Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace. Well it's taken a long time in coming, and was almost a dream come true for millions of fans and fanatics around the world when it arrived in US cinemas in May 1999. A lot has been said about the film, some people liking it, others disappointed by it. I'm going to do two things that are rare for me now. First I'm going to review a complete DVD package, rather than just then film itself -- something I avoid, as I'm anything but an expert on all those fancy words used to describe the picture and sound on DVD. Second, I'm going to talk about Star Wars. I'm not, I confess, a fan, and have only seen ..  Read the complete review

We should have seen this coming, we really should. Even before the film hit the big screens, all the signs were there that this was going to be at the very least a massive disappointment. George Lucas had already taken the misguided step of meddling with the original films, inserting out of place CGI doodles all over the celluloid. Then there were the trailers, which gave us an unsettling glimpse of things to come. The reality was way, way worse than that, and it really shouldn't have been. This was a disgusting mess of a film that was far more nauseating than the sum of its rotten parts. As it is for so many other people below a certain age, the first three ...  Read the complete review

You could call this one of the bigger let-downs in modern cinema history - for me it's more of a waster opportunity. The raw materials were there - from John William's majestic score, the already established worlds of the original trilogy, the story of a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi coupled with the rise of the boy who would become Darth Vader, this release had everything going for it, aside from one thing, it's creator, George Lucas, insisted on writing & directing the prequels. Essentially retired since the first film in 1977, Lucas was a man with 3 films to his name - his uber low-budget directorial debut, the isolated sci-fi world of 'THX-1138', 1975's ...  Read the complete review

The "new trilogy" of Star Wars fans recieve frequent derision for being a mere shadow of the former glory of the series, and this is perhaps truer of none of the three than the first - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Amid absurdly high expectations, it simply faltered, with some pretty hokey script and plot devices, such as the explanation of the Force as midichlorians, a strange substance that is present in the blood of Jedis and Siths. Furthermore, a lot of people found the focus on young Annakin itself an irritation, because the lines fed to child actor Jake Lloyd were so base and cretinous. Many blame Lloyd's delivery for this, but I ...  Read the complete review

One of the nice things about Episode 2's release was that we could finally bury our disappointment at Episode 1's rambling narrative and Jamaican sidekicks and look at it with something approaching sanity and detachment. We marvelled at the cool wheelie robots and lightsabres, some of us foamed at the mouth with loathing for a certain Gungun (I liked him), and now we can sharpen our talons and analyse it to bits. It's worth mentioning, then, that this is not EXACTLY a review, but I think you'll find much food for thought within it. Let's ignore the really nasty streak which led Lucas to portray Anakin as a little saint (which will make his ...  Read the complete review