Fair is fair

THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN (1985)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"The Legend of Billie Jean" is one of those harmless, innocent, hard-to-take-your-eyes-off 1980's flicks I remember watching on cable. I had seen it twice then but, honestly, I can hardly fathom what I liked about it. Call it one of those guilty pleasure flicks like "St. Elmo's Fire" where I recall finding both movies watchable and almost endearing, yet I find little else there. Billie Jean is the rebel of the movie, yet what in good God's green earth is she rebelling against?

The movie aims to find a solid theme about what society might deem as trailer park trash and how they are trying to rise above it. Maybe. Young Billie Jean (Helen Slater) lives in a trailer park in Corpus Christi, Texas. She lives with her single mother who is trying to find the right man, and her younger brother, Binx (Christian Slater), who worships his Honda Elite scooter. There is some unnecessary business at the beginning where some blonde dudes make the moves on Billie and throw Binx's scooter in the lake. Awwww, what a travesty. This is the kind of slipshod material that you might encounter in a Friday the 13th flick. Before you know it, determined Billie Jean wants 608 dollars for the damage done to her brother's scooter since it turns out that one of those barechested, sunglass-wearing blonde bullies works at a shop with his father, Mr. Pyatt (Richard Bradford). Before long, Mr. Pyatt attempts to rape Billie and he gets shot by Binx and, well, we got a mess in our hands. The police search for Billie, Binx and their wayward friends as they flee the state. Ostensibly, a road movie though how Billie's picture in the papers inspires young folk remains a mystery. What inspires them exactly? That she is young, blonde and lovely and that she took a stand to demand money? When Billie eventually encounters a district attorney's son (the vibrant coolness of Keith Gordon) after breaking into his house, she videotapes herself with cropped hair, denim jacket and develops a slogan: "Fair is fair." And the nation of young people rise up, girls crop their own hair, and repeatedly chant that slogan.

At the end of the day, all Billie Jean wanted was the 608 dollars and, I surmise, an apology from the rapist creep of Mr. Pyatt who survives the shooting with a bullet in his arm. Naturally, Mr. Pyatt exploits Billie Jean and sells various posters and other mementos with her likeness. Say what? By the end of the film, the drama is all over when Mr. Pyatt's true colors come out in front of Billie's fans.

The performances are exceptionally good. Helen Slater gives us a forlorn Billie Jean, a girl who wants to right all wrongs. Christian Slater, in a peroxide look, was still working out his kinks in his acting but his presence speaks volumes. It is also great fun to watch Yeardley Smith (pre-Lisa Simpson from TV's "The Simpsons") as one of Billie's friends who just wants to tag along because her trailer park home life is miserable (a scene where she is brutally slapped by her mother almost rivals a similar moment in De Palma's "Carrie"). Almost anything with Peter Coyote (playing a sympathetic police detective) makes up for just about anything. But I do not know what to take away from "The Legend of Billie Jean." Slater's performance suggests anything but a rebel, or even a Joan of Arc (a scene where she watches a film clip of Jean Seberg's Joan of Arc is a pivotal point). She knows she is making a difference...but what difference is she making exactly?

Not So Typical Love Song

LOVE, SIMON (2018)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

While watching the lighthearted, sweet and extremely familiar movie "Love, Simon," one film director's name came to mind: John Hughes. I had no idea that the critics felt the same way until I did research on this film. It is possible that the late John Hughes might have crafted a movie like this back in the 1980's, or perhaps later. It's got heart, compassion, lots of laughs, has a perceptive look at 2010's high-school life, some decent soundtrack choices (you cannot go wrong with any selection by The Kinks), etc. Of course, I don't know if Hughes would have ever made a movie about a smart high-school teen coming out as gay. Still, Hughes reference aside, this is an enjoyable film in its own right and, yet, aside from the main character being gay, the movie doesn't exactly feel innovational.

Simon (Nick Robinson) is like any other high-school teen who is soon to graduate - he gets a car as a present, his parents (Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner) love him, he finds that he actually likes his younger sister who loves to cook, and he has great friends. Oh, and he is (as exclaimed in the voice-over narration) "just like you." Well, not quite. I grew up in the New York suburbs and we did not have a great-looking house nor did I have a chalkboard wall with all sorts of inscriptions (I wish I did, and is that really a bedroom accessory now?) The difference is that Simon is gay but he hasn't come out yet. His family and his friends do not know, but his anonymous computer pen-pal, known as Blue, is aware. Blue is gay too but he hasn't come out either. What's the hold up? I wondered too because coming out as gay can't be that difficult in a supposedly progressive high-school where a guy has already come out, can it? And this is all based on a 2015 book by called "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli. It is not like 2015 was that long ago, but I digress.

"Love, Simon" had me in its romantic spell of yearning, even if I felt like I had seen this film before. The fact that it is considered the first mainstream gay teen romantic comedy doesn't exactly give me pause because I had seen many gay-themed films, both teen-oriented and adult, in the last 20 years. It does seem as if it took Hollywood a little to long to catch up (TV shows and Netflix, not to mention indie flicks, have already, pardon the pun, come out). Still, what gravitates me towards this engaging crowd pleaser of a movie is Simon's reluctance and insecurities about coming out, so much so that a bad theatre actor at school, Martin (Logan Miller), blackmails him after taking snapshots of Simon's emails at a school computer. So why does this Houdini-loving, "Cabaret"-infected ambitious young man take such pains to blackmail noble Simon? Love, of course, for Abby (Alexandra Shipp), one of Simon's attractive friends who is also a transfer student and lives in an apartment! Oh, my gosh, the gall! The movie states that every teen lives in a fancy house yet Abby, oh, no, she is an apartment-dweller. Actually, her brief backstory is so interesting that you kind of wish the movie followed her story more closely.

So, in addition to John Hughes tropes of high-school living, there is also a mystery - who is Blue? That had me guessing and I was wrong about two suspects. Nevertheless, "Love, Simon" is about being an insecure high-schooler who has such appealing and approachable friends that you wonder why he can't just come out. Aside from two troublemakers who are defiantly anti-gay, nobody has much of an issue with homosexuality. Simon's parents? Well, not exactly, and one of them seems to have a real issue with it, only seemingly. As I said, there is nothing here that we haven't seen before but it is so well-crafted, so cleverly humorous (Tony Hale is sidesplittingly funny as the vice principal who wants no texting in the school halls) so endearingly sincere that I cannot fault a teen romantic comedy for working me over and making me care thanks to director Greg Berlanti and his charismatic young cast. "Love, Simon" succeeds and I would love to see it again. So now we need a mainstream gay movie where being gay is not a big deal. That would be groundbreaking.

People no longer behaving as human beings

THE NIGHT WILL FALL (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Originally published in Steel Notes Magazine

No one can dispute that one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century can’t easily be forgotten, especially by those who survived to witness it and tell the tale. The Nazi Holocaust is that crime, one which still perplexes me to this day. “The Night Will Fall” is an absorbing and nightmarishly haunting documentary that rivets the attention and shakes your own well-being to the core. It is a devastating film that will leave you speechless.

In elementary schools, at least during the 1980’s when I attended, images of those horrific death camps were shown. Most of the world has seen the mangled, emaciated corpses of Jewish men, women and children bulldozed into mass graves. “Night Will Fall” takes a different position – it chronicles the making of these largely unseen, incomplete documentaries, a first-person narrative of the cameramen who were there to film this devastating record. We first see the liberation of the first death camp to be liberated by British Forces (British 11th Armored Division), Bergen-Belsen, where the soldiers armed with cameras begin to record tantalizing footage. This footage is useful as not only a public record but also as evidence against the SS officers who participated in this mass extermination. Bodies are seen carried about as if they were inanimate human rag dolls, most of them naked and disposed of in pits and carried into trucks. The British soldiers have no idea of what to make of this, a reality of which can never be shaken off or forgotten. BBC war correspondent, Richard Dimbleby, reports on the 30,000 bodies in plain view at Belsen (typhus had killed many, possibly even Anne Frank who did die at Belsen). The towns and villages nearby Belsen have no clue what has transpired though the smell of death, as sensed by the British soldiers, lingers and dominates the countryside. This was not the time for the German folk to be blissfully ignorant.

“Night Will Fall” also documents the Soviet troops who liberated and documented the atrocities at the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps in Poland, a year before Belsen. But what is most astounding is the discovery that the Soviets’ footage was not considered a reliable source by the British, for reasons never made clear. Maybe the British, as with the rest of the world, didn’t want to believe the bitter truth about those death camps. Once the combat cameramen made their way to Belsen, the truth was unmistakable. Also remarkable is that the Belsen footage was to be edited into a film titled “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey” (narrated by the late actor Trevor Howard). This film would have served as a factual presentation of that bitter truth. Unfortunately, despite the editorial presence of Alfred Hitchcock on hand, the film was never completed and only some clips were shown. The reasons behind it perplexed me: the British wanted to establish an alliance with Germany post-World War II in hopes of combatting a new enemy, Communism. I suppose the last thing the British wanted to do was to be accused of presenting war crimes as propaganda.

What clips we do see in “The Night Will Fall” are so stunning, so powerful, so staggeringly emotional that it is hard to watch it without shedding a tear (some living British officers who are interviewed in the documentary have trouble holding back their emotions). In fact, all Holocaust deniers should watch this because the filmed record does not lie. We see the Jewish hostages reacting with joy when liberated, some with scalding emotional tears of relief, a relief they never expected. We see empty towers where Nazis had once set their rifles overlooking the camps. We see German residents in droves coming into Belsen, overcome with absolute shock by what was hidden from them. We also see something which I never knew; SS officers helping to dispose of bodies that lay on the ground. We also see how other Jewish hostages are gathered near the stench of death beneath their feet.

“The Night Will Fall” is not as chillingly poetic as Alan Resnais’ “Night and Fog” from 1955 (that film showed the lifelessness of the camps a decade later) but it is a haunting, hair-raising, deeply resonant documentary about what Dimbleby once most accurately said of the SS and of other nations that might practice such atrocities, “People no longer behaving as human beings.”

Whipping a drummer into shape

WHIPLASH (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Originally published in Steel Notes Magazine

 I can’t tell you when teaching methods in schools changed but I can say that the early 1990’s, the birth of that most distasteful phrase “political correctness” was the start of when all schools adopted the phrase “Good job” because the effort was seemingly enough. When I went to high school in the 1980’s, a sufficiently good job on your grades usually meant a mediocre grade. A solid B or even B+ was pooh-poohed upon – if I got those grades today, I might be seen as a genius. When it came to art, painting or photography or filmmaking, a good grade was hardly meritorious. What did the student accomplish that could lead to then becoming the future Monet, the future Ansel Adams, or the future Stanley Kubrick? Could their artistic potential be pushed to punishing extremes? That is at the heart of the harsh, furiously entertaining and intensifyingly dramatic “Whiplash,” a sort of “Full Metal Jacket” depiction on prestigious jazz bands dealing with an abusive instructor who would give R. Lee Ermey a heart attack.

How abusive is this instructor? He hurls chairs at his students, berates them with homophobic slurs, and punishes the drummers to such an extent that their hands are bloodied at the end of an exhausting rehearsal session. The late Who drummer Keith Moon might have thrown a chair at this instructor or set fire to his own cymbals in protest. J.K. Simmons is Terence Fletcher, a notable jazz conductor at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory in New York. Fletcher is looking for the next Buddy Rich, the legendary jazz drummer with a short temper, but he is of little faith in students whom he considers wimps. As a pretext, Fletcher recounts the story of how legendary drummer Jo Jones threw a cymbal at the young alto saxophonist, Charles “Yardbird” Parker. As Terence tells it, if Parker had simply been told, “Good job,” he might not have reached the depths of his own power of playing the sax – the Bird might not have excelled and perfected his techniques. Salient observation, but does throwing chairs and slapping students help them to excel and go beyond their futile attempts to impress the teacher? I should think not (some current jazz musicians and teachers consider the movie to be a little too over-the-top.)

Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is the harangue upon, abused and exasperated drummer who aspires to be Buddy Rich and relentlessly plays Hank Levy’s classic “Whiplash” with great ferocity and passion. Neyman is probably good enough, but Mr. Fletcher sees more behind the kid’s talent. The kid could be great, not just solidly good or perhaps “mediocre.” Fletcher’s abusive tactics are his way of seeing behind the students’ masks, manipulating their familial problems to his advantage to get the best out of his them. Neyman himself is not an easy kid to like – he assumes he will be great and has a superiority complex to most of his family. He has trouble maintaining a dating relationship with a movie theatre concession stand clerk (Melissa Benoist from TV’s “Supergirl”) because he has to work as hard as Charlie Parker, sometimes 15 hours a day. His hands bleed and, in one climactic moment prior to a jazz competition, he gets into a car accident and still manages to play, well, just barely while he suffers a head wound followed by a physical assault on Fletcher.

The tyrannical Fletcher doesn’t display many emotions except anger and violence. Every time we see him appear, my stomach felt as if a weight was placed in it and my hands got sweaty. You subjectively feel like Andrew Neyman throughout the film and your blood pressure might go right through the roof whenever he is taunted by Fletcher. J.K. Simmons has a special gift for playing what could have been a demonic, hateful character; he shows empathy and has a powerful charisma that burns the screen with hot vitality. It is no wonder he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, his Fletcher is not cut out of the sentimental vein of “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or any other nicer teachers from our cinematic past. The film doesn’t shy away from suggesting that Fletcher’s tactics are not the most instrumental in shaping any talented performer but his insatiable need to find and root out greatness is definitely clear.

Written and directed by Damien Chazelle (based on his own experiences at Princeton), “Whiplash” is not for ordinary audiences and it is not for parents who feel that every kid nowadays should win an award for “making an effort.” It is not an easy film to digest but most great films don’t always make it easy for audiences. There is a respect that develops between teacher and student and the finale, an emotional powerhouse with jazz drumming that has the relentless tempo of the movie itself, is sure to leave you drained. You may not like these two characters but you can identify and respect their search for pushing the limits. Neyman and Fletcher are two characters that will remain in my cinematic crosshairs for some time. Good job, great film.

Dropped in to see the condition of my rug

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

A 20th Anniversary appreciation by Jerry Saravia

The Coen Brothers have always defied expectations in their cutthroat, very precise approach to genres, making films that look and feel as they were made by nerds who chuckle when people leave frustrated by what they have just seen. Some of their films manage this feat with spectacular results ("Barton Fink," "A Serious Man," "Fargo") and others are plainly bad and highly uneven ("O' Brother Where Art Thou?", "Intolerable Cruelty"). "The Big Lebowski" is somewhere much higher. It is not an easy film to describe but I guess you could call it a stoner noir comedy and even that doesn't fully define it. It is often very funny, has thrillingly inventive visuals, terrific soundtrack, eye-popping performances, is extremely crude and contains Tara Reid's best, liveliest performance. It is slacker porn (my term), basically a movie that is pure pot-bellied humor, emphasis on pot, and has purposely leisured pacing because the characters speak as if they just had a joint.

Well, not all the characters. John Goodman is the boisterous, maniacal Vietnam Vet Walter who is paranoid and sees conspiracies everywhere, and can get you a severed toe by lunch. He screams expletives at every turn, even screaming "Fuck You Donny!" to Steve Buscemi's more mellow Donny. They all frequent the bowling alley, which of course includes the title character, the harmless, White-Russian imbibing Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), the royal Dude, the righteous Dude, or the Dude who Abides or just plain dude, if you are into the whole brevity thing. It is the strangest performance of Bridges' career and possibly his most iconic, maybe even the purest. He not only symbolizes a pot-smoking slacker, he is POT! You could smoke Bridges' character and feel relieved and stress-free. Watching him on screen gives you a relaxed feeling, so that is why I call this film the first real Slacker Porn flick because Bridges epitomizes it.

The plot all comes down to one specific detail - some hired thugs have urinated on the Dude's rug. The Dude wants a new rug from another Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound and grumpy millionaire (David Huddleston), whom the Dude was mistaken for. It turns out that Big Lebowski's wife, Bunny (Tara Reid), was kidnapped and all that is given to the millionaire is her severed green-painted toe as a reminder she is still alive. But was she really kidnapped and was that her actual toe? Eventually, we get more hired thugs, some German nihilists, a ferret attacking the Dude in his tub, a dream sequence involving bowling balls and Saddam Hussein (!), a British Julianne Moore who wants coitus with the Dude, lots of pot ingestion, cremated remains blown away in the wrong direction, odd and memorable music selections from Yma Sumac and Kenny Rogers, a dapper Ben Gazzara, a fantastic Sam Elliott as the narrator, and much more.

"The Big Lebowski" is not just a crazy flick, it is the craziest, wildest, oddest and most insanely entertaining film that the Coens have ever made. Ever since its low box-office numbers in its theatrical release back in March of 1998, the film achieved an understandable cult status and remains one of the most quotable films of the 1990's. Without it, you would not have half of the other alleged noir pot comedies that have come and gone in its wake, like the overrated shenanigans of "Pineapple Express" which never found a consistent tone or the equally tone deaf "30 Minutes or Less" or P.T. Anderson's goofball boredom of "Inherent Vice." I could say so much more but I won't, you know, if you are into the whole brevity thing.

National Lampoon's Sometimes it Sucks to be Human

A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE (2018)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Is it too real or too funny? That is the question, one I asked myself of Milos Forman's own biopic on the late comedian Andy Kaufman in 1999's "Man on the Moon." Then I realized, that is the point, the subversive point. Same with director David Wain's "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" based on the far too short life of one of three National Lampoon creators, Doug Kenney. The film is too real and too funny, and it finds few breaks in between but we still care despite its focused look at a man spiraling out of control.

Set during the late 1960's up until 1980, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" stars Will Forte as Doug Kenney, a comedy writer who may have a difficult time creating comedy but he does find inspiration and, more importantly, the truth in comedy that stings like a wasp. After developing the National Lampoon magazine with the help of his best friend, the pipe-smoking Henry Beard (amazingly played by Domhnall Gleeson whom Star Wars fans may know as crimson-haired General Hux) and several others (who are left out of this adaptation because, as we are told, it would take too much time to focus on so many contributors), National Lampoon magazine gets off to a rocky start but it soon develops into the irreverent, wacky, in-your-face satirical mag it became. For example, while Doug has moved in with his girlfriend and Beard, he develops a comic for the mag with panels showing how his girlfriend broke up with him after catching him cheating on her. The scene is evocative of much of Kenney's own insular uncertainty, a man incapable of fidelity to a woman, incapable of talking to others without breaking out in sarcastic asides and brittle jokes. Kenney is not exactly a frenetic Robin Williams but he can't seem to calm down for a second, even when snorting copious amounts of cocaine. When he settles in the serene landscape of Hawaii, the solace only reminds him of what is missing in his life.

The trajectory of Doug Kenney's life is not something I am familiar with and the Lampoon magazine is something I've only glanced at, and nothing more. The films made under the Lampoon banner, the good ones such as "Animal House" and "Caddyshack" I am familiar with and have enjoyed for their anarchic mode. In a sneakily subtextual way, "Animal House" celebrates life as a rebellious act - to liberate oneself from the establishment by smoking pot and wearing togas and getting into food fights. That can apply to Kenney's life, though his demons are far more complex. His disapproving parents are cause for much pain and, with all the success and money and blow in the world, he still sees himself as a failure. I can say that blazes through with the acid pen of writers John Aboud and
Michael Colton.

As for the casting of comics in the roles of famous comedians, it is hardly a mixed bag but some are more blink-and-you-will-miss Gilda Radner-type cameos. Erv Dahl, a comic known as the Rodney guy, does a mean impression of the late comic but he is only part of the scenery, not necessarily part of the action (a funny moment during the filming of "Caddyshack" has Rodney not reacting when the director calls "action"). Same with even Doug's girlfriends though Emmy Rossum has a sharp, savvy turn as Kathryn Walker, his last girlfriend (an actress in her own right) before Doug bites the dust - her feelings for this disheveled man are real and she won't give up on him. Only Joel McHale makes more of an impression as Chevy Chase and he looks the part, clumsiness and all. But this is hardly a criticism, it is actually rather brilliant that the people in Kenney's life are like chess pieces - they move across the board seamlessly if not without faults and Kenney eventually gets his checkmate. Eh, I never said that some of my reviews did not suck and my metaphors are occasionally less than acute.

I can't say with assurance that "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" captures the anarchic spirit of National Lampoon magazine but it certainly captures the insularity and depression of Doug Kenney. Will Forte encapsulates that beautifully and masterfully, an actor who has anchored TV's "Last Man on Earth" and Alexander Payne's masterpiece "Nebraska" with an unspoken authority. In hindsight, the film also captures how Doug saw an imbalance in his own life, how none of his friends are anything but decorative pawns for him, a sense that it is all about jokes and the minute the funniness and the party atmosphere dies, everything dies within him. It is unfortunate that real life bit him hard. 

The Force is Strong with this one

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When a new "Star Wars" movie is released, it has to be a cataclysmic supernova, a blast of escapist, high-octane energy into a world beyond our wildest expectations. That was delivered with 2015's "The Force Awakens" and it is definitely the case with "The Last Jedi," an even more formidable entry in this new trilogy. I do not want to sound too optimistic but this movie is an even grander spectacle, an eye-popping, tacitly humorous, profoundly deeper and more emotionally satisfying "Star Wars" movie. Maybe George Lucas giving his creation to a new host of filmmakers was not such a bad idea after all - this is the second-best Star Wars film ever made after "The Empire Strikes Back" (my personal favorite).

Battles between the Resistance and the First Order continue under General Leia's (Carrie Fisher) command, as the First Order grows stronger and in greater numbers. Poe (Oscar Issac), the stubborn, rebellious flyboy pilot, has his own ideas on how to squash the First Order's many Imperial cruisers, sorry, I meant to say First Order Dreadnaughts. Somehow, the First Order has figured out how to track down Rebel, sorry, I meant to say the various ships from the Resistance while in active light speed! It is now up to resilient Finn (John Boyega), the former Stormtrooper, and (new addition to the universe), Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a Resistance fighter with mechanical skills who keeps an eye on anyone doing a traitorous thing like fleeing in an escape pod, to find a codebreaker in a casino city who can hack in to the tracking device.

Meanwhile, the Force is almost too strong with Rey (Daisy Ridley), whom we last saw meeting with the bearded, isolated Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) at the end of "Force Awakens" for a solid minute and a half of screen time. Luke has no interest in training Rey nor does he want to help fight the First Order - he would rather catch fish and milk some odd-looking creatures's udders than even hold a lightsaber (in one expertly timed moment, he tosses the lightsaber over his shoulder). Rey tries to convince him yet she is conflicted by the ominous, murderous Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) whom she can communicate with telepathically and sometimes even see him. Kylo wants to rule the galaxy at any cost and hopes Rey will join him. Will she? Will Luke train her and help fight the First Order? Can Finn and Rose hack into those Dreadnaughts?

What I love most about these movies is the Buddhist jargon relating to the ways of the Force. Rey is more than capable of wielding the Force, shaping it, seeing into the past but not exactly into any discernible future (she is a newbie after all and her vision can be, pardon the pun, hacked into). Luke is astounded at her metaphysical capabilities and it spooks him. Some scenes involving how to use the Force as a shield and to project oneself apparently infuriated many fans, but I loved it - it shows that the Force is still something mysterious and not easily explained away.

Beyond the depiction of the Force, we also get something of a first for these movies - flashbacks and they involve Luke and Kylo. A couple of these scenes show the first Jedi temple and its eventual destruction by Kylo - essential elements to understand Kylo's corrupted soul. These scenes are among the most powerful, and there are times when one can't be too sure of Kylo's intentions with the First Order or with Rey (no wonder Luke almost wanted to, ah, I will not give that away). There are also many who sacrifice themselves to help others, and I would not dream of revealing any of them but a few of them are surprising.

This is also the most visually awesome and awesomely staged of the Star Wars movies. Between the red soil of the mineral planet Crait, the ostentatiousness of the casino city, the herd of mammals freed and running through the night, the space battles, Snoke's red throne room, the island overlooking the sea where Luke lives - everything is quite a sight to behold. The special-effects never feel obtrusive and always feel organic to the story.

All the performances are top-notch, all the relationships are beautifully conveyed including Luke and Rey, Rose and Finn and even Laura Dern's commanding work as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo and her tense recognition of the troublemaker Poe and her little asides with General Leia. There is also Benicio Del Toro as an eccentric codebreaker who is only in it for the money, not to mention the Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) whom we see more clearly this time as a remorselessly evil man who wants nothing more than to destroy the Resistance.

I was wowed and entertained by "The Last Jedi" but I was also transported into another world that always felt like home to me since 1977, and that is the appeal of this highly escapist franchise. More so than ever, we need Star Wars and Star Wars needs us.