Natalie Portman

From the Vault #15: STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)

December 11, 2019 December 9, 2019 / By A J. Black / Leave a Comment

From 2012 onwards, before developing this blog, I wrote a multitude of reviews on the website Letterboxd. In this irregular series called From the Vault, I’m going to haul these earlier reviews out of mothballs and re-purpose them here.

This one is from May 28th, 2014, as we close in on Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker…

It was back in 1973 that the beginnings of what would become Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith came to life, as George Lucas roughly mapped out the entire Star Wars saga without specifics four years before Episode IV would take the world by storm and create a cinematic legacy unlike perhaps any other before or since.

Much as the previous two prequels underwhelmed significantly from a creative standpoint, leaving many fans with a sense of caution going forward, few would deny Revenge of the Sith remained much anticipated. This was the story we had all been waiting for – forget the preamble and effectively set up of The Phantom Menace & Attack of the Clones, this would be where it all came together, Lucas ready to show us just how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader & the Galactic Empire rose from the ashes of the Jedi. How could such an epic tale three decades in the making fail? The good news is, well… on the whole it doesn’t.

Revenge of the Sith is by some distance the finest Star Wars prequel and though it can’t quite sit on a par with the original trilogy, it skirts close with a combination of epic visuals, narrative power and finer characterisation than the previous two movies combined.

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From the Vault #14: STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)

December 9, 2019 December 7, 2019 / By A J. Black / Leave a Comment

This one is from May 26th, 2014, as we close in on Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker…

Unlike the incredibly hyped, feverish release of The Phantom Menace three years earlier, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones loomed large with more a muted sense of expectation, a ‘new hope’ as it were that George Lucas might have learned a few lessons from the severe disappointment his first prequel in the planned trilogy turned out to be, due to cardboard dialogue, stiff acting, leaden plotting and a remarkable lack of fun.

Perhaps aware of his own shortcomings behind the typewriter, Lucas hired a young writer, Jonathan Hales, to help him pen this second instalment but in no uncertain terms, two heads were not better than one. Attack of the Clones desperately wants to be this trilogy’s The Empire Strikes Back – it’s immediately darker, it seeks to be edgier, it balances plot shenanigans with a central romance, and it builds to an ominous, open-ended conclusion. The only difference is that it’s a soul crushing experience to sit through until that end point – perhaps even more joyless than the previous movie, with only the barest hints of the chutzpah the original trilogy exhibited, and yet again a raft of immensely wooden performances by talented actors struggling with a script that is banal in the extreme.

Considering the promise of what could have been, it’s yet again another enormous clusterf*ck.

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From the Vault #13: STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

December 8, 2019 December 7, 2019 / By A J. Black / Leave a Comment

This one is from May 25th, 2014, as we close in on Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker…

In 1987, after a costly divorce settlement that undoubtedly dampened his enthusiasm for playing in a fictional universe, George Lucas unofficially cancelled his long-held plans to produce a prequel trilogy to Star Wars, his magnum opus & arguably the most iconic Hollywood movie franchise in cinematic history. It didn’t last long.

The technology Lucas felt wasn’t around to realise his grand vision for the series was becoming a reality thanks to leaps forward visible in such movies as Terminator 2: Judgment Day or Jurassic Park and by 1994, imagination forever burning to tell the story of how Anakin Skywalker became cinema’s most infamous villain, Darth Vader, he was writing what would ultimately become The Phantom Menace. To say ‘Episode I’ was anticipated would be an understatement – millions spent on marketing, thousands queuing for weeks outside cinemas for tickets, the press in a frenzy. Star Wars had struck such a chord from 1977 onwards that by 1999, as the internet was exploding into the household, fandom was at its expectant peak.

Think back… how old were you? What were you doing? And when you finally saw The Phantom Menace, did you wonder why you’d spent so long excited?

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Avengers: Endgame (2019)

April 26, 2019 April 26, 2019 / By A J. Black / 2 Comments

“Part of the journey is the end” says Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark at a key point in Avengers: Endgame, a phrase which could neatly punctuate Marvel Studios’ remarkable conclusion to the first era of their Cinematic Universe.

Endgame is a staggering achievement. It is, without question, *the* biggest superhero movie ever made. It makes last years Infinity War look, at times, like an indie movie. Okay, that’s a bit of an over-exaggeration, but there is one sequence in particular toward the climax of Endgame which is just, quite frankly, jaw-dropping in its ambition and scale. It was one of several moments over the next few minutes which had the audience in my screening cheering, whooping and gasping in joy, surprise and the impact of what Endgame provides, and provides in absolute spades: payoff. Payoff to ten years of narrative and character investment from an audience which has grown, some who have grown *up*, with the Avengers.

It therefore comes as a surprise to report that Endgame, on first blush, is not as solid or accomplished a piece of cinema as Infinity War, or Avengers Assemble, or Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok and certainly the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It easily dwarfs every single MCU movie to date in scope, without a shadow of a doubt, but by its very nature there are structural issues, and problems with certain beats of characterisation, which are going to become more of a sticking point for critical fans once the euphoria and magic of Marvel’s fan service begins to wear off. This is a euphoria I share, by the way, right now, to the point I am itching to see Endgame again very soon.

Endgame is a film which, certain problems aside, will absolutely make you feel a whole range of emotions by the end. If you’re invested, this is a powerful experience.

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Annihilation (2018)

March 14, 2018 March 20, 2018 / By A J. Black / 2 Comments

Amidst the online furore around the release of Annihilation, there’s a worry the film itself could well get lost in the haze, which would be unfortunate. Alex Garland once again, with this adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, proves himself a growing allegorical auteur.

Garland first found fame of course as the scribe behind Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, a stripped back, British take on the zombie genre popularised originally by George A. Romero. Garland has always been interested in dystopian surroundings, whether in a post-apocalyptic future where a deadly virus has ran amok, a corporation-fuelled, oily near future crime saga (in Dredd, which star Karl Urban just this week claimed Garland ghost-directed), or his previous, much-celebrated picture Ex Machina, which tackled the thorny subject of artificial intelligence and sexuality, helping to make stars of Oscar Isaac, Domnhall Gleeson and Alicia Vikander in the process. These are films using an often disturbing future-lens to reflect anxieties of our time. He’d be very at home in the company of Black Mirror.

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