It´s Oscar season so i am currently watching films like it´s my job. Aka .the
best job.
Rocky got a 3nd chance at life (VI was also good after all) thanks to
Creed and i can see Sly winning an Oscar just for the Hollywood comeback narrative alone.
Tarantino´s
Hatefull 8 is on of his "slow films" and thus comparable to Jackie Brown (his "worst") / Kill Bill 2 / Death Proof and one of the few with proper on screen gore.
The film is a (too) slow burn that truly explodes just before the 3rd act and it indeed feels like a stage play as promised. The film is a really solid B with amazing music by a western legend and genre fans/critics will love it but a true mass apples may be lost.
Season 2 of
Fargo pulled a reverse True Detective by being better than the first and i could go on but they will be overshadowed by
Star Wars: The Force Awakens anyway so on to my 9/10 IMDB review:
Jar Jar Abrams reignited the ForceI had hight hopes due to the perfectly picked director (Star Trek into Dumbness was a rare fluke though) and Disney´s carefully crafted new continuity and they succeeded by giving me the first good Star Wars movie since 1983 and even the best one since 1980.
TFA may not be a perfect film and it relies heavily on the structure of IV and V but isn´t this what we all wanted to re-introduce the cinematic arm of the franchise? The film looks like the original trilogy, sounds like it and most importantly
feels like it as it re-mystified the titular Force. Especially due to the Force Vision in the exact middle of the film which i consider the best sequence featured. The film even tried it´s best to respect the now thankfully dead Extended Universe and it also looks forward the future by introducing new cinematic techniques and narrative content to the franchise. Chief among them is the villain Kylo Ren who exceeded my lofty expectation by becoming a worthy follow up to Darth Vader. Or should i say an inversion as he turned out to be Anakin Skywalker done right!
I was glued to the screen every time he showed up and the film ended up being less predictable than expected. The other clear highlight is Harrison Ford who returned to form for the first time in 2 decades. The film is even very progressive by having a female protagonist who´s gender is a non-issue, a vulnerable black man as a deuteragonist and it also easily passes the Bechdel-Test so we now have empirical proof that such films can make money. Eh Hollywood? Rey is ironically the new character i cared about the "least" as the film is only a setup for her Joseph Campbell-esque journey but i still like her a lot.
The film is the funniest of them all too (who knew that C-3PO can actually be funny?) despite being the darkest but the humor should have been assigned to less characters and there is even an equally useless female counterpart to Boba Fett. There are actually a lot of villains in the film which lead to a well developed sense of danger due to an even stronger themes of fascism and the film may be slightly overstuffed in general but i have no idea how the scriptwriters could have stepped up their game as the deck was stacked up against them no matter what. ILM is destined to win awards for the mesmerizing effects but i suspect they won´t be the only aspects of the films to gain acclaim due to the overwhelming positive reception form all audiences and the 2 hours flew by.
My biggest takeaway is that the seasoned team behind VII managed to bring back the excitement and most importantly the magic so it wish it luck on it´s journey to topple the very enjoyable Avatar. VIII will be guided by a Breaking Bad veteran and Rogue One is intriguing due to the premise alone so Disney´s very own MCU finally got some competition. Battlefront is lastly fun, Rebels is an outright hit and so are the comics and a lot of the books so i commit no hyperbole by stating that the Disney acquisition managed to save Star Wars from creatively collapsing on itself.
May the Schwartz be with you Disney!Last edited by residentgrigo at 8:20 am, Jan 8 2016________________
I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters,
My ANN-Lists + Imdb
I mean, it's by Guillermo Del Toro, I didn't even watched the trailer. It was pretty, like a dark fairytale. Mia Wasikowski is there too, serious as always, I wonder if she has a light side to her. Hahaha 
)