Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
Director: George Lucas
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Don't expect radical revisions in this 20th anniversary reissue of George Lucas's spellbinding space opera. The sfx may now be unimpeachable, but none of the much heralded extra sequences fashioned from out-takes - the confrontation between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt; Luke and his childhood friend, Biggs, bantering about the good old days - actually contributes anything meaningful in narrative terms. It's the minor tweaks which most impress. The computer-generated beasties scurrying around Mos Eisley's spaceport are triumphs of animation, and the dogfight scenes benefit immensely from more convincingly nuclear-looking explosions and the removal of unsightly matte lines. For the most part, you'd never guess the film was 20 years old. Only the innocence of its universe testifies to the sea change in film-making it provoked. The jaw-dropping wetness of Mark Hamill's Luke continues to astound, while Harrison Ford's amphetamine enema of a turn, which shifts the film into top gear after its rather too leisurely first act, merely confirms what we've always known: stars will out.Author: JO'C
Cast & crew
Director: George Lucas
Producer: Gary Kurtz
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse full cast
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Duration: 125 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now