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.

Monsoon Wedding (2002)

India, 2002
Directed by Mira Nair

I know that posting a French poster on an English language review of an Indian film doesn't make a whole lot of sense - but that poster captures the vibrancy, the color, and the overflowing spirit of Monsoon Wedding the best.

A middle upper class, modern Indian family gathers together to celebrate a traditional Punjabi wedding, an arranged marriage between a couple who hardly know each other. Their enormous family converges from all over the world - including different states of India, Australia and the United States. Monsoon Wedding zips between its many characters at this elaborate, four-day celebration, including the workers setting up the wedding and house servants. It is a constantly busy movie, rich with incidents small and large. Multiple character arcs unfold simultaneously. There is comedy, budding romance, and even some serious drama, as an appalling family secret is revealed. Although Monsoon Wedding is deeply culturally Indian, the stories it tells are universal. It is all about the frustration and joy of family. Warm-hearted, ebullient and accessible, this is the type of foreign film that even those who hate reading subtitles may end up loving.

Monsoon Wedding belongs in a tradition of of exuberant, messy wedding movies like Father of the Bride or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Stylistically, it is reminiscent of Robert Altman. The camera is always roving about, moving between characters, around the house and its grounds, through the crowded streets of Delhi. The screen is teeming with life - conversations overlap, people weave in and out of scenes. However, in its attitude Monsoon Wedding couldn't be further from the cynicism of Altman. In spirit, it reminded me of the recent films of David O. Russell. Like Russell's films, Monsoon Wedding is irrepressibly energetic, an explosion of cheerful vulgarity and healthy sentimentality. And like The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, it acknowledges the hardships and annoyances of family, but is ultimately a joyous celebration of familial love and togetherness.

Monsoon Wedding should be relatable to viewers of any cultural background, but it is specifically and uniquely Indian. It shows not only many family members coming together, but many different facets of India. Modernity and tradition, poverty and wealth, English and Hindi languages all mix together in a microcosm of contemporary India. Writer and director Mira Nair clearly made Monsoon Wedding as a love letter to her home city of Delhi, and it is gorgeous. Every scene pops with color and patterns - of henna, of marigolds, of bright saris. The Bollywood-influenced soundtrack is toe-tapping and infectious. Delhi looks so beautiful, and so rich with life, through Mira Nair's camera that I felt transported. I've never seen India, but now I ache to. This is the danger of watching foreign films, in particular ones as vivid as Monsoon Wedding - they can make you homesick for places you've never been!

It's always a delight to watch a feel-good movie that is not insipid or shallow, but earns its good vibes through sincere generosity of spirit. Monsoon Wedding is lively and heart-swelling, bursting with stories of family tenderness and courage, and swooning romanticism that makes most Hollywood romances look timid and stingy. What a joy to watch!

Rosetta (1999)

Belgium, 1999
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Rosetta premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. It was a small Belgian film set in the nondescript industrial town of Seraing, directed by sibling brothers who few had heard of yet, and not starring any big name actors. The story it tells is an intimate, grim one. Rosetta lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother. She is fiercely desperate for a job, any job, for a sense of normalcy, purpose, and escape from her dead-end existence. She will do anything to get work, making questionable decisions in the process. Rosetta, in what was considered a surprise at the time, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Best Film and Best Actress for its star, Emile Dequenne.

If you ever watched the show 30 Rock, reading the above synopsis you might have been reminded of Tracy Jordan's "Hard to Watch". Tracy Jordan the comedian, in an attempt to class up his public image, stars in a tragic Serious Film About Poverty, one that is actually shallow with nothing to say. Naturally, it wins a ton of awards. 30 Rock was on to something there. The world of independent and foreign films is rife with movies unfortunately similar to "Hard to Watch". The least obnoxious of these are probably sincere attempts at illuminating real social problems, but end up saying little more than "life can really suck, especially if you're poor". Gee, thanks movie! I didn't know that! Even worse are the films that have an exploitative or leering fascination with poverty and suffering, or use it as a pretentious feint towards being True Art yet are nothing but hollow, condescending vanity projects on the part of their creators. Rosetta, with the unrelenting misery of its titular character's life, seems at risk to become such a film. But there's something different about Rosetta, and all of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's films.

For starters, the Dardennes know the milieu of Rosetta personally. They live in Seraing, and spent their early filmmaking careers as documentarians, largely chronicling the lives of fellow Belgians. Authenticity is felt in every scene of Rosetta. In fact, the film was so provocative to the Belgian public that people successfully petitioned for a new law upping the minimum wage for minors in Belgium. It was nicknamed the Rosetta Law. This is the rare film about social issues that actually triggered helpful change in the world, which is incredible.

Perhaps why Rosetta stirred people to action was because it is not directly political in nature - there is no didacticism or overarching socio-economic theme here. Any political implications arise from an utterly personal story, which is more persuasive and powerful. Rosetta is an intimate film - claustrophobically so. I don't think there is a single shot without Rosetta in it, most often in close-up. The camera follows closely behind her as she walks and runs, locking the viewer into her headspace.

It is also an enormously physical movie, relying as much on movement to tell its story as any action film. Rosetta is always moving. When she is fired from her first job, she refuses to leave the building, even fighting off the security guards when they try to escort her out. She is always running, peering around corners, crawling through holes in fences. When her mother is in withdrawal, she tries to escape the trailer to meet a man who will exchange alcohol for sex. Rosetta chases her and furiously tackles her to the ground. Fired from a second job, she assaults her boss in desperate frustration and clings to a sack of flour, refusing to give up. Rosetta is a fighter. She feels that if she ever stops moving forward, she will only fall deeper into the black hole of poverty. In the process, she has become a hardened person, ferociously single-minded in pursuit of her goal. This is the only way she knows how to survive. It's Rosetta against the world. In one heartbreaking scene, we briefly see through her defensive shell. Rosetta has made an awkward friendship with a co-worker, and sleeps on a sofa in his apartment one night. She is clearly relieved not to be in her trailer, and probably feels more secure than she has in a long time. Before falling asleep she whispers to herself. "Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You have a job. I have a job. You have a friend. I have a friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You will not fall by the wayside. I will not fall by the wayside. Goodnight. Goodnight." She is reminding herself that she has an identity. Her fight for a job is a fight to be recognized, to matter. It is tragic that nobody else in Rosetta's life says these encouraging words to her - she must say them to herself.

Paradoxically for a film that is so physical, Rosetta is not ultimately about her material situation. Rosetta begins and ends the film in an equally dire material state. It's about the awakening of a conscience. Rosetta is so determined to hold down a job that she ends up betraying one of the only people who was kind to her. She has no sense of morality beyond survival, and treats other people as either obstacles to her goal, or a means to an end of getting there. But after this hurtful betrayal, we begin to sense stirrings of something behind Rosetta's stoic facade - remorse? Regret? And in the quietly remarkable final shot, we see in her face something else entirely, as she is the recipient of a tiny but hugely meaningful act of grace. Perhaps this is the ultimate reason why Rosetta functions on a much higher level than "Hard to Watch" and its ilk - it transcends being just a study of a life in poverty, becoming a glimpse of a soul in transition.

Though the Dardenne brothers are not religious as far as I'm aware, their works resonate with Christian themes. Many of their films unfold like biblical parables. In Rosetta, beneath the seemingly objective, tangible approach the Dardennes take to storytelling, you sense a spirit moving through the characters and their world. In several of their movies, their characters reach a point of utter despair. They are ready to give up - then something happens to stop them. It could be coincidental, but it changes them. In Rosetta, she seems to finally realize something beyond her own urgent, desperate needs - perhaps she is beginning to hear a still, small voice within her.

Rosetta is the furthest thing from a feel-good movie. But its rewards are great - this is a film of immense power. And I cannot believe I've written this whole review without even mentioning how great Emile Dequenne is as Rosetta - there is not a trace of actorly vanity or artifice in her performance. 

For those who have yet to see a Dardenne brothers film, this is likely not the best place to start - their recent Two Days, One Night and The Kid with a Bike are equally incredible and more accessible. Within their plain-looking movies is a wealth of wisdom and compassion - I highly recommend seeking them out.