Perpetual Rants

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

With The Force Awakens, so did my writer’s block.

Not to say that TFA was bad. It just made me speechless to the point that I wasn’t able to verbalise how I felt about the movie (and this carried on for two years, and for all other movies I watched from then till now, which was quite a lot).

The Last Jedi broke my block in twain and I’m still not running on empty (it’s been five days).

If you’re looking for a rational-type review analysing how good/bad I thought this movie is, how much sense did the plotline make, how the actors fared, etc., then this is not that review.

This is a review by someone who tremendously enjoyed TLJ, punctuated with all the things she totally loved (and some didn’t-quite-loves) about it, and part of this post eventually descends into ALL CAPS because she still is very excited about the movie and can’t stop ~~fan-girling~~ thinking about it.

*spoilers*

*no really, all spoilers from here on out please don’t read any further*

No movie has ever made me go OMG. Even movies that surprised me in the enjoyment department (like The Avengers) had semi-predictable storylines. I go into comic book movies having a bit of background on the characters (because I love comic books and am surfacely familiar with quite a number of them); I watch a Star Wars movie knowing who the characters are, and being (more than averagely, if I may add) able to see parallels between old and new, and because I love that old drug named nostalgia, my mind goes to overdrive as I watch the movie and I tend to more or less be able to see things coming.

TLJ made me go OMG several times. Very loudly. List below:

FIRST OMG – Leia somehow Force(s) herself to fly through space towards the Resistance cruiser so that they could save her!

I suppose Han is kinda right on this, but it was such a triumphant moment that Leia wasn’t a friggin’ goner (and that Lucasfilms hadn't lied about wanting to give her a bigger role in Ep 9) that in that moment, I was just glad that she managed to save herself.
SECOND OMG - KYLO REN OFFS SNOKE! I WAS OMG-ING AT THAT ENTIRE SEQUENCE WHEN THE LIGHTSABER WAS SLOWLY MOVING TOWARDS SNOKE’S BODY!! AND THEN KYLO REN FIGHTS BACK-TO-BACK WITH REY WITH THE PRAETORIAN GUARDS OMG BE STILL MY HEART I REALLY THOUGHT HE’D TURN TO THE LIGHT SIDE BUT ACTUALLY HE STILL IS DARK OMG.

AS I’M WRITING THIS I JUST REALISED THAT KYLO ASKING REY TO JOIN HIM PARALLELS REVENGE OF THE SITH WHEN ANAKIN ASKS PADME (SOMEONE HE LOVES) TO JOIN HIM AND ~~TOGETHER THEY COULD DEFEAT PALPATINE AND~~ RULE THE GALAXY.

AND METHINKS KYLO TOTALLY IS INTO REY (a spark has been… awakened) AND I’M TOTALLY SHIPPING THEM AND I HAVE NEVER SHIPPED ANYTHING BEFORE IN MY LIFE.

no, not even Kylux

*exhale*

Sure at this point in TLJ the Palpatine figure is gone, but what brought me to this realisation was the backdrop - throneroom burning up looks very similar to Mustafar red AND I DON’T KNOW IF I’M OVERANALYSING THIS OR IF IT’S INTENTIONAL (knowing me, it is likely the former).

And in Snoke’s face(!) for trying to stoke Kylo’s inner conflict between Light and Dark by ~~setting Kylo up with Rey~~ continuously bridging his Force connection with Rey. I mean, wait for the guy to put his shirt on before patching the call through, Snoke! They were holding hands next!

For a guy to ~~monologue~~ keep on going about not being defeatable, he sure didn’t foresee THIS coming (his own death, I mean).
THIRD OMG – LUKE ASTRAL PROJECTION FTW!! I WAS HALF EXPECTING HIM TO DISAPPEAR LIKE WHEN VADER RAN KILLED OBI-WAN BUT THEN LUKE WAS STILL THERE AND KYLO REN SLOWLY STICKS HIS LIGHTSABER INTO HIM AND IT TURNS OUT HE WAS USING THE FORCE TO BE THERE!!! AND I GOT ALL EMOTIONAL WHEN HE TOPPLED OFF HIS SEAT BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT HIM TO HAVE EXERTED HIMSELF AND THEN DIE AND THEN WHEN HE LOOKED AT THE SUNS I MISTAKENLY THOUGHT HE SAW A SPECK AND THAT SPECK WOULD BE A FIRST ORDER SHIP SO I PANICKED BUT THEN IT WASN’T AND THEN I WAS RELIEVED AND THEN HE DIED OH ALL THE FEELS.

Though if Kylo had actually stopped and think about it (instead of being filled with / blinded by rage, as he always is), he would’ve noticed that Luke’s lightsaber is blue, and that would be telling because KYLO AND REY HAD JUST BROKE LUKE’S BLUE LIGHTSABER IN THEIR FORCE TUG OF WAR PREVIOUSLY ON SNOKE’S SHIP.

Other things I loved about the movie:

Luke channeling a bit of Yoda in him, when he first taught Rey what the Force was (and he kept smacking her hahaha). Funnily, I can’t seem to remember what the third lesson is. But I’m going to watch the movie again, so I’ll keep a lookout for that.
Rey and Kylo communicating via ~~Face~~Force-time, and their connection/relationship grew that way. That was completely unexpected, and it was most intriguing (because then they find out more about each other and so do the audience).
Admiral Holdo for not being a typical bureaucrat trying to keep things together. When she turned her ship towards the First Order cruisers, I figured she’d go kamikaze on them, but I never thought she’d actually go LIGHTSPEED on them!! So bad-ass.

Though if her timing was off, she could've gone lightspeed riiiiiiiiiight before her ship rammed into the First Order, and then the suicide run wouldn't have been suicidal at all.
Puppet Yoda!
The truth about Rey’s parentage. Up till that point the movie was dragging its feet with the reveal (even Kylo Ren in the elevator briefly mentioned her parents but didn’t go any further), and it almost feels like it was done on purpose that I couldn’t help but LOL (yes, I really did LOL at that scene).
Rose the mechanic. She’s so adorbz. But I didn’t dig the Canto Bight scenes. I thought it was a bit of a time-waster and that she and Finn had a sojourn there as a roundabout excuse to be able to get on Snoke’s ship and then get caught. And Benicio Del Toro? Totally wasted.

And while we’re on ‘wasted’, Captain Phasma again is wasted. How is it that a stormtrooper so bad-ass that she’s female and six feet tall and chrome can’t be utilised effectively in a movie filled with other moments of bad-assery is totally beyond me.

Also, exposition. Older movies generally showed. Movies in recent memory tend to explain or tell, like - “she took off in Snoke’s personal escort”? That was said so non-importantly (I’m not blaming Hux it’s just that when Kylo is all seething and pissed you tend to focus on him more) that when I saw her in the Millenium Falcon, I got confused and wondered if I’d missed a scene that showed the Falcon picking her up from Snoke’s ship.

I first noticed this in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry and his friends would routinely explain things (which in the book, were shown) to each other as they walked from classes, around corners, or down the stairs.

I loved that TLJ blew my mind with several scenes, and I loved how there is a sense (dare I say) of believability about all of it (even though it’s about qi a make-believe energy that flows through all of us and around us). With all the new things introduced, never did it make me pause and think – “no way, that’s ridiculous” (unlike when Anakin’s mom revealed that she had a virgin birth). To me, everything happened very organically, and I didn’t feel that anything was out of place (yes, even Luke’s disillusionment about the Jedi and everything).

With TLJ, I feel that the new trilogy could potentially be a quadrilogy. So much development happened in this movie with Rey and Kylo (and Poe but not much on the Finn side, though), with so much more growth to be seen. Rey needs to grow into a Jedi (and none of that slapdash shortcut that TFA took by making Rey be an utter prodigy at the Force); and Kylo needs to become even darker than he already is, so that when redemption happens (I still have hope for this) it'd have an even more powerful impact to the audience.

For all this to have happened in TLJ, I feel that Ep 9 cannot finish this - it has to be two more movies. By making it into a quadrilogy (officially, please – none of that Part 1 Part 2 junk), Lucasfilms (and Disney) would make sure that things end properly. And please don’t detract from the main trilogy by promising to explain things in the anthology films, like how Rogue One became highly necessary to explain out how the serious flaw in the Death Star came to be.

And no I’m not saying that because I want Luke to come back as Force Ghost to properly train Rey for an entire movie like Yoda did with him.

It’s a shame that Rian Johnson wouldn’t be writing Episode 9. I would’ve liked to see how he takes Rey and Kylo onward (and to the end), since TLJ is just the middle movie.

Anyway, thus ends my post about TLJ. I will be watching it again later today, so will edit if I feel I need to.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Crimson Peak (2015)

Hearing that this film is more visual style than substance would not have deterred me from the cinemas, but hearing that the storyline is predictable would have (and made me wait for it to come on TV), if not for Tom Hiddleston.

Watching this film was a bit of a fan-girl experience, because Hiddles didn’t make an appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which means that the last time I saw him in something ‘new’, was three years ago in The Avengers.

Aside from this, the trailer was random enough that I couldn’t make head or tail, and it piqued my interest enough to want to know what happened without going to Wikipedia.

I guess I could blame my level of expectation on Stephen King. Stephen King had said (six months prior, at previews) that this movie was (and I quote) “fucking terrifying”, and the last time he said something like this was for the 1980s film The Evil Dead.

And everyone knew how that movie turned out, right? As I was telling people, Stephen King is still relevant, he's still putting out books every other year, so to me, there’s no reason I would doubt Stephen King's word on this.

In promos surrounding the movie's opening, the director has been saying (or ‘clarifying’) that the film is a gothic romance with ghosts, rather than a horror movie with romance thrown in.

So it’s not like, ‘~~buyer~~viewer beware’, or anything. But despite above ‘warning’ from Guillermo Del Toro, I went in prepared for a romance, but still kinda hoping to get scared shitless (due to Stephen King’s “fucking terrifying” stamp of approval).

Alas, any shitting to be had came from gore rather than actual scares or plot twists. I even managed to guess what the Sharpes were up to even in Act 1. In that sense, I was a bit disappointed in the plot department - I guess I didn’t expect to see it coming so easily.

I'm sure you know the story by now. Young girl becomes enamoured with tall, dark, mysterious stranger, and gets whisked away to his mansion in the middle of nowhere to be with him and his creepy sister. Other creepy things then ensue.

There are some red herrings – Enola Sciotti (or E.S.), I believe, is one, seeing that E.S. could stand for Edith Sharpe or even Eunice Sharpe. Although I’m not sure whether it was meant for Edith to conveniently discover and ask Thomas what Milan is all about. I had the impression that Thomas had a wife originally and her name had begun with E, but in the end his other previous wives had names from letters that weren’t ‘E’.

It’s a bit of a shame, because if you noticed, the central theme of the film was already revealed, mirrored in Edith’s manuscript, and when Thomas ~~berates~~criticizes her about it, do note that there are quite many a spoiler in what he said. I thought that was very meta, very cool, and a great foreshadowing of things to come.

And with this, I would’ve preferred the central theme to have been fleshed out more, to see more of what it was of Edith that won Thomas over. There wasn’t really enough of that, and the only scene in which we see something like this is in the one where Thomas goes, “You’re different from the rest”.
It wouldn’t have been easy to strike a balance between both character and plot development, and the rather slow burn of seeing Edith trying to figure out what is going on could have been exchanged with more, well, romance.

Yes, you read right. I am choosing romance over horror. The sap in me is winning this round.

Visually, the movie is gorgeous, and I loved, loved the decrepit, crumbling mansion that is Allerdale Hall. The name ‘Crimson Peak’ comes from the red clay that seeps into the snow during winter. I was reminded a bit of The Shining when our heroine runs out into the snow and tries to defend herself. Luckily, there isn’t much running around – otherwise it’d be a direct ~~copy~~homage of The Shining.
Verdict: The movie is very suspenseful; at liberal points in the film I threw my hands up to my eyes (after what happened to Edith’s father), and the ghosts were ghastly enough to make me scrounge my face up and cringe. But I feel the violence and gore are gratuitous, and towards the end there is one unfortunately unintentionally comic scene (and I wasn’t the only one who thought so - my friend cracked up at it). It was the one thing that marred an otherwise intense affair, especially with Lucille all riled up and in crazy banshee mode. I think I would’ve liked the movie more if I hadn’t seen it coming so early in the film.

Still, even Del Toro probably couldn’t bear to harm Hiddles’ cheekbones, eh?

Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy New Year!

May 2016 bring you all lots of joy, happiness, and a ton o'fun!! 👍👍🎉🎉

Saturday, December 26, 2015

(Belated) Merry Christmas!

15 minutes past Christmas day. Hope everyone's had a good one!

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I have reviews for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Crimson Peak, Peanuts and Star friggin' Wars: The Force Awakens! But I've been getting very distracted by work and other things lately. Will post all these by this year (and also some of those backlog reviews ugh).

Edit to include Peanuts. Totally adorbz movie!

Friday, November 27, 2015

I'd intended to blog more this year...

...but my iPhone and extensive phone gaming got in the way.

Those things are friggin' addictive. Sigh.

Anyway, what I've been up to the past two months are:

- Playing phone games and burning through phone data like how I eat food (I eat very, very fast).
- I saw Crimson Peak! Review in progress. I completed like, 80% of it within three day of watching it, but after that, forgot that I need to tidy up and put it up.
- Bought Star Wars: The Force Awakens tickets!! Cannot, cannot, CANNOT wait for 17 December.
- Work, work, work. And also: sleep, sleep, sleep. And kinda lazing around because I tend not to be in the mood to work at home. Argh, backlog!

That's it. I've not forgotten the multitude of reviews I've yet to put up (though tomorrow at work I may forget about them temporarily). Patience is much appreciated at this point!!