handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
A moviegoing pal of mine calls it ‘Disney goosebumps,’ the awestruck, think-I’m-gonna-cry feeling evoked when the alchemy works and image and music fuse with your imagination and longing to transport you to another world.
This is a geeky rehashing of The Phantom Menace, after a summer of six viewings of the movie and endless debates and discussions with other fans and friends in person and via e-mail, and in response to some of the criticism that has been aimed at the film by various folks online and off.
What can I possibly say about *Star Wars* that hasn’t already been said a hundred times? George Lucas’s modern fairy tale must be one of the most discussed, most analyzed films of the century…
Made on the cheap, *American Graffiti* has a timeless power that speaks to everyone who was ever a teenager.
Honestly, I’d pay cash money to see either Neeson or Ewan McGregor on his own read from the phone book, and the two of them together is almost too delicious to bear. His Obi-Wan unfortunately doesn’t have an awful lot to do, but McGregor wastes no opportunity to be brilliant, reigning in a young man’s impetuousness with a Jedi-in-training’s emotional control — that these two opposing forces are at war within him is clear throughout the film.
Of the original trailer, I wrote, “It’s like coming home to a place I’ve never been.” Just the snippets of the film we’re shown in the new trailer make that feeling all the stronger. The organic reality of Lucas’s imaginary universe appears not to be diminished by the abundant use of CGI — the rolling hills of green grass, the city on the cliffs we see as the trailer opens look as real as the faces of the actors. Their faces already seem like those of old friends.
A recent episode of Showtime’s Stargate SG-1 featured this delightful line: ‘We’re afraid you’re gonna dark side on us,’ one character says to another who’s under the sway of the enemy. The mythology of Star Wars has presented us with a new verb: ‘to dark side.’ I love it.
