Best thing: The interaction between the new Imperial authoritarian character and Moff Tarkin (somehow played by Peter Cushing resurrected specially for the occasion) is wonderful and culminates brilliantly at one of the films best dramatic moments towards the end. Oh and Darth Vader's scenes are all amazing too.
Worst thing: Sorry Forest Whitaker. I had trouble understanding your character's motivations and history with the protagonist. I also found the voice you put on felt a bit forced. I still think you're great, but this role didn't work for me.
It's always important to get your endings right. The times when I often feel most annoyed by a film are when I've stuck with it only to feel like there was no payoff by the end.
So Rogue One has things the right way round in having a bit of an iffy first half where characters feel unformed, leading into a powerful second half where everyone has something to do and where the pace never slows, leading to an emotionally charged third act.
If you are a little concerned that this isn't the experience you hoped for after the opening scenes with Mads Mikkelsen have finished, just don't worry and stick with it.
One thing is for sure, this is the most beaitiful Star Wars movie ever made. Talk about 'out of this world', the visuals are spectacular.
I took a bit longer to get this review written than I'd hoped, so I've now seen a few people complaining about the depiction of Peter Cushing's Moff Tarkin using computer effects. Frankly I thought that was brilliant. How do you make us believe someone is specifically Peter Cushing's character? Put Peter Cushing on screen! And it's a great Peter Cushing performance too.
Another character who appears towards the end felt a bit too shiny to be real. But I was mostly convinced by Moff Tarkin here. (Personally I'd say he was heads and shoulders better than the cartoonish Snoak figure from The Force Awakens.)
Donnie Yen is especially great. Felicity Jones is cool in the lead role, but my favourite performance would have to be Ben Mendelsohn as an ambitious figure working for the Empire.
Star Wars has not been this good for a long time.
A+
Passengers (2016)
Best thing: Zero gravity issues with a swimming pool? Pretty awesome visual trick.
Worst thing: During a key point in the film, a space suit turns out to be remarkably resilient. It felt like a bit of a cheat.
I may have had lowered expectations. Having already booked up our cinema visit in advance I was pretty shocked to see reviews mostly settling around between 2 and 2.5 stars out of 5. But I've got to say, I don't seem to share any of the issues mentioned.
The story is essentially of a man stranded in space. The difference is that he's actually stranded in time. While the crew hibernate for over a lifetime's trip through space, our protagonist awakes too early, doomed to spend the rest of his life in transit.
What results is a simple yet compelling sci-fi tale of people stuck in the hyperspace version of a luxury cruise-liner. But our protagonist is told that hyperspace hibernation pods never malfunction, so is something else at play?
Now it's on the poster pretty clearly that Jennifer Lawrence is in this film too. How does she end up awake too? Our protagonist makes a seriously dodgy decision and many people have held that against the film, but I feel the consequences of that choice are not ignored. Parrots are not on the same intellectual level as human beings, but it has been observed that they go mad if caged and ignored for long periods. Our protagonist is going through a kind of cabin fever and that leads him to make a horrifying decision.
One interesting suggestion was what the story might have been like from Jennifer Lawrence's perspective. I'm actually interested to know what it would have been like if she was the engineer and Chris Pratt was the writer. Or if she woke up first. I think this opens up a number of potential combinations, but I'm happy with the combination they went with.
There is an aspect of the third act resolution which pushes credulity a little bit, but Passengers has enough charm and humour to look past that. (Michael Sheen's contribution as the bartender robot cannot be ignored. He's awesome!) Like Gravity, this has a simple story, some fantastic effects, a sense of isolation and a few good characters to guide us through it. The story is arguably a little better here than in Gravity.