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Lincoln: Divided We Stand (2021)
Well Worth Watching
I was drawn in from the beginning and enjoyed the entire 6 episode series. There were lots of facts and details I didn't know or had forgotten about Lincoln's life, both personal and political, before his Presidency. They also provided significant insight into his wife, Mary that many will appreciate.
Although, I didn't necessarily agree with the various historians and commentators, they provided different perspectives and food for thought. The documentary does a good job of humanizing Lincoln and showing the man. My main criticism would be about the last episode, which glossed over some of the details around his assassination, presumably because viewers have at least heard that before.
Definitely educational, entertaining and worth a watch.
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
A Classic but with too Many Flaws for the Modern Viewer
This movie is considered one of the greatest movies of all time and was certainly groundbreaking in many ways. However, for this viewer, there were too many flaws or distractions to allow me to rate it higher than a 7.
Yes, the story is well told, but the movie is too long. Some scenes drag on longer than necessary to make the point. There is a lot of setup to get to the more entertaining action scenes in the last third of the movie.
Some things that particularly bothered me and detracted from the movie for me were the incredibly obvious skull caps that many of the main characters wore. It was close to comical with some actors and that immediately distracted me and weakened the movie for me. Next, while Kirasawa is famous for his attention to detail and cinematography in the battle scenes, there were real weaknesses there. While the villagers had very long spears, they did not seem to use them to maximum effect, when simply ramming the riders with the spears would have been enough in real life to knock them off their horses immediately or kill them outright. They also would have used them against the horses themselves in a real battle. Then, in most cases after riders fell from their horses, even when surrounded they almost always were able to crawl away briefly before being stabbed. Next, despite the great potential for exciting sword fights between the samurais and the bandits, this was almost or entirely nonexistant. The samurais never really got to show their skill, other than single swipes at the riders or simply stabbing the bandits. A complete waste of cinematic excitement!
Finally, while presumably the bandits were in it to fight to the death, this is only hinted at and it just seemed idiotic for their forces to get weaker and weaker and yet they continue to attack with no hope for success or even a plan to win. I could not help but focus on how stupid they were and that it was obvious they were going to lose badly. The film tries to build up the drama for the "climactic" battle, but it is completely ridiculous.
Last, while the bandits have their "fort" destroyed by fire, they never think to use fire to defeat the villagers. This, again, makes no sense at all and was so obvious a solution that it was very distracting.
Another annoying factor was that the villagers were portrayed as completely pathetic, actually crying hysterically many times in the movie. They came across more as losers than people deserving of sympathy. I just didn't get the purpose of the excessive crying. Also, a few times the screaming of various characters seemed excessive and made them less realistic to me.
So, in conclusion, these were significant flaws to me that brought my rating of the film down. I consider it worth watching and overall entertaining, but just not a great film.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
Not as Good Upon Second or Third Viewing
My impression on first viewing this movie was very positive. It lost some of it's luster, though, upon viewing it multiple times a couple of years after its debut. The story is entertaining and the cinematography and special effects are excellent, but a number of things bothered me.
I didn't like the developments with Luke Skywalker and his character; I understand why Mark Hamill had issues. I didn't like how Leia disappeared from much of the movie, and I really didn't like how her near death experience was handled. The segment in Canto Bight was mostly pointless, as it turns out. The hall of mirrors scene with Rey didn't make sense. The new character, Rose, was OK but was not believable; she reminded me too much of Nurse Kelly (sp?) on MASH. And the relationship that supposedly happened with her and Finn was completely unbelievable. Finn was another mostly non-contributor. He had a fair amount of scenes but didn't contribute much. His one opportunity to be a hero got side-tracked, literally!
I really didn't like the Admiral Holdo character. She came out of nowhere and her motivation for not revealing the escape plan was never explained and thus made no sense. She seemed untrustworthy and acted mainly condescending and insulting to Poe. She just seemed out of place.
So, these many annoyances came to the forefront on my second viewing. I had been more swept away the first time, largely because there was a lot more originality than in the Force Awakens, but almost anything would have been more original than that. The wasted sequence in Canto Bight could have been eliminated and shortened to movie to a more reasonable 2 hours. TLJ is worth seeing but, in the final analysis, is not that great. I give it 7 stars.