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LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) in Movies

Jan 23, 2020

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

2016 | Action, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

8.3

(227 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

In this day and age, where Star Wars is beloved by so many, and more recently met with sighs and trepidation by just as many, it's a franchise that easily faces scrutiny.
We can look at both the prequel and sequel trilogies to plainly see that it doesn't take much to piss off Star Wars fans in one way or another.
The announcement of Rogue One was met with said scrutiny, some saying it wasn't needed, some feeling fatigued by the sheer amount of Star Wars being thrown at us, sentiments that I can understand.
But I truly believe that Rogue One was a surprising win, and I left the cinema feeling that it belonged up there with the top tier SW films, and my opinion hasn't budged on repeat viewings.

The story revolves around a rag tag group of mercenaries, smugglers, and outcasts, and how they managed to secure the Death Star plans that set off the events of A New Hope back in 1977.
The cast of heroes aren't fleshed out a huge deal, but were given enough backstory to understand them adequately and back their campaign against the Empire.
Just like TFA, it's great to have another female lead in the SW universe. Felicity Jones is likable enough as Jyn Erso, even if her character is a little on the vanilla side.
The duo of Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus (Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang) work great next to one another, and provide a lot of the films humour and emotional impact.
The droid K2-SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) is also a surprising highlight, his dry sense of humour works fantastically with the more serious tone of the movie.
We also have Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) which is the only character from the main group I struggled to like. He's written like a poor man's Han Solo, and I just didn't care about him at all, an aspect that can hopefully be rectified in the upcoming Disney+ series.
We also have Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera - a concrete connection to Star Wars: Rebels no less!, Mads Mikkelsen as Jyn's father Galen, and Ben Mendelsohn as this films villain, Orson Krennic.
It's a really strong cast if mostly enjoyable characters that earn their place in the SW pantheon.

In terms of cinematography, Star Wars has arguably never looked so good. Gorgeous and colourful locations like Scarif contrast against the classic Whit and greys of the original Empire design beautifully. All of the CG effects are more or less perfect, (with a huge exception that I'll get to in a second) and the action set pieces are thrilling. The whole final act is spectacular, and then just when it's seems like it's all over, we get THAT ending sequence - Gareth Edwards knows just the right amount of nostalgia to ensure the audience laps it up, and it's one of the best minutes of any Star Wars film ever.

The exception I mentioned above is of course going to be the subject of bringing back real actors from the dead. The inclusion of Grand Moff Tarkin makes sense in this particular narrative, but it does feel a bit odd seeing Peter Cushing, who died over 20 years ago, back on screen. Another cameo late on that includes a younger version of a legendary Star Wars character looks really off as well.
Overall though, these are just nit picks at an otherwise terrific sci-fi adventure.

Rogue One is bonafide great entry into the Star Wars canon, and its my personal favourite of the Disney era so far. Top stuff.

Kudos

Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

Michael Capuzzo

9.0 (2 Ratings) Rate It

Book

Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore...

RPGMP3 (211 KP) created a post in RPGs Rock

Apr 23, 2018

Played a DnD 5e one off over the weekend. It went reasonably well, we had a new player who enjoyed herself. My friend Glen, is in the process of converting a lot of the old Mystara content to 5e and wanted to test the balance of the adventure. The party consisted of a Variant Human Cleric of War (who worshipped Nob Nar, the Halfling god of adventure), a Gnome Wizard and a Phanaton (flying squirrel person) Rogue.

The adventure was called The Khan and the Duchess and started with the party working as caravan guards for a gnome caravan that gets attacked by Goblins. The party fared well in the attack and even recovered some of the stolen goods, drovers and guards from a nearby goblin camp. The sessions wrapped up with the party attending a high society social gathering with the caravan master as thanks.

There is more to come but we seem to be off to a good start. We used it as a way to do a streaming test for recording out tabletop games for future sessions and it seemed to work pretty well.

Looking forward to more playing, as I am most often found in the GMs chair.

Kudos

Ross (3284 KP) rated The Mummy (2017) in Movies

Mar 6, 2018 (Updated Mar 6, 2018)

The Mummy (2017)

2017 | Action, Adventure

5.1

(122 Ratings)

Movie Rating

I never fall asleep during films. I fell asleep.

The script and overall plot of this movie did not warrant big name actors like Cruise and Crowe. If anything, I think they played their parts badly and stopped a mediocre script from achieving the levels of mediocrity as a film. Cruise no longer has the charisma to play the cheeky, loveable rogue that this film needed (someone like hmmm Brendan Fraser) - that's not just saying what was needed to make it a decent remake of the "original", but what was needed for this script.
The plot relied on a number of stupid, illogical decisions by the main characters, and a lot of special effects. The aspects of the plot and the Mummy's mission which differed from the Fraser version were not well enough developed or explained to fully embed them in the plot - really, she just fancied Cruise?!
And the plot relied on too many coincidences, the discovery of the crusaders' tomb and the Mummy's tomb being almost exactly at the same time?! Really?!
And finally, the notion that there could be an area of London that is as-yet undiscovered and not covered in graffiti, human faeces and broken bottles is frankly ludicrous.