Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 220

  this is the best star wars movie.

  in my particular mind, this is also the first *great* star wars movie. (it helps that i have no special reverence for the original trilogy. it also helps that this movie has so many fucking PORGS).

  will get into it once people see the movie.

  (as for whether it would have made my top 25… i don't know and i don't care).

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  Review by k(arst)en ★★★★½ 155

  Know what? Don’t know what I could have possibly been on that first time, but this film kinda rules. One of the best looking films of the last few years too. Probably my favorite Star Wars film now that I think about it.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 24

  Reminds you of what this sort of thing can be with an actual director behind it instead of merely a gang of well-meaning producers. Johnson deploys a few basic narrative and visual tricks that haven't really popped up in a STAR WARS film before, along with his usual precise frames and tight technical craft, and a particular attention to emotional continuity. There's also a welcome preoccupation with collateral damage, both physical and psychic. One thing Johnson's films have never really been, though, is elegant. As in his previous stuff, certain beats here are sometimes actively clumsy, there's some serious tonal whiplash, and pacing stutters. But all of this, positive and negative, adds up to a genuinely idiosyncratic, maybe even auteurist work. Johnson may be the first guy since 1977 to make a STAR WARS movie feel like a personal one. At its very frequent best, it seems downright off-brand.

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  Review by Ralph ★★★★★ 178

  I used to hate this movie but then you all talked me into loving it. It's my favorite movie now.

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★★ 44

  Chills every time I watch this. This movie is really something special.

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★★ 90

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Watched the score-only version of this movie and it still absolutely fucking rules. I honestly feel like every scene makes me go "oh shit! I forgot all about how great this was."

  • Paige Tico's heroic moment in the opening scene absolutely works on me, and it's wild how such a minor character sticks with me every time I watch this movie.

  • I love the porgs. I love them.

  • Wise old hermit legend Luke on his mountain is fantastic. The scene where he vaults over the canyon pass, the shot where he's carrying the giant fish up the mountain– it's all outstanding. This is how Johnson hammers home that Luke has become the incredible, mythical figure people wanted…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 74

  saw this again last night.

  revised Star Wars rankings:

  1.) THE LAST JEDI

  
  2 - 4.) the old ones that defined your childhood or whatever
  5.) BB-8 is born
  6 - 7.) the less old ones that ruined your childhood or whatever
  8.) “oops, i guess we *don’t* have the technology to reanimate dead actors after all”)
  9.) Clones

  
  (same rankings I had after I saw TLJ the first time, but now the space between the top 2 spots is bigger)

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★½ 51

  Cinema is art and art is subjective and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But also people who don't get that this is the best blockbuster franchise movie in years are out of their minds.

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★★ 22

  Sorry folks... I love it so much. Instead of the Abrams approach of taking Lucas' images and repurposing them as comforting echoes, Johnson goes back to Lucas' influences: Kurosawa, Lean, old WWII movies, and all sorts of classical cinema from Wings to The Lady of Shanghai, and uses them to explore ideas that instead lovingly confront the history of Star Wars. He takes the myths and locates the wounds; the kids wrestling with the losses, responsibilities, and incomplete structures that a previous generation passed onto them, seeking answers in reflections. ("You're not alone. Neither are you.")

  The film itself is rather clumsy, strangely structured, and messily lurches from sequence to sequence but instead of doing so out of flat, corporate-mandated…

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  Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★★½ 47

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  (sigh)

  PROS
  -Luke, Rey, and Kylo are all interesting as shit. I'm totally on board with their plotlines, even if Rey getting shafted from the narrative in the climax is a little disappointing. Still, the final showdown between Luke and Kylo is powerful as hell.
  -The cinematography is stunning. That shot of Luke exiting the base at the end, walking across the red-stained battlefield, is straight up my favorite shot in all of Star Wars.
  -Great direction and acting all around
  -This is kind of a backhanded compliment but Snoke's death scene cracks me up
  -Yoda's scene is really beautiful I love it (the puppet still looks weird tho)
  -That R2 scene where he plays Leia's message is how you…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 6

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  90

  Yoda and Luke, together again, observing the fire of the past.

  "We are what they grow beyond."

  Might be the line of the saga.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 37

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  ***SPOILER WARNING***

  “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” — Kylo Ren

  “The Last Jedi” is the best Star Wars movie since “The Empire Strikes Back,” but it’s also a lot more than that — it’s as much of a new hope for the eroding blockbuster culture of 2017 as “A New Hope” was for the emerging blockbuster culture of 1977. Needless to say, this is something of a huge surprise. At a time when mainstream cinema is typified by the coddling safety of episodic superhero movies, makeshift “Jumanji” sequels, and whatever the hell you call “The Emoji Movie,” Star Wars is pretty much the…