January Movies

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ☆☆☆☆

I enjoyed this movie a lot. It’s not particularly nuanced but the resolution of the various story lines opened up in the previous two movies was satisfying. Romance between characters was hinted at but I liked that it was resisted.

At the Concord Regal

Little Women ☆☆☆

The acting was great in this movie. I was intrigued by some of the clips in the trailer as it looked like it would be a fresh update of a narrative that has been told too many times (IMHO). There were some things I really liked. But overall, it was a disappointment. The story is told non-linearly and so feels like it is just a series of clips of the most famous scenes. The movie also didn’t seem to be able to make emotional distinctions between these scenes so that Jo being upset after she cuts off her hair is given the same emotional weight as Amy almost drowning when she falls through the ice while skating. There’s a scene late in the movie where Jo has the pages of the novel she’s writing laid out in a grid on the floor and she’s moving them around. I theorized that this was supposed to show that the movie is those pages being shown as Jo writes them. Ann said she thought that was a smarter interpretation than the movie. In any case, let’s stop remaking these same stories over and over.

At Red River with Ann

1917 ☆☆☆☆

Wow. What a tense movie. George MacKay was excellent as Schofield. Andrew Scott has a hilarious cameo. Richard Madden shines in a brief cameo at the end. It’s mostly really well done although there are a couple of false moments. There a scene where a trip wire is tripped by a rat and it seems unbelievable that neither character was significantly injured. The entire sequence between Schofield and the French woman was problematic, sliched, and unbelievable. I won’t go on because those problems are outweighed by how good the acting is, how well told the story is, how beautiful the cinematography is. Definitely an Oscar contender.

At Barnz Meredith with Ann and Pat