STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER - Stumbling At the Finish

Endings are hard. Ask anyone who's invested in a long-running TV show or book series or, yes, film franchise. Stories like The Lord of the Rings or even the Harry Potter series are usually the exception to the rule, especially when you're dealing with a franchise spread across four decades being helmed by a half-a-dozen directors and a small army of writers, script doctors, and editors who had major hands in shaping the story.

Unfortunately, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker lands closer to The Dark Knight Rises than to even the original trilogy's Return of the Jedi. It's not bad, but it's over-stuffed and unfocused and winds up selling some of the dramatic turns of the previous two films short. It's rousing and exciting in the moment, but leaves little of substance after it departs.

Like I said, endings are hard.

FROZEN II and Letting Go of the Disney Princess

In 2013, Walt Disney Animation's Frozen, a long-in-development loose adaptation of "The Snow Queen," directed by Chris Buck (Disney's Tarzan) and Jennifer Lee (one of the lead writers on Wreck-It Ralph) debuted in theaters and hit its target audience like a nuclear bomb. The film became the House of Mouse's highest-grossing animated film of all time, grossing over 1.2 billion dollars (supplanting titans like The Lion King and Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3) and catapulting Queen Elsa of Arendelle to the status of "Most Beloved Disney Princess" of the modern age.

So, obviously, a sequel was not only inevitable, but it was sure to be the safest possible bet for the Walt Disney company. Right?

Well, yes.

. . . But also, not really.

KNIVES OUT - In Deep

There's something delightfully pure about a good old-fashioned locked room mystery. Take a lot of people, a little murder and a signature location, then watch them bounce off of each other as one person tries to solve the crime and another tries to get away with it. Merely executing that concept masterfully is admirable, but what makes the new "Whodunnit" from writer/director Rian Johnson (Looper, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) a genuinely great film is how it chooses find its best narrative footholds beyond what we expect.

As all great mysteries must.