Before she even says a word you know she is the damsel, and as soon as she opens her mouth you know she is not in distress. Leia spars words with Vader without fear. She stands her ground, patronizes him, and never falters. When watching The Adventures of Robin Hood you may root for Maid Marian because you're supposed to, but when watching Star Wars you root for Leia because she earned it.

Like King Arthur at the beginning of The Sword in the Stone, the hero of Star Wars is a naïve farm boy. Luke like Arthur before him, is the everyman. We're interested in Vader and Leia because they show themselves as interesting, but we sympathize with Luke because we watch him be forced into adversities beyond his control and we feel bad for him. It's necessary for the story that Luke isn't as strong as the other characters from the start because he's the one we are going to watch grow the most over the course of the series. But while his actions and dialogue make him kind of a whiny brat, the film makers put a tremendous amount of effort into everything else to make us like him. There is one very important scene just after we meet Luke that fully establishes him as a character. Luke walks out of his home and for about twenty seconds looks off, far into the sunset, he's lit by the red glow and the wind blows in his hair and as we watch this simple action the music swells with all of Luke's hopes and dreams and without having said a thing the audience wants him succeed.

If Luke is King Arthur, the boy destined for greatness, than Han Solo is Robin Hood. The thief with a heart of gold. Han wastes no time asserting himself as confident and careless of the law. Everything from his boots to his gun holster show Han to be the cowboy, the rogue. He hangs around rowdy bars, has a bounty on his head, and shoots first. Were A New Hope the only Star Wars movie made it would be Han who experiences the biggest character arc. Idealistically Luke, Leia, and Vader change very little, but Han goes from a cocky scoundrel who values his independence to a cocky scoundrel who values his friends.

The characters in Star Wars don't get lost in a complicated story or come second to the special effects. They are there to be at the forefront. They are there for the audience to connect to and love and hate and feel for. The story is told so the characters can shine through it. And by using such a simple and established story like the good guy fights the bad guy, it allows Luke and Leia and Han and Vader to have more depth than their archetypes traditionally do.

Ten out of Ten.

Star Wars Week

In honor of the rerelease of The Phantom Menace 3D I am going to not watch it. But I will watch and review all six Star Wars movies which I already have on DVD and see no reason to pay extra to watch again. I'm going to watch them in the order that they were released and I will try to be as objective as possible.

The Artist

The first three movie posters I passed as I left the theatre were for Wrath of the Titans, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace 3D, and Titanic 3D: a sequel to a generic action movie and two 3D rereleases. And it is with a defeated disposition that I accept this to be the majority of modern cinema. That being said Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist is a welcome departure from the doldrums of modern, commercially-minded, film products.

The Artist is a black and white silent film, and to be honest that was enough for me to want to see it. I like to see movies that throw away normal conventions and take a risk in their production, and the idea of making a silent movie and trying to market it to a modern audience seems to be a very risky business move. But when a movie studio takes that risk it's a good sign that they are more interested in the art of film than the product of film. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money from your artistic ventures, but the fear of not making money should not frighten film-makers into playing it too safe and repeatedly creating the same product. So with the intention of having more people support what I consider to be a very artistic film, I highly recommend The Artist.

However...

I did have some problems with the film, and though I fully support its artistic boldness, I do want to give it an honest review. Towards the end of the movie I started to feel its length. The problem seemed to lie in the pacing of the plot. The movie begins in 1927 and follows the rise and fall of two actors over the course of the decade. The first actor is silent film heartthrob George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) who tries to find his place among the new talking pictures; and the other, the young, Hollywood upstart Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). But George's fall and Peppy's stardom happens over the course single a montage towards the beginning of the film. The bulk of the film is dedicated to George feeling sorry for himself as he continues his plummet. Things do happen on his way down and he does make an attempt to pick himself back up, but ultimately it is his pride that drives him downward, and like Charles Foster Kane before him, I found the story of the fall kind of boring. I just have a hard time feeling bad for proud millionaires.

The cinematography is beautiful, the acting is great, and the writing is clever; John Goodman, James Cromwell, and Malcolm Mcdowell make nice cameo appearances. And if my biggest problem is that The Artist is too much like Citizen Kane then I guess I shouldn't complain.

Eight out of Ten.

Hugo

When I first heard that Martin Scorsese was making a family movie I was intrigued. It seemed like maybe crazy Uncle Marty was ready to calm down and make something for the kids. Hugo is just that. It's a movie that kids will find silly and exciting with lots of colorful settings and quirky characters. And it's something that moms will leave the theatre saying, “Aw, that was cute.” But I am neither a child nor a mother, so Hugo did little for me.

Hugo is the story of a boy who lives in a Parisian train station in the 1930s where he befriends the old and mostly forgotten George Méliès (Ben Kingsley). Depressed by the events of WWI Méliès wishes to forget his past, but Hugo's need to find meaning in a clockwork robot his dead father left him forces him to delve into Méliès' cinematographic history. Hugo seems to be Scorsece's way of honoring Méliès. In real life George Méliès made fun movies meant for entertainment and wonder. They were family friendly and full of magic, and that pretty much sums up Hugo. The only difference is that Méliès' film were rarely over fifteen minutes long where as Hugo goes on for over two hours.

All in all Hugo just felt a little lazy. Much of the plot is strung together by random encounters and there is a lot of foreshadowing that never comes to light. And for a movie so steeped in French stereotypes why was there only one French character? Nearly every side character spends their time in cafes eating baguettes and croissants, wearing berets, and listening to accordion music—and speaking with English accents. The worst of these is American actress Chloe Moretz's character: a presumably French girl with an awful English accent whose only purpose in the film is to introduce Hugo to inconsequential side characters. The only character important to the plot other than Hugo is George Méliès, and Hugo meets him in the opening scene. So I don't really know why she was in the movie other than to force an awkward romance.

Like I said Hugo has a lot of bright colors and wonderment. If you're easily drawn in by spectacle then you'll probably be able to overlook the weird plot holes and enjoy yourself.

Five out of Ten.

Grandma's Boy

Grandma's Boy is a commercial for the following companies:

Boost Mobile

Vitamin Water

Dell Computers

Konami Digital Entertainment – America

Microsoft Game Studios X Box

Glaceau

And those are just the ones I noticed in one viewing—the list at the end of the credits was much longer. The amount of product placement in this movie is disrespectful to the viewer. The filmmakers clearly didn't care what cluttered the screen as long as they got a check for rubbing it in the audiences faces.

I expected this movie to be funny in a guilty pleasure sort of way. Something that I wouldn't normally watch, but would be good for a few cheap laughs. I was wrong. I laughed twice. If I can sit through a comedy and distinctly remember how many times I laughed then something is broken. I've had people tell me it's great and I've heard people say they love it, but I did not. I tried, but I couldn't. If you're hosting a party and want a movie to put on that no one's really going to watch then put on Anchorman or Airplane or the news—anything but Grandma's Boy.

Grandma's Boy is poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed.

One out of Ten. 

The Birth of a Nation

If you're sick of movies like The Blind Side (2009) and The Help (2011) teaching you about the white man's burden then you might really love D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The Birth of a Nation tells the story of the civil war and the subsequent restoration period from the southern perspective. In this film the KKK are the heroes and most black people are the bad guys (I say most because the film acknowledges that freed slaves who stayed submissive to their masters were good black people). The Birth of a Nation is silent, black and white, and just over three hours long, so I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone who did not fit into one or more of the following three categories:

1. You are interested in film history

If this applies to you then you'll probably enjoy this movie. The Birth of a Nation set the standard for feature length films and developed the narrative structure that has persisted in Hollywood to this day. Nearly every primitive special effect that Griffith invented for his films were used and reused by directors ever since.

2. You are interested in the American history

The history of The Birth of a Nation is a testament to the fluctuating view of race in America in the 1910s. It remains one of the most controversial films ever made, and upon its release was simultaneously celebrated and boycotted and banned all across the nation.

3. You are racist.

If you are racist and don't mind sitting through silent films then The Birth of a Nation is for you.

This film is definitely not for everyone. It's an important film and a well made film, but whether it's good or not almost seems irrelevant. A person living in our modern world is not going to watch a three hour silent film to entertained, but that doesn't mean The Birth of a Nation is not worth watching. This is a movie that you will either love for its historical importance or you simply won't watch.

Ten out of Ten.

Let the Right One In

Vampires are a pretty trendy topic these days and for whatever reason people love incorporating them into weird romances. Let the Right One In brings this to a new level of creepy by having its couple be awkward twelve year olds. Oskar is a reclusive kid who gets bullied at school and Eli is a vampire who has been twelve “for a long time.” He collects newspaper clippings about murders and she lives with a creepy older man who collects blood for her. They are both so strange and uncomfortable that it made it hard to care about them as protagonists.

Another minor issue I had with Let the Right One In is I was made too aware that it was adapted from a book. There are a bunch of little instances when the film introduces something that seems important and then never follows up with it. There was one scene like this that really seemed out of place. Oskar is visiting his dad's house (his parents are separated) and is having a good time, but then a man comes in and it gets really awkward. Oskar's dad starts drinking and then the scene ends. Neither the dad nor the other guy are in the rest of the movie. It seems likely to me that they both play a more important role in the book, but if you're going to leave most of that part out then why introduce them at all?

Neither the creepy protagonists nor the few loose threads are enough to completely kill the experience of the movie, and it was so gritty and dark it was definitely an experience. I feel like that's what people are usually looking for in their horror films, but as someone who's generally not a fan of the genre Let the Right One In didn't do much for me.

Six out of Ten.