Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla (1974): The penultimate Godzillaverse movie in the original Toho Studios run demonstrates that old adage about history beginning as tragedy, returning as comedy, and ending in farce.
Aliens send a giant robot Godzilla to conquer the Earth. Godzilla teams up with kaiju King Caesar, some scientists, and Interpol to save the world. King Caesar is easily the worst kaiju Toho ever created, a sort of cross between a lizard, a Muppet, and a team mascot. Godzilla demonstrates another new power, generating a massive magnetic field. Well, why not? Lightly recommended.
Terror of Mecha-Godzilla (1975): Original Godzilla director Ishiro Honda returns for this final entry in the original Toho series. That makes for a decent finalé, with Godzilla even strolling off into the sunset at the end, sort of. There's a bit too much Interpol vs. the Space Aliens action in this one which may have contributed to its series-ending low box office.
Along with a resurrected Mecha-Godzilla, the undersea-dwelling Titanosaurus also battles Godzilla under the control of the aliens and a misanthropic human scientist and his alien-resurrected cyborg daughter. This last leads to a scientist-hero telling the woman, "I don't care if you're a cyborg, I still love you." Shakespeare, eat your heart out! Lightly recommended.
The Wrecking Crew (Matt Helm 4) (1968): Sharon Tate is pretty much the only reason to watch this unfunny, boring yet fascinating mess -- fascinating mainly because Mike Myers drew a lot of inspiration for the Austin Powers movies from the Matt Helm series, including Dean Martin's cover job as a fashion photographer. When someone says movies today are bad and overly parts of serials, make them watch this. And it's purportedly better than Matt Helms 2, 3, 5, and the TV series!!! Not recommended.
- Phantasm: Don't have sex in a cemetery at night.
- The Night of the Living Dead: Frankly, just avoid cemeteries altogether.
- Dracula: Beware of illegal immigrants.
- Frankenstein: Early childhood education is vitally important to the development of a child.
- The Exorcist: Don't become a Roman Catholic priest: Low pay, high mortality rate.
- The Nightmare on Elm Street series: Don't take justice into your own hands, especially if it involves burning an alleged felon to death.
- The Friday the 13th series: Don't have pre-marital sex.
- The Hallowe'en series: Seriously, don't have pre-marital sex.
- Cujo: Have your pet regularly vaccinated for rabies and other diseases.
- The Omen: The Italian health-care system is a mess.
- The Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Home gardening can be a life-changer.
- The Day of the Triffids: Green energy is bad.
- Gremlins: Have your pets spayed or neutered.
- Pet Sematary: If you have young children, don't live close to a road.
The Score (aka Killtown) (1964) by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark: A typically terse, concise, matter-of-fact entry in Donald Westlake's series of novels featuring super-thief/burglar Parker. Westlake wrote them as 'Richard Stark' in order to avoid flooding the early 1960's market for Donald Westlake. Lee Marvin, Jason Statham, and Mel Gibson have played the amoral, hyper-efficient Parker in movies, to varying effect (Marvin was clearly the best, in the John-Boorman-directed Point Blank (1967).
The scheme this time is fascinating and clever, and, as always, complications and double-crosses come into play before the 'caper' is over. Though 'caper' is far too jolly a word for anything in a Parker novel. So call it a heist. Grofield, a slightly more amusing Westlake character, is a member of the team in this one. Highly recommended.
Thanos: Titan Consumed (2018) by Barry Lyga: Very enjoyable back-story for Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe does a nice job of gradually making the Mad Titan unsympathetic after depicting his childhood and early adulthood as a time of isolation and sorrow. All this and we find out where and when Thanos gets the Mind Stone! Though Thanos' ultimate plan of killing half of the population of the universe to save it still doesn't make much sense, Lyga at least specifies that we're talking about the sentient population of the universe and not every virus, bacterium, and tree. Recommended.
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| Rorschach |
HBO's WATCHMEN series (which should really be called AFTER WATCHMEN) gives us a White Supremacist Group calling itself The Seventh Kavalry. That's a reference to Custer's doomed Cavalry. The change from 'C' to 'K' in 'Cavalry' is a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Seventh Kavalry wears masks based on deceased original WATCHMEN hero Rorschach.
WATCHMEN creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons based Rorschach on a character created by Steve Ditko (himself creator of Spider-man, Dr. Strange, and many others). That character was The Question.
Rorschach's real name was Walter Joseph Kovacs. That 'K' was a nod to Ditko's love of K's.
A fairly astonishing number of Ditko creations had either a 'K' or the K sound created by a hard 'C' in their names.
These characters include but are not limited to the following characters: Vic Sage (The Question, whom Rorschach parodies), Ted Kord (Silver Age Blue Beetle, whom Nite Owl parodies), Peter ParKer, Rac Shade, Mocker, Doctor Strange, Doctor Octopus, Mac Gargan (Scorpion), Electro, Doctor Spectro, Jack Ryder (Creeper), Chameleon, Clea, Clown, Curt Connors (Lizard), Hank Hall (Hawk), Tinkerer, Karcilius... OK, you get the idea. You'll note that the 'K' sound even lurks in The Question and Rorschach.
So the Seventh Kavalry is also a nod to the Ditko 'K.'
Hey, there's a 'K' in Ditko!
Imagine that!
Calypso (2018) by David Sedaris: Sedaris is an extraordinarily gifted comic writer whose observations about family, life, and the FitBit in this volume often move into an understated poignance that never becomes mawkish or overly flippant. The comic essays included here (no short stories this time around) appeared between 2016 and 2018.
The adventures of his family and himself go into some dark places here, including the suicide of a sister whom Sedaris and his siblings (there are six Sedaris children in total) have been avoiding because of exhaustion for years... in David's case, eight. He never lets himself off the hook. He also never loses his almost-trademarked gift at portraying the absurd moments of almost any event, any person.
Most notably himself.
A sequence involving a snapping turtle, a beach house, and a non-cancerous fatty tumour on Sedaris' stomach really has to be read. Maybe with a bit of vomit coming up in one's mouth from time to time. Sedaris doesn't spare us his misadventures in stomach flu, falling off ladders on Christmas Day, and failing to interact in a meaningful way with his emotionally distant and physically and mentally declining nonagenarian father.
I think it's all pretty much dandy, the sort of humour that supplies catharsis and belly-laughs. It's not his finest collection of humourous essays -- that would probably be When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008). But it's a lot of sometimes serious fun. Calypso will certainly delight longtime readers of Sedaris, and it also serves as a fine introduction to his work. Highly recommended.
Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut (2019): written by Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr; loosely based on the novella Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad; directed by Francis Ford Coppola; starring Martin Sheen (Willard), Marlon Brando (Kurtz), Laurence Fishburne (Mr. Clean), Harrison Ford (Lucas), Scott Glenn (Kurtz Convert Lt. Colby)), Robert Duvall (Kilgore), Sam Bottoms (Surfer Lance), Frederic Forrest (Chef), Albert Hall (Chief), Dennis Hopper (Photojournalist), G.D. Spradlin (General Corman), and [Uncredited] Joe Estevez (Stand-in/Partial Voice-over 'Stand-in' for brother Martin Sheen):
Hey, it's Apocalypse Now, so a chance to see it in any cut on a big screen was a treat. And it improves on Apocalypse Now Redux by omitting the dire, momentum-killing 'Crashed Playboy Bunnies' sequence!
However, it keeps the other major addition, the French Plantation sequence, to mixed effect: it's the one part of the film that plays as potentially supernatural, which is not really in keeping with the rest of the movie. However, there are also cues throughout the sequence that it might not really be happening at all -- not least of which is the sudden transition from Willard's opium scene to the boat back on the fog-saturated river.
Brando is great, and on a big screen, almost life-sized! One of no more than a hundred of the greatest movies ever made, all done without CGI! Highly recommended, though you could replicate it by simply omitting a couple of scenes from Redux on a rewatch. The surfboard-stealing scene is also a hoot, though also in Redux. Highly recommended.
