Category Archives: Movies

Movie Review: Dune Part 2

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This weekend the long-anticipated completion of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark Science-Fiction novel, Dune, hit wide theatrical release with Dune Part 2.

Dune Part 1 released in 2021 after a delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic introduced audiences to the Atreides family, one of the Great Houses of a far future galactic Empire, an Empire riven with feuds and competing power-centers. Following betrayal and a surprise attack that destroys House Atreides that film’s protagonist, young Paul Atreides, and his mother flee into the deep desert of the planet Dune seeking sanctuary with the planet’s indigenous inhabitants, the Fremen.

This film, Dune Part 2, completes the adaptation as it follows Paul and his mother as they attempt to integrate themselves the Fremen’s culture and deliver justice or revenge upon their enemies while avoiding a cataclysmic galactic war that Paul’s precognitive powers foresee.

For those familiar with the source material this will be a fairly faithful adaptation of that story, though there are major elements that have been omitted, fans of Alia of the Knife are sure to be disappointed, and the timescale of the second half of the novel has been greatly compressed rather than sped through as with the earlier theatrical adaptation by iconoclast director David Lynch. The essential beats of the story are there, and the final resolution remains generally unchanged. Villeneuve and screenwriter Jon Spaihts have brought forward some of Herbert’s thematic elements that were made clear only in sequel novels, yet not so much as to spoil another entry in the franchise as Villeneuve has stated he would like to conclude this adaptation as a trilogy.

Hans Zimmer, himself a fan of the original novels, returns to score this film with a soundtrack that tonal matches his work in Dune Part 1. The cast is enhanced with Austin Butler, Christopher Walken, Florence Pugh, Lea Seydoux, and an uncredited Anya Taylor-Joy providing a glimpse of what a third film might include. Greig Fraser’s cinematography continues to the outstanding and he and Villeneuve’s experimental work with infrared photography adds an alien ‘otherness’ to some scenes.

All in all, those who consider themselves fans of Dune Part 1 are likely to be fans of this conclusion with anticipation for the next installment from this quite talented filmmaker.

Dune Part 2 is currently playing in theaters worldwide.

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Quick Review: Suitable Flesh

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Suitable Flesh is a 2023 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s tale The Thing on the Doorstep of a body-swapping wizard and the pair of friends entangled in the madness.

Shudder Films

Scriptwriter Dennis Paoli has gender swapped the leads roles with Heather Graham playing Dr Elizabeth Derby, a psychiatrist who through a troubled patient, Asa Waite (Judah Lewis) comes to the wizard’s attentions and Barbara Crampton playing Elizbeth’s best friend and fellow psychiatrist Dr Daniella ‘Dani’ Upton. Directed by Joe Lynch in a manner to recall the bonkers insane cinema of Stuart Gordon Suitable Flesh ultimately fails both as a horror film in its own right and as a pastiche to Gordon’s movies of the 80’s.

The script’s greatest weakness, and it has more than one, is that the story is told from the wrong Point of View. Centered on Graham’s Dr Derby the story is flat because Elizabeth is a reactive character, responding to events around her and not driven the narrative forward. Dr. Upton would have been a far better choice for the film’s point of view as she would have had a mystery to solve, a fantastic truth to uncover, and a dear friend to save. The second largest mistake is telling the story though the device of a flashback. The framing of a film as a flashback can be a powerful tool see Double Indemnity as an example, but it required a skill beyond Paoli’s current talents, draining the movie of all tension and suspense.

In addition to the weakness of the script, and I did not list all the ways I thought the writing needed further works, the film is hampered by lackluster performances. With the exception of Barbara Crampton and Judah Lewis every actor feels as though they were simply sleepwalking through their parts, presently nothing that felt like real live-in characters. The flat performances ultimately undercut the attempt to pay homage to Stuart Gordon’s films such as Reanimator where the actor give grand expansive presentations of arch characters.

While I had looked forward to this movie arriving on streaming for months, Suitable Flesh, screening on Shudder proved to be a disappointment.

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An Interesting Barbie Theory

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This will be quick.

Warner Brothers Studios

Warner Brothers

A lot of ink, electrons, and noise has been spilled over the fact the fact that Barbie was nominated for ‘Best Picture’ by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but its director Great Gerwig did not receive a nomination for Best Director. Some have suggested that this is misogyny which sorts of proves the theme of the film, some have advanced the idea that as a comedy the films struggles against a bias, but that doesn’t seem to explain no Best Director but still getting Best Picture. Yesterday I heard an interesting theory.

Best Director is a nomination that is determined by directors not the Academy at large and the suggestion is that directors really dislike it when actor come along and ‘usurp’ the director’s chair. The person advancing the idea presented as evidence that Ben Affleck was not nominated as director for Argo despite the film being nominated and winning Best Picture, nor was Bradley Cooper nominated for his direction even though A Star is Born was nominated for Best Picture.

Of course, with ten nominations open for Best Picture but only five for Best Director it is a given that each award cycle is going to have films nominated for the top prize without their directors being recognized. Was it bias against women, against comedy, against actors, or perhaps no bias at all that kept Greta Gerwig off the nomination list? We will never know, and people will believe the explanation that in all likelihood conforms to their already held beliefs.

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Godzilla Minus 1.0; the Best Godzilla Movie

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It is quite a feat to dethrone Gojira that King of Godzilla and Kaiju features but in my personal opinion that is exactly what 2023’s Godzilla -1.0 achieved. To justify this position I will have to spoil some of each feature.

Toho Studios

1954’s Gojira, known in the US primarily by the 1955 re-edit Godzilla; King of the Monsters, is an outstanding piece of cinema ruminating on the atomic age and the trauma of the atomic warfare unleashed on Japan and its civilians. (We will not discuss the moral, ethical, military, or political aspect of the twin atomic bomb attacks. That is not the purpose of this essay.) From its opening scene with the hapless fishing trawler blasted by the unseen Gojira, deliberately reminiscent of the ill-fated tuna boat Lucky Dragon 5 and the terrible radiation poisoning its crew suffered from the first hydrogen bomb test, to the film final moments depicting Godzilla reduced to a skeleton by another monstrous super weapon, Gojira is about the atomic age and its ramifications. Co-inhabiting the film with this theme is the story of a love triangle between two men, Ogata and Dr Serizawa and the woman they love Emiko. There simply isn’t enough screen time to develop the triangle into a powerful story line nor does it tie in directly with the theme of the film. Only Serizawa’s research and development of the ‘Oxygen Destroyer’ which provides the means to end Gojira’s rampage provides thematic connection and resolution to the separate storylines.

Gojira (1954) is an amazing feat of budget constrained film making that invented a new genre and that remains thematically relevant 70 years later. It is a great film and until 2023 rules undisputed as the best of the franchise and the entire Kaiju genre.

Toho Studios

Godzilla Minus 1 opens with our main character, Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who has abandoned his suicidal mission. Landing on Odo island with ‘mechanical troubles’ he witnesses the first appearance oof Godzilla and along with a single mechanic, Tachibana, survives the monsters rampage but earn the wrath of Tachibana. With the war’s ending Shikishima returns to a Tokyo destroyed by firebombing and the contempt of his neighbors for having survived the war. Years later, still suffering from survivors guilt for not pointlessly dying in the war and with an assembled found family, Shikishima’s life is thrown into chaos when Godzilla reappears, even larger than before, and devastates the area. Drawn into the plots and plans to destroy the monster he sees the opportunity to ‘fulfill’ his kamikaze mission in the intricate plan to deal with Godzilla. Reunited with Tachibana to restore an aircraft for the attack Shikishima receives absolution from the mechanic for his action on Odo island and ‘permission’ to live.

Throughout Godzilla Minu 1.0 the theme is about survival, the waste of lives in war, the importance of the government to respect the lives of its people. Shikishima’s emotional arc is tied directly to the ‘war’ against the monster. At its heart this film is the story of one man, his terrible burden surviving where so many others did not, and his finding of peace, love, and absolution. A powerful story with a single compelling character to drive it make Godzilla Minu 1.0 simply the best Godzilla movie ever.

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Quick Hit Review: Frybread Face and me

REI Co-Op Studios

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Currently streaming on Netflix Frybread Face and Me is a coming-of-age fil about a young Navajo boy, Bennie, (Keir Tallman) sent from his home in San Diego to live with his grandmother on the reservation for a summer as his parents address their martial troubles. At his grandmother’s home Bennie is introduced to aspect of Navajo culture that were alien to him, his extended family including his cousin Dawn (Charley Hogan) nicknamed Frybread Face.

Absent from the film is any grand climatic emotional scene but rather Bennie’s changes are built from more grounded simple elements of his life on the reservation. Executive Produced by Taika Waititi, Frybread Face and Me isn’t part of that filmmaker’s usual chaotic style but reflects writer/Director’s Billy Luther heartfelt connection with his people.

I really enjoy watching film from cultures different from my own and this one was no different. An aspect of Navajo culture that I had been unaware of that this story taught me is the ‘Baby’s first laugh’ custom. The Navajo celebrate an infant first laugh or giggle with food and gifts. Technically the baby hosts the celebration but as infant rarely have the faculties for such an endeavor at about three months old the duties are actually performed by the person who induced the laughter.

The film doesn’t shy away from the poverty faced by those living on the reservation but that aspect of life is simply that, another element of living while the focus of the story and of Bennie’s growth is the reality and love of family.

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2023 A Personal Review

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The year, as we in the west number it, is coming to a close and that is a time for reflection. This year has seen triumph and tragedy in my personal life, much like the years that preceded it and that will follow.

In January I began the world building work for my next science-fiction novel, a dystopic and cynical story set on the corporate cities of Mars under the thumb of a once brilliant billion now degenerated into madness and paranoia. With it set only a hundred years into the future that required lots of research and planning to keep from making myself appear too foolish. This month also saw a dear friend of nearly 40 years struck with a terrible wasting degenerative neuro-muscular disease.

February saw the released of a pair of films that I thoroughly enjoyed, Megan a fun take on the killer doll cliche and Cocaine Bear which delivered precisely what was labeled on the tin.

In March I continued the work on my Mars novel and endured the lackluster Antman and The Wasp: Quantum Mania and the even less enjoyable 65 but was treated to the spirited and fun Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

April saw the historic event of a former President of the United States charged with crimes and his party lash themselves to the mast of his sinking ship. Sadly, nothing in the intervening 8 months changed and they remain devoted to his insurrection and criminality. April was also when I began thinking seriously that the time was right for someone to revisit the werewolf as presented in 1941’s The Wolf-Man with particular attention to the fascism in the subtext.

May was a birth month, a celebration if you wanted of my own and the experimental scene I wrote for a very vague and unformed concept of a werewolf novel. After its reception at my writers group and with their encouragement I continued on past that scene and unwittingly started writing a novel without a prepared outline.

In June I watched Asteroid City a strange almost poetic film nearly devoid of any traditional plot and yet strangely compelling. All world building work ceased as the werewolf novel took over all of my creative CPU cycles.

July was a very good month for movies with the release of Oppenheimer and Barbie both film outstanding in their quality with resonate themes of deep importance. My sweetie-wife and I finished the TV series Silo and agreed it had been a waste of time and talent as had Marvel’s Secret Invasion. It was about this time that I began to seriously consider that my unplanned novel was not going to crash and burn and might actually get finished.

In August The unplotted novel passed 40,000 word and my sweetie-wife and I discovered the delightful Australian murder/comedy series Deadloch a real hidden treasure on Amazon Prime.

September witnessed the passing of that dear friend diagnosed in January and once again the hard terrible lesson of life is that it ends. The movies of this month, A Haunting in Venice, and The Annual secret morgue of genre films, did little to mitigate the sadness of that period.

With October I became confident enough in my werewolf novel to reach out to a former editor and pitch him the book. He expressed an interest but also cautioned I would need a pen name for it. The Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for Medicare Advantage enrollment started and the day-job became more stressful and busier but work on the novel continued.

November was a pleasant month. Two enjoyable features at the theater, The Marvels and Next Goal Wins provided comfort cinema, the annual sf convention LosCon provided friends and geek infusions as well as seeing to completion of the novel first draft.

That brings us to December, I closed out in theater film watching with the fantastic Godzilla Minus 1, abandoned the series The Crown as the Charles and Diana story held little interest for me, and turned my manuscript over to my darling sweetie-wife for her red pen of corrections.

As I said at the outset, 2023 held triumph and tragedy and now onto 2024.

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Movie Review: Godzilla Minus One

Toho Studios

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In the nearly 70 years since the very first film the Godzilla has ranged from the very serious thematic representations of Atomic Age fears to wildly chaotic affairs aimed at children. The brainchild of filmmaker Takashi Yamazaki who wrote, directed, and served as Visual Effects Supervisor on the film Godzilla Minus One is a return to employing the legendary monster as a thematic metaphor exploring serious adult topics.

Eschewing the lore of the previous movies in the franchise this film can be considered essentially a remake of the original 1954 classic Godzilla, but with an entirely new set of characters and subtextual intentions. Covering the period from just before the end of World War II until the late 1940s Godzilla Minus One speaks powerfully to the destruction, stupidity, and waste of war.

After an encounter on Odo Island that left his deeply traumatized Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) lives in disgrace and poverty while being generally despised by his neighbors for surviving the war. Thrown together in the ruins of firebombed Tokyo with Noriko (Minami Hamabe) Koichi is unable to escape the nightmares of his past and only through confrontation with Godzilla might he possibly excise the unwarranted guilt and shame he has carried since the war.

Yamazaki has crafter an excellent film. As a screenwriter he cracked the difficult problem of combining a deeply human and dramatic story with a plot that finds a monstrous Kaiju leveling destruction on a recovering Japan essential. As a director he possesses a keen eye and understand that keeping the camera mostly at human eye level injects terror rarely experienced when a kaiju is photographed level with their own head. The visual effects of the film are utterly fantastic. While there are bits and pieces where the seams show, naval vessels that aren’t quite perfect in the rendering, the same for some trains, Godzilla itself always is perfectly depicted. Production design has captured the feel of devastation that encompassed Tokyo following the horrors of the Allied bombing campaign.

The film’s score uses movements from the original film’s composition, notably the marches for the Imperial Self Defense forces and Godzilla’s theme. The recording and performance of these pieces is simply epic.

Unlike previous serious Godzilla movies, this film is not concerned with minister and generals, keeping it story focused on civilians and veterans, the people on the ground who lived through a war in which their government too often decided that their lives were something to be lightly tossed away in futile gestures.

I cannot recommend enough that Godzilla Minus One needs to be seen in a proper theater. The movie is epic and grand in every way save for it tightly focused human story. While I could quibble about some aspects of the story final resolution, those issues are not enough to devalue any of my admiration and love for this piece of art.

Godzilla Minus One is playing in theaters in Japanese with English subtitles.

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Movie Review: Next Goal Wins

Searchlight Pictures

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Even someone as disconnected from the world of professional sports like myself knows that soccer is a low scoring game. It’s quite a shock to discover that it is a historical fact that the American Samoa team were crushed, annihilated, and humiliated by Australian National team losing to them by the astounding seemingly impossible score of 31-0. Next Goal Wins is the comedic, true-life inspired, sport feature film from Taika Waititi.

If you have seen comedy sports team movies before, such as The Mighty Ducks or The Bad News Bears, then you will instantly recognize the structure of this movie. The irascible tantrum throwing coach, in this case Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) is tasked against his will to bring a team of outcasts, misfits, and oddballs into some sort sporting shape before an emotionally important game. Along the way the team learns something of value from the coach and the coach learns that there is more to life than sports and that he shouldn’t judge on early impressions.

Nothing in Next Goal Wins breaks this fundamental story construction, but two things do make this movie distinct. First, the film take time to respect and enjoy the culture of American Samoa. The people of this island nation are the real heart of soul of the production. Secondly the film is very much fixed in the off-beat humor of its director and co-writer Taika Waititi. Waititi’s humor is grounded in humanism. It is rarely cruel or mean and often celebrates humanity’s oddness that produces such infinite variety. Much like his current HBO series Our Flag Means Death, this film elevates the weird and different illustrating that joy is a much better way to live than anger.

This film is not a deep exploration of human soul, but it is concerned with that soul and that to be happy is important and sometimes it is choice. This is one well worth seeing.

Next Goal Wins is currently playing in theatrical release.

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Movie Review: The Marvels

Marvel Studios

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Marvel Cinematic Universe films come sin several flavors and tones, from the intensely personal and dramatic such as Captain America: Civil War, the thematically serious such as Black Panther and its critique of both colonialism and ethno-isolation, to the comedic and lighthearted such as Ant-Man. 2023’s The Marvels, while resenting world-ending threats for humanity, falls cleaning and intentionally into the light and comedic category.

As a side effect of a magical device entangles the power of Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) the three women are forced into an oddball partnership to stop the murderous revenge rampage of Kree warrior Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) bitter from the fall out of Captain Marvel’s ending the Kree wars and domination depicted in the film Captain Marvel. Supporting characters include Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Kamala’s immediate family introduced in the limited series Ms. Marvel.

The ‘mismatched partners’ is a classic genre of cinema and while that sort of story is often a two-hander, screenwriters Nia DaCosta, who also directs, Egan McDonnell, and Elissa Karaski juggled the competing needs of the ‘forced partner’ comedic tones with the serious world dying stakes that are often a requirement of superhero movies, and the family conflicts quite well. The Marvels is principally a comedy, one that finds its humor in familial relations, both blooded family and the found variety. Any doubts about the intentional comedic tone are dispelled by the tongue in cheek use of the song Memory from the musical Cats. The difficult problems of exposition dealing with characters entering the theatrical world who were created in the streaming series format is handled with quick amusing lines. (You got your powers walking through a witch’s hex? Yup.)

The cast is uniformly good and talented, handling the FX work and the comedic character beats with equal skill. The cinematography by Sean Bobbit is perfectly adequate capturing the sequences with enough flair to have some emotional impact but not quite reaches truly impressive levels.

While The Marvels will not reach the heights of becoming one of my favorite 5 MCU movies it is certainly well cemented in the upper half of this franchise and with a running time under two hours it makes for a pleasant and fun distraction.

The Marvels is currently playing in theaters and well worth the trip to see it on the impressive big screen.

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Spooky Season Finale: Mulholland Dr.

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I had planned to cap off Spooky Season with a re-watch of David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Dr., but sadly sleeping poorly on the night of the 30th, having extra errands add extra stressors to the day, getting zero words down on my werewolf novel, and a minor headache in the evening left me with the brain capacity of a reanimated slug.

Mulholland Dr. is an amazing piece of cinema that the first couple of time I viewed it left deep emotional impacts while remaining just out of intellectual understanding. I think I finally have an interpretation that works for all the aspects of the film, but it could be something entirely of my own invention. Lynch’s work, with the exception of his adaptation of Dune, defies convention and straight forward representation.

The key to understanding Mulholland Dr. is knowing that one of Lynch’s favorite and formative films is 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, and this film is his most direct reinterpretation of that classic movie’s themes. Lynch’s film is the story of a young woman, Diane, played by Naomi Watts, who dreams herself to a magical setting, Hollywood, which she describes a ‘this dream place.’ In the land of her dreams Diane is instantly recognized for her tremendous acting talent and falls in love with a mysterious amnesiac woman, Rita, that loves her back. There are subplots with a vain director tormented by infidelity and criminals forcing his casting choices, but the locus of Diane’s dreams are her career and the love between her and ‘Rita.’ None of this is real and more than halfway through the film we are shown, but it is never explained to us, Diane’s real life, where she is Betty, her career is shit, the woman she loved, ‘Rita’ has left her to marry a man, and everything ends in murder and madness.

In The Wizard of Oz, we experience Dorothy’s real world before being shunted of to her fantastic fantasy. In the end we return to reality and the deeply uncynical message that there is no place like home. Mulholland Dr. inverts all this, we first experience the Diane’s fantasy, unaware that all the characters in it are reinterpretations of people she has already met, so when we meet them in the real world it is reality that is strange, threatening, and confusing. Our disenchantment with reality is the same as Diane’s. This is not the glittering land of dreams that Hollywood has always presented itself to be, and we do not like that. In the end Diane’s madness at what she has done in reality breaks down her ability to separate dream from reality and what had once been a dream transforms into a nightmare as she pursued by figures of innocence from her dream to her death.

Mulholland Dr. is rarely counted among the films or horror but the deep unease and unsettling nature the film places for me it squarely in that genre. It is a film of dreams and nightmares and how though those two things feel very different that are inf act the same thing.

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