This beautifully filmed next installation sets audiences up for New Hope in an episodic, non-J.J. prequel, but sadly Rogue One feels like a visually stunning attempt at expensive fan fiction cosplay.
Young Jyn Erso must find the father she lost and with her band of raiders retrieve the plans for the original Death Star and return them to the Rebellion before the Empire can destroy any hope they have left. Erso, foster raised by rough and tumble marauder, (Forest Whitaker), begins her new life as she escapes from a prison transport. Despite her tough upbringing and current status, her character sways calm, soft-spoken, even tender with only a bit of street-smart fighter in her.
She befriends the newest droid addition: a tall, almost Real Steel-esque bot who drops one-liners like parade candy. Erso’s small Rebel battalion also includes a repetitive blind ninja and his gruff and grubby sidekick protector, as well as an angsty Rebellion fighter called Cassian.
The episode was a consistent build to New Hope, especially the final ten minutes with Vader, claiming concept from all over the Star Wars…now universe. So much throwback, but sadly so little development. New locations and random characters litter the first act with only a few anchoring moments to enjoy the nods to original SW films. When costumes and even cinematography matter more than the relationships of the characters, the film suffers. They introduce too many borderline superfluous people and use CGI as a crutch rather than a tool to bring 1977 back to life with technology that will most likely be outdate in a year. The emotionless Polar Express faces look more Snoke than Vader.
Meanwhile, the weak script sadly weighs the action down. Formula without mystery is story structure without voice. Characters announce each move, “I am going to go over there and then light it up.” Even heroic speeches felt like glib driving directions. “I will find out how to find them.” Audiences should get to play detective by engaging curiosity and problem solving before the film leads them to the destination. Even the final line was too much given in an already simple, dark, and scattered story.
Delightfully surprised by this one. It had the best effects to date, and I was equally won by humor and lighthearted giddy snark as Benedict Cumberbatch embraces his Marvel side. The pace of the film somehow works despite the constant embedding of exposition in tectonic spinning and explosive flair. It’s rather beautiful.
Some may complain about the heavy-handed mysticism present, but Strange himself keeps the Film leveled as a man of sarcasm and science.
Log line it: when a self-centered brain surgeon tests fate one dark and stormy night he is left incapacitated without the use of his hands, so his medical quest leads him on a spiritual journey – one which forms his heroic destiny.
Dr. Strange will return and with him a host of Marvel merch and intertwined storylines. Those infinity stones have birthed quite a following from Hydra to heart-valves to Galaxy Guards with great musical taste. Now they have a mystic who can control time, and somehow it works.
Besides the group goal to go out guns blazing, the town prepares for war building giant spike gates and booby traps. Even so, without the Seven the town would have collapsed against the Gatling.
Newish actress Haley Bennett made the film more believable by riding out in tears and fighting in tears. She didn’t play the triumphant heroine, or the oppressed female. She showed an honest side to gun-slinging and territory claiming. She bootstrapped and got to work letting the battle begin, come what may.
So much killing was to be expected, but if they’d decided to go beyond the pg-13 rating, it would have been a bloodbath. How do we care for one specific life on the screen when so many are expendable? Surplus cowboys didn’t make the number of deaths easier to palate.
He’s like an all-American Bond with MacGyver’s intuition. Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vickander, and even Julia Stiles ride along to stop the world-threatening madness by outsmarting one another, getting to Bourne first, and attempting to win him over.
It also felt like a jumble of too many recently viewed plot points: the hive mind movement was very Ender’s Game, the “Sabotage” replay felt like a forced nod to JJ, and the new character Jayla, (actually oddly named for Lennifer Lawrence), shows little if any connection to her namesake or imagination as she is a cut and paste of Ray from Star Wars (2015) as she shares all of the same skills, attitudes, and basic backstory?
These SNL favs and friends know how to get a laugh. They are made to entertain. They laugh at themselves first, and it works. These funny women of New York have taken Hollywood by storm and come back to town with bigger names and top billing. They’ve earned it. Chris Hemsworth also runs havoc as the team’s dimwitted receptionist and top poltergeist target.
As a magnet for mutant power, he gains control of all. Believing he is a god, his thirst for ultimate dominance forces an 80’s Care Bear stare-down in yet another civil-war type super-battle. 
McAvoy charms. Fassbender feels. Jennifer Lawrence glows.
Top game for many seasoned pros now surrounded by debut newbies who work equally as hard to show off their powers and prove their places in the legendary Marvel universe.
The 80’s can actually be a tough period to pull off in a film. It’s easy to slip too far down the rabbit hole of crimped bangs, fingerless gloves, fishnets and hightops. Add leather strappy boots and reference Coca-cola, and I guess you’re half-way there. The filmmakers also often made it feel like an 80’s sitcom’s Christmas episode rife with flashbacks of famous favorite family moments.
Sadly this X installment is more promise than payoff, more flashback than Flashdance. A few glaring missteps:
The tagline is “Only the strong will survive.” Perhaps they meant the fans.
Only the Captain believes there is good in his friend, and Cap can keep his fists up all day.
The world demands accountability for the collateral toll taken during city battles. As long as there are Avengers, there will be conflicts challenging them. Circular reasoning, but the stats back it up. Unfortunately, a few bad guys with vengeful vendettas know that the best way to break up a team is from within.
Make them fight themselves, and as it says in scripture, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
The team, indeed, divides over political issues and faces off only after acquiring a few more helpful fighters on each side. They recruit Ant Man, the beautiful Black Panther, and a fresh new Spider-Man for the front lines. 
They seem to put civility back into Civil War, as it begins in a glass meeting room with kind conversations between our two power houses. It builds to what seems like a fight for fun, a wits-to-fists stand-off until it gets personal.
Knowing it can’t end well if they keep it up, Widow walks the fence to bring peace.
The action to exposition ratio feels even and seamless in this the best Avengers series franchise film yet. It’s well written as characters continue their own arcs in character development, and remain consistent in both dialogue and story. This film is also shot beautifully, often putting viewers at hip and fist level so we step into the shoes of different Avengers as they fight. 
This empathy may help maintain viewership for what is already being called the biggest film in the world. Perhaps the world will seek, as the each of the Avengers eventually do, redemption and reconciliation too.
Mowgli is just a little boy who must learn, as all others do, how to survive in his world: jumping over giant tree limbs, swinging from vines like an orangutan, singing with bears and monkeys, running from Shere Kahn, howling as the adopted son of the wolf pack.
The screen goes dark after the final, gorgeous, framable shot of this art film closes with the unique credit sequence. The lights come up in the theater and the audience exits reluctantly, as sad to leave the jungle as Mowgli was when he realized he had to rejoin the man village. Director Jon Favreau, who also brought us Elf and Iron Man, made a masterpiece with this live action re-make of the 1967 Disney favorite. It stays true to the characters, the music, the art of the original. 
The classic Jungle Book comes to life in glorious widescreen with the unmistakable voices and cadence of favorite actors like Bill Murray and Christopher Walken. May the wonders of this kind of movie making never cease. It’s amazing to think that it was all made on a sound stage in Hollywood. 
Everyone old enough to appreciate the original MUST watch this film. It’s rare that I say I loved everything about a film, but I wish I had the ability to stop blinking and never miss a single frame of this perfect picture. See it, and live the beauty of the original film. Sit up close. Baloo, Bagheera, Mowgli, and every jungle friend will be your friend for life.
Splatter: on FILM 