Rian Johnson wrote and directed Knives Out, which I also caught in the cinema before lockdown. This is a crime mystery about the death of a crime mystery writer, and Rian the writer payed all due homage to the genre, especially in its ‘Big House Murder plus Enigmatic Crime Consultant’ style. A Big House with a Big Cast and complex plot a la Agatha Christie, but when did you actually care about any of her characters? Here you do, and that drives the tension. The 'Rev' Doctor Mark Kermode (the BBC film critic to be found on iPlayer, Youtube and BBC sounds) says that if the cast of a movie are having fun when making it that often means that the audience won't when watching it. That is not the case here. Johnson loves playing with genres, and he does so with style. Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana De Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, don Johnson, Toni Collette and Christopher Plummer - along with relative newcomers Katherine Langford and Jaeden Martell) are obviously having a whale of a time bouncing off each other, and they let us share in the fun. I cannot think of an ensemble movie this good since A Fish Called Wanda (with of course Jamie Lee Curtis).
I like crime stories where the solution is as much to do with character as the clues, and we are given a rich stew of characters here.
You do not need to be a ‘crime thriller’ fan to enjoy this movie. If you like to see really good actors inhabiting a cast of interesting characters involves in a in a witty plot with a convincing and beautifully lit set, and a DVD print as sharp as the knives, craftily short and directed, then go for this.
I have used my time to revisit some older movies, thinking I might want to re-evaluate them, including Star Wars VIII; The Last Jedi. I know a lot of Star Wars fans (I am sure they have a brand name, like Trekkies, but I don’t know what it is) really didn't like this, some almost crying 'heresy!' I enjoyed the first three Star War’s movies but was underwhelmed by the next three. The new trilogy (and it spin-offs) renewed my interest, and when I learn that Rian Johnson was going to direct VIII I was really pleased.
I love Johnson’s movies, starting with 2005’s Brick, which he wrote for his friend Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Here comes a little diversion, but we will get back to The Last Jedi, I promise.
As a teenager Gordon-Levitt starred in the long-running TV series The Third Rock From The Sun playing Tommy Solomon, the oldest alien in the in the group of aliens, embodied as humans to observe us Earthings, but he inhabited the youngest body. When that ended he found it hard to get a sizable film role, being too much identified with that Tommy . He did star in the low budget Mysterious Skin, a brave choice, but that did not make much on an impact. Rian Johnson wrote Brick, first feature film, for his college mate Gordon-Levitt. It made twice as much at the box office and won a lot of awards and critical acclaim. Brick is a black and white film-noir, with all the expected 1940’s tropes and stock characters, but set on a contemporary US High School. Gordon-Levitt was brilliant as the fast-thinking, fast-talking young hero and Lucas Haas, another child actor famous for Witness, was the ‘villain’. If you don’t know Brick, it is worth chasing down - as is of course Witness.
Gordon-Levitt went on to make 500 Days of Summer, Inception, 50/50 and The Dark Knight Rises, in which there was a hint that he might be a new Robin, but I think that was just a Chris Nolan joke. Meanwhile Johnson wrote and made The Brothers Bloom, with Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, before Rian and Gordon came together again in Looper, with Gordon-Levitt starring alongside Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. That is a great movie, and a great performance from Gordon-Levitt as he plays a young version of Bruce Willis, who is also in the movie.
So, having enjoyed Rian Johnson’s fresh eye and original writing in Brick and Looper, I was keen to see what he did with Star Wars. It seems that George Lucas loved The Last Jedi, and asked Johnson to make three more ‘spin-off ‘movies. But a lot of fans did not like what he had done to tLuke Skywalker – namely kill him off. Critics were also divided, not over the quality of the script or the Direction, but over the liberties taken. I had no problem with that, and I loved the clarity about the parentage of Rey.
I had expected that in Star Wars style we would learn that she was the secret child of some Princess or General; a high born, and therefor able to ‘save the world’. I expected and hated that idea. The New Hope had given us a Black Stormtrooper and a ‘low born woman’ as our heroes, and they fit my anti-racist and republican preferences. And after all, the Rebels were citizens of the former Republic, so we might ask what Princesses were doing there in the first place? Sorry Leia. And the thing about The Force is that it is universal, not exclusive, so why cannot Rey access it, or by accessed by it, as a commoner – a normal human being ? So thank you Rian for your revelation in The Last Jedi that Rey was not ‘royal’, but simply and wonderfully like the rest of us, and that the time for the Jedi priesthood was over.
Mark Hamill was initially and publicly very unhappy about the script, with his smaller part and eventual demise, but when Rian told him that the title was going to The Last Jedi Hamill realised that he was The Last Jedi and embraced the movie. For those of you with a theological interest I have always believed that Jesus was what he claimed to be, ‘a Son of Man’ like the rest of us, not ‘The Son of God’ unlike the rest of us. If you are shocked by that suggestion I can tell you that there is a wholly respectable school of Christian scholarship behind it. I also believe that priests are just like everyone else too, which is why I did not and do not wear a clerical collar unless it is really necessary.
So; you may appreciate my dismay when along comes the royalist cavalry in The Rise of Skywalker, and we are told that Rey is in fact the grand-daughter of the Palpatine Emperor. He may have been a bastard, but at least he was an Emperor. Hierarchy rules, hurrah! Well not for me.
I notice that it took six men to write The Rise of Skywalker, headed up by Chris Terrio, who also wrote Justice League andBatman vs Superman; ‘nuff said? But at least the DC studio brought Wonder Woman in at the end of Batman vs Superman.
I know a lot of science fiction fans like binaries; black/white, good/bad, human/alien, android/human but many us do not go for such simplicities. Blade Runner was ambiguous, and that is why so many people did not like it in 1982. Maybe that is also why it is seen as seminal now. Rian Johnson does not go for binaries either, and that is why The Last Jedi is my favourite Star Wars movie since 1977.
Having really enjoyed David O. Russell’s The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle I thought I would go back to see his 1999 movie Three Kings again. George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Nora Dunn find themselves in Iraq at the end of the first Gulf War. They are sure there are fortunes and careers to be made as they launch on a desert Odyssey that is funny and violent, surreal and satirical, shocking and humane. I enjoyed it a lot more second time around.
I also looked at The Dark Knight Rises again. If you have followed my blog you will know how much I admire The Dark Knight, partly because of its exploration of some of the moral and ethical issues that exercise me. I wrote a critique and a parish study pack about it, which can be found below if you are interested. I also think it is of the best films of any genre made in the last 50 years, so the third part of the trilogy had a lot to live up to. Of course it didn’t, in my eyes. We had lost both Heath Ledger and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Tom Hardy and Marion Cotillard are very good of course, but. There are plenty of good things to appreciate in The Dark Knight Rises. It is, after all, a Jonathan and Christopher Nolan movie. I don’t think that Jonathan gets enough credit for their joint writing endeavours so I name-check him here. But I did watch Rises again, a little less in the shadow of its predecessor, and I enjoyed it a lot more. After all the narrative arc needed a resolution, and this one is neat – and of course ambiguous. Have I been clear that I really appreciate ambiguity?
I mention the 2016 movie Hidden Figures again because I see that NASA has named its Headquarter building in Washington D.C. after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American engineer at NASA part of a group of women whose story is told in that film. The NASA building is on the recently renamed ‘Hidden Figures Way’, a tribute to the movie and the black women who’s computational and engineering skills played such a great – but previously obscure – part in the early NASA manned Space program. Their achievements were recounted in Mary Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. The film followed in the same year, with Janet Monae playing Mary Jackson, Taraji P Henson as Katherine Johnson and Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan. In 2019 Mary Jackson was also posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
It says on the NASA website;
‘In 2017, then 99-year-old Katherine Johnson was there to personally dedicate a new state-of-the-art computer research facility that bears her name at Langley. Johnson, another original member of the West Area Computing Unit, also was honored as a trailblazer and given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. In addition, Johnson was part of the group honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, and NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, also bears Johnson’s name.
“NASA facilities across the country are named after people who dedicated their lives to push the frontiers of the aerospace industry. The nation is beginning to awaken to the greater need to honor the full diversity of people who helped pioneer our great nation. Over the years NASA has worked to honor the work of these Hidden Figures in various ways, including naming facilities, renaming streets and celebrating their legacy,” added Bridenstine. “We know there are many other people of color and diverse backgrounds who have contributed to our success, which is why we’re continuing the conversations started about a year ago with the agency’s Unity Campaign. NASA is dedicated to advancing diversity, and we will continue to take steps to do so.”
It's a good movie too.
