my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Director:   Rian Johnson
Year:   2017
Genre:   Fantasy
Times Seen:   2
Last Seen:   12.28.19

Other Movies Seen By This Director (5)
- Brick
- The Brothers Bloom
- Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
- Knives Out
- Looper

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
12.28.19Internet We're about to see the new Star Wars and we realized we kind of forgot most of what happened in this.

My memory of this movie is kind of weird. I remember having a good time in the theater, but since then I also remember not having any answers for all the people who hated it and my lingering memories are all the things that bugged me about it, like:

-The dude tasting dirt
-The Rose character's heavy messaging
-The meandering second act
-How they treated Luke
-How they treated Leia
-The weird mind link between Rey and Kylo
-How they undid all the hard work the first movie did to set up a bunch of cool stuff like Snoke, Kylo's helmet, Rey, and Luke.

So... with all that in mind, this second viewing kind of reinforced my memories. I will say there were some stuff I liked:

-Chewbacca and the Millenium Falcon
-Finn
-The visual effects

Kind of a shorter list. I don't know... it doesn't make me so jazzed for this next one. Let's see how it goes.
12.16.17Bullock IMAX I'll keep this spoiler-free since it's so new and to be honest i'm still processing what I think about the plot. I will say that I liked this... it felt like a natural progression from Episode 7 but where that one felt like its mission was to reboot an echo of the first trilogy, this one seems to play against most of the expectations set forth.

I thought everyone's characters progress and grow in interesting ways. The visuals are stunning, the Star Wars is strong... I have to say I felt like, an unconscious intake of breath when the star wars logo pops on screen and that fanfare starts. I don't know what it is, but it still works on me. It's still a franchise that holds tremendous power. I wonder how long that will last, but for now i still felt it.

My main criticism is the heavy-handed-ness of its "messages" and mostly how they shoulder all these messages on one character's shoulders. I feel like I would've liked that character were it not for some super on the nose social comment that every line of their dialogue holds.

Most everything else was pretty cool. Some characters don't get much screen time but there's a lot going on. The movie felt like a lot happened. All the new planets were also great... typical top-tier designs of Star Wars land. The same goes for the new creatures, who feel a tiny bit inserted just for some aww moments in an otherwise busy film. The moments of humor also felt like a signifier of this new trilogy. There were definitely a few jokes in the OT, but nothing felt so authored to be funny. Poe's character is like, a legit wise-cracker. Same goes for Finn.

So yeah... good stuff. Liked it. Glad I saw it in IMAX 2D, even though someone next to me smelled like pickles the whole time.