The Blues Brothers review

 Number 360 on the top 1000 films of all time is John Landis' musical-comedy drama - 'The Blues Brothers.'

Elwood Blues (Dan Ackroyd) and Jake Blues (John Belushi) are brothers, petty crooks and blues musicians. After Jake Blues is released from jail, the brothers find out their Roman Catholic childhood orphanage will be demolished after failing to pay their property taxes. They reform their old blues band to raise money to save their old orphanage. The film features many musical cameos from massive soul singers like James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. Carrie Fisher also co-stars.

John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd were titans of the American comedy world. Both of them were prominent members of SNL - with this film and their characters growing out of an SNL skit  and Ackroyd going onto star in the legendary Ghostbuster's franchise. They brought their comedy flair to what was a funny if ridiculous film. But it was ridiculous in all the best ways.

The brother's misadventures include larger-than-life car chases, irritating a vengeful country music band and running neo-Nazi's off a bridge. It was completely bonkers, but that all added to the spectacle. And it all fitted the film's less-than-serious tone. It's a comedy. You're supposed to take things lightly. If you don't, you'll be in trouble.

About as much trouble as Jake and Elwood find themselves in when they return to their orphanage unable to stop cursing or taking the lord's name in vein, Sister Mary Stigmata beats them out of the building in one of the film's funniest if silliest scenes.

And the action scenes also looked great from the aforementioned car chase scenes to Carrie Fisher's increasingly outlandish attempts to kill the two brothers. Granted, this all led to the film going drastically over-budget - with much of that fuelling John Belushi's coke addiction, but it looked great on-screen.

True, the musical cameos were all pretty shoe-horned in, but they only added to the spectacle of the film. And when the cameos included singing legends like James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles, who's complaining?

The Blues Brothers was a great film. Yes, it's silly and larger than life, but you need to remember not to take it too seriously.

Hannah and her Sisters review

 Number 340 on the top 1000 films of all time is Woody Allen's comedy-drama 'Hannah and her Sisters'

Hannah and her Sisters follows the entwined lives of three couples across a twenty-four month period. The first story focusses on TV writer Mickey and the destruction of his marriage with his wife Hannah (Mia Farrow,) all told in flashback. The second focusses on Hannah and her new husband Elliot (Michael Caine) as he falls in love with Hannah's sister Lee Barbara Hershey. The third story focusses on Hannah's other sister Holly (Dianne West) a former cocaine addict who is trying to break into Broadway with her friend and rival April (Carrie Fisher.)

I have yet to come across a Woody Allen film that I have actually liked. Hannah and her Sister was no exception. In fact, it had everything I don't like in a Woody Allen film: Woody Allen, inappropriate relationships and a distinct lack of laughs.

Woody Allen always seems to play the same character in his films: a neurotic, middle-aged Jewish writer. The novelty ran out five films ago. Now this character has become incredibly tedious. Mickey was no exception especially considering his hypochondriac ways. This hypochondria then stems into an existential crisis as Mickey starts looking for religion - a religion other than Judaism. This wasn't a character that I wanted to root for. At least he wasn't dating a seventeen-year-old.

The inappropriate relationship was saved for Michael Caine's character Elliot who cheats on his wife with her sister. Sure you can argue that Allen was depicting a true fact of life, but it didn't make the character very likeable. I'm also going to be controversial and say that Caine didn't support the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Sure, he was the best part of a bad film, but that didn't mean he gave an Oscar-winning performance. The same goes for Dianne Wiest who won for Best Supporting Actress.

The biggest problem about the film was that all the characters were unlikeable. They seemed to spend all their time fighting with each other from Mickey to Hannah to Elliot and Hannah to April and Holly to Hannah's parents. The whole barrel was rotten. There wasn't one character I cared for or even wanted to care for.

It didn't help that the film was so expository with title cards doing the cinematic equivalent of telling and not showing. As is par for the course for a Woody Allen film, Hannah and her Sisters was just not funny. I didn't crack a smile until the thirty-five minute mark and I don't think I laughed more than three or four times.

This is the sixth Woody Allen film that I haven't liked. Who knows? Maybe I'll like the next one. I'm not holding my breath.

Why Star Wars is overrated

 Yes fanboys, you've read that correctly. I think Star Wars is overrated, but before you start force choking and executing order 66 on me, hear me out.

I am a fan of Star Wars - the films at least, I have had little exposure with the extended universe, but I don't think they're some of the best films of all time. The original trilogy certainly don't deserve to be included in the top 1000 films of all time.

I can acknowledge Star Wars for what it is - mindless, escapist fun. It's nothing more than that - we're not talking hard sci-fi like Blade Runner or Star Trek where we get deep philosophical questions about what it means to be human. Star Wars is the hero's journey set in space. That's it.

I've always been puzzled when I've heard girls say that they don't get Star Wars. What's there to get? Are we talking about something as (supposedly) profound or deep as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Are we posed with meaningful questions about the nature of humanity like we get in the Terminator films? Star Wars is nothing more than a big boy's film: it's a Western set in space. Tatooine and the other outer rim systems are the Wild West - the Mos Eisley cantina is an easy substitute for the old-timey saloons. Instead of horses we have spaceships. Instead of the man in black, we have Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker is our hero in white. The bounty hunter Han Solo is the outlaw, roguish man with no name. The blasters substitute the magnum revolvers. Hell, instead of Indians and cowboys, we have the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire.

I think George Lucas would agree with me. When he was originally creating Star Wars, he wanted to make something closer to Flash Gordon and the Brothers' Grimm fairytales than Kubrick's Space Odyssey. He wanted to create a space fantasy where the audiences witnessed something fun, adventurous and whimsical. And that's what he did. It doesn't mean that these films are the best ever made.

Fans slate the Disney sequel saga for their awful writing and dialogue. That's fair criticism, but I would urge you to take off your rosy-tinted glasses. The original films are just as badly written. The evil, omnipotent Galactic Empire was stupid enough to make not one but two Death Stars with the same fatal flaw of having a massive hole in the middle, which any old rebel pilot can fly their X-Fighter into and shoot a few torpedoes into. This is an error so egregious that Family Guy mocked it and a whole new film had to be created to explain it - Rogue One. 

Furthermore, Leia kisses Luke in a New Hope and the Empire Strikes Back before confessing that she's always known they were brother and sister in the Return of the Jedi. A lot of this comes down to Lucas' originally writing a monstrously huge script for A New Hope - most of which had to be spread across a whole trilogy of films. This meant that he had to use the ending of Return of the Jedi for a New Hope, as he explained in the DVD commentary, which would explain the overly-cheesy and definitive ending that didn't leave much room for a sequel. 

Yet it isn't just his writing that is bad, but also his dialogue. Harrison Ford criticised it saying you can type this shit up, but you can't say it. There are varying reports about why Alec Guinness' character of Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi dies in a New Hope, but some say that Guinness begged to be killed off, so he didn't have to say the dialogue anymore. In Attack of the Clones, Hayden Christensen, who plays Anakin Skywalker, goes off about how much he hates sand. A lot of people slate Christensen's wooden performance, but how charismatic can you be when you have to recite a monologue about sand?

But Lucas wasn't just bad at writing or at dialogue, but also direction. Far from being a director who was at the forefront of the action, he gave his cast and crew little instruction. Producer Gary Kurtz described him as a loner who didn't get on with the large crew while Carrie Fisher said that when he did give direction it was little more than "faster" or "more intense," in the Empire of Dreams The Story of the Star Wars trilogy documentary. That's exactly the captain you want at the helm of your ship, right?

What I will give Star Wars credit for is its pioneering use of special and visual effects. Obviously, I wasn't alive to see the original films in cinema, but I've heard that it was an amazing experience, because of the effects. Lucas made terrific use of miniature models to create some brilliant action sequences.

This pioneering use of models eventually translated into CGI, which made the prequels such an entertaining watch. But it was just entertaining. Nothing more. Especially when Lucas took things too far and kept constantly re-releasing the original trilogy with unnecessary edits like replacing the original holographic emperor in The Empire Strikes Back, played by Marjorie Eaton, voiced by Clive Revill, with Ian Mcdermid who went onto play the evil emperor in the prequels. Another replacement saw Sebastian Shaw who played the force ghost of Anakin Skywalker in the Return of the Jedi being swapped out with Hayden Christensen.

I also don't think the prequels aren't as bad as the fanbase makes them out to be. Yes, the Phantom Menace is slow-paced and bogged down with trade negotiations, but they get progressively better from there. Despite being bad, they are still entertaining. Like the originals. And, like the originals, they all share the same weaknesses. Samuel L. Jackson had to say some god-awful dialogue in Return of the Sith: "our worse fears have been realised," and, who can forget Darth Vader cheesily screaming out nooooooooooooooo. Of course, we've already heard about the infamous sand monologue.

There is nothing a Star Wars fan hates more than Star Wars. And there is no fandom I hate more than the Star Wars one. (I wouldn't be surprised if I start getting force-choked before I finish writing this.) I get that all fanbases have their toxic, elitist elements, but the Star Wars fanbase seems rotten to the core.

Firstly, they're blinded by nostalgia for the originals, which as we've already established, aren't all they're cracked up to be. But these rosy-tinted glasses have become blinkers where they struggle to acknowledge anything out of their reality.

Now even a casual Star Wars fan like me can acknowledge that the Disney sequels aren't great - even by Star Wars' standards. In the opposite of the prequels, they start off well and get progressively worse. I enjoyed the Force Awakens - I thought Ray and Finn were great together. But then they're separated for the next two films. In lieu of not knowing what to do with Finn, they give a couple of love stories that don't work, all while Ray's writing becomes progressively more contrived.

This is all fair criticism, but due to the Star Wars fandom, who enjoys bullying actors on social media, I'm sure it doesn't go far enough. Star Wars fans so hated the character of Rose in the Last Jedi that they sent no shortage of racist and sexist hate to Rose's actress Kelly Marie Tran - so much so that she deleted her social media. There were plenty who insisted this wasn't indicative of the whole fanbase, but I'm not so sure. Ahmed Best who played JarJar Binks became suicidal over the hate he received from playing a fictional character. Jake Lloyd who played the young Anakin Skywalker in A Phantom Menace didn't grow up to be a Hollywood A-Lister, but a paranoid schizophrenic with a criminal record. Granted, this isn't directly the result of the fandom, but being constantly bullied certainly didn't help things either.

I realise this isn't strictly a Star Wins, but a fanbase being stupid thing - Leslie Jones in Ghostbusters and Josh Mcdermitt in the Walking Dead also suffered abuse at the hands of so-called fans. Hell, even Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, had people hissing and booing at him in the streets. Yet it always seems the Star Wars fanbase who seems the most vitrolic in their hate. And they are always the ones you less likely to be able to reason with.

Do you disagree with me? Prove me wrong in the comments, but don't talk to me the way you did with Kelly Marie Trans. And remember, I do like Star Wars.  They're just NOT the best films ever. May the force be with you all.