Favorite New-to-Me Films of 2015

A list of films I've seen for the first time in 2015 and loved (excluding any new releases).

Happy New Year!

1. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1963) - begins as a simple ethical thriller about a kidnapping, transforms into a detail-heavy police procedural and a film-noir descent into Japan's underbelly. Has the character depth, thematic complexity and moral weight of a great novel, told through Akira Kurosawa's elegant filmmaking brilliance. I've only seen it once but already hold it among the greatest movies I've ever seen.

2. I Fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi, Italy, 1963)

3. Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, Italy, 1961)

4. Time Stood Still (Ermanno Olmi, Italy, 1959) - #2 to 4 are all by the same director, Ermanno Olmi. In I Fidanzati, a northern Italian engineer is relocated for work to Sicily, leaving behind his fiance. In Il Posto, a young man begins a "job for life" at a confusingly bureaucratic, coldly impersonal office building. In Time Stood Still, a younger and older man work a winter job at an isolated dam construction site high in the Alps. All three are quiet, short and simple, but "still waters run deep" - I am amazed by the humanity and insight that suffuse these tiny stories. Ermanno Olmi was my most treasured discovery of the year.

5. The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, France, 1980) - paradoxically, a hugely influential animated film that almost nobody has heard of (Hayao Miyazaki claims it inspired him to become an animator). Brilliantly designed and animated, dizzyingly inventive. Unlike any film I've seen before, watching it unfold was a delight.

6. Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, Japan / Russia, 1975) - another classic from Akira Kurosawa, although it's hard to believe it's from the same director as High and Low. Where High and Low is forbiddingly dense, Dersu Uzala is beautifully simple. A story of friendship and survival in the Siberian wilderness that is gorgeously filmed, wild and heartfelt.

7. The Tale of the Fox (Wladyslaw Starewicz, France, 1930) - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is often called the first feature-length animated movie, which is factually wrong; The Tale of the Fox was made even earlier. A brilliant stop-motion retelling of a German folktale about a trickster fox - a clever, unrepentant jerk who is, amusingly, never redeemed. The animation still looks great, the story is darkly funny, and it was an inspiration for the also-brilliant Fantastic Mr. Fox from Wes Anderson!

8. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, United States, 1957) - I personally love these cheesy 1950s sci-fi movies, but The Incredible Shrinking Man is truly something special. As our protagonist shrinks from the size of a man to a child to a pin, the old-school special effects remain shockingly convincing - I loved all the massive props of everyday objects (like using a match as a torch, or a paint mixer as a bridge across the deep chasm between a dresser and a windowsill). The Incredible Shrinking Man is a work of B-movie genius, a survival adventure story set in a suburban 1950s home - where a spider in the basement becomes a towering monster and a leaky faucet creates a massive flood.

9. The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, United States, 1938) - one of the greatest swashbuckling adventures ever filmed. From Errol Flynn's charming swagger to Olivia de Havilland's elegance, from the glorious technicolor to the swordfights and derring-do, The Adventures of Robin Hood is classic Hollywood at its best.

10. Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, Japan, 1936) - a bus travels through the Japanese countryside, driven by the well-loved 'Arigato-san', known for yelling 'arigato!' to everyone he passes on the road. Seems charmingly naive at first, populated with fond caricatures passing through Japan's lovely mountain roads. But even with its happy-go-lucky attitude, Mr. Thank You deals with some of the tough realities of depression-era Japan - many passengers are searching for work, including a disarmingly young girl who is travelling to Tokyo to, it is suggested, work as a prostitute. Yet Hiroshi Shimizu's film is unerringly kind and generous in its vision of people - one of its loveliest moments shows Arigato-san conversing with Korean immigrants travelling on foot, a discriminated-against group at the time. Mr. Thank You's gentle kindness is actually a strong, brave statement.

Crimson Peak

United States, 2015
Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Warning: this review contains some plot spoilers for Crimson Peak. Since the film is new I will not discuss the events of its last act in detail, but if you wish to enter the film entirely unaware of how the story unfolds then I'd suggest returning to this review after seeing the film.

I normally avoid discussing the general critical responses and box office performance of films, as I want to review only the film itself, and not the hype or popular opinion surrounding it. But the underwhelming response to Crimson Peak is revealing. Its box office gross thus far is unimpressive, especially coming from a major director like Guillermo del Toro. The critical response has been mixed, with the negative reviews being outright snarky in their dismissal of the film."Over-designed pseudo-gothic crud," one review called it. Another critic notes that "Crimson Peak feels like a 1946 film made seven decades later." He's absolutely right. Aside from a much franker approach to sex and violence than would exist in 1946, Crimson Peak is stubbornly old-fashioned. It very much belongs to a bygone genre - the gothic romance - and how its plot unfolds will not surprise anyone familiar with the genre. There is little postmodern revisionism here. The fact that Crimson Peak has not been enthusiastically received is unsurprising - here is a film largely out of step with modern tastes and expectations.

But while an unironically melodramatic, lavishly designed gothic romance might not be for all tastes, I eat up this nonsense and find Crimson Peak to be a morbid delight. Crimson Peak wears its various influences and generic antecedents proudly. Guillermo del Toro was clearly inspired by the Victorian era gothic literature of the Bronte sisters and Mary Shelley, the Bluebeard fairy tale, Alfred Hitchcock films like Rebecca and Notorious, the gothic campy stylings of the Hammer horror films of the 50s and 60s, and Italian horror of the 60s (known as giallo), famous for their bold colors and focus on sensation over logic. Yet, at the same time that it is a devoted tribute to and continuation of its various forebears, Crimson Peak is wholly a product of Guillermo del Toro's imagination.

Take the opening scene of the film. Our heroine, Edith, is a young girl. Her mother has just passed on from black cholera. Edith is crying in bed when she notices a skeletal specter floating towards her. A black hand grabs the terrified Edith and whispers a warning - beware of crimson peak. It is the ghost of Edith's mother. According to an interview del Toro gave, this scene is based on a ghost story from his own family:

"The opening scene is based on a visitation that my mother experienced. My mother's grandmother died, and when she was a child she was crying in her bed, and she heard the silk of the dress of her grandmother move in the corridor. She smelt her perfume, and she heard the bed springs creak and felt the weight of her grandmother leaning on her back. She jumped up screaming and left the room."

The opening titles follow, and like in a classic Disney animation the title is introduced on a grand old book, opening to begin the tale. This is Crimson Peak acknowledging its belonging to an old and well-established literary tradition. Crimson Peak exists entirely within specific generic conventions, yet simultaneously feels like a deeply personal passion project on the part of its creator. Guillermo del Toro's greatest gifts as a storyteller are his imagination and his sincerity. You always gets the sense, watching one of his films, that he deeply believes in and loves the story he is telling. This sincerity is what enlivens all the musty but fun cliches of his gothic tale, and brings to life its ghoulish plot and operatic emotions.

Crimson Peak's opening act is charming and, admittedly, rather heavy-handed. Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is now a young woman in turn of the century New York and an aspiring writer. She writes ghost stories, which she insists are not truly ghost stories but "stories with ghosts in them", where ghosts are actually a metaphor for the past. This is del Toro (clumsily) telling us how to feel about the supernatural element of his own film, in which ghosts are not so much the main event as a manifestation of past tragedies that haunt places and people. But it's oddly meta-textual, and I doubt that someone with visceral supernatural encounters in her past would write of ghosts solely as a metaphor, but I digress. Edith is a brave and spirited woman living a happy, sheltered life with her wealthy industrialist father. Into her life waltzes Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a mysterious baronet from England who is unsuccessfully searching for investors for his mining operations back home. Edith is charmed by this alluringly dark and handsome stranger, even as the audience immediately detects a certain duplicitousness in his manner.

At a ball Thomas and Edith waltz together. This is the scene where Crimson Peak entirely won me over. They hold a candle as they dance - the sign of a good waltz being an unextinguished candle throughout the dance. The camera swoops through the crowd and weaves between the couple, focusing on the flickering but undying candle. It is a grandly romantic sequence reminiscent of old Hollywood filmmaking. Accompanying them on piano is Thomas's sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), and her vivid blood-red gown and quietly predatory demeanor spell trouble.

Soon after, tragedy strikes when Edith's father perishes in an "accident" - which we in the audience know to be murder by an unknown assailant. The murder is quick but shockingly brutal. It earned audible gasps and an "oh sh--" from my theater audience, and horrified cringing from me. Edith, now alone, runs to Thomas's arms. A terrific shot shows Thomas embracing a distressed Edith - the camera tracks behind his back, his black coat swallowing the whole screen and poor Edith in darkness. Clearly she is being unknowingly lured into danger.

Edith marries Thomas and moves to England, settling into his home of Allerdale Hall...but here I must not give too much away. The house is ancient, huge and in ruins. Edith stumbles upon strange clues pointing to some dark secret in her husband's past. Lucille lurks about, behaving like the creepiest in-law ever - and is there something stranger than the love of siblings in her and Thomas's closeness? And then there's the horrific ghostly visitations - are they threatening Edith, or trying to warn her of something? You can probably guess the answer to those questions without seeing the film. But the point is not surprise so much as how beautifully and vividly everything unfolds, and the satisfying intensity of the climax.

The three lead roles are expertly performed. Mia Wasikowska is an excellent heroine in the Victorian mold - innocent and feminine, though not helpless or dumb like many of the distressed damsels of similar stories. Tom Hiddleston is perfectly cast as the Byronic antihero (or villain?). Most impressive is Jessica Chastain as the evil sister-in-law. She's a Mrs. Danvers-esque scheming, uptight villainness until the last act, where the true extent of her insanity and hatred is revealed. Then she's all over-the-top fury and raging lust, and Chastain commits to the character fully. Like Kathy Bates in Misery, Chastain will have you giggling uncomfortably one moment and scared into silence the next. Copare this performance to her angelic mother in The Tree of Life and you'll see Chastain's amazing range as a performer.

One of the recurring criticisms of Crimson Peak is that it values "style over substance". The old "style over substance" complaint is a lazy critical shorthand that needs to die. A movie's "style" - cinematography, design, music, editing - is part of its "substance"! And the "style" of Crimson Peak happens to tell much of the story. Look at the costume design as one example. Edith's gowns are all cheery colors - gold, violet - while Lucille's are dramatic red or deep blue. Lucille wears corsets and pulls her hair up tightly, as if she's restraining herself by force. When she shows her true colors her hair is flowing freely, and she's wearing a loose, billowing gown - as if she can finally unleash all she's been repressing. It's costume design as character building. Even the sound of Crimson Peak tells a story. Edith pulls out a hair pin and it sounds like a sword being unsheathed. Lucille scrapes a spoon along the bottom of a bowl of porridge and it sounds like a knife. Domestic items foreshadowing the violence to come - and gothic romance as a genre is all about the horrors that can arise from domestic spaces.

Yet the standout element of Crimson Peak is the house itself, Allerdale Hall. Guillermo del Toro had a real, intricately detailed 3-story house built for the film's production. It is a marvelous movie set that contributes invaluably to the atmosphere and menace of the film. Allerdale Hall is nicknamed Crimson Peak for the red clay surrounding it, which dyes the snow red in winter and oozes through the floorboards like a manifestation of the Sharpes' guilt. The house is rotting - a giant hole in the roof lets in falling leaves and snow. The place symbolizes the Sharpes themselves - a desperate old aristocratic family, a dying remnant of the Old World order. Like many other gothic stories, much of the horror of Crimson Peak comes from a dying aristocracy becoming predatory in order to survive, but only furthering its own doom. And like Guillermo del Toro's past films, the supernatural beings of Allerdale Hall may be grotesque but the real evil there is very human.

My Favorite Film of 2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

 I'm starting a series of reviews on this blog, looking back at my favorite films of different years, from contemporary movies all the way back to silent films - both as an excuse to write about personal favorites, and to show what films I admire from different eras of history.

China, 2000

Directed by Ang Lee

I have vivid memories of my first time watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a kid. The first moment of high-flying action left me awestruck. A powerful sword, the Green Destiny, has just been stolen by a masked bandit. One of our heroes pursues the bandit, and suddenly they are bouncing off walls, parkour-style, and continuing the chase on the rooftops, gliding from roof to roof in the night. When our hero catches the bandit their fight defies the laws of physics - they run across walls and perform impossible mid-air acrobatics, but there remains a tremendous physicality and athleticism to their movements that makes the fantastic battle believable. I had never seen anything like this before, and I was stunned. The rest of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon absorbed me just as much - not only was it exciting, but it had a grand beauty, a sense of mystery and romanticism that lit fire to my imagination. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the first foreign film I remember loving, and it has instilled in me a fascination with martial arts films that remains to this day. It's also one of the rare childhood favorites that, as I've gotten older and less impressionable, has not lost any of its magic.

Director Ang Lee has stated that his intention with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was nothing less than to make the greatest martial arts epic, or wuxia film, in history. And while I obviously have not seen every martial arts film ever, in my eyes he has succeeded. Crouching Tiger does for the wuxia genre what The Lord of the Rings does for western epic fantasy or The Godfather does for gangster films - perfects a genre at the same time that it transcends it with a far grander vision than is usually offered by stories of its type. The fight scenes are technically astounding, and varied in their style and impact. The film's craft is of the highest quality, and of a scope and stately beauty comparable to an epic from the golden age of Hollywood. The performances - those of Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh in particular - are impressive. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon offers movie escapism at its best.

At the time, Ang Lee must have seemed like a counterintuitive choice to direct an epic fantasy film. Before Crouching Tiger, Lee had only directed several small-scale Chinese dramas and an adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Yet, along with proving his skill as a director of ambitious spectacle, Lee brings the same focus on character and theme from his previous features to Crouching Tiger, giving it an emotional honesty and sensitivity not often found in action epics. There is a surprising amount of Jane Austen in its DNA, considering its generic and cultural opposition to all her works. Calling Crouching Tiger a Sense and Sensibility in ancient China - with Shu Lien as its Elinor and Jen its Marianne - is simplifying things a lot, but should give you an idea of its thematic concerns. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is about conflict between (and within) characters with differing philosophies on how to live. Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai are governed by their "sense" - rigid personal codes of honor and societal respectability - while Jen is governed by her "sensibility" - self-expression, passion, individuality. Crouching Tiger shows the benefits and limitations of both ways of living.

Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) are warriors who live by strict codes of duty to society, self-discipline and worldly detachment. From their first scene together it is obvious that, beyond their mutual respect and friendship, unexpressed romantic feelings exist between them. But circumstance, honor and an excess of restraint keeps them from acting on their love or even confessing it. Li Mu Bai has just retired the warrior life and is leaving his sword to the protection of his friend Sir Te, where it is stolen. The bandit is Jen (Zhang Ziyi), the young daughter of one of Sir Te's guests, Governor Yu. Jen has been secretly trained in martial arts by her governess, actually the infamous criminal Jade Fox in hiding; Jen is engaged to be married to a man she does not know, and rages against the constraints of a proper life she does not desire. Jen befriends Shu Lien, and Li Mu Bai pursues her in an attempt to convince her to become his apprentice, but her increasingly wild and dangerous expressions of pride, fury and contempt for society cause conflict between them.

Neither way - of self-denial or selfishness - is portrayed as entirely right or wrong. This is most clearly shown through the two very different romances of Crouching Tiger. Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai have a great friendship and clearly relish each other's company, though they have never allowed their relationship, despite their feelings, to develop past that. They come to realize that they have been depriving themselves for too long. Li Mu Bai describes why he abandoned his former life - he had been meditating and reached a spot of absolute stillness and ultimate detachment. But instead of achieving nirvana, he felt a horrified emptiness, and something pulling him back to earth - which we understand to be Shu Lien. For all their wisdom, Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai are cowardly when it comes to their own desires, their ascetic lifestyle becomes only a negative. Their confession of love, once it comes, is tragically overdue. Yet, at the same time, it is all the more meaningful and mature for its withholding - it comes from a place deeper than just lust or romantic attraction.

Jen's romance, told in flashback, is entirely different. As her family crosses the desert, their caravan is raided - the raiders' leader steals her beloved comb, and she pursues him furiously to get it back. This leads her to become lost in the middle of the desert - the comb-stealer, Lo Dark Cloud, brings her to his cave hideaway where she can regain her strength. The two initially hate each other, though in a playful sort of way, but this transforms suddenly into lust. Their love affair is wild and exotic and very romantic, but also unstable and dangerous. And when it seems to end, they both fall into rage and self-destruction. Their romance is about the opposite of Li Mu Bai and Shu Lien - both are beautiful and foolish in their own different ways.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is about the necessity of balance in life - between our passions and our duties, between being a member of society and an individual. The film ends tragically, because our characters have realized this only too late. But all of this is told in the form of a tremendous fantasy adventure - and as in a musical or a dance film, the fight sequences of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are not so much a way to advance the plot as eruptive, fantastic expressions of characters and their conflict. It's only a bonus that the fight scenes are so terrific, and varied in style - from Jen's arrogant battle against dozens of warriors that destroys a whole restaurant, to a ferocious duel between pissed-off sisters, to a struggle between Jen and Li Mu Bai high in the stalks of a bamboo forest, jaw-dropping in its beauty. The athleticism, creativity and cinematic beauty on display is exhilarating.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a rare sort of movie - one with the beauty and mystery of an art film, but a soaring sense of adventure that will appeal to a wide, international audience of all ages. It's a masterpiece and a movie that entirely captivates me.

Other films I love from 2000:

• Yi Yi (directed by Edward Yang, Taiwan) - a masterfully-made, wise portrait of a Taiwanese family. You can watch the trailer here.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, United States) - hilarious characters, great music, and a weird, wonderful reworking of Homer in the South.
• Best in Show (directed by Christopher Guest, United States) - fake documentary about the Mayflower Dog Show, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
• In the Mood for Love (directed by Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong) - 2000 was an amazing year for Asian film. An almost-romance between neighbors who suspect their spouses are having an affair with each other, told with achingly gorgeous visuals and music.

Barry Lyndon

United States / United Kingdom, 1975
Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Barry Lyndon is seemingly Stanley Kubrick's most "normal" film. Based on an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, it outlines the rise and fall of Redmond Barry, an 18th century Irishman and opportunistic social climber, who fights in the British and Prussian armies in the Seven Years' War (and deserts both), ascends to the highest levels of society through lies, luck and seduction, and ultimately loses it all. The broad strokes of Barry Lyndon are typical, it's a story we've all heard before. There is nothing here as obviously outrageous as many of Kubrick's other films - including, prior to Lyndon, a political satire ending in nuclear holocaust (Dr. Strangelove), a trippy science fiction epic (2001), and a bizarre shocker about crime and punishment in a dystopian London (A Clockwork Orange). Yet in its own way, Barry Lyndon is every bit as unusual and challenging as any of them, and just as clearly an uncompromised product of Kubrick's vision.

Barry Lyndon's opening sets the tone for the 3 hours to follow. The funereal notes of Handel's "Sarabande" blare on the soundtrack as the opening titles appear.

The first image shows, from a distance, two men about to engage in a duel.

We cannot see their faces, and their human drama - of life-or-death importance to them, obviously - is dwarfed by the landscape surrounding them. The scene almost looks more like landscape painting than photography. A narrator informs us, without an ounce of emotion in his voice: "Barry's father had been bred, like many other young sons of a genteel family, to the profession of the law. And there is no doubt he would have made an eminent figure in his profession -" BANG "- had he not been killed in a duel, which arose over the purchase of some horses." And we see Barry's father fall limp in the distance.

This opening tells us several things about Barry Lyndon. 1) This is a highly formalized film - from the overwhelming classical music, to the fussily decorous titles, to the painterly cinematography. 2) Largely due to 1), this is a distant, cold film. We are observers of these people and their tragedies, but Kubrick never invites us to feel sympathy for them. We are always kept at a distance. The dry narration often tells us what is about to happen before it actually does, flattening suspense or typical engagement with the story, and it even makes sardonic little jokes at the expense of the characters, which leads us to 3) this is all quite absurd. The duel may have been of the utmost importance to Barry's father, but to us it looks petty and foolish - a dumb quarrel erupting over an event as comparatively trivial as the purchase of horses. The grand aesthetics do not elevate the characters and their tragedies so much as parody them.

Barry Lyndon's attitude of bemused detachment is what makes it so unique. Our main character is never particularly likable, and star Ryan O'Neill intentionally plays Barry as a blank slate of a person. The film moves along at a steady pace - about the speed of a glacier, also an apt comparison for how warm and friendly it is. I've probably made it sound deeply unappealing: Barry Lyndon is beautiful but cold, and unconcerned with character development or traditionally engaging storytelling. Yet it is mesmerizing, and even surprisingly enjoyable. How so?

For starters, I'm not using the word "beautiful" lightly in this case. Barry Lyndon is one of the most gorgeous movies ever made. If every artform has at least a handful of indisputable genius artists, then Stanley Kubrick must be considered one of the true geniuses of the movies. From the cinematography to the music to the editing, Barry Lyndon is masterfully crafted. Every image is carefully composed and lighted - Barry Lyndon used natural lighting instead of set lights, which at the time required the development of a new type of camera lens (also used by NASA). The effect is magical, especially in the scenes lit only by candles. The images have a soft glow that, along with the film's slow, steady rhythm and beautiful music, has a hypnotizing power. Taken purely as abstract art, Barry Lyndon is remarkable.

But there's more to it than that. The images of Barry Lyndon are designed to look like paintings, not only for beauty's sake but to communicate the story's themes. Redmond Barry wants to attain a certain status within a society that prizes a rigidly aestheticized lifestyle. He lies, cheats, and transforms himself to achieve his goals, and as he does so, the images themselves become more formal and stylized. Through much of the first half, detailing Redmond's humble beginnings as an Irish lad and anonymous soldier, the imagery is painterly, but has an openness and freedom to it.

As the film continues and Redmond reaches the highest levels of his society, the photography becomes more static and controlled. In Barry Lyndon, the indoors, ritualistic life of the high class is portrayed like a luxurious prison. Characters are trapped in beautiful images resembling the tableaux of 18th century paintings. The Lyndon estate becomes as claustrophobic as the Overlook Hotel of Kubrick's next film, The Shining.

The highly controlled camerawork is violated during several violent moments of the story. Redmond starts a fistfight with another soldier during his time in the British army. Kubrick films the fight with a handheld camera, giving it an intimate, visceral quality shockingly different from the cool distance of most of Barry Lyndon. We hardly ever see Redmond happier than during this scene, where he is beating the hell out of another man.

Stanley Kubrick rarely had a kindly view of human nature, and his Barry Lyndon is a savage satire of the classism of 18th century society. As Kubrick views it, there is a brutal animal nature beneath the formality of high society. All the rituals and grandeur of their civilization are just fancy trappings on a "survival of the fittest" Darwinian struggle to be the biggest and the best, to crush any competitors. A perfect society for a sociopath like Redmond Barry to flourish in. Moments like the aforementioned fight scene are just the characters - and the film itself - dropping any pretense and revealing their true nature. Kubrick plays much of this for sardonic, bone-dry comedy, and it is surprisingly hilarious at times.

Yet, to the film's credit - and keeping it from becoming totally misanthropic - Redmond Barry is not entirely unsympathetic despite being a nasty cad. He is also tragically misguided, a young man in search of his place and in want of a father figure. We see him behave gently and honorably around only a few people - including a superior in the army who becomes a mentor, and Barry's young son who he loves dearly - and he loses all of them. For all its frigid cynicism, Barry Lyndon accumulates moments of tremendous power, particularly towards the end. Kubrick may be ruthless in his view of human folly but Barry Lyndon is not entirely heartless.

It Follows

United States, 2015

Directed by David Robert Mitchell

Like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Final Destination, It Follows has a simple premise - one that is ridiculous but perfect for the horror genre, the kind of scary story that could be told around a campfire or at slumber parties. A strange curse is being passed around - if you have sex with a person who has It, something will start following you. Nobody else can see it but you. It takes different human forms, sometimes of people you know. It will always be walking towards you - slowly but inevitably. If it catches you, you're dead. You can pass it on by sleeping with somebody else, but if It catches them, It will just follow you again.

It's an absurd but catchy plot hook, and one that It Follows utilizes very cleverly. Though there are grotesque moments, director David Robert Mitchell shows restraint when it comes to violence and cheap "boo!" scares - It Follows draws most of its horror from the creeping tension inherent to its premise, the mystery of not knowing where or who It is, and of suddenly recognizing It moving inevitably towards you. Clever camerawork builds suspense - as in a rotating 360-degree shot, where with each rotation It grows steadily closer.

There's a very obvious metaphor to be found here, It as the embodiment of an STD. It Follows acknowledges this metaphor early on, but moves on quickly - It gains larger, vaguer meanings than just the menace of sexually transmitted disease.

It also represents anxieties about impending adulthood and the loss of childhood's safety and innocence. The characters of It Follows are unusually believable for the horror genre, which often casts 30 year old supermodels to play teenagers. They look and behave like real young adults, all reminiscent of people I knew in high school, with a convincing, low-key camaraderie among them. And all of them are adrift in a late adolescent limbo - still living with parents in their childhood homes, but facing the encroachment of dangerous adult responsibilities. Two characters play a "trading places" game while waiting in line for a movie - where they observe the strangers around them and pick who they would most like to trade lives with. The young man picks a little boy, because he still "has his whole life ahead of him". This sounds like a ridiculously melodramatic thing for a young person to say, but there's a relatable truth to it. Many stories show the exciting promise and freedom of being a young adult but It Follows explores the darker flip side. Emerging from the innocent bubble of childhood into adult knowledge can be dreadful - a new awareness of your fragile place in a sometimes scary world, with mortality creeping closer.

It Follows is set in Detroit, and Michigan native Mitchell makes the setting come to life in fascinating ways vital to the story. It's a dreamy vision of suburbia, with rows of houses tucked among dense, swaying foliage. The light is hazy, and the colors all pastel and soft. Whenever the characters make excursions outside of the suburbs into urban Detroit, the colors turn gray, and everything is harsh and ruinous. One character comments that she was never allowed to go beyond 8 Mile as a child into the big bad city, and she never realized until she was older what that meant. But even the safe zone of suburbia is crumbling in It Follows - the streets are eerily empty, and the old houses are beginning to decay.

Then there's the odd absence of parents. Adults are only glimpsed briefly in It Follows, and their lack of presence is pointedly intentional. We never see our main character Jay's mother clearly - her face is always just out of the picture or blurry, she always has a wine glass nearby, and Jay never goes to her for help or advice during her ordeal. Where Jay's father is, we don't know - but it's suggested that he is the final form It takes in the film, a storytelling decision that surely was not meaningless. These kids are on their own, and perhaps their entry in adulthood would not have been so treacherous if they had loving guidance from their elders.

It Follows never tells us what to think about these ideas, they remain haunting, unresolved undercurrents to a pretty terrific horror movie. It Follows is not perfect - it violates the rules it sets up several times, which is a storytelling pet peeve of mine. But it is a thoughtful, artfully-crafted gem in a genre that largely produces rubbish, and it gets so much just right. I dug its dreamy retro style, which is like a cross between Sofia Coppola and John Carpenter - and that score is seriously awesome.

Mad Max: Fury Road

United States / Australia, 2015
Directed by George Miller

Mad Max: Fury Road opens on a shot of a desert landscape, with a shocking contrast between the  scorched yellow-orange sand and the bright blue sky. A wildman stands alone in this wasteland, muttering about the voices of those he's lost "worming their way into the black matter of my brain". A two-headed mutant lizard scuttles past him - he crushes it with his boot and eats it alive.

From this cracked and crazy opening, Fury Road more than earns the word "mad" in its title. This movie is completely bonkers. With his original Mad Max films director George Miller essentially invented the post-apocalyptic genre as we know it today, with its heavy metal / punk stylings (or, as succinctly described in Spongebob: "Welcome to the apocalypse, Mr. Squidward...I hope you like leather"). With Fury Road, George Miller has been given a gargantuan budget to bring his mad vision to life on an epic scale, and the results are awe-inspiring. Fury Road is essentially a two-hour long chase scene, set in a breathtakingly detailed, truly mad apocalyptic world.

And what incredible chase scenes! The action in Fury Road is beautifully choreographed and executed - George Miller is a maestro of vehicular mayhem. Take this sequence as an example:

There are a lot of moving parts to this sequence, with our heroes in the "War Rig", Immortan Joe in pursuit, and a gang of motorcycle bandits on the attack. Yet the action never becomes chaotic or confusing - we always know where everyone is situated, what they are doing, and what the immediate dangers are. And all those crazy leaping motorcycles and explosions? They're real - it's actual stuntwork, not CGI. It's understandable why most action films create much of their action on computers, as it's easier and a hell of a lot safer, but CGI never holds the same impact (and the one scene in Mad Max that does use big special effects is, by a significant margin, the film's least engaging action sequence). There is a believable, brutal physicality to Fury Road that, when combined with impressive choreography and clean camerawork, makes for a terribly exciting, intense viewing experience. And believe it or not, that motorcycle chase is pretty sedate compared to the absolutely nuts action in the last act. Once our heroes are assaulted by a whole horde of lunatics in a caravan that is like a cross between an apocalyptic Cirque du Soleil and a metal concert on wheels, things get really crazy, but all the madness is executed with the same clarity and perfect timing.


The story is simple but engrossing. The lizard-eater of the opening sequence is Max, a hardened survivalist haunted by guilt. He is captured and taken to The Citadel, a community governed by the tyrannical Immortan Joe, who keeps the populace under control by creating a violent death cult in which he is the central figure. Max is used as a "blood bag" for Nux, one of Joe's War Boys, who are wasting away from the effects of radiation and need supplies of fresh blood to stay strong for battle. Here we meet the real protagonist of Fury Road - Imperator Furiosa, a former slave who drives the massive War Rig for Joe and his army. She deviates from her latest mission, escaping in the War Rig with five of Joe's concubines, or "breeders". Max and even the War Boy Nux become accomplices of Furiosa and the women - initially a hostile partnership borne of desperation, but mutual respect begins to grow in the ragtag group of escapees.

It's a basic story with a predictable arc, but set in a richly realized world of Miller's creation. Fury Road is the most immersive science fiction film I can recall since Children of Men nearly a decade ago. Like Children of Men, Fury Road never stops to explain to the audience the rules or history of its world - they are communicated through visual details, the language and customs of the characters. For all its outrageousness, the world of Fury Road feels lived-in and authentic, and holds relevance to ours. Immortan Joe's society is a religious cult that keeps the masses ignorant and does not tolerate any dissidents, that ensnares powerless young men by promising them glory in the afterlife if they die for their cause, and treats women as products to be controlled. That is hardly the stuff of fantasy - the Islamic State operates on largely the same principles.

The characters, too, are simple but drawn and performed with conviction. Tom Hardy's Max is gruff and near-silent - he grunts more than he speaks - but his development from a crazed survivalist to a man with actual concern for other lives is quietly moving. The women who escape with Furiosa have striking individual personalities, with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's Splendid Angharad, who is clearly the brave natural leader of the group, the quirky, eerie Dag (played by Abbey Lee), and the kindhearted Capable (Riley Keough) being particular standouts. Nicholas Hoult is brilliant as Nux, the initially scary-funny brainwashed War Boy who becomes brutally disillusioned of the Immortan Joe cult, and turns sympathetic as we realize he is, in a different way, as much an innocent victim as the women. But best in show is undeniably Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. Like Max, Furiosa doesn't speak much, but we understand all we need to through Theron's eyes - her grit and courage, her genuine care for her young stowaways, her quiet self-loathing and seething fury. Furiosa is a terrific character, played with subtlety and soul by Theron - an actress who is sometimes cast based on her blonde goddess beauty but actually excels when playing difficult, spiky characters. She's an action heroine comparable to the great Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.

Also like Aliens, Mad Max: Fury Road is an intense action masterpiece elevated by surprising tenderness. Because for all the carnage and grotesquerie on display, Mad Max: Fury Road is actually hopeful. I grew to care for this band of heroes and their fight for dignity in a mad world that robbed them of sanity and humanity. The acts of redemption and sacrifice at the film's end are sincerely heartfelt. Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of Fury Road is its affirmation that subtlety and soul can co-exist with wild bombastic spectacle.

But if that doesn't interest you, the "wild bombastic spectacle" should be more than enough - there's even a giant truck carrying dreadlocked drummers and a warrior playing an electric guitar that's also a flamethrower, which is about the nerdiest, coolest thing I've ever seen.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

United States, 2005
Directed by George Lucas

Revenge of the Sith begins at breakneck speed. Right off the bat, there's an enormous space battle, droid fights, heroes dangling from dizzying heights, a lightsaber duel, the death of a major villain and the introduction of a new one, and the crash landing of a huge spaceship - all within the opening 25 minutes! Revenge of the Sith announces the Return of the Lucas, and this exhilarating opening sequence is him throwing down the gauntlet; enough with the dithering of the previous episodes, this time it's for real.

The next two hours don't disappoint, despite undeniable flaws. Though the special effects are beautifully rendered for the most part and have aged well (in fact, the 10 year old CGI of Sith is more convincing than the effects in this year's Avengers 2 and Jurassic World), they are used excessively. The unneeded digital effects become distracting at points, like when Count Dooku flips over a balcony and is noticeably replaced by a plasticine CGI figure. Wouldn't a stunt double have looked more natural? And, sure, there are still snatches of cringe-inducing dialogue - in particular a mercifully brief romantic scene between Anakin and Padme early on in the film, an unwelcome stowaway from the disastrous Naboo section of Attack of the Clones that embarrassingly clings to Revenge of the Sith like toilet paper to a shoe.

Yet these are mere nitpicks in the grand scheme of the film. The main handicap of Revenge of the Sith is that it's preceded by The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Since they failed to set up the characters in compelling ways, Sith has to fight an uphill battle to give the climax of their story the power and emotion it needs. I wholeheartedly love Revenge of the Sith, but it's impossible not to imagine the masterpiece it could have been if the preceding episodes had laid a solid foundation for it to build upon.

But lamenting the Revenge of the Sith that could have been is ultimately pointless - the Revenge of the Sith we got is awesome, flaws and all. It is an astonishing upgrade from episodes I and II, and a highly entertaining, full-blooded epic on its own terms. I believe this is the story Lucas wanted to tell all along - the birth of Darth Vader, the fall of the Jedi, and the rise of the Empire. His storytelling is reinvigorated, with an emotional and thematic coherency previously missing.

Anakin Skywalker is no longer a teenage Padawan but a full-fledged Jedi Knight, and the more mature Anakin is a better fit for Hayden Christensen as an actor. Anakin is finally believable as a powerful Jedi and a basically good but misguided man. Christensen's line readings remain flat, but the grating whininess is gone, and he has a strong physical presence that expresses Anakin's grief and fury when he turns to the Dark Side. Padme remains frustratingly nebulous but Natalie Portman does what she can with the character, finally emoting like things matter. One brief scene, late in the film, makes Anakin and Padme's connection more palpable than anything previous. Anakin is standing in the empty Jedi Temple, in a dark moment of crisis, while Padme waits nervously alone in their apartment. Sensing each other and the turmoil to come, they stare across the Coruscant skyline in the direction of the other, as a plaintive female voice wails eerily on the soundtrack. With confidently atmospheric direction and spot-on silent acting, this moment tells us more about the love of Anakin and Padme than the entirety of Attack of the Clones.

Once again, Ewan McGregor is an engaging Obi-Wan - but MVP easily goes to Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. As his true colors show themselves, Palpatine transforms from a serpentine charmer to a cackling, grotesque creature - McDiarmid holds nothing back, putting all the campy menace he can into every sneer and guttural croak. He strikes a perfect balance between cartoonish wickedness and sincere menace. His relationship with Anakin is the most well-developed in the film. Palpatine clearly senses Anakin's weakness - his anger over perceived patronizing from Obi-Wan and the Jedi, his egoism and desire for power, and his fear of losing Padme - and exploits them. Palpatine adjusts to whatever role will best manipulate Anakin, beginning as a confidante and father figure to gain his trust, acting as helpless victim to drive Anakin to terrible action, and finally becoming his master, the newly christened Darth Vader utterly in his grasp (though 'christened' is hardly the word for this dreadful rebirth).

With Anakin's turning to the Dark Side, Revenge of the Sith becomes unflinchingly dark. In its story, Sith draws from more than the science fiction serials which inspired the saga, but also Greek tragedy, Wagnerian opera, gothic horror, and real-world fascist regimes. Palpatine's political machinations and takeover are clearly modeled off the rise of Hitler; a series of shots showing Anakin and the Stormtroopers marching on the Jedi Temple visually alludes to goose-stepping Nazi soldiers. One sequence, which cuts between the murder of Separatist leaders and the Senate cheering the formation of the Empire, was inspired by nothing less than the baptism / assassination sequence from The Godfather.

George Lucas clearly has grandiose ambitions for this story, and Sith lives up to them. Whatever his failings as a screenwriter and director of actors, Lucas has a unique genius for visual storytelling - a talent on full display in Revenge of the Sith. Many images are electric, charged with mythic power. Take the above still - a quiet moment where the vulture-like Palpatine reaches down and caresses the maimed, near-death Darth Vader. The image is all the more unsettling for its perverse tenderness, a hellish vision of paternal affection.

But for all its despair and gloom, Revenge of the Sith is too exciting to be too terrible of a downer. The spectacle of it is exhilarating, with Sith delivering all the lightsaber duels and wild alien creatures a Star Wars fan could hope for. It's also very violent, and by far the most badass Star Wars episode of all. Plentiful moments will inspire fist-pumping glee from action fans like myself. I'm especially fond of the Wooikees swinging into battle Tarzan-style, of little Yoda beheading and lightsaber-skewering any Stormtroopers who dare to mess with him, and the villainous General Grievous revealing his four lightsaber-wielding arms. Grievous is one of Sith's most bizarre, fun creations, a spidery, towering fiend who is part organic and part machine. His duel with Obi-Wan and his spectacular fiery death are particularly memorable; Grievous is also a clever shadow of the future Darth Vader - more machine than man, and ultimately a puppet of Palpatine. The action highlight of Revenge of the Sith, and the high point of the film in general, is the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan. The furious fight choreography and apocalyptic setting give this battle between brothers the intensity it deserves.

The final scenes of Sith are perfect. The Frankenstein-like rise of Darth Vader. A return to Tattooine, with that familiar John Williams theme. It gives me chills. I can't imagine a better lead-in to the original films.

Revenge of the Sith singlehandedly justifies the existence of the prequel trilogy. It turns Anakin / Darth Vader into the main figure of the whole saga, and makes elements of the original films even more powerful - such as Vader's duel with Obi-Wan in Star Wars and his redemption in Return of the Jedi. It's a great film, worthy of being placed alongside the originals.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

United States, 2002
Directed by George Lucas

In my mind, Attack of the Clones has long held the title of the worst Star Wars film. On this recent viewing, I was surprised to find my opinion change. For all its failings - and oh, there are plenty of them - I prefer Attack of the Clones to The Phantom Menace, and not only because Jar-Jar has been demoted to a cameo appearance.

There's no doubt, however, that Attack of the Clones is guilty of some of the same storytelling crimes as The Phantom Menace, and commits several disastrous new ones. There is still stiff dialogue and failed attempts at humor. The politics still take up too much screen time, without impressing on viewers a sense of their urgency or importance. CGI is still overused - and while the special effects have aged more gracefully than those in The Phantom Menace, the digital universe of the Star Wars prequels is simply not as engaging as the tangible sets and effects of the originals.

Yet the major failing of Attack of the Clones, and the unavoidable reason why I'd considered it the worst in the saga, is its two main characters: Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala. As individual characters and a romantic couple, they are painfully unconvincing. Hayden Christensen gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a big budget movie. It's astonishing how dreadful his Anakin is - I don't think he has a single convincing line reading. He is perpetually pouty, and never sympathetic or engaging. Natalie Portman as Padme looks bored and embarrassed - like she'd rather be anywhere other than in this film saying these ridiculous lines, in these ridiculous outfits, with her creepy co-star.

"Creepy" may sound harsh, but, really...

...yikes. That stare is surely intended as "intense romantic longing" but looks more like "unhinged rapist". But apparently Senator / former Queen Amidala likes the stalker-ish attentions of her petulant sociopathic teenage bodyguard, as they soon fall madly in love. Or, at least, Attack of the Clones desperately tries to convince us they are madly in love, despite the utter lack of chemistry between them; Anakin's seductive monologues (like this gem) are thoroughly repulsive and Padme has all the charisma of a plank of wood. Their romantic scenes are so poorly written that they make you wonder if Stephanie Meyer's secret first job was a ghost writer for George Lucas. The embarrassing love scenes would be forgivable if they were placed sparingly throughout the film, but that isn't the case. Attack of the Clones comes to a screeching halt for a lengthy second act that is mostly taken up with their Passionate Love Affair, with all of its awkward flirtation, tormented fireside confessions, and frolics amongst gigantic Nabooan pig beasts.

The main sin of the Star Wars prequels is their failure to make Anakin Skywalker an involving character. He is the central figure of the trilogy, perhaps the entire saga - his rise, fall, and redemption span all six films. Yet he's not the magnetic personality he should be; he's downright unlikable. Signs of his eventual turn to the Dark Side appear in Attack of the Clones, but they don't resonate because we never believed his goodness in the first place. Anakin doesn't seem like a good man struggling with inner darkness, but a whiny brat whose violent outbursts are mere temper tantrums. 

Anakin has a botched character arc, but Padme isn't even given one. She is devoid of a personality - or, more accurately, she fits the persona any particular scene requires of her. She's a canny politician, then a sexy warrior, then a damsel in distress; there is no consistency to her character. When Anakin confesses that he slaughtered an entire village of sandpeople in a fit of rage - a terrible genocidal act, whether or not they had killed his mother - Padme reacts with mild concern, like Anakin had just stubbed his toe and not gone on a murderous rampage. No way that would be the reaction of a righteous politician. Padme's vagueness makes me miss Leia, who even in her most undignified moments - like, for instance, choking an enormous slug to death while wearing a bikini loincloth - had the dignity of an actual personality.

On the bright side, Ewan McGregor is much improved since his last stint as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is the only actor who knows how to handle George Lucas's clunky dialogue, with a tongue-in-cheek levity. McGregor is a fun, engaging presence, which Attack of the Clones sorely needs.

So, on the level of characterization and storytelling, Attack of the Clones is largely a disaster. But it works far, far better as pure spectacle. Perhaps George Lucas was rusty during the making of The Phantom Menace - after all, he had not directed a film for 22 years, since the original Star Wars. With Attack of the Clones he remembered how to direct an exciting adventure.

A thrilling chase scene through Coruscant opens the film on a strong note. The effects have aged very well and Coruscant finally comes alive as an interesting world - an enormous, glittering maze of a city, with politicians and the wealthy living in spacious tower-top apartments and the multi-species masses thriving in a neon underworld below. Most of Attack of the Clones's following set pieces and new worlds are just as fun. 

In an intriguing scene, Obi-Wan visits a stormy ocean planet inhabited by willowy, ambiguous beings who live in sterile, bulbous halls perched above the waters. Under mysterious orders previously unknown to the Jedi, they have been growing a clone army for the Republic. Obi-Wan meets the model for the clones, the shady bounty hunter Jango Fett, who does not appreciate the intrusion of this snooping Jedi. Their ensuing fistfight is pretty terrific, an atmospheric brawl in the pouring rain with a believable physicality to every blow - the following chase through an asteroid field is also a good deal of fun.

But the best is saved for the end - the last act of Attack of the Clones is packed full of good stuff. Our heroes find themselves in a dire situation - prisoners in an ancient Rome-style execution, for the entertainment of an arena full of humanoid termite aliens. Three hungry beasties descend on them - one a giant turquoise crab-spider, one a fleshy red rhino, one a grinning feline creature. It's a sequence that Edgar Rice Burroughs could have cooked up for his John Carter of Mars books. In the nick of time, a horde of Jedi appear to save our heroes - a diverse squadron of warriors, their blue and green lightsabers flashing to life all around the desert arena. This moment is nerd nirvana, and George Lucas at his best. His genius lies in how he synthesizes decades of Hollywood epics, pulp fiction serials and classic sci-fi stories into worlds of his own creation that are equally original and familiar, outlandish and comfortable.

Not all the action scenes work as well - one sequence in a droid factory is far too silly, especially the unfunny slapstick of the bastardized prequel version of C3PO - but on the whole, Attack of the Clones excels as imaginative, exciting sci-fi spectacle. Yes, you have to endure a lot of dreck to reach the good parts, but the high points offer enough of that Star Wars magic to make the overall film worth it.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

United States, 1999
Directed by George Lucas

It's difficult to know how to review a Star Wars film. They are among the most widely-seen, beloved, and (in the case of the prequel trilogy) notorious films of all-time. There is so much hype and passionately held opinions surrounding these movies that it seems impossible to view them separate from their cultural influence, as stand alone stories. But I'll give it my best shot.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace begins a new prequel trilogy, one that is strikingly different than the original Star Wars trilogy. The original films very closely follow the Hero's Journey template outlined by Joseph Campbell. The Hero's Journey begins with an ordinary man with an unexceptional life - like Luke the farmer on Tatooine. Our hero hears a call to adventure and is taken under the wing of a mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. He then crosses the threshold into a whole new world and is thrust into a grand battle of good versus evil, the Rebel Alliance against the evil Galactic Empire. After being severely tested and tempted, he defeats the forces of evil and restores peace and balance to his world. The prequel films are an equally archetypal and classical form of storytelling, the tragedy. Our tragic hero is Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father. He is a man who rises to greatness as a Jedi Knight, but falls to the Dark Side and is transformed into Darth Vader. Anakin fits the model of the tragic hero outlined by Aristotle - he is a basically good man whose fall comes about not by vice or depravity, but character flaws and errors of judgment that lead to destruction. The Phantom Menace is the beginning of this tragic tale - Anakin Skywalker is an innocent child just discovering his great powers, and the Galactic Republic is experiencing the first stirrings of dissent that will lead to war and the formation of the Galactic Empire.

Considering the darker and more complex nature of its story, you would expect The Phantom Menace to be a more nuanced or adult Star Wars. Yet The Phantom Menace is actually the most child-oriented, lighthearted film of the entire saga. In itself, this is not really a problem - after all, Anakin is still an innocent child in The Phantom Menace, the characters have little sense of the tragedy to come, and good storytelling accessible for any age is all too rare. But in execution The Phantom Menace is bizarrely at odds with itself. The simplistic characters, declarative and nuance-free dialogue, and goofy slapstick humor place The Phantom Menace firmly in "kiddie movie" territory. But the plot centers around an intergalactic trade blockade that is actually a front for the future Emperor Palpatine to secure power, and the discovery of the boy who will become Darth Vader and kill two of the film's major characters, Padme and Obi-Wan. I'm not claiming that George Lucas shouldn't have tried to make The Phantom Menace fun or accessible in the face of its dark subject matter - of course he should have, it's Star Wars. But The Phantom Menace never strikes a good balance. Dry political discussions are followed by manic slapstick action sequences, making for an unpleasantly schizophrenic experience. I'm not sure whether George Lucas vastly misunderstood his own story, or was making a misguided attempt at appealing to children out of commercial concerns and in the process alienated many adults. Either way, The Phantom Menace is a disappointing missed opportunity - an elemental story rich with potential, told in a broken, awkward way.

The poor storytelling extends to the characters, who are uninteresting at best and at worst...um, we'll get to that in a minute.

Let's start with Anakin Skywalker himself. Bringing Anakin to life would be no easy task for a writer or child actor. He is just a young boy, but one who must show potential for greatness - for good and for evil. But Anakin in The Phantom Menace is a complete failure of a character, like the star of a cornball 90s kid movie anachronistically plopped into an epic space opera. It wouldn't be fair to put the blame on Jake Lloyd, just a kid who was likely acting as he was directed to. But, sadly, he never convinces on any level, leaving a vapid blank space where an engaging main character should be. Since the core of the prequel trilogy is Anakin's transformation, this is a big problem.

Bland characters are the norm in The Phantom Menace. Talented actors like Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor are adrift playing personality-free ciphers. Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn is the most engaging, due to Liam Neeson's authoritative screen presence, but is just as poorly written as the rest. An invaluable ingredient of the original trilogy's success was the characters - Han Solo, Leia, Luke and the rest of the crew had vibrant individual personalities, and delightful chemistry when put together. The protagonists of The Phantom Menace are wooden and dull, never giving us a reason to care. But they're nothing compared to this...

...the unholy monstrosity known as Jar-Jar Binks. Everything about Jar-Jar is off-putting. Starting with his design - the lanky body, the yellow cat eyes perched on crab-like stalks, the duck bill with incongruous human teeth - he is intended to be the lovably goofy comic relief, but is too much an uncanny nightmare of a creation to be anything but unnerving. His personality is even worse than his appearance - he is a screeching idiot who destroys all in his path, tagging along with the heroes for no discernible reason. Even if he had attempted to do so, Mr. Lucas could not have concocted a more perfectly obnoxious character than Jar-Jar. Every minute of his screen-time (which add up to a mercilessly large number, considering his unimportance to the narrative) is painful.

The Phantom Menace mishandles the Star Wars mythology just as much as it botches the characters; which is, perhaps, an even more crushing disappointment. The Star Wars universe is expanded very little, or only in uninspired directions. The new worlds lack the lived-in, authentic creativity of the various planets in the originals - Naboo looks like a fantasy world screensaver and Coruscant is just a bland futuristic cityscape. The Jedi Order never is as awe-inspiring as it should be - they seem less like mystical warriors and a force for good, and more like dull, humorless bureaucrats. And the introduction of midichlorians - "microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force" - is an unwelcome, mystique-deflating explanation of how the Force works. The mysterious spirituality of the Force is what made it so awesome in the first place!

The amount of time The Phantom Menace spends explaining Trade Federations, blockades, peace treaties and the Galactic Senate, without making clear what's actually at stake or why any of it matters, is baffling. The political turmoil of the Republic, and the sinister scheming of Palpatine behind the conflict, could have been gripping if told coherently and with an appropriate sense of dread and tension, but in The Phantom Menace all the plotting is relayed through tedious, confusing exposition dumps.

Yet there are bright spots amid the gloom. Brief moments of The Phantom Menace tap into the gleeful excitement that is classic Star Wars - where pulpy, old-school science fiction meets grand, mythic storytelling. The clear highlight of the film is at the end, when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight Darth Maul. Although Darth Maul has limited screentime he is the most memorable figure of The Phantom Menace, with his tattooed body, demonic horns, and that double-sided lightsaber, which every 10 year old boy thought was the coolest thing ever. They battle in an enormous metallic hall that looks like a set from Metropolis, as operatic singing blares on the soundtrack. In a few minutes there is stirring heroism and tragedy, and the type of exhilaration that only the best high fantasy can provide. A shame that the film surrounding that terrific scene is so lifeless.