Only The Brave review

 
I first heard about director Joseph Kosinski back in 2010 when Tron Legacy came out. It was a visually mesmerizing movie, I was a fan of Tron and was anticipating the sequel. I didn’t think much about the director as I was caught in the world that was created. He caught my attention once again in 2013 when he directed Oblivion. This was another that was just visually gorgeous to look at, and while the story wasn’t anything new, it was still compelling enough to grab my attention for a couple of hours and to suck me in, and it did have a couple of solid twists, well one really big one in particular that threw me off. Not only were these movies visually cool, but they had great soundtracks to go with them. Seriously the two soundtracks to these movies are still worth listening to today. At that point, I felt that I had the director figured out, he could create visually stunning movies that were very cool to look at and probably had great scores to go with them, and would more likely be Science Fiction movies, but story or emotion wise, probably wouldn’t do anything beyond that. Now before I move on, don’t get me wrong, if you read any of my previous reviews, I really like visually cool looking movies, and I really like going to those a lot. Anyway, I first heard about the movie around August when a trailer was attached before The Dark Tower. I remember seeing Joseph Kosinki’s name attached as the director, I realized I didn’t think I saw him direct another movie since Oblivion, and right then and there I knew I would go check it out, besides the fact that the movie had a solid cast and that it looked like a solid movie.

I kept my eye out for it, I knew when it would arrive and I planned to go see it. I heard good reviews out of this and so I was definitely going in with hopes that this would be really good, and it was. This was a very good movie. What surprised me was that not only did this movie have quite a few really gorgeous shots, but it had a really solid story and it actually had emotions, I nearly teared up by the end, I got emotional. I found myself really caring about the characters and the situation. This movie also brought an appreciation of something I don’t express enough gratitude for, firefighters. I haven’t been in a burning building (thankfully), and I don’t think of them a whole lot, but this movie re-introduced that appreciation for them, and how they are truly real life heroes. Not only that, but it really goes into the difficulty of being a firefighter, and how that can affect their personal and family lives. 

 

There are two main characters that we get to see into their home lives, the chracters played by Josh Brolin and Miles Teller. We get glimpses of Josh Brolin and Jennifer Connolly’s family life and how they make their difficult schedule work but also how it goes into those frustrations when one of them wants more out of the relationship. Miles Teller’s character has an incredible growth throughout the movie and there are moments where you see his character struggle with the responsibilities he has taken on him and how it begins to affect his family life at one point. All the other performances are excellent, and we have a great set of actors portraying their characters wonderfully. In case you didn’t know, this was based on a true story, I didn’t know about the facts of this story going in, this is another movie that I chose to not look up facts until after the movie, another one I did that was Everest two years ago (which surprisingly also starred Josh Brolin). Seriously, a director I had personally categorized and he has gone beyond what I expected.

The visual effects of the movie were very well done, it’s a compliment when you can’t tell if there was any CG work done or not, and a lot of the shots I could not tell if there was any sort of CG work, there were a couple I thought I could but there weren’t very many. I want to touch on another aspect (since I brought it up with the director’s previous movies) that I also really enjoyed, and it was the music. The composer was Joseph Trapanese, who was the composer for Oblivion and also the underrated animated TV show, Tron Uprising. It wasn’t a score that would blow doors down but just helped to set the mood for the story and doesn’t overpower the movie but helps to support it. I have listened to the score off Spotify while at work and it is a very nice listen and very calming. The songs chosen in the movie are also very good. 

I have thought about this movie since I saw it. How much we don’t really give them the credit they really deserve, they can be seen as unappreciated heroes until they are involved in saving our lives. Like I said I am thankful I haven’t been placed in that situation of being in a burning building and having to be rescued, nor do I want to be placed in one, I am just thankful to have movies like this that I can see and appreciate the people that are willing to give their time and efforts to do something that I wouldn’t want to do. I think the last movie we got about firefighters before this was Ladder 49 (which was pretty good if my memory serves me right), and that was 13 years ago. I hope we can take time to really give thanks to these individuals. As I was watching the movie, I was caught by how complex a lot of the techniques were to putting out or stopping a fire from spreading. I always thought it was about driving a fire truck from point A to point B to take a bunch of water and put out the fire. If I decided to go over to the fire station and state I want to be a firefighter, I would not have the proper knowledge to handle it. More importantly, I couldn’t go from a city to the mountains and expect to know how to properly deal with the fire in the mountain from spreading. As I stated earlier, the last firefighter movie I saw before this was Ladder 49 thirteen years ago, and that dealt with firefighters in a large city, this movie deals with containing fires in the mountains of Arizona, and the techniques were definitely different.

I am going to stop there, I really hope you consider checking out this movie for yourself, this is something that is definitely worth seeing in theaters.

Tickets on Sale for Star Wars The Last Jedi, plus new trailer

 
Okay, maybe I should have written that headline in reverse, however, with the tickets going fairly quickly, I figure you should get your tickets first. Stop what you are doing, get your tickets, and come back here.

Did you get your tickets? Okay, well, there is a new trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which I am sure many debated they should watched after Rian Johnson said he was torn on us watching it, mainly because he wanted us to go in without any sort of trailer. Personally if there was one movie that they could have gone without releasing any sort of trailer and we still would go to the theater, this would be it. But if you are wondering if I gave in and watched.......of course I did. I was on the fence this morning, but after reading his comments on Twitter more carefully, I realized what he was meaning, which was that he wasn't trying to get us to boycott the trailer but that he wanted us to go in without any sort of speculation on what the story was about. He even got on later in the day explaining his comment that he made earlier in the day. As well, even if I decided to not watch the trailer tonight, I was sure I wasn't going to be able to resist for long anyway, and now that I have seen it, my anticipation is off the charts again. The hardest part is calming down and waiting for the release date in December.

I do need to talk about one element in the trailer, something that no other trailer has done before, as far as I can remember. If you are one of those that are trying to avoid trailers, or descriptions of trailers, for The Last Jedi, do not read any further.

That moment is when Kylo Ren is attacking the ships of the Resistance and it appears that he is facing Leia's ship and is about to destroy it. With the passing of Carrie Fisher late last year, this moment just stopped my heart and I stopped breathing for a short second, and almost choked up. This is not something that normally happens for me.

Finn and Captain Phasma have an epic battle, and that just seems awesome. I want to go back and see how Finn and Captain Phasma's relation is. I got a feeling there is probably more between them than we may have thought about, we do get hints in The Force Awakens that Finn resents Captain Phasma, maybe she was trying to be a bit more controlling over him. Regardless that seems like an awesome fight will go down, actually I am sure many awesome fights will go down. 

If you have noticed the posters, the color red is a prominent color, in the teaser poster and the new poster released today, as well, when the title for the movie was released earlier this year, the Star Wars logo was in red. There is also plenty of red in the trailer.

And seriously, what's going to happen to Rey and Kylo Ren? There are moments that make you think that Rey could turn to the dark side, kind of like how the shots at the end are edited together. I want to say I don't think they will do that. First off, I am sure those two aren't in the same scene there, it's just trailer editing. But honestly, that is something that has gone through my mind, what if Rey turned to the dark side. At the same time, what if Kylo Ren turned back to the good side, and found redemption.

I also have many questions on Luke Skywalker and Snoke. The obvious that come from the previous movie, as well as what comes from this trailer. Why is Luke scared of Rey's potential? Are Rey and Kylo Ren similar? In regards to Snoke, I remember there were theories that he was Darth Plaugus, who was Palpatine's master (remember the story that Palpatine told Anakin in the Opera scene in Episode 3?). That would be an interesting idea if that were true. One of my big questions is how did Snoke come into play? What made him decide to seize control of the galaxy, what is his ultimate goal?

I wasn't too sure what I was going to get when I saw the trailer, I just kept expectations normal, just hoping for some cool things to help pump me up for when the movie comes out. And I wasn't too worried about spoilers going in, because the talent behind these movies are working to keep everything under wraps as much as possible. If I heard that the editor of the trailer for Terminator Genysis edited the trailer and that he locked out Rian Johnson when he was putting together the trailer, then yes, I would have avoided the trailer, and I wouldn't be telling anyone to watch it.

Honestly this is something that is hard to keep my thoughts straight as I have so many thoughts going on in regards to the trailer, but I strongly recommend you watch the trailer if you haven't seen it yet.

Now on to what I first brought up in the subject, tickets are now on sale. I will admit that I was shocked with how hard it was to secure my ticket, I am not sure why I thought that because The Force Awakens was really hard as well. I had one theater in mind to get my ticket, but I couldn't get in to that showtime to secure my seat, so I guess either they sold out or it's going to be a company bought show. Regardless, I ended up going to buy a ticket for a Thursday night showing on an IMAX screen, because for the first showing of a Star Wars movie, you need to go big, but my seat was a few rows away from the screen, about 4 rows, but I couldn't be any happier though. I also have a ticket to go with a group of friends the following day as well that my friends purchased. But yeah, it was definitely a fight to secure a ticket, and I was cheering at the fact I secured my seat and all. Getting tickets to a Star Wars movie opening weekend is literally like getting tickets to a concert.

Anyway, that is all I have to say in regards to Star Wars The Last Jedi at this moment. I will for sure do a review of the movie when I see it, and if you want me to do another post on me sharing some of my speculations, let me know. My next planned post will be a breakdown on some of the movies I am looking forward to this holiday season.