Sknydpr

It honestly boggles my mind how I kept reading about how this movie was bombing at the box office, when it clearly was very poorly marketed. It was two weeks after its "wide" release before it finally showed up to our local art house/second run movie theater. The chain multiplexes gave it a complete miss.

Mike Flanagan is a very talented screenwriter and director and this was possibly Stephen King's most sentimental work. And there's two INCREDIBLE dance scenes. The result is completely human, uplifting film.

There is some anxiety inducing story in the start of the film, but it is not a horror film by any measure. King is also very good with general fiction too, after all.

This movie will stick with you for awhile. Hours after my viewing, I was still thinking about it (and tearing up.)

It's worth seeing, but don't go to any extraordinary lengths to do so.

Let me get straight to the point. This film was no better than Attack of the Clones. I have to question the sanity of anyone who has said this is the best one since Empire and there's nothing to question for those who've said it was the best of the series.

Hayden Christenson still cannot emote anything more than a generally perturbed condition. Natalie Portman, who I admire, even seems to have been asleep for most of the shooting. The dialogue was absolutely horrible in spots, the low point of which was the fully-costumed Darth Vader shaking his cybernetic arms and screaming "Nooooooooooooo!" in his grief. I'm sorry, is this Star Wars or Days of Our Lives? There was some clunky dialogue in the originals too, but nothing to that degree. I was also completely unconvinced by Anakin's switch to the Dark side; there was very little hesitation for someone to turn his back on the people who'd rescued him from servitude and been his family for several years.

Basically, this is 2 1/4 hours of some pretty spiffy CGI and Yoda kicking some serious butt. Episodes 1, 2, and 3 are interesting for filling in the back story for the originals (when they're not contradicting them), but none are in the same league. If any of the three had been issued as a stand-alone original, there'd probably have never been another one made, let alone five.