For the week of March 30th, Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Home Entertainment are bringing the whole Skywalker Saga to Blu-ray. That's nine Star Wars movies in 4K, from 1977's landmark Star Wars through last year's divisive The Rise of Skywalker. No doubt Disney and Lucasfilm will continue plumbing the far reaches of the Star Wars universe from now until time immemorial; just recently J.D. Dillard and Matt Owens were tapped to develop a new Star Wars property, and Rosario Dawson will be joining the cast of Disney Plus' popular Mandalorian series. But with The Rise of Skywalker, it does feel like Lucasfilm has reached the end of a particular journey, and I'm not talking about the one that began when Princess Leia Organa gave two bickering droids a holographic message of grave importance. No, for the first time in a long time, Star Wars no longer feels bulletproof. There was a time when, for whatever faults one might find, the series existed outside the realm of popular criticism. Credit the strength of the first feature and its even-better sequel The Empire Strikes Back: this pairing bought so much goodwill among genre fans that we were willing to put up with the worst indulgences of the flawed-but-fun Return of the Jedi (and for the record: I'm not talking about the Ewoks - they're far less offensive than that film's seeming inability to make Han Solo matter in any way, shape, or form). Even George Lucas' much-derided prequel trilogy has aged more gracefully than one might have expected. Those born after, say, the year 2000 have been able to excuse Lucas' stilted dialogue and over-reliance on digital effects and sets (plus, The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith are better than you remember). But with the release of J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens in 2015, the franchise seemed bound more to matters of corporate and financial interests than to any kind of artistic exploration. I enjoy The Force Awakens, but it's as safe a reboot as you could imagine, banking Abrams' facility for introducing great characters against his far-less-appealing sense of pacing: busy and nostalgic. The prequels at least tried to give viewers something unexpected (so many of them hinge around tariff crises) - Abrams is content to recycle much of the first Star Wars. Its sequel, Rian Johnson's controversial The Last Jedi, offered a bold course-corrective, but even those who like that film's utter disdain for the "expected" rules of franchise sequelizing (and I count myself among the fans) can't deny that it jettisons much of what Abrams established beyond a few characters and key plot details.
That's why, in theory, it's hard to get too upset about The Rise of Skywalker, which marks J.J. Abrams' return to the franchise. In terms of its pace, Abrams is returning to the velocity of his Force Awakens as opposed to the more measured Last Jedi. The first twenty minutes are a blur, careening from Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, good but underused) destroying an interstellar outpost in search of a mysterious tracking device, which takes him to an underground villain's lair straight out of Metropolis, where we meet the film's true Big Bad (and more on that in a minute) before cutting to a lightspeed-skipping chase between Finn (John Boyega, who has little to do but yell), Poe (a visibly irritated Oscar Isaac), and Chewie (Joonas Suotamo) in the Millennium Falcon and a whole squad of First Order fighters, only to end on the Rebellion's new outpost so we can watch Rey (Daisy Ridley, struggling to keep up with the character's inconsistencies) destroy what feels like half the jungle in an otherwise routine session of Jedi-Force training. It is a lot, and it only slows down for exposition. More than anything, it feels like he and his co-screenwriter Chris Terrio (the guy who penned Argo and *checks notes* Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) really want you to forget what happened in the new trilogy's knotty middle entry. Does the new film invalidate huge chunks of The Last Jedi? Undoubtedly, and in often indelicate ways (the new film's disregard for Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico is especially galling). But to be fair, it's just doing the same thing The Last Jedi did after The Force Awakens: trying to read the market and then provide corrections in real time. I just wish those edits were a little more fun. The Rise of Skywalker wears you out, and it doesn't have the necessary narrative clarity to ground any of the mayhem. Both its predecessors streamlined their main objectives (The Force Awakens: stop the new Death Star proxy + find Luke Skywalker; The Last Jedi: train Rey + find a way to fix the Rebel fleet's warp drive), but The Rise of Skywalker sees plot as an endless series of fetch quests. We have to travel to some planet to find a whatzit, and then a complication sends us off to another galaxy in search of the next thingamabob, with little time to appreciate any of the worldbuilding or new characters (I think Keri Russell is doing good work as a former scoundrel ally of Poe's, but the movie can't be bothered to get to know her). And while I get the Last Jedi backlash, this movie's retcons do not make for more satisfying viewing. People complained that Finn, Poe, and Rey barely spent any time together; now they spend too much time together, their interactions consisting of frenetic motion and sub-Whedon banter. They disliked Rian Johnson's less-than-precious approach to Star Wars mythology; now we get to see Kylo fixing his mask so he's more like Darth Vader and Abrams trotting out Lando Calrissian (a bemused Billy Dee Williams) in the name of fan service. And they hated that Rey was of non-Jedi lineage; that Big Bad I mentioned is none other than the reanimated Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid, obviously), who just so happens to be Rey's grandfather. How Palpatine returned is more confusing than how Abrams and Co. awkwardly retrofitted Force Awakens deleted scenes in order to give Princess Leia something to do, but in both cases, we sense Lucasfilm trying to please that which will make their profit margins grow. These movies are product now, plain and simple. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But now they only take Lucasfilm execs to higher income brackets. Once upon a time, they used to take us all to galaxies far, far away.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that the film "marks the high point for the franchise in terms of technical construction. Now that the saga is complete, it's interesting to watch its evolution from analog to digital to the seamless merger of the two. The original trilogy, of course, relied heavily on miniatures and practical set pieces and props to build the illusion of galactic conflict. The prequels bet heavily on what is now comparatively crude digital animations and antics, with The Phantom Menace in particular a playground for what was in 1999 groundbreaking technology. These latest films blur the line between real and digital to the point that there's essentially nothing in the movie that stands out as obviously fake or manipulated. It's a stunning achievement of seamlessness in great complexity. The Rise of Skywalker also features one of the most riveting lightsaber duels in the franchise. The best still arguably remains within The Phantom Menace - it's almost impossible to top Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon versus Darth Maul - but audiences are in for a treat when Ren and Rey duel above a familiar world's ferocious waves and atop the wreckage of an iconic Star Wars locale. The space battle at film's end can't match that from A New Hope for dramatic intensity, but it sure does look pretty, as gray as it may be."
From the Criterion Collection comes the Blu-ray debut of Barbra Streisand's Oscar-nominated melodrama The Prince of Tides. To say that they don't make 'em like this anymore is an understatement: the current Hollywood ecosystem would not allow for an R-rated, $30-million studio movie (that's roughly $60 million when adjusted for inflation) that runs two-and-a-half hours and centers around a romance between two adults (Nick Nolte and Streisand herself) who are nearing fifty. Heck, the most salacious content is buried in a third-act flashback, and it's more tasteful that its lurid contours might suggest (murder, rape, etc.). But what's even more amazing than the film's existence is its critical and commercial success. This was one of the highest grossers of 1991, earning $135 million and netting seven Academy-Award nominations. And I mention the film's inexplicable provenance and popularity because now I've seen The Prince of Tides, and I can't fathom how it did so well. The Pat Conroy book is tremendous; Conroy's warm, homespun prose transforms all the clichés that surround protagonist Tom Wingo (Nolte), a former teacher and football player turned genial wastrel. I never bought in the book why Wingo needs to travel from Savannah, Georgia, to New York City and bare his soul to his sister's psychiatrist (Streisand) after his sister tries to kill herself, but Conroy does such an expert job of balancing plot revelations with Wingo's sardonic inner voice that I never much cared. However, Streisand has no such luck. She foregrounds the corn, laying on Stephen Goldblatt's honeyed cinematography and James Newton Howard's soaring score as if to say, "Stop. This is important." I'm not surprised - Babs remains a fan of the grand gesture - yet that doesn't make the film any less punishing as it tries to batter you into emotional submission. And so you become acutely aware of the things that don't work. Most of the film's subplots, most notably the ones involving Streisand's dysfunctional family (Jeroen Krabbé and a terrible Jason Gould, son of Barbra and Elliott Gould) and Wingo's achingly unfaithful wife (Blythe Danner, laying it on pretty thickly). Or the film's approach to psychology, which owes more to theater and high drama than it does actual psychiatric practice (Streisand throws a book at Nolte's face during one of their sessions). Or the yawing lack of chemistry between Nolte and Streisand: on this, I blame Nolte, who is as hostile and shambling as his smarmy Cape Fear lawyer is. Ultimately, The Prince of Tides benefited from a cultural moment. We used to make movies for adults. They used to be based on books. And Barbra Streisand used to be the biggest star in the world. Removed from that context, it's no surprise the film can't justify its own existence. It's a movie out of time.
The biggest surprise of the week, though, is Joe Begos' gnarly little throwback VFW, which RLJ Entertainment is releasing. VFW has nothing on its mind other than genre exploitation. It's a mixed beverage that's two parts 1990: The Bronx Warriors, three parts Assault on Precinct 13, and one part Original Gangstas, as a group of cult movie icons (Avatar's Stephen Lang, The Warriors' David Patrick Kelly, The Karate Kid's Martin Kove, Demon Knight's William Sadler, and Hammer's Fred Williamson) hunker down in the titular VFW and try to fend off waves of drug-crazed maniacs serving an unhinged gang leader (Travis Hammer) in a slightly dystopian future. Just by reading that synopsis, you probably already know whether or not you're in the film's target audience, and if you're game for the cavalcade of impalings/shootings/stabbings/explosions that follow. If this doesn't sound like your cup of tea, I get it, and I totally understand. But for those who like a grimy, violent siege picture, VFW is in terms of how it conducts its business: we get about twenty minutes of setup and introductions, and then we're off to the races for a full hour of hyperviolence. Begos creates a lot of intensity through cutting, and he establishes early on how violent things will get - the title crashes into frame as a tweaker jumps off a balcony and explodes like a water balloon into the ground below, and it only gets grosser from there. Still, I was surprised by how much natural gravitas the cast has. As histrionic as the rest of the picture is, the actors play things at a nice, understated tempo. I don't think Lang has ever been this natural on camera (he has a scene where he punches Kove and then immediately regrets it), and he's so commanding playing, for all intents and purposes, an uncomplicated hero. So it goes for Sadler, who gets most of the film's dialogue (including a great monologue about how these guys all met in Vietnam) and makes a meal of it, and especially Kove, whose affably sleazy car salesman is a far cry from his Cobra Kai jerkwad. I think I'd be happy watching this crew just hang out for ninety minutes, which makes my investment in their survival all the more pronounced. VFW doesn't exactly transcend its mission. Anyone expecting the wit of From Dusk Till Dawn or the white-knuckle filmmaking brio of Green Room might be a little disappointed; I started wishing for more compositional rigor in terms of its cinematography (the shooting/cutting is a little haphazard), and outside of the old pros, the cast is very variable (Sierra McCormick is largely terrible as a punk kid who becomes the veterans' unlikely ally). But the flick is mean, short, and fast enough that the flaws don't matter as much. There's trash, and then there's good trash. VFW falls squarely in the latter camp.
Randy Miller III wrote that the film "feels like a celebration of practical effects, at least the red and squishy kind - there are no monsters to be found, but enough blood and guts to rival the two most recent Rambo installments. This unapologetic approach, though a bit shocking at first, feels like a natural fit for the film's dark, gritty, and synth-soaked atmosphere, where most of the light is supplied by flickering neon. It works in tandem with the largely likable lead performances, as VFW is populated by a handful of familiar faces from notable 80s and 90s flicks...While VFW probably won't eclipse any of those films in hindsight (expect maybe the last one), it is a reasonably satisfying 'what you see is what you get' production that, with some more refined lighting and more capable supporting actors, would have been even better. This dark and low-budget production feels like an odd choice for 4K, but RLJ Entertainment's combo pack seems up to the modest challenge, serving up a decent A/V presentation and fan-friendly extras to boot."