Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): CAST AND CREDITS: Technically the third (!) film in a trilogy of Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017) sees Godzilla once again playing hero against an invasive super-monster from outer space, the monster originally known as Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster in the old Toho Studios kaiju movies.
I had a lot of fun. The tone remains fairly light throughout, striking a nice balance between the grimmer Godzilla (2014) and the light-as-hell Kong: Skull Island. The human characters are paper thin but generally not all that annoying. Mothra and Rodan also play major roles, while the movie also teases a King Kong/Godzilla buddy movie should a fourth film get made. Recommended.
Rampage (2018): written by Ryan Engle, Carlton Cuse, Ryan J. Condal, and Adam Sztykiel; directed by Brad Peyton; starring Dwayne Johnson (Davis), Naomie Harris (Dr. Caldwell), Malin Akerman (Claire Wyden), Jake Lacy (Brett Wyden), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Agent Russell):
Based on a 1980's video game I'd never heard of until after viewing this movie, Rampage is a dumb but enjoyable giant-monster movie. It's no Pacific Rim, but it's certainly better than Pacific Rim: Uprising, and it's certainly a frothier, lighter film than the 2012 Godzilla reboot.
Dwayne Johnson plays a gorilla expert who's also a former Black Ops super-soldiery sort of fellow. Through a series of unfortunate events related to an evil corporation headed by Malin Akerman, Johnson's best gorilla buddy gets exposed to what amounts to a growth serum that also stimulates aggression AND causes the infected to be compelled to follow a specific radio signal. Jesus, that's a lot of genetic engineering -- making an animal that can zero in on a radio frequency?
Thanks to the evil corporation, a 30-foot-gorilla is not the only problem. There's a giant wolf and a giant alligator! And they're all headed to... Chicago? Um, OK. The use of Chicago for the climax does give the viewer a great dialogue exchange in which the alligator is briefly mistaken for a submarine, causing the Idiot General defending Chicago to opine that "we don't have any subs in this area!" In Lake Michigan? What?
So there's lots of yelling and shooting and military strategy and tactics so inept that they make the military geniuses of the 1998 Godzilla reboot look like Rommel by comparison. Will The Actor Formerly Known As The Rock survive? Will he figure out how to get his gorilla pal back on the side of the angels in time for a climactic battle with the alligator and the wolf? Will all the carnage and death end with a 1960's and 70's-style 'Ha Ha Ha! Time for some quips!' bit?
Oh, well. Fun, dumb, and full of CGI. Recommended.
Doc Savage: Skull Island (2013) by Will Murray: Will Murray has written more official Doc Savage novels than anyone but Savage co-creator/developer Lester Dent. He's done so since the early 1990's, first adapting and expanding unused Dent plots and radio scripts. Skull Island, though, is different -- an authorized team-up of Doc Savage and King Kong!
Who is Doc Savage? The hero of 181 pulp-magazine novels published between 1933 and 1949, reprinted to surprising popularity starting in the early 1960's and continued by Murray and others once those novels ran out in the late 1980's. Trained since childhood to be a physical and mental marvel, Doc fought super-villains and monsters in that pulp series, becoming the second-most popular pulp hero in sales, after The Shadow.
The Man of Bronze supplied the Superman Mythos (through Doc-savvy Superman editor Mort Weisinger and through Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) with a number of attributes:
- Doc's Fortress of Solitude predates Superman's.
- Doc's first name, like Superman's, is Clark -- Clark Savage, Jr.
- Doc, like Superman, has a crime-fighting female cousin.
- If the Man of Bronze, Doc's most famous nickname, led directly to the Man of Steel, well, another Doc nickname -- the Man of Tomorrow -- was appropriated verbatim for Superman.
- One of Siegel and Shuster's early Superman pages describes Superman as "A Genius in Intellect! A Hercules in Strength!", which sounds a lot more like Doc Savage than Superman.
Anyway, Skull Island is both terrific and atypical. The frame narrative concerns Doc returning to New York from his Fortress of Solitude c. 1932, too late to save Kong from his tragic fate. Two of Doc's lieutenants, apish chemist Andrew 'Monk' Mayfair and waspish lawyer 'Ham' Brooks, witnessed some of the final battle shown in the 1933 movie from Doc's heavily armored New York offices on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. So, front-row seats.
Doc accepts the task of moving Kong's body from its impact site at the base of the Empire State Building and preparing it for transportation back to Kong's home of Skull (Mountain) Island. Once Doc has sent an embalmed Kong on his way in the world's largest burial shroud, to be shepherded back to Skull Island by promoter Carl Denham in the hold of the freighter that fatefully brought Kong to New York, he tells Monk and Ham the story of his first encounter with Kong.
A young Doc Savage sets off on a sea voyage with his generally absent father in 1920, after Doc's return from WWI. Clark Savage, Sr. wants to find his missing father, Doc's grand-father, 'Stormalong' Savage, lost for years somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Battles with head-hunters and pirates come along before the Savages discover Skull Island, hidden within its permanent fog bank. On the island is Stormalong Savage, along with the monsters we saw in the original King Kong and some dinosaurs and perils we didn't see in King Kong. And there is Kong, of course.
Given the chance to tell a story about Doc Savage before he was Doc Savage (if you know what I mean), Murray delves much more into the psychology of the young hero. Clark Savage, Sr. has just been murdered as the first Doc Savage novel, The Man of Bronze, begins. Here, I think Murray does a swell job of fleshing out the relationship (and lack thereof) between the two Savages. Stormalong is also a terrifically fun and poignant figure. So, too, Kong, a threat who becomes an ally to the Savages, possibly because they don't have designs on taking him back to civilization.
Murray gives us some lovely moments, often spiked with graphic violence -- Doc has not yet adopted his 'no killing' policy. Indeed, he wouldn't adopt this until several novels into his career -- the early Doc Savage novels present a fairly murderous Doc.
Skull Island also acts as a welcome antidote to Peter Jackson's ridiculous retconning of King Kong into a really big gorilla. King Kong, faithful to the original novel, is almost completely bipedal and resembles no ape on Earth -- he truly is a rara avis, a different species. This makes sense. In Peter Jackson's world, a tiger would exactly like an over-sized domestic cat and an ostrich a big chicken. Screw you, Peter Jackson.
Anyway, this is a swell Doc Savage novel, somewhat revisionist insofar as we delve into the origins of Doc's psychology (and into the origins of the Doc Savage Oath!). It's fun without being entirely weightless, as good pulp entertainment should be. Highly recommended!
Beginners: written and directed by Mike Mills; starring Ewan McGregor (Oliver Fields), Christopher Plummer (Hal Fields), Melanie Laurent (Anna) and Goran Visnjic (Andy) (2011): Set mainly in 2003, Beginners tells us the story of Oliver Fields as he recovers from his father's recent death and tries to forge a lasting romantic relationship.
Fields's father (played by Christopher Plummer, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role) came out of the closet after his wife's 1999 death, and the movie jumps around in time to show us Oliver reacting to his father's public embrace of his sexual identity, his father's lengthy battle with cancer, and Oliver's own search for meaning.
The movie's skillfully structured and maintains a nice, organic balance of sorrow and joy throughout. There's a very cute Jack Russell terrier with some killer dialogue (!), a very cute French actress, some nice little comic moments involving Hallowe'en parties and graffiti, and some beautifully written scenes between Oliver and his father, young Olilver and his mother, Oliver and his father's much-younger lover (ER's Goran Visnjic, bouncy as a spaniel), and Oliver and the actress.
The direction is accomplished without being too showy, and Mills comes up with an effective recurring structural motif that comments on Oliver's state of mind while also reflecting his career as a visual artist. Plummer certainly deserved his Oscar win; McGregor could have at least used a nomination, as he convincingly portrays a withdrawn character in the grip of powerful emotions. Highly recommended.
50/50: written by Will Reiser; directed by Jonathan Levine; starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Adam), Seth Rogen (Kyle), Anna Kendrick (Katherine), Bryce Dallas Howard (Rachael) and Anjelica Huston (Diane) (2011): Seth Rogen plays Seth Rogen in a movie about how Seth Rogen's friend battles cancer, based on a true story about how Seth Rogen's friend battled cancer.
Surprisingly dramatic, 50/50 's strengths lie with Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performances, which generally feel as fresh and realistic as perhaps any movie with Seth Rogen can feel. The writing tries to avoid cheap laughs, and the make-up department actually makes Gordon-Levitt look awful as his character undergoes chemotherapy.
Little movie bits do intrude throughout (and even if they, too, are based on reality, they nonetheless become movie bits because we've seen them in movies too many times). Older cancer battlers dispense hard-fought wisdom and hash brownies. A cute therapist becomes a possible romantic partner.
Thankfully, the movie remains capable of giving us non-movie bits as well -- Gordon-Levitt's character really is debilitated by his cancer and its treatment. No character is rendered completely unsympathetic. And Gordon-Levitt himself has become a fine, nuanced actor. With sharper writing, this could have been a revelation rather than simply a surprise. Lightly recommended.
The Most Dangerous Game: adapted by James Ashmore Creelman from the short story by Richard Connell; directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack; starring Joel McCrea (Bob), Fay Wray (Eve) and Leslie Banks (Zaroff) (1932): Short, sweet adaptation of one of the most reprinted, most adapted, most imitated short stories ever. 63 minutes!
OK, the movie originally clocked in at 78 minutes, but preview audiences got freaked out by some (then) graphic footage, and the pre-release chopping frenzy ensued. Made before the Production Code but released afterwards, The Most Dangerous Game also featured too much skin (you won't notice), and so wasn't re-released for years after its debut.
On an island with a surprisingly diverse landscape, an evil hunter who has grown bored with hunting animals now hunts the most dangerous game -- man! And he keeps trophies! Can shipwrecked big-game hunter Joel McCrea defeat evil Count Zaroff at his own game?
Well, that's the plot of the movie.
This is a lot of fun in a short package, and you'll probably spend a few minutes marvelling at the bizarre yet effective sets (and trying to spot the King Kong sets -- this movie was filmed at the same time as King Kong, with the many of the same actors and production staff). Recommended.
The Rite: suggested by a book by Matt Baglio, written by Michael Petroni; directed by Mikael Hafstrom; starring Colin O'Donoghue (Michael Kovak), Anthony Hopkins (Father Lucas Trevant), Ciaran Hinds (Father Xavier), and Alice Braga (Angeline) (2011): A good-looking, moodily directed movie that has a dumb script, The Rite offers us The Exorcist for Dummies. That young male lead Colin O'Donoghue bears a striking resemblance to Evil Dead 's Bruce Campbell really doesn't help the suspension of disbelief.
A young American priest with faith issues gets sent to the Vatican's Exorcism school. Hilarity ensues as he gets sentenced to do field work with super-Exorcist Anthony Hopkins, playing Anthony Hopkins.
Cats and frogs strike sinister poses -- Hopkins's Father Trevant lives in what looks like a cross between a student ghetto and a small-animal zoo. Are the demons Trevant labours to cast out real? Will faith be restored? Will a character with the name 'Angeline' play a pivotal role? Will possessed people get all veiny, do weird gymnastical tricks, and talk in spooky voices about things they couldn't possibly know? Will there be a demonic, red-eyed mule? Wait, what? Yes. Yes, there will be.
The movie spends a lot of time talking as if it's smart without ever exhibiting much intelligence. It does look good, though, and the director wrings about as much shock and horror out of a pedestrian script as almost anyone could. All of this is ostensibly inspired by a true story. Not recommended.
