The Star Wars saga ends with a whimper not a bang

The older you get the fewer surprises there are in life, which is not necessarily as good as it sounds. When I was little going to the Princes in Springburn the first thing I did when I went into the cinema was turn around and look at the banner for what was coming on the following week. If you wanted to find out what was on anywhere else, then you had to wait for the ads on the listings pages in the Sunday Mail. Our informationless world was a less complicated but much more satisfying place.

These days, thanks to any number of websites, you can find release schedules for the next two years; you have to actively avoid knowing what’s coming out when, or what it’s about. The rise of the franchise movie means we have created a world where our desires are ceaselessly teased, trailed, and generally manufactured to make sure that you are there on that all-important opening day. Then you have to run the gauntlet of spoilers to make sure you retain your fresh impression of whatever this week’s big franchise movie is, all the while having your appetite artificially whetted for next week’s big franchise movie.

Let me go back to that opening sentence.  What do I mean by old? I mean I remember seeing the first three Star Wars films in their original versions on their original release. I was in my twenties, just, when Star Wars came out in 1977. It is hard to describe the impact the film had, largely because it was an unknown quantity. We knew it was a big, science fiction movie but that was it.

What a visceral thrill it was to see something we had really never seen before. It was unbelievably exciting and more important; it pushed the boundaries of cinema in a way that even Martin Scorsese would accept. There were technologies introduced in this film which revolutionised the way films would be made. It was a success at ever level. The same applied to The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and, albeit to a slightly lesser extent, The Return of the Jedi (1983).

All of which brings me in a convoluted manner to the latest Star Wars movie, or as we must now call it, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. There is very little excitement here for me I’m afraid. It is visually spectacular, but the feeling is that it is all in the service of selling the audience another toy or action figure. It is as soulless a piece of corporate ballyhoo as you will come across.

Narratively The Rise of Skywalker seems to feel the need to spend most of its time retelling what happened in the past two movies as Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) head towards their inevitable destinies. This time round The Final Order, not to be confused with The First Order of previous movies, stands in their path. Obviously, I am going to avoid spoiling things for you.

It is entirely plot driven, this happens, then that happens, then this happens, and – oh wait – yeah, that happens. There is not a shred of innovation or character development in the whole movie; there is no story, just plot. It feels like a once-fashionable rock band churning out the tired old hits on the contractual obligation album.

There are inevitable comparisons with the Marvel Cinematic Issues, with which I also have issues in its manipulation of the audience. However, the MCU took a bumpy start and under the creative control of one man, Kevin Feige, turned it into a seamless narrative and commercial success. By comparison the Star Wars franchise, even though we were told that George Lucas in the mid-seventies had plans for a nine-movie saga, still looks like it is spinning its wheels from film to film.

A Star Wars movie used to be an event, now it is part of a process. A great big, box-ticking, make sure you get everything in regardless of whether it fits, process.

The Rise of Skywalker is not a bad film by today’s standards, it’s just not a terribly good one. It does not capture the imagination, the only times I was emotionally moved was by John Williams’s magnificent music cues that reminded me of the original scenes to which they are calling back.

Technically the film is a triumph and there is no doubt a lot of toys will be sold on the back of it. But I would have given anything to have felt, however briefly, a fraction of the excitement and innovation of the first one.

The Irishman is Scorsese's magnificent elegy on the gangster genre

It is not unusual for a great director towards the end of his career to become a little retrospective in their work. Clint Eastwood, for example, did it in Unforgiven (1992) and his Iwo Jima movies, and to a certain extent in Gran Torino (2008). These were meditations on his career and his very screen persona which considered the effects and consequences of violence

In The Irishman Martin Scorsese does something similar as he considers a directing career spanning more than 60 films in almost as many years. The themes at play in his work are broadly religion and masculinity. The search for God began in Mean Streets (1973) and ended three years ago in Silence (2016), still the most underrated of his films in my opinion.

If that film examined his quest for faith, The Irishman is a companion piece of sorts which visits the other great theme of his work. It is a look at masculinity, not the toxic masculinity of Mean Streets, Raging Bull (1980) and Taxi Driver (1976) but a more particular version. This film looks at what it means to be a certain type of man in post war America.

The Second World War is a touchstone in this film for our hero Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) and his generation. Often styled by those who followed as the greatest generation they operated under their own code and their own system. Frank, working for the Bufalino crime family, works under an even stricter code. This is literally Mob rule.

Frank is a blue collar hit man but he cannot say what he does. I Hear You Paint Houses is the title of the source book, a reference to his work as a hired killer in which houses are painted with blood and brains. Euphemistically Frank also proudly boasts that he does his own carpentry which means he disposes of the body too. Somewhere along the way, it’s implied, he also disposes of his decency and humanity.

We first encounter Frank as a truck driver, a teamster, who has a chance meeting with Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci). The mobster takes a shine to him and Frank starts augmenting his income with a little off the books criminality. His wartime skills and combat experience lead him to work as a hitman, an enforcer. Frank is also a staunch union man and through Bufalino meets Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) the head of the Teamsters Union, a man who Frank adores

The story of Jimmy Hoffa in many ways is the story of post war America, the rise of the blue collar workforce, and Frank has a ringside seat as the American century hits its stride. That this is also a history of corruption and wrongdoing is neither here nor there.

It is what it is, as the most fateful sentence in the film has it, and Frank is left alone with nothing but memories. He is the last man standing.

Unusually given that Scorsese is revisiting his standard themes of sin and repentance, Frank cannot repent. Even when his priest is delivering the Sacrament of the Sick towards the end of his life Frank appears to be approaching God but will not repent. Does he genuinely feel no remorse or has his life cost him so much in terms of those he holds dear that he feels he has already atoned? That is for us to decide in a film which lays out the information without ever judging.

The Irishman is a towering piece of work from America’s greatest living director. It runs for a whisker under three and a half hours but never sags or drags. Scorsese is in command of the immaculately-paced material from the first elegant oner that announces his cinematic mastery to the final enigmatic closing shot. It is a compelling and hypnotic piece of storytelling which is completely absorbing.

Given the length of the film, it is the very opposite of the typical Scorsese gangster film. The effervescence of Mean Streets is entirely absent here; this is a ruminative and reflective film in which a master looks back at his career.

Robert De Niro is excellent as Frank with the sort of performance we haven’t seen for some time, Al Pacino – unaccountably working with Scorsese for the first time – is great as Hoffa but, for me, the performance of the movie comes from Joe Pesci. He is sublime as Russell Buffalino, a portrayal of complete and unquestioned power. Bufalino is a man whose every whim is catered to until he realises that even he has to accept limits to the extent of his authority.

In some ways the bond between Russell and Frank, and their particular type of friendship, is at the heart of this film. Unlike the scabrous relationships between the two of Goodfellas (1990) or Casino (1995), this is affectionate and sustaining like a surrogate father and son. Russell is all Frank has left when, like Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956), his actions have driven him beyond the pale.

In some ways The Irishman is like a greatest hits album for the director. As well as De Niro and Pesci we also see Scorsese alumni such as Harvey Keitel, Bobby Cannavale, Stephen Graham, Gary Basaraba, Barry Primus and many others. Given that the theme of the movie is fast and retributive violence there is also a great deal of warmth and humour in the film; at times it’s like watching some people you’ve known for years having a great time at a really cool party.

Behind the scenes it is also old home week with Scorsese collaborators such as Irwin Winkler, Jane Rosenthal, Rodrigo Prieto, Robbie Robertson and the incomparable Thelma Schoonmaker playing their part in bringing this masterpiece to life.

De Niro has famously described The Irishman as ‘unfinished business’ between himself and Scorsese. Over the years their collaboration has resulted in some of the greatest American films ever made. It is unlikely we will ever see their like again and, that being the case, this is a fitting coda to their earlier work.

Joker combines a traditional look with a contemporary message

An awful lot has been written about Joker and, to my mind, most of it is pointless and largely irrelevant. Having seen it – which I think gives me an advantage over some commentators – it is not a training film for incels, nor is it horrendously violent. 

There are, I think, half a dozen killings in the film only one of which would be described as graphic. Certainly, I am more relaxed about the violence in Joker than I am in, for example, about the consequence-free carnage of the most recent Rambo films or Gerard Butler’s Fallen trilogy. 

For me, Joker is a flawed, ambitious but largely successful movie which also happens to highlight all that is wrong with the current state of the film industry. This film should have been able to be greenlit on the merits of its own story, but instead the only way it can get made is by classing it as a ‘standalone non-canon' superhero movie. What nonsense. 

There is simply no need narratively for the Batman connection. The Wayne family are little more than marginalia. Gotham City here is plainly 1970s New York, specifically the moral abyss around Eighth Avenue.  Cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s putrid colour palette gives the film a traditional look with a contemporary feel. 

It’s a film that owes more to Martin Scorsese’s cinematic universe than the DC Universe. It has its origins in those powerful Seventies stories of urban alienation such as King of Comedy (1981) or Taxi Driver (1976), also Network (976) to an extent, as well as lesser-known films like WUSA (1970). 

It’s a powerful narrative. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a deeply troubled man whose mental health is gradually disintegrating. He works as a clown for hire for a promotions agency and slowly but surely approaches the brink of collapse. His only hope is as an aspiring stand-up and being discovered by late night talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert de Niro). When all of this falls apart it leads to a killing spree, an orgy of rioting, and Arthur becoming a totemic leader of the mob. 

One of the problems with Joker, for me, is that director Todd Phillips doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say. It is not a well organised film though, to be fair, it does make great use of the unreliable narrator. 

The shining light here is Phoenix who does a tremendous job selling the story. The performance teeters alarmingly on the edge of hysteria but he is also brave enough to be quiet. The use of silence and stillness is compelling and makes Arthur’s emotional disintegration palpable. 

It strikes me that there is a point to be made here about the perils of dismissing the marginalised in our society. I couldn’t help but recall a recent trip to San Francisco where scores of homeless and/or mentally ill people have been abandoned to the streets; the same streets that contain the headquarters of global corporations like Uber.  

There must be a reckoning for that at some stage, you need only look at the schismatic behaviour here and in the US. Although Phillips touches briefly on this his film lacks the courage to point any fingers. 

Instead of indicting society Joker is dressed up as a superhero movie and rather than make a serious point its main concern seems to be setting up a sequel. Given the potential of much of this film that’s rather a shame. 

In Ad Astra, Brad Pitt reaches for the stars

James Gray, for my money, is a very underrated director. Since his feature debut with Little Odessa (1994) he has quietly put together an impressive body of work with enough of a connecting thesis to merit being treated as a genuine auteur. He doesn’t make many films but they all tend to have something to say and they are worth the wait.

Gray’s films look at masculinity, He is not overly concerned with the toxic sort that Scorsese for example finds so fascinating, he tends to look at masculinity in a family setting. Whether it is in The Yards (2000) or We Own the Night (2007) or The Lost City of Z (2016), Gray’s characters are caught up with a drive to find their own destiny while at the same time conforming to the demands of their familial responsibilities.

Ad Astra is perhaps the most considered example of the Gray canon so far. It is the story of an astronaut (Brad Pitt) who is sent on a mission to find his long-presumed dead father (Tommy Lee Jones). The older man was presumed lost in space but appears to be still alive and in charge of technology which threatens the future of the earth.

Although there are a lot of action scenes in the trailer this story, set in the ‘near future’, is thoughtful and cerebral and has questions to ask about a sense of self and indeed the nature of humanity. There are strong religious undertones in some of the dialogue which suggests the future may be more theocratic than secular, and this adds a particular resonance to a son atoning for the sins of the father by sacrificing himself for the good of mankind.

There are clear influences from the likes of Lem’s Solaris or Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in the way Gray tells his story. There is much inner monologue which can be the kiss of death in some films but here Pitt’s musings are quietly seductive and draw you into the story.

The second half of the film is a little more action-packed than the first and there are one or two sequences – such as the Moon pirates or a mysterious mayday call – that look like they might be going down the route of a larger conspiracy theory.  Is someone trying to thwart the mission? However Gray eschews all of this stuff in favour of Pitt’s personal journey of discovery as he searches for empathy, meaning, and opening up to emotion.

I’ll concede that some might find this a little pretentious but it resonated with me and I had no issues with it. The film is a little slow in places but Hoyte van Hoytema’s stunning cinematography creates an immersive experience which is augmented by Max Richter’s ethereal score.

The cast it littered with big name support – Donald Sutherland, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Natasha Lyonne for example – but this is Pitt’s film. I cannot imagine any other actor who can pack so much nuance and meaning into an apparently expressionless face.The camera has always loved Pitt, now in his maturity it adores him. Pitt’s close-ups dominate this film but they are endlessly fascinating, unlike George Clooney’s in the most recent version of Solaris (2002) which are just bland.

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I found Ad Astra utterly compelling, even with the space monkeys, and I was absorbed from first to last.

And, who knows, with this and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, it could be Brad Pitt’s year after all.