Change Your Image
happyspaceinvader
Reviews
Army of One (2020)
A study in bad film making
Well, the low scoring reviews are not wrong... this movie is hilariously bad.
It's a shame because some of the fight scenes are reasonably well filmed and performed, and some of the gore was pretty decent too. And there were occasional moments of half-decent cinematography. And the location was stunning.
But... there's no getting away from it, this film is batshit crazy, and not in a good way.
There's an intro showing a guy doing his police job and storming a house full of psychopaths wearing weird scary masks... but don't worry about these particularly odd details because we'll never come back to it.
The husband is stabbed in the guts. Flash forward an unspecified amount of time and the guy is driving off for a camping holiday with his wife.
They go into a cafe where they get into a tense standoff with some hillbillies... all very cliched and somewhat offensive.
They go on to their camping site where a park ranger warns them to stick to trails because "the locals ain't friendly"... and what? The locals don't follow those same trails?
They go on a walk and it's clear that the guy's gut wound is still troubling him, yet when they're caught in the rain, they break into someone's house and have sex on their couch. Like you do, of course, with or without a 4 inch knife wound in your gut.
They're caught in what will become the signature move throughout this movie where someone is surprised from behind by someone else. The man is shot in the head, right between the eyes and then the woman is shot in the head at the same distance (about 3 feet), and then both their bodies are dumped in the shallowest ditch you've ever seen and not even covered up.
And then the wife wakes up with nothing but a bloody streak down the side of her head.... How did the hillbillies not notice they'd missed?
And believe it or not, everything I've described so far is just about watchable, in a Grindhouse kind of way.
But now the film descends further and further into implausibility...
The wife goes on a protracted revenge spree that consists of taking the worst possible decisions at every turn, and directly causing the death of two innocent women caught up in the hillbillies' very unlikely criminal operation. At one point she even leaves a wounded police sheriff behind... how very like a Ranger, I don't think. In one scene, she uses an axe to sharpen a stick, instead of, you know... using the axe. In another scene, she accepts a lift from someone so obviously telegraphing "I'm one of the bad guys" and even falls asleep in the car. And in scene after scene this supposed highly trained Ranger displays an astonishing lack of situational awareness so that she can be jumped from behind by someone.
All the while the acting gets steadily worse and cartoonish, the dialogue goes very weird with strange conversations that go nowhere and even the editing and camerawork start to suffer.
It feels like a student film project that ran out of money and everyone just gave up halfway through, and it was finished off by someone who thought they were cutting together a comedy.
However, I would say it's worth watching on a streaming service (e.g. Amazon Prime), only because you have to see this to believe how bad a movie can be.
Hannibal (2013)
Requires quite some suspension of disbelief
It started very well but, by the end of season one, I find my suspension of disbelief tested beyond its limits. Inept forensic investigators, psychiatrists and psychologists with the corniest "movie psychology" dialogue, hospitals with no CCTV, doctors all-too-ready to collude to lie to patients at the risk of their health (but really to keep the plot moving forward) and the most over-the-top (and frequently unfeasible) murders see each episode descend further into silliness.
The dialogue in general seems 90% exposition to the audience, and there are many other extremely unsubtle filmic devices used in ways that are so repetitive, each episode becomes frustratingly predictable.
And, to cap it off, yet another outdated (even for 2013) unrealistic and thoroughly unhelpful depiction of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (which I am personally diagnosed with) just makes this series too hard to continue; I will likely just read the synopses to see how it plays out.
The Covenant (2023)
Team America: World Police
Sorry, but I couldn't take this one seriously. I was all hyped up for a Guy Ritchie film and what I got was something that felt more like Michael Bay. There was zero evidence of Ritchie's trademark style: no clever camera work, no clever dialogue, no devious plot twists, no back-tracking and showing the same events but from a different perspective. "Covenant" is as much a Guy Ritchie film as "Ant Man" is an Edgar Wright film.
It felt like more than half the film was montage with actors staring into the middle distance (the title of my review is the movie that kept coming to mind while watching this). There were many scenes that looked as if they'd been filmed purely for the trailers. The military parts felt unconvincing (sending such a tiny squad to potential IED factories with no immediate backup, driving around in open-top Humvees in full.view of potential snipers). The plot is telegraphed to the audience at every stage, robbing the movie of any tension or unpredictability. Almost every line of dialogue is patronising exposition. The performances were largely wooden and the characters 2-dimensional.
And, overall, the whole movie feels like jingoistic wish-fulfilment... which I suppose is why so many reviewers "got the feels" and gave it 8/10 or higher. It's alarming how many reviewers believe it was based on a true story: it is not. But I'll be generous and give it 5/10 for the parts that felt like I was playing Call of Duty.
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Cor blimey missus Popp'ins, they're taking the Mickey!
Good grief, the accents in this film are so ear-bending as to make it unwatchable if you have even the faintest idea of what a British person sounds like. Dick Van Dyke only got away with it because "Mary Poppins" was a comedy. But in a horror movie, involving ghosts, you really have to up your game to sell the suspension of disbelief.
There are plenty of fine American actors who can do convincing British accents (enough to convince me, a British person)... yet apparently none of them were available for The Conjuring 2. So why the film makers decided to go ahead and set the film in London is beyond me. Maybe they'd already filmed the obligatory "THIS IS LONDON" montage, and paid for all the British pop songs (just in case the montage was too subtle) before they started casting?
It doesn't stop there... you've got the supposedly broke family with a massive (for the period) colour TV in the living room. The interior of the house is somehow far larger than the house shown in the exterior shots... exterior shots that were clearly all filmed on the same day, but with a different car driving past each time.
It's just impossible to take seriously (let alone find it scary) as a horror movie. As an unintentionally hilarious comedy though, it just about works.
The Conjuring (2013)
So many jump scares
I was disappointed with this movie after reading the gushing reviews.
Within the first 30 minutes alone, I counted at least 7 jump scares (and then stopped bothering to count them). They all worked exactly the same way:
1. Creepy music while someone investigates a part of the house
2. Creepy music suddenly stops... jump scare imminent
3. And then the loud sound to make you jump (and/or a visual accompaniment)... sometimes it's supernatural, sometimes a fake out.
And this continued pretty much through out the rest of the film, each scare happening the exact same way, but I stopped counting after the first 30 minutes.
And that was enough to set me in such a negative mood, I could help but focus on the well-worn tropes and plot holes, of which there were plenty.
Like why none of the characters simply switch on a light? Or why the characters insist on using matches in the dark rather than a flashlight? Or how someone could possibly buy a house without realising it had a basement... until the day they move in? Or why this film brings absolutely nothing new to the table that we haven't already seen in Poltergeist or The Amityville Horror or "Bad Dream House" from The Simpson Halloween Special.
And at that point, the film simply ceased to be scary for me. Instead, it became tedious. I only watched it until the end because I'd paid for it.
Perhaps it's just a film "of its time"; perhaps back in 2013 there hadn't been many other jump scare films for a while? In the 10 years since, there have been plenty of horror movies using more original methods of frightening us.
Kill List (2011)
Were you even paying attention?
I can see from the reviews that the ending of this film is quite divisive, but what's interesting is how many people claim it's an unexpected tonal shift that feels out of place. The reality is that it's telegraphed right from the beginning; if it caught you off guard, you weren't really much paying attention to everything that preceded it. Or you've simply not seen many British budget horror movies.
In particular, you have the creepy Fiona, who stares through her eyebrows into the camera right from her early scenes and carves a weird cultist symbol into the back of Jay's bathroom mirror. Then you've got "The Client" who demands Jay's blood on the contract he's signing. And after that, the first two "hits" thank Jay and Gal before they're killed. The Librarian pretty much gives the game away by claiming to recognise Jay.
Oh, and let's not forget the soundtrack, where all other sound is blocked out except for weird atonal synthesiser sounds, reminiscent of early 70s horror movies (it reminded me specifically of the music in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"). Or the fact the film begins with a picture of a creepy cult symbol.
I honestly wasn't sure exactly what the ending would be the first time I watched it, but I sure as heck could tell it was going to be something surreal, open-ended and, dare I say it, a little pretentious.
Honestly though? I didn't much like the ending, because surreal and open-ended finishes always feel to me like an easy route out of writers block... "the ending of this movie will be your homework for the week".
However, that was merely a "I didn't like it" in the sense of an upward eye roll... it didn't ruin the movie, it didn't "completely negate the story that preceded it". It was just a bit of an "ugh... ok, you couldn't think how to end it, so you went the surreal route". It's still a brilliantly crafted movie from start to finish, with amazing actors lending it more plausibility than it possibly deserves.
I, Sniper (2020)
From the horse's mouth
You can either learn from history, or choose to ignore it and carry on repeating the same mistakes. To learn from history, you have to hear all sides of the story... not just the sides that tell you what you want to hear so you can sleep more easily at night.
We'll never get to hear the side from the older killer, John Muhammad, as he was executed in 2009. But to hear the side from the surviving killer Lee Malvo provides a fascinating insight into just how easy it is to plan and commit a murder spree in the USA. And if it was frighteningly easy in 2002, it's apparently just as easy now in 2023 if not easier.
It's only Feb 20th and already there have been 68 mass shootings in the USA, with 104 people killed and 269 injured. Statistically, Americans are far less safe right now than while these two men were on the loose back in 2022.
The Internet is strangely light on the background of these two men... one a decorated soldier, the other a Jamaican immigrant. What should be shocking is how relatively ordinary they were, according to the people they came into contact with, but instead it's tragically familiar.
One particularly telling moment is when the owner of the shooting range (where the killers honed their skills) gets in a muddle as to whether owning guns is a "God given" right or a constitutional right. You suspect he wants to believe the former, but has to concede the latter. And when he makes a point of telling us that what a gun is used for is "up to the individual", the camera lingers just long enough to see the self-doubt settle into his eyes.
The Howling (1981)
Budget horror... and it shows.
There's one scene in the The Howling that is particularly jarring: A couple of news reporters are in an occult bookshop, discussing werewolves with the owner. The problem is that, until this point, there's been no discussion of werewolves by any of the main characters. And this rather sums up the disjointed nature of this film. It feels like some good ideas that were pieced together in a rush, with plenty of other scenes that similarly leave you thinking "Wait... what? Did I miss something?".
And for a film with such incredible practical werewolf effects, there are a couple of surprisingly bad special effects sequences that really should have been consigned to the cutting room floor: one that uses cartoon animation and another that uses stop-motion.
Overall, it seems as if most of the budget was spent on the werewolf transformation scenes, and not enough on writing, plot development or basic continuity. It's not even particularly scary. Ok, it was made on a very small ($2million) budget in a very short space of time (28 days)... but then so were a number of far better horror movies both before and after this, such as Halloween.
Good points though... the first 14 minutes of the movie are one of the best horror movie openers I've seen, right from the original opening credits to the seedy, neon-soaked L. A. streets. The werewolves still look pretty good, even in 2022. Dick Miller (as the book shop owner) is always a treat too.
Definitely worth a watch for a laugh at how goofy it all is.
Scare Package (2019)
High School Movie Project? Nope, worse than that.
What a mess! I was going to compare it to the kind of thing you see High School students make but, honestly, that would be unfair... you do see some decent horror movies made by kids.
"Scare Package" is essentially just a series of very silly horror effects pieces strung together by... well, there's no real plot to speak of, just a series of scenes, strung together. Not worthy of the title "anthology". It's framed by a video store with some oddball characters in it, and tenuous links into each "chapter". And those chapters have absolutely zero substance... we see some characters, something happens to them, and then it ends. No twists, no clever moral tale, nothing to make you think at all... it's all utterly pointless.
And for a comedy horror anthology, It's never scary, never funny (except perhaps to a lobotomised chimp) and the horror effects are far too goofy to be in the slightest bit believable. I feel sorry a bit for the actors, who actually do ok with what they've been given, but what they've been given is so poorly written. It's trying desperately to be funny (and also, sigh, "meta"), but fails to land a single joke.
And yet there are reviews on here trying to pull the old "well, if you know about horror movies, you'll find it funny" trick... I wonder if they're really just friends and family of the people who made this? This is not even "so bad it's good"... it's just bad. A complete waste of time. Avoid.
Southbound (2015)
The Emperor's New Clothes
"Thinking man's horror"... "need to use your brain"... "You just don't get it"... are some of the defenses I've read for "Southbound (2015)". If watching this movie made you feel special and clever for working it out, then... well, good for you. I mean, it's not as if the basic premise is rammed down your throat, courtesy of a poster featuring a pentagram made from desert highways... or the DJ narrator wittering on about redemption and demons... or the very fact that weird monsters and portals in space/time are frequently shoved into your face.
The problem with Southbound is that all its ideas are ripped off other better horror stories, yet only half developed... like university/college comedy sketches that fizzle out or take a mad turn for the surreal because the writers couldn't think how to end them. It's just a series of horror movie clichés linked together in a ham-fisted way that adds no meaning to the overall picture. This is not the same as being clever and/or mysterious.
"The Way Out" follows a couple of men, Mitch and Jack, who are obviously on the run; they're spattered with blood, and one of them sees demons. They stop at a gas station, but when they try to leave by driving away, they simply end back up at the same place. Mitch has a photo of his daughter with him, and there's some discussion that whatever they've recently done was for her. The demons eventually catch up with them, killing Jack and leaving Mitch to flee to a Motel room... through a portal into his own home... and then wander around in a perpetual "P. T. Demo"-style loop, trying to find/follow his daughter's voice. BECAUSE THEY'RE IN HELL... GEDDIT?
And then the camera shows us a cleaner putting a "Do Not Disturb" sign on (presumably?) the motel room door Mitch went through, to another motel room where 3 young women are staying. And now we're in the story "Siren", where the 3 women are in a touring rock band, but their camper van gets a flat, so they're stuck by the side of the highway in the middle of the desert. A very obviously creepy couple stop to offer assistance, which they eventually . It's the typical pattern... two of the women are thick as custard and completely oblivious to the weirdness going on, with a "final girl" who's been suspicious from the start. There are also some references made to a 4th woman, with some accusations that our final girl had something to do with her death. There's then a weird family meal that you've seen dozens of times before in better movies... and then, the two ditzy women are recruited into whatever cult the family are into. THE FAMILY ARE DEMONS BY THE WAY, GEDDIT? The final girl WHO IS IN HELL, GEDDIT? Manages to escape to the highway...
... only to be run over by the vehicle she was trying to flag down. And now we're in "The Accident". You see the driver was on his mobile phone to his wife/girlfriend and wasn't watching the road. He calls 911, and the very unconvincing person on the other end of the line tells him to pick up the mangled woman he's just knocked over and driver her to a hospital. He drives towards the town... which is basically Silent Hill. The hospital is completely deserted... a man on the line pretending to be a surgeon talks him through various supposed medical procedures that ultimately end up killing the mangled woman. And there's laughter on the other end of the line BECAUSE THEY WERE DEMONS ALL ALONG, GEDDIT? The man tells them he doesn't deserve this... and so is then directed to some clean clothes and an undamaged clone of his car, in which he drives off. BECAUSE HE WAS IN PURGATORY... GEDDIT?
And next we see a woman in a phone box closing off the 911 call with him, and she walks to a bar (called "The Trap", geddit?) where the occupants all seem to know each other before a man bursts in with a shotgun, threatening them and asking where his sister is. And this is "Jailbreak". The man drives the bartender, at gunpoint, to an ice cream parlour... where his sister is tattooing someone. The man tries to escape with his sister, but she reveals that she killed their parents and deserves to be there. The man stops the car and is dragged away by naked men. BECAUSE THEY ARE IN HELL AND THESE ARE DEMONS, GEDDIT? His sister goes back to the ice cream parlour and passes a young woman on her way... and that segues into...
"The Way In"... which is, of course, the prelude to "The Way Out" BECAUSE IT'S CLEVER, SEE? So the family in the ice cream parlour drive to their holiday home, where they are attacked by 3 men in masks, two of whom are very obviously Mitch and Jack from the first segment (as they're wearing the same clothes). At some point, it's implied that the father of the family had something to do with Mitch's daughter's death. The men kill the family, but then demons appear, so they run away. BECAUSE THEY'RE IN HELL, GEDDIT?
And now we're back to the beginning of the movie... for a bit too long, because maybe some people at the back of the theatre might still not have worked out that EVERYONE IS IN HELL/PURGATORY FACING THEIR DEMONS, GEDDIT? IT'S CLEVER.
Except, it's not clever at all... it's a really tiresome movie that beats you over the head with its central premise approximately every 5 minutes. I only watched to the end because I expected some sort of payoff. But there was none.
And the deaths seem disproportionate to the supposed sins. It's never explained why the 2 band girls ended up as cult slaves, why the teenage girl deserved to die for attempting to save her parents... and is the movie really saying causing death by utterly careless driving deserves such a light punishment? Can't help but feel that particular outcome was one of the writers airing a personal grievance.
Neither the overall premise nor the individual stories are in any way original. It's all stuff we've seen dozens of times before in horror movies and horror video games ("Dead End", "In The Mouth of Madness", "Jacob's Ladder", "In The Dead of Night" to name but a few). There's not a single memorable line of dialogue. The characters are all unpleasant and two dimensional, I really couldn't care about the fate of any of them. The cinematography is pedestrian. The movie is never in the least bit scary (unless you're religious, I suppose). The gore and special effects are... mostly ok, but there's also some cringeworthy CGI to counter that.
I think the only thing I can praise this movie for is that it at least didn't rely on jump scares.
Day of the Woman (1978)
Not the Grindhouse/Exploitation picture I was expecting
Technically, there are spoilers here, but nothing you haven't read about already, and I've kept the details deliberately vague.
This film truly shocked me, but not in the way I was expecting. I found the cinematography absolutely spellbinding, particularly given the absence of a musical score. The build-up to the first notorious scene is extremely suspenseful.
There are also one or two moments of dialogue that make (for the 1970s) some insightful comments about the way less enlightened men view women. Now, a cynic may feel these were crowbarred into the script to justify the pivotal rape scene, but that scene itself is filmed in such a way that forces you to sympathise with the victim... mostly closeups of the victim's utter misery intercut with closeups of the men's sweaty grimacing faces, occasionally cutting away to show the bruises, cuts and blood, to remind you that a violent assault, although sexual in nature, is nevertheless a violent assault... and the polar opposite of a consensual act.
I've read reviews drawing attention to the length of this scene; however, without wishing to appear as if I'm downplaying or mitigating... it's actually three very separate and relatively short assaults, with long gaps in between where the victim tries to get away, but is tracked down. This is perhaps what makes it so unpleasant to watch... there's no opportunity to become anaesthetised to the horror and, just when you think it's over... it's not.
Such a scene *should* be shocking... it absolutely *should* disgust you. I've read reviews that complain people might watch this movie for "the wrong reasons", but I think you'd have to have serious mental health issues to find any of this section of the film remotely titilating.
Overall, it's certainly worlds apart from "Last House on the Left", which is very much a Grindhouse-style film, complete with the goofiest and most inappropriate soundtrack you could imagine. It reminded me far more of the film Revenge (which also has incredible cinematography and no musical score).
Except... ok the film does fall apart a bit in the final act. The extent to which the victim lures her first assailant stretched credibility way too far for me. There are also a few cack-handed edits... at one point, we suddenly land in the middle of a scene where a character is being beaten up apropos of nothing. But the notorious "bath scene"... I actually thought that was rather clever and not at all what other reviews had led me to expect. And then the very last scene, was filmed in such a menacing way.
So, a couple more points that struck me: changing the title to "I Spit On Your Grave" was a silly mistake; the film deserves the original title far better. Also, the brutality of the film's final act scenes comes mostly through clever editing and acting... you see far less than reviewers might have implied.
I'm happy to give "Day of the Woman" the benefit of the doubt and believe it was *trying* to deliver a feminist message, even if it didn't really succeed. I also think it's worth a watch... you may be similarly surprised as me at how different it is from what you'd been led to expect.
WNUF Halloween Special (2013)
Poor writing and acting ruins the immersion.
For a found footage film to work, the performances need to be authentic. Unfortunately, WNUF Halloween Special is so heavily scripted with actors hamming up their performances way beyond the goofinesses you expect from actual US television that any sense of believability or immersion flies straight out of the window.
At one point early in the film, a police officer does a "piece to camera" segment on the news (has that ever happened?) but he in no way conveys the mannerisms of a police officer... he's just so glaringly obviously an actor in a costume.
The anchors and journalists are similarly poorly acted... and there are just too many inaccuracies to pull you out of the moment, such as a politician holding a broadcast mic while being interviewed.
A lot of people have criticised the adverts, but I thought they were the best part, and far more authentic than the main parts of the story.
Overall, this movie was neither funny, nor scary... just a huge waste of time. In better hands, it could have been so much more.
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Pointless, clichéd and tedious remake
Essentially just a series of lazy horror movie clichés from start to finish.
You've got characters witholding vital information for no good reason, characters wandering off on their own to investigate when they hear a suspicious noise, characters not checking someone's really dead when they think they've killed them, characters taking so long to surprise someone that they end up being discovered before they can jump them, characters firing guns wildly without aiming. There's even animals behaving in completely irrational ways that get them into trouble.
Can we all just agree that having a bunch of people (and animals) making stupid decision after stupid decision is more annoying than suspenseful?
Blair Witch (2016)
Jump scares until you're numb with indifference
The main thing this movie gets wrong is the "found footage" angle. The original actually looked like found footage - shot from a handheld camera with extremely natural performances from the actors.
Clearly the producers of "Blair Witch" wanted something that looked like found footage, but also like a traditional movie. The conceits they employed to attempt to straddle that canyon are laughable. We've got a drone, ear-mounted cameras for each of the indistinguishable actors... the movie really hammers this point home to try and explain to us why this "found footage" is going to look more like a regular movie.
Except... it doesn't work, for two main reasons. First, the actors act like actors... not like real people. It's so obviously scripted, there's a kind of forced reality to it, a bit like you see in commercials where an actor is pretending to be a member of the public. They're not even particularly likeable, and seem to come from a cookie cutter of horror movie stereotypes.
But the biggest problem is it's shot and cut together like a regular horror movie, with shots from the various cameras cut together to create dramatic narrative. There's even ambient background music at some points. And would anyone who discovered found footage really keep every time someone bumped into someone else and edit it in as a jump scare? Seriously... there are times when there's more than one jump scare per minute. No amount of adding hilariously fake-looking "camera glitch" and NIN-like sound effects sells this as genuine.
There are plenty of other movies that have managed to get this formula right... and plenty of other regular horror movies that are extremely scary. By attempting to have their cake and eat it, the producers of this movie have sucked all possible tension and suspense from "Blair Witch". This movie is simply tedious and repetitive.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Butchered by the Studio
An interesting movie that played well with test audiences was then ruined by studio execs who bizarrely decided to change the movie based on a tiny minority of the same test audience. Any subtlety or nuance is ruined by cliché after cliché and completely misplaced gore, jump scares and the worst CGI you've ever seen. Out on the Internet, there exist some fan edits that get closer to the director's original cut. I suggest you seek one of those out... they all improve upon this mess.
In Search of Darkness (2019)
Not a proper documentary
I was expecting an insightful documentary... what I got was 4 hours 20 minutes of talking heads. This is literally just a year-by-year picking of random horror movies, and having a random selection of the talking heads say what they thought about it.
There's no commentary to tie the whole thing together. It doesn't start anywhere interesting, do anything interesting in the middle, or end with any kind of conclusion. It's extremely shallow, dull and repetitive. After watching for 30 minutes, a title card came up saying "1981", and my heart sank as I thought of how relatively expensive this Blu-ray was to import from the USA... (and, incidentally, how the back of the case says "Stereo Surround", yet it's actually just 2.0 Stereo).
There are far more interesting documentaries on horror films available on YouTube for free... seriously, go seek those out instead. I recommend "Good Bad Flicks", "Oliver Harper"... even "Dead Meat" (whose presenter appears in this movie) as better examples of movie analysis that "In Search of Darkness".
If you're already a horror aficionado, you'll learn nothing. If you already seen every movie presented here, you'll learn nothing. For any movies that weren't on your radar, you'll get spoilers. I can't see who this is aimed at except the sort of people who like to veg out on the TV equivalent of methadone.
Star Wars (1977)
Ah the original... how can you not like it?
It's the original ground-breaking movie... that was then ruined by idle hands. CGI hands that look more like cartoon hands in 2020. What a spectacularly short-sighted decision that was. And then it was tinkered with again... and I think a 3rd time? Oh the humanity.
Watch the original, please. Ask around.. you'll find it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Well, the plot is contrived, stupid and corny... the dialogue laughable ("nobody talks like that", one of the actors told the director while filming... but he didn't listen). And the only lightsaber fight... that hasn't aged well. But good grief the special effects are incredible, the cinematography inspiring... the music... iconic. And it's damn good fun.
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Not as good as everyone claims
Plot wise... well, it's full of holes, like every Star Wars movie. Full of ridiculous "how convenient" moments. Full of inconsistencies with the previous movie. And still awful awful dialogue that's just not how people speak to each other.
But, groundbreaking special effects. Stunning cinematography. The whole thing is just so beautiful to look at, especially the stuff in the snow. And, it's a wee bit dark, with an unresolved ending... that was pretty controversial at the time (now we tend to expect it in a sequel). Even though the middle section goes rather slow, it's spellbinding in its tension.
To be clear, I'm talking about the original version here. The Special Edition did improve some bits, but ruined others by looking jarringly out of place. Watch the original if you can.
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
This is where it started to go downhill
The first disappointing entry in the series (if you take the order in which they were released). The rescue sequence at the beginning is drawn out far too long and the second you think about it, it's utterly absurd. And then the movie slows to a complete crawl, with very little in the way of action, and the most awful and obvious merchandise placement. This is the downward slide from a Fantasy Fiction (note not Science Fiction... Star Wars has absolutely no science in it) that adults could just about admit to liking... to something that would barely be green-lit as a children's movie today. The ending cranks up the action a bit, but it's all so poorly choreographed (more obvious on repeated viewings). Oh and the acting... and the dialogue. Pure cheese... and not in a good way. More in a 3rd rate American soap kind of way.
And more stars off for it all being made even worse with CGI tinkering. I can just about bear to watch the original, but the "Special" Edition? Nope.
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Great end to the best trilogy in the franchise
Like Force Awakens, this is pure pulp trash, with flashy camerawork, flashy special effects, 4th wall breaking humour and lashings of fan service. Silly and contrived plot, odd moments when the writers troll us with apparent character demise, only to undo it moments later. And, yet again, the most hilarious disregard for the laws of physics. But it was ever thus. The entire franchise is ridiculous from start to finish. Not a bit of it makes any logical sense whatsoever. Even the original trilogy's story arc felt like that game where you write part of a story on a piece of paper, fold it over and hand it to the next person. The prequel trilogy less so... but that's levels of awfulness below everything else, so hardly a redeeming feature. Shame Rose was relegated to a side character though... I think that's the only disappointing bit of the movie. Otherwise, a great send off. Now let's hope someone goes back and re-makes the prequels. And maybe the original trilo- oops... too far?
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Does what's required, and rather well
Hardly original, but the Star Wars series is pulp trash, not highbrow SciFi... so we can forgive it that. Flashy camerawork, witty self-referential and 4th wall breaking dialogue, shameless fan service? Yes please! I watch Star Wars to be entertained in only the most superficial way... otherwise I wouldn't be able to re-watch the original trilogy. None of this was ever meant to be taken seriously. Watching this movie makes me feel like the 5 year old child I was back in 1977 watching the very first movie. Thank you for that J J!
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
If you thought Phantom Menace was bad...
Well, looking back, it's hilarious to think we all thought the series had hit rock bottom with Jar Jar Binks and midichlorians.
Attack of The Clones is Mexican soap opera levels of awfulness, compounded by CGI backgrounds that now look cartoon-like in their primitiveness. And the CGI foreground effect saren't much either. Everything in this movie has aged horribly. Plot? No... just a sequence of things that happen to happen... and then it ends. Characters that act in bizarre and inconsistent ways, simply to move the story in a contrived direction. Given the entire movie was written to retcon a throwaway line in the first Star Wars movie, the actual "Clone War" is severely underwhelming. A bunch of faceless nobodies shooting at a bunch of anonymous droids. Who cares?
In an already trashy series, this entry is one of two that I simply can't bear to watch any more.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Not the worst, but still barely watchable
This was a massively disappointing movie at release, and it's not really aged well since then. An over reliance on PlayStation 2 era special effects, yet they skimped on extras (why is Naboo almost completely unpopulated?). Far too much boring discussions about trade negotiations. Far too much looking at people sitting and talking, standing and talking, walking and talking. There are a couple of good action sequences though, and the A-list actors do their best with the atrocious dialogue. Notice I'm not complaining about Jar Jar Binks? Well, he's far from the worst thing about this movie. Let's hope the entire prequel trilogy is remade someday, after hiring decent writers.
Rogue One (2016)
The best in the franchise
I love this film. I think I'd love it just as much (possibly even better) if there had been no Star Wars movies before it. It's hard to believe it went through so many rewrites and firings. The dialogue is sharp and witty, and it's the only Star Wars movie to dare to kill off characters in a way that makes you feel the impact. Special effects are superb, direction and cinematography is spot-on. Really, the only fault I can find in it is the two "uncanny valley" CGI characters. I really hope one day that is addressed in a re-release.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Enjoyable to watch, less so to reflect upon
I actually like this movie. It dared to challenge expectations, it's beautifully directed and the dialogue is the least cringeworthy in the entire series. Plot holes and inconsistencies? Of course... but no more than in any other Star Wars film ever made. Let's face it... the entire series is trashy 1-dimensional pulp.
That said, while I love watching it.... I can't ignore that a major section of it is just a " dog story". That nags at me during and after each repeated viewing, hence a couple of stars off. And, being an appalling pedant, it plays far too fast and loose with the laws of physics. But it's still more watchable than anything else in the series (bar The Force Awakens, Rise of Skywalker and Rogue One). And I say that despite (or perhaps because of) having been a young and impressionable child when the very first Star Wars movie was released. If I ever met Rian Johnson, I'd shake him firmly by the hand for freshening up a stale franchise.