DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions
Here are three highlights of last year’s movie calendar that demand to be seen – or seen again. One is escapist and the other two are anything but.
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (PG-13)
“This is not going to go the way you think,” says Mark Hamill’s iconic Luke Skywalker at one point to the protagonist, Rey.
But is that true of the movie itself?
Well, it is and it isn’t. That is, there are mildly surprising developments along the way in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and yet the overall production is pretty much what we expected.
Yep, here we sit, 40 years later, and The Force is still with us.
“Star Wars,” the eye-popping 1977 space opera that kicked off the beloved and influential franchise and, as a cultural phenomenon, ushered in the blockbuster era, now presents itself as “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” the middle installment of the third trilogy, once again located in a galaxy not that far, far away.
Once again, we get technical polish, stimulating imaginativeness, exhilarating action, arresting imagery, striking otherworldly settings, and inescapable contemporary resonance.
Oh, and lots of glossy fun, to boot.
The sequel to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” comes to us from writer-director Rian Johnson (“Brick,” “The Brothers Bloom,” “Looper”), who takes the directorial reins from J.J. Abrams and jumps right in where his predecessor left off.
Daisy Ridley’s Jedi-in-training, Rey, having entered the Jedi world in search of her destiny, joins the subtitle character, of whom we got a glimpse in the previous film’s final shot. He helps her discover her abilities and powers and helps guide her on an adventure with Leia (the late Carrie Fisher), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) still representing their adversary, in the hope that light might be shed on abiding secrets and mysteries that have thus far remained elusive.
Meanwhile, the Resistance prepares to do battle with the First Order.
Whether you’re familiar with some or all of the “Star Wars” episodes that have preceded “The Last Jedi,” installment No. 8 in the franchise, you’re apt to find this adventure accessible and involving.
Like its predecessors, “The Last Jedi” traffics in good-vs.-evil hope rather than dystopian grimness and addresses the theme of dealing with loss without getting heavy-handed.
Johnson, calling on a supporting ensemble that also includes Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro, gives the film an effective sense of humor and smoothly delivers an installment that both provides a compelling narrative bridge to the next chapter and still satisfies on its own terms.
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is among the best of the eight offerings thus far. Casual viewers will be sufficiently diverted, but faithful fans should be downright enthralled.
THE POST (PG-13)
It’s Spielberg, Streep and Hanks – with icons like these, first names are hardly necessary – together again for the first time.
And Steven, Meryl and Tom are not only making a movie, but making a statement about the Trump administration’s attack on the press of late.
“The Post” – as in The Washington Post – is a historical biodrama and newspaper melodrama that finds master-class director Spielberg addressing the paper’s role in exposing the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
His latest immediately takes its place among such restrained cinematic classics about journalism as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” yet another resonant reminder of the importance of freedom of the press.
The focus is on Post publisher Katharine Graham (the first female newspaper publisher), played by Streep, and Hanks’ executive editor, Ben Bradlee. They decided to go ahead and publish after a federal judge had already short-circuited the similar efforts of The New York Times – challenging the federal government on the issue of their right to publish, given that they were exploring a cover-up that spanned four U.S. presidents.
And, period piece that it is, don’t think for a second that today’s political climate – and all the parallels that the very existence of this project suggests with respect to the adversarial relationship between the Trump administration and the press – is lost on screenwriters Josh Singer and Liz Hannah or on the film’s three primary movers and shakers.
File it under Movies That Matter.
The script, which draws upon Graham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 memoir, “Personal History,” concentrates on the risky road traveled by Graham and Bradlee, sets itself up as a Watergate precursor, dramatizes the transformation of the titular newspaper from a regional publication to a national one, and ends up representing itself as a virtual prequel to “All the President’s Men.”
So, yes, it’s a love letter to principled print journalism. And why shouldn’t it be?
For Spielberg (“Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T. The Extraterrestrial,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park,” “Lincoln,” “Saving Private Ryan”) it’s ho-hum, another keeper. But you can feel the film’s convictions in every frame.
The Pentagon Papers comprised a secret study initiated by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, played by Bruce Greenwood, that chronicled the U.S. involvement in Vietnamese politics since the 1950s. It made it obvious that a succession of political administrations from both parties – going all the way back to the Truman administration – lied about the progress being made in the conflict and the prospects for any kind of real American victory.
That was what Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), a contributor to the report who had been a State Department analyst and was now working for the Rand Corporation, initially leaked to The New York Times. It clearly demonstrated that the war was not winnable. And yet the war effort continued. But the Nixon administration’s blocking of any further publication left it up to The Post, and Ellsberg agreed to leak the papers to assistant managing editor Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk).
Storyteller Spielberg is his usual deft overseer, conjuring considerable suspense, compelling and inspiring us even though we know the outcome in advance. But the emotional narrative spine is delivered by Streep’s Graham, who had unexpectedly taken over management of the paper after her husband committed suicide.
It is she who finds her voice along the way in a thrust that resounds deafeningly in this particular season of the woman.
The courageous Graham-Bradlee decision to publish not only threatened the paper’s very existence but could have meant a prison term for the two of them.
And while Hanks provides an effective alternative reading of gritty crusader Bradlee, so memorably delivered by Oscar winner Jason Robards in “All the President’s Men,” Streep is her usual magnificently-nuanced-and-yet-underplaying self, essaying a character who comes into her own in a beautifully calibrated performance that earned her yet another Oscar nomination, thus suggesting an alternative title: “Some of the President’s Men – and a Woman.”
As for maestro Spielberg, he pretty much ignores technical flourishes – certainly an appropriate approach – and lets the loaded subject matter speak for itself, which it does by delving into moral, ethical, and legal nooks and crannies.
“The Post” is, among other things, a political rejoinder by a supremely talented triumvirate. And it’s as robust and splendid as it is timely.
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (R)
You’d have to sit through a lengthy parade of movies to come upon a trio of performances in the same film as authentic, as lived in, and as memorable as those of Best Actress Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Best Supporting Actor winner Sam Rockwell, and Best Supporting Actor nominee Woody Harrelson, in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
How’s that for an unlike-any-other title?
Injustice League, anyone?
This darker-than-dark comic drama from British writer-director Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “Seven Psychopaths”) is about as unpredictable as a contemporary movie can be.
The premise: A grieving mother (McDormand) takes on the local authorities (sincere police chief Harrelson and racist deputy Rockwell) and challenges them to solve the case triggered by the rape and murder of her daughter.
She does so by posting attention-getting messages on the items and in the location referred to in the title.
McDormand’s so-vivid-she-jumps-off-the-page character, which can’t help but put us in mind of her iconic, Oscar-winning work as Marge Gunderson in “Fargo” (1996), is a recently divorced mother who lost her daughter less than a year ago.
But the case to catch her killer has gone cold and updates have ceased, which is why she has rented the space on three barren billboards.
McDonagh’s fine, unsentimental script traces what happens throughout Ebbing’s populace as one thing leads to another in the wake of this unspeakable tragedy, but the narrative remains refreshingly unconventional in its compellingly and convincingly rendered reality.
McDormand’s role, written for her by McDonagh, anchors the ensemble, creating a ferocious protagonist who is in severe emotional pain. But, understandably sympathetic and justifiably enraged, she is also occasionally – and amazingly – laugh-out-loud funny.
Meanwhile, the script obliquely explores injustice and violence and the infuriating indifference of the universe, while forcing us to re-examine our definitions of hero and villain.
The stimulating amalgam of wrenching tragedy and acidic wit is something we don’t often see on the big screen, but here it’s delivered in spades.
Still, it’s the threesome of generously delineated major characters and their fascinating, intersecting character arcs, brought to three-dimensional life by performers at the top of their game, that stay with us long after the end credits have rolled.
The unique and compelling “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is a bracing, commanding, indelible dramedy.
