Star Wars Episode 2 Attack of the Clones (2002) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson

*½

By Alan Bacchus

I can’t think of a worse piece of dreck foisted upon the pop culture annals with bigger hype and anticipation than Attack of the Clones, George Lucas’s second (or 5th depending on how you number these things) chapter in the Star Wars saga. A teenaged Anakin Skywalker struts his stuff as a Jedi-in-training caught up in a political power struggle in the galaxy far, far away, with strings pulled by some nefarious clandestine omni-being.

To give it credit, the story is plotted out sharply. Lucas’s desire to create a nebulous cloud of evil, pulling the strings on both the galactic Senate and the business-oriented Trade Federation, deepens the big picture world of Star Wars more than the first series ever did. In the first three pictures we knew only a few planets and only a few characters. And the movements of the characters themselves occupied a very short time span and were in contained spaces. Here, characters move and make decisions all around the galaxy involving complex plotting that surprisingly holds itself together.

With that said, Lucas’s tin ear for dialogue was never more off key. Everyone seems to be sleeping through this picture, especially Ewan McGregor, who looks exhausted at playing the increasingly useless character Obi Wan Kenobi. Take the opening dialogue scene introducing an older Anakin Skywalker to the audience. They’re riding an elevator up to Senator Amidala’s quarters bantering about their past battles with 'humorous' lines like, “I haven't felt you this tense since we fell into that nest of gundarks.” Unfortunately, McGregor just can’t fake the ridiculousness of the attempted comic exchange.

It’s also an uneventful debut for Hayden Christensen, who speaks in a whiney cadence from the back of his mouth and with a Marlon Brando mumble. The romantic exchanges offer the most laughable moments in the entire series, specifically Anakin’s lakeside confessions expressing his love for the softness of Padme’s skin. And the groundwork of Anakin’s future conversion to the Dark Side is laid with the grace of a jack hammer.

It was a bold move by Mr. Lucas to shoot the film digitally, one of the first major mainstream films to do so. For the most part it’s indistinguishable from film, offering us some remarkably pristine and robust imagery. That said, Lucas further demonstrated his disdain (or laziness) with physical production by shooting almost everything on a soundstage in front of a green screen. His hubris in thinking that his other baby, ILM, could render special effects, background landscape and everything else in the frame with a computer and pass it off as real is completely off base.

For example, there’s a shot early on during a running chase between Anakin and a mysterious assassin who tried to kill Amidala. We see Hayden Christensen running across the neon streaking cityscape dodging pedestrians in order to keep up with his assailant. Unfortunately, the crop lines around the actor’s body and the awkward and inconsistent motion of the actors within the space tell us this is not a real space, but a puzzle of separately shot elements cropped together on a computer. In the original films Lucas used motion controlled cameras to link elements together, an effect that still looks realistic today because he used real tangible objects shot with his camera.

Without the anchor of real objects in the frame (other than the actors), most of the action in this film is a swash of colours and light, which fails to stimulate us or at least move us emotionally. The final act, featuring the Jedi battle in the arena, is incomprehensible and over-produced. The only two scenes to keep from this entire film are Obi Wan’s fight with Jango Fett in the rain and the final double-Jedi match against Count Dooku. Both scenes are exciting because of the simplicity of the choreography in the Dooku battle and the real-life rain falling on the actors in the Obi Wan/Fett scene. Again, these are physical effects that the audience can innately feel are real.

I don’t think I’m off base to say it’s the tangibility of this new Star Wars world that is the greatest loss of the series.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Jake Lloyd, Natalie Portman

***

By Alan Bacchus

Yeah, I don’t hate this movie, and sure it’s a slight disappointment, especially when compared to the first and second original films. But The Phantom Menace successfully puts us back in the tone, style and pacing of the original series, however cartoonish and wooden most of these new characters are.

Like everyone, my expectations were high. Not only for the return of the characters I grew up with and loved, but more for George Lucas’s return to the directing chair – the first film he directed since Star Wars (1977). Unfortunately, it’s marred by a strong feeling of laziness on his part. But more on that later.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The main reason this film succeeds is Liam Neeson, the guiding force (pun not intended) of this movie. He’s a commanding physical presence, which lines up perfectly with the powerful and Zen-like existence of the Jedi knights. I’d argue that it’s the best performance by any actor in a Star Wars film.

Lucas also sets up a strong political plot, laying the seeds for the eventual takeover of the galaxy by the evil Emperor whom we got to know only briefly in Return of the Jedi. While in the previous films the journey we’re taken on is a relatively simple trajectory from the point of view of a naïve country boy-turned fearless Jedi Knight, these new films, based on Phantom Menace, promised a complex chess games of sorts.

The character of the Phantom Menace, as referred to in the title, unfortunately fails to provide any tease or mystery. The man under the hologram cloak looks and sounds exactly like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, who looks and sounds exactly like Senator Palpatine, the wily seat-filler who engineers most of the action. By the time Revenge of the Sith comes around there’s almost nothing to reveal.

The laziness referenced above is the over-reliance on computer special effects, which moves beyond a mere technical aid and overwhelms the drama. Lucas accomplished some remarkable achievements in technology, but he also pushed it so far as to show its seams. Most of everything in this picture is shot on a green screen soundstage, a process which is more invisible to its technique than ever before. But it’s still not 100% photorealistic. Unfortunately, our human eye can tell even the slightest variance from reality, thus creating a barrier between us and the characters on the screen.

Lucas also overpopulates this film with non-human characters, seemingly caused by this same overconfidence in the technology. He did the same thing with Return of the Jedi, using more alien creatures as main characters than in Star Wars or Empire. Unfortunately, in any of these films the best characters are always the human ones. Yoda might be the exception, but he was operated as a physical hand puppet by the great Frank Oz. In these new episodes much is lost in the transition from human to puppet to CG. As such, Jar Jar Binks, Anakin’s Tatooine slave master Watto and the Japanese nose-less Trade Federation boob Nute Gunray are ineffectual supporting characters that can’t match the heart or soul of human actors.

That said, Lucas has also crafted what is arguably his best villain, Darth Maul, the red-faced acrobatic Sith warrior who looks absolutely menacing with his Maoris-style face makeup and snarling teeth. Lucas is smart to tease us with Darth Maul's abilities until the film’s absolute best scene at the end (and probably the best scene in the entire 6-film series), that is the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Maul lightsaber battle. This trump card, which he keeps in his pocket until the last 20 minutes, is enough to make up for any ill-feelings from Jar Jar, the over-reliance on CG effects and the usually stiff human acting.

Star Wars (1977) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness

****

By Alan Bacchus

I can’t believe it either. I’ve been running this blog for almost 5 years and this is the first time I’m discussing Star Wars. While the mixed results of the three newest films and the general over-analysis of the entire Star Wars world threatened to tarnish the reputation of this film, the original 1977 Star Wars is still a magnificent piece of entertainment - it's simply untouchable. Back then it was a risky venture for George Lucas, who, like a true artist, threw caution to the wind for the sake of his vision – that is, a popcorn movie space opera told with the deep emotional resonance of classical mythology, but with the gleeful attitude of the hokey sci-fi serials of the '50s.

Sure, the elaborate costumes, creatures, special effects and cool lightsabers command our attention, but let’s not look past the stunning visual design and visual compositions from Lucas’s superb cinematic eye. Back then George Lucas was an inspired filmmaker. His previous two pictures, THX 1138 and American Graffiti, were stylistically and aesthetically different, but both were pinnacles of perfection with regard to composition. To clarify, by composition I mean the placement of the camera to frame a shot and the arrangement of characters, background, props and other set decorations within that shot to convey meaning and emotion. Whatever deficiencies Lucas has with dialogue and directing actors he makes up for in pathos, emotion and drama within his frames.

In Star Wars, his compositions are David Lean-epic. The opening shot, of course, which starts on the small passenger ship, slowly revealing the gargantuan Imperial destroyer chasing them down echoes Stanley Kubrick’s epic reveal of his spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in Star Wars, the juxtaposition of the tiny rebel ship against the giant ship behind it conveys the good vs. evil battle that will rage on for the entire series.

This expression of theme through composition returns at the midpoint of the film when Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon gets sucked into the Death Star by the tractor beam. Lucas uses a David and Goliath metaphor with the enormous gaping mouth of the Death Star over and above the tiny Falcon slowly creeping into the frame.

Another one of my favourite scenes is the Obi Wan/Darth Vader lightsaber fight. It's a monumental battle of jedis and old rivals from years past in one final dual. The fight plays out in a frame-within-a-frame against the magnificent backdrop of the Death Star docking bay. While the actual choreography of action is rudimentary compared to the later battles in the subsequent movies, the stakes and drama of the battle complemented by Lucas's superb composition and direction of the scene equal anything else in the series.

On the pristine and unbelievably perfect Blu-ray transfers, Lucas's magnificent use of light within his frames sparkles as much as any of the recent movies. The interior design of the Death Star, for instance, is filled with source lights embedded into the walls, roof and floor. And the reflective surfaces of Darth Vader’s helmet or the shiny Death Star flooring are no accident either. This is production value and polish (literally) from what was a comparative medium-to-low budget made to look many times more expensive than it was.

And lastly, the lightsabers themselves, which we take for granted now because they're so ingrained in our popular culture, must have been monumentally cool when seen on the big screen for the first time. The bright red and blue glowing swords are still mesmerizing to watch on screen no matter when they’re used.

The ability and courage of George Lucas to boldly stand his real actors up against enlarged puppets and other outrageous Halloween-style costuming with complete seriousness can not be taken for granted. Under anyone else's watch, other than say Mr. Spielberg, who was also at the top of his game then, Star Wars would likely have been a complete failure. Thank God it wasn’t.

Star Wars is available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

American Graffiti (1973) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Charles Martin Smith, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark

****

By Alan Bacchus

What a remarkable trio of films directed by George Lucas in the 1970s. THX 1138, his first, though not commercially successful, is a magnificent low budget production in experimental science fiction. Star Wars, of course, was his third in 1977, and requires no explanation (yet). And in the middle stands American Graffiti, which was then one of the highest grossing and most profitable films ever made, as well as a multiple Academy Award nominee. These are three markedly different films in genre, subject matter and tone, but all still recognizable as Lucas’s unique vision. Sadly, he wouldn't direct a film of his own again until he started doing Star Wars prequels in the 2000s. But before 1977, Lucas was arguably the most exciting filmmaker of the 1970s.

In American Graffiti, George Lucas rewinds us to the early 1960s to an unnamed suburban town in Northern California where, under the warm dusk and night skies, teenagers cruised the streets as the primary form of socialization and courtship. Perhaps influenced by the seminal ensemble film by Federico Fellini, I Vitteloni (1951), Lucas follows four male friends over the course of one night on the last day of summer before everyone splits and goes away to college.

There’s Curt (Dreyfuss), a smart but conflicted young man torn between going to college to fulfill his parents’ dreams and prolonging this significant time of one’s youth. Ron Howard is Steve, the popular all-American kid who can’t wait to experience college life but needs to dump his girlfriend first. Terry (Martin Smith) is the meek nerd who still has one more year left in high school and gets the surprise of his life when Steve offers up his revered '58 Chevy Impala to use while he's away. John Milner (Paul Le Mat) has already graduated but never went to college. Instead, he stuck around to work as a mechanic riding the coattails of his former glory as a high school A-lister.

Each of the separate stories of these characters produces remarkably profound emotions of our own youth. Even today, which is much different than 1960 and 1973, the feeling that each of Lucas’s characters experiences about this moment between childhood and adulthood is so identifiable and strong.

While Lucas equally distributes his running time to the other characters, he seems to identify most with Richard Dreyfuss’s conflicted Curt. Dreyfuss’s quiet but powerful performance is magnificent, representing Lucas's window through which we can look back at our own youth. On numerous occasions he has to tell his friends that he’s questioning whether he’s actually going to leave the next day for college. And each time Dreyfuss looks away or hesitates in his dialogue it produces an emotional reaction for the audience.

Just as profound as the emotional journey for these characters is the look, sound and feel of Lucas’s vision. Watch carefully and notice the consistency in his compositions and his use of light across the three aforementioned films. Look at the magnificent reflections off his muscle cars cruising the night streets, an effective cue that reminds us of the play of light off Darth Vader’s black helmet in Star Wars or the faceless policemen in THX 1138. Ironically, the film doesn’t have a credited Director of Photography. Instead, Lucas used two separate cameramen under the guidance of ‘visual consultant’ Haskell Wexler.

It might be an overused term, but American Graffiti truly is a timeless film, invisible to age and impossible to forget. It’s one part of the remarkable legacy of influential and inspired films from George Lucas in the 1970s. Damn I miss him.

American Graffiti is available on Blu-ray from Universal Home Entertainment.

THX 1138 (1971) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Robert Duvall, Maggie McOmie, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Sid Haig

****

By Alan Bacchus

Oh George Lucas, what happened? What happened? Let’s look back at who was once one of the most exciting, ambitious, cutting edge Hollywood filmmakers. This first film from George Lucas, an expansion on his revered student short film, is an amazing piece of cinema. Intially dismissed by both critics and audiences, I think, has finally gained its due appreciation.

The film's lasting power and legacy is not just because of the success of Star Wars, nor the fact that its central theme of human nature breaking away from the consumer-driven soul-crushing authority and uniformity has been retold in numerous science fiction films since (Gattaca, Truman Show, Moon, Matrix), but because 40 odd years later, other than the youth of Robert Duvall, and maybe the cars used in the final car chase, it’s almost invisible to time.

THX 1138 has the hallmarks of a young ambitious director, trying to tell stories with big themes, and with a fuck-you auteur attitude which at the time was wholly against the aesthetic mainstream. The existential Orwellian themes existed in literature, but not so much in cinema. The success of the trippy art house sci-fyer 2001: A Space Odyssey definitely helped this get greenlit, but it was also the 70's when filmmakers were challenging just about everything we thought about Hollywood filmmaking.

We don’t know much of where the film takes place, who the characters are that we are following, or how they got there. All we know is that a drone named THX (Robert Duvall) is one of seemingly thousands, maybe millions of drone-like workers who have shaved heads, wear all white and make robots using remote controlled joysticks. Are they captives or slaves? We don’t even see their leaders, only their expressionless voices over the omniscient sound system, beating into their heads about efficiency and cost saving. The only semblance of authority are the mysterious giant silver faced robot policemen who roam the hallways of this underground world.

THX's enabler is his roommate LUH (Maggie McOmie) who secretly changes his drug supply which releases him from his submissive state. It also releases their suppressed carnal lust resulting in some very satisfactory lovemaking. The police are watching though and immediately arrest him and place him in a very cooky prison cell/asylum consisting of an all-white infinity. With the help of a giant black man SRT (Don Pedro Colley), who may or may not be a hollogram, THX escapes eventually climbing up out of his underground prison into the real world.

For Star Wars fans it's fun to see elements of design in the visual makeup of this film which would appear in his 1977 film. The robot policemen of course, look like C3PO in a cop’s outfit and there’s a regilious undercurrent whose followers or priests wear jesuit-like cloaks like Obi-Wan Kenobi or the Jawas.

Also look for a consistency in Lucas' supremely acute eye for composition, a style which moves from this film through American Graffiti and Star Wars. Lucas almost exclusively shoots this film with long lenses which crushes the background, removes all the depth from the frame and creates a voyeur effect. As a a result when the camera is on one his characters, it’s difficult to see around his or her space. And so it’s Lucas’s own editing which pieces together this unique and fucked up world. When Lucas takes us outside the whiteness of the workplace and domicile he jumps to extremely wide lenses showcasing the inventive locations used to visualize the outside world. Lucas manages to make regular parking lots, carefully chosen modernist architecture of the 60’s and the yet unfinished Bay Area Rapid Transit system look like hundreds of years into the future. And so, remarkably, without much artificiality, it’s the visual design of these simple compositions shot with these specific lenses that transport us into the future.

To reinforce his themes of dehumanization Lucas’s close-ups of flashing cursors, read out screens, flipping analog numbers most of which are meaningless and not narratively significant, serve to beat us and the characters down with the overly scientific and calculated nature of this near future existences. This penchant for numbers would even bleed into his screenplay for Star Wars, naming many of his characters, solely as numbers – C3PO and R2D2 for instance.

After the very purposeful pacing of the first two thirds, the dramatic escape by THX and his compatriot SRT (Don Pedro Colley), increases the pace leading up to a stunning final car chase. Of course, we all know Lucas’ penchant for cars through is second feature American Graffiti, but watch how the combination of sound and the visual juxtaposition of THX’s rickety racecar with the elegant stealth of the two policemen on motorcycle resembles the feeling of Darth Vader’s tie-fighter chasing Luke Skywalker’s X-wing fight in the final assault on the Death Star.

Unfortunately after three great films (incl Graffiti and Star Wars) Lucas lost the directing bug and stopped directing movies. Perhaps his creative juices burnt out after three pictures. Certainly from reading and listening to interviews he never really liked the actual the process of production – which helps explain why his new Star Wars films were more computer generated than actual filming and working with actors. It’s a shame because despite little dialogue there’s some great performances in THX 1138 and American Graffiti.

THX 1138 is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video. Of course it's the director's cut which contains added CG effects, which like the original Star Wars, was really unnecessary, as the original stands tall on its own.

Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith (2005) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Hayden Christensen, Ewan MacGregor

**1/2

I think we all tried really hard to love the last chapter of the new Star Wars series. The audience and critics for the first time watched the film in the context of the new series and not the old films from the 70’s/80’s. We all knew it was never going to be like it was – both in our nostalgic memories and in objective history. The result was the best critical and audience reaction of all the prequels. But in the context of watching the film a couple years after its initial release “Star Wars Episode III” is pretty good but still a sub-par effort and an average film at best.

The film begins with the usual magnificent music sting of John Williams starting the opening crawl. I still get exciting watching any of those crawls. The first scene starts with, believe it or not, a CG-generated “long take” following Obi Wan and Anakin’s spaceships penetrating a large-scale space battle. The two Jedis infiltrate the command ship of General Grievous - the spider-like leader of the droid army - and rescue the kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). During the rescue Anakin and Obi Wan once again face off against the evil Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). Anakin exacts revenge for their defeat in part II by cutting off Dooku’s hands and then scissoring off his head with aggressive anger.

The film proceeds by continuing the plot threads of part II. The Chancellor, who is disguised as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, is politically pulling the strings from both sides of the Clone vs. Droid War in order to solidify his own power. Meanwhile Yoda (Frank Oz), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and the rest of the Jedi Council fear the dissolution of the intergalactic Republic order, but seem unable to stop it. Anakin’s quiet relationship with Padme (Natalie Portman) has resulted in her being pregnant. But when Anakin starts having premonitions of her death during childbirth he seeks answers beyond the zen-like live-and-let-live Jedi ways. Anakin is broken and vulnerable and eventually succumbs to Palpatine/Sidious’ coercion to the dark side. It all sets up a final battle between old friends Anakin and Obi Wan to save the galaxy from being taken over by the Sith.

Over the course of the three films it became clear Lucas wanted to link up every aspect of the old series from the new series. Like a checklist every line of dialogue from the backstories of episodes 4-6 is referenced or cleared. Where did Leia get her last name, why don’t C3PO and R2D2 remember the events of the past, how come the Emperor is deformed, why is Darth Vader taller than Anakin Skywalker etc etc. We even see a computer generated Peter Cushing, in death, reprising his role as Grand Moff Tarkin (from the 1977 film). Lucas also cleverly completes the arc of the visual design of the series. The costumes, vehicles, props, and landscapes of the film are closer to the 1977 film than the 1999 film. There’s a scene early on when Ewan MacGregor and Hayden Christensen are in an elevator aboard General Grievous’s ship that remarkably resembles Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford aboard the Death Star in the 1977 film. The similarity in colour and design of the sets in both films are uncanny. Unfortunately scenes like this are few in far between in “Revenge of the Sith”, which brings me to my main concern with the film.

If Lucas really wanted to link up with the 1977 he would have shot it with real sets and minimized his CG effects. Lucas is clearly in love with his toys and needlessly goes so over-the-top to the point of making the film look more like “Shrek” than “Star Wars”. At one point Obi Wan is riding a lizard-beast-like creature chasing Grievous who’s riding a giant cylindrical buzzsaw. They traverse all kinds of terrain before mutually crashing at a landing port. The movement of the camera, actors and vehicles were so out of the realm of the physical possibility it took me out of not just the film, but the Star Wars-world as a whole. By teasing us with a couple of scenes of ‘real life’/non-blue screen sets we briefly had a flash of how good this last film could have been.

I haven’t gotten started on the atrocious acting, the on-the-nose dialogue and bad casting, but that’s never been the point of “Star Wars”. To give the film some credit, there’s a dozen action set pieces, some of which are astounding, some are pathetically overwrought. The highlight is the magnificent battle between the short but venerable Yoda and the deformed and whiny Emperor. Watching them both tear up the intergalactic House of Parliament was beautiful stuff. As well, Lucas’ handling of Anakin’s turn to the dark side surprised me with its careful patience.

Having reflected on the three prequels, and even taking Jar Jar Binks into account, “The Phantom Menace” is probably still my favourite of three. It’s a close call, but it was the least removed from the first series, it features the best performance of the prequels (Liam Neeson) and still has the best scene of all the prequels – the Darth Maul fight.

It’s ironic, but the reason I like the original films better than the prequels is because back in the day George Lucas had constraints – constraints of time, money, and technological tools etc. Lucas given carte blanche, unrestrained by a studio, to put whatever was in his mind onto screen, resulted in a bloated exercise in unabated ego. He tried to give us what we wanted but instead gave us to much of a good thing. Enjoy.

Buy it here: Star Wars - Episode III, Revenge of the Sith (Widescreen Edition)

American Graffiti (1973) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Candy Clark

***1/2

Remember when George Lucas was a good filmmaker? Seems like so long ago. Let’s go back to “American Graffiti”, Lucas’s second directorial effort, an ensemble nostalgia film about growing up in the early 1960’s. Graffiti started the successful careers of many of its stars including Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfus, and Ron Howard. It was a personal film about Lucas’s youth and the passion that went into making it is visible on screen. It’s a terrific film that stands up to most of the “Star Wars” films.

The year is 1962 in suburban California. The film takes place over one night and follows a group of recently graduated high schoolers for one last romp before they each head their separate ways. Much of the action happens in around the precious cars that the kids drive up and down the main drag. A high school dance is worked into the mix where Steve and Laurie (played by soon to be ‘Happy Days’ costars, Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) are on the brink of breaking up; Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfus) gets lost from the group and is taken on a wild ride with a group of local thugs led by the veteran heavy, Bo Hopkins; Terry The Toad (Charles Martin Smith) finds first love with Debbie Dunham (Candy Clark); and John Milner (Paul Le Mat) befriends a 13 year old who jumps into his hot rod car for an adventurous ride.

The metaphor of the transition from youth to adulthood is echoed in the setting. 1962 was two years before the British Invasion and before the psychedelic swinging 60’s. John Milner references the uncertain future when he says “music’s been going downhill since Buddy Holly died”. This somberness foreshadows the ending which comes as a tonal surprise. Innocence is behind Lucas’s characters and the future will never be same. “American Graffiti” then becomes the photo album of his generation.

Graffiti has the innate naturalism of an intensely personal or autobiographical film. Like “Mean Streets” or “Dazed and Confused”, or even “Fellini’s 8/12”. All these films have a natural organic flow that plays interrupted without obvious plotting or story beats. The beats are there, but with natural performances and dialogue we forget we’re manipulated by a story. That’s why the ending of “American Graffiti” resonates, because we actually get to know these characters as people.

At first glance, “American Graffiti” may not resemble “Star Wars” or “THX 1138” at all, but on close examination Lucas’s brilliant eye is always present. His static compositions are very similar to his other films, and the glowing and reflected lights of the street and the cars are a beautiful site. Its clear George Lucas knew how to frame a shot, how to edit and how to direct actors.

It’s a shame Lucas lost his touch. In the 80’s he obviously concentrated his efforts on producing, and forming ILM. It would have been nice to see what other films he could make without the mask of CGI of the new “Star Wars” films. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever know. Though we may have lost George Lucas forever to the dark side, I sure hope he has it in him to surprise me. Enjoy.

Buy it here: American Graffiti (Collector's Edition)