The following contains my SPOILER FREE review for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Enjoy!

Escapists be warned: Rogue One is way too real. You want to shove your head in the sand for a few hours to forget the horrors of the reality of our world right now? This movie is not for you! There is a lot of violence, tyrannical governments, and literal genocide in this movie.

Set in the months (or days? The passage of time is kind of vague) leading up to the events of A New Hope, this film will be familiar to fans of the Original Trilogy. It is the story of the team who stole the plans to the Death Star for the Rebel Alliance. It is the gritty, dark war story that Star Wars fans have been waiting for.

The [fascist] Empire has firmly taken control of the galaxy, and the Death Star is finally complete. Our main character Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is a criminal, in jail for crimes committed against The Empire. Not rebellion type crimes, mind you, just normal crimes that she would have been imprisoned for had this been The Republic. In fact she makes it very clear in the beginning that she is not interested in rebelling against The Empire. She is forcibly recruited to the Alliance to help find her father (A criminally underutilized Mads Mikkelson), the man who The Empire forced to build the Death Star. She is placed under the command of Rebel captain Cassian Andor and his wise cracking former Imperial robot K-2SO (Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk) to find her father and stop the Death Star from being completed.

This is the basic premise of the film, one that promised to not only expand upon the Star Wars Universe as these one shot films are intended to do, but also fill in some gaps left by A New Hope. I think the movie did so fairly well. I enjoyed watching this movie much more than I did The Force Awakens, which I was not thrilled with. My biggest problem with that movie was how it was all something we had seen before (Read my review here) and a complete rip off of the Original Trilogy.

Rogue One took place at pretty much the same time and yet managed to give us something completely different and fresh. We visited many different planets, were introduced to a bunch of new characters that bear no resemblance to characters we have seen before, and showed us a different perspective than we have ever seen in a Star Wars film. It was dark. Death was everywhere and you saw good guys doing "bad" things. This movie showed us the sacrifices a person makes in war when fighting the ultimate evil.

There was no Luke Skywalker being the beacon of justice and everything good. It was ordinary people doing whatever they had to in order to get the job done, and at times it was not pretty.  The Force played a role in the film, mostly through the character of Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), who the first ever Force user we have seen in the films who was neither a Jedi nor a Sith, but it was a pretty small role compared to what we have seen in the past. 

The visuals of the film were amazing, arguably the best in Star Wars yet. It was a beautiful movie to watch. It also filled in some plot holes from A New Hope that fans have been arguing about for literally decades in a satisfying way.
I know a some people will disagree with me on this point, but I found the fan service in this film to be just the right amount and made sense to the plot. We were shown characters we have seen before and loved, characters that were in the background but we now get to see in action, and some familiar sights from the Original Trilogy. However they were there for a reason other than evoking fan nostalgia, and that reason is because this is a story of that era and those people and visuals needed to be there. This does not apply to everyone of course. Did we really need a two second shot of C-3PO and R2D2 in the Rebel hangar? No probably not, but I enjoyed seeing them there all the same. 

Then of course there was Darth Vader. I am a huge Darth Vader fangirl. No shame there. He was my favorite fiction character of all time for most of my life. So when I heard he was going to be in Rogue One, seeing him was the thing I was most excited about. Although he had only two scenes, those two scenes were the best scenes of the film. He is the epic bad-ass we all remember from the Original Trilogy, but with modern technology they were better able to show the terror and skill that he was capable of in a greater capacity than when the Original Trilogy was made. I squealed and jumped up and down in my seat every time he was on screen.....yea. 

That was all the good, now for the bad. 

No, this was not a perfect film. For starters, it was way too long. At a whopping two and a half hours, it did get a tedious. The set up to the story took up a lot of time that we did not need to spend it on. Everyone knows where the story is going, let's just get there already! In fact, there were many elements of the story that were way too predictable. They followed a series of tropes that anyone who has ever seen a movie is probably familiar with, and the plot was extremely predictable at pretty much every turn. 

The characters were not very well fleshed out or developed. They were certainly likable and interesting, but by the end of the film we barely knew who they were. We had a superficial understanding of their basic personalities, but nothing more. The emotional connection that we felt for say Finn, Ray, and Poe in Force Awakens was just not there, and therefore the climax of the film lacked the emotional punch I think they were going for. 

The CGI characters. I will not reveal who, but there were two characters from the Original Trilogy brought to life through the use of CGI. Many people I spoke to thought it was well done, many others thought it was creepy and looked off. I am part of camp creepy. I appreciate how much work it took to accomplish what they did, and that they did a very good job, but it still took me out of the story every time I saw one of these characters and made me shiver a little. 

Overall, it was a decent movie. I am sure on a second viewing I would enjoy it a lot less than I did the first time, but after one viewing I was pretty pleased with it considering I was expecting the worst. I have higher hopes for the future of these Star Wars one shot movies than I had previously, and am glad that this one was made. I highly recommend seeing it, just don't expect a masterpiece. If anything, it made my appreciation and interest in the Original Trilogy grow even more. 

Thanks for reading! If there is interest expressed I may do a spoiler filled review in the future of specific things in the film I loved/disliked, but we shall see. Till next time! 

I actually made it out to the cinema this week and saw the film Arrival staring Amy Adams!

Arrival is an alien invasion story, but deviates from all the worn out and tired tropes of the genre we have become familiar with over the last few decades. It all begins with the arrival (haha see what I did there) of our elusive aliens. Twelve ships arrive on earth in seemingly random locations throughout the world, and naturally all of humanity freaks out. What do the aliens want? Do they intend to wipe us out? What do we do?

This is all happening in the background. The real focus of the story is on Louise, a highly respected American linguist. She is plagued by memories of a different life, a life spent with her daughter, who died young of an unspecified, but incurable disease. It is through Louise's perspective that we see the beginnings of how earth responds to the aliens. The respective governments where the ships have landed are telling the public nothing, not admitting to any contact with the aliens and generally staying pretty mum on the entire situation. Naturally this incites panic, and the world begins to fall into chaos. Louise attempts to keep calm and continue her life, but that quickly falls apart when she is approached by a colonel who she had done translation work for in the past. He gives her a recording of the aliens "speaking", asking her to translate. This begins Louise on her journey to establish contact with the aliens, learn how to communicate with them, to figure out what they want and why they are there. Louise, our hero, believes fully that the aliens are there in peace, that they wish to help humanity not harm them. She must work against the fear taking over the globe in order to prove it.

As someone who has studied linguistics, I really appreciated the approach they took to the entire process. Usually in these types of movies, the aliens have some sort of magical translation box, already know English, or there is no attempt at communication and war is inevitable. In Arrival, all the countries in the world send in their own language experts, they all attempt to communicate in their own languages, and they all make progress based on their different approaches that arise from their cultural differences. In the beginning they all share what they know with each other, but as time goes on and chaos erupts around the world, this collaboration falls apart. The methods used to decipher the alien's language, and attempt to teach them all were all based in actual techniques used by linguists working today. There is a feeling of realism in this film that is gripping, despite the ten foot tall octopus looking aliens that are a main feature. The way that people react, the way that governments react, are all very relevant and familiar to how we see people behaving in today's difficult climate.

Amy Adams was spectacular, flexing her acting muscles to portray this complicated, intelligent and driven woman. Louise is a character that never doubts herself, knowing that she is right and never gives up till the very last moment to solve the puzzle and ultimately save the world.

The story is emotional, complex, and riveting. I found myself on the edge of my seat more than a few times. When the climax hits and all the pieces come together it is a moment of pure triumph. I wanted to cheer in the theater I was so delighted. And, without giving anything away about the ending, it tackles another subject common in sci-fi that I have always found to be very poorly done, by giving you just enough to for it to make sense but not so much that you are confused and over analyzing.

There a lot of good films out right now, and bigger ones are just around the corner (Star Wars strikes again, will this one be any good? Stay tuned...), but if you get the chance go and see this movie, I highly recommend you do so. Not many movies are made anymore at this caliber.

Well it has certainly been a while since I wrote here! I took a backpacking trip recently, and wanted to recount my experience as it very well may be the last one I ever do.....

My brother's girlfriend (Emily) managed to win the lottery and get a one night pass to camp at Snow Lake in The Enchantments, a section of the Cascade Mountains (yes, there is an actual lottery for these passes that you have to enter). I was told over and over that this was one of the most remarkable hikes, and that many backpackers dream of getting this opportunity. I was excited, but very nervous. I was also told it was one of the most difficult hikes around. Because of reasons, I was not in the best shape going into this, so I knew it was going to be a challenge...

We left bright and early at 5:45am to get to the trail head, 2 hours away, before the sun was too high in the sky. The drive was nice. We got to watch the sun rise over various parts of Washington as we drove, and we made it to the trail head on schedule. It was a lovely cool morning, and the beginning of the trail was very flat, which gave me the opportunity to get used to having a heavy pack on my back. I have to say the worst part about that thing was unexpected. The grinding into my hip bones throughout the entire trip left bruises that took days to go away.

Eventually the elevation began to climb, and I started to get more and more anxious about what was coming: Aasgard Pass. I had not heard of Aasgard Pass before, but it is a well known feature of this particular trail. 2300ish feet in one mile. This is a quote from the Washington Trail Association about it:
"Thiis “shortcut” to the Enchantments Core Zone refers only to mileage. As far as miles per hour goes, Aasgard may be one of the slowest hikes you attempt. Achieving the pass is a thigh-burning, chest-bursting, eye-popping endeavor that offers as many extraordinary views as beads of sweat that will fall from your brow as you ascend nearly 2000 feet in just three-quarters of a mile." x
This mountain pass is what makes this hike so formidable...for the most part. There is some other stuff I will get to later that also made it very difficult.

We made it up to a beautiful lake, Colchuck Lake, and could see Aasgard pass on the other side. (Sorry for the crappy photo quality. I did not bring my nice camera on this trip as A) my brother high-jacked the battery for his camera and B) it was too heavy/bulky to take with.)


 My brother thought it would be easy going around the lake to the pass....it was not. It was..interesting. There was a lot of up and down over little mounds and rocks, but right before the pass there was the remains of an avalanche. This resulted in us literally scrambling over MASSIVE boulders. It was unexpected, and turned out to be preparation for what awaited us on the pass.
After finally making out of the field of rocks, and briefly getting lost and winding up on a sandy beach, we made it to the bottom of the pass.

My strategy was to go my own pace, and not worry about trying to go the same speed as Matt and Emily. Matt told me if I fell, to scream loudly. Sage advice. On the Washington trail website, it recommends not doing this pass if you have a poor center of gravity and have a heavy pack on. This is for a good reason. It was basically another avalanche field with massive rocks and boulders, but at a 80 degree angle.
I started out pretty confident. Yea it was hard, but I felt I was doing well. I was pretty sure I was gonna make it through this without any problems. As long as I didn't look at how far we had to go, I would totally be fine.

Not to mention the scenery was INSANE. The mountains were being bathed in just the perfect light, and next to us was a ridge called "The Dragon's Tail". If I were to name mountains, they would all be dragon themed, but this one was particularly accurate.

It was shortly after this, and my over confident thoughts of making it through this okay, that we encountered our first mountain goats. I had never seen a mountain goat up close before, and had been warned that they could be aggressive for human urine because of the salt (They crave the mineral...vintage memeing), but no one warned me that they would just be wandering along the same paths that we used. This was my reaction to the first mother/kid pair we saw...


Our strategy for the goats was to group together and move to the side as much as possible so the goats could pass. They seemed to be pretty used to humans, and would just walk right on by like we weren't there. We ended up seeing 5 goats on Aasgard pass.

After the 5 goats, not gonna lie, I was fading fast. We were only half way up and I was exhausted. I had never climbed anything for this long in my life, and was not ready for the quick wall of exhaustion I hit. My brother took to shouting out how far we had left, but the last 500 feet every single step was a fight with myself. The last 200 feet, I could barely move. I would take two steps and had to rest. It was pretty awful. I was sweaty, my hips were on fire, and I felt like I had nothing left in the tank. Eventually, we made it to the top (Matt and Emily several minutes before I did, let's be honest). I was rewarded with this view:
And THIS is an expression to sum up how I felt about the view at the time:

So yea, that was...not fun. We stopped pretty shortly after that to have lunch. I have never tasted anything better than the Clif bar and peanut butter in a packet that I had for lunch that day. It hit the spot in a more satisfying way than any food ever has. It was during lunch that we spotted two more goats, and my brother snapped a photo that enabled me to make my very own meme about the aggressive urine drinking goats of the Cascades...
You can check out my brothers far superior photos at his Flickr HERE. I really recommend you do that, because my photos taken with my phone do not do the landscape justice.

At the top, it was pretty cool. If you think of the words alpine and tundra, that is pretty much what this was. Small snow lakes scattered in a granite wasteland with snow patches and very little vegetation. Throw in the glaring sun and I felt like an idiot for thinking I wouldn't need my sunglasses (or sunscreen for that matter, a choice I would deeply regret later that night).


Blissfully, this part was pretty flat, although the sun was really giving me a headache. We saw a lot of cool things. Water was flowing everywhere, and we had to scramble through snow a number of times.The coolest thing, and I still can't get over this, WE SAW A BADGER. An honest to God wild badger. I was so excited, the little dude was just sitting on top of a rock. I shouldn't say little, he/she was huge. Before I could snap a picture though, they ran off into a hole. A bit more camera shy than the goats...

Eventually we started to make our way down the other side of the mountain and upon a bunch of lakes with names like "Lake Perfection" and "Inspiration Lake". Yea someone was a little too literal with the naming here.
There started to be actual trees, and some shrubs, and lots of good old fashion mud. You can't tell in this picture, but the shallow water in this lake was crystal clear. It was actually kind of freaky how clear it was. I wanted to go into it so bad, but as we still had like 5 miles to go and the sun was not going to wait for us, that would have been a poor choice.

Just an FYI, we were hardly the only people on the trail. Even though you need a permit to camp in this area, it is completely open to day hikers. There was TONS of people. One group was headed to the same place we were, and we had the (dis)pleasure of following them almost all the way there, until we managed to pass them with a few miles to go.

This strip of the trail was actually quite lovely. We were walking on relatively flat land and there was the most gorgeous lakes and ponds in every direction. The bluest water you had ever seen, and the moon was shining over head.




We saw so many more goats, bringing the total to 10. Then we entered a fresh new hell, as we got to the other side of the mountain and had to head down to Snow Lake.

When I say down..I mean down. This part was actually kind of frightening. The "trail" was extremely steep down a cliff basically. We had to have complete concentration with every single tiny step we took, which was mentally and physically exhausting. It was very painful on my knees and my jaw because I was clenching in the entire time.


After to Aasgard pass, this is the part that took the longest. As Emily put it "There is no photo or way you can describe to people to make them understand how intense this is". She said this as I was trying to take pictures to do just that.
The sun was setting, so that added to the drama of it all, as we needed to set up camp before it got dark. Eventually we made it to the bottom, and the trail leveled out. We could walk like human beings again, and I was ready as heck to be off my feet.

After what felt like from here to eternity, we made it to the lake, and after hella more walking to find a camp site, we set up camp quickly, refilled our water, and SAT DOWN. We actually had a really nice campsite, minus something that I would discover later. It was a little piece of land that jutted out over looking the lake. We had gone 11 miles that day. It felt like a lot more.
After we had stopped moving and were digging into the burritos we had brought with us for dinner, I started to feel...off. Near the end of my burrito I started to feel really sick. Matt tried to force me to finish it, for obvious reasons. You don't want food smelling up your camp site and attracting animals, but after admitting to him it was making me sick, he let it go. I decided that maybe what I needed was to lay down, so I head into the tent.

Emily and I were sharing the tent while Matt was in his hammock a few feet away. Emily and I listened to podcasts on her phone for a few hours, and I did not feel better. I eventually decided I needed to walk it off a little (ironic since that is what I had been doing all day), and got up to wander around the camp in the dark.

That is when I saw them. MICE. MICE EVERYWHERE. We had unknowingly set up on top of a mice colony. They didn't go into our stuff, just were running around. They stared at me and I stared back. Little monsters.
 Even though I felt awful, being out gave me the opportunity to see the stars. Emily, from inside the tent, asked me if there were "crazy stars". Well, there were not crazy stars, just a little bit more than I was used to back in upstate NY. The new additional stars were not super bright, they kind of looked like white twinkly mist with the closer ones. The mountain next to use was glowing white (presumably from the moon light although I could not see the moon anymore), and the lake was a perfect reflection pool. In the distance I saw a rotating search light from the nearby town of Leavenworth. (Something Emily looked up after, and was apparently for a man who had been missing for months. A man who's body they found a few days after our hike. ugh)

It was other worldly, and also ccoolldd, so I eventually went back into the tent. I got up two more times to try to walk off my misery. The last time I got up, Matt had woken up. He had fallen asleep quickly and easily hours beforehand, and was startled to see me wandering around. He scolded me for not drinking more water. So I went back to the tent to get more water, and then became 100% certain that I was about to vomit. I very quickly got my shoes back on, darted out of the tent, and walked briskly away from the camp behind a large rock to throw up, which I did...all over my shoes.

Yup kids, I had sun poisoning. Sun poisoning side affects (including vomiting), can sometimes take hours after you have left the sun to occur. After it was over I felt ssoo much better. Poor Matt walked by me with a little shovel in hand to bury it. Bless him. I stayed out in the dark for a little bit longer to make sure I was fine, then went to bed. I wish I could say I slept like a rock, but that did not happen. I was tossing and turning all night. Needless to say I was the first one awake in the morning. It was nice though, I got to see the sunrise...

 Having lived in actual forests, I understand, but having this amount of foliage in the middle of a city is nothing to turn your nose up at either! There are certain cities I could think of...not naming any names....that could benefit from green space like this.
 There were tons of people with their dogs there. One man and his German Shepard walked by and he said to me "Isn't it wonderful having all this nature in the city?" It really is. Plus any opportunity for me to stalk other people's dogs is awesome.
 It is the middle of January, and although there are no leaves on the plants, massive ferns and bright green moss was growing everywhere. I thought winter in England didn't feel real, this was another world!
 The few bridges that went over the ravine were pretty impressive. I really enjoyed this large green one. It had that old time feel that had character; not some giant concrete monstrosity.
And of course, RUNNING WATER. I love visiting places like Utah or Texas, but I could never live somewhere where running water like this is not abundant. I grew up in a flood basin where streams, bonds, creeks, and rivers were everywhere. Back home you cannot go 400m without running into a body of water it seems. In England I lived in the city with the most canals in the world. I am glad Seattle has so much water around, and it is one of the many reasons I wanted to live here.

Although there was plenty of people wandering the paths, there was a delicious feeling of solitude. You couldn't really hear the street traffic, and the air was so fresh and cool. It is a great place to be alone with yourself, and just listen to the stream trickle along. I expect to be spending a lot of time there in the future. A little haven in the midst of my crazy life!

WARNING: This *review* contains spoilers! ....and is a super nerdy, way too in depth review of the new Star Wars film.

To begin I want to state that I, during the most formative years of my life, was a massive Star Wars nerd. I had no less than 15 posters on my wall and spent most of my time on Star Wars forum sites, writing Star Wars fan fiction with my friends, and re-watching the movies until my eyes bled.