For the week of March 26th, the only Blu-ray that most people care about is Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Home Entertainment's controversial Star Wars entry The Last Jedi. Last year, the film drew the kind of ire that Star Wars fans haven't encountered since the days of midichlorians and trade wars, and maybe even worse than that: The Last Jedi's vocal detractors raged that writer-director Rian Johnson had betrayed much of what has come to define the franchise since The Phantom Menace. To tweak some of the rhetoric from the picture's most stirring/divisive moment, every word of such a criticism is right, and that's what makes The Last Jedi such a masterful experience. Rian Johnson is, bar none, the most talented filmmaker ever to direct a Star War (go watch Brick or Looper and tell me I'm wrong. Trick question: you can't), and he certainly delivers all the surface flash viewers expect. A thrilling opening assault on a First Order fleet. The most badass use of hyperspace travel I've ever seen. The greatest lightsaber battle in the franchise. But Johnson also knows how leaden the series has grown under its own mythos. To that end, a betrayal is in order: to demolish our expectations, and to unlock all the potential J.J. Abrams established with 2015's The Force Awakens. More than most sequels, The Last Jedi is obsessed with the past - how it stubbornly repeats itself, how you escape it - so when Rey (Daisy Ridley) seeks out Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill, in a performance that should have netted him a Best Supporting Actor nomination) just as Luke once went after Yoda, Johnson sees her as trapped in the same codes of behavior dictating Star Wars characters for years. However, Luke sees it, too, and his reticence to act as her Force mentor gives their dynamic a flinty edge missing from every Star Wars movie released post-1983. But that whole expectation-reality adjustment exists for every major character. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac, beyond charming, as usual) wants to adopt a more aggressive stance against the Empire, and he chafes against the measured leadership of General Leia (the late Carrie Fisher, giving the film's lone unsatisfying performance) and Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern, bringing depths we don't really see until a second viewing). Former stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) just wants to find Rey and run far away from the Empire-Rebel maelstrom, but he keeps encountering a Job-like series of catastrophes that force him towards a greater moral responsibility. And Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis, once again buried under CGI prosthetics) wants to reestablish the Imperial stranglehold that the Emperor held previously, even as he ignores the very different political and emotional realities governing the new war. So it goes across the cast, until you start sympathizing more and more with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, as idiosyncratic and ragingly vulnerable as he's ever been), who just wants to burn it all down, Jedi and First Order alike, and build anew. More and more, I think Johnson's sympathies lie with Kylo, both in his handling of the character's emotional arc (the nature of the Kylo-Luke relationship puts The Last Jedi in close conversation with Looper) and in his shared zeal to unburden Star Wars from the past. More than that, I should not say, except to praise the details. Like the film's goofy sense of humor (the cow-like thala-siren maintaining unsettling eye contact with Rey as Luke vigorously milks it; the way Johnson turns Domhnall Gleeson's official First Order stooge into, essentially, Daffy Duck). Or the seriousness with which it comments on "forever" wars and the military industrialization complex. Or its canny handling of gender. Or the way Kelly Marie Tran and Benicio Del Toro jockey for biggest scene-stealer, only to end the match in a draw. Or even the manner in which the film tweaks our expectation of blockbuster size: in many ways, this space opera acts as Star Wars's bottle episode, which is fitting, given that Johnson directed one of the greatest bottle episodes ever made. Or the last shot, which almost made me cry. Or the incredible mid-movie cameo, which succeeded. I have been waiting a long time for a Star Wars adventure this rich, this deep, this unabashedly provocative. If it's not quite the franchise's high-water mark, then give it time, 'cause the years will be very kind to this one.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman called the film one "of extremes. Johnson has taken not only the new set of films, but also the series, in a radically new direction. It's easy to find faults with it, and it's easy to sing its praises. The film's tonal presentation is perhaps its most glaring weakness, overwrought with needless humor that interferes with the dramatic currents that build the narrative - as flimsy as it may sometimes be - and often appear in the film simply to move merchandise, in the Porg's case, or simply to tickle Johnson's fancy. Essential, plot-critical humor works - Poe Dameron stalling the First Order at film's open, BB-8 playing hero later on - but with a story as dark and daring as this, the laughs, which oftentimes are met more with a groan rather than a guffaw and almost always undercut a more serious scene, only get in the way. The Porgs are the worst thing to ever happen to a Star Wars film. Yes, Jar Jar was silly but the Gungan at least stood in to make a critical, galaxy-shaping vote at one point in the prequel trilogy, elevating himself from crude comic relief to critical cog in the franchise. Even the cute Ewoks helped the Rebellion fight a tide-turning battle. Chewbacca only brushes a Porg aside when it gets in his way during a battle; they literally serve no purpose."
This week also brings two more Scream Factory steelbooks for the John Carpenter cult classics Assault on Precinct 13 and Prince of Darkness. Actually, using the word "cult" in conjunction with Assault on Precinct 13 feels a little unfair. Even when you consider the other features in Carpenter's oeuvre, this 1976 thriller still stands near the very top. Carpenter has always loved westerns, and he's quick to draw comparisons from Assault on Precinct 13 to Rio Bravo. Like that earlier John Wayne oater, Assault on Precinct 13 follows a smart, decent cop (Austin Stoker) as he attempts to defend his police precinct against a horde of strung-out gang members. That said, Carpenter's staging of the titular assault owes just as much to horror movies as it does the Western; the relentless frequency of the gang members recalls the zombie menace in Night of the Living Dead, and he stages one killing with such shock-force impact that I've never been able to shake it. In some ways, Carpenter even improves on Rio Bravo. Whereas Wayne remains perpetually at moral odds with the imprisoned convict (Claude Akins) who motivates the siege, Stoker finds an unexpected ally in the convicted murderer (Darwin Joston) who gets locked up right before the killing starts. Carpenter loves to watch men at work, and he finds such dignity in these two opposites banding together to get the job done. The film is such an irresistible confection of horror, action, and buddy adventure that I'm not surprised Carpenter wanted to give it another shot with Prince of Darkness nine years later. To be sure, we're seeing the act of diminishing results at play. Despite the hooky setup - a group of theoretical physicists and theologians accidentally unleash the Devil, who sends a horde of demonic baddies against them - Carpenter struggles to generate a compelling sense of pace. It takes about ten minutes for the opening credits to finish (Carpenter intersperses them awkwardly throughout the expositional setup) and even longer to get our heroes together and fighting evil. For a siege movie, the real mayhem doesn't start until the last half, and even then, Carpenter resolves the drama in such a perfunctory fashion that we wonder what the point was. However, Carpenter nails this dreamlike, surrealist mood that mostly redeems the wonky pacing. We might spend way too much time wandering through shadowy, candle-lit tombs, but Carpenter and DP Gary Kibbe light them like a passage to hell. The boundaries between reality and...something else feel so tenuous, and Carpenter uses that unease to stage some horrifying shock effects, most notably a chilling use of VHS footage and an ending shot that lingers like a nightmare.
Also from Scream Factory comes the often ingenious horror-comedy Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Co-writer/director Scott Glosserman's central hook feels like such a no-brainer, it's a wonder more filmmakers haven't used it: just as mockumentaries like A Mighty Wind or Best in Show satirize folk singers and pop music, respectively, so does Behind the Mask adopt a faux-documentary approach to the world of deranged slashers. In this case, the film crew-within-the film (Angela Goethals, Ben Pace, and Britain Spellings) starts following around Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel, who's so good here it's a shame he didn't have a bigger acting career), the murderous spirit of a dead child who...except that's really not true, and it's indicative of the game Glosserman wants to play. Leslie is actually Leslie Mancuso, and homicidal impulses aside, he's a sweet guy with very little in the way of physical and emotional scars. He just wants to be the best serial killer that he can be, and Baesel brings such childlike enthusiasm to the part as he excitedly outlines his "workout" to the documentarians. Glosserman tweaks so many of the expected slasher tropes - he shows Baesel exercising constantly to stay in tip-top shape (as Leslie notes, it takes a lot of cardio to do that thing where the killer just appears behind a victim), and he even gives his antihero a Dr. Loomis-like adversary, in the form of Nightmare on Elm Street star Robert Englund. In theory, the closest analogue to Behind the Mask is Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde's Man Bites Dog, yet that earlier mockumentary quickly tipples into horrible savagery, whereas Behind the Mask remains good-natured and blithe for most of its runtime. We like Leslie, and against our better judgment, we start rooting for him to succeed at his bloody business, which, unfortunately, is where Behind the Mask falls somewhat short. Conceptually, I like how Glosserman approaches the third act, with the film crew becoming unwitting participants (read: victims) in Leslie's plans; Glosserman drops the documentary aesthetic for the stylized polish of a well-made Friday the 13th entry. However, this material can't help but be more familiar than what preceded it - we miss the quirky humor once Baesel starts carving people up. That said, Behind the Mask is still leagues above most slashers, and it might even claim the genre's most idiosyncratic "dead killer isn't really dead" stinger.
Finally, we end on the FX sci-fi-drama Legion. I noticed a lot of chatter at year's end about the best superhero adventure of 2017; one could make a case for the absurdist comedy powering Thor: Ragnarok, the emotional stakes of Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2, or the gritty integrity of the R-rated Logan. With all due respect to those last three films (and I liked each a good deal), they don't hold a candle to Legion, which is the most experimental and daring comic-book adaptation I've seen since David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. In fact, it takes a little while before we even realize Legion is going to be a show about people with superpowers. The pilot throws us into the mind of David Haller (Dan Stevens, detonating the last bit of the bridge between him and Downton Abbey), a young man suffering from extreme dissociative identity disorder. Emphasize "extreme": in his blurring of dream and reality, showrunner Noah Hawley creates the kind of boldly subjective narrative space that simultaneously recalls David Lynch, Nicolas Roeg, Wes Anderson, peak Oliver Stone, and Looney Tunes cartoons. So riveting is Hawley's control of the material that we're all in even if we're not sure what's happening - he lands every significant emotional body-blow, particularly David's tragic suicide attempt. Slowly, we realize that David has powers extending far past his cognitive challenges, and long stretches of Legion find David exploring his abilities alongside a kind of proto-X-Men group (Jeremie Harris, Rachel Keller, Bill Irwin, Amber Midthunder, and Jean Smart, as the group's de facto Professor X). This material offers Legion's most conventional thrills, and I'm often reminded of Hawley's team-dynamics work on the late, great cop procedural The Unusuals. In particular, Irwin and Midthunder steal the show as two very different people occupying the same physical body. But as much as we (and FX, I'm sure) might want Legion to follow the expected path, David's condition proves so unstable that it starts rending away at the team, in manners both in and out of his control. His assault reflects in the changing styles of the show, which vacillates wildly between comedy, horror, sci-fi, melodrama, and full-fledged musical, believe it or not, as well as in the varied approaches to performance. On one end: Smart and Keller, both so good as the series' pragmatic, grounded hearts. On the other: Aubrey Plaza, forever tarnishing her image as the once-and-former April Ludgate with a role that...well, you'll see. And in the middle, Stevens, who has the kind of manic, unpredictable charisma that Al Pacino had in the 1970s. If nothing else, Legion cements Noah Hawley's reputation as the auteur equivalent of Stephen J. Cannell. Hawley's work on Legion is so formally and narratively innovative that I almost can't believe he did it multiple times last year. Right after Legion concluded its first-season run, he premiered the equally impressive Season Three of Fargo. Based on his work on TV, I'm convinced Hawley could issue in a whole new Golden Age of the medium all by himself. Essential viewing.