By far the best in the prequel trilogy

Rating: 7/10 (22 December 2016)

Episode I was an overall disappointing movie - it's successor, a slight improvement, but nowhere near being good - The third and final installment in the trilogy, the good one! Yes, I just said that. Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is a good movie.
George Lucas finally and made a good prequel movie. Jar Jar doesn't utter a word and the boring space politics, gone. The cheesy Anakin/Padme romance, is a lot more bearable than in Episode II.
Let's start from the beginning - The opening sequence is an actual Star Wars sequence. We see, in front of our very eyes, a thrilling battle, the best one since Return of the Jedi. Anakin fights Count Dooku and wins. He takes his lightsabre, and has him unarmed. Palpatine persuades Anakin to kill him on the spot, even though this is not a thing that a Jedi should do in such a situation. For the first time, we see a glimpse of a much darker Anakin, influenced by Palpatine.
Much like in Attack of the Clones, we see two major plot lines taking place at the same time, one with Anakin and Padme and the latter with Obi Wan. This time around, however, both are compelling, powerful parts of the movie. Even Hayden Christenson is good in this movie, give or take a few terrible lines of dialogue. Obi Wan's fight with Grievous, excellent!
Gradually, we see Anakin turn to the dark side, and we understand exactly how he feels, even if he does go a little too crazy at times. Ian McDiarmid steals the entire movie. Every time he comes on screen, he is awesome.
This whole movie is so much better than it's two predecessors, but it's far from perfect. The dialogue is much better for the most part, but there are far too many unintentionally hilarious lines, like that formidable 'Younglings' scene, where Ewan McGreggor has to cover his mouth, to hide his amusement.
The CGI is everywhere, just like before, except generally, it is executed very well. It's a clear picture of how much technology had improved in those few years. It isn't anything close to the beauty of the visual effects that we would eventually see in The Force Awakens some 10 years later, but it is so much better than the dated visuals of The Phantom Menace. It's just a couple of years before the revival of practical effects, and in many respects, the original trilogy did it better, but for the most part, the special effects have held up very well.
All in all, this is a surprisingly good movie. The movie people were expecting a Star Wars prequel to be, and in my opinion, it does seem that this was the story George Lucas wanted to make a reality, as he seems to put more care and effort in this movie than those two other, messy prequels. Forget the other two, you could start watching from here and miss nothing important!