We’re in the home stretch, folks. Just a few more weeks and it’ll be time for graduation. But maybe even better, it is almost time for summer big budget blockbuster season. And there are some real heavy hitters coming with Avengers: Infinity Wars coming out in a few weeks. There’s a new Mission Impossible coming, the sequel to The Incredibles, and Solo: A Star Wars Story, just to name a few.
You know what? Let’s stick with Star Wars stories for a second because I never did review The Last Jedi. But if we are going to stick with sci-fi, I’ve got to talk to you about my favorite sci-fi movie so far this year (though, I want to clarify that I haven’t made it out to see Black Panther yet). While both of our movies this month are science fiction and indeed share an actor, they are certainly very different.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) [PG-13]
Yeah, I know I should have seen this in the theater a while ago, but the fall semester was rough for me this year. My quick take is that this is a film chock-full of moments.
The Last Jedi picks up right after Star Wars: The Force Awakens ends. Poe Dameron, played by Oscar Isaac, is fighting. Former Stormtrooper, Finn is recuperating. Rey is trying to convince Luke Skywalker to join the resistance and is exploring her new connection with Kylo Ren.
There’s a ton of plot that gets jammed into the two-and-a-half-hour run time. And that’s where I think the movie is both good and bad. There are some really fun and interesting moments that pop up in The Last Jedi. Unfortunately, that means that the overall coherency of the movie is less than desirable. Director Rian Johnson is juggling a lot of balls here. He catches most of them but not all.
Now I get it, Star Wars fans, and I agree that The Last Jedi really did feel in some places like a sequel to a different film series. Some of it, I was okay with. I didn’t mind the silly jokes. Some of the choices were just weird. Like the Princess Leia thing. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I won’t ruin it but if you have, for real, I’m not sure how you are supposed to square that with the rest of the series mythology.
In the end, it is hard to dislike any Star Wars movie (that doesn’t include Jar Jar Binks. I should add that). And I certainly don’t dislike The Last Jedi. It certainly looked good. It sounded good. I actually think the humor was better than in most of the other Star Wars movies. And let’s face it, we’re all going to see it anyway sooner or later.
6.5 paws out of 10
Annihilation (2018) [R]
This could be the hardest movie I have ever had to review. Not because I am torn on how I feel, mind you. I know I thought this was fantastic. But how do you even talk about it?
Start with the plot? Okay. Natalie Portman plays Lena, a Johns Hopkins professor who we are first introduced to as she is lecturing her students about cell biology. Her husband, Kane (played by the shared actor between our two movie reviews this month, Oscar Isaac) is a soldier who has disappeared after a covert mission.
But then he shows up mysteriously at their house. Or does he? Kane is acting strange and suddenly starts hemorrhaging. Kane and Lena are whisked away by a psychologist named Dr. Ventress, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Ventress explains that Kane’s mission took him into “the shimmer”, which is a rapidly metastasizing area that has taken the lives of everyone who has entered it, except Kane. Lena decides that it is her responsibility to join the next mission into the shimmer to help save her husband.
Sounds like a good, old fashioned genre film, right? And in some ways, it is. But director Alex Garland doesn’t just throw characters into a situation and then find creative ways to dispatch them. Instead, he mutates what could be a standard genre film into something different and far more meaningful.
Now, this is where it gets hard. What happens when the mission heads into the shimmer is, well, slippery. The whole movie can be interpreted in many different ways. There is no clear explanation about what happens or doesn’t happen. At the beginning of the film, we see Lena being interviewed after she has escaped the shimmer, but by the end we aren’t really sure if she has.
But all of this ambiguity and space for interpretation not only works but works so well that I can’t imagine anyone seeing Annihilation and walking away without thinking afterward. Science fiction is at its best when it can entertain and make you think at the same time. For my money, Annihilation is that kind of science fiction and is among the best science fiction films I have seen in years. But just be prepared, it is hard SCIENCE fiction. This isn’t just space cowboys shooting up the bad guys. It is so much more and so much better for it.
8 paws out of 10
As always, if you have a movie you think I should check out or you want to talk further about one of these reviews, drop me a line at collincougar@collin.edu or leave me a message on Facebook.