#very interested in the backstory for why he views himself as a useless loser but also. hes really a damsel huh???

[lecliss]

Oh wow 2.4 really just ends like that huh. Everything calms down and the prison is reopened so everyone can actually escape off screen MEANWHILE JIAOQIU GOT FUCKING KIDNAPPED. AS IF THE BETA FUCKING HIM OVER WASNT ENOUGH HE HAS TO BE THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS WHO CALLS HIMSELF A USELESS LOSER TOO????

[mylifeincinema]

My Week in Reviews: December 22, 2019

This was supposed to go live last night, but instead of having it scheduled, I had it in drafts. Oops.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019)

*This Review May Contain Spoilers.*

Well, it's not very good... but I still kinda loved it.

Things to Love about The Rise of Skywalker:

-It actually wraps up the saga, characters that we've grown up with get endings, and the characters we were introduced to a few years back get closure to their beginnings.

-Babu Frik. He could've very easily been another Jar Jar, but thankfully his screen-time was limited and executed well.

-The action sequences. Pretty much anything with a lightsaber involved is fantastic, here. Especially the dual location duel between Rey and Kylo and their duel on the ruins of the Death Star.

-Poe. I've always liked Poe, and he's given some more backstory/personality here. So that's good.

-Kylo's arc. It's satisfying and suitable for the character both on the page and as Adam Driver brought him to life.

-Zorii Bliss. She felt shoehorned in to give Poe a potential backup love interest. And to steer people away from 'shipping' Finn and him. But she was interesting, and brought to life with a good sense of mystery and conviction by Kerri Russell, so unlike Finn's forced (new) love interest, she didn't distract and/or annoy.

-The production design. The world building in this new trilogy has been absolutely stunning, and thankfully it didn't slow down any with this finale. There's nothing quite as eye-popping as Crait. But there's still a lot of interesting and beautiful work all over this film.

-Babu Frik. Seriously, I want to hang out/go on adventures with that little dude. He's awesome.

-BB-8... that dude deserves his very own trilogy.

-The Harrison Ford cameo. His 'I Know." damn near killed me. Very well done moment.

-The benching of Rose. Nothing against the actress (she's fine), but the character and her subplot in The Last Jedi was so awful and awkward, that I was really happy to see her role in this film diminished.

-The Knights of Ren.

-Any/all Chewie moments. I love him.

-Porgs!!

-Did I mention Babu Frik?

Things Not to Love in The Rise of Skywalker:

-The screenplay. There's so much painful dialogue and convenient, underdeveloped plot points, here, it's torture.

-The pacing is all over the place. The beginning is edited like a sloppy 'previously on' segment, and later scenes that should've flown by feel sluggish.

-That fucking 'I guess he must have been on a different transport!' bullshit. Are you fucking kidding me? Did these useless assholes actually get paid for this shit.

-D-O... what an unnecessary/annoying little droid. They could've easily replaced him with a simple discovery from BB-8 or C-3PO. Easily.

-Palpatine. It all felt convenient and forced. The story shit actually mostly works, but McDiarmid's hammy performance drags down any of the scenes actually featuring him.

-That festival. Ugh.

-Jannah and the hinting that she, Finn and other ex-Stormtroopers may be Force-sensitive. Stop giving this shit away to anyone you think might inspire any fucking nobody watching... it's lazy and pandering.

-Kylo Ren's helmet. Ugh. It looks so damn corny and he only wears it for (what seems like) one or two brief scenes.

-That clearly shoehorned, painfully cheesy 'I am all Sith', 'I am all Jedi' bullshit. We get it, another Disney backed film had an amazing, wildly effective moment with a similar exchange... that doesn't mean every film you release from here on out need to rip it off.

-Same goes for the cheesy 'Resistance Assemble' type moment, except J.J. executed that one fairly well, so I definitely didn't hate it in the moment.

There's surely plenty of other things I could put into both of these categories, and surely a lot more I could put into the latter rather than the former. But it's a Star Wars movie. Only three or so have ever actually been good movies. If you go in knowing what to expect it's really easy to let go and have an amazing time. Despite all of the major flaws throughout this one, that's exactly what I did. - 6.5/10

Uncut Gems (Benny & Josh Safdie, 2019)

Wow...

Who knew a two-hour anxiety attack could be so fucking fun??

Adam Sandler is spectacular; probably the best he’s ever been. He takes this wildly unlikable loser and makes us start to cheer for him in a way that pulls us into the film similarly to the way the game pulls him deeper into his gambling addiction. Despite knowing he’s a loser, we begin to cheer for him to win, forgetting that losers don’t win… not really. The Safdie Bros. fill the film with never-ending tension, making even the few relaxed scenes pop with a sense of urgency and trepidation. Together they form a wild ride that scarcely loosens its grip on the viewer, building up an unbearable pressure that explodes in the most sudden and shocking manner. In the only manner it ever really could. - 9/10

Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood, 2019)

Richard Jewell is a film about a simple man who wants to live a simple life by simple rules. When he's given his moment, he delivers, only to have it snatched away from him from an establishment that just doesn't like the who and what he is.

Richard Jewell was a hero. Plain and simple. He wasn't a smart man, but who cares? All he wanted was to do some good in this world. He did. And that's the truth.

Paul Walter Hauser is fantastic. He brings Jewell to life with an overeager sense of duty and an often too black and white view of right and wrong. He doesn't fully understand what is being done to him, and certainly doesn't understand why. It never totally clicks why the FBI is treating him like a bad guy, after all, he's law enforcement just like them. He's at once completely naive and downright better than them. He doesn't understand their game, but he does understand it's not fair. Hauser taps into all of this completely, and shows us everything that made Jewell the man he was, for better and worse. It's a damn shame Hauser won't see any of the awards attention for this, as it's one of the more impressive real-life performances we've seen in recent years.

Kathy Bates and Sam Rockwell deliver scene-stealing performances as Jewell's mother and lawyer/friend, respectively. They both care for him, albeit in different ways, and their dedication comes through loud and clear through these performances. Jon Hamm is solid, and frustrating, portraying a composite FBI agent who failed in the moment, and who will damn well do anything to succeed in closing his case regardless of the truth, just to prove he himself isn't a failure. Olivia Wilde gives AJC journalist Kathy Scruggs a far more redemptive and complete arc than the film's detractors would like you to believe, and certainly more than she actually deserves. But in the end, I don't really care about Scruggs. Wilde did fine work, but at the end of the day, she's just someone who wrote a smear-campaign about a good man. In 2019, she's a dime a dozen.

Sure, the screenplay is slanted. It cares only about painting Richard Jewell as the hero he was, and won't be bothered by treating Scruggs fairly or losing itself in the media circus. It does this to help give a full picture of the nightmare Jewell was going up against and never seems excessive or unfair.

Eastwood's work here is as tight as ever; there isn't a wasted shot to be found throughout the film. He's not a director whose style ever blows me away (save for Million Dollar Baby, maybe), but his work's consistency and efficiency is astounding, filling scenes with just the right amount of emotion (that press conference) and tension (that bombing sequence) without ever losing focus of the story at hand.

Here, Richard Jewell is that story. - 8/10

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.