Tag: Daisy Ridley

We Bury The Dead, In Lest We Grieve

A restrained zombie drama led by Daisy Ridley, We Bury the Dead trades splatter for grief, memory, and moral unease, following a woman searching for closure on the edge of a disaster zone where the dead may not be fully gone.

We Bury the Dead Movie PosterVertical, Umbrella Entertainment
Mild Spoiler Alert

Daisy Ridley is an actress who’s selective about the roles she takes on. Whether she’s carrying the weight of the Skywalker name or stepping into something far more grounded, her presence brings a quiet gravitas that helps sell the story. In We Bury the Dead, she plays Eva, a woman suspended between grief and hope, unsure whether to mourn her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) or believe he might still be alive.

Mitch was working in Tasmania when an EMP device accidentally detonated. With communications crippled and information scarce, Eva fears the worst. As media coverage reveals the scale of the devastation and the number of lives lost, the only certainty she has is uncertainty.

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How The Inventor (2023) Seeks to Change the World, A Movie Review

Leonardo da Vinci’s life has been retold countless times from various perspectives, and not all of them are as charming and magical as this take, simply titled The Inventor!

The Inventor (2023) Movie PosterSherry Media Group
Now on VOD (Amazon Prime link) and DVD

Nearly everything you want to know but were afraid to ask about the last decades of Leonardo da Vinci’s life is charmingly examined in the stop-motion masterpiece, The Inventor. I couldn’t spot anything that’s worth critiquing on since it’s so perfect in keeping me entertained. Not only does it have an internal rhythm like a nursery rhyme to entertain kids, but also just most of his diagrams and art gets blended in are very dreamlike.

Its whimsical style is as eye-catching as a Cartoon Saloon movie, and without Stephen Fry, I’d probably pass on viewing it. He knows how to keep an audience engaged and is no stranger to providing character voices. When considering his huge resume (which includes The Canterville Ghost), he’s just everywhere, delighting audiences with his performances. The plot, if there is one, really concerns how The Maestro managed to stay out of trouble. Although this movie doesn’t recount his early life, just where it comes in is at the height of his desire to reform Western Civilization.

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Unanswered Questions (Still Exists) After The Rise of Skywalker

Image result for rise of skywalker posterBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Mild Spoiler Alert!

This weekend, all eyes are on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. This chapter is a mystery because nobody but writers J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio knows what this tagline really means. Delivering freedom across the galaxy against the tyrannical First Order now led by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) requires more than the Resistance making the last stand. Anyone looking at the Wikipedia for a summary will get the movie spoiled big time. Don’t look.

Speculation included the rise of a new order of Force users or introducing a new individual who is either a lost Skywalker or a random individual just as powerful with this mystical art. The last film by Rian Johnson is special in that regard. It put the power to the everyman. Ray was a Nobody. Her heritage did not matter. The final frame showed a very young boy having the power too, and hope will always lie with a new generation.

Speculation on who Ray is the daughter of is rampant because part of the fandom wants closure. I had other expectations and am still left scratching my head because of a few oddball moments.

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Which Stars Shine Bright in The Last Jedi?

The trailers and opening scroll in The Last Jedi reveal the Resistance will have to start running for their lives as the bad guys are hot on their heels.

Star-Wars-8-1162258

Spoiler Alert

After the events from The Force Awakens, both sides are in disarray. The First Order lost their planet destroyer (technically a new Death Star). The trailers and opening scroll in The Last Jedi reveal the Resistance will have to start running for their lives as the bad guys are hot on their heels.

As mentioned in my review of the previous film J.J. Abrams crafted a love letter to the fans. He offered plenty of nostalgia to enjoy and made sure the digital technology got exercised to its fullest to make those moments count. Watch it too much, and everyone will agree it’s basically A New Hope.

There’s no denying that Star Wars, in all its other iterations in the animated front, comic books and novels, are built on a lot of tropes George Lucas created and improved upon from Episode IV to VI.  They range from classic one-liners and visual moments we always get excited by. From exhilarating trench sequences, varied variations of a ‘speeder bike’ chase to crazy aerial dog fights, is it even possible to add anything new? Writer/Director Rian Johnson offers a bit of the same old thing with a great new look and injects some fantastic narrative spins not everyone saw coming.

In what I loved after a second viewing (I bought tickets for Thurs and Friday) is with how actor Benicio Del Toro chewed up the scenery. To say more and to read ahead contains major spoilers.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens New International Trailer Gives Hope!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens International PosterEveryone is having different reactions to the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens international trailer. As for me I’m experiencing goosebumps. But maybe it’s not just because Walt Disney Studios Japan released a new trailer but it could also be that there is a new Force Awakens poster in Korea too.

In this latest trailer the focus is on new characters in the ongoing saga, Finn (John Boyega), Rey (Daisy Ridley), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).

The villians get to flex their Imperial might and there are a few moves being displayed by Ren while wielding his crossblade lightsaber. The Stormtroopers lead by Phasma do what they do best, blow stuff up and lay waste where needed. And what of the beautiful shot of the TIE fighters approaching Jakku, as already mentioned by Screen Crush, that scene of the TIE fighters coming out of the sun does remind me of the chopper scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now.

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