TV Review: *****Andor Season 2 (2025)

 Andor Season 1

Andor Seson 2 dropped 12 episodes, in a month, 3 a week for four consecutive weeks.  They are now all available on Disney +.  

This series has been great fun.  The character of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is very intriguing and conflicted.  Added to this is Luthen Rael (Stellan Starsgård) who is the master spy.  Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) is with the empire and trying to catch them.  In the end it turns on her head and she becomes the scapegoat.Her helper is Syril Karn (Kyle Soller).  And of course Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) who says what she has to say to the Senate and is able to escape to become the leader of the rebellion.  This show has many other interesting characters.  It tells the story leading up to Rogue One and A New Hope.  It is vrery well done and the feel of the show is just right.  This is Star Wars without light sabers.  Not everyone is s Jedi.

Movie Review: ****The Terminal (2004)

 When you are stranded in an airport and your visa is no longer valid because your country is no more due to a coup.  Viktor Navorski finds himself in this predicament.  He may not enter the U.S. and he may not return home.  Because of the coup his passport is no longer valid.  So he lives at the airport.  At first he returns carts to collect a few coins with which to feed himself.  He befriends Enrique Cruz (Diego Luna) who is a food service worker and provides meals in exchange for help meeting an immigration officer, Dolores Torres (Zoe Zaldaña).  The conflict in this story is created by Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) who is the head of the U.S. Customs and seems to take pride in causing grief for Navorski.  Navorski also meets and woos a flight attendant, Amelia Warren (Katherine Zeta-Jones).  He also befriends Gupta Rajan (Kumar Pallana) who is a janitor, but in actuality is an illegal immigrant.  A theme is why does Navorski want to visit America.  Dixon wants to find out, and even interrogates Warren to find out.  Finally Navorski reveals he wants to get the signature of a jazz musician.  

A funny part of the show is that Navorski actually gets a job in the airport working construction.  He build a fountain and does many different tasks.  

Political issues finally resolve, and Dixon tells him he can go home; but not enter the United States.  Dixon sys he will persecute his friends if he does not go strait home.  Rajan gives himself up to convince him to finish his dream.  He does this, and then returns to catch a flight home.  

This story follow rather loosely the story of Mehran Nasseri who lived in the Paris airport for 18 years.  This is a good show telling the human spirit and the will to survive in difficult circumstances.

Disney+ TV Review: ****^Star Wars: Andor 2022

 Andor is incredibly good as it keeps building until we hit the climax in the last episode.  Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is nothing more than a mercenary or thief.  He is recruited by a rebel organizer, Luthen Rael (Stellen Skarsgärd) He and Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) work together in funding the rebellion.  Andor and some other reels carry out a successful heist of an imperial payroll, thus getting needed money for the rebellion.  Cassian hangs low, but in doing so is unjustly imprisoned.  He is set to work on some unknown device.  Escape is impossible as the floor is wired with electricity in it which is turned on at any hint of escape.  But when we realize that any sentence is a life sentence in this prison (a whole floor was killed when one was due to be released) escape becomes the goal.  

Andor's adoptive mother, Maarva (Fiona Shaw) passes away.  He must return to the funeral.  However the epire want him captured so they can torture him and learn secrets of the rebellion, particularly the identity of Luthen Rael.  Luthen Rael also wants to kill Andor so as to prevent being exposed.  It seems there is not much hope for him.  The highlight of the whole series is when Luthen's mother, through a droid, gives her own eulogy and calls for rebellion.  The tension just builds and builds to this point and finally pops.  In the chaos, Andor gives his life to Luthen.

The sage of Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) is weaved into the other stories.  However this story did not reach its head yet.

season two

Movie Review: Star Wars: Rogue One

This is the hot movie of the Christmas season this year, and so we ventured.  I had a great time, although there were some poorly written scenes.  The story line is great, telling the story of the spies who retrieved the plans for the Death Star.  In the first Star Wars we get a hit of this movie, when the general says, "Many died to retrieve these plans."  So this movie gives us the heroic stories of those many dying.  Jyn (Felicity Jones) is the daughter of the man (Mads Mikkelsen) developing the plans for the death star.  He was forced to by the empire, particularly Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).  However he has deliberately put a flaw into the design.  Getting the idea of that design flaw to others however is difficult.  His daughter, in the meantime has been in hiding since she was a girl.  However, the Alliance contacts her by breaking her our of prison where she was under a different name.  She agrees to go with a small crew, because it will mean seeing her father, and proving he is not the terrible man everyone makes him out to be.  However the Captain of the mission, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) has special orders to kill her father if they can reach him.  In the meantime the death star is operational, and used on a target where it is feared there is an imperial pilot turned against the empire.  He was sent with a message from Jyn's father.  So the adventure goes.  they go to an Imperial communications hub to retrieve the death star plans, which are needed to know how to destroy it.  however Krennic is also headed there.  Soon the death star follows.  A raging battle follows, with our heroes trying to get the plans out of the communications base.  Now for the pieces I felt were contrived.  They had to retrieve the actual plans from a tall tower, and they have to climb up this when the power goes out.  Then Jyn has to reset the satellite dish, and has to go out on the eat of the tower to do this, where she is vulnerable to laser fire.  Why couldn't the control be some place convenient?  However I must say this is a movie I will see again.   Also interesting characters were Chirrut Umwe (Donnie Yen) and Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang) both Rogue Warriors.  A new droid, K2SO (Alan Tudyk) is an imperial protocol droid now helping the Alliance.
At the end of this story, the first Star Wars story (episode IV) is set up.