Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"

Befitting its title and main character, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is the grittier, edgier entry in the Star Wars saga. Right from the get-go, director Gareth Edwards and screenwriters Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy give us the tonal and sensory cues that we’re in for something very different.

No ubiquitous text scrawl at the start of the movie. No blast of John Williams’ iconic Star Wars theme to set the mood. Indeed, Michael Giacchino’s score has a dark and forbidding beauty to it. The rebels are shown to be capable of underhanded dealings and even cold-bloodedness in battling the Empire. Hardly a lightsaber in sight.

There’s still a line between good and evil, but lots of graying at the fringes.

There are also plenty of hallmarks of Star Wars. It’s a tale of orphans and adoptive parents, of hope shoving off despair, of those who desire power for its own sake and those who would oppose them. The Force certainly plays less of a direct role than any of the seven other movies, but its energy still thrums in the background, living on the characters’ tongues and in their hearts.

It’s easy to call it the weakest of the Star Wars movies. The first half especially is discombobulated, with too many fringe characters demanding their moment in the spotlight. Including not one, not two but three Asian-influenced warriors who aid the cause. One of them is even the embodiment of that tired old saw, the blind-but-still-a-badass combatant.

Still, it’s a matter of degrees. The weakest Star Wars flick is better than 90% of sci-fi/fantasy films out there. And “Rogue One” continually builds energy as it goes instead of losing it, leading to an action-packed final act I suspect will leave zero fans disappointed.

You probably already know that “Rogue One” shines a light on the events leading up to the destruction of the (first) Death Star, depicting the men and women (and aliens) who procured the secret plans that made it possible for Luke Skywalker to blow up the planet-killing station.

(And, in doing so, it definitely rejiggers around some of the established Star Wars lore. To wit: Apparently, many Bothans didn’t die to bring us this information.)

Felicity Jones plays Jyn Erso, capable thief and miscreant. Abandoned as a child after her father (Mads Mikkelsen) was conscripted by the Empire to help construct the Death Star, she finds herself falling into the hands of the Rebel Alliance. Leader Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) recruits her to seek out Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a radical who rescued Jyn as a child. Saw’s a battle-scarred sort who’s missing parts of his body, and we suspect that’s not all.

Chief baddie is Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic, chief architect of the Death Star project, while Diego Luna provides the counterpoint, rebel spy chief Cassian Andor. Donnie Yen plays Chirrut Imwe, aforementioned blind guy, and Wen Jiang is stoic gunslinger Baze Malbus. Riz Ahmed plays Imperial pilot/turncoat Bodhi Rook, whose entire role could’ve been outsourced to a gaggle of stunt men and extras, and probably should have been.

The scene-stealer is droid K-2SO (voice and motion capture by Alan Tudyk), an Imperial enforcer who was captured and reprogrammed by Andor. He’s rather peevish but also protective of his human charges, and is so used to more freewheeling behavior that when the time comes to impersonate his former role, he’s spectacularly awful at it.

I enjoyed “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” – but then I’ve liked all the Star Wars movies, even the unfairly maligned prequels. (To those who harp on their clunky dialogue and goofy humor: that’s a feature, not a bug, of all these films.)

It’s a departure, but also a return to roots for a franchise that seemingly has whole new universes yet to explore.

Review: "La La Land"

“La La Land” is kind of adorable and kind of inconsequential. It’s writer/director Damien Chazelle’s (“Whiplash”) ode to Old Hollywood, both the city of Los Angeles and the musical films it once spawned like sunrises.

It’s a stunning-looking movie, with eye-pleasing vistas, vivid colors and detailed production design and costumes. Not to mention the eminently ogle-able stars, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. You could take their faces and charms and transpose them into any Hollywood musical from its 1940s and ‘50s heydays, and they would not look out of place.

Both, alas, have rather modest singing voices. Hers is breathy and girly; his has a narrow range to which Justin Hurwitz, who composed the songs and soundtrack, carefully bookends his melodies so as not to strain. “City of Stars” is the most memorable tune and main theme, repeated in various forms and with both singers.

The story’s as old-fashioned as can be: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to woo girl back. The narrative only really takes on some heft in the final act, as our star-crossed lovers struggle to reconcile their passions and hearts -- which don’t necessarily always point in the same direction.

Chazelle uses a nifty parallel structure, so we see the tale unfold from first one perspective, and then the other. Later, this trick will be used again, unspooling in the opposite direction.

Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz purist eking out an existence hammering standards on the piano at a hip restaurant. But he has a tendency to lapse into his own compositions, much to the ire of the owner (J. K. Sebastian). One night in walks Mia (Stone), an aspiring actress worn out from endless auditions, and she’s smitten.

It’s got all the ingredients of a classic Meet Cute – until Sebastian angrily brushes past her after getting canned.

But they do meet again, he’s a little more attentive this time, and things rise from there. A long walk to parked cars ends in a dance against the starry sky, with Gosling and Stone (or at least their doubles) flowing beautiful in a pas de deux. Later they’ll wind up at the planetarium and their hoofing will grow more literally celestial.

Their careers rise and fall, which alters and leavens their romance. Sebastian abandons his principles to join a very lucrative band that’s more Kenny G than Coltrane. Soon he’s on the road all the time, doing interviews, making bank but emptying out his reserves of integrity. Mia, meanwhile, gives up on auditions and her day job as a barista to stage her own one-woman play.

I find myself deeply in like with this movie. It’s charming, it’s gorgeous, it’s nostalgic without seeming like a mere throwback. But I was emotionally detached during most of it. I understood Mia and Sebastian as constructs for a story, not living beings I could invest in. “La La Land” gives us the ol’ razzle-dazzle, but doesn’t get around to plucking the heart strings.

Video review: "Suicide Squad"

People seem to want to have an instant relationship with movies these days. Large swaths of the moviegoing public had judged the “Ghostbusters” reboot long before it came to theaters. Folks fell in love with the new “Stars Wars” sequel in a similar fashion, seeing it as the antidote to the unfairly maligned prequels.

After the Sturm und Drang of the lackluster “Batman v Superman,” I think many were not willing to judge its follow-up, “Suicide Squad,” with an open heart. And while the movie’s certainly got some problems, especially in the first half, it’s actually a notable variation on the gradually tiring superhero genre.

Instead of all-powerful do-gooders racked with guilt over their abilities, we are given a half-dozen flawed villains who are given a chance to get out of prison to work for the government. It seems there’s some sort of energy vortex in the middle of the city that could destroy the world, so our gang of creeps is sent in to take care of it.

The A-listers are Will Smith and Margot Robbie as Deadshot and Harley Quinn, respectively. He’s an ace assassin who never misses, while she’s a former psychiatrist who turned into a deranged go-go girl under the influence of her even crazier boyfriend, the Joker (Jared Leto). Alas, if you’ve watched the trailers for “Suicide Squad” you’ve already seen a good chunk of Leto’s entire role. The Joker’s not the main bad guy, just a colorful backgrounder here.

I’m not even going to list the others, because there’s too many of them, plus other secondary figures. Suffice to say they’re a pleasing multicultural mix of killers and psychopaths.

Things take too long in the first half, with quick riffs on each character to introduce them. But it all builds up nicely to a carefully choreographed orgy of mayhem and CGI special effects.

“Suicide Squad” may not be a great super hero/villain flick, but it’s more entertaining and fun than snap judgments might suggest. Sometimes you have to just wait a little bit and let the movie come to you.

The lynchpin of the bonus features is an extended cut that adds 13 minutes of previously unseen footage. You can also watched synchronized pop-up content related to each scene using the VUDU app.

Other extras include seven making-of featurettes and a gag reel.

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Review: "Office Christmas Party"

“Office Christmas Party” starts out a little funny, a little sweet, and then slowly devolves into a dumb raunch-fest.

Don’t get me wrong: a good filthy comedy can be just the thing to break up the dull parade of PG-13 action flicks and kiddie fare (see the first “Hangover”). But when it’s not executed well it becomes like the loud, drunk guy at the party everyone wishes would leave (see, or rather don’t, the other “Hangover” flicks).

This is the rare movie where the fringe characters are more interesting than the stars. If you cut out everything with Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T. J. Miller and Olivia Munn, you’d have a discombobulated but very tight story of a bunch of office denizens caught up in the weirdest, wilding holiday party ever.

There’s the dweeby guy (Karan Soni) who’s been bragging to his fellow tech nerds about his hot nonexistent girlfriend, so he hires a prostitute to play her. Things go OK until she decides to freelance a little extra action from his buddies, and her she-pimp starts waving a pistol around.

Kate McKinnon of “Saturday Night Live” and “Ghostbusters” scores with another kooky character concoction, an uptight Human Resources manager named Mary who acts as the resident killjoy, but secretly has a freak flag in need of flying.

Then there’s the budding romance between single mom/office manager superstar Allison (Vanessa Bayer) and sweet-natured Fred (Randall Park), whose pet peeve is the underrepresentation of Asian men in adult films.

Fortune Feimster has a scene-stealing turn as a novice and overly exuberant Uber driver who hasn’t figured out what the appropriate level of chatter with the fares is yet. She keeps popping off one killer throwaway line after another, and I wished she would drop off Aniston and the movie could follow her the rest of the way.

But…

The setup is that the Chicago branch of a biggish tech firm is run by the ne’er-do-well son (Miller) of the dearly departed company founder. It’s a loose house and there’s plenty of goofing off, but they make money and realize growth – just not enough to please the hardcase CEO, played by Aniston, who happens to be his sister.

She’s got a lifetime of resentment built up over having to do all the work while golden boy slacked and got ahead, so she’s determined to cut costs to the bone – even ordering a 40% layoff, nixing bonuses and even canceling the hallowed Christmas party.

Rich boy hatches a plan with his nice guy Number Two, Josh (Bateman), who really runs the office, to land a big contract with a major mover (Courtney B. Vance) and save everyone’s bacon. But, using the sort of logic that only works in movies, they’ve got to go ahead with the wildest office party ever to impress the crusty older dude.

Munn plays Tracey, the resident hacker whiz who has a plan to route Internet signals through anything electric, from street lamps to hot dog rotisserie machines. (Question: once they flip it on and everyone’s got free Wifi, how exactly do they make money?)

I think we all know where this is headed. There will be hookups, hilarious injuries, hard drugs will make an appearance, and some scary guys will threaten our heroes for about a minute and a half. Just grab the plots from the “Hangover” movies and a smattering of ‘80s comedies like “Risky Business” and “Bachelor Party,” toss it in a blender and drink deep until you can’t take it anymore.

Review: "Miss Sloane"

Elizabeth Sloane is, by universal assent (including her own estimation), “a real piece of work.”

As played magnificently by Jessica Chastain, “Miss Sloane” is the ultimate Washington D.C. insider – a famed lobbyist who uses all the considerable skills at her disposal, along with a host of nefarious methods, to get what she wants for her clients. Bullying, (barely) legal bribery, non-profit fronts, toadying, outright espionage, bald-faced lying – Sloane sees these things as merely tools in her dark arsenal.

Sloane labels herself a “conviction lobbyist,” meaning she’ll only advocate on behalf of groups or causes she personally supports. But after years gleefully fighting in the trenches and corridors of power, all that really matters for her is getting the win.

At one point her boss, Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong), just stands outside her office, stunned by Sloane’s latest act of brazen manipulation upon the body politic. I just want to know, he says, how somebody like you comes to be – how you grew up, what events shaped your personality, and so on. Because Sloane’s actions often seem to indicate the operation of a brilliant mind without even an ounce of conscience.

The story opens with a framing device of Sloane being grilled by a U.S. Senate committee chaired by a glowering politico (John Lithgow) demanding answers about her unseemly methods. So we assume her nefarious history has finally caught up with her.

But as the story goes deeper and we learn more about Sloane and her skillful machinations, we start to wonder whether she’s sitting in the hot seat by choice.

Sloane is the star player at the biggest lobbying firm in town, run by a patriarchal figure (Sam Waterson) who’s been dying to land the gun lobby as a client for years. A new bill is coming up for a vote that would require universal background checks, and they want Sloane to send it down in flames by appealing to women. Sloane literally laughs in their faces, and bolts to a much smaller company backing the measure.

About half her team defects with her, including protégé Jane Molloy (Alison Pill), who regards Sloane as both mentor and cautionary tale. Meanwhile, she’s facing off with her conniving old partner Pat Connors, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays key new ally Esme Manucharian, a passionate gun control advocate with a personal history.

It all plays out in the high-stakes world of the media, as various forces and circumstances align themselves to help or hurt the cause.

Director John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”), working with rookie screenwriter Jonathan Perera, give us an intricately plotted political thriller, a drawn-out game of cat and mouse, with a character study in the middle.

Sloane is so busy training her high-powered vision upon her adversaries and allies, there’s not much time for self-exploration of the person behind the façade. She literally doesn’t sleep, subsisting on pills and food from the same Korean BBQ place every night. Sloane even arranges trysts with male escorts to satisfy her basic primal urges; when an urban cowboy type (Jake Lacy) shows up in place of her usual faux beau, it leaves her both miffed and intrigued.

The film touches on the current debate about gun rights vs. control, and there’s certainly a bit of Hollywood moralizing, but it isn’t really about that. It’s just the backdrop for a larger tale about the rot in our political system, and a portrait of one of its chief schemers.

Can one have a noble heart but wallow in corruption? Just how bad do the ends have to get before they cease justifying the means? “Miss Sloane” explores these questions in a slick but probing way.

Video review: "The Hollars"

John Krasinski’s second feature film as a director and star isn’t terribly ambitious, but it gathers together a truly wonderful cast and gives them interesting things to say and do. Margo Martindale and Richard Jenkins both fall into that tiniest category of actors I think of as “people I would pay to read my medicine bottles.” They’re always distinctive and alive.

Toss in Anna Kendrick, Sharlto Copley, Charlize Day, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Krasinski himself, and that’s enough reason to choose “The Hollars” for a home viewing right there.

Krasinski plays John Hollar, a typical arrested-development sort who can’t get his career or personal life out of first gear. He’s got an amazing girlfriend (Kendrick) who’s pregnant with his baby, but he hasn’t put a ring on it.

When family matriarch/rock Sally (Martindale) falls ill, dad Don (Jenkins) more or less dissolves into a puddle, while wayward son Ron (Copley) is dealing with his own issues, losing both his job and his family. Meanwhile, the Hollar family business is going under.

So John returns to a scene of chaos and resentment, as all these sharp divides must be spackled together with love and trust.

Everything goes exactly as you’d expect. Most of the time I dislike movies that are completely predictable. But “The Hollars” has genuine heart and some snappy dialogue courtesy of script man Jim Strouse.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you won’t get even a hint of any real surprises. But I doubt anyone who watches this film will consider it time ill spent.

Bonus features are decent. Krasinski and Martindale team up for a feature length commentary track, and there’s also a Q&A with the two plus Kendrick from the LA Film Festival. It also comes with two featurettes: “Persistent Vision: Margo Martindale” and “The Family Trust: Inside The Hollars.”

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Reeling Backward: "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964)

I was surprised by how inert and ineffective "Cheyenne Autumn" is. I've been meaning to catch up with it for years and came away quite disappointed from the experience.

The film is seminal for a couple of reasons: it was John Ford's last Western, and it was pretty much the first deliberate attempt by Hollywood to cast American Indians in a positive light, showing how they were ill-used by the American government as it expanded into the West.

It's based on a real bit of history, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878-79, during which hundreds of native people left the harsh, arid reservation land that had been set aside for them and traveled more than 1,000 miles north to their ancestral home. There were several skirmishes with the U.S. military along the way, and newspapers of the day portrayed it as a rampaging army of Indians on the warpath.

In truth, they were largely elderly, women and children, and posed no threat to anyone unless their trek was opposed.

The movie was actually based on two novels, "The Last Frontier" by Howard Fast and "Cheyenne Autumn" by Mari Sandoz, though only the latter received a screen credit. Screenwriter James L. Webb had recently won an Oscar for another Western, "How the West Was Won," of which Ford directed one of the five sequences. They ended up reusing a lot of the same talent for this picture, including stars Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker, Webb and Ford.

"Cheyenne" can't quite decide who is its main character. Its heart seems to lie with the Indians, particularly Little Wolf and Dull Knife, the two main leaders of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. They're played by Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland, respectively, both actors of Mexican heritage. Italian-American Sal Mineo plays Dull Knife's hot-headed son, Red Shirt. Most of the other Cheyenne are played by Navajo, and speak in their own language during the film.

But Widmark is put front and center as Capt. Thomas Archer, a fictional Army officer assigned to make them stay put, and later pursue them after they begin their exodus. He's a sympathetic figure torn between his military obligations and his own recognition of the suffering of the Cheyenne. Baker plays Deborah Wright, a Quaker devoted to educating the Indian children who ends up tagging along on their quest.

Their tepid romance is barely sketched in the early part of the film, then quietly tucked away for the rest. There isn't even a big reunion scene and kiss at the end. They have a little cheeky repartee, addressing each other as "Friend Deborah" and "Friend Thomas" in the Quaker way.

The movie's pacing staggers this way and that, an occasional fight scene between the Cheyenne and Army with lots of talking in between. Archer tries to convince his superiors to show the Cheyenne more respect and restraint, but it falls on deaf ears. Eventually he takes his case directly to the Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson).

Karl Malden has a small but vigorous role as an Army officer who imprisons the Cheyenne on orders, leaving them to freeze and starve to death in a warehouse because he's too afraid to take other action without authorization. The character refers to himself as a Russian, though his accent sounds more German to these ears. Perhaps we'll be generous and say Malden was going for Prussian, and leave it at that.

Patrick Wayne, son of John, has a small part as an impetuous young officer Archer has to continually reprimand. John Carradine turns up in Dodge City as a gambling gentleman.

The music by Alex North is quite good, but often too obtrusive. There's an opening piece and an intermission that is probably unnecessary.

By far the biggest problem with the film is the Dodge City sequence. It arrives just before the intermission, and completely rips the audience out of the story of the Cheyenne.

It stars Jimmy Stewart as Wyatt Earp and Arthur Kennedy as Doc Holiday, portrayed here as peevish, aging gamblers who have taken up the offices of sheriff and deputy simply to allow them to sit in the saloon and play cards all day. They want nothing to do with the Cheyenne "horde" passing nearby, and Earp even contrives to lead the ad-hoc force of vengeful vigilantes in a different direction.

It's a weird, weird sequence that belongs in another movie. It's completely comedic in tone, right down to a saloon wench losing her dress and some vagrant cowpunchers getting one-upped by the wily Wyatt. One wonders what Ford and Webb were thinking including it in the film, especially seeing as the original cut was creeping up on three hours -- Ford's longest movie.

Indeed, after being initially released in theaters the Dodge City section was cut out, and wisely so. Most modern versions on video include it, to the detriment of the overall experience. This is where the "chapter skip" button comes in handy.

"Cheyenne Autumn" is undeniably a magnificent-looking film, shot largely in Ford's beloved Monument Valley with widescreen and lots of vivid colors. Cinematographer William H. Clothier deservedly received the film's sole Academy Award nomination.

At the time of its release, John Ford publicly declared "Cheyenne Autumn" to be an elegy for the Native American. It says something of the man that during his lifetime he came to recognize that his own work bore a great deal of responsibility for the popular depiction of Indians as whooping savages, and it was something he regretted.

He tried to get the movie made for years without success. When he finally did, it was his longest and most expensive project, and one of the few that was a commercial failure. Ill health and a lack of confidence from the studios resulted in Ford only completing one other feature film.

It's such a shame that one of the greatest movie directors ended his career on such a sour note. John Ford's song of regret for the Indian, while noble in purpose, is a discordant and dull affair.