Film review: Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker

It's another greatest hits package from the Disney/Lucasfilm factory. New characters doing the same thing. Kind of like "Home Alone 2" and 3.

It's the same, just bigger. We get a "I find your lack of faith disturbing," scene but instead of simply the officer getting strangled, he gets thrown into the ceiling. We get the little guy rises up against the big empire scene again, but instead of Ewoks, it's a kazillion little space ships; we also get Emperor Palpatine taunting the hero at his/her darkest moment, AGAIN with Palpatine.

I kept thinking of the commentary track on "The Phantom Menace" where a special effect guy is bragging about how they got a hundred ships passing by the window in the background of a scene, and I'm thinking, y'know, three ships would have been fine.

I'm a little disappointed, I really thought when Disney announced they'd wrap up the Star Wars trilogy of trilogies, they would have planned the whole thing out *before* the cameras started rolling. No, no, they just made it up as they went along with no forethought into foreshadowing or comprehensibility.

Film Review: Little Women

I walked in cold; I had never read the book, nor seen any of the semi-annually made remakes. And granted I should have expected a film entitled "Little Women" to be on the girly side .. but.. this was really really girly.

Would it have killed them to throw a bone to the men in the audience by including a car chase or an Infinity Gauntlet?

As it is it's the most beautifully filmed episode of "The Waltons" ever. Not that that's a bad thing.

Director Greta Gerwig shakes things up by bouncing back and forth in time, and the highlight is her meta ending in which she makes fun of a typical Hollywood ending while still using it. She has it both ways and it's pretty clever.

Beautiful cinematography, great acting, Meryl Streep! It's going to win a ton of Oscars, but when you boil it all down, it's a movie for girls.