Reviews

Knives Out Review

by Theo Sloan

Reviews

February 17, 2020

Knives Out is director Rian Johnson’s fourth movie, and it is his first movie since Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi. It stars Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, Chris Evans as Ransom Robinson, and Ana de Armas as Marta. It also features many famous stars, such as Jamie Lee Curtis and Frank Oz, in smaller roles. Knives Out is a spectacular movie, one of the best of 2019, making talking about the good in this movie both fun and easy. Please note that I will not be discussing plot details in this review because I recommend seeing the movie if you have not already done so.

Knives Out is a murder mystery with a new twist. A classic murder mystery aims to have the audience guessing who the murderer is throughout the runtime, and while Knives Out does achieve that, it also has a second story that kicks in about halfway through the movie that almost overshadows the murder mystery itself. However, the murder mystery is fantastic and features some of the best twists and turns in any movie I have ever seen. This movie is amazingly well-written. The acting is also phenomenal. I praised Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley in The Rise of Skywalker, and I stand by that, but the acting here completely blows those performances out of the water. This movie features Ana de Armas in her biggest role yet, and she does a fantastic job. Daniel Craig is amazing as well, and Chris Evans proves that he is capable of more than the nice-guy Captain America role he has been playing for ten years. In addition, the score in this movie is fantastic. From the beginning of the long, uncut opening shot, the score instantly grabbed my attention and pulled me into the movie. 

Knives Out completely sucks its audience into the world it establishes and the story it tells. I consider these to be the most important attributes of a movie. From the opening frame to the closing shot, it had my full attention. It was at times dramatic, scary, intense, sad, funny, and victorious, and it never once pulled me out of the movie. Knives Out also features some biting social commentary. I am more open to political messages in movies than some people, but I acknowledge that it can sometimes feel forced or pretentious. However, this movie suffers from none of that. Its main point was that, regardless of their political views, the rich do not ever want their wealth taken away from them, and they will turn on anyone who tries to do that. Rian Johnson also manages to stick a little message about internet trolls into the movie, a group he dealt with after The Last Jedi proved to be the one of most controversial media of the 2010s. Knives Out is great, though I do have some nitpicky issues with it.

There are some characters played by fantastic actors who don’t get much screen time, and I wish some of them had a little more time to chew scenery because they are all so great, but this is an insignificant issue. The movie is essentially perfect. Knives Out is now available to stream and will be coming to DVD very soon. I highly recommend that you check it out.

9.5/10

Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker Review

by Theo Sloan

Reviews

January 23, 2020

Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker is Lucasfilms’ fifth Star Wars movie under Disney. It is directed by J.J. Abrams and stars Daisy Ridley as Rey and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. This movie has some truly great moments in it, though they are not enough to salvage its lack of creativity and jarring plot.

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are the absolute standouts of The Rise of Skywalker. Their chemistry is beyond amazing, and their connection provides the heart of the movie. The action sequences are also great. There are a couple of outstanding lightsaber duels, and Rey and Kylo Ren’s Force connection that has been established in The Last Jedi is used expertly to make some of the action sequences even better. In the beginning of the movie, there is a fantastic chase scene that shows lightspeed travel being used in a new and interesting way. There are multiple new Force powers as well that I really enjoyed seeing, just as I enjoyed seeing Luke’s ability to Force project in The Last Jedi. John Boyega and Oscar Isaac both return in this movie playing Finn and Poe, respectively, and their dynamic is very fun once again. Additionally, BB-8 is still really cute.

Moving on from the good elements in this movie, there are a few mixed aspects about The Rise of Skywalker that need to be addressed. Emperor Palpatine returns in The Rise of Skywalker, played once again by Ian McDiarmid. I take serious issue with this plot point, because I feel that it undercuts the victory in Return of the Jedi. It is also incredibly unbelievable that Palpatine could have done some of the things that he did without being detected. However, I think that Ian McDiarmid throws everything into this performance, and I have to give him credit for his performance, even though I don’t love every choice he has made with this character. Another shortcoming of the movie is that it follows a very similar story structure to Avengers: Endgame except without any time travel. Though I do not think it is fair to judge a movie for being too similar to another movie, and I get that they are both supposed to be epic finales to long sagas of movies, sometimes they feel so similar that it becomes a bit distracting. Unfortunately, everything else that I have to say about The Rise of Skywalker is negative.

The Rise of Skywalker is uncreative and safe. Besides Rey and Kylo Ren’s relationship, everything has been done before by another movie. For example, in the finale, the stakes are raised by making the Emperor have an entire fleet of Death Stars. This is now the fourth Star Wars movie to feature a Death Star that has to be destroyed, and it is tiresome. This movie also chooses to bring Palpatine back, another safe, uncreative decision made in this safe, uncreative movie. This choice uses one of my least favorite plot devices: claiming that something was going on behind the scenes in previous movies that the audience and the characters did not know about. In addition, there is too much unnecessary fan service. The most cringeworthy fan service occurs when Maz Kanata hands a medal to Chewbacca after the finale, which is a call back to the medal ceremony in A New Hope, in which he does not get a medal. This scene not only got an actual groan from the audience in the theatre, but it actually breaks Star Warscontinuity, because in one of Marvel’s Star Wars comic books — which are considered to be in continuity with the movies — it is explained that Chewbacca does not get a medal, because Wookiees don’t like medals. There are also an extreme number of cameos, which are distracting. Some actors who make cameos are Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Frank Oz, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen, and Billy Dee Williams. All of these actors have a cameo as their respective Jedi from the prequel trilogy, or in Billy Dee Williams’ case, as Lando Calrissian. Additionally, there is a lack of cohesion in terms of the sequel trilogy. This movie undoes almost everything that The Last Jedi has done both thematically and plotwise. The Last Jedi has a very clear message of “let the past die; kill it if you have to,” to quote Kylo Ren. Furthermore, The Last Jedi sets up Rey’s parents as being nobodies, includes a galaxy-wide slave revolt, teases a new order of Jedi, gives a big role to Rose Tico, and sets up Kylo Ren as the new leader of The First Order. Unfortunately, J.J. Abrams either ignores or actively undoes all of those things. It is extremely jarring to watch The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi — which flow together well enough — and then watch this completely fan-service ridden, convoluted mess of a movie.

Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker is a movie that has some great performances and passable comedy, but that is unfortunately not enough to save its messy plot, abundance of fan service, and undoing of The Last Jedi.

4.5/10

Black Odyssey Review

by Aditi Deokar

Opinion

May 18, 2019

On May 10th, 2019, I attended a performance of black odyssey, a play that runs from April 25th, 2019 to May 19th, 2019 in Central Square Theater. According to Central Square Theater’s website, “black odyssey melds together Greek mythology, African-American oral history and music in this visionary new take on Homer’s classic tale.”¹ It certainly accomplishes this mission through the contemporary themes that it melds with the themes in the Odyssey.

Ulysses Lincoln, an orphan in the streets of Boston, leaves to join the military in order to gain money for his new family. On the way, he kills a young one-eyed boy named Poly’famous who just happens to be the son of the sea god Paw Sidin. As Paw Sidin begins to win the great godly chess game that will determine Ulysses’s future, Ulysses is carried by the ocean through space and time and must meet his ancestors and learn his history so that he can accept the crime he has committed. Along the way, he meets characters such as Tiresius, Circe, and Calypso with an African-American and rap twist, and learns about African-American history. He comes home to a family still suffering that same discrimination through the prejudiced criminal justice system.

The story is easy to relate to with its casual raps about Boston that hide a much larger message.  Even after Ulysses is reunited with his family, there is much more progress to be made in this country before everyone is treated equally. I felt that I understood this part much better because of BUA’s All School Learning Experience last year about race and mass incarceration, and I think that any BUA student would enjoy seeing how the directors tied that together with the general plot of the Odyssey.

¹“Black Odyssey Boston,” Central Square Theater, accessed May 16, 2019, https://www.centralsquaretheater.org/shows/black-odyssey-boston.