Star Wars Prequels: A Good Foundation for the New Trilogy

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I’ve never had a spot on the anti-Star Wars prequels bandwagon.  When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, I was 14 and a huge Star Wars fan.  I was too young at the time to go to a midnight showing, so I had to wait all day to see the film that evening, and I could not sit still.  By the time the 20th Century Fox fanfare started playing, I was in tears, and stayed that way through most of the film.  I remember everyone in the theater enjoying it immensely, laughing and cheering throughout, and I saw it again two days later.  Needless to say, I’m a Star Wars fanboy, and while my 28 viewings of the Star Wars saga films in the theater are not anything close to a record, it’s safe to say that I was in no way disappointed by the prequels.

With the announcement that Disney and Lucasfilm will be making (at minimum) Episodes VII-IX, many people have found themselves revisiting that last Star Wars films that were released, giving the internet new justification for one of its favorite pastimes: prequel bashing.  Many of these have been presented as “Lessons J.J. Abrams Can Learn from the Prequels” containing a list of grievances against the film.  IGN recently featured an article of this type, and I want to address some of its complaints.  I’m going to do my best to set aside my fanboyism because I truly feel that Episodes I-III are great films, and have been unfairly maligned in the last 14 years.
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Review: Quartet

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2012 was a busy year for Maggie Smith.  In addition to her role in season 3 of “Downton Abbey,” she was featured in two, very similar films: Quartet and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The two movies are so similar that it’s almost impossible to review one without comparing it to the other.  Both films feature aging retirees, adjusting to both a new phase in their lives and to new environments.  However, while The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was energetic, and uplifting, Quartet is more subtle, quiet and slightly more serious.
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Review: A Good Day to Die Hard

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25 years after his first adventure, NYPD Detective John McClane is back, in his fifth film, A Good Day to Die Hard.  McClane’s last outing, in 2007, we were given man left behind by the modern world and confronted with a threat he couldn’t fully comprehend.  He was partnered with a geeky companion, and the juxtaposition was the perfect way to reintroduce Die Hard for the modern era.  This time out, McClane travels to Russia in an attempt to help his son, who has been arrested for an assassination.  I can see how this seemed like the perfect setup, offering plenty of opportunity for McClane to be a fish-out-of-water in a similar way to the very first film.  The only problem is that I think the filmmakers have never seen a Die Hard movie before.
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Analysis: Argo and Filmmakers’ Responsibility

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Even before Argo won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Hollywood’s top honor, it was already being plagued by controversy.  (Nevermind the fact that every other nominee was controversial in some way: Lincoln got easy facts wrong, Silver Linings Playbook mishandled mental illness, Beasts of the Southern Wild romanticized poverty, Zero Dark Thirty lied about torture’s effectiveness, Django Unchained was racist and used the n-word too much, Russell Crowe’s singing was horrible in Les Miserables, Life of Pi misrepresented Indians and religion, and Amour advocates assisted suicide and wasn’t even in English!)  It’s nothing unusual for films to encounter controversy, or even to court it, but the debates this year about facts and politics in film have raised questions (none of them new) about the responsibility of filmmakers to the audience.
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2013 Oscars Recap

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Another Academy Awards ceremony has come and gone, and overall it was an enjoyable evening.  There were few surprises among the award winners, though I only correctly predicted 16/24 winners correctly (equaling my score from last year, at least I’m consistent).  In addition to there being no real surprises there are also no winners that I feel were not deserving to win; even if I disagree with the outcomes, the awards went to quality films/performances which makes it hard to complain too loudly.  The show itself was enjoyable, if not spectacular, with some wonderful moments and some bits that fell flat, and I was surprised with how much I enjoyed Seth MacFarlane.  Read on to see my thoughts in a bit more detail.
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Review: Life of Pi

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“He said you had a story that would make me believe in God.”  This is both the essence and the greatest fault of Life of Pi.  It tells the beautiful and exciting story of the young Indian man, Pi, and his adventure adrift on a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.  It’s a gorgeous film, with amazing effects, and based on a book that most people thought to be unfilmable.  It has some impressive acting, is filled with many interesting and stimulating ideas and is in many ways a remarkable achievement, but throughout the movie that quote kept ringing through my head.
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Review: Silver Linings Playbook

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Pat (Bradley Cooper), a high school teacher in Philadelphia, is finally being released from a mental hospital after eight months.  He was sent there as part of a plea bargain after he discovered his wife with another man and almost beat him to death, a product of the bipolar disorder he was diagnosed with at the hospital.  He’s spent these last eight months working hard to improve himself, losing weight and dealing with his condition, in order to impress and reconnect with his wife, Nikki, if only he could get her to drop the restraining order.
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Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

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Beasts of the Southern Wild is the sort of film that defies classification or description, by nature of its inherent simplicity and the complexity of interpretation.  It’s nominally the story of a girl whose community is devastated by a hurricane, but that’s merely the surface.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is one part environmental fable, one part coming of age story (maybe), one part morality tale about the links of the universe, and possibly many more things, all wrapped around one truly remarkable and unique performance.

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85th Academy Awards

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Once again, it’s time for Oscar predictions.  I did pretty well last year, getting 16 correct, and almost all of the major categories (curse you Meryl!).  This year is going to be an extremely tough one, given all of the drama involving Ben Affleck’s snub in the directing category.

Best Short Film, Live Action:
Prediction: Curfew
My Pick: N/A

Best Short Film, Animated:
Prediction: Paperman
My Pick: Paperman
Everyone loved Paperman, which played before Wreck-it Ralph.  It’s a perfectly sweet and heartfelt hand drawn/CG combination, and seems like a certainty. Continue reading →

Review: Les Miserables

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Adapting a stage musical into a film has proven to been a dicey proposition in the years since Chicago burst onto the scene in 2002.  Unlike original musicals (such as Moulin Rouge!, Enchanted, or even The Muppets), adaptations bring with them a lot of baggage and expectations.  The especially long-running and popular shows have legions of devoted fans, who need to be pleased in order to help spread the word, however their expectations must be balanced with making the film appeal to the general populace (which, unfortunately, now seems to take pleasure in disliking musicals by default).  It’s possible for a film to be too faithful (The Producers) and alienate Broadway purists, or go so far the other way as to lose all sense of their source (Rock of Ages).  Equally important to the faithfulness of the adaptation is how well the film captures the spirit of the source; a film can be incredibly faithful but still miss the mark (The Phantom of the Opera) or can play things loose with the source and still manage to capture the spark (the brilliant, Mamma Mia!).  Then there’s the issue of running time and the filmmakers who assume that audiences no longer have the patience to sit through 3 hours of singing, so the entire film feels rushed (Hairspray).  And even if you do everything right, or at least as right as possible, there’s still no guarantee that your film will find an audience (Rent). Continue reading →