ORIGINAL SHIN

Your Humble Narrator caught up with a couple more, still in the multiplexes:

Shin Godzilla--For some reason, this 2016 Japanese monster spectacular has currently received a wide release in the multiplexes. Like 2023's Godzilla Minus One, it's a free-standing entry, unconnected to the other films in The Big G's franchise. Also like Godzilla Minus One, it's marvelous, and worth taking the trouble to see on a big screen.

It's a very different film than the ruminative, chastened period piece G-1, however. Shin Godzilla is contemporary and feverishly-paced, with a satirical edge. Apparently taking inspiration from the Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, directors Hideaki Anno (who wrote the script) and Shinji Haguchi focus on what it would be like if something like this really happened; the political and bureaucratic minutiae of the response to a gigantic creature rising from Tokyo Bay and wreaking mayhem in the city.

In rapid-cut sequences, plastered with ironically detailed subtitles, we see the prime minister and his civil and military advisors weighing options and glumly wishing the problem would go away. At least as much of the film unfolds in offices or conference rooms, or in corridors with long West Wing-style "walk-and-talks," as in the rampaging monster's wake.

Eventually the burden of stopping the titan falls to Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa), leading a team of "lone wolves, nerds, misfits" from different government departments who drop decorum and speak candidly with each other. There's also a lovely and cheeky American envoy (Satomi Ishihara) trying to help before the U.S. decides to hit Godzilla (and Japan) with another nuke.

The special effects sequences here, though sparing, are superb. When we first see the title character, he's crawling on all fours and has a slack jaw and buggy fish eyes. As the movie progresses, he gradually evolves into a dark, radioactively glowing, thuggish-looking version of the familiar icon. He's less endearing than previous versions, but I couldn't help it, when his attackers start getting to him toward the end, I still couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the poor guy.

Also, Shin Godzilla employs passages from Akira Ifukube's unforgettable score for the original 1954 Gojira. In Japan, that music must be as familiar as the Jaws or Rocky themes.

Weapons--In the middle of the night, a bunch of little kids in a prosperous-looking middle class Pennsylvania suburb get out of bed and leave their homes, running through the streets with their arms out to their sides like wings. It turns out they're all from the same 3rd-grade class. Only one kid shows up at school the next morning. Not surprisingly, their young teacher (Julia Garner) falls under suspicion from their panicked parents; before long somebody has painted the word "WITCH" on the side of her car.

That's the set up for this horror tale from writer-director Zach Cregger, and it's undeniably a strong hook. It's so strong, indeed, that as the movie progressed, I found myself thinking "this better be good." I was prepared to be furious if the compelling premise dribbled away into ambiguity, offering no clear explanation of the mystery.

I'm glad to say that this doesn't happen. The secret at the heart of the story, told Tarantino-style in lengthy chapters from the point of view of various characters--the teacher, a devastated father (Josh Brolin), the principal (Benedict Wong), a cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a petty criminal (Austin Abrams), the remaining kid (Cary Christopher)--finally is revealed. It's a conventional horror movie explanation, I suppose, but at least it's coherent, and it leads to a potent, gruesomely funny climactic payoff.

Cregger's characters are particularly sympathetic because none of them are paragons; Garner shines as the teach, who drinks too much and is empathetic to her students to a degree that her mealy-mouthed principal thinks is unprofessional. Brolin gives a convincing portrait of the kind of parent whose fear makes him highly vocal. But the most memorable performance is by Amy Madigan, who doesn't show up until about midpoint, then easily steals the movie with a hilarious yet spellbinding turn.

KAIJU; GESUNDHEIT

A few odds and ends: First, check out my review, on Geek News Network, of the Jeffery Angles translation of Shigeru Kayama's original Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again novelizations from 1955...

...as well as my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Kraven the Hunter...

And here's one of the odder pieces of "For Your Consideration" movie schwag I've ever recieved; a View-Master with images of Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain's Maria:

ULTRA BEAUTY

Now on Netflix:

Ultraman: Rising--The very name Ultraman is a madeleine for me, evoking powerful childhood memories, often thrilling, just as often frustrating. As a kid in rural northwestern Pennsylvania in the early '70s, I used to try to tune in UHF Channel 29 from Buffalo, New York, on weekday afternoons to see reruns of the late '60s Japanese TV series about the solar-powered superhero who battled all manner of bizarre kaiju threatening humanity.

When the weather was clear, especially in the summer, I would often have a good signal, and I'd get a clear picture of the weird psychedelic paint swirls out of which the show's opening title would take shape. When the weather was lousy or wintry, I'd usually get nothing but snow, and great would be my indignant disappointment.

In the early iteration of the show that I loved (1966-67), created by Godzilla special effects master Eiji Tsuburaya, Ultraman was the alter-ego of Clark Kent-esque Hayata, an intrepid member of the "Science Patrol." This agency was tasked with animal control duties on the myriad massive monsters that regularly inconvenience Japanese society and threaten its infrastructure. When the situation became sufficiently desperate, Hayata would excuse himself and press a button on the "Beta Capsule" he carried, thus transforming himself into the sleek android giant, who would then fight the creature in question with a combination of martial arts and a variety of rays he could shoot from different parts of his body.

Ultraman's might was short-lived, however. Very early in the fight, a small warning light in the center of his chest would begin to flash, and the narrator, in the English-dubbed versions I saw, would gravely intone (if memory serves): "The energy which Ultraman draws from the sun diminishes rapidly in Earth's atmosphere. The warning light begins to blink. If it stops blinking before he returns to the sun, Ultraman will never rise again!" Or something like that. It seemed pretty urgent, every episode.

The franchise has continued in Japan throughout the decades, over dozens of series with differing characters, as well as movies, comics, video games etc. I never followed any of them. This animated feature from Netflix, however, is of American origin, though it's set in Japan and is an unmistakably loving homage. Directed by Shannon Tindle from a script he wrote with Marc Haimes, this one gives The Big U a new alter-ego, a handsome baseball star named Sato, who is estranged from his father, a scientist who once had the Ultraman secret identity gig.

Early on, a winged monster's baby imprints on Sato/Ultraman (voiced by Christopher Sean) and regards him as his parent. The story involves our hero's efforts, aided by a flying robotic sphere (Tamlyn Tomita) to protect the baby from the schemes of the kaiju-hating Dr. Onda (Keone Young), and also to mend his relationship with his Dad (Gedde Watanabe).

The old show was deeply silly but visually elegant; this new feature is visually elegant but balances the silliness with a sincere attempt at solid characterizations and relationships. It's an entertaining movie, but it does have a large downside, at least for me: I found the baby kaiju grotesquely cutesy; it looks like a mutant human baby in a tacky Halloween costume. It's like an Anne Geddes photo gone nightmarish.

In general, I could have done with more full-grown kaiju action. But the finale of Ultraman: Rising is fairly spectacular, and there's a lot to like in this movie. I would welcome future installments in this series. I particularly like the idea of an Ultraman who treats kaiju as humanely as possible. Or, rather, ultra-humanely.

CORE VALUES

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend:

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire--2021's Godzilla vs. Kong began with Bobby Vinton's "Over the Mountain, Across the Sea" on the soundtrack, as Kong showered in a waterfall to start his day. This new saga starts with Jim Reeves singing "Welcome to My World" as the super simian lopes through his new home at the center of the earth. Things aren't so bucolic for the big ape; he's plagued with dental pain, harassed by hideous creatures and, assuming he's the last of his kind, he's lonely.

Meanwhile, up on the Earth's surface, Godzilla is keeping busy. He vanquishes a spidery Lovecraftian nightmare in the streets of Rome and then, rather adorably, he curls up to get some shuteye in the Colosseum like it's a cat-bed.

In other words, this is the second American kaiju flick in a row that declines to take itself too seriously. Is it as good as last year's startlingly sober Japanese national rumination Godzilla Minus One? Not remotely. Is it even as good as Godzilla vs. Kong? Probably not. But it's still plenty of fun.

Kong plumbs an unexplored region of the Hollow Earth where he meets an endearing mini-Kong and others of his own kind. They're enslaved by Skar King, a vicious ape dictator, and his brutal goons. Kong understandably feels the need to act.

Along for the ride are a few humans, including Rebecca Hall, returning as the Kong-ologist from the previous film, Kaylee Hottle as her beautiful, pained-looking adopted daughter, the last known Skull Islander, Brian Tyree Henry as the conspiracy-minded podcaster and Dan Stevens as a cocksure kaiju veterinarian. But the focus is less on humans here than even in the earlier films in the series.

As preposterous as Godzilla x Kong is, it's also genuinely and freewheelingly imaginative. Director Adam Wingard and his gaggle of co-screenwriters give us scenes of Kong sauntering among the Pyramids, or Mothra over Rio, or Godzilla taking a belly-flop dive from the summit of Gibraltar, that seem to owe more to cheerful whimsy than to logical plotting.

Still, without too much straining, one could even tease out an allegorical political subtext here. It's not hard to guess who the mangy, patchy, orange-furred King Skar might symbolize, but the source of his tyrannical power has a parallel, too. Skar maintains his rule because he holds in bondage a huge, spiky, frosty-pale monster with freezy breath. This behemoth started to remind me of a certain currently subjugated Grand Old Party.

There was also something I liked about this movie's ending: It has one. It doesn't have twenty. When the dramatic arc has been satisfied, Godzilla x Kong doesn't keep piling on extra codas, as if panicky it hasn't given us enough. It wraps things up in under two hours and gets out while the getting is good. Let it serve as an example to future big franchise movies.

'23 SKIDOO

Before rattling off a list of my top ten movies for the year, I should offer a disclaimer. As with most years, it's based on incomplete information. There are still quite a few significant movies I haven't yet seen. But here, based on what I've seen and how I'm feeling at this writing, is my Top Ten List for 2023.

Killers of the Flower Moon--Martin Scorsese's epic yet intimate nightmare about the Osage murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s is a masterpiece; one of his best works and probably the best movie of the year.

Oppenheimer--Half of the midyear hit duo, this chronicle of the atom smasher of White Sands is a dazzling directorial performance by Christopher Nolan, fracturing his narrative yet keeping us focused. Possibly a hair overlong and anticlimactic, it's riveting at its best.

Barbie--The other half of "Barbenheimer." Greta Gerwig's brightly-colored take on the Mattel icon is crazy, imaginative and deeply goofy, yet in its own way no less serious in its ambitions. Margot Robbie is improbably touching in the title role.

American Fiction--Jeffrey Wright is quietly marvelous as an African-American novelist who so resents being expected to pander to white ideas about the black experience that he does so with a vengeance and becomes a smash. Cord Jefferson's adaptation of the Percival Everett novel Erasure is both rueful and hilarious, often at the same time, and beautifully acted by Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Issa Rae, Miriam Shor and the criminally underutilized Erika Alexander.

Maestro--It's not so much a biopic in the usual sense as a portrait of the marriage of Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre. Bradley Cooper is luminous as Bernstein, and his reserved directorial style balances Bernstein's grand self-dramatizing manner beautifully. Yet it's Carey Mulligan's Felicia who emerges as the movie's guiding spirit.

Godzilla Minus One--The Lizard King stands in for postwar despondency in this one-off, one-of-a-kind monster spectacle that's also a surprisingly moving portrait of a nation coming to terms with utter defeat, and gradually starting to rise from its own ruins.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret--Judy Blume's classic for adolescent girls was a long time coming to the screen, but under the direction of Kathleen Fremon Craig it struck just the right note; sweet and lighthearted.

Air--Sneakers have become such a cultural touchstone that it's probably inevitable that we'd get an origin story for athletic footwear. Ben Affleck's account of the development of the Air Jordan line and the issues around it is absorbing and amusing.

The Holdovers--Alexander Payne's '70s-period comedy, set at a private school in Massachusetts, is essentially a vehicle for the performances of Paul Giamatti as a splenetic ancient history teacher, Da'Vine Joy Randolph as a bereaved cafeteria manager and Dominic Sessa as the kid they're stuck with for the holidays. But what performances they are.

Saltburn--After her stunning debut with Promising Young Woman, Emerald Fennel's second feature, a neo-gothic take on class, is by comparison a little overwrought and sour. But it's no less brilliant, and it comes together joltingly at the end.

A few others that I found to be worth my time: The Blackening, A Haunting in Venice, Dumb Money, Jules, Theater Camp, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Thanksgiving, Somewhere in Queens, Cocaine Bear, Renfield, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Napoleon and The Boys in the Boat.

A superb 2024 to us all!

G, SPOT ON

Now in theaters:

Godzilla Minus One--To paraphrase Yeats: What rough beast, its hour come round again, slouches toward Tokyo to kick ass?

Who else? This new kaiju flick, from Godzilla's home studio Toho, celebrates the title character's 70th anniversary. Released in the U.S. with minimal fanfare (no screening for critics in my area), this entry tells a standalone story, unrelated to the earlier Japanese or American films, and it feels very different from either series.

For one thing, it's a period piece. It begins in 1945, with Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a young kamikaze, first shirking his suicide mission, then freezing up when he's confronted with the supposedly legendary sea monster at a small airbase in the Odo Islands. This lapse results in horrifying losses. Then when Shikishima gets back to the ruins of postwar Tokyo he's a pariah in his neighborhood.

Over the next couple of years, the guilt-haunted Shikishima becomes the reluctant head of an improvised family after Noriko (Minami Hamake), a young homeless woman, takes shelter in his house with an orphaned baby she's picked up. To support them, he takes a job with an oddball minesweeping crew on a small boat, clearing the leftover mines surrounding Japan. Then one day The Big G surfaces, made gargantuan after being irradiated during the Bikini nuclear tests, and heads for Tokyo.

The monster scenes here are spectacular, staged by writer-director Takashi Yamazaki with panache and a feel for dizzying ponderousness. There are some genuine jolts, too, notably Godzilla's first appearance. Best of all, the behemoth's big scenes employ Akira Ifukube's masterly score from the original 1954 film.

But at some level Godzilla Minus One feels less about monster action and more about Japanese society struggling to come to terms with an almost unimaginable defeat. The big scaly guy seems more like a symbol of the magnitude of despondency that had to be overcome for the country to survive and rebuild. This, along with heartfelt acting from an appealing cast and an effective sense of period detail, makes the film unexpectedly moving.

Having a failed kamikaze as the hero set the story up for an obvious payoff that I found troubling from the first scenes of the film: The perceived need for redemption from the eminently sensible decision not to carry out the lunacy of a futile suicide mission. Here, I thought, is the sort of intractable nationalism that makes for good melodrama, but in real life leads countries into war and horror and misery.

I'm happy to say that G-1 is having none of it; while giving full credit to worthwhile self-sacrifice, the film is resolutely life affirming. "This country never changes," one of the characters mutters, about some governmental folly. "Maybe it can't." But that country did change, albeit at a Godzilla-sized price, and this movie gets at the pained yet exhilarating spirit of that change.

My Kid accompanied me to this film, and after checking out the trailer on the way to the theater, she disapprovingly said "I think they're going to hurt him," him being Godzilla. She was right; the monster is not, here, a long-suffering defender of humankind against some bizarre alien or primal abomination, but a rampaging destructive force who must be stopped. Even his roar sounds scarier; it's not the usual nasal, irritable honk. But even so, I too felt sympathy for him during the efforts to destroy him. Something about that big lizard is lovable, even when he's being a bad boy.

BEAST PICTURE

Opening in theaters and on HBO Max...

Godzilla vs. Kong--The colossal ape of the title, plodding groggily toward a morning shower under a waterfall, scratches his butt. On the soundtrack is Bobby Vinton singing "Over the Mountain, Across the Sea." This was the point, barely a minute in, that I was pretty sure this movie was going to be fun. I wasn't disappointed.

I was indeed disappointed by the 2014 Yank version of Godzilla, but the 2017 Kong: Skull Island and the 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters were both big improvements. This clash of the titans, their first movie meeting since the 1962 Japanese King Kong vs. Godzilla, may be the best of the latter-day lot. It's certainly the silliest, which works to its benefit.

After years of peaceful coexistence, the gargantuan reptile of the title is turned from heroic protector of humankind back into a menace, for purposes of the main event; he attacks a shadowy corporate facility in Pensacola, Florida. A conspiracy-minded podcast host (Brian Tyree Henry), a teenager (Millie Bobby Brown) and her best friend (Julian Dennison) investigate the sinister reasons behind the incident.

Meanwhile, those same corporate interests have Kong transported--in chains, by ship, just like back in 1933--from Skull Island to Antarctica in hopes that he'll lead them into the Hollow Earth. Traveling with him are a Hollow Earth expert (Alexander Skarsgard), a "Kong Whisperer" scientist (Rebecca Hall) and her adopted native daughter (Kaylie Hottle), who communicates by sign language. The two strands converge, via an actual hole to the center of the Earth, in Hong Kong, where the title monsters plus one other kaiju icon scrap in the streets.

As you can tell from this synopsis, director Adam Wingard and his screenwriters certainly don't let utter preposterousness get in the way of telling this tall tale; they loot sources from Verne and Burroughs to pro wrestling. When Kong socks Godzilla in the jaw for the first time, it reminded me of Alex Karras punching the horse in Blazing Saddles. This pop pilferage has the feel, at times, of kids improvising a make-believe monster game in their back yard.

Yet there are moments, like the scenes involving Kong negotiating the gravity deep underground, that have a near-poetic wonder. And the monsters, especially the soulful, fed-up Kong, are truly vivid characters, engaging our sympathies more than any of the human actors.

Absent profound, meaningful filmmaking and drama--and maybe, sometimes, in preference to it--this is what I want my summer blockbusters to be: fast, funny, unpretentious, with dash of heart. It clocks in at under two hours, but it didn't leave me feeling cheated.

TURTLE RECALL

Happy October, everybody! As stressful as things are right now, I hope everyone is able to take pleasure in my favorite month on the calendar.

Obviously, a creature feature is in order for the season, so this year I thought we'd pay tribute to a classic movie monster who, after his initial appearance at least, generally served as a friend to and defender of humanity: Gamera!

But to discuss my feelings about Gamera, harder-trying Avis of Japanese monsters to Godzilla's Hertz, I must go back to Cinema 18, around 1969.

Cinema 18 was, oddly enough, a movie theater located on 18^th Street, just east of Sassafras, in my home town of Erie, Pennsylvania. Sometime in my college years, it became a porn theater, and later a restaurant of some sort, but for a good stretch during my high school years it was a purveyor of wonderfully discreditable horror, exploitation and offbeat action flicks; everything from Midnight Cowboy (rated "xxx") to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Richard Lester’s Cuba to the Penthouse version of Caligula.

It was a great, screwy place to see them, too. A railroad track ran right behind the theater, so the rumble of trains filled the place a couple of times during most shows. And the floor of the auditorium sloped downward, then, toward the middle of the house, it inclined back upward toward the screen. Somehow, none of this seriously compromised the cinematic experience.

What I remember Cinema 18 for most fondly, however, is playing lots of Japanese kaiju (giant monster) flicks during the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was there, in a packed house, that I saw my first Godzilla picture, 1969’s Destroy All Monsters!, and later War of the Gargantuas; hugely influential, for better or worse, on my lifelong tastes in movies, and art in general.

It was the scene of a bitter early memory, too. According to Erie historical sites, Cinema 18 opened in 1968, so I don’t think it can have been open much longer than a year when it booked Gammera the Invincible, the debut movie of Godzilla’s rival from Daiei Film, the gigantic tusked, twirling, titular turtle. I was taken to see it on a Sunday afternoon, when I was 7 or 8 years old, along with my best friend Mike, only to learn, from a hand-scrawled sign on the door, that the show—the last show of the run—was sold out.

You may well imagine my disappointment at this denial, and the even-tempered maturity with which I expressed it. The walk back to the car, past the tauntingly beautiful poster of the enormous beast trampling Tokyo...

...was one of the more miserable retreats of my life to that point.

This all came back to me this season when I was sent a screener of Gamera: The Complete Collection from Arrow Video. It’s a magisterial box set of all 12 Gamera flicks, starting with the 1966 original, Gamera, the Giant Monster, that made it to the States a few years later, recut for American audiences, as Gammera the Invincible, and sold out Cinema 18 on that fateful Sunday.

Thus I finally got to see the film, the stirring tale of how a legendary prehistoric turtle is freed from arctic ice by a Cold War mishap, how he flies to Japan using jets in the leg apertures of his shell; how he becomes the object of fanatical adoration by a little boy; how he tears up nuclear power plants and rampages in Tokyo; how he does, indeed, seem to be invincible. I watched it in both its original Japanese form and in the American version, with interpolated scenes featuring Brian Donlevy and Albert Dekker and some other American actors all keeping very straight faces.

As silly as it is, it’s a beguiling movie, shot in a gorgeous, charcoal-drawing black and white (the other films in the series are in color). The added material in the American version offers some pretty amusing touches that suggest that the people who made these scenes maybe just weren't taking things all that seriously: The dissenting scientist on a TV discussion show, for instance, is named "Dr. Contrare" (and is played by famed voice actor Alan Oppenheimer, later the voice of Skeletor); they should have given him the first initial "O."

The newspaper headlines we're shown are pungent as well; La Monde promises INSIDE REPORTS OF GIANT TURTLE CONTROVERSY while Corriere Della Sera's front page ungrammatically declares GIANT TURTLE? BALONEY SAYS SCIENTISTS.

The Complete Collection boxed set includes a staggering amount of special features; commentary tracks and trailers and German TV spots are attached to each of the movies. Gammera the Invincible even includes a title song, "Gammera," recorded by "'The Moons'...The Most Exciting Group Since The Beatles!! With the New Out of This World...PSYCHEDELIC SOUND!!" The song's music and lyrics are credited to a certain Wes Farrell, but the only lyric I heard was the repeated word "Gammera," here pronounced "Gam'raaaah!"

In the subsequent films in the series, several of which I had seen on afternoon TV in the intervening years, Gamera shifts from a menace to the defender of Earth and humanity, especially children, against a variety of what Milton would call "complicated monsters, head and taile..." He takes on the lizardy, horn-nosed Barugon (1966); the winged Gyaos (1967), sort of like a pterodactyl with a wedge-shaped head; the tentacled Viras (1968); the blade-headed Guiron (1969); the horned, finned Jiger (1970), known as "Monster X" in America, who disrupts Expo '70 in Osaka; the sharky sea monster Zigra (1971) and a gang of all of the above in 1980's Gamera: Super Monster.

In all of these ludicrous spectacles, the title character has a vivid personality; like his rival Godzilla, the monster turtle has a curiously lovable expression of perpetual, epic irritation on his face. From the first film on, he looks, indeed, like he just woke up after a long sleep.

This trait is continued in the post Daiei Film, '90s-era Gamera flicks, none of which I had seen: Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995); Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (1996) and Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999).  They're all pretty good, especially Gamera 2, which ends with the plucky heroine (Miki Mozuno) slyly asking into the camera if humans would ever want to get on Gamera's bad side, environmentally speaking.

It's only the single 21st-Century Gamera flick (to date) that strikes a slightly off-key note. In Gamera the Brave (2006), in which the turtle is reborn into the care of yet another little kid, he gets a makeover and is at last made self-consciously cute, with big sappy eyes like a Furby.

Without his grandly irritable expression, the beast loses much of his charm.

Anyway, it was great to get re-acquainted with the big guy. I can only say that had I known, on that unhappy Sunday half a century ago, that I would one day watch Gammera the Invincible and some dozen other Gamera flicks on a big-screen TV in the comfort of my home…it wouldn’t have improved my mood in the least.

HE IS THE LIZARD KING

Check out my "Friday Flicks" review, on Phoenix Magazine online, of Godzilla: King of the Monsters...

Happy Friday everybody!

PEEPSHOW

Happy Opening Day everybody!

Also: Happy Easter weekend!

In honor of the holiday...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...here's Peeps Bunny-eating Godzilla:

Let me just state again for the record that, despite the currently fashionable pose of elaborately loathing them, Peeps are the greatest Easter candy yet invented. Godzilla and I can't be wrong.

TIRE AND FURY

Just because Svengoolie is showing 1964's excellent Godzilla vs. Mothra (aka Godzilla vs. the Thing to U.S. audiences) this Saturday...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...check out this impressive piece of tire sculpture...

REVENGE WATCHING

Since we were discussing MeTV last week, allow me to point out that the vintage network's old-school horror host Svengoolie, who's been on a welcome Godzilla kick lately, shows Godzilla's Revenge this Saturday.

I have exceptionally fond memories of that one (released in the U.S. in 1971), as my sister Priscilla took me to see it at the Warner Theater in Erie when I was about nine.

So...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's acknowledge Gabara, the monster who acts like a jerk to Godzilla's kid Minya in that film...

Excuse the spoiler, but needless to say, both Godzilla and son get their revenge...

AND TO ALL A GOOD FRIGHT

Merry Christmas, everybody. Here…

Monster-of-the-Week: …is Santa Godzilla, comin’ to town:

This guy needs no reindeer, you’ll notice.

AND I NEED YOU TODAY, OH MANDA

The other day it fell to me to evict this pleasant little invader from the offices of The Day Gig…

I relocated the trespasser to a junk-cluttered desert area outside where, I hoped, he or she would find ample prey and shelter. The creature, whose skin was a pretty orangey-red that doesn’t come across in the pictures, expressed his or her opinion of my actions by excreting on my hands. The exploit made me feel like I should have my own show on Animal Planet.

Anyway…

Monster-of-the-Week: …in his or her’s honor let’s give this week’s nod to Manda, the titanic snakelike terror from several Japanese monster films, including 1963’s Atragon and my own favorite kaiju free-for-all, 1968’s Destroy All Monsters...

MUTOS GRACIAS

Out on DVD this week is the uneven new Yank version of Godzilla...

...in which the title beast faces off against…

Monster-of-the-Week: …the “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms,” or MUTOs. I confess that I found these big geometrical buglike menaces somewhat lacking in personality, but they did, at least, have a fine sense of ponderousness, so let’s make the “Winged MUTO…”

…this week’s honoree.

THE BIGS

Opening this weekend…

Godzilla—There’s a fine melodramatic flourish near the beginning of this second American-made movie about the great beast. It involves Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston, and allows them both, but especially Cranston, to let it rip with some old school emoting. It gets the picture off to a promising start.

This doesn’t last, I’m disappointed to say. Though certainly an improvement on the 1998 U.S. version, the new movie plods. Binoche and Cranston are two of the best things it, and one of the movie’s troubles is that there isn’t nearly enough of them onscreen. Nor is there enough of Ken Watanabe, of Sally Hawkins, of David Strathairn, or of Elizabeth Olsen. The focus is on the Navy man hero, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is passably stalwart but not remotely as interesting as his costars.

More problematic still...there wasn’t enough of the title character here, for my taste. King Kong obviously excepted, no giant movie monster has as distinctive and oddly lovable a personality as Godzilla. The filmmakers give him quite a buildup here before his entrance, and unlike Roland Emmerich’s ‘98 Yankzilla, this one really does feel like an authentic incarnation of beast, with his blunt muzzle, his nettled expression and his squeaky-hinge roar.

The monster scenes are good—directed with an almost maddening sense of deliberation by Gareth Edwards, they have an uneasy ponderousness, a low-angle sense of peril, that many other films in this genre miss. But only at the end do we get a heavy dose of rampaging creature action, and by that time I was worn out by the banality of the plot and the dialogue. This Godzilla has many strong moments, but to assemble a fine cast around an iconic central presence and then not give any of them enough to do? That’s monstrous.

Million Dollar Arm—American sports agent J. B. Bernstein hits upon an idea to open India to baseball fandom: a reality TV show in which cricket “bowlers” compete to see who can throw fast enough, and accurately enough, that they might be a prospect as an MLB pitcher. Neither of the first year’s winners turns out to be a bowler; one specializes in the javelin. But both end up in Los Angeles, trying out for the Majors.

At least in its broad outlines, it’s a true story, though this sweet Disney movie doubtless makes it a little taller. Bernstein, played by Jon Hamm, is depicted as a desperate, scheming hustler who starts by exploiting the two homesick boys, both of whom come from poor provincial backgrounds, and gradually finds his soul by becoming a surrogate father to them. He’s also a ladies’ man who likes young models, and the boys see that his scrub-wearing, nurturing neighbor (the charming Lake Bell) is the better choice for him.

It isn’t as corny as it sounds. The screenwriter is Thomas McCarthy of The Station Agent and The Visitor, that master of unlikely ad hoc families, and he wrings most of the potential condescension out of the dialogue. Aided by a driving score by A. R. Rahman, the director, Craig Gillespie, keeps things crisp, as do the actors—Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal as the arms, Pitobash as an aspiring manager, and Bill Paxton as the earnest pitching coach Tom House. There’s also Alan Arkin as a curmudgeonly scout who keeps his eyes closed throughout the tryouts, because he can judge the speed of a pitch by the sound it makes in the catcher’s mitt.

And then there’s Hamm. He shows a scarily flawless surface in his Mad Men role, but as soon as he steps out of that character he becomes strangely disheveled and nerdy. This isn’t always a bad thing—he used this quality to excellent effect, for instance, in his supporting role in Ben Affleck’s The Town. It works for him in Million Dollar Arm, too—he comes across believably as a nice guy trying hard to be a heartless shark, and happily failing.

Skinless—Playing for one show only, at 11:55 tonight at FilmBar Phoenix, this splatter parody concerns Dr. Peter Peel (Brandon Salkil), a brilliant young oncology researcher working, like many brilliant young oncology researchers, out of his basement. He has a malignancy on his shoulder, so despite countless examples of this proving a poor idea, he skips straight to human trials on a possible skin cancer cure, with himself as the guinea pig. Regret ensues.

Originally known under the (better, if less commercial) title The Ballad of Skinless Pete, this no-budgeter is the work of a young Cleveland-based writer-director named Dustin Wayde Mills. He’s by no means lacking in talent—he writes speakable, lucid dialogue, he obtains serviceable performances from his actors, and he structures the story coherently. It’s outrageously gruesome and deliberately sick, very definitely not for the squeamish, but it’s played with a deadpan wit that keeps it, overall, from seeming mean-spirited.

I just wish that young horror film makers could find a way to tell a gripping tale without reflexively turning to the trope of the young woman tied up, pleading and whimpering for her life. Skinless escapes contemptibility because, like Cronenberg’s The Fly (to which it pays homage) it has a heart. But I can’t say that I enjoyed the unsavory final act.

Still, Mills could quite conceivably make a classic horror film. Unlike the many modern-era movie horrors that are motivated by hatred of women, Skinless Pete, you see, is motivated by unrequited love—like the Phantom of the Opera, like King Kong, like the Creature of the Black Lagoon. I’m not placing Pete in their league, certainly, but neither am I suggesting that Mills could never create a movie monster that was.

TO BE OR NOT TO BEHEMOTH

With the new Yank version of Godzilla opening tomorrow, my mind just naturally turns to the subject of sea monsters. So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s honor a vintage movie menace from the deep, the radioactive title character, one of the last stop-motion creations of the great Willis O’Brien of King Kong fame, from the 1959 British shocker Behemoth, the Sea Monster…

…or, as the movie was called in its American release, The Giant Behemoth. This was necessary, I guess, to differentiate it from all those small or midsize Behemoths one sees.

Biblical scholars may note that the “Behemoth” referenced in the Book of Job is a land creature—and is specifically classified as a vegetarian. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to call the movie Leviathan, the Sea Monster? Or, for the gratuitous-adjective American market, The Giant Leviathan?

REVERSAL TO FORTUNE

Opening tomorrow here in the Valley is the Oscar-nominated animated feature The Wind Rises, which the great Hayao Miyazaki claims will be his swansong film.

So this week…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to a Japanese monster, or rather to a Western reimagining of a Japanese monster which a pal posted to my facebook page:

I like the idea; I’m calling him “Allizdog.”

GODZILLA IS IN THE DETAILS

In honor of Comic-Con, now underway in San Diego…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to Godzilla, as rendered in this rather marvelous teaser poster from the convention for next year’s new American version…

SEX SHELLS

In honor of these admirable prehistoric turtles…

…fossilized in the act of having sex…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s pay homage to that colossal chelonian, that towering testudine, that really big freakin’ turtle, Gamera…

Developed in the mid-60s by Japan’s Daiei studios as a Godzilla knockoff, Gamera is an enormous, tusked, oddly endearing turtle who can fly, courtesy of his own rocket propulsion. My own favorite of the many Gamera movies is 1970’s Gamera vs. Jiger, released in the U.S. as Gamera vs. Monster X, in which the Gamster defends Expo ’70 in Osaka from this beast…

It’s amazing how much of the dialogue in the later stretch of that film consists of children yelling the name “Gamera” again and again.

RIP to uber-auteurist critic Andrew Sarris, departed at 82, and to the creepy, ever-reptilian TV and movie actor Richard Lynch, a perpetual heavy owing in part to a mug...

...he’d supposedly scarred by setting himself on fire under the influence of LSD, departed at 76.