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    ‘Andor’ Shows How a Resistance Is Built, One Brick at a Time

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    In the best of the Disney+ “Star Wars” series, returning for its final season, fighting fascism is more than just a joyride.The “Star Wars” movies, TV dramas, animated series and sundry other content-shaped products have shown us some spectacular sights: underwater civilizations, planet-choking cities, mystic swamps, ice worlds and volcanic hellscapes fit to forge a demon.“Andor,” whose second and final season began on Disney+ on Tuesday, has some of that world painting too. But perhaps its most memorable, and certainly its most definitive, physical feature is: bricks.The brick walls on Ferrix — the childhood home planet of the series’s hero, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) — have a somber origin story, revealed in the first-season finale. They are the cremains of the dead, baked into stone and placed into edifices to support those who come after.These bricks are the symbol “Andor” is built out of. Like many “Star Wars” stories, the series is about a battle against a fascistic empire. (In the melee that ends the first season, set at Cassian’s mother’s funeral, her brick is used to clock an imperial soldier in the head.)From a street-level, brick-level perspective, “Andor” shows what resistance means, how it works and what it costs. It emphasizes not just individual heroism but also collective loss and sacrifice. In “Andor,” rebellion is more than a joyride: It is a construction project.A sense of tragedy is built into the series’s premise. “Andor” is a prequel to the 2016 movie “Rogue One,” in which Cassian goes on a fatal mission to retrieve the blueprints for the Death Star, the planet-killer that Luke Skywalker destroyed in the original “Star Wars” (now known as “A New Hope”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      On ‘Andor,’ All Is Fair in Love and ‘Star Wars’

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      What attracts two people to each other? Are they drawn together by a mutual need for companionship, affection and emotional support?Or are they united by their individual yearnings to advance their own positions and consolidate power in a tyrannical empire that is building a moon-size superweapon?In the Disney+ series “Andor,” the answer turns out to be a little from Column A and a little from Column B, at least in the case of one of the stranger — yet undeniably compelling — relationships to emerge in the “Star Wars” fantasy franchise: the frustrated pencil pusher Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and the ruthless security officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough).Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) had an unusual and often awkward relationship in “Andor” Season 1. At the start of Season 2, that relationship has evolved.Des Willie/Lucasfilm and Disney+Their pursuits are often nefarious — against their perceived enemies and also against each other. And although their give-and-take may have lacked the smoldering looks and snappy banter of, say, Princess Leia and Han Solo, Meero and Karn became a subject of fascination for viewers of Season 1, who watched the power dynamics ebb and flow in the characters’ often awkward relationship.As their story continues to unfold in Season 2, the first three episodes of which debuted on Tuesday, the actors portraying them and the show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, are taking stock of the characters’ journeys — what it says about the underlying themes of the series, the nature of couplehood and the possibility that there might be someone out there in the universe for everyone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Monday’ Review: A Year of Love and Its Hangovers

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      Fiery physical contact keeps an expat couple together in Greece, and the sex scenes are enough for a half-dozen movies.This movie’s first image is of a disco ball; the first song on its soundtrack is Donna Summer’s 1977 “I Feel Love.” But “Monday” isn’t a period piece.The director Argyris Papadimitropoulos, who co-wrote the movie with Rob Hayes, understands that for some partyers from the Balearic Islands to the Mediterranean — this movie’s English-speaking soon-to-be-lovers are introduced to each other while getting their freak on in the director’s native Greece — staying young involves nostalgia for a sybaritic era you didn’t actually live through.Mickey (Sebastian Stan), a D.J., and Chloe (Denise Gough), a lawyer, meet cute, and utterly smashed, on a Friday night, and wake up the next morning naked on a beach. They’re hauled off by cops to an embarrassed but not terribly traumatic reckoning with the law. These attractive characters are well past their 20s, which by some lights makes them a hair too old to be carrying on like this. Which is part of the film’s point, in fact.The movie chronicles more than one weekend — it follows the relationship over almost a year, but each sequence kicks off on a Friday and ends on a Monday. Movie enthusiasts who bemoan that contemporary film is bereft of both romance and sex take note: The glue that keeps these two together is fiery physical contact, and the sex scenes are enough for a half-dozen movies.Where their other affinities lie is something of a puzzle, but frequent intoxication can render such questions moot. The director’s semi-skewering of rom-com clichés, including the venerable race-to-the-airport bit, underscores their mutual unsuitability.While “Monday” is not quite as bracing as Papadimitropoulos’s prior feature, “Suntan,” it’s a sharply observed, well-acted picture with a lot of tart detail and a few real stings in its tail.MondayRated R for sexuality, and plenty of it. Language, too. In English and Greek, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More