Video review: "The Rise of Skywalker"

Full disclosure: I’ve never disliked a Star Wars movie. It’s even fair to say on some level I’ve loved everyone one of them. Yes, this includes the hated prequels. And all three of the “sequel” trilogy, culminating with the release of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”

This is a grand, energetic, undeniably flawed but also satisfying conclusion to a nine-movie saga sprawling over more than four decades. It relies a little too much on fan service and repackaging characters and story elements from previous films. Yes, it’s a bit lazy (spoiler warning) to recycle Emperor Palpatine as the main villain. On the other hand, he was such a good one that we don’t mind a reprise all that much.

The matter of the parentage of newbie Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley), which had been teased and argued about, is dispensed with in a twist I doubt many saw coming. The good-guy characters of Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) are relegated largely to the background in favor of Sith hottie Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and his turbulent relationship with Rey.

It’s part enmity, a little bit romance and not a little ego/ambition.

The first part of the movie is wildly uneven, but they rope it all together for a thrilling second half. There are lightsaber duels, Force fireworks, space battles and all the other hallmarks we’ve loved about the Star Wars saga.

Yes, there is some fumbling storytelling and occasionally hammy acting. This has actually been a feature, not a bug, of all Star Wars movies. But there is also plenty of power and majesty here. Having grown from childhood to middle age with these movies, I’m allowed to both revel in and chuckle at them.

Bonus features are nice, starting with an expansive making-of documentary, “The Skywalker Legacy.” There’s a “creature feature” about the process of creating all the film’s aliens, whether by makeup, puppetry or CGI animation. I appreciated the spotlight on Warwick Davis, who played an Ewok as a youngster and does so again, this time in conjunction with his son, Harrison.

There are also featurettes on creating the landspeeder chase on Pasaana; the history of that strange little blowdryer-looking droid, D-O; and creating the desert world aliens.

A digital-only exclusive with composer John Williams reflects on his amazing body of work for the Star Wars films.

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Video review: "Pacific Rim Uprising"

“Pacific Rim” was one of the best science fiction/action movies of the past decade, a rousing war between giant human-controlled robots and invading alien behemoths, but its unnecessary sequel is a pale shadow. It expels stars Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi (except for a cameo by the latter), the screenwriting team and director Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”).

It’s rarely a good thing when a movie swaps out its entire creative team and most of the cast, and my fears were well-founded.

It’s still a decent popcorn movie, with TV veteran Steven S. DeKnight (“Daredevil”) taking over as director and also co-writing the script (along with Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder and T.S. Nowlin). John Boyega of “Star Wars” fame assumes the lead role as the son of Idris Elba’s commanding Stacker Pentecost, playing wayward Jake.

As the film opens, it’s 10 years after the menacing kaiju monsters were defeated and the portal into their world sealed. For some reason, the world has continued to build jaeger robots and train humans to pilot them. There seems little strategic value in this, other than preparing for a movie sequel.

Jake, who’s been spending his time scrounging and partying, gets recruited back into the jaeger program, where he butts heads with old adversary, straitlaced Nate (Scott Eastwood). Much macho strutting ensues. Tagging along is Amara (Cailee), a teen rascal who’s been building her own (smaller) jaegers out of scrap parts.

The dweeby scientist duo of Newton and Hermann is back (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman), pretty much the only returning cast members with significant parts. Tian Jing plays the CEO of an evil jaeger-building corporation that wants to help save the word, and lighten its pocketbook.

The beast-vs.-mech throwdowns are still a lot of fun, though I was disappointed the jaegers have gotten a lot smoother and more civilized since last time. I liked when they were clanky and slow, looking like something people had built. There are more group battles but less gore, which is good and bad, respectively, at least if you’re a fan of this stuff.

I don’t know why they made “Pacific Rim Uprising.” The last movie tied things up in a nice bow, and this sequel just unravels the knot for no good reason. It’s entertaining, but forgettable.

Bonus features are rather nice. There’s a feature-length commentary audio track by DeKnight and a handful of deleted scenes with more commentary by the director. It also comes with 10 making-of documentary shorts, touching on various aspects of production, deeper dives into some of the supporting characters, and more.

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Video review: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

Some people were upset with me when I dubbed “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” the weakest film in the franchise. But I think it’s an easy call.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t like the movie. I surely do. I’ve adored all the Star Wars films on some level. Again: that doesn’t mean I turn a blind eye to their flaws.

The ninth entrée in the franchise introduces new characters, in addition to the ones we met in “The Force Awakens.” The two most notable newbies are Kelly Marie Tran as Rose, a mechanic with the rebellion who goes off on an (in the end, totally unnecessary) adventure with Finn (John Boyega), and Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Holdo, who takes over leadership of the rebellion when Leia (Carrie Fisher) is laid up.

The plot is essentially one long chase, as the Empire (now called The First Order, but functionally identical) pursues the last remnants of the resistance across space, in a race that becomes a standoff. (Apparently, all large ships in this universe travel at the exact same sub-light speed.) Hothead pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is hatching all sorts of schemes to turn things around, but the lady leaders stay the course.

The real meat of the action takes place with proto-Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley), who seeks out self-exiled Master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to beg him for help. But Luke has become disillusioned and despondent, refusing to join the cause… though he offers Rey a little light Jedi training.

Meanwhile, Darth Vader grandson/heir apparent Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey find themselves sharing a psychic bond through the Force. Their communication leads to an uncomfortable sense of attraction between the two, which will get played out when the pair is eventually presented to the new Emperor, Snoke (Andy Serkis).

That’s a lot of moving pieces -- without even bringing in Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), Yoda (Frank Oz), Maz (Lupia Nyong’o), sneering General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), cosmic lock-picker DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and a few others.

Writer/director Rian Johnson often struggles to formulate all the people and events into a cohesive narrative whole. At a smidge over 2½ hours, this is the longest “Star Wars” movie, and it could greatly have benefited with some tightening of the story.

Still, it’s an enjoyable bit of space opera, filled with massive special effects and action set pieces. The entertainment value is still very, very high. But I find it hilarious that people who love to rag on the “terrible prequels” aren’t willing to train the same level of scrutiny on these newer films.

As we’ve come to expect with “Star Wars” video release, bonus features are pretty spectacular.

These include a feature-length audio commentary track with director Johnson; deleted scenes; footage of Serkis’ on-set portrayal prior to the post-production digital makeover into Snoke; extended breakdowns of three key sequences; “Balance of the Force,” which explores the mythology of the Force; and “The Director and the Jedi,” a feature-length documentary on the making of the movie.

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Review: "Pacific Rim: Uprising"

I approached "Pacific Rim: Uprising" with a mix of fear and optimism. I absolutely adored the first film from five years ago, in which skyscraper-sized monsters and robots face off against each other. It was like turning the dial back to my childhood, watching Ultraman paste some prehistoric critter, but with 8,000 percent better production values.

But I was surprised a sequel was even being made. The first one did not do spectacularly well at the box office, though I think it did better on video. Director Guillermo Del Toro is not involved, other than the obligatory producer credit and presumed check, with TV/streaming veteran Steven S. DeKnight ("Daredevil") taking over the helm. He brought in his own writing team, none of whom worked on the first film, and shares a script credit himself.

All that is not exactly... reassuring.

As I settled in to watch, I was anticipating how the new set of filmmakers would address the obvious challenge of a sequel: how the world would suddenly have more jaegers, the giant metal machines controlled by twin human pilots, now that the kaiju creatures had all been defeated and the breach into their universe sealed at the end of the last movie.

After all, it's easy to come up with some science fiction-y reason why the breach could be reopened and new monsters roam the Earth. Less simple to explain how mammoth jaegers that probably cost hundreds of billions of dollars and years to build suddenly materialize, especially when they're no longer needed.

Curiously, the approach the creative team used to overcome this storytelling obstacle was... to just ignore it.

Yep. Really.

As the movie opens, it's 10 years later and there have been no new kaiju. The busted-up parts of civilization have been rebuilt and peace is at hand. And the reconstituted jaeger program is up and running smoothly with dozens of new models and pilot teams.

Wait, what?

Why the frick would nations devote large chunks of their economies to a military option that is now unnecessary? It's almost like the entire international community was anticipating a movie sequel.

It seems mostly what the new jaegers do is patrol junkyards of old jaegers to keep miscreants from stealing parts to build their own much smaller, crappier jaegers, which they then use to... well, we're not actually told what they do with them. Rob banks? Impress their neighbors? Guard still smaller junkyards against the possibility of even tinier scrap jaegers?

The whole concept is like its own infinity loop.

One of the rascals building their own jaegers is Amara Namani, a teenage castoff played by Cailee Spaeny, who looks like some studio chief hollered, "Get me a Hailee Steinfeld clone, but younger!" Her jaeger, which she has dubbed Scrapper, can roll himself into a ball and do all sorts of parkour-style flips and tricks.

In general, the jaegers look much less like the clanky robots built by humans from the first film, and more like free-flowing action heroes. Basically, the franchise has gone Transformers.

Amara runs in with Jake Pentacost (John Boyega, back to his hard-to-understand natural British accent), who from his name we know is the wayward son of Stacker Pentacost, the badass jaeger chief played by Idris Elba. He used to be in the program but got kicked out, spending his days hunting jaeger scrap to fund his partying. But much like Charlie Hunnan's Riley, he gets an improbable jump to the front of the line and finds himself back in the pilot's seat.

(Speaking of Riley, no word on why he's not in this movie. Spoiler: His partner, Mako Mori, gets one of those walk-on-and-promptly-die treatments.)

Scott Eastwood plays Nate, the new head jaeger ranger, who has history with Jake that will get played out in a lot of Y-chromosome quips and strutting. Amara joins the crew of cadets, who are a nice spectrum of brown skin tones, except for Victoria, the snarly Russian she clashes with. I learn Victoria is played by Ivanna Sakhno, after I had assumed the Olsen sisters had spontaneously created another sibling to keep he chain going.

The only characters from the first movie back in a meaningful way are the two dweeby scientists, Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) and Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day). Gottlieb is still working for the jaeger program, while Newt has sold out to be an expert with Shao Industries, whose imperious CEO (Tian Jing) wants to replace the jaeger pilots with remote-controlled substitutes.

The action scenes are still a lot of fun, and we get to see teams of jaegers go up against a group of kaiju, which isn't something we really got to see before. We get to ooh and ahh at all the new variants of monsters and robots. Disappointingly, I registered a steep drop in the level of kaiju blood 'n' guts compared to the original film.

"Pacific Rim: Uprising" isn't a terrible sequel, but one that wears its commerciality without much camouflage. It's pretty rare to make a great movie, have almost everybody involved in it leave and come up with a decent sequel. Especially when you don't even bother to explain the premise.

Review: "Detroit"

Political correctness is a sordid game I refuse to play. But even I admit I’m uncomfortable with a feature film about the 1967 Detroit riots with an almost entirely white creative team.

Director Kathryn Bigelow reteams with her “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter, Mark Boal, in a film that attempts to look at the watershed civic unrest from the perspective of African-Americans who suffered at the hands of brutal police tactics. While most of the cast is black, the movie struggles to get over a sense of existing more to soothe white guilt than chronicle a racist tragedy.

Indeed, the first words we see or hear refer to the 1967 riots, also known as the 12th Street riots, as “the Detroit Rebellion.” I don’t know any serious historian who would use that term, which refers to an organized uprising designed to topple the power hierarchy, either by replacing the exiting government or splitting off from it.

Somehow, I doubt even the people who took to the streets, throwing rocks and setting storefronts on fire, would have called their actions a rebellion. They were simply enraged at being continually abused and stepped upon, and reached a point where they didn’t want to take it anymore.

I admired the film but got stuck on the fact this wasn’t the movie I was expecting. This is not a comprehensive look at the root causes of the unrest, the tactics undertaken by authorities to quell the violence, or the aftermath suffered by a community that struggles to this day to overcome that dark moment in history.

Indeed, if any moment can be pinpointed as the tipping point of when the great modern divide in America began -- between cities and suburbs, whites and those of color, blue and red -- the ’67 riot is it.

Although Bigelow and Boal start their story in the streets, this is really the tale of the Algiers Motel incident. Largely forgotten now amidst the bigger backdrop of the riots, this was the case of Detroit police officers, state police and national guardsmen detaining a group of young black men and two 18-year-old white women after gunshots were heard from the annex of the motel, a party spot a few blocks away from the mayhem.

Over the course of several hours, the suspects -- who were never charged with anything -- were beaten, abused, assaulted. It became clear the white officers were angered by white girls dallying with black boys. Three black men were fatally shot, with trumped-up excuses after the fact to justify self-defense by the officers. It was, as depicted in the film, essentially torture.

Anthony Mackie plays one of the victims, a recently discharged Army soldier, and Hannah Murray plays the mouthy girl. Algee Smith is Larry, lead singer of an up-and-coming Motown group called The Dramatics, who gets caught up along with his manager (Jacob Latimore).

Baby-faced Will Poulter is the central villain as the police officer directing the interrogation; earlier in the day we watched him pump two shotgun blasts into the back of a looter carrying groceries. Jay Reynor and Ben O’Toole are his wing men, dim and deliberate, respectively.

John Beyega is more or less the central character as Mel Dismukes, an African-American man working as a private security officer protecting a nearby business. He continually inserts himself into situations, using his uniform and officious demeanor to stave off some of the worst law enforcement abuses of black folks.

The film unequivocally presents Dismukes as a hero, when in fact he was charged with abusing the Algiers suspects along with the three police. All were found not guilty (though not, as the movie condenses, in the same trial).

Exactly what happened in the motel remains sketchy even today, though the movie carelessly presents its own version with crisp black-and-white lines, knowing this is what will be etched into the public consciousness.

From a narrative and technical standpoint, “Detroit” is a very well-crafted film that strings the audience’s emotions along with an expert hand. What’s less clear is who this movie is about, or for.

Video review: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

For the record, I’ve adored all the Star Wars movies -- even the much-maligned “prequel” trilogy. So when I say that I liked Episode VII, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” about as much as I did “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” is not the intended insult most people think.

I would put both near the bottom of any ranking of the franchise. Which is to say I think they’re still very good science fiction/fantasy films. But their flaws are more glaring than the others. I won’t belabor those of “Phantom Menace,” as they’re well-known -- kooky trade war plot, Jar Jar buffoonery, etc.

The biggest problem with “TFA” is that it’s not terribly original. It’s essentially a reboot of the first film: a nobody on a desert planet rises to glory through the mystical Force; bad guy in a black mask; cantina of bizarre aliens; roguish smuggler Han Solo sets aside cynicism to join the rebels; world-destroying space station threatens the galaxy; plans for its destruction are embedded in a perky little robot.

Director J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote the script with Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt, seemed more intent on making a greatest hits compilation for the fans than a logical and satisfying extension of the Star Wars saga.

Like: how is it that 30 years after its defeat, the Empire has reconstituted itself into the First Order, complete with Stormtrooper armies and a new Death Star (er, Starkiller Base). What were Leia (Carrie Fisher) and the Galactic Senate doing all this time?

The setup is that Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) was training a new generation of Jedi Knights when he was betrayed by his chief pupil, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who was seduced to the dark side despite his good parentage. (Which I’ll not reveal here, for the 0.2% of readers who didn’t see the movie in theaters and are still innocent of the Internet.)

The plans for Starkiller Base come into the possession of Rey (Daisy Ridley), a mysterious scavenger living the quiet life on barren Jakku, and Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who betrayed his dark conditioning. They meet up with Han Solo (Harrison Ford), searching for his long-lost ship the Millennium Falcon, as everyone scrambles to get the plans before First Order wipes out the resistance.

It’s a delightful space adventure, with plenty of dogfights, scary critters and lightsaber duels. Kylo Ren is a new iteration of villain – self-aware, unbalanced, petulant. Rey remains an enigma, including to herself, but there are hints of great destiny ahead. The weakest character is Finn, who transforms overnight from emotionless soldier to hootin’ rebel cheerleader without even the barest of emotional journeys. (Boyega’s often over-the-top performance doesn’t help, either.)

But it’s easy to overlook the failings in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” because they don’t detract from the immediacy of the thrills. I’m just hoping future films in the series will harbor a little more ambition.

Bonus features are pretty good, mostly represented in seven featurettes that touch on special effects, John Williams’ musical score, building BB-8, etc. There’s also a lengthy making-of documentary, “Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey,” plus several deleted scenes.

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