May the Fourth Be With You 2020!

Never was there a better time to savour the myth, fun and wonder of Star Wars. Have a great day!

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

 These are you final steps, Rey. Rise and take them. The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more as Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron’s (Oscar Isaac) journey continues led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher). They discover that the Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is alive and unwell and living on Exegol where he’s been discovered by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). With the power and knowledge of generations behind them, the final battle commences between good and evil and Rey makes a surprising discovery about her origins that leads to a confrontation that could have devastating consequences for future generations …  Every Jedi who ever lived, lives in you. How to finish a beloved trilogy? Perhaps it’s fitting that the concluding days of a decade that ends a 42-year long saga is one that commenced with James Cameron’s Avatar a film that was purportedly about to change cinema; that film’s impact then became dissipated with the sheer proliferating superheroism of Marvel Comics; so now we have something that seems somehow less tainted than either of those (non-) series. J.J. Abrams may not be the ideal filmmaker to bring things to a conclusion, ending things not being his forte (I give you Lost). The first trilogy is so beloved;  the second so critically reviled (albeit kids love it); so how would it tie up so many apparently disparate loose ends? Well, it does, if rather haphazardly. It brings together the Sith story with the Jedi story and allows the characters of both Rey and Ben/Kylo Ren to assert their position in the pantheon. The original characters play an active role, albeit in unexpected fashion;  a favourite returns;  and there is more than one kind of rebirth. In other words all the Jungian and mythical tropes that inspired George Lucas via Joseph Campbell are invoked. Even the Ewoks (the honours appropriately taken by Warwick Davis and his son) make a very brief appearance, in case anyone would think they’d been overlooked. There is some dreadfully portentous dialogue; there is some bad acting (I’m sorry to say I mean you, Richard E. Grant); there is a brief Lesbian kiss (the Force definitely woke up); there are some deaths and sacrifices. The film that made my entire generation go to the movies ends the 2010s and it’s not a cliffhanger, it’s a proper ending. What else do you want? It all sits, more or less, on the elegant shoulders of Ridley and she’s very good as the feistiest woman since, well, Princess Leia. Happy New Year. Screenplay by Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams from a story by Derek Connolly & Colin Treverrow and Terrio & Abrams. We are not alone

A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)

You have a good job, you make good money, and you don’t beat your wife. What more could a Latino father-in-law ask for? Wall Street broker Harold (John Cho) is asked to look after a Christmas tree by his father-in-law (Danny Trejo) who objects to the faux monstrosity in his suburban villa,  but he and his ex-roommate Kumar (Kal Penn) end up destroying it with a giant spliff from a mysterious benefactor.  The two then set out to find a replacement for the damaged tree and embark on a chaotic journey around New York City with their BFFs Todd  (Thomas Lennon plus his infant daughter) and Adrian (Amir Blumenfeld) while scoring drugs, having sex, trying to avoid being murdered by a Ukrainian ganglord and making babies … The tree is a cancer, Harold. We have to get rid of it before it kills Christmas. The stoner dudes are back apparently unscathed after a sojourn in Gitmo, rampaging and raunching about NYC in as tasteless a fashion as humanly possible. With a toddler off her trolley, a claymation sequence, a song and dance feature starring Neil Patrick Harris who isn’t really gay, every ethnicity and creed mocked and a penile homage to A Christmas Story, this is the very opposite of woke. A laugh riot intended to be seen in 3D but we’ll take an egg in the face whatever way it falls. Almost heartwarming! Screenplay by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg. Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson. Oh, great. Now we’re getting tinkled on

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

Are you sure I don’t look like a dick?  With their headquarters destroyed by missile strikes launched by power-crazed international drug dealer Poppy (Julianne Moore) and the world held hostage, members of Kingsman find new allies when they discover a spy organization in the United States known as Statesman. They’ve been holding a lepidopterist (Colin Firth returns as Harry) in their Kentucky distillery (a cover) since he got shot in the head a year previously and appears to be suffering from retrograde amnesia. He thinks he’s a butterfly collector and has no recollection whatsoever of being a spy. In an adventure that tests their strength and wits, the elite secret agents from both sides of the pond band together to battle Poppy and save the day, something that’s becoming a bit of a habit for Eggsy (Taron Egerton) … I’ve never considered genocide especially ladylike. With its retro stylings (London gentleman vs. Fifties-obsessed villainness), drink vs drugs, its nod to Michael Caine’s heyday (those spex), cute dogs, a meet-the-parents scenario, bombs and ultra-violence there’s something for everybody in this comic book sequel. Channing Tatum joins in the fun as the cowboy on a mission, with Jeff Bridges heading up the allied US spy gang and Mark Strong back as Merlin accompanying Egerton (with that awful white-Londoner-doing-black-argot shtick that is SO irritating) doing the superspy thang. Then there’s Poppy’s predilection for human burgers and kidnapping celebrity musicians. It’s cheeky, rude and fun. Somewhat. Not to throw rain on the parade, it’s a shame that writers of such creativity as Jane Goldman and (director) Matthew Vaughn don’t do something properly challenging instead of rehashing this nonsense. That’s two and quarter hours of my life gone in an exhausting tribute to special effects and let’s face it, this isn’t Lawrence of Arabia. Sigh. Hey, hey, Elton. Language. Okay, well, as fabulous as your catalogue is, I think I want to hear some Gershwin

Silent Running (1972)

It calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth… and there were valleys. And there were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in – you could go to sleep in. And there were blue skies, and there was fresh air… and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space.  After the end of all botanical life on Earth, with all the flora and fauna destroyed and forests defoliated, ecologist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) maintains a greenhouse on a space station around the rings of Saturn in order to preserve various plants for future generations. Assisted by three robots (Huey, Dewey and Louie!) and a small human crew (Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint), Lowell rebels when he is ordered to destroy the greenhouse in favor of carrying cargo.  The decision he takes puts him at odds with everyone but his robots and they are forced to do anything necessary to keep their invaluable greenery alive. But when he finds himself playing poker with his remaining robots he realises the desperation of loneliness and then his bosses locate him … This is one of a slew of environmentally conscious sci fis from the early 70s. It works because it asks the biggest question:  what do we mean in the universe? And it does so simply and without deep philosophical pondering, it’s just a guy in outer space who wants to save the world and realises he misses human companionship. Dern is superb as the uncomplicated man who tries to save himself. Written by Michael Cimino, Steve Bochco and Deric Washburn. The directing debut of 2001‘s effects guy, Douglas Trumbull:  when you see his charming robots you’ll know why he got a call from George Lucas for Star Wars. Ecological elegance.

Blade Runner (1982)

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Los Angeles 2019. A rebellion amongst replicants in the off-colonies has to be put down and blade runner (or detective/android killer) Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is recruited to assassinate the leaders – Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora (Joanna Cassidy). The replicants are returning to Earth in order to extend their four-year lifespan. His employer, the boss of the Tyrell Corporation introduces him to Rachael (Sean Young) his most cherished creation …  Hampton Fancher and David Peoples loosely adapted Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and with Ridley Scott at the helm created an utterly beguiling brand of future shock which is beautiful and dazzling, grand and depressing. It’s a rain-slicked Metropolis where life is cheap and detectives prowl the streets like Chandler was scripting with robots:  human nature never really changes.  The mise-en-scène falls into both the sci-fi and film noir genres (echoing the identity crisis at the heart of the story). A proliferation of signs from both cinematic traditions, coupled with overwhelming production design (by Lawrence G. Paull and David Snyder based on sketches by Scott and Syd Mead) calls to mind modern-day Hong Kong, music videos and the fog and teeming rain associated with America in a World War II era familiar from hundreds of noir movies, this is a virtual essay in postmodernism (which supplants the concept of genre with that of textuality). This is such a complex quasi-generic film, awash with implications for representation in the age of modern technology which are obvious:  ‘authenticity’, ‘realism’ are artificial constructs.  A play on our familiarity with other cultural products is central to postmodernism’s perceived jokiness, while the traditional relationships between time and space are condensed (a condition of postmodernity) and undermined to create virtual reality so that a ‘real, knowable world’ is just that – a world in quotation marks, as real or unreal as you choose to make it.  The film represents a summary of this problem with a jumble of signs referring to other signs – its pastiche of styles telescoping the ancient world, 1940s, 1980s and 2019, its electronic soundtrack (by Eighties maestro Vangelis) and a raft of references to other movies, other characters, ideas and themes.  It’s about dystopia and imperialism, dehumanisation by a Tyrannical Corporation, totalitarianist tech companies and class revolution, the nature and function of memory, what it is to be free, what it is to have power and to have none, the fragmentary nature of identity in a dying culture, what it means to be human. No matter what version you watch – and there are nine (variously with and without voiceovers and certain revelations/clarifications) if you include The Director’s Cut and The Final Cut – you will never be able to stop its imagery searing your cortex. Philip K. Dick saw some footage before his untimely death from a stroke – and loved it. It is visionary cinema and it is astonishing. This is my 1,400th post on Mondo Movies. Thank you for watching. MM#1400

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Aka Farewell to the Master and Journey to the World. Must I take drastic action in order to get a hearing? When humanoid alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) arrives on a flying saucer in Washington DC the military takes action and the world takes notice. He’s accompanied by an eight-foot robot called Gort. When Klaatu speaks about world peace a nervous soldier opens fire and he disappears from Walter Reed Hospital where he cures himself. Meanwhile Gort is in front of the spaceship, unmoving. Klaatu hides in plain sight in a boarding house (wearing a suit from a dry cleaner’s bearing the tag ‘Mr Carpenter’) where he is befriended by Bobby (the great child actor Billy Gray) whose widowed mother Helen (Patricia Neal) is a secretary engaged to Tom Stephens (Hugh Marlowe). Bobby goes to Arlington National Cemetery with Klaatu and the alien expresses a desire to meet someone of the calibre of Lincoln. Bobby suggests Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) but when Klaatu visits he’s out so he writes a solution to a mathematical problem left unfinished on the blackboard with instructions on how to be reached. Klaatu returns with government escort and the men discuss the dangerous nature of atomic power:  Klaatu warns that Earth will be eliminated. Bobby follows him and sees him enter the spaceship. He reports the incident to Helen and Tom and Klaatu visits Helen at work and they enter an elevator that stops – he stops all electricity worldwide for a half hour, demonstrating the incapacity of governments to deal with true power… it all comes to a head when he returns with Helen to Professor Barnhardt and the trigger-happy military shoot him dead after being forewarned by Tom. Until … Klaatu stages a resurrection. This Christ analogy was smothered in censor-friendly form, its pacifist message a radical intervention into Cold War paranoia with superb production design (Frank Lloyd Wright contributed to the UFO!) and a suitably strange soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann. Tightly written by Edmund H. North from a story by Harry Bates and superbly directed documentary-style by Robert Wise, this has many great scenes with some of the best in the boarding house between Rennie and Gray. There’s a reason this is a classic and it’s very resonant today. Remember – Klaatu barada nikito!

Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D

You just can’t go around the streets killing people. Well, you can actually. James Cameron has revisited one of the key films of the 90s and possibly the greatest action film ever made. It was re-released for one night only – 29 August –  the date the T-1000 was released to an unsuspecting world. In this time-defying work Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is whiling away the months in a state mental health facility while her kid John (Edward Furlong) is in foster care practising those sneaky skillsets that his mom has taught him because in the future he’s the leader of the humans in a machine-led dystopia. While T-1000 (Robert Patrick) has been sent back to kill John, The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has been sent to protect him in one of the greatest face-offs (literally) you will ever see. Once the computer boffin (Joe Morton) has been engaged rather forcibly to help destroy his creations (in a philosophical 360 these will destroy too) there is nothing for it but fight to the death. I didn’t like the 3D and it actually added nothing but migraine in this 4K edition. This is sensational from concept to execution. And you don’t need me to repeat the lines or the warmth between Der Ahnuld and Furlong or the genius of casting Hamilton who is ripped to the max in the greatest action role outside of Sigourney in Aliens. Robert Patrick gives me nightmares. This is future shock like no other. No need to tamper with brilliance so the visual jolts bothered me greatly:  a weird choice given that this is a warning about technology, a fever dream that has particular resonance today.  Written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr. This is intense.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Updates, eh? Sometimes they work, sometimes they get you in the … Well between computer glitches and Shelley, the Prometheus behemoth is regenerating with this Alien retread and despite my misgivings including the dislikeable casting, I didn’t even look at my watch until ten minutes before the end. Some kind of record. Particularly given the charisma gap here. The Covenant is en route to an intergalactic colony with a coupla thousand peeps and foetuses in pods but a random electrical event causes the death of the Captain (James Franco, gone in sixty seconds) and he’s replaced by deputy Billy ‘Skeletor’ Crudup a religious zealot who sees another planet and decides to stop there instead. Bad move. Because this ain’t paradise and there is not just the pathogen ‘accidentally’ released by Prometheus to contend with, but David 8 (Michael Fassbender) the lone survivor of that ship. And his ‘brother’ Walter (Fassbender) a staple of the Covenant crew meets one of his own kind – family! – for the first time. We’re into mad scientist territory and moreso. It’s only a matter of time before the team including second in command Daniels (beady eyed Katherine Waterston, Franco’s widow) are in all kinds of danger. This can happen when you literally have to recharge your batteries:  so much for technology. This is so fast and furious you never stop to think about the fact that Danny McBride is the guy who’s left to rescue them. Wow. This is more than a human origins/Adam and Eve story:  it’s a proper riposte to the gyno-politics of the series, especially the last one when Dr Elizabeth Shaw (the great Noomi Rapace) carried out her own abortion/Caesarian – and you should see what’s left of her. This is what happens when men decide they want to take charge of reproduction, with obvious debts to more than one Shelley. Written by John Logan and Dante Harper from a story by Jack Paglen and Michael Green. I have one major issue with this. Please stop shooting all sci fis and superheroes on grayscale. I can deal with all the colour spectrum. Really. And I’m not the only one. Put on some lights, use the rainbow. This has been going on for years and I’m sick of it. I will need a coalminer’s lamp next time I go to the movies if this continues. And next time an insect flies into one of your orifices, be very scared indeed … Outer space, innerspace, vive la difference! Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Star Wars (1977)

It was forty years ago today that movies changed! Now that really WAS a long time ago. Happy birthday Star Wars!