Go-Go-Godzilla: Heisei Era in review

I come out of the Heisei Era of Godzilla (1984 - 1995) wondering if I even like Godzilla at all anymore. I mean, I must otherwise I wouldn't be putting in this kind of time and energy into watching every damn last one of them. But I'm trying to remember if there's a single Godzilla film that I didn't fall asleep to while watching, at least since maybe the first two from the Showa era, and I can't think of one.  If I need to go to naptown, it looks like Godzilla is the guy to take me there.

The Heisei spans 7 films over an 11 year period, as opposed to the Showa era which spanned 15 films over a 21 year period. All things told, both eras were dispensing films at almost the same rate. Toho, once they get the machine up and running, can seemingly just crank these things out. The last 5 films of the Heisei era all came out in a 5 year span (the last 12 Showa era films came out in a 13 year span). But that kind of speed does show in the quality of storytelling.

The first four of the Heisei era films are not readily available to stream, rent or buy. I saw a copy of Godzilla vs Biollante on Blu-Ray at a video store a few weeks ago, and it was selling for over $200. I wound up finding free streams in Japanese with subtitles on the Internet Archive. The video quality was ok, but the sound quality was terrible...all I can say is it's good that there was subtitles. I did wind up acquiring the latter three Heisei films on DVD, since distribution rights were acquired by TriStar in America. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla came in a sealed 7-movie set with all the Millennium Era Godzilla films (so I'm set for the next phase) while Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla and Godzilla vs Destroyah came on a single, double sided disk which I found at a used store.  These three were all dubbed, which is not my preference at all. I did watch most of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla with the Internet Archive subtitled version on my phone just to compare the dub vs the sub, and they weren't exact, but they weren't too egregiously different either, not like the heavily edited American versions of the Showa Era G-films.

After I watch a Godzilla film -- or rather, after I start watching a Godzilla film, fall asleep through half of it, get confused and frustrated by the ending, then re-watch another day, and do my silly and wholly unnecessary play-by-play write-up -- I hop over to youtube and watch Big Action Bill's amazing "history of" videos which go deep into the pre-production background, details on the suits used for the production, info on the director and performers and writers and music...just really well researched and essential compendiums for pop culture tourists like myself who are only going to spend a limited amount of time and investment in a property before they move onto something else.

Through Big Action Bill's videos, it sort of confirms the chaotic nature of these films behind the scenes. Scripts seem pretty rushed in coming together, often just cobbled from the dregs of past disposed-of story ideas and monster concepts. Where a lot of time and energy are put into building miniature cities and the suits, the actual filming of these movies seems very much a "get the shot, move on" concept. 

There's a marked improvement in both miniature construction and suit construction in 9 years between Terror of Mechagodzilla and The Return of Godzilla, but the production values seem comparable between the two eras. Depending on the director , you might get some absolutely gorgeous shots, with impeccable lighting that really trick the eye in a delightful way, or you might just get puppets on strings swirling around on what's clearly a badly lit set, and  sometimes both even within the same film... there's no consistency.

After 22 films, they still haven't figured out how to do a flying creature well. Whether it's men in big rubber suits hoisted in the air by cables, or static mini-puppets bashing into each other, they all look unconvincingly awful.  Every time they introduce a new monster with wings I have to groan, because the monster fights with flying creatures are the absolute worst. 

Big Action Bill also pointed out that in Japanese cinema it's common for extraneous or tertiary characters to pop in to deliver exposition or do an action beat or take up space that one of the main characters would otherwise take in a North American film. Most Godzilla films in both the Showa and Heisei era sink because there are too many characters, and the "main" characters of the film are really non-entities with no development to speak of. That Toho recycles their actors from film to film in different roles only confuses things even more. I found myself asking myself "Are we supposed to know that guy?"  

The Heisei era had a few recurring characters, including government and military personnel, who, if they had a name, I never really cottoned to it, because they are so minor and inconsequential despite being in (nearly?) every movie. Then there was Miki the Psychic Girl who appears in 6 of the 7 films, but has no distinct character arc and no defining personality to speak of. She's a consistent presence but has so very little to do. She's supposed to have this strong connection with Godzilla, but it amounts to almost nothing but an exposition dump every time.

The first two Heisei films, The Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Biollante, felt ...elevated somewhat from their Showa Era predecessors, but following that it felt like the Heisei era was really reverting back to Showa-era goofiness to varying effect. Godzilla vs Destroyah does effectively return a bit of actual horror and tension with Godzilla's impending meltdown set to destroy the world, but really inept scripting and storytelling rob the film of much of its dramatic and emotional impact.

I went into the Heisei era really excited, hoping to see better stories, better characters, tighter continuity, and, well, I got one of those three, the one that matters least. I come out of the Heisei era feeling pretty drained on the property, and let down overall.  Many fans, I've been hearing, consider the Heisei era to be be the best of big G, which has me even more worried as I head into the Millennium era. 

One big change needs to happen in this process of watching all the Godzillas is a further adaptation of the template I'm using to recap them... especially the "recapping" part. It started with the Double Oh series for James Bond and then was almost a necessity with our A Toast to HallmarKent series, but recapping a movie beat by beat, or even in broad strokes, has become one of my least favourite things, primarily because Godzilla films are so anti-structure and, frankly, poorly written, event-focused stories.  So recapping all the sort of stream-of-consciousness flow to these movies is kind of maddening, because they don't make much sense and trying to capture every absurd swerve is a fools errand. I'm that fool, but I can no longer be.  Heck, maybe we'll find the Millennium era finally finds some narrative drive to their movies....

At least I know, post-Millennium, getting into the Monsterverse and Reiwa era, that there's some actual great stuff happening there to look forward to.  

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Rankings:

Heisei Era

1. The Return of Godzilla
2. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II
3. Godzilla vs Destroyah
4. Godzilla vs Mothra
5. Godzilla vs Biollante
6. Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla
7. Godzilla vs King Ghidorah
8. Godzilla 1985

All the films (so far):

1. The Return of Godzilla
2. Godzilla vs Mothra (1964)
3. Gojira
4. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974)
5. Ebirah, Horror of the Deep
6. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II
7. Terror of Mechagodzilla
8. Godzilla vs Destroyah
9. Godzilla vs Mothra (1992)
10. Godzilla vs. Hedorah
11. Godzilla vs Gigan
12. Godzilla vs Megalon
13. Destroy All Monsters
14. Godzilla vs Biollante
15. Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla
16. All Monsters Attack
17. Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster
18. Godzilla vs King Ghidorah
19. Invasion of the Astro Monster
20. Godzilla Raids Again
21. Godzilla 1985
22. Son of Godzilla
23. Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956)
24. King Kong vs Godzilla (US version 1962)

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Beekeeper

2024, David Ayer (Suicide Squad) -- download 

The Bee Keeper and the Brick Layer walk into a bar....

This one, typical of the kind of movie I rush to download now, that That Guy of my youth would have sneered at. Despite my comments prior, I did not waste my youth only watching terrible movies. To have found the quality actioner among the dross was a challenge, endlessly reading reviews and the backs of VHS boxes. But as I got older, I tempered, reduced my desire to be challenged all the time. Sometimes, and more often than not now, I just want familiarity, a digestible plot, the same brain chemistry release I get when I play FPS video games. Oh, I want some semblance of capability, as if all I wanted was the concept, there are endless number of Z-grades on Amazon and Tubi. 

Yes, I know I have said that umpteen times but I still catch myself wondering why Toasty Now actually looks forward to movies that Toast Then (aka That Guy) would have sneered at.

David Ayer doesn't have a great track record in my world (actually no, scratch that dude. other than Suicide Squad, you rather like his work), but TBH I didn't even know he did the movie till I clicked Start. What I knew going in was that this was seminal Jason Statham, who is still in his prime Action Hero role for at least a decade, before he gets relegated to my other favourite (one of) genre of Aging Shooter. Here, he is a retired.... agent... of an organization called The Beekeepers, Ayer's version of Vaughn's "The Kingsmen", except there only seems to be one Beekeeper at any one time, a legendarily capable soldier for America, who stands aside from the politics and the laws to always set things right.

Statham is the same age as me, i.e. we are both turning 57 this year. On one hand, he is very very VERY much in better shape for a guy our age, than  I am. On the other hand, he or his purple suit, were very concerned about his "greying" as he has the most obviously dyed beard. People have asked me if I have ever thought about dying my facial hair as my head-hair is still mostly sans grey, but after seeing how blatant his was, and he doesn't even have any head-hair, I am secure being (more) salt & pepper.

Adam Clay (Statham, Parker) is quiet in his retirement as he... well, keeps bees. That is, until Evil Scammers scam the Old Lady (Phylicia Rashad, The Cosby Show) he rents bee space from, stealing from her not only her own money, but the money from the charity she runs. In response, he uses his old Bee Keeper contacts to blow the Evil Scammer callcentre up, which strangely enough, is not in a foreign country, but in midwest US of A, and looks like the set of a 90s hacker movie, replete with tacky clothing and annoying personalities, all the while spitting out an endless litany of bee knowledge. Meanwhile the Old Lady's daughter (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy), a member of law enforecement who happens to have been trying to take down these Evil Scammers, follows Clay from blowed-up-place to blowed-up-place. MEANWHILE, the Top Evil Scammer (Josh Hutcherson, The Hunger Games) happens to be a pampered rich boy who uses his pampered rich mom's contacts (Jeremy Irons, Dungeons & Dragons [not that one]) to find out who is blowing up his call centres, leading to a John Wick "oh" moment, when they discover Clay was a Bee Keeper.

For the most part, the movie is an unremarkable, familiar action movie, paced as well as expected, with a slight twist that is more of an eye roll. It introduces an an interesting John Wick-ian organization, but never really does anything with it. So.... pretty much as I expected / sought out?

Go-Go-Godzilla #23: Godzilla vs Destroyah

Director: Takao Okawara
Year: 1995
Distributor: TriStar, Toho Pictures
Length: 100 minutes

The Creature's' Story:
Like best rappers, Godzilla spit hot fire now.
Oh wait, Godzilla am glowing all red, boiling water around Godzilla. This not good.
Wha' happened? 

Godzilla am dead. :(

The Human Story:
Birth Island (Godzilla's home) is gone! Destroyed! 
Godzilla emerges all fucked up, burning bright red, and possibly having an atomic meltdown.
Dr Yamani's (from the original Gojira) grandson, Ken, did his college thesis on Godzilla which G-Force is treating as a possible answer to Godzilla's situation. When he meets Miki, the psychic girl, she worries that Baby G didn't survive the destruction of Birth Island. Ken also theorizes that Godzilla's full meltdown will superheat the earth's atmosphere and then explode the oxygen destroying everything. Intense!
Godzilla, he is adamant, must be destroyed!

It's taken 40 years but someone's finally invented "tiny atoms" and made "microoxygen" which hearkens back to the "oxygen destroyer" of the original Godzilla film, possibly the most dangerous weapon man's ever created.  If they have no other option, then the Japan Security Defence Force has no other choice but to attempt to recreate Dr. Serizawa's original weapon. Serizawa's widow implores Ken not to build the weapon Serizawa gave his life to ensure it would never exist again.

In the meantime they try a new weapon that will flash freeze anything. They target Godzilla using the new Super X Mark III flying tank to try the weapon out, with only limited succes.

Meanwhile A microorganism from the precambrian era that eats oxygen was discovered in a soil sample and has already mutated and gotten loose.The microorganism grows into many microorganism and then continue to combine and grow, attacking everything in their path until ultimately it turns into a singular form dubbed "Destroyah".  They are effectively the Oxygen Destroyer of the original Gojira come to life. Eventually, it's determined that Destroyah, as devastating a creature as it may be, may be their only hope in saving the earth from Godzilla's meltdown.

In order to get the two creatures together, the JSDF needs to lure Godzilla into Destroyah's path as it rampages through Japan. In order to do so, Miki finds Baby Godzilla is still alive and is convinced to lure it to Destroyah's path, where the mini-titan valiantly but hopelessly confronts Destroyah, and is injured to the brink of death. 

As hoped, Baby G's peril brings Papa G a-comin' and the two remaining titans tussle. Even with Oxygen Destroying powers, Godzilla reaches a new level of fierceness in his mid-meldown state and obliterates the other creature. But Godzilla transfers some of his atomic essence to save Baby G, and when he goes full meltdown Baby G absorbs all the ensuing radiation and he grows to full-Godzilla size as a result. 

Godzilla is dead. Long live Godzilla!

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
Involuntary foe.

The Sounds:
Akira Ifukube delivers a new score and new themes but also spins the usual Godzilla themes on their head. It's a fitting sendoff and his liveliest Godzilla score since the 70's, but still not as fresh as his 60's work which refused to rehash earlier sounds.

The Message:
Past sins will always come back to haunt you. Back in Gojira, the Oxygen Destroyer was deemed far too dangerous a weapon for man to have in their hands, so its creator destroyed every record and himself in the process to ensure the weapon could never be recreated. But what he couldn't see, just like Oppenheimer, is the monster that would result.  Whether it's lingering radiation poisoning or even bigger bombs, man, even in the face of the direst warnings cannot help but push itself towards its own extinction in the name of curiosity.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZZ
While it's still not a very cohesive story, and it meanders quite a bit, the looming threat of a world-ending meltdown from Godzilla is a very intense idea. The threat of Godzilla bashing buildings, knocking over bridges, and stepping on tanks, is nothing compared to the visualization of Godzilla fully imploding, with the resulting disaster setting fire to the very atmosphere of the earth. It's like Terminator 2: Judgement Day times 11. (And that's not the only pop culture nod, here as the director pays tribute to Aliens and Jurassic Park among other big even films from the past decade).

For some reason, a second Psychic Girl is introduced into the film, a Japanese ex-pat now from America. It just means some of Miki the Psychic Girl's thunder is stolen by this other woman. But where they could be combative, they wind up becoming easy allies and they help each other out. Miki does get some good scenes being emotional about Godzilla and Baby Godzilla, but I can't help but feel her 6-movie run missed a great opportunity for her to have an actual connection with these creatures as an audience surrogate, not just existing for an expository purpose.

The film uses new techniques in composite editing of the suitmation and live city scenes. It's not flawless, but it's delightful to look at. As well, the final battle sequence is filmed on the biggest miniatures stage yet, and it an utterly impressive cityscape terrain for them to do battle on. 

I don't love any of Destroyah's looks, exactly, in any of its forms (it's mid-size scale kind of look like the Brood from X-Men) and its final form gets wings, which, means it flies. As we've seen in almost every film where a creature flies in Godzilla, it looks terrible. I'm not sure why they keep going back to that well. 

Godzilla's meltdown effect, though, is incredible. The body suit glows, and there's smoke or steam coming off of him and when he walks in the water it's bubbling around him. It really reinforces that something is incredibly wrong with that thing.

It's a decent finale, and really treats Godzilla with a reverence that I'm not sure any film has captured in this way. 

KWIF: Past Lives (+2)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film

This week:
Past Lives (2023, d. Celine Song - AmazonPrime)
Nimona (2023, d. Troy Quane, Nick Bruno - Netflix)
Plus One (2019, d. Andrew Rhymer, Jeff Chan - Netflix) 

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Between watching films like Anatomy of a Fall and Maestro, the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith series on AmazonPrime, and hearing the neighbours yelling at each other through the walls nearly every day, for, oh, the past four years, I feel like I've gotten more than my fill of intense, unhappy relationships.  It's bad for the mindset to have too much of that in one's life, even peripherally.

Celine Song's Past Lives is kind of a bittersweet tonic to such sequences of relationship animosity. It's an ode to individualism as well as to love. It's an incredibly mature, thoughtful look at relationships and shows people who are capable of self-awareness and managing their emotions.

Na Young and Hae Sung grew up together in Seoul. By the time they were twelve they were intensely competitive with one another in school, but also incredibly attached. Just as they're starting to explore feelings for each other, Na Young is ripped away as her family emigrates to Canada. No word of a lie, but their last moment with each other is one of the most beautifully composed visual metaphors in cinema, thanks to a perfectly scouted location.

Twelve years later, Na Young, now Nora (Greta Lee), is an aspiring playwright, while Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) has wrapped up mandatory military service and looks to the next phase of his life. But he's not forgotten a piece of his past, and he reaches out through a series of connections on Facebook to find Nora, who, curious herself, reaches out in return. Their connection is as immediate as if they had never left it, only the attraction is much more adult and the emotions much more understood. Alas, a half a world away, and half a day's difference makes a relationship hard to sustain... and what's more, Nora is finding it distracting from her goals, from what she wants to achieve. With no hope of Hae Sung coming to New York and no time for her to make a trip to Soeul, she presses "pause" on whatever is happening between them. And they both go about their lives.  

I think one of the more difficult things in film and television storytelling is making video calling interesting to watch, but Song here really gets so much out of how her actors behave towards the camera (and just off camera). There's so much to be said about what we see on the screen within a screen, but then there's what we see in the scene that the characters don't see of each other...physicality, gestures... and then there's the missed connections, which, somehow, are just heartbreaking.

Another 12 years pass. Nora is married to another writer,  Arthur (John Magaro), and they have, what I think can be said is a very practical partnership. When Hae Sung, recently reconnecting with Nora, comes to New York to visit, there is clearly a rekindling happening between them, a palpable attraction that hasn't gone away in the 24 years since they were last able to touch each other. What results is a Before Sunrise-esque level of engagement, talking candidly about what life has been like, and what life could have been like in different circumstances. Arthur is not ignorant of the connection they share, he's not oblivious to the cliches of storytelling where he's the odd-man-out, but at the same time, there's a reality that all three players are fully aware up. No one is upending their lives just for some idea of "love".

The way the characters engage with each other, with openness and honesty that is both given and received, is absolutely refreshing. There's no real drama in Past Lives, there's no romantic cliches of "true love conquers all", there's just a heavy concrete slab of reality at the foundation of this movie, and in Nora's character. She is a realist, and despite whatever emotions come with Hae Sung, she has so many more emotions tied elsewhere that would be uprooted to be with him.

Despite the almost wet blanket scenario and absence of high drama, it's a very romantic movie. It is a movie about love, and it's never a bad time to be in the presence of love.

But it's also a movie about what it means to feel complete, and love is only a piece of it. Why do people cheat on their partners or leave their family behind to run off with a new fling? It's often got nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with themselves...they're chasing external happiness. 

Hae Sung, for his part, can't let go of Nora because he's not found happiness with himself. He's still chasing a feeling he felt long ago in someone else, rather than trying to find that feeling inside.  

--This is the last film of the Best Picture Oscar Nominees that I had yet to see, and this is the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, I've seen all Nominees prior to the ceremony. Last week I ranked the nominees in my preferential order (not who I think will win, just my preference), and I think Past Lives would fall into that middle pack with The Holdovers, Oppenheimer, and American Fiction, where any of these four films could swap places in the 3-6 slot. But I still like Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things well above them all.--

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I like the idea of the Annupurna/Netflix feature Nimona, based on the graphic novel series by ND Stevenson, much more that I think I enjoyed Nimona.

The film starts with a bit of an overcomplicated history lesson voiceover describing how the mystical land and society was built around protecting itself from monster then jumps a thousand years in the future to find a techno-medi-evil terrain where a young street kid was taken in by the queen to be educated as part of the land's fabled knighthood, a position usually reserved for the elite families of the city. 

Ballister Boldheart is about to be knighted, bucking tradition, but during the ceremony he is framed for murdering the queen and goes on the run. He is found by Nimona, an energetic changeling who looks only for companionship from a fellow outcast. The pair have to battle both class structures and intolerance to uncover the truth of the Queen's death, as well as, perhaps, change some minds about changelings being the monsters this society has been so afraid of for generations.

Without really any fanfare, Nimona is a young adult fantasy-adventure that features queer characters as its leads.  Ballister was in a romantic relationship with Ambrosius Goldenloin, the champion knight, until Ambrosius cut his arm off when he thought Ballister murdered the Queen.  Nimona is trans-coded, and while the character is pronouned "she" throughout, Nimona kind of bucks the idea of even being gendered, or classified as any sort of form.  

I love that aspect of the film, that it so effortlessly includes these characters without ever awkwardly making a point about it, but at the same time, it's the entire subtext of the movie if you're looking for it. Unfortunately the setting of the film did absolutely nothing for me. The societal structure, the visual design, the meta-cross of fantasy and techno-future...I just didn't find it appealing. 

But the final act turned into a real emotional rollercoaster and really got me in the gut and got the tears flowing. The climax raises the stakes to a very surprising and intense level, and its resolution is a thing of absolute beauty.  I may not have been enthralled by the first two acts leading up to it, but it pays off really nicely. Riz Ahmed as Ballister and Chloe Grace Moretz both deliver really great voice performances as well. It's not a better film than Across the Spider-Verse in this year's Best Animate Picture Oscar race, not The Boy and the Heron, but it shouldn't be dismissed as so many Netflix originals often do.

Toasty's take...we agree.

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After finishing the aforementioned Mr. & Mrs. Smith series starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, this indie romcom starring Erskin and The Boys Jack Quaid popped up prominently on Netflix. I had never heard of the movie, so, as I do, I promptly took a gander at Letterboxd to see how the cinemaphiles had rated it, and they liked it, singling out Erskine as the film's key draw.

I had seen Erskine around over the years, including the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but she wasn't that prominently featured (I haven't yet watched her comedy series Pen15). So Mr. & Mrs. Smith is my first big exposure, and wow...what an impact.  I'll get to that review later this coming week.  But with the Letterboxd recommendation of more wonderful Erskine business, Plus One became a must-watch.

Erskine plays Alice, who gets into an arrangement with her buddy, Ben (Quaid) to be each other's dates to the many weddings each has to attend that summer.  They're just friends to start,  she even acts as his wingman for a time, and there's not an ounce of romantic chemistry between them at first, but the friend chemistry is wholly palpable. But you can't spend that amount of time with one another in fancy dress, loaded with alcohol, surrounding by sweeping sentiments of love, and not, perhaps, get swept up in it.

But how do they know it's real?  I came to the movie for Erskine, but Quaid is a very likeable presence and the ostensible lead of the film (it really does focus more on Ben's life and POV than Alice's). Where Alice has recently gone through a break-up at the start of the film, Ben seems kind of terminally alone. He's the last of his friends who is single by the time the summer wedding season gets into full swing, and when he looks at his twice-divorced father (Ed Begley Jr.) who just proposed to a woman half his age, Ben thinks he understands why.  So when he gets together with Alice, and, more surprisingly Alice is all-in on the relationship, it's Ben who starts to get shaken by what they have.

In a way, Plus One follows a pretty similar formula to beloved Kent household favourite Holidate,  so there was something comfortable about the structure, though the timeframe of the relationship is sort of compressed over a few summer months as opposed to a whole year. Still, changing venues, different people surrounding the characters, and the device of leading each wedding "chapter" off with the best man or bridesmaid speech (and highlighting all the different tropes of said speeches) was terrific. 

Erskine is the standout here. She's a bundle of aggressive energy, with a sincerity and vulnerability that temper the aggressiveness into charming. As she'd proven in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, she's a versatile and gifted actress, comedic or otherwise, and I expect we'll be seeing an increasing amount of her over the next couple of year. Quaid has more of his mom Meg Ryan's charm than his dad's sort of smarm, which makes him kind of perfect for a romcom lead. He's not the stereotype of the romcom lead, but he is a guy you definitely root for to get his shit together.  It's charming.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Paradise

2023, Boris Kunz (Drei Stunden) -- Netflix

Youth is wasted on the young. In my personal experience, as in me, that is entirely true. I wasted my youth in vast swathes. TBH I still am wasting my life. And I am past the point of return value. But whatever. But what if you could regain that youth? As in physically be younger, but with all the wisdom (???) of your current age. Like all good scifi cautionary tales, this youth only comes at the cost... of another's youth. Tit for tat. You get younger, they get older.

The world of Paradise is of the twenty minutes into the future ilk, where the rich are richer and reap all the benefits. There are unexplained massive refugee camps everywhere all over Europe, much of eastern Europe left the union and lives in squalor. But for a small exchange, like 10, 20... 40 years of your life, a company called AEON will give you a life (what's remaining of it) of leisure and wealth. And your years are given to someone who can afford it. Oh they say it is meant to benefit the scientists and artists and the people who are making the world better, but we all know better. 

Max (Kostja Ullman, The Reckoning) is Top Seller at AEON, a man who coerces teenage refugees out of decades, a man about to be rewarded, able to upgrade his apartment, start a family. But then their apartment burns down, and he finds out his young wife Elena (Marlene Tanczik, Never Look Away) has used her years as collateral. Debt enforcement is immediate -- 40 years. Max is desperate to get his wife's, their, life back, even if she doesn't want it. And when he finds out the founder of AEON was directly involved in his apartment fire and his wife's debt, he has to ask himself who is worth more.

The movie could have continued to explore the moral complications, but instead it decided to devolve into an actioner, putting Max and Elena between the forces of AEON and Adam, the terrorist group that wants to end this technology forever and kills anyone who benefits from it. Oh, it tries to weave in some difficult choices but those get lost in the gunfire. In the end, nobody wins but AEON the corporation, which is a lazy way to end most dystopian fiction, assuming Nothing Ever Changes and nobody wins. Except the rich.

KWIF: May/December (+4)

 KWIF = Kent's Week In Film... week-ish.

This Week:
May December (2023, d. Todd Haynes - Netflix)
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023, d. Martin Scorsese - AppleTV+)
Maestro (2023, d. Bradley Cooper - Netflix)
The Lost City (2022, d. Adam Nee, Aaron Nee - Netflix)
Last Night In Soho (2021, d. Edgar Wright - Netflix)

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The conceit behind Todd Haynes' latest, May December, is one that should make anyone feel very uncomfortable. Its premise is inspired by the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau story, one in which a woman in her 30's commited statutory rape on a minor, is criminally convicted and imprisoned, where it turns out she's pregnant and has the baby, then, upon release, rekindles the relationship, marries and raises a family with the boy-turned-man. 

Haynes' film is a fictionalization of this, meeting up with this very awkward family some 20 years later, where the facade of "normalcy" has to be plastered up every day. Helping bring us into this dynamic is actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) who will be portraying Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) in a new movie, and Gracie has agreed to let her into their life in hopes of getting sensitive representation in the picture.

Elizabeth spends time with the Gracie, Joe (Charles Melton) and the Yoo family, joining them for dinners and at work and at school, and if she picks up on the extremely awkward dynamics between everyone, she's very reticent to react to it. Gracie keeps trying to politely present her homelife, as well as her place in the town they live in as something natural, just your average family. She avoids any mention of drama, because if she were even to consider it, then there would be nothing but. 

Gracie has a son from her previous marriage, Georgie, who was Joe's best friend until Joe was molested by his mom. Georgie is clearly fucked up by the whole event, and basically lives a drug-fuelled, care-free life, laced tightly with anger and rage. Gracie and Joe have three children of their own, their eldest has returned from her respite at college for the graduation of the middle child, while their youngest teen seems to have just become aware of their family history. All three kids are mortified to be Gracie's children, but do seem to have a very close bond with Joe that Gracie seems to ignore.

If it all sounds direly heavy, it is surprisingly anything but. Instead of capital-D drama, Haynes instead leans very, very hard into melodrama. It starts with the score, which is a mix of new compositions by Marcelo Zavros and re-orchestrated tracks of Michael Legrand's from the 1971 British period drama The Go-Between. I don't know if you could call music "gauzy" but those Legrand tracks are definitely that, like prototypical TV-movie-of-the-week overblown melodrama. Deep register piano keys reverberating, while higher register keys are slowly plunked in a pretty simple but ominous tune.  The first real indication of what kind of movie this is finds Gracie opening the fridge door, cue the strong melodramatic piano chords (as if a big, important, dramatic reveal is about to happen), she stares into the fridge, and utters "I don't think we have enough hot dogs."

As Elizabeth makes her way through the supporting players in Gracie and Joe's life and history, while also spending extensive time with them both, a portrait of what their dynamic really is is revealed. Joe, despite being 36, a medical professional and seemingly a good dad, is still very much emotionally in a 13-year-old's mindset when it comes to his view of the world, and even moreso his relationship with Grace. She infantilizes him something fierce, acting as his mom and his wife and lover. The glimpses we get into their sex life are horrifyingly embarrassing for them both. Gracie, in her own way, is emotionally stunted. She's oblivious to others' needs and feelings, unapologetic to a fault, and incapable of seeing any flaw in herself. It's not ego, but repression, though it's clear deep down it's all resonating within her and she doesn't know how to reconcile it. The facade she keeps up, of everything being normal, is what she has to do to survive, but it keeps her at a distance from everyone, and it's clear she's still sort of preying upon Joe.

The dynamic between Moore and Portman is phenomenal. The scenes of Gracie and Elizabeth together -- as these two women do little else but study each other -- are fascinating. Gracie is perhaps jealous of Elizabeth's youth and freedoms, while Elizabeth basically is trying to become Gracie, to taste her life in a very unhealty way.  It's all the more hilarious when we see the production Elizabeth is in at the end of the film, and how she's chosen to interpret Gracie for the role.

May December is an extremely watchable dark, dark comedy with just a hint of repugnance. It does present these characters with a sense of pathos, rather than being judgmental or damning, but at the same time, there is absolutely nothing flattering being said about this situation or the people involved. It's just as fucked up as you would think. But what a treat.

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Of all the films on this year's "Best Picture" list at the Academy Awards, Killers of the Flower Moon was the one I looked forward to watching the least. The subject matter is tough to take in, but important history to learn. The Osage people, when oil was struck on their land in the 1910s, became rapidly wealthy, but the white man's government refused to let them access such wealth and it was put into trusts that they could only retrieve with help of an executor, or a white family member. It led to a lot of greedy white men doing horrible, heartless things, as greedy white men have been known to do throughout, oh, all of history. 

There's been a lot of talk about how this film exposes this horrible history and puts a big old spotlight on it as prestige Oscar bait, much in the way HBO's Watchmen put a big spotlight on the Tulsa massacre (which happens, and is referenced, within the timeline of this story). It does accomplish that. But, to my continued dismay throughout its 206-minute runtime (!), it tells this story almost entirely through the eyes of white men. Those mainly being the morally inept Ernest Buckheart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his vile uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro) whom he calls "King".  On this Osage people's land, King is the deputy sheriff but also a civic leader. He has a warm smile and kind tone which fools all the Native Americans into believing him to be a just man, when in reality, behind the scenes, he's responsible for robbing their people of their land, their money and their lives. 

King guides Ernest towards stern Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), and influences him into marrying her, but Ernest thinks he truly loves the woman, although he doesn't respect her enough to try and save her, or who she cares about, from King's machinations. Throughout the progress of the film, King has every member of her family killed in one way or another, and, through tampering with her insulin, poisons her slowly over time so that Ernest may inherit and keep her entitlements "in the family".

It is a long, long movie that is quite watchable in the Scorsese way, but, for me at least, not in the slightest likeable. I took great exception to how the film essentially sidelines Mollie for the majority of the picture such that we only ever see her grief, or her point of view of the events from a distanced lens. She is the female lead of the film, but she is a secondary character when, truly, the film should be about her.  Ernest is a horrendous lead. I run pretty cold on DiCaprio most of the time, and while he truly he puts in the effort here, Ernest is just a dull, shitty person and following him around for 200 minutes is about as enjoyable as having a root canal. I'm obviously in the minority on this, but I think it was a fatal miscalculation having Ernest, and not Mollie be the lead of the film.

Of all the "Best Picture" nominees (I've seen 9 of the 10 as of this writing) this is my least favourite.

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Maestro, as a "Best Picture" nominee, sits one higher on the list than Killers.... Bradley Cooper's all-in dive for Oscar glory follows the life, but mostly the marriage, of celebrated American conductor, composer, musician, bon vivant etc. Leonard Bernstein. 

Cooper writes, directs and stars in the picture, you can truly feel him reaching for that golden statue like a small child, desperate to get his grubby hands on one. But, if my inklings are correct, the effort was enough to earn him the nominations, as if to say "we see what you're doing, and good job, buddy", but also to say, "better luck next time" with a pat on the head.

This is a hot mess of a movie. It spans Bernstein's life from his early 20's up until his death (the worst Hollywood biopics tend to be those that dare to try and fit someone's life and/or carrer and/or accomplishments into 2 hours). As a result, Cooper decides to present this life as, basically, a series of vignettes. Short acts that feature a great conversation, or a dance sequence, or a marital spat, or one of Bernstein's great efforts behind the conductor's podium. 85% of the film revolves around Leonard's life and strife with his truest love Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).  I write "truest love" because Bernstein was bisexual, or pansexual maybe, but definitely his preference was men, excepting for Felicia, and just because he was married didn't mean he put any of his predilections aside.

Before seeing this film, I knew that Bernstein existed, but that about it. I might have been able to guess that he was a composer, maybe even a conductor, but I wouldn't have been able to give you a single credit to his fame (except his namedrop in REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)"...which here becomes the tackiest needledrop in cinema since every needledrop in 2016's Suicide Squad). After seeing this film I know that Bernstein was a revered conductor and composed the music for West Side Story and really, really, really, really, really like fucking men. And that he really loved his wife, even when fucking men. 

I don't feel at any point I ever got a true sense of who Leonard or Felicia were as individuals, only as a couple. I had a strong sense of their relationship because that is almost exclusively what this film is about, and frankly it's not tremendously enlightening. It's not boring, as the film moves way too quickly to get bored, but at such a rapid clip moving through someone's life (or someones' lives) it's hard to ever feel grounded or invested. I was often confused. I liken Maestro to being the first 10 minutes of Up stretched out over two hours, with a lot more men kissing.

Cooper, in his various vignettes, experiments with style and structure and it must have been pretty creatively rewarding, but as an audience member, I found it distracting from the first scene when it jumps from aged and wrinkled Bernstein into black-and-white squareboxed format. Later when Leonard and Felicia first meet, they talk in that 1930's His Girl Friday rapid-patter which is definitely a style choice, but feels completely put on and unnatural. This whole film, frankly feels that way.

Clearly Cooper has a deep love and fascination with Bernstein, but this movie feels like he watched Fosse/Verdon and said "that's the take for Maestro". But what Fosse/Verdon had was 10 episodes, as well as All That Jazz to back into the life of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. 2-ish hours is just not enough to get even close to that level of intimacy with Lenny and Felicia.

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When I put The Lost City on, Lady Kent asked me one question..."Why?"

In the year and a half since The Lost City debuted in the wake of covid and got swallowed up by the streaming machine, it's actually garnered itself a bit of a reputation as being... good?  Yes, "good, question mark".  

This one was a fairly low-key pretty big hit, quite surprisingly.  We look at these sort of celebrity two-hander action comedies with a bit of disdain these days. If it's not a known property we're like, "why is this happening, exactly?". They used to happen all the time, pre-superhero dominance, but I think they're seen as old fashioned, and film goers get a bit cynical when studios try to force two movie stars together and just expect us to want to see it. Films used to be star driven, now they're IP or concept driven by and large. We've become wary of "celebrities". 

If you've seen Romancing the Stone, this is basically a reformulation of that story. A romance writer finds herself in a situation not too far outside one of her plots, forced to partner up with a man she can barely stand, only to fall in love, find adventure and treasure, and defeat the bad guys.   In this case, when Sandra Bullock's novelist Loretta Sage is kidnapped by billionaire Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliff), it's Sandra's sweet, simple himbo cover model Alan (Channing Tatum) who comes to her rescue... or, rather, tries to come to her rescue.  

It's a film that is smart misadventure, exposing the incompetence of the two leads, but also showing an ability to grow and learn on the fly, and get closer to each other as they're forced to rely upon each other. There is a 16 year age gap between Bullock and Tatum which makes for a great other-side of the usual Hollywood trope.  It presents Alan's crush on Loretta in a puppy love sort of way until Alan becomes disillusioned when spending real time with her, only to come back around when she starts to break down her pretentions and emotional barriers.

Tatum is the absolute best at playing the "beautiful, sensitive meathead", and he dials it up to 11 here as perfect comedy. Bullock has a "mode" for these films and she falls pretty comfortably into it. She has been doing it for almost 30 years. Radcliff, with every role he takes, from farting corpse to novelty musician, continues to shake off the stink of Harry Potter, and he plays a wonderful entitled asshole that's part Dr. Evil, part Ron Silver.

In the end, Lady Kent said "I have to say...pretty good?"

Now, the question is do we watch the Julia Roberts/George Clooney two-hander Ticket to Paradise?

[Had to laugh revisiting Toasty's post and seeing him ask the same question as Lady Kent...why? But...we agree.]

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It is surprising to me that it took almost three years for us to get around to watching Last Night in Soho. Lady Kent and I both are fans of Edgar Wright's work, having seen all his films, many multiple times. I think the middling reviews of ...Soho put it low on the priority list, plus the combo of Thomasin McKenzie's porcelain doll-esque face and ghostly street urchin voice as witnessed in the trailer didn't entice me much more.

And yeah, the opening moments of ...Soho were very much hard for me to get into. It's not McKenzie's fault she's built the way she, but that sort of built-for-childrens-programming vibe is not something one can quickly settle into.

In the film McKenzie's Ellie Turner has been accepted to the London College of Fashion, but she's been raised poor and rural by her grandmother following her mother's suicide. She doesn't fit in at school, and dorm life is too aggressively social, so she rents a room in Soho with a strict elderly woman. Ellie has seen dead people before (she sees her mother sometimes, and thinks of it as a sign of good luck) but when she falls asleep in Soho, she lives a completely other life. She starts being there, in the glorious 1960's heyday, both following and sometimes inhabiting the life of Sandie Collins (Anya Taylor-Joy). Ellie loves the fantasy of it and it becomes her escape from crushing reality.

But the dream soon becomes nightmareish, with Sandie being bamboozled out of her chanteuse career, instead working burlesque and ultimately, unwillingly the sex trade. The men of the 60s all become monsters until Ellie sees a murder and becomes obsessed with it in the modern day. She has to question her own sanity when the worlds start to blur even when she's awake.

Wright has clearly fashioned ...Soho in the Italian Giallo fashion: murder mysteries that are usually bloodier, scarier, and sexier, sometimes with a paranormal bent, and typically finds a non-police or private detective in the role of solving the mystery or capturing the killer. Even in his usual fashin, this is a more stylized film for Wright, as he twists his narrative around visual concepts one would have found in the 60's and 70's but, challenging himself to push further. The colour palette of the film, especially in the 60's, is gorgeous, pink neon soaked with heavy black shadows. The mirror work, in the first act especially, is mind blowing: I'm sure it was practical but there's some definite movie magic going on there (a scene where Taylor-Joy descends down a mirrored staircase but it's McKenzie in the mirror is a triumph).

It's the third act then, when it goes full psychological and paranormal horror, that it becomes a bit too overblown. Without revealing anything, the finale is very muddy in its message about victims of violence and what justice means for them, and I think that's where the critical reaction was shaken.  I can't help but think about Poor Things' narrative when watching this, even though I understand they're both portraying different times and intentions. 

So, happy to have seen it, and will probably revisit in the future, but also, I get the disappointment with it, and I agree. And it seems Toasty and I agree as well.

But is it horror?
It kind of is, in the way that Giallo is a subgenre of horror. It's not out to jump-scare you but it is meant to be intense and frightening. So yeah, ish.

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BONUS
Kent's Oscars 2024 Best Picture Rankings:

1. Anatomy of a Fall
2. Poor Things
3. The Holdovers
4. American Fiction
5. Oppenheimer
6. Barbie
7. The Zone of Interest
8. Maestro
9. Killers of the Flower Moon
   to watch: Past Lives

(Note: The Holdovers, American Fiction and Oppenheimer could all shuffle around in their respective 3rd/4th/5th place spot depending on my mood)

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Badland Hunters

2024,  Heo Myeong Haeng (feature debut) -- Netflix

Oh cool, a post-apocalyptic movie with a mysterious lone warrior figure... sort of a The Book of Eli from South Korea.

Opening Credits. Waitasec, that is the apartment from Concrete Utopia. 

<grabs the Google Machine> 

This ... is... a sequel / spin-off ?!? OK, I am in.

But its not really, more like, "Well, we have this expensive set, so why not use it for another movie...."

So yeah, an earthquake happened. Buuuut before we get to that, a Mad Scientist is being arrested for the experimentation he has been performing on human subjects in order to save his dying daughter. It involves lizards. I think we can get where that is going to go.

Now we get the earthquake which destroys the building the Mad Scientist was in.

The "badland hunters" are Nam San (Ma Dong-Seok, Eternals) and his young friend Choi Ji-Wan (Lee Jun-Young, Love and Leashes). The former is skilled, tough, and massive, a Dave Bautista analog for South Korea. His sidekick is a cocky teenager. They all live in a community of survivors built around a collection of buses. The movie wants to go for a desert warrior vibe, for at least a bit, but since its amidst the ruins of collapsed Seoul, they explain the dust & sand on a recent drought. But no matter, they dispense with the ruins and dust and sand pretty quickly when they arrive at the lone standing apartment building. That is where the bulk of the movie takes place.

Why do they go there? Well, since the last movie, the "Lord of the Flies" residents have been supplanted by the Mad Scientist and his military flunkies. They have been hunting the ruins for teenagers that they coerce into moving to their domein with promises of water, food and education. Its been long enough that people know there is no help coming, but these Bad Guys are clean, polite and claiming to represent some form of government. They take Choi Ji-Wan's crush Han Su-na. Nam San doesn't trust them so the two hunters head out to retrieve her, with a brief pitstop along the way to secure some guns from gangsters, who Nam San beats up. Guys, you have GUNS; he has fists.

Anywayz, that's it for hunting in the badlands.

Suffice to say there is evil human experimentation continuing at the apartment building and Nam San has to shoot, chop and punch his way past the lizard serum jazzed up super soldiers in order to save Han Su-Na. And he has to shoot the Mad Scientist.

The movie harkens back to the 80s-90s PA movies that I kind of loved back then, and kind of like ironically now but this one is just not very good at all. But Ma Dong-Seok is solid, more than believable and the enigmatic, capable warrior. Honestly, he's the only reason to watch the movie. I really do wish there was more badlands, and more hunting, like in the poster.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

2023, James Wan (M3GAN) -- download

My viewing of this movie sort of mirrors my write-up of the first movie, in that I was compelled to rewatch Aquaman to remind myself of the story, but I didn't. Maybe I should have, for at least, according to the writeup, I was somewhat entertained by the first. I am not even sure I was entertained by this one. I just didn't like very much of it, and to entirely contradict my opinion during the first, I did not like (at all) how Jason-Momoa everything was here. Maybe I am getting deeper into my Cranky Old Man phase of life, but fuck, he was annoying.

As for needing to rewatch, that's alright cuz they do a decent recap at the beginning of this movie. For people like me, I gather, who only saw it once and don't recall a fucking thing. I don't remember the movie being about Orm at all. I swore it was all Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, The Matrix Resurrections). I thought this movie was going to be about Orm (Patrick Wilson, Hard Candy; is he intentionally supposed to look like original blonde DC Aquaman?) and was very confused about the recap including his capture -- shouldn't that bit be a proper movie, and not just a preamble? (dude, really?) Anywayz, doltish memory aside, I was glad for the recap.

Which is then followed by a non-recap catch-up of what's been going on SINCE the last movie. Essentially National Lampoon Atlantean Royalty. Aquaman (Jason Momoa, See) got married, had a son whom he is raising on the surface with his father the lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison, The Book of Boba Fett). Mamma Mera (Amber Heard, Drive Angry) doesn't seem to ever make an appearance as, rather than killing off the character, they retain her role but diminish it so much, its a disservice to us the viewers as well as the cast. Anywayz, Aquaman hates being king but loves being daddy and loooooves that his son can talk to fish sea creatures the same way he does. He also gets peed on. We are supposed to laugh. I am not a daddy, so maybe I don't get the funny?

Meanwhile Black Manta and his Awkward Scientist (Randall Park, Fresh Off the Boat) are trying to recover from BM getting his ass kicked in the last movie. That recovery ends up entwined with said Lost Kingdom when BM finds the (proper) trident of Underwater Sauron (Pilou Asbæk, Ghost in the Shell). BM ends up gathering up the remaining glowing green cannisters of a planet-killing toxic power source to do Bond-ian Villain things with. And that heats up the planet, and that causes havoc in Atlantis, and they want to blame The Surface World, and... well, Crabby King AM has to break out his brother to convince him to help find BM and save both worlds.

At this point, having recently rewatched Wakanda Forever I am once again merging the two movies in my head. Oh yeah, here they DO call themselves Atlanteans, and while they DO hate the Surface World, its more BM wishing to destroy.... both? But the Atlanteans do see The Surface World as the cause of all woes, so yeah, they want to destroy Wakanda, I mean The Surface World.

The movie is, once again, very very pretty. The colours, especially in my 4K pirate copy are soooo pretty and bright and stunning. The action is rote, and I did not find it very inspiring, but for the bit in the desert. AM's wahh-hoo's were driving me bonkers. His college-bro antics did as well. In the end, Underwater Sauron doesn't really play much of a role, definitely not enough for his realm to get into the title, but whatever, its a plot point so we can get zombies and monster-fish and whatnot.

To repeat, I did not like this movie very much, but as we well know, that won't stop me from rewatching it some time down the road. I might even end up doing a single post of the last 6 months of rewatches, a couple of lines each? My dislike of a movie often tempers with age, but only if inspired to watch it again. And I have never been inspired to rewatch the first Aquaman so that must say... something?

Kent's post. I guess we agree, but he does have more fish-skin in the game.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Gone Girl

2014, David Fincher (The Social Network) -- download

I think I remember now. Fincher films have structure, a clearly defined pace. Might have to watch a few more and expand on that. In this one, the structure is so clearly defined, and denoted by a subtitle -- "__ days gone". It helps us understand the compressed timeline of the movie as it progresses, and then stretches out. Its not something we notice in movies a lot, in that so much happens in such a short period of time.

Nick (Ben Affleck, Argo) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike, Wrath of the Titans) are the perfect couple living in the midwest in a nice house in a nice town. The day begins with Nick visiting his twin sister (Mar)Go (Carrie Coons, The Leftovers) at the bar (The Bar) they own together. It may be Nick and Amy's 5th wedding anniversary but things seem off with Nick. He's drinking at 11am. He returns home to find his house in a disrupted state, furniture overturned, things broken, his wife nowhere to be found. He immediately involves the police.

As the search and the search drama goes on, we are interspliced with a story from the point of view of Amy, as she relates, via diary, how they met and eventually, how things started to go wrong. They were the perfect couple but only when in balance.

The beginning, where Nick is seen as the husband whose wife is missing and desperate to find her, where he is also the guy who smiles too much, who has every interaction dissected, who is the first suspect, who is a bit of an ass, who was cheating on Amy, is only the beginning of the story. Things shift, drastically. I hesitate to spoiler things but it has been almost a decade since the movie came out, so...

The next act of the movie is about Amy, who is not missing, who is not murdered, who has decided to punish Nick for no longer being the perfect husband. She will frame him for murder, a frame-job which she intricately builds over time, and then she will kill herself. But the "perfect" frame-job only works while she has money, and she is only a mastermind in her own mind, and once her plan comes undone, she adjusts, with homicidal intent. Fuck, she's psycho.

This was only a few years before Affleck was alleged to have had an affair with his nanny. But the movie might just be the template for Affleck being seen as the ultimate in entitled husband assholes. Sure, the movie might frame it so we think, "well, he's an asshole, but at least he's not a psycho," but it doesn't diminish the role he played in the events. Its complicated, as they say.

The structure of the story is fun, the way it plays with your sympathies. It makes you take sides, make conclusions but then smashes those conclusions on the floor. And the movie also frustrates you by just... ending. There is no conclusion, no resolution, just a situation where things end up. Amy is alive, she has what she wants, Nick is trapped but also chooses to be trapped. Fuck, she's psycho but then... what is he?

Kent's post. He thinks about it more than I do. But then again, he always does.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Three Thousand Years of Longing

2022, George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) -- Amazon

What a beautiful fairy tale of a movie that ... well, to be honest, left me pretty empty. Not feeling empty, just that it didn't affect me much. It should have. Miller was able to take an older, popular action franchise and have it become transcendent while still retaining the world contained within. The visuals, the music, the world building !! And lest us not forget, he took a story about a pig and astounded the world. But not everything can be those, some just have to be an exercise in movie making.

When opening genie containers, I assume the world would be more interested in finding Idris Elba than Melissa McCarthy. I know I was. So was Tilda Swinton. Elba (The Suicide Squad) is The Djinn, discovered in a bottle that scholar Alithea Binnie (Swinton, The Dead Don't Die) finds in a shop in Istanbul on one of her trips for work. As is the way, he offers her three wishes, which have conditions, but she is suspicious. She is a woman of tales, and all the tales tell one to be wary of djinn. So, instead, he tells her tales of him, of his past, of his wishes.

Each tale is cautionary, full of wonder and love. They expand on who he is, what he can do, and how people have treated him, and he in turn, treated them. The tales turn the sceptical Alithea and in the end, she wants nothing more from him but to have him love her. So he does. So he returns to London with her, to become part of her life, but a secret one, that she returns to each day. But it comes with consequences for djinns  were never meant to be part of our modern world with all its signals and wavelengths. So, she finally releases him, but the love is retained and he returns to her on occasion, when his strength returns.

Each tale was so intricately built, so beautiful dressed and shot. The Djinn is truly a marvel to behold, a being of smoke and fire and shimmering, reflected light, both massive to behold and airy. But there was no weight to the stories, they didn't draw me in. They were just nice things to look at, to hear, but didn't move me once, there was not even one moment of, "That'll do pig, that'll do." Its a shame. If it wasn't for the marvellous visuals and colours, I might have been bored entirely. There was so much to work with, but perhaps I can just blame it on the source material? 

Kent's take.

1-1-1-KsMIRT: A long day's January into night

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. Behold, the rest of January.

This month:
Monarch Season 1 - AppleTV+ (10 Episodes)
Ghosts (BBC) Seasons 1 & 2 - CBC Gem (6 episodes each)
The Prisoner - Blu-Ray (2009 mini-series, 6 episodes)
After Midnight - CBS weeknights (multiple episodes)

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1

The Plot 100:
In the 1950s two scientists and their military liaison investigate Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (MUTOs) while also navigating tangled emotions and government bureaucracy in founding a formal organization to support their activities, Monarch. In 2015, in the fallout of "G-Day" (from 2014 Godzilla), a young woman goes to settle her father's affairs in Japan only to learn he had a whole other family, and she is part of Monarch's legacy. She stumbles upon sensitive documents that send her, her half-brother and his tech-savvy ex on the run from Monarch's forces.

(1 Great): I mean, freaking Godzilla. The show uses the MUTOs very sparingly (as do most Godzilla films) but extremely effectively. Every scene with Godzilla here has an incredible sense of scale and there's a potency in the juxtaposition between the creature and the real world events and people surrounding it. Godzilla and the other MUTOs are forces of nature, not characters here and really are quite the spectacle. 

(1 Good): The flashback sequences set in the 50's are exceptionally well done, both in story and in visual execution (the costuming, sets, technology, etc, all on point).  They really hit home the sense of discovery and the frustratingly limited mindsets of Western white men of the era. The main cast of characters in this age, played by Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm and Wyatt Russell are an exceptionally appealing trio, with Yamamoto's Dr. Keiko Miura doing an exceptional amount of the heavy lifting, navigating post-war racism and suspicion of the Japanese, getting respect from peers as a woman in her field, and dealing with both Bill Randa (Holm - a character later played by John Goodman both in Kong: Skull Island and in this show's prologue) and Col. Leland Shaw (Russell). She needs to be the heart and soul of Monarch and I think they manage to establish that very well.  

(1 Bad): The modern day is a mixed bag. On the one hand there's a pretty wild journey that newfound siblings Cate and Kentaro Randa (Anna Sawai and Ren Watabe) need to go on, both emotionally and physically along with their friend May (Kiersey Clemons), but they're the weakest part of the show, mostly in how the writers don't seem to know how to incorporate their adventure with navigating very complex emotions. The drama of it all - including Cate's post G-day PTSD, Kentaro's daddy issues, May's secret past - all feel like distractions and not well integrated. These subplots often leave the characters acting petulant or standoffish in very unappealing ways.  Thankfully, they manage to hook up with modern day Leland Shaw (Kurt Russell in full-on KR charm mode) and the Monarch team they are on the run from, Tim (Joe Tippett) and Duvall (Elisa Lasowski) are exceptionally likeable, especially as we're never quite clear on where they stand on the threat level to our leads, and it shifts more than once.

META: The ten episodes are very digestible and constantly engaging with the only lag points being whenever they detour into our 2015-era characters' past. These diversions into their history, Lost-style, pull the brakes on the propulsiveness of this very globe-trotting, multigenerational adventure.  In general, I like all the characters here, but Cate, Kentaro and May all take turns being the wet blanket on the season, and those moments are my least favourite.

But the effects in this show look expensive and incredible, and obviously having the Wyatt Russell/Kurt Russell gimmick of them playing the same character in two generations is goddamn delightful and one of the best things on TV ever. The younger Russell at times seems to be intentionally channelling his father in scenes and line deliveries and it's a blast to watch.

In general, I was very surprised by this show. I was expecting a cheap, inconsequential tie-in to the Legendary Studios' Monsterverse movies, but this seems anything but that. In some ways, the attention to detail and the care of the lore and the characters seems of even better, more improved quality than some of Legendary's shakier films.

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Ghosts (BBC) Season 1 & 2 (2019, 2020)

The Plot 100: Alison learns she is the only living heir left in the Button family lineage. She has inherited Button House, a rural manor. She initially wants to pawn it off, but with her husband Mike, they decide to leave London behind and attempt to turn the space into a hotel/events destination. But when Alison has an accident and nearly dies, the near death experience results in her seeing ghosts everywhere, but especially on the Button House property. They're a mixed bag of souls but elated to have the attention of the living. This is about how they co-exist.

(1 Great): Ghosts is deliriously charming. Each Ghost is a delightful comic trope that the show leans into but also allows little glimpses of depth into. 
There's Julian, the conservative MP from the 90's who died having an affair in Button House (he has no pants on). He was an awful human being, utterly selfish and self serving and not much has changed as a ghost. He's also the only ghost who can physically manipulate objects in the house.
There's Pat, the former scout leader, who was accidentally killed in the 80's on Button House grounds by a scout with an arrow through his throat.
There's The Captain, a WWII-era officer who likes things ordered and tidy and is still repressing his homosexuality almost a century after his death.
There's Fanny, the uptight, prim-and-proper Lady of the house who was murdered and whose PTSD has her reenacting her death nightly. She's constantly offended and turns her nose up at almost everything modern.
There's Thomas, the laughably romantic poet who died in a duel, who has the hots for Alison.
There's Kitty, the stuntedly naive, immature, and sexually curious noblewoman who desires nothing more (and nothing less) than being Alison's best friend.
There's Mary, an uneducated servant who was burned at the stake during witch trials. If someone passes through her, the smell of sulphur emanates. 
There's Robin, the caveman, whose speech is stunted, but he seems, more than any of the ghosts, to have evolved with the times. He can manipulate electricity and the lights.
There's also Sir Humphrey who was decapitated and whose head and body are often never in the same place, much to the head's chagrin.
And finally there's the plague victims, all confined to the basement, who seem a pretty cheery and helpful lot, despite their unsettling appearances.

Within two episodes, I loved all these characters and the performers who play them. With such short seasons, and such a large cast, the tropes of the characters don't really wear thin, and the teases of their backstories don't really have that much runway to get tired.  Watching how each of these different personas out-of-time react to modern day events is really what the series is all about.

(1 Good): Not to be outdone, Alison and her husband Mike are an adorable couple. Alison is a people pleaser so once she gets over the fact that she's seeing ghosts, she's very keen to keep the peace and help them out however she can. Mike is super chill, but also a little inept and very self-conscious about it. It's a hilarious mix for a sitcom, but it means Mike is constantly making tiny little mistakes into big freaking disasters. Alison, in trying to please everyone, often winds up in these same disasters with Mike, which is basically the situations in this situation comedy.

(1 Bad): Seriously, this is basically a perfect sitcom. Incredible set-up, incredible cast, and so many possibilities. If there's a quibble (and it's not even really a quibble) it's that it's not a "binge-worthy" show. There's no ongoing narrative thrust to it that drives you to absolutely must watch the next one. But that's not truly a bad thing. I like having a show I can just pick up and watch an episode of when I have a half hour to spare and not feel the urge to jump into another one. I like a show that has a status quo that changes so minimally, it might not matter too much to watch them out of order.  It's sort of an old school sitcom in that regard.

META: I had already seen many of the cast on different seasons of Taskmaster (maybe my favourite show ever?) - like Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lolly Adefope, Katie Wix - so I was already charmed by some of the players in Ghosts before I even started watching it. Everyone is truly great.

My only problem was in access to viewing. In Canada all four seasons are on CBC Gem (a public, free streaming service) but it's so bogged down with ads that a 30 minute episode takes almost 45 minutes to watch. Some commercial breaks have 14 commercials. During the holidays in December, CBS was airing the first two seasons, but my PVR was having a headache in recording it. I think it's also on whatever BBC America or whatever streaming service is out there for British programming but I'm not getting yet another service.

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The Prisoner (mini-series)

The Plot 100: Number Six is new to "The Village", a remote desert location with seemingly no connections to the outside world. Six's memories play tricks with him, the villagers play tricks as well as all seem to be in on The Village life and its quaintness. There's a cheery facade of perfection to it all, but underneath everyone is afraid of stepping out of line, of Number Two's wrath. But Six seems to get away with more than anyone else in the Village, of pushing boundaries, and it's not like Two isn't watching. He watches everything.  Two is trying to break him specifically, but why? And why is he here? 

(1 Bad): There's more than one bad in this, but the part that I had the most trouble with, honestly, was the editing style. It really took to that post-Bourne series, Paul Greengrass quick-cut editing and ran with it. It drove me nuts in the opening minutes of the first act through to the final moments of the show. I know a lot of the intent behind the editing was to establish for the audience a sense of confusion that Six feels in the show, and to a very limited extent it did the trick, but it was also unpleasant viewing and more aggravating than immersive. I think I would have enjoyed the series maybe 70% more with cleaner editing and camerawork.

(1 Good): The flavour of The Prisoner was there enough to keep me watching. The Rovers popped up a couple of times (though not enough for my liking), and every time this version of the show got away from Six's backstory and focused more on the village and its strangeness, the more intriguing (yet familiar) it became. Unfortunately the story within the show is completely tied to Six's history, to the point that the finale gets muddied as to whether the backstory is actually the present or not (again, the editing here is a real hindrance to enjoyment).

(1 Great): Ruth Wilson. Can you ever go wrong with Ruth Wilson?

META: Look, I love the 1960's Patrick McGoohan-starring The Prisoner series. It's an incredible 18 episodes of espionage-tinged mind-fuckery. It's got surface level action-drama-intrigue appeal as well as deeper philosophical undercurrents to be picked apart: questions of identity, sanity, values, morals, society, authoritarianism, liberty, and on and on and on. It's a concept that has seemed ripe for a remake for decades since McGoohan shut it down (at 18 episodes, he felt the series was twice as long as it needed to be).

The remake debuted in 2009, from an ITV/AMC British-American co-production. While I don't remember any exact statements from the time, my recollection of the reviews I had read said the show did not live up to its predecessor, and, as such, I gave it a pass.  But after a rewatch of the McGoohan series recently, as well as doing a writing exercise recently of trying to recreate The Prisoner in another setting, and then seeing this come out on Blu-Ray for the first time recently, I decided to pick it up, as much as I didn't want to be seen as backing Caviezel and his right wing take on the world. 

It transfers The Village from the picturesque Portmeirion in Wales to a desert town that has a mix of downtown USA and Baltic architecture (it's Swakopmund, Nimibia, and much of the influence is traced to German colonialism). It's an place with some interesting details that are at times nicely shot, but it's flatter and more sprawling environment than the 60's set, and it does rob the modern of some of the original's sense of confinement. 

McGoohan's Six was a very stoic, some might even say cold blooded protagonist in the original series, and I can see why they went with Jim Caviezel in trying to find a similar match, but McGoohan's prickliness had the sense of "the only sane man in an insane world", while Caviezel just seems lost in his environment. Unlike McGoohan who was the key creative force behind the original series, I don't get the sense that Caviezel was all that engaged by the role, or he wrestled a bit with the directions. He's not a very charismatic lead regardless, and scenes where he's being "romantic" with Wilson or Hayley Atwell are painful to watch. They might as well be kissing a log.

I watched Caviezel in 5 seasons of Person of Interest and his performance on that show is fairly one-note, but it's pretty much exactly what that show needed. It debuted after this mini-series, but I wish that, like how McGoohan's spy series Danger Man led indirectly into The Prisoner, that PoI had led indirectly into this interpretation and he could have transferred that one-noteness here. But then this interpretation isn't really about a spy who has quit his job with no explanation, instead it's about someone working for a data collection and processing firm and quits when he discovers a secret about the firm, and the show wants us to be invested into what he discovered about the firm, but it's really hard to care.

SPOILERS, but in the end it's about a virtual reality simulation that is being used to help people with extreme mental health disorders (dissociative identity disorder, PTSD, depression) escape into a more controlled, healtier world for them (though most are unaware).  I really did not mind the reveal for the show, but I really dislike it for The Prisoner branding. And if you think about it too much it reveals a lot of complex questions around treatment of mental health and its representation thereof. 

I think about other shows or movies who had "VR" reveals in their finale and the ones I can recall (the American Life on Mars sticks out the most, but also 1899) and it doesn't bother me as much here, but maybe if I was enjoying the show more fully, it would have. I think maybe I was just resigned to the show going wherever it was going. 

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After Midnight

The What 100: A remake of the old Comedy Central series @Midnight, a comedy game show where three contestants (stand-up comedians or comedic performers) compete for comedy points by having snappy answers to stupid questions about trending topics on social media.

(1 Great): I knew of comedian Taylor Tomlinson but can't say I've ever seen her stand-up. The first episode of After Midnight I thought she was fine but also suspected she was fake laughing to hard. Turns out that's just how her laugh sounds, and she's very quickly settled in as a fake gameshow host where the points don't matter. She's very good at taking the piss out of herself, the show, producer Stephen Colbert, and their CBS corporate overlords, and she's pretty damn charming. Favourite bit is the "talk show portion" of the show that comes after the first act break. I love Taylor's absurd or faux banal questions.

(1 Good): What I really liked about the Chris Hardwick-hosted @Midnight was that it would introduce me to funny people who I didn't know before. So I fully expect After Midnight to do the same, in the easy and comfortable format of a competition/panel/game show (it's no Taskmaster, but then nothing is).  So far, I've only seen faces I already know, but most are very welcome faces, including a lot of familiar recurring panelists from the old show like Marcella Arguello, Doug Benson, and Milana Vayntrub. 

(1 Bad): The show has moved from 30 minutes to 1 hour, but really it's only about 36 minutes as they plug a LOT of commercials in between. Frustrating if you're not used to commercials (or at least being able to click past them).
But thankfully the episodes are all on youtube. The first couple episodes were presented in full, but later they partitioned them out in segments based on ad breaks. The only problem was they weren't labeled for viewing order so it was frustrating to watch that way too. But now they've assembled daily playlists so it is better.

META: The hit-to-miss ratio is only about 1:4 which, given that the bits are delivered at such a rapid-fire quip, is still a pretty high laugh-per-minute ratio.

I watched the first two weeks daily (usually next day) as matter of priority. Since then I've already fallen off daily watching, mostly because of the longer format.  It's easier to slot in a sub-1/2 hour show into the daily schedule than a 40 minute show. But I'm very happy it's back.