I Do Believe They Think I Am Some Sort Of God

Year: 1983

Director: Richard Marquand

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

Run Time: 2 hours 11 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Capping off a trilogy is a tricky thing. Indiana Jones did it right, redefining the dynamic by roping in Sean Connery as Indy’s father. But so often a trilogy can descend into silly spectacle like Scream 3 or fade into relative anonymity like The Godfather: Part III. And how does one expect to follow two pristine entries like Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back? It’s a challenging proposition, so I don’t blame George Lucas & Co. for not really trying.

Ya burnt! Let’s get into my justification before the people with pitchforks find out where I live.

For the first time in the trilogy, things pick up more or less where they left off. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is still frozen in carbonite, providing the sluglike crime boss Jabba the Hutt’s (Larry Ward) walls with quite the conversation piece. Leia (Carrie Fisher) is still in love with him for no discernible reason. And Luke (Mark Hamill) is still a whiny spacebaby, only now he styles himself as a Jedi Knight, despite never actually having finished his training with the ailing Yoda (Frank Oz). They rescue Han from Jabba’s wretched hive of scum and villainy, and rejoin the Rebellion to aid their mission to stop the Empire from completing work on a brand new Death Star.

Luke’s true test of becoming a Jedi master begins here: will he succumb to his hate and anger and become a pawn of Darth Vader (David Prowse body, James Earl Jones VO) and the wicked Emperor (Ian McDiarmid)? Or will he find the light and hope and crap that will guide him to the right side of the Force? A battle ensues on and in orbit of the forest moon of Endor, with Han, Leia, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) fighting alongside a native tribe of teddy bears called Ewoks (Warwick Davis and a bunch of other people) to shut down the shield surrounding the star and Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) leading the space battle above, because I guess he was the only named character they had left and Obi Wan’s ghost (Alec Guinness) wasn’t gonna do it, as much as his death entirely fails to hamper his presence in the material world.

In another life, George Lucas probably would have been a ghost hunter.

Return of the Jedi has been the subject of much fan derision over the years. “The Ewoks are stupid! It’s just another Death Star!” I have an equally low opinion of the film, but for almost entirely different reasons. Although I agree that the Ewoks are poorly executed with their stiff, unmoving plastic surgery lips, their presence grants us a reprieve from the biggest weakness of Jedi: the human characters.

Luke, Leia, and Han Solo have never had particularly interesting arcs, because they’ve never really been asked to. But all of a sudden, it’s the end of a trilogy. Some kind of arc needs to be fulfilled, so the trio is tossed into a character development blender set to warp speed. Luke especially gets hit full in the face with his so-called emotional journey, squashed into the “inner conflict between light and dark” storyline implied by Empire. His endless, tedious exchanges with Darth Vader and the Emperor would be interesting if we had any insight into his character or the struggles this script pretends he has, but it’s just a mountain of New Age Forcebabble with completely incomprehensible stakes.

Return of the Jedi also lurches from a major gearshift tonally. Where Luke’s half of the story grows more needlessly serious and introspective, the rest of the film descends into the lunatic chaos of a cartoon. Yes, the Ewoks are a symptom of this, but they’re by a wide margin less irritating than Jabba the Hutt’s cabal of snickering evil puppets, which look like rejected goblins from Labyrinth. Or the dastardly calliope score. Or the hyperbolic screams every unnamed character seems to give whenever they’re knocked over.

But I kind of loved those screams, so I won’t dwell on that.

It’s taken me about a week to crank this review out, because I just can’t find it in my heart to give a crap about Return of the Jedi. It’s a thin endcap to a massive franchise, and that’s fine. It does enough to not stomp all over the massive legacy of Star Wars, both as a special effects spectacle (the land speeder chase on Endor is beyond reproach, even if it has some shaky rear projection) and as a blockbuster titan (They may not be up to much this time around, but there mere presence of the returning characters is magnetic enough to overcome that; and John Williams is mostly coasting on old compositions, but what compositions they are!) but it’s really just not that good.

I hate to say it, but it’s true. Return of the Jedi is all over the place, shoving characters into and out of its lopsided narrative at random (poor Boba Fett – I’ve never understood exactly why the bounty hunter who appears in five minutes of Empire is so darn-tootin’ popular, but he deserves better than the Three Stooges demise he’s handed here), lurching through a truncated repeat of the Death Star plot, and ladling a heavy second helping of family lineage intrigue that drowns continuity. It’s still Star Wars, so it’s at least an engaging popcorn space adventure, but Return of the Jedi was the first time the series showed signs that not every entry in the canon was going to be an out-and-out masterpiece.

TL;DR: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a tonally imbalanced, childish conclusion to an otherwise terrific trilogy.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 972

Reviews In This Series

Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)

Looking For The Magic

Year: 2001

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

Run Time: 2 hours 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

As both a self-respecting movie blogger and a human born in the mid-90's, there has been a glaringly egregious gap in my review history: the largest cultural phenomenon of the millennium, the Harry Potter franchise. Now, I hadn't rewatched any of these films or reread any of the books since the release of the final entry in the franchise in 2011, so it is from a relatively fresh, newly adult perspective that I approach these films, making this marathon - I hope - all the more interesting.

I will always carry a deep and abiding love for Harry Potter in my heart. How could I not? His presence has defined my entire living memory. But I'm going to attempt to come at these films on their own terms, separate from my inner child's feelings on the matter. And let me tell you, nothing prepares you for the cold, hard truth behind beloved childhood films like a double dose of Chris Columbus.

It's really not fair to subject children to this kind of torment.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in case you are a baby who has not yet learned to read, is about one Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), an eleven-year-old boy in the care of his despicable aunt and uncle, who discovers that he is a wizard and is summarily carted off to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. There he learns that he is the only known person to have survived an attack by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort (played for the time being and without distinction by Richard Bremmer), who killed his parents when he was a baby.

During his first year at Hogwarts, Harry befriends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), a boy from a low income wizarding family, and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), a somewhat bossy girl who excels at schoolwork. In between their lessons, they discover that Hogwarts is currently the hiding place of the philosopher's sorcerer's stone, a legendary MacGuffin that creates the Elixir of Life and which Voldemort desperately wants. They suspect that their wicked potions professor Snape (Alan Rickman) is plotting to nick the stone from the school, right under the nose of the wise and powerful headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris).

Also, why did publishers think that American brains would melt upon seeing the word "philosopher"? That's not an unheard of term over here. It's not like pretentious undergraduates are tramping around signing up for sorcery majors. We get it, guys. And actually, Nicolas Flamel was an alchemist, so screw all y'all.

The Sorcerer's Stone is different from the book. That is fine. I don't mind my cinema being different from literature. They're two different mediums for a reason. I'm just telling you all this so when I complain, it won't feel like useless nerd rage.

While the film cuts large swaths away from the book's plot left and right, it ironically completely fails to trim the fat. The end result is a story that zooms from beat to beat with a machine gun clatter, often dawdling pointlessly for twelve seconds at a time on unjustifiable plot points like the birth of Norbert the dragon (whereupon he is immediately shipped offscreen and hardly mentioned again), a transfiguration lesson (which is merely an excuse to repeat an effect we've already seen before), and the introduction of the Hogwarts ghosts (perhaps the most shameless and irritating fan pandering, because they instantly vanish from the film and they have the gall to not even include Peeves).

In their blind fury to slam every possible moment from the book into the audience's eyes, Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves forget that they're supposedly making a self-contained narrative film. Imagine, if you will, that a movie is an intricate wedding cake, holding itself elegantly in delicious harmony. The Sorcerer's Stone is more like a pile of jagged fondant shrapnel with a dozen mismatched figurines jammed in at odd angles.

Metaphors are hard. Segues are harder.

There is some really wonderful stuff in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I'll close with that, so I leave you all with the feeling that maybe I'm not a grouchy old codger. For the time being, let's continue complaining.

There is a moment, and it is very early in the film, where the technical side of things goes completely off the deep end. It does not stay here for long, but the effect lingers for a great deal of time as it wades back to more navigable waters. I speak of the "cabin in the sea" scene, in which, for no apparent reason, the 180 degree rule as well as all laws of continuity editing and location geography are shot in the head and dumped into shallow graves. The camera goes haywire, jumping back and forth like a deranged chipmunk and never adequately displaying the scene to any degree.

Aside from that brief patch of gibbering insanity, the film is otherwise technically sound (including some early 2000's CGI that comes off a bit blocky, but is hardly distracting and it's still better than Jupiter Ascending), though it does tend to feel a little stuffy and stagebound, lacking the expansive open-world feel of the later sequels.

Masterpiece Potter, if you will.

Here's where my mood begins to improve. The performances, largely culled from the highest grade talent available across Britain, are remarkably superb for a children's film. Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are the perfect choices for their respective characters, taking the film seriously and bestowing their roles with a profound sense of gravity. Richard Harris with his wheezy otherworldliness, Robbie Coltrane with his rugged good cheer, and Warwick Davis with his being Warwick Davis all round out the adult cast quite nicely.

The only liability in the acting is the children, which is naturally to be expected. Radcliffe does a fine job, though he utterly fails to convince when he is supposed to be feeling pain in his scar. Intimate understanding of pain like that doesn't happen until puberty. And Rupert Grint has some natural comedic talent, though he doesn't get so many opportunities to show it off this time around. Emma Watson is the weakest link thus far, but her overly-recited lines don't contradict her character so it's not distracting in any way.

All in all, things could be a lot worse on the kids' end and it's almost impossible to be better on the adults' end (*cough cough Michael Gambon cough*).

Yay! I was mostly nice for two whole paragraphs!

Alright, now that that's out of our systems, it's time for the effusive fan praise. First off, John Williams' score and especially the iconic "Hedwig's Theme" is just superb, capturing the magic and wonder of this new world with a soaring heart. It's not so overdone as some of his more recent scores, utilizing a minimalist melody and orchestration to capture an unforgettable whimsical tone. Its use in the film isn't always perfect, and it's overplayed at some points making some minor scenes self-consciously epic-sounding (Harry's going to the broom cupboard, not to war), but the score itself is an undeniable masterwork.

The other unimpeachable aspect of the film is its production design. The layout of Hogwarts castle has not yet reached its zenith, but the interiors are uniformly cluttered, lived-in, and supernaturally in tune with the mystery and majesty of the wizarding world. 

It is not Harry Potter in its best form, but it lays a solid groundwork for the truly wonderful things to follow. Really, it's a fine film to begin a franchise with. But only (and here's the clinches), only if you've already read the book. You need that handicap in order to decipher the incomprehensible mass of plot that the film vomits up in its middle half. But other than that, hey, good job.

TL;DR: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a decent enough beginning to the franchise, but leaves the door wide open for future improvement.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1346
Reviews In This Series
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Columbus, 2001)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Columbus, 2002)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Cuarón, 2004)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Newell, 2005)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Yates, 2007)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Yates, 2009)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (Yates, 2010)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (Yates, 2011)

Archive: January 10, 2013

Like Bowling Pins

I’ve watched a buttload of movies that I have not yet talked about (in fact, six of them were in the same day - a new record for me), so I’m gonna knock ‘em out one by one real quick.

Leprechaun 4: In Space

Year: 1996
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Cast: Warwick Davis, Brent Jasmer, Jessica Collins
Run Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

This movie got its start when, as a prank, a producer pasted a picture of the Leprechaun over Tom Hanks’ face on an Apollo 13 poster. That perfectly exemplifies the amount of thought that went into the making of this film. Brian Trenchard-Smith returns to direct his second film in the franchise, which is a fate I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemies.

This movie doesn’t make as much of the “In Space” gimmick as the likes ofJason X and Co., but does feature some stellar bad-good scenes like the Leprechaun bursting out of a Space Marine’s penis, the diabolical Dr. Mittenhand, and an Irish magic-induced drag performance by the ship’s captain.

Pretty solid stuff right there.

Body Count: 8

Rating: 4/10

Leprechaun: In the Hood

Year: 2000
Director: Rob Spera
Cast: Warwick Davis, Ice-T, Anthony Montgomery
Run Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

It’s always a bad sign when they stop numbering these things.

This film follows our little Irish friend across the streets of Compton as he pursues a trio of rappers who have stolen his magic flute. The flute’s magical power seems to be that it makes audiences enjoy really awful rap, and the group is trying to use this to score a trophy at a competition in Vegas.

It’s exactly as uncomfortable as you would expect a movie by a white director that is chock full of black stereotypes to be. Ice-T’s character is named Mack Daddy, for crying out loud. This film also features a cross-dressing character, which is the only thing that resembles continuity in the entire series.

Body Count: 9

Rating: 5/10

Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood

Year: 2003
Director: Steven Ayromlooi
Cast: Warwick Davis, Tangi Miller, Laz Alonso
Run Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

This is (at the time of writing) the last film in the Leprechaun series, and it actually kinda doesn’t suck. A stoner gets stabbed with his own bong, the annoying skank gets what’s coming to her, and there’s a psychic that’s just a jumbled ball of clichés but at least they’re trying something new.

The Leprechaun doesn’t even show up in the main plot until about the half-hour mark, so we actually get to see some fleshed out characters that somewhat resemble real human beings. It’s kinda nice.

Body Count: 9

Rating: 6/10

Psycho Santa

Year: 2003
Director: Peter Keir
Cast: Krystal Stevenson, Jason Barnes, Jeff Samford
Run Time: 1 hour, 21 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

I don’t even wanna talk about this one, what torture. The plot of the movie takes place in a series of flashbacks as a man tells his girlfriend the tale of the Psycho Santa. Essentially there are 4 vignettes, each more boring than the last.

In the first, we watch a girl and her friend have a sleepover in a cabin in the woods, which sounds like the perfect setup, but then nothing happens. One girl takes a shower and we get to see just how many body piercings a single person can hold. And then the other girl dances for about 6 minutes. Not even sexily. Just kind of mindlessly gyrating. Then it cuts back to the storyteller, who tells us that they were killed. We don’t even get to see it.

The second vignette follows burglars who sneak into a supposedly empty house, which turns out to be occupied by a blind woman. They let her go about her business. She’s blind so she doesn’t notice them. Then they proceed to drown her FOR NO REASON in a scene that lasts about three minutes and is just absolutely awful.

The third shows the Psycho Santa kill a young boy and his mother (props to the filmmakers for being brave enough to kill disabled women and children, I guess. It absolutely does not work.). Well, he slices the woman on the collarbone. Evidently this renders her completely immobile and wracked with pain, and she crawls toward a telephone that happens to be on the floor. For about seven minutes. Kill myself.

I’m so bored I don’t even want to talk about the fourth one. If this movie handled its pacing well with the plot it was given, it would have a 10 minute run time. And that would be about 5 minutes too long.

Body Count: 1 hour and 21 minutes of my life

Rating: 0/10

The Christmas Season Massacre

Year: 2001
Director: Jeremy Wallace
Cast: D. J. Vivona, Jason Christ, Chris Belt
Run Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

This movie came in the same DVD bundle as the atrocious Satan Claus and Psycho Santa, but it was actually pretty funny. It’s clearly just a group of friends who got together to make a movie and it runs like amateur hour, but it follows a guy with an eyepatch decorated with a Christmas tree who kills his high school classmates in pirate themed ways in Christmastown, California, so it’s really not all bad.

God, sometimes I question my life choices when I write sentences like that.

Body Count: 9

Rating: 4/10

Silent Night, Deadly Night

Year: 1984
Director: Charles E. Sellier Jr.
Cast: Lilyan Chauvin, Gilmer McCormick, Toni Nero
Run Time: 1 hour, 19 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

OK, this one was actually pretty great. It’s been nearly impossible to find, but the DVD just got released in the wake of its loose 2012 remake, Silent Night. I rejoiced much more than I should have.

This film got an unfair amount of flak for portraying Santa as a psycho even though in the film it’s clearly just a guy dressed as the Jolly Red Serial Killer. But moral tensions were high and this film got the axe, as it were, and barely saw the light of day until several years afterward.

However, it’s a solid slasher flick about a kid who watched a robber dressed as Santa murder his parents at a young age. He now views Santa as a punishing figure and after he is forced to dress as Mr. Claus for his job at the toy store and has a little too much eggnog, he seeks to punish those he deems naughty.

Featuring an appearance by scream queen Linnea Quigley, this film was great fun and has some actually disturbing sequences that still hold up to this day.

Body Count: 13

Rating: 7/10

Psycho Beach Party

Year: 2000
Director: Robert Lee King
Cast: Lauren Ambrose, Nicholas Brendon, Thomas Gibson
Run Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: UR

This film is basically what a Gidget movie would be like if there was a serial killer on the loose. 

It features Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aunt Zelda from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Amy Adams in her second feature film role.

The female detective is played by a man in drag, who uses a body double for a sex scene.

It is based on a play that this man wrote and starred in.

It also features a two gay beach bunnies struggling with their love for each other, one of whom is severely constipated due to stress.

It’s a deliriously absurd, campy mess and it is absolutely delightful.

Body Count: 4

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1311