End of Year MOVIE JOURNAL

[Chris Knipp]

STAR WARS: EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF STARWALKER (J.J. Abrams 2019). The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga - so at least this is meant to be the last Star Wars episode. Duty might have led me to see it anyway - though I've missed a majority of other ones - but I was curious to see Adam Driver, who I've become a fan of for his work over the last decade in "Girls" and with Baumbach, Jarmusch, Scorsese, and a lot of good directors, as Kylo Ren. The production mars his rough beauty by smoothing out its roughness with makeup and hair styling, but a lot of the time he's in a mask anyway. It was nice to see Richard E. Grant, who I'll always think of as Withnail (and so many disreputable cousins), picking up a nice fat paycheck as General Pryde. This episode has s very low critical rating, but some say those can go up substantially later. Only for fans though. There are some strikingly beautiful landscapes, with more use than usual of big objects in the foreground, possibly because they're so effective in 3D. i will now do my duty and watch Driver star in the earnest and significant The Report, out Nov. 15, but who saw it? Watched at Hilltop Dec. 21, 2019. Metascore 54%.