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rubberneck04
Reviews
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
It was fun. That was all it needed to be.
Lots of people spending hours of their life writing thousands of words of critiques. Star Wars isn't a religion. It's a series of movies made for young audiences. And they're all incredibly intriguing and have certainly captured the imaginations (and allowances) of tens of thousands of little boys and girls who grew up into the adult men and women currently critiquing it here on IMDb and elsewhere.
The Force Awakens is a well shot, well acted movie. The new lead actors - Daisy, John, Adam, Oscar - are charismatic and likable. The plot is derivative, as was the original Star Wars to Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, and stylistically, director JJ Abrams has uncharacteristically chosen retro cinematography and imagery to match the original Star Wars he saw as a young boy, in the same way George Lucas chose to emulate the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials he enjoyed when he was a young boy.
The costume, set and prop design are top notch, as is usual for the gifted experts working at Bad Robot, Lucasfilm, and Disney. BB-8 is the sort of technical achievement of believably combining real life robotics, puppetry and CGI that Lucas ought to be proud of "fathering." ILM, under Abrams' direction, has done an excellent job of finally finding the right balance of CG in Star Wars - using it only to further the story.
John William's score is sweeping and grand - some people have not thought it as memorable as past Star Wars score, but I enjoyed it; it does not have to overcompensate for a lack of quality acting and overuse of plodding politics.
The dialogue finally feels natural (long a problem of the series under the pen of George Lucas) and The Force Awakens is by far the funniest Star Wars movie in the series.
Of the returning actors, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill fare the best. Carrie Fisher is rusty but warm and motherly. All classic Star Wars character appearances (including the Millennium Falcon, as much a character as any human, robot or alien) are treated with dignity and respect, and their (re)introductions are crafted to serve as crowd-pleasing moments.
The side characters, played by Lupita N'yongo, Gwendoline Christie, Domnhall Gleeson, Andy Serkis and so on... all underutilized but the movie is tightly edited to allow them to all have moments and leave enough mystery that you want to see more of them.
Overall, the Force Awakens was an incredibly fun movie, the only one I've ever gone back to theaters to watch more than once. I simply don't see the point in wasting time nitpicking details that only contrarians and hardcore fans will ever take issue with. What it does, it does well, and there's nothing wrong with that or enjoying it for that. Que sera, sera as they say.
The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)
Don't judge by what you hear.
Just recently introduced (and already a huge fan, I might add) to the original Dukes of Hazzard TV show, I went in to this movie with the words of at least a thousand people, strangers, critics and friends alike.
Needless to say, I was not at all disappointed. Many go in looking for some sort of morale, a deep message, as usually conveyed in the TV show, and others go in set in their ways that it cannot surpass the original in any way. To these people, I can only prescribe a trip down memory lane to when you were a teenager. Now unless you're the 40 year-old virgin (good movie as well), anyone must agree with me that this movie took what the Dukes of Hazzard was ever really about - running moonshine, the General Lee, and Daisy Duke, and turns it into a romp that should tear you out of your seat and have you joining in with the Duke boys' "yee-haw"'s.
The only pet peeve I had was that Willie Nelson's Uncle Jesse and M.C Gainey's Rosco Coltrane were nowhere near what the originals were like. All the other characters seemingly melded from John, Tom, and Catherine to Sean, Johnny, and Jessica as well as everyone else, and I especially liked the new character, Sheev.
Go and see this one, unless you never went to high school or went through teenage years.
Indiana Jed (1992)
Will blow you away for a decade-old amateur film....
When I was studying up on my own career as an amateur filmmaker, I learned that two high school kids in the early 90's had made a movie that supposedly was very good.
Well I hunted it down and didn't expect much, I mean, I've lived 60 miles from where it was filmed for my entire life, so i know what the area was like and being a big fan of the Indiana Jones series, I wasn't sure if they could pull it off. Boy was I wrong.
I'll admit, the acting isn't the best, but being at the same age as they were when they made this, I've seen in my own movies what limitations you have. But the humor and the style hit me. It was cleverly written, and although oftentimes seemed a bit TOO much like a copy or parody of the Indy series, it always saved itself in the end.
At risk of going overboard with compliments on the movie, it actually has inspired me to do my own movies full-feature, and I've since been impressed with the Linn brothers' other works.
So if you get a chance, and can set aside that it's an amateur film a decade old.....watch this. You will laugh and be amazed at what a fine job a group of high school students can do on a movie.