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.

FOUR BETTER OR WORSE

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend:

The Fantastic Four: First Steps--Week before last, in my review of the new Superman movie, I grumbled about the reliance of contemporary superhero movies on devices like interdimensional travel and parallel universes. Now comes this Marvel entry, which is set entirely in a parallel universe, "Earth 828" in the Marvel "Multiverse," the home of the famous super-team. It's a realm of snazzy midcentury modern decor and beehive hairdos and stentorian TV announcers and the like.

Partly because the whole movie takes place in this setting--no universe-hopping--and partly because I'm a sucker for this style of design, I didn't mind it in this case. Director Matt Shakman and the other filmmakers generate a fine atmosphere of nostalgia for a period that never happened, at least not in this universe. Cool as the movie looks, however, it took me a little while to get pulled into the story. 

You may remember the title quartet, created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby in 1961, scientists and explorers endowed with superpowers by a trip to space. Reed Richards can literally stretch himself to ridiculous lengths; Sue Storm can make herself invisible and also commands force fields from her hands; her brother Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch, can make himself a flying fireball at will; and Ben Grimm aka The Thing, is a super-strong and super-durable rock-man.

Despite the title, this isn't an origin story. Our heroes are well-established here, and Sue is pregnant with Reed's baby, when a threat from space turns up. The planet-gobbling giant Galactus (Ralph Ineson) is headed hungrily for Earth, scouted as a suitable snack for him by Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). Even with Sue eight months along, The Four journey to space to intercept Galactus and negotiate with him. Turns out The Big G is more than willing to make a deal, straight out of a fairy tale: He'll spare Earth, in return for Sue and Reed's baby, who he says will absorb his hunger and let him retire from planet-eating.

Or some nonsense like that. Despite the high-powered stars--Pedro Pascal as Reed, Vanessa Kirby as Sue, Joseph Quinn as Johnny and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben--the characters didn't initially pop as vividly as they do in some Marvel and other superhero flicks. Pascal is subdued as the reflective, problem-solving Reed. He and Bachrach and Quinn are all good enough company, and Garner is quite an elegant Surfer, but only Kirby zaps the earlier parts of the movie with energy when she speaks.

Eventually, though, things get lively. I think it was during a scene in which the Four are multitasking on the edge of a black hole that the actors seemed to wake up, and First Steps started to feel kind of deranged, in a good way. By the time Galactus arrives in New York, the movie takes on an agreeable kaiju flavor; the titan looks a bit like the title character of the '60s-era Japanese film Majin, Monster of Terror, and the climactic clash between him and The Four is satisfying. There's real, off-the-wall imagination here, and after an unsteady start First Steps ends up surefooted.

LILY IN THE VALLEY

Opening this weekend:

Grandma— Lily Tomlin plays Elle, a widowed poet, sort of famous by poet standards several decades ago, now eking out a meager L.A. existence with lecturing and writer-in-residence gigs. Elle’s granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) shows up one morning in a jam and needing a few hundred bucks, but Grandma’s broke at the moment.

Like last year’s Obvious Child, this comedy-drama from Paul Weitz concerns a young woman who, unlike Diablo Cody’s Juno, is in no serious doubt about her desire for an abortion. Elle and her granddaughter are both reluctant to face the wrath of her high-powered daughter (Marcia Gay Harden) so they set off in Elle’s 1955 Dodge Royal in search of anyone else they can hit up.

It’s a simple, poignant story, but the great Tomlin gives it comic force. Or she did for me, anyway. I’ve never been able to resist Tomlin, not since I was a small child. I interviewed her once, and she cracked me up to a professionally unseemly degree. While most of her lines in Grandma aren’t laugh lines, on paper, her blunt, declarative delivery makes the cantankerous yet kind Elle a potently mirthful figure.

But this enhances her authority rather than undermining it. When she says, in that Detroit accent, that they should stop and buy a couple of dollars worth of gas—“stahp and buy a couple of dahllers wirth of gahss”—it somehow has the quality of a Biblical pronouncement.

Garner, wistful beneath a Jean Harlow-like blond halo, wisely does little more than hang back and serve as Tomlin’s foil. Most of the other cast members that pop up in the episodic storyline—including the late lamented Elizabeth Pena—do the same, but one actor is allowed to shine: Sam Elliot, as Grandma’s distant ex.

Over the last couple of decades Elliot has sometimes been on the borderline of a joke—a piece of prime ‘70s beefcake that aged uncommonly well, an endearing, easygoing hunk emeritus. In his brief scene in Grandma, however, he reveals a painful bit of Elle’s backstory, and in the process gives maybe the most startlingly intense performance of his career.

No Escape—Owen Wilson has taken a job with an American firm operating in an unnamed Southeast Asian country, and has moved there with his wife (Lake Bell) and two daughters. They aren’t even there a day, however, before the government is overthrown and the revolutionaries are massacring people in the streets, including Americans. They have a special resentment for Wilson’s company.

So for the rest of the movie, Wilson and his wife frantically try to elude the murderous mobs and get their kids to safety. They’re eventually helped by Pierce Brosnan as a skirt-chasing Brit expat who [spoiler!] turns out to be with British Intelligence.

Directed by John Erick Dowdle from a script he wrote with his brother Drew Dowdle, No Escape is undeniably gripping, especially in its first half. As it progresses, the hairbreadth escapes and turns of good fortune grow harder and harder to accept, and the dialogue grows more sanctimonious, but the situation keeps us invested until the end credits.

The stars are well-cast, too. Beautiful, strapping Lake Bell has the right physicality for this brave and capable Mom, and Wilson, with his boyishly openhearted American-idiot persona, is a perfect fit for the clueless hero. You think, really? You took this job and dragged your family to this distant country without so much as spending ten minutes reading up on Wikipedia about the potential problems there?  But then you look at Wilson and think, yeah, it’s possible.

No Escape isn’t boring, but it is distasteful. It was hard for me to shake the sense that we’re meant to see what happens to this family as extra-special horrible because it happens to middle-class white Americans. It’s true that Brosnan’s deus ex machina character is given a heavy-handed little speech in which he says all the right things about how western influence in repressive regimes leads to this sort of horror. This seems intended to preempt charges of xenophobia, but it’s cosmetic. The visceral impact of the film is Yellow Peril, all the way.

Playing this week at FilmBar Phoenix:

Turbo Kid—This actioner is set in the post-apocalyptic year of…1997. The conceit is that we’re seeing a cheesy sci-fi flick of the ‘80s, a low-budget Road Warrior knockoff in the vein of Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone or Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn or World Gone Wild or Crime Zone. It even has Michael Ironside, all but reprising his Spacehunter role as an evil warlord.

The title character, played by the sympathetic Munro Chambers, is a bicycle-borne scavenger of the wastes who models himself on a comic-book superhero called Turbo Rider. A sweet, daffy blonde pixie called Apple (Laurence LeBoeuf) befriends him, and when she’s abducted by the despicable Zeus (Ironside), who presides over gladiatorial games a la Thunderdome and has found a way to turn dead bodies into precious water, The Kid comes to her rescue. Somewhere in there he and Apple are also befriended by a Down-Under-Accented cowboy-type tough guy (Aaron Jeffery).

It certainly can’t be said that Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell, the writing-directing team that created this insane Canada-New Zealand co-production, don’t know their source material. Everything rings on-the-money ‘80s: the editing, the costumes, the hair, the stunts, the special effects and especially the music, including Stan Bush's marvelous pump-up anthem, “Thunder in Your Heart.” Apart from Ironside’s gray hair, about the only giveaway we’re not watching a genuine artifact is the extreme level of slapstick gore, which in those days, if memory serves, was more the province of stuff like the Evil Dead flicks and, later, Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive than of the wasteland-warrior genre.

If this kind of splatter, mostly played for laughs, doesn’t bother you—I wouldn’t recommend the film for younger kids—Turbo Kid is nostalgic fun. I spent many hours in front of movies like this, often with some poor long-suffering girlfriend I’d dragged along, and I can attest to its authenticity.