Star Wars: The Last Jedi (also known as Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi) is a 2017 American epic space opera film written and directed by Rian Johnson. It is the second installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the eighth main installment of the Star Wars franchise, following Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). It was produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The ensemble cast includes Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie and Frank Oz in returning roles, with Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro joining the cast. The film features the final film performance by Fisher, who died in December 2016, and it is dedicated to her memory. The plot follows Rey as she receives Jedi training from Luke Skywalker, in hopes of turning the tide for the Resistance in the fight against Kylo Ren and the First Order.

So I finally got around to it and to be honest there were parts of it which I found to be boring in some parts and a bit predictable. I am not a big fan of Star Wars and I have this say this – I do not see why this franchise is so popular and why a lot of people find this franchise and universe so fascinating. I am not that impressed. Also I am one who likes the prequel trilogy and think that they were essential for us to understand the main characters in the original trilogy and especially Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader. And I wasn’t impressed with the Force Awakens which is just a rehash of A New Hope (JJ is known to do that, what say Star Trek : Into Darkness?) .

What did I like from the movie? The special effects, the fight scenes, the spaceship fight scenes, the light sabre fight scenes with Kylo & Rey and everything with Leia, Poe and his character development and the new character Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) who becomes a hero with her death. What didn’t make much sense is the new Jedi trick of projecting themselves across great distances of light years and interacting with someone, Luuke’s behaviour throughout his interaction with Rey, the casino “royale” scene which made no sense and the whole adventure that Finn & Rose go through to get the codebreaker – for nothing! And Phasma – wow, that was a slap in the face. I was expecting a lot from this character and they ruined it!

And what the heck is with the porgs if that’s what you call them? Stupid, idiotic looking animals. Luke, who is completely out of character in this film milking some animal and then drinking the milk that he just squeezed out of it’s tits? The final fight scene between Kylo and Luke – don’t get me wrong, it was cool but the fact that Luke was mind projecting all that while and not really there was a bit weird. And he dies or decides to die in peace once that is done as he looks up at the rising suns on his exile planet. Finn was a supporting character and not very impressive in this movie.

The Last Jedi had its world premiere in Los Angeles on December 9, 2017, and was released in the United States on December 15, 2017. It has grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of 2017, the 7th-highest-ever grossing film in North America and the 9th-highest-grossing film of all time, as well as the second-highest-grossing film of the Star Wars franchise. It’s beyond me but then money and Disney and the Star Wars machine defies odds. 7.5 outta 10!

Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. The film stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac, and follows a group of military scientists who enter “The Shimmer”, a mysterious quarantined zone full of mutating landscapes and creatures. The film was released in North America by Paramount Pictures on February 23, 2018, and in other markets on March 12, 2018 by Netflix.

From the skies something flashes by and hits a lighthouse in an area in Southern California and a shimmer like dome appears surrounding it. Over the course of three years the area inside the shimmer, deemed Area X, grows and expands until it reaches almost city size. Cellular biology professor and former U.S. Army soldier Lena’s husband and Army Special Forces soldier named Kane is one of the military men sent in to investigate the inside of the shimmer as part of the 3rd group sent in – no one comes back out. A year later, after deemed to have been lost, Kane returns back home surprising Lena without much memory of what happened and suddenly become ill. Lena calls an ambulance but a government security force intercepts Lena and Kane on the way to a hospital and brings them to Area X.

Psychologist Dr. Ventress recruits Lena into the project, after being question by her as she feels that a group of scientists should follow the all military 3 expeditions. The research expedition consisting of them, physicist Josie Radeck, anthropologist Cass Sheppard, and paramedic Anya Thorensen. Lena does not reveal to her teammates, other than Ventress, that Kane is her husband. Once inside the shimmer they lose track of time and events that happened and their equipment save for supplies and ammo are useless. Inside the now swamp like environment they are attacked by a mutated crocodile which has teeth like a shark, which the manage to kill. They then find Kane & group’s base of operations inside an abandoned military center and in a memory card find a recording that shows Kane cutting open a living expedition member to reveal that something inside him is moving.

At night a mutated, bear-like creature drags Cass away and kills her; the following morning, the team see Cass’s boot. Lena investigates further alone, and she discovers the mutilated corpse of Cass, which she reveals to the others. As the team continues toward the lighthouse at the center of the shimmer, they find a settlement filled with human-shaped plants. Josie hypothesizes that the shimmer is acting on organisms the way a prism distorts and refracts light. The team members realize they are rapidly changing as well. That night when Anya discovers that Lena is Kane’s wife, she gets paranoid and restraints the other three. Anya hears what sounds like Cass screaming for help outside, and investigates. The creature that killed Cass enters the house, and the screams are coming from the creature. It kills Anya and attacks Lena before Josie shoots and kills the creature.

Ventress, who is dying of cancer, goes to the lighthouse alone while Josie, seemingly gives herself to the mutation happening and changes into a human shaped plant. A distraught Lena heads to the lighthouse where she finds a corpse, incinerated by a phosphorous grenade. A video recording footage in the camera next to him shows Kane ranting about the shimmer’s effects on him, urging someone offscreen to find Lena, and finally committing suicide and his doppelganger appears near him. Lena descends into the hole and finds Ventress, who tells her the forces at work will spread to encompass everything. Ventress disintegrates into a glowing nebulous structure that absorbs a drop of blood from Lena’s face and creates a humanoid entity that mimics Lena’s every motion and eventually transforms into an identical copy of her.

Lena manages, after a tussle, to set an active phosphorus grenade in its hands before fleeing. The creature is set ablaze by the grenade and it spreads the flames everywhere engulfing the lighthouse, and the various constructs in the area collapse and the shimmer fades away. Lena goes back and is questioned by the military while under quarantine and is reunited with the doppleganger Kane. She asks him whether he is the real Kane, to which he replies, “I don’t think so.” He asks her if she is Lena, to which she does not respond. The two embrace as their irises shimmer and shift in color.

Here is a scifi movie that is slow and methodical and yet brings enough intrigue and some terror and thoughtfulness into the plot. You are left wondering and guessing as the movie ends, which is what good scifi does. I will give it an 8 outta 10!

Pacific Rim Uprising is a 2018 American science fiction film directed by Steven S. DeKnight (in his feature-film directorial debut) and written by DeKnight, Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder, and T.S. Nowlin. It is the sequel to the 2013 film Pacific Rim, with Guillermo del Toro, director of the original, serving as a producer here. The sequel stars John Boyega (making his producer debut) as well as Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, and Zhang Jin, with Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Burn Gorman returning from the original film. Set in the year 2030, the plot follows humanity needing to again fight Kaiju, giant monsters set on destroying the world.

Set 10 years after the events of the 2012 film,  former Jaeger pilot Jake Pentecost–son of Kaiju War hero Stacker Pentecost–makes a living by stealing and selling Jaeger parts on the black market. While trying to steal part of a disabled Jaeger’s power core, he and teenager Amara Namani (who stole the core to power her homemade and much smaller Jaeger, Scapper)  is arrested by the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. His adoptive sister and PPDC General Secretary Mako Mori gives Jake a choice between prison and returning to the PPDC as an instructor. Both Jake and Amara, who is recognized for her talent, are taken to the PPDC where Jake starts training Jaeger program recruits with his estranged former co-pilot Nate Lambert. Nate and his sister reveal to him that the Jaeger program is threatened by Shao Corporation’s drone program, which offers to mass produce remote controlled Jaegers developed by Liwen Shao and Dr. Newt Geiszler.

Mako is due to deliver a final assessment to determine the authorization of the drones at a PPDC council meeting in Sydney, but is killed by rogue Jaeger Obsidian Fury before she can report. The drone program is authorized and before her death Mako reveals the location of a defunct Jaeger production facility in Russia, which she suspects Obsidian Fury is using as a base of operations. Before Jake and Nate can investigate the area in their own Jaeger, Obsidian Fury destroys the complex and engages them in battle. Upon destroying its reactor, they find that Obsidian Fury was controlled by a Kaiju’s secondary brain. Later, the drones are taken over by cloned Kaiju brains and simultaneously attack Shatterdomes worldwide, inflicting heavy casualties on the PPDC forces and incapacitating almost all Jaegers. Hermann Gottlieb seeks out Geiszler for help, unaware that Geiszler is the mastermind behind the attack, as he has been corrupted by regularly drifting with Kaiju brains.

Seeking to destroy the world for the Precursors, the alien race who created the Kaiju, Geiszler has installed a backdoor in the drone program so that the Kaiju brains could take over the drones, destroy the PPDC and open new breaches all over the world. Although Shao is able to destroy the drones, three powerful Kaiju successfully emerge from the Breaches and unite in Tokyo. The team realizes that the Precursors’ goal is to activate the Ring of Fire by having the Kaiju fall into Mount Fuji, where their blood will react with the volcano’s rare earth elements and activate all of the volcanoes volcano in the ring of fire, wiping out all life on Earth and terraforming the planet for their colonization. Using the recruits and 4 jaegers, the team launch an attack at the the Kaiju, Geiszler merges them into one gigantic beast that quickly overpowers the team. The PPDC use Gipsy Avenger, the last operational Jaeger to destroy the Kaiju with a rocket designed by Shao. In the aftermath, Geiszler is taken into custody by Nate.

The captive Geiszler threatens that his masters will attack the world over and over again. Jake replies that next time, humanity will be the ones attacking the Precursors. Setting up what could be an awesome third movie, which could be made if this movie is successful. I must admit, initially I was not impressed with the movie as it looked and felt like so many other films. The original movie was much better but in the second part of the film, things picked up and the action is riveting. Albeit the actors do look cheesy with all the stuff they have to do but it was fun. No characters really stand out. I’ll give it a 7 outta 10!