1-1-1-KsMIRT: not enough and too much

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month(ish) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  It's back(!), because I'm feeling too scatterbrain to think unfettered.

This Month:

Fallout Season 2 - AmazonPrime [8/8 episodes watched]
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 - Disney+ [8/10 episodes watched]
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2 - AppleTV [10/10 episodes watched]
Scrubs Season 9 - Crave [13/13 episodes watched]
Widow's Bay Season 1 - Apple TV [10/10 episodes watched]
Dark Winds Season 2 - Crave [6/6 episodes watched]

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Fallout Season 2
season 1
[created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet]

The Plot/What 100: Lucy travels the wastelands with the Ghoul, looking for her father who has run off to Las Vegas to enact the next phase of the plan. Whatever that is. Maximus tries to prevent a war, and in the process, probably starts a war. Stephanie, now overseer of Vault 32, seems to have her own machinations in play, while Betty in Vault 33 finds resources dwindling and an inbred uprising fermenting. Lucy's brother Norm has awakened the management, and finds his leadership skills wanting. Something big is about to start, and it probably can't be stopped.

[1 Great] Often flashbacks in a TV show serve as information dump or as a means of exploring a character's backstory a little more thoroughly. It's often aside from the main plot, maybe thematically connected, but having little bearing on the progression of the in-world story of today. The flashbacks in Fallout have served to show us the world before the wasteland, and the life of The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) back when he was a famous movie star, war veteran and pitch man for Valut-Tec. This season, though, Cooper Howard is brought in through the back door of the conspiracy to blow-up the world...you know, for profit! And he has to navigate not only the twists of the shady people involved in the conspiracy and those trying to prevent it, but also his wife's part in all of it. It's actually pretty gripping, and since it's largely all from Coop's perspective, we only really know what he knows and so the rug gets pulled out from us both multiple times. It's pretty awesome and Goggins is fantastic.

[1 Good] Since I don't play the games, all of the world of Fallout is new to me. So I never knew that there was a war between USA and Canada, as the U.S. tried to annex my country. Toasty filled me in that this has long been a part of the lore of the games, so it's not just a reactionary bit to the Trumpian whim of terrain expansion. It's not explored too deeply in the season, but we learn that Stephanie's nefarious machinations are all in the service of Canadian resistance, and while the show tries to play her off as the bad guy, I'm firmly on her side. "Don't think of them as human beings, think of them as Americans...." That line gave me chills and really speaks more to how the teaching of American Exceptionalism others everyone else to Americans, rather than any desire for Canadian aggression towards our neighbours to the south (many of whom are really good human beings).

[1 Bad] There's nothing really bad about this show. I found myself pretty enthralled by this entire season. I was maybe a little frustrated at nebbish Norm and his inability to level up, not at all like Lucy did. But that's Norm's character flaw, he's just not very good at stuff. Lucy on the other hand wants to remain an optimist but boy does the world grind her down. It's a little tough to watch, but her confrontations with Hank (and the Ghoul) when she's finally had enough, well, pretty great.

Meta: It had been over two years since I watched Season 1 and I had forgotten how richly constructed the world of this show was, all the different threats it weaves together in a way that may feel loose but is surprisingly cohesive.  The addition of Justin Theroux as Robert Edwin House, the billionaire Coop is told is going to blow up the world is an excellent addition, and the character's impacts both in the past and future are deeply felt. Funny, gross, and richly satirical about both capitalism and totalitarianism, it's a surprisingly deep show for how ludicrously fun it is.

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Daredevil: Born Again Season 2
Season 1
(created by Dario Scardapane and Matt Corman & Chris Ord)

The Plot/What 100: Daredevil attacks a secret shipment of weapons through New York's harbour, a deal Mayor Wilson Fisk had made with the CIA (?), and now it's causing headaches. Anti-vigilante laws are enforced with brutality, anyone suspected of allying with a vigilante (or anyone Fisk just doesn't like) is rounded up and caged. Bullseye has turned "friend" to Daredevil, but his violence is too extreme for his liking (and people get caught in the crossfire). BB Urich manipulates Fisk's protege, Daniel Blake, in to revealing classified information, which she then uses as anti-Fisk propeganda. It's not going to go well for either of them.

[1 Great] I still think Charlie Cox is the perfect Daredevil, even if he's not written so perfectly.

[1 Good] Jessica Jones is back. Loved seeing Kristin Ritter back, if only for a minute.

[1 Bad] It's all just so goddamn tedious. It's a show that just keeps hitting the same points over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's so damn exhausing. Matt doesn't want to kill anyone, but he's always debating with people whether he should. And debating with people whether he should let them kill. His conflict is now not even a religious one but one of a guy who has to decide whether he believes in the law and legal institutions of the country in the role he performs, or, you know, puts on a costume and doles out concussions on a nightly basis. We've seen it all before. And it's a show that just teases and teases and teases out it stories and threads as if it had 25 episodes to fill. It doesn't and there's so many of these characters we don't really care that much about (sorry BB, sorry Daniel, sorry Heather, sorry Karen, sorry to the rest of you...) mostly because  they're so boring. The sombre, sober tone of the series, the smug self-satisfaction over even attempting to comment on modern times and governmental descent into fascism, it's all so off-putting.  Fisk needs to be put aside for a good long while. He's not Daredevil's only villain, but outside of the Hand in season 2, it's been nothing but Fisk, and it's gotten stale. Nothing new is said about their relationship this season. And they totally mishandle Jessica, severely underusing her and ...depowering her in fits and starts? Why? Ugh.

Meta: I really gave Season 1 a pass. I decided I liked it because I was happy it was back. I really, really like Cox in the role and was just so plussed to see him again. But, in hindsight, Season 2 only highlight that Season 1 was just as much of a drag. I recall Lady Kent and I taking a day off work, ordering enough pizza for two meals and just binging 16 episodes of a season of Daredevil. It was exciting to us. By the third episode of this season, watching Daredevil felt like a chore, like something we had to do, and it was definitely not something we were enjoying. We were counting down the minutes until Jessica Jones' arrival and that little baloon of hope deflated almost instantly.  Cox's best appearances as Matt and Daredevil were not in the 17 episodes of his own series but in an episode of She-Hulk and a cameo in Spider-Man:No Way Home. 

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2
Season 1
(created by Chris Black and Matt Fraction)

The Plot/What 100: Keiko Mura has been rescued from Axis Mundi, 60 years after she disappeared into a wormhole, and she's only 60 days older than when Shaw last saw her. Her world is rocked to be reunited with her son and meet her granddaughter and grandson having missed most of their lives, but Monarch, the organization she founded with her husband Bill Randa, is not what it once was, and faces some stiff private sector competition.  Not just competition, but organizations looking to control the kaiju for their own agendas, and developing the technology to do so. But the immediate crisis is the reappearance of Titan X, last seen by Keiko, Bill and Shaw a lifetime ago.

[1 Great] It's never not awesome watching giant monsters fight, and the show does a pretty decent job of showing scale when it's happening.  Obviously the show doesn't have the budget of a Godzilla x Kong feature, or even the budget that Season 1 had, so the fights are few and far between, but pretty great when they happen. 

[1 Good] There is an episode where Shaw, in trying to figure out how to lure Godzilla out of Axis Mundi, winds up receiving an S.O.S. from himself decades before when he was briefly trapped in there. Since Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell are playing the same character, there's no reasonable way that they could share the screen together, but this is the next best thing. A novelty episode but still kind of great that has some real emotional elements for both performers to work through in completely different times in their characters' life. The show does a pretty good job throughout this season finding consistency between the Russels' performance of the character. 

[1 Bad] Much like Daredevil: Born Again this show frustratingly treads water because it needs to bide its time between its big budget setpieces. This results in some incredibly stupid (and sometimes very confusing) character threads where certain characters go off and do their own thing for reasons that never truly feel justified, and then return to Monarch for reasons that never truly feel justified, only to get into arguements that never truly feel justified, and then to do really stupid things that never truly feel justified. Most of this shit is our young cast of Kentaro, Cate and May. They make my eyes roll involuntarily far too often.

Meta: Monarch is not a good show. It's wildly inconsistent and seems to lack purpose other than to be an in-world flourish to the Legendary series of Kong and Godzilla features. The characters amble so much one has to often ask what they're actually contributing to the story.  The scenes set in the 1950s and 60's are far more interesting, as the setting gives a pastiche for the series to play into and often it seems like it would be a better program had it firmly set itself in that time and explore the Kaiju with their technological limitations.  I honestly don't know if I would watch a third season should it return (maybe if they get Bill and Lewis Pullman to play, like, an adversary to Shaw...that would be enough to get me back in).

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Scrubs Season 9 (aka Scrubs: Med School Season 1)
(created by Bill Lawrence)

The Plot/What 100: Sacred Heart teaching hospital now has a whole campus, where we see J.D., Turk, and Cox all hold classes, and Elliott is pregnant so she's on light duty. The new batch of recruits includes Lucy Bennett, a midwestern, daydreamy "horse girl" who's naive and optimistic, which Cox wants to drum right out of her, lest he wind up with another John Dorian. Drew dropped out of med school a half decade ago, had a rough bit of life experience, and is back with reinvigored focus, only Cox has taken an unsettlingly deep interest in him. Cole is a SoCal-bro all the way, a prototypical rich kid whose parents funded half the wings in the hospital, so despite how annoying he is, he's teflon (he finds a friend in retired and sexually rambunctious [to the point of sexpest-ery] Dr. Kelso), and Dr. Denise Mahoney, the sarcastic, and jaded T.A. It's Scrubs but with new people, and some of the old people.

[1 Great] I was honestly surprised at how quickly the Scrubs formulae worked being reworked like this with a nearly whole new cast. I think having some of the old guard around some of the time works quite well (especially John C. McGinley whose Perry Cox is maybe the most critical ingredient to the show, though Eliza Coupe as Denise certainly could have filled the void in the eventuality of McGinley's departure). Dave Franco nails perfectly the irritatingly entitled dirtbag Cole but never fully as the villain, and the writing staff find ways to round down his sharpest edges to make him pretty much a likeable character. Kerry Bishé as Lucy is and isn't just a female J.D. And putting them side by side for a few episodes early in the season (before Braff departed) was the perfect way to highlight both. The new cast, gels pretty quickly, and it helps that they're all pretty talented performers (Coupe and Franco, obviously, go on to bigger and brighter things) who settle into their roles quickly and the writers find a voice for really fast. It's basically Scrubs-by-way-of-Community just maybe a year too early. 

[1 Good] My favourite part of the season was the blossoming relationship between Denise and Drew. Denise is a Tough.Nut and is such an Eliza Coupe role that's perfectly suited for her. Drew has a hardened past and his own embarrassing secrets, but can almost go toe to to with Denise in the cynicism department. They find very quickly that they have similar world views, and yet they're two quite different people that have a real challenge with compromise or, you know, emotional vulnerability. Watching them actually negotiate being together is the biggest joy of the season.

[1 Bad] I haven't watch original flavour Scrubs in a very long while, but did it have so much gender-based "comedy" as well. There's so much name calling and put-downs, mostly to the point of calling someone (usually a male character) a "girl" or a "bitch" or something more clever insinuating that the guy is soft and/or feminine. There's also one episode that has a B-plot rotating around Turk and Cox dealing with a lesbian couple (both played by very attractive actresses of course) and being total children around the idea. It's pretty embarrassing for the show and the characters.

Meta: Having just watched the reboot of Scrubs earlier this year, I was curious about the ill-fated season 9 that was intended to be an independent spin-off but ABC chickened out in letting it be its own thing. I don't know if it was ever going to be successful, as people had a certain idea of what Scrubs was and that centered around Zach Braff-related silliness, of which this is in shorter supply. Maybe it is just having watched the reboot, which, quite frankly, feels more like a reboot of this season of Scrubs: Med School than it does of Scrubs proper, but this went down pretty smooth (dated jokes aside). I had a really great time with this and would have liked another couple seasons with this crew.  Maybe it's because I knew half of this cast already from elsewhere or maybe it's because this season of television the writers pointedly made a decision to focus on the new crew (as opposed to the reboot, where it's more than half about the old crew, and less than  half about the new crew) but I think I like this season better than the reboot. A little bit more at least.

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Widow's Bay Season 1
(created by Katie Dippold)

The Plot/What 100: Tom Loftis is mayor of the remote New England island town of Widow's Bay. Unlike most people who live there, Tom wasn't born there but married into island life, his wife having died during childbirth 17 years ago. Tom has lofty ambitions of being the new Martha's Vinyard, and rallies the town behind his new tourism push. The only real objector is Wyck Crawford, a grizzled fisherman who vociferously insists that the island is cursed and that outsiders should definitely not come. He is correct on both counts. 

[1 Great] It's so very hard to choose one single thing that is great about Widow's Bay since it is uniformly terrific. Merging horror, comedy, and emotional drama the show very ably builds a small island community where it makes sense whenever any two or three cast members share the screen and the personalities are so well defined without being too trope-y that we kind of know exactly who these people are, until we get to know them more. Any character can be given a spotlight and ably hold it, the performers on the show all very keenly get the assignment, while the directors (including Atlanta's Hiro Murai and horror director Ti West), writers (including comedic performers Colton Dunn and Neil Casey) and crew all seem to be completely enthused to be  working on the show that lets them toe so many lines, and step over them, and step back. By the show's third episode there was already a stand-out episode, and then they deliver another, and another.  It's still very much a genre show, but it's doing it as if it were Parks and Recreation crossed with Midnight Mass, and it's even been told that creator/showrunner Katie Dippold originally gestated this idea as a script for Parks & Rec, but just couldn't make it work).

[1 Good] The music by David Fleming is incredible, absolutely nailing the assignment. He's able to strike a tone that is ominously lighthearted when it needs to be but can go strange, mysterious or intense when necessary. His score leans into the conventions of scores from the more mass-audience friendly horror of the past like Poltergeist, Jaws, the Omen, or the Exorcist without ever directly referencing any of them. He's found the vibe, the tone of those scores perfectly, and using their most cliched aspects as much for terror as for punctuating the humorous or absurd. It's a very deftly conceived soundtrack, one that makes me take notice without pulling me out of the moment. 

[1 Bad] The premise of the series is sort of a Jaws scenario, where there's danger lurking but the mayor won't sacrifice the town's economic prosperity for the possibility of danger. There's also an X-Files set-up where certain people in the town are aware of its curse, and are pretty comfortable with it, in fact, but Tom wants to just shrug it off. Within three episodes, though, Tom can no longer shrug it off. As we get deeper into the season Tom may be in denial at points, but it's clear he knows deep down what's true about this island. And then it's staring him plainly in the face...

I don't generally agree that TV was better when it was 25 episode seasons, as that type of American TV show created a lot of bloat. What we lose in going down to 10 or 8 or 6 episode seasons is the ability to focus more intently on secondary characters, or sometimes, as with Widow's Bay things move a little bit faster than you had expected. Tom's journey from disbeliever to skeptic to true believer happens in about 7 episodes and while I wouldn't want this season to be split into two to slow the pace of his progression, if the season were longer, with more time to expand its focus to the town at large it could really have benefitted from such a scope increase, even just three to five more episodes. The "bad" is, basically, I want more.

Meta: Widow's Bay is probably the best season of television this year. Just a lightning bolt of a show that comes out episode one firing on all cylinders and then injects the nitrous oxide into the tank in the second episode. Matthew Rhys has had a trio of prominent dramatic series over the past 15 years, but this show lets him step out of being miserable and deadpan and instead into a funnier misery, and he absolutely excels at it, both physically and verbally... he has great comedic timing...who knew? While he's been a revered dramatic actor for years, Kate O'Flynn, playing Tom's assistant Patricia, steps out of small-time character actor shadows and into the limelight, and completely destroys. Patricia can be weird and off-putting to start, but O'Flynn is able to elicit deep compassion and sympathy for Patricia, eventually turning from loser to unlikely hero (though Patricia is still incapable of going full badass).

Episodes 4 and 5 jockey for best episode of the season, with episode 4, "Beach Reads" putting Patricia and her high-stakes party planning front and centre, while episode 5 , "What to Expect on Your Trip" finds Tom accidentally getting dosed with mushrooms and blinking in and out of consciousness (I don't think I've ever seen an episode of tv told from a POV like this, where it just keeps jumping ahead in time, the viewer as disoriented as the character). It's like season two of The Bear all over again ... "Fishes" or "Forks"?

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Dark Winds Season 2
(created by Graham Roland)

The Plot/What 100: Jim Chee has left the feds to be a private investigator, and gets called to look in on a robbery at a wealthy landowner's home by his wife. Jim's case dovetails into a truck bomb investigation Joe Leaphorn is investigating, the clues to which lead him to believe Jim's client is somehow tied into the murder of his son. Joe's deputy, Bernadette, looks elsewhere for growth opportunities, while Emma and Sally ward off a white reporter from L.A. looking for a story around the heinous eugenics practices at medical clinics and murdered and missing indigenous women.

[1 Great] Each season is adapted from one of Tony Hillerman's series of Tribal Police books. Much like Slow Horses six episodes seems to be the perfect length to fluidly adapt the story without any padding. It does lead to the feeling that time has passed between seasons/stories, and I really enjoy how the first episode works as both catch up on what's happened to the characters in the interim as we as the place-setter for what the thrust of the season will be. The only one who doesn't seem like they're on a different path this season is Joe Leaphorn, who seems all to settled in his ways. But a pretty serious blow-up with Emma as well as confronting the man who may have killed his son sets him on a new path by the season's end, and his relationship with everyone in the show is different by the end (or at least our understanding of those relationships is).

[1 Good] People take their bloody lumps this season. It's a pretty taxing and brutal affair that Leaphorn and Chee get caught up in, and they pay the price. But determination, resiliency, stubbornness, and, in Joe's case, pure blind rage, get them through. It's a little harrowing to be honest, but the fifth episode trek through the desert is an epic 40 minutes of TV.

[1 Bad] I do not begrudge the series at all for attempting to tackle some of the horrific and disgusting practices that indigenous women have been subjected to, past and present, in America (and most of the colonized lands of the world, frankly), it's pretty necessary to put a spotlight on it. It's only "bad" in that it's unfortunate how tertiary this story line is to the show. Despite having not read the books, it's still evident that this plot doesn't come from the source, as it just doesn't fit with the rest of the events of the show and is of a different tone entirely. It gives something for Emma (Deanna Allison) and Sally (Elva Guerra) to do this season, but it almost feels more like that (needing to provide a story for the characters) than to hit hard on raising the awareness of these atrocities. Such a thing deserves its own central spotlight

Meta: Such an easily consumable, enriching and entertaining show. The three leads, Zahn McClarnan, Kiowa Gordon and Jessica Matten, are all incredible performers and have such a great rapport.  McClarnan's face is one of the most captivating on TV, while Gordon and Matten are just so damn good looking, and ridiculously charming together you just want to see more of them as a romcom (although the show's just looking for reasons to keep them apart). This season features Jeri Ryan in a guest-starring role and she's superb as a middle-aged femme fatale who may or may not be playing games with Chee. Veteran character actor A Martinez also turns up as Sherriff Gordo, Joe's friend and mentor. We also meet Joe's father (Joseph Runningfox) this season, an ex-cop and a hard man who Joe's still trying to live up to. Joe tries to fight his father's influence while also actively emulating him. It's a fascinating dynamic which we need to see more of. 

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Kraken

2026, Pål Øie (The Tunnel) -- download

Blah blah, insert some repetitive commentary about Norwegians being the only one doing disaster movies these days. But this isn't a disaster movie, is it? No, but kaiju are a type of Natural Disaster, wouldn't you say? And it matters not, as I am always there for a giant monster story, except maybe the Russian movie of the same name that came out the year prior, which struck me more as a mockbuster of this one.

This is where I admit I was entirely suckered by "Clash of the Titans" and their subbing of Cetus (Greek tentacle monster) for The Kraken, which is actually of Norwegian origin.

Johanne (Sara Khorami, Troll 2) is a marine biologist sent to a fish farm in Sogneford, a Norwegian fjord know for having the deepest waters. Something has been causing strange fish behaviour and die-off's which everyone assumes is linked to the revolutionary technology being used at the fish farm, a device that utilizes sonic waves to shake off "fish lice". Think of this as the same ecological impact as fracking, but water-based -- locals are upset with it but its allowing the fish farmer company of bring in Japanese investors, hoping to expand to other fjords.

It starts with disappearances and unexplained deaths -- tourist kids on their jet ski, local kayakers. Meanwhile something is hinky as Johanne investigates the fish farm itself; we immediately do not trust technician Georg (Jon Erik Myer, Furia), while Johanne clashes with the lead technologist Erik (Mikkel Bratt Silset, The Tunnel) who happens to be her ex and has utilized technology they developed together, but eventually abandoned. Meanwhile the daughter of the owner of the fish farm is playing junior eco-terrorist and poking her nose where it shouldn't be.

The movie breezes past any real suspense, doing a cookie-cutter approach to monster movies: unexplained deaths, grim body discoveries, shady corporate antics, old men with monster history, well-meaning scientist, even a Jaws-like "no, we can't close down the water". It all culminates in a silly battle with the kaiju itself when it attacks the fish farm -- the fish-lice tech was going way beyond its self-imposed safety specs and had awakened the beast from its slumber in the deepest parts of the fjord. Stealing cues from Deep Rising, the tentacles "chase" people through duct work and our heroine whispers, "We need to stay quiet !" Why? Tentacles are not ears, unless this movie is postulating that kaiju octopuses listen with their entire body? No matter, they run and hide, bad people are pulled under and Johanne destroys the tech just in time. BUT her and Erik rig up the remaining tech to turn it into a ... bomb? What? How? Whatever, she escapes on her own to trigger the device before being dragged down herself, a heroic sacrifice to save the people of the fjord. Does she kill it? Send it back to its slumber? Who knows; whatever "logic" is at play, it would be tossed aside for any planned sequel.

It was a silly movie that took itself way too seriously, and while it had earnest well-done performances, the characters were all paper thin and the dialogue was common place. The CGI was decent enough but the destruction was far too reserved for a kaiju movie. And yet... I liked it?

Poster commentary. IMP Awards only had the Russian movie. I was amused that Google offered me many versions of the "Kraven" movie poster... only one letter difference, right? The tag-line "only 5% of the ocean has been explored..." has very little to do with this movie.

KWIF: Tokyo! (+4)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie of which he writes a longer, thinkier piece, and then whatever else he watched that week he attempts a quick wee summary of his thoughts (and fails...in the "quick" part).

This Week:
Tokyo! (2008, d. Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Bong Joon-ho - Tubi)
Shiva Baby (2020, d. Emma Seligman - Netflix)
First Men in the Moon (1964, d. Nathan H. Juran - Silver Screen Classics)
Rolling Thunder (1977, d. John Flynn - AmazonPrime)
Miami Blues (1990, d. George Armitage - AmazonPrime)

and go.

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I don't know how I've gone this long without having heard of the French-funded anthology film Tokyo!  which features three exceptionally notable modern auteurs of cinema. Like, you would figure it would have come up in any conversation about the repertoire of these visionary filmmakers. But no, I had to find out by spending 20 minutes thumbing through the "free to me" movies section of my cable provider. 

Yes, I still have cable, because... shut up.

Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-ho? I've said many places about how I hate anthologies (usually in relation to comic books) mainly because they're usually nominal works from their creators, but to watch three short films from these luminaries, there can be no disappointments here. 

Gondry cut his teeth making impeccable music videos that tell wildly imaginative stories in a very short amount of time, so it's almost like 30 to 40 minutes may be more his wheelhouse than actual feature films.  His entry, Interior Design, is based on the sequential art short story Cecil and Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Belle.  The story finds a young couple Hiroko and Akira coming to Tokyo to screen Akira's first indie film. They stay with Hiroko's college friend in her tiny apartment, but it's supposed to be very temporary. It is not. While Akira finds a menial job immediately, Hiroko can't even manage that. Akira says she's has no aspirations, and Gondry very effectively captures her aimlessness, which is truly the heart of the story. Hiroko wanders the streets of Tokyo, looking at apartments, but always feeling a step behind, hopeless and homeless. After Akira's screening she's chatted up by another woman who tells her how important it can be to solely be the support base for an artist, to have no purpose than to ease another's burdens so that they can be creative. It hits Hiroko in her core being. Who is she? What is she?

I can't really talk about what puzzles me about this film without spoiling its very Gondry-esque twist. So skip this paragraph if you don't want to know...  ... ... Hiroko starts turning into a chair. The classic wooden type with the spindled back. She's utterly distraught and very publicly transitions, her clothes falling away as her legs become wooden stilts, until eventually she just is a chair. But she can also not be a chair, emerging fully naked in the evening streets of Tokyo is a scary place. She transitions in and out of being a chair, until a musician, just takes chair-Hiroko home. The musician's place is gorgeous, the perfect apartment she failed to find in her own search. When the musician leaves, she starts tending to the space, watering the plants, cleaning the kitchen, and when he returns, she's a very useful chair.  I mean... what?  It seems that Hiroko finds a sense of fulfillment out of being a piece of useful furniture, not just taking up space, but having purpose, but the sort of regressive domestication and becoming exactly the support base for an artist had me scratching my head at the messaging (especially since the night before we were watching comedians make fun of the "Tradwives" of the internet). Not that there's anything wrong with a woman finding fulfillment in such a life, so long as she doesn't advocate it as the *only* option for women. Anyway, it threw me for a loop that I'm still circling.

Carax's story, Merde, starts out darkly comedic, as a milky eyed, long-nailed leprechaun with an oddly-groomed red beard and green corduroy suit (no shirt, no socks, no shoes) emerges from the sewer and proceeds to walk down this busy Tokyo street disrupting everything, with Carax doing a long rear-facing take tracking the action. He steals things out of peoples hands, tosses lit cigarettes into baby carriages, eats people's money and flowers, licks a woman's armpit, and is generally just an ugly, uncultured nuisance. Oh yeah, and it's all set to the key theme of Godzilla. The local TV news (which Carax depicts as being, like, cable access) has eyewitness statements and begins calling him, as subtitled "The Creature from the Sewers" (and my keen ears did hear the actual use of Kaiju in his name).  The leprechaun explores the underground of Tokyo and finds an old WWII military depot, including a crate of grenades, which on his next exploration of the surface he begins lobbing everywhere, murdering dozens. A task force is sent into the sewer and captures him. He's put on trial where a French attorney, with a similar oddly-groomed red beard and long nails is one of only three people who speak the same language as the creature, who we learn is called Monsieur Merde (or "Mr. Shit").  M. Merde is a terrible racist and hates the Japanese, but he explains he is as his god made and delivered him, and he is cursed to be in places where he is at his most uncomfortable. 

The trial find Carax using one of his favourite tricks, split and multi-paneled screens. He does this I think because otherwise the trial is rather interminable to watch as any statement to or from M. Merde needs to be translated from Japanese to French then French to Merde's weirdo language, or in reverse.  It's a bit of a trifle, this neo-kaiju story, as far as I can tell, there's not really much of a statement being made here. In referencing Godzilla through the music, a heavily allegorical film, it implies there may be an allegory here as well, but I can't seem to find it. If anything I was made uncomfortable by M. Merde's similarities to those unhoused or addicted experiencing a mental health crisis very prevalent in Toronto, which is definitely coincidence but really puts a damper on this as just a bit of an odd lark.

The final story is Shaking Tokyo from Bong Joon-ho. It begins with a title card defining "hikikomori", sort of a shut-in/agoraphobe/hoarder, but really young (like teen or 20s). Teruyuki Kagawa plays our hikikomori here, who describes his routine in every detail, nothing that he hasn't been outside in over ten years, hasn't looked another person in the eyes in as much time and gets everything delivered. His house is piled high with books, magazines, pizza boxes and toilet paper rolls, but they're all immaculately stacked in a very orderly way. His comfortable, familiar world is usurped when receiving his usual pizza delivery, he catches a glimpse of the driver's garter belt, which instinctively causes him to look up, and he meets the young woman's eyes. The awkwardness is palpable for both but, just then, an earthquake hits. The young woman falls over unconscious. Panic stricken, the man first keeps his distance, then grabs her a glass of water (which he then drinks) then checks (without touching her) if she is still breathing. He notices she has tattoos on her arm, buttons, with labels ("sadness", "hysteria", "headache"). Then he notices another on her leg that says "coma". He presses the "button" and she awakens. She takes in his space, compliments him on it, and notices a flaw in his pizza box stacks before departing. He is clearly smitten. Days later, off schedule, he nervously orders another pizza, only it's delivered by a very gruff man who barges into his space leaving pools of rainwater behind him. The girl has quit, become hikikomori herself.  He psyches himself up for days to go out into the world and save this young woman from her fate.

Director Bong is such an immaculate craftsman, not that Gondry and Carax are not very specific in their productions, but there's such a crispness and exactness to all of Director Bong's productions and that is just as evident here. The short is beautifully shot, every frame seemingly perfect in its composition. His spaces, even his messy spaces, seem so refined, but here we have a hoarder who is so orderly. Just like with Interior Design and Merde, there is one element that just makes me uneasy, and it's the fact that our hikikomori is clearly older then the seemingly very young delivery woman. Their "meet-cute" is hella cute, brief as it is (and teetering dangerously on manic pixie dream girl territory, if not for the fact that he's sort of a manic pixie dream man himself), but the age disparity (I looked it up and there's a 20-year age gap between the performers), particularly in the end where he is groping at her arm and forcebly pulling the young woman out of her house to, in his mind, stop her from becoming like him...well, it's a deeply uncomfortable level of physicality. It speaks to the man's desperation, but there's also a fixation paradigm here that the physical engagement, despite intention, is a step too far.

Each of these three stories I was immersed and immensely compelled by. These are great storytellers and directors each really interested in abnormalities of society. But at the same time they're very 2008, and each story, as noted, has an element that, by today's standards, would have to be reconsidered. 

As a whole, these are stories that take place in Tokyo, and use Tokyo as their environment effectively, but I wouldn't say that Tokyo is necessarily a character, or that these three outsiders are representing anything foundational or even observational about the massive city (heck, Gondry's is a transposition from New York-based source material). Their weirdo vibes are always welcome though, and I think overall it's a successful anthology, with an asterisk.

---

I love this spin on the classic
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana
Brass "A Taste Of Honey"
album comver

Lady Kent and I very much enjoyed Bottoms, last year's absurd high school outsiders comedy that plays with the trope of marrying sex and violence with immensely delightful results. It was the second feature from writer-director Emma Seligman and co-writer/star Rachel Sennott. I had heard of this duo as a result of their highly praised debut Shiva Baby, a film I have had every intention of watching since it's pandemic era release...but I had heard it was a cringe-comedy and I've become really averse to the subgenre. With the evening running short and nothing more pressing to watch one night, the 1-hour 17-minute runtime, more than anything fit the bill. 

The film opens with college-age student Danielle (Sennott) having sex with older man Max (Danny Deferrari). It's very clear he's her sugar daddy, though maybe not clear to him. She's missed the funeral of an elderly relative, and she meets up with her parents (Fred Melamed [Lady Dynamite] and Polly Draper [Thirtysomething]) for the shiva. Her mom is very concerned with social status and preps manufactured talking points for the family when friends and relatives engage them on what Dani has been up to (and everyone is into everyone's business). he family dynamics are very quickly, concisely, and clearly conveyed. It's masterful scripting and tremendously funny.  Dani spies Maya (Molly Gordon, The Bear) and avoids her. Turns out they were best friends-turned-lovers gone sour, in what Dani's mom calls "a phase", but if lying about her schooling, career goals, work history and romantic life while avoiding her old flame isn't enough, who shows up to the shiva but sugar daddy Max...who is married (to a shiksa no less) and has a baby ("Who brings a baby to a shiva?").

While the proceedings are frequently uncomfortable (Dani's fixation on Max, and, moreover Max's tall, hot blonde and very successful wife, lead her to say and do some very ill-advised things), it's kind of clear that Dani is in a bit of a crisis. The comedy is Dani doing and saying the wrong thing, but there's a deeper meaning to it all that Maya clocks right away. They have their own baggage they need to sort through, but at the heart of it, there is love and affection. Even Dani's mom, judgemental as she is, clocks something is off with her, but is too busy circulating to really drill down. She just wants Dani to pretend she's someone else and behave herself for a couple hours, unaware of the toll such repeated requests is having on Dani's ever-fracturing psyche.

Particularly the last act, when Dani's unconscious competitive and vengeful streaks start to manifest, directed at Max's wife (who, once we are separated from Dani's POV of her, actually seems very nice, and very much the victim of a husband taking advantage of her), the film does venture into "cringe" territory, but for the most part it's not interested in doing something funny without it having a character purpose. Cringe characters are those that make bad choices either unconsciously because they are narcissist or idiots incapable of self-reflection. Dani is neither of these and Sennett, the full-fledged, ready-made star of this movie, delivers every nuance, while Seligman's use of focus and lenses enhances what Sennott is delivering, really capturing the mental breakdown she's going through. What a debut.

---

I was browsing cable (yeah, yeah) one day and I stopped on a channel, utterly perplexed by what I saw. Big expensive sets of alien landscapes, gorgeously lit, with men in sci-fi spacesuits...this wasn't some low budget B-movie from the 50's or 60's that of course I've never heard of if it wasn't MST3K fodder, no, this was a beautiful technicolor (sorry "dynamation") production that clearly had some coin behind it. So what was it and why had I never see it before? Turns out it was the 1964 adaptation of H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon, a film for all my years of nerditry, I'd never, ever heard of.

I say this so confidently, but it's probably more a case of "if I ever had heard of it, it clearly didn't make an impression")

Released 5 years before man would actually land on the moon, the film begins with the first moon landing, a laughably cooperative effort between the U.S., Russia and Great Britain. It's quite the slog of an opening sequence before we actually get to the men on the moon, pretending to be all realistic but comes off as unnecessary filler. Once we see the shuttle descend towards the moon, a not-too-shabby effect for '64, and then the really nifty space suits in action, it definitely picks up. Until one of the astronauts finds, of all things, a ratty old Union Jack flag and a degraded note sitting on a rock. 

The note claims the moon in honor of her Majesty Queen Victoria but written on the back of a court summons. A curious mystery that leads to a ground pursuit for the name on the summons, that leads to a kooky old man in a care home. He then tells the story of how he wound up as one of the first men on the moon...in 1899!

We flashback to rural England, where flim-flam artist Arnold Bedford is hiding out from his creditors. His American fiancee, Katherine Callendar, has come to join him, unaware of his tumultuous financial position. They become entangled in a real estate scheme with their neighbour, Joseph Cavor, a mad-scientist of the Doc Brown persuasion. He's invented a solution called Cavorite, that, when applied to an object, and hardens, it eliminates all mass from the object.  It makes no scientific sense, but it's the conceit of the story so we just go with it. Cavor's whole goal is to take a trip to the Moon, and Bedford wants in on the product for commercial gain... the trip to the moon will be the ultimate selling point. As their preparing to leave, Bedford's creditor's show up, and an incensed Katherine goes to confront him, only to be pulled into their vessel on their mission.

The trip to the moon is riddled with scientific inaccuracies, but for a tale written before aeroplanes were even a thing, there's a lot of good guesses to the science needed behind such a journey. Once they get to the moon, though, it's a whole other story. For example, they're using deep-sea diving suits, but gloveless so their hands are fully exposed. 

On the moon, they encounter an alien race of bug-people who, despite Cavor's insistence on peace, Bedford can't help but just keep killing. The film waffles between both men's perspectives of these aliens they encounter. Cavor's scientific curiosity leads him to extend his best graces to this unknown civilization (who have the technology to adapt to communicating in a shared language). Bedford just sees the unfamiliar-as-enemy and can't help but kill and keep killing, and wanting nothing more than escape and their complete destruction.  

As a viewer, I really wanted the Star Trek solution here, the diplomatic pursuit of peace and sharing of culture, and Cavor is the vessel for that desire. But the film seems to settle much more into Bedford's panic, and we never escape the fact that Bedford can only see them as a threat. It's so ugly and colonial. Katherine, for her part, doesn't seem to give a shit either way and just wants to go home. She wasn't wanting to be on this journey to begin with.

Cavor stays behind, but send Bedford and Katherine on their way, to which we return to "present day" where Bedford warns of the threat the astronauts currently on the moon will face. They turn the TV on to discover the astronauts have found the insects' lair, but it's abandoned and crumbling. Turns out Cavor's germs killed them all years ago. It's unclear if this Twilight Zone-wannabe ending is supposed to be a happy or sad ending.

As I said, it's a pretty posh production that features stupendous Ray Harryhousen effects, so it's really easy on the eyes. The story, as sci-fi, is very rudimentary but then it is based on a story decades old by that point. It's got tinges of modern science fiction of the time, again Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Doctor Who and Quatermass (the latter also a creation of this film's screenwriter Nigel Kneale), but it's holding fairly true to the tepid structure and plot of sci-fi from a more naive time. It's also going for the uniquely British 60's styled fantasty-adventure romp that dials up the slapstick and pithiness (especially in Caver) to a nearly unpalatable degree. 

I also have to admit the viewing experience was not served well by the lengthy commercial breaks that interrupted it every 25 minutes or so

---

I had heard of Rolling Thunder back in the '90's when I went gaga over Pulp Fiction and was consuming every Quentin Tarantino article and interview I could find. Tarantino has mentioned it was a favourite, if not the favourite film of his. I had just assumed, for years, given his predilection towards Grindhouse, that it was, like, a trucker revenge fantasy maybe by a quality director but from their early days working for Roger Corman...or something like that. It wasn't the most readily available film at the time, and it somehow never made my "to watch" list (or if it did, it was a list from many generations of lists ago).

My expectations and what Rolling Thunder actually is were two very different things. From the description on Amazon Prime, my expectations were immediately readjusted to it being what Tarantino calls a "revengeamatic" - those 70's-era films of a man or woman wronged and the great lengths they go to get revenge that seem to all hit the same consistent story beats. So, when I hit play I was now expecting a heightened pulpy, gritty, film with actors. making. choices. I still was so far off.

For 90 percent of Rolling Thunder we get an incredibly sensitive portrayal of post-Vietnam veterans, in this case late-stage released prisoners of war, returning home and finding a world that is both unfamiliar to them and to find they are emotionally unequipped to engage with it.

The film opens at a San Antonio airstrip with a vast welcome party waiting for Major Charles Rane (William Devane, Payback) and other POWs while plane is making its descent, over which Charlie Pride's "Is Anybody Going to San Antone" plays. Charles is greeted by his wife, and the son he's not seen in 7 years since he was a baby. His wife admits she's been with another man, a policeman she's now in love with, and Charle's son admits he doesn't remember him at all.  Charles has a therapist and is coping with this world that's changed since he's been away, but he's numb inside.  He's been gifted all sorts of presents, including a gorgeous red convertible Cadillac, and 2,555 silver dollars (one for every day he was a prisoner), and he's garnered the affection of a local taven waitress who calls herself a Major Rane groupie.

Half the film is just Charles' sense of reality, his trying and having extreme difficulty connecting with others. Only his groupie, Linda (Linda Haynes), doesn't seem to mind but also Charles isn't really ready for what she's serving. All these performances are remarkably restrained, and honest. These feel like people and not caricatures. They have adult conversations and don't avoid difficult subject matter, which, as a result, takes all the usual dramatic stakes right off the table. Charles being cuckolded isn't even a thing. He gets it, and he doesn't care, so long as his kid is getting treated well in it all.

But some goons come looking for the silver dollar collection they saw in the news. They think they can beat and torture Charles for the collection's whereabouts, not realizing that Charles. has some incredible coping mechanisms for dealing with such things after 7 years as a POW. Even when they stick his hand in the garbage disposal, he doesn't crack. It's only when his wife and son return home, that the men have leverage, and the kid gives up the coins. They are all then shot, and only Charles survives.

He has extensive rehab and extensive questioning from the police (especially his wife's fiancee), and he gets closer to Linda (or, at least, she gets closer to him). He's still mostly dead inside, but there's a little fire burning. Where most films would move into the obvious revenge plot, the stalking and killing of the individual goons, Paul Schrader's script for Rolling Thunder doesn't work that way. It's not in any way a revengeamatic, it refuses to follow the flow. Charles prepares his cache of weapons, sharpens his hook hand, collects Linda (who at times seems to get Charles' mission, but has trouble staying on board) and heads south to track down the men that murdered his son. It goes pretty awry, and Charles has to recalibrate.

In the end he ditches Linda from his mission, recruiting his POW comrade (Tommy Lee Jones, U.S. Marshals) and they plan a sneak attack at a brothel (in a scene Schrader repeats, though a different impetus, in Taxi Driver) that goes about as expected. It's neither clean, nor heroic. It's not to be celebrated, it's just what a broken man with the help of a broken friend feel is all they can do in this world.

There is an uncomfortable anti-Mexican undercurrent to the final act, only really palpable in the way the film thinks these white American men should just be able to walk into Mexican spaces and have a right to do whatever they want in them. The bad guys are a mix of Americans and Mexicans, the worst of which are the white men, so it's not framed in any way as an anti-Mexican picture.  It does seem unintentional, but just a product of the superior-by-default whiteness that has dominated pop culture in North America for centuries. It doesn't spoil the film overall, as its character focus is tremendously compelling, plus I find it fascinating that even before the revengeamatic was in full swing there was already a film that was a subversion of it.

Pairs well with First Blood?

---

Real badge
Real gun
Fake cop
Bad poster

I don't remember in what context Miami Blues was recommended as an underrated, maybe even forgotten picture, but worthy of reassessment, but it's been on my radar for the past few months.

It was probably the Blank Check Podcast episode on The Hunt for Red October talking about Alec Baldwin's career...but don't quote me on it.

It is a very brightly lit, 90's pastel-soaked production that looks like a comedy but has a deep dark heart. We meet handsome, shifty grifter "Junior" (Baldwin, Match Game) on an airplane to Miami. Within seconds of landing, he's stolen a suitcase and broken the finger of a Hare Krishna...unknown to Junior, the shock of which kills the young man.

Junior arrives at a hotel where he has a contact, and has her send a girl up to his room. So arrives Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, eXistenZ), a perky, naive (but not unintelligent) college student, who is there for sex work, but Junior is basically there to scam. He seems to take a shining to her, but it's evident Junior can't ever get his brain out of grifter-mode to fully understand emotions. They do start a relationship but one in which Junior is in full control. He's not physically abusive, but he is fully manipulative and doesn't care an ounce about what Susie thinks about anything or her aspirations.

Detective Sergeant Moseley (Fred Ward, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins) is on the case of the dead Hare Krishna, and in tracing witnesses finds Junior (under whatever stolen ID he was using at the time) and Susie. He winds up at their apartment and shares dinner with them. It's an amazing cat-and-mouse scene of Moseley picking up on Junior's habits, analyzing them very vocally and Junior having to quick-think his way into explanations (Junior eats the meal with his shirt off, the combo of Baldwin's incredible pelt of chest hair and food making me feel very uncomfortable). It's clear to Junior that Moseley has his suspicions so he later finds Moseley's apartment, sneak attacks him, beats him half to death, and steals his badge and his false teeth. 

Then Junior starts parading around town as a fake cop, interrupting crimes in process, only to finish the crimes off himself. It's a rampage that has not gone unnoticed by the police, and Moseley, still recuperating, is obviously very invested in resolving.

The tone of this film is the hardest part to glom onto. Junior is a horrible, horrible person, but it's a film that's daring us to like him. We've seen plenty of anti-heroes over the years, but director Armitage never commits to the label. If anything as we get to know Susie we become more keenly aware of how much of a villain Junior really is. There's no high drama, no pulse-pounding suspense, no over-the-top action, but it's a comedically punched-up story of a sociopath and the cop and young woman both in over her head with him. I think I like this film more in retrospect than I did watching it, and now I think I'll need to go back to it sometime, there were some really, really great lines that I need to pin down.

I just realized, at the very end of this review, that this reminds me sort of a Coen Bros. movie. I wonder if Armitage was riffing off of Raising Arizona when he was making this. It shares vibes with the Coens' crime comedies, but it's not stitching along the same seams.  I would almost say it pairs better with American Psycho, but I'm two decades removed from viewing ol Patrick Bateman so I can't fully say.

Ga-Ga-Gamera #1: Gammera [sic] the Invincible

[Oh crap, another stupid boy project from Kent continuing the Kaiju thread. This time, all* the Gameras, the giant space turtle who's friend to all children.]

[*maybe]

Director: Noriaki Yuasa, Sandy Howard
Year: 1966
Length: 85 minutes (note that the version on Tubi says 68 minutes but it literally just cuts off at the 48 minute mark, and the Rifftrax version is 72 minutes)

The Gist:
A Japanese scientist, his assistant, and a news stud (erm photo journalist?) are researching the indigenous life of the Arctic while a joint American/Canadian venture to map the Northwest Passage. Overhead they are disrupted by fighter planes rocketing past... Russian fighter planes. After a couple of low-level military types sexually harass the only female member of the staff (a Sargeant no less), base General Arnold orders a couple of American planes to fly out in response. A conflict ensues and a Russian plane is shot down, exploding a low megaton atomic bomb. Dr. Hidaka warns his new "Eskimo" friends to steer clear of the area given the radiation it would kick off. But something even more dangerous emerges as the ice cracks and spreads, a giant turtle, a legend of death and destruction the "Eskimo" chief calls Gammera. The turtle attacks the coalition ship and destroys it, killing all men on board. Only Dr. Hidaka, Kyoko and Aoyagi survive since they were with the tribe at the time.

The Russians claim electronic interference caused their planes to veer off course. The ship's destruction comes with reports of a giant turtle causing the destruction, and news spreads out in the world causing debate and controversy.  A network talk show finds a zoologist, Dr. Contraire (played by future Skeletor voice actor Alan Oppenheimer) butting heads with the network science expert Dr Manning over the plausibility of Gammera all while prolifically smoking.  And now sightings of UFOs are popping up everywhere, further dividing people.  The military is tracking these reports of flying saucers and estimate it will reach Tokyo next.  General Arnold is reassigned to "Operation Gammera", first validating and then tracking this beast.

Toshio is a lonely boy obsessed with turtles. His teach expresses his concern over this obsession, and his sister and father tell the boy he needs to let go of his pet turtle and have human friends. This quirky boy obsessed with turtles also lives in a lighthouse. This is not a Wes Anderson project.  Just as Toshio frees his turtle, near the ocean, Gamera appears. Surprisingly, the kid doesn't believe somehow his pet turtle has turned into a gigantic one. He's at first frightened by the beast but he loves turtles so much he wants to get a closer look. He runs to the top of the lighthouse to get a look but Gammera swats the blinding light, though it saves Toshio from falling to his death.  He's now obsessed with Gammera and believes the creature is his best friends.

Dr. Hidaka is now famous worldwide and immediately ambushed by more journalists upon his return to Tokyo but he's called to action by the Japan military as Gammera is spied near a geothermal power station. Dr. Hidaka advises the military to attempt to electrocute the creature but it fails. The facility catches fire in the ensuing barrage, but Gammera consumes the fire like slurping a strand of spaghetti.  The military calls their American allies for nuclear weapons, and debate ensues. But then...lunch.

Dr. Hidaka and company consult with Col. Sanders impersonator Professor Murase who advise that the atomic weapons will only fuel the creature, not destroy it. They determine that freezing Gammera is the only option. Experimental freezing bombs appear to have an effect, and they explode the ground under him, sending Gammera onto his back, effectively immobilizing him, but Gammera pulls himself into his shell and rockets away like a flying saucer stunning everyone.

A UN Council meeting is assembled and though everyone is in agreement of needing a plan to destroy Gammera before he destroys civilization, the Russians and Americans conflict over who will lead military operations. 

Toshio, his sister and father come to Tokyo and meet with Dr. Hidaka. Toshio says Gammera doesn't mean to be destructive, he "just goes overboard because he's so big and clumsy". He thinks that Gammera could be trained to be a good boy but Dr. Hidaka explains to the boy (off screen) just how dangerous the creature is.

Plan Z is announced to the world by Dr. Hidaka. They plan to draw Gammera, using fire - the nom-nommiest of giant turtle food - to an isolated island. There they have laid a trap, an iron coffin they contain Gammera in and rocket him off to Mars. Toshio tries to interfere in these plans, to save Gammera, but he's is merely a 9-year-old boy and he really can't do shit. The plan succeeds and Toshio resolves to become a scientist so he can study Gammera on Mars.

Gammera, Friend or Foe:
Foe, I suppose, but the seeds of being friend to children everywhere are sown.

The Samesies:
Compared to Godzilla, here we have a creature awakened by nuclear weapons, who is reported to come from a long-ago age where the earth environments were dramatically different, and who may appear to be a giant version of a creature they know, but is physiologically very different.

Gammera, like Godzilla, winds up in Tokyo and begins wrecking the joint.

Just like with the original Gojira, Gamera, the Giant Monster was brought to the US by heavily editing the film and inserting Americans into it. 

We get the requisite assembling the army and the futile attacking of the giant Monster, but these scenes mercifully don't last anywhere near as long.

The Differences:

Gamera/Gammera was, from the first film, very clearly meant to appeal as much to kids as adults. Knowing that Gamera pivots from threat to saviour between the first and second film doesn't seem as drastic a reversal as when Godzilla does it. Here Gamera seems more like a lost creature, than one of wanton destruction, and Toshio is clearly an audience surrogate.

The story, even with all the American footage cut in, is pretty straightforward. Far more straightforward that most Godzilla films,

The American footage here feels more uniform. It's mostly men-in-rooms-debating but they all feel of a piece. In a way it's the Japanese story footage, the stuff with Toshio mostly, that feels out of place as a result. If there had been more men in suits arguing over what to do this could have been a proto-Shin Godzilla.

Like Godzilla, Gamera consumes hazardous material, but instead of radiation, it's fire...and instead of atomic breath, Gamera does spit fireballs.

The miniature work here is not even close to being on the same level as even the earliest Godzilla films, but it seems less the point here. Where Toho Godzilla films seem built as a showcase of the kaiju suits and resulting destruction, I don't think anyone at Daiei had any pretension that they were keeping pace with their rivals so much as cutting off a slice of the pie for themself.

Anyone worth caring about?
The American cut pares out a lot of the characterization of Dr. Hidaka, Kyoko, Aoyagi and Toshio, so we don't get much from them. It certainly gives almost no characterization of its figures like General Arnold, but there's a consistent purpose to everyone's scenes here, and the only thing that feels so wildly out of place is that J.T. Standish news segment.  

The Message:
Where Godzilla was originally a representation of the fears and anxiety of nuclear proliferation, there's not much of a message to Gammera. 

Rating (out of 5 Ms): MM

Given that I hated, hated, hated the American versions of Godzilla and King Kong vs Godzilla, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the cut-in scenes of men-in-rooms-arguing. The TV news show with Contrare and Manning was my favourite scene in the movie. I love what both Alan Oppenheimer and Mort Marshall are doing in that scene. It's completely extraneous (I think it's cut completely from the Rifftraxx version) but it's an absolute delight.

I have a super cheap 2-disc set of the first 6 Gamera films (with their American titles) and the transfer of Gammera the Invincible is so, so washed out as to render so many details invisible. It's not a great looking movie. The version on Tubi (the first 48 minutes that are there) look only marginally better.

Sleepytime Factor: Oh, I started falling asleep immediately. I nodded in and out of consciousness nearly the entire time I was watching the film, mostly because I was up late, and then woken up early and in need of sleep. I woke up with maybe 20 minutes left and finished it off thinking I had seen it all. Then I watched some of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of Gamer only to fall asleep through that entire film. I rewatched Gammera later in the day and stayed pretty awake through until the latter act where I had woken up earlier. Then I started drifting off again. 

 

Go-Go-Godzilla: final thoughts and ranking

 Last year, on Halloween, when I decided to start watching All The Godzillas*, I didn't know that there was both a new Toho Godzilla and Legendary Godzilla feature in the direct path of my stupid boy project. It was genuine good fortune that my viewing experience culminated with the release of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. 

I also didn't expect that, just a few weeks prior to GxK, I would be cheering for a crew of Japanese visual effects artists as they held their Godzilla action figures in one hand and their Oscar in the other. Or that the best of all Godzilla films would be that latest Toho production.

As I reflect upon viewing  All The Godzillas*, it's a pretty messy blur of textured suits, destroyed miniatures and radiation blasts. If you were to pick out any pre-2010 Godzilla title and ask me to explain to you the plot, with the exception of the original Gojira I'm not sure that I could.  The Toho films run through so many of the same tropes and iterations of the same creatures, they reuse so many of the same actors in different roles, and their plots are so often labyrinthine or nonsensical or convoluted, and rarely ever with connective tissue from one film to the next, that it's really hard to make one stand out from the whole.  

Rather than a full or rich understanding of story or character, with each of the pre-2010 Toho films I am left with instead an impression, a sense of something that I liked or disliked about it, something that I reacted strongly or negatively to.

As I've said a few times, what I respond to most in Godzilla films is a strong character story. In almost every Godzilla film, Godzilla is not really a character. He is what the film is built around, weather as a force of nature, or as a planetary protector... he may have characteristics, or perhaps even a bit of personality, but he's never the central story character, certainly not like Kong usually is. I don't recall ever feeling a tremendous sense of sympathy or empathy for Godzilla.  Sure, you root for or against the big bastard, but you're never invested in him for his wants and desires, biting nails hoping he achieves his objectives.  And if Godzilla ever stares down a human, it's usually anyone's guess whether their monster is even clocking human facial expressions. Have you ever stared an ant in the eye and felt a genuine connection? There should be nothing remotely human about Godzilla, and he shouldn't care about us as a species at all.

As I wrote up each film for this "Go-Go-Godzilla" series, I assigned each film a ranking (out of 5 Zs). I also would enter my viewing in Letterboxd, assigning the film a ranking out of 5 stars. For the most part these rankings aligned (but not always, sometimes as I write things out my opinions can become more, or less, favourable). But I used these ratings to maintain my rankings list, adding to it with each film watched.

Very quickly the rankings list started to feel more and more arbitrary. By the time I was watching Tokyo S.O.S. do you really think I could earnestly compare it to Godzilla vs Megalon? All I really have to go on is my Z/star ratings as guide to establish tiers and then my general sense memory to sort the films within the tiers.

I mean, it was pretty obvious to me what my favourites were, and very clear what I genuinely did not care for, but everything in-between is the "mushy middle". 

Even with the Z/star rankings as guide, my "sense memory" of certain films wants me to push it higher, or perhaps question it's spot. Like Mothra vs Godzilla was a big win early on after two dudes, but is it really at equal stature or enjoyment to me as Minus One, 2014, or Shin?

Gojira is classic cinema, a massively influential and important film with a deeply resonant message. But its storytelling is disjointed and visually its perhaps not as potent as it was 50/60/70 years ago. But surely it's better than any film with MechaGodzilla, right?

And I feel like I would go to bat for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep any day, and think it should be in my top ten. So why isn't it?

I'm sure if I dared do a rewatch of all these that they would shift all around. I think Minus One, 2014, and Shin would all remain top 5, and that most of the bottom five would stay right there, but everything else could swing in unexpected ways. 

But I don't think Lady Kent would tolerate me doing a full Godzilla rewatch any time soon, and there's a whole lotta other kaiju tourism for me to partake in.

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RANKING
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1. Godzilla Minus One (2023) ****

2. Godzilla (2014) ****

3. Mothra vs Godzilla (1964) ****

4. Shin Godzilla (2016) ****

5. The Return of Godzilla (1984) ***1/2

6. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2004) ***1/2

7. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) ***1/2

8. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (1993) ***1/2

9. Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) ***1/2

10. Gojira (1954) ***

11. Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) ***

12. Godzilla vs Kong (2021) ***

13. Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999) ***

14. Godzilla vs Megaguiras (2000) ***

15. Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) ***

16. Godzilla vs Gigan (1972) ***

17. Godzilla vs Megalon (1973) ***

18. Godzilla vs Destroyah (1995) ***

19. Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster (1964) ***

20. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) **1/2

21. Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) **1/2

22. Godzilla vs Mothra (1992)**1/2

23. Destroy All Monsters (1968) **½

24. Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-out Attack (2001) **½

25. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)**1/2

26. Godzilla vs Biollante (1989) **1/2

27. Godzilla Raids Again (1955) **1/2

28. Godzilla 1985 (US version 1985) **1/2

29. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) **

30. Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla (1994) **

31. All Monsters Attack (1969) **

32. Invasion of the Astro Monster (1965) **

33. Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991) *1/2

34. Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956) *1/2

35. King Kong vs Godzilla (US version 1962) *½

36. Son of Godzilla (1967) *

Did not watch:
Godzilla (1998)
Godzilla Planet of Monsters (2017)
Godzilla City on the Edge of Battle (2018) Godzilla The Planet Eater (2018)