Guest
Review by Rob Huebert
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (US/Japan
2019 http://www.godzilla-movie.net/)
For those who do
not need logic or deep thoughts in their movie, but just like to be entertained
with large booms and bangs – Godzilla: King of Monsters is right up your ally.
Taking three teen-aged boys who loved it and one wife who hated it, I must say
this is my type of movie. For reasons that are never quite clear, this movie
makes Godzilla the misunderstood hero. It turns out that she/he (it is never
made clear except for calling Godzilla King and not Queen) is responsible for
maintaining the balance of life. This of course makes her/him the ultimate
environmentalist. She/he faces an enemy that does not share his/her concern for
the world and a series of battles follow. But none of this matters for those
who like their summer movies big loud and exciting. For people like me and my
sons, this movie is the type of wholescale entertainment that summer is made
for. Sure the major badgirl is more than a little unbelievable and annoying,
and her partner - the badguy as an environmentalist extremist - would rather
kill millions of people, but for those who like these types of movies, who
really pays attention to such matters? The fights of the monsters are what
matters and these take place mainly at night or in other murky environments,
but they are constant and building. The good humans are able take some part in
defending Earth, but for the most part, the usual suppression of the laws of physics
tend to render their weapons ineffective. The physical impact of human-based
bullets, missiles, and even nuclear weapons, are always neutralized while the
teeth, claws and atomic breath of the monsters destroy and kill both humans and
other monsters. And of course, in the tradition established by the very first
King Kong movie, all pilots are always ordered to fly close enough to the bad
monsters to allow all planes to be battered out of the sky. So there is no
rational defence of the movie. But it does entertain those who like it. My
wife, who likes her movies intelligent and logical, will not watch this again
when it comes out on video, unlike me and my boys.
Gerry’s
take
To keep my mind
from going numb, I kept asking questions like: what are all these good actors
doing here (Vera Farmiga, conspicuously wearing a Canada Goose parka in an
Antarctica sequence; Kyle Chandler as her estranged husband, Sally Hawkins for godzilla
sake, a bearded Thomas Middleditch looking slightly less goofy than on HBO’s
Silicon Valley.) To her daughter’s dismay, Farmiga as Dr. Emma Russell goes all
mad scientist in cahoots with an “eco-terrorist” leader (Charles Dance, more
memorable as an evil Lannister king on the iron throne in Game of Thrones). You see, monster “titans” are needed to cure
earth of its “human infection”. Ken Watanabe gets the sacrificial role in the
nuclear resurrection of Godzilla after an alien hydralike three-dragon headed “monster
zero” threatens annihilation. I liked the rider-friendly Game of Thrones
dragons better. In a minor stalwart
soldierly role there’s also a dead-ringer forToronto Raptor superfan
rapper Drake (apparently it’s Anthony Ramos).
As the preposterous minutes pile up to 132, a Russell family drama plays
out without getting wiped out by apex monster-geddon. Many brain cells may have been lost, but I
believe no computers were harmed. C
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
(US
2019 https://a24films.com/films/the-last-black-man-in-san-francisco)
This is one of several noteworthy
Sundance selections starting to appear in theatres (others include Luce and The Farewell). Director Joe
Talbot was awarded a directing prize for this moody feature centred on two
friends, one of whom, Talbot’s friend Jimmie Fails, plays a version of himself.
Jimmie’s buddy “bro” Mont (Jonathan Majors) lives with his grandpa (Danny
Glover) in a small apartment where they both bunk down. But Jimmie, who’s spent
time in a group home and lived in his car, holds tight to his belief that a
Victorian-era mansion, now valued at $4mllion, was actually built by his
grandfather in 1946. Unexplained is the
location in the Fillmore district that had been occupied by Black and
Japanese-American families but is now gentrified in one of the most
unaffordable cities in North America. After white owners vacate the house over
a property dispute, Jimmie and Mont become squatters, though this can’t
last. Jimmie’s family dream is just
that, a dream. The Black young men hanging around, one of whom is murdered,
speak in the profane language of the street (using the “n” word). That’s among
a medley of narrative fragments. There’s
an almost surreal tone that, unfolding over two hours, drains the drama of
impact. Long before the credits we know that the “gentle” San Francisco of the city’s
eponymous hippie-era anthem is long gone and not coming back. B
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (US
2019 https://www.tonimorrisonfilm.com/)
Directed by Timothy Greenfield Sanders,
this lengthy documentary tribute to the acclaimed African-American novelist
isn’t the most dynamic with its mix of archival images and talking heads, but
it is satisfyingly insightful on its subject and the significance of her work,
which was groundbreaking in terms of a deep exploration of the female African-American
experience liberated from, as she says, the burden of “the white gaze”; the
male gaze too. Morrison, now 88, was born Chloe Wofford in Lorain, Ohio on the
south shore of Lake Erie. From
university she became a noted editor at Random House and professor at Princeton. (She also prides herself as a master maker of
carrot cake). The American literary
establishment was slow to recognize her talent, though her 1987 novel Beloved won both the Pulitzer Prize and
American Book Award. Among those interviewed is Oprah Winfrey who produced and
starred in a 1998 movie version. Morrison gained global attention when awarded
the Nobel prize in 1993. A recipient of the presidential medal of freedom in
2012, the most engaging voice is Morrison’s herself, speaking directly and
disarmingly to the camera. A-
Wild Rose (UK
2018 https://www.wildrosefilm.co.uk/)
Who knew there was a Grand Ole Opry
saloon in Glasgow? Darn tootin’ and thrown out of it in an early scene is the
female singer who gets feet stompin’. In
the story directed by Tom Harpur, the aptly-named Rose-Lynn is played
energetically by Jessie Buckley, who also possesses a decent soulful voice for
delivering a country song. A teenage
mother to a little boy and girl, on release from prison on a drug conviction,
she has to wear a “tag” (electronic monitoring device). Concealing that from
her upscale employer Susannah (Sophie Okenedo), also a mother to a little boy
and girl, Rose-Lynn works as a “day woman” housekeeper for the family. She
doesn’t play music or write songs, but with “three chords and the truth”
tattooed on an arm, she keeps up spirits by holding on to her great ambition to
get to Nashville. Although her skeptical mother Marion (Julie Walters) lets
exasperation show when Rose-Lynn routinely neglects and disappoint her kids,
Susannah is charmed enough to help her get an audience in London with a
legendary BBC radio producer. That has its own mishaps but Susannah gives her
another chance to get the money together for an American trip by performing
before a well-heeled crowd. When that
too goes south, mother Marion comes through in a brief mother-daughter scene
that is the most affecting in the movie.
No spoilers as to whether Rose-Lynn
gets any shot at her Nashville dreams. What’s a rose without the thorns? Maybe
a homegrown song’s enough for hope past the hard luck and heartbreak … if like
a hurtin’ country tune it would feel as sweet.
B+
On
Netflix:
Nova: Black Hole Apocalypse
This two-hour documentary originally
aired on the PBS “Nova” series. From writer-director
Rushmore De Nooyer, narrated by astrophysicist Janna Levin (http://jannalevin.com/),
it’s a fascinating exploration into the science behind the discovery and
characteristics of gravitational waves and “black holes”—phenomena of such
gravitational mass that light cannot escape.
Levin is excellent at communicating the mind-boggling calculations and
numbers involved, including the existence of “super massives” at the centre of
galaxies and what the frontiers of future discoveries may be from deep-space
telescopes. Each increase in knowledge
adds to one’s awe of creation. A
Murder Mystery (US
2019)
A smalltime New York cop Nick Spitz
(Adam Sandler) finally takes wife Audrey (Jennifer Aniston) on a European bus
tour when a twist of fate makes them guests of a rich playboy Charles Cavendish
(Luke Evans) who invites them on the yacht of his billionaire uncle Malcolm
Quince (Terrence Stamp). The murder of the aging tycoon is the first of several
as Nick and Audrey become spectator suspects in a bumbling investigation by
Inspector de la Croix (French comedian Dany Boon). This whodunit is a modest amusement. Still,
given low expectations, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. B
The Last Czars (US
2019)
Netflix keeps adding new miniseries
faster than anyone can keep up. An
interest in Russian history hooked me enough to stick through six
episodes. The doomed reign of the last Romanov
Tsar Nicholas II, which started and ended in bloody tragedy, has so many
extraordinary elements. It’s a story of tone-deaf divine-right autocratic
absolutism amid disastrous military defeats and decades of
ruthlessly-suppressed revolutionary ferment. There’s the long-hoped-for son
Alexei (after four daughters) whose hemophilia is kept secret. There’s the malign influence over the
German-born tsarina of the “mad monk” Rasputin, finally assassinated in 1916 by
aristocratic plotters. Then the final blows—the army desertions and mutinies,
the tsar’s abdication, the Bolshevik October revolution, in 2018 the massacre
of the imperial family of seven in the cellar of Communist-controlled Yekaterinburg’s
‘house of special purpose” during a civil war as a counter-revolutionary “white
army” forces were closing in on the city to liberate them. Not only that, but
the miniseries delves into the subsequent strange case of a traumatized girl
claiming to be the sole surviving Romanov daughter Anastasia. Indeed there
turned out to be more than one troubled imposter. In a postscript the series observes that the
remains of the last Romanov royal family were not found and reburied until
after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Despite attention to
period design and costumes in the docudrama recreations of events, interspersed
with occasional archival footage and interviews with historians, I would have
preferred a deeper straightforward documentary approach. It’s an American production but the main
actors all speak in British accents. For
example, tsar “Nicky” is played by blue-eyed Scot Robert Jack, who more closely
resembles Joseph Fiennes as the commander “Fred” in the series The Handmaid’s Tale. The recreations tend towards melodrama. The
post-1918 “Anastasia” mystery gets far more attention than the short-lived 2018
provisional government of Kerensky, a
Socialist Revolutionary and vice-chair of the Petrograd Soviet, whose overthrow
by Lenin’s Bolsheviks was followed by purges, power struggles and civil strife
on a mass scale. Still I’d give the
series a cautious recommendation given the remarkable nature of this momentous
period of world-historical significance that continues to reverberate a century
later. B+
Comments
Post a Comment