Godzilla-History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man...

Oh no, they say he's got to go...

Poor Godzilla.  He's always been a big, misunderstood overgrown radioactive nuclear powered lizard death machine.  Stuck in a world he never made, wandering through cities never built for him and occasionally having to put the smack down on a chump monster needing an attitude adjustment.  Only very few humans seem to appreciate the good he sometimes does, even if to him, it is mostly turf guarding.

Back in 1954, Japanese film company Toho Studios brought Godzilla to the public.  Spawned out of their very understandable nuclear nightmares.  With many sequels and remakes on the board now, the big G is clearly entrenched in global culture.  And, like the big beast himself, count on a return.

The latest is Godzilla (2014), written by Gareth Edwards.  Edward's first feature was a low budget very different giant monster movie which showed his serious chops as a filmmaker.  Monsters was an indie film treat in 2010, showing Gareth Edwards as one of a crop of young, up coming filmmakers who love genre storytelling and who has a unique voice he wants to contribute to the storytelling body.  So the suited powers that be showing themselves to be a bit more enlightened nowadays (and smelling a bargain when they sniff it), hired Edwards and put him on board Godzilla.

Bryan Cranston was finishing up Breaking Bad at the time, firmly establishing credibility as an actor after his performance as Walter White.  Apparently the studios pursued him with a serious abandon and he played coy, turning them down.  He says the script finally convinced him to come on board, but I'm guessing a serious paycheck did as well.  Not that his part was a walk on check cashing.  Playing an obsessed, troubled engineer propelled by grief, though a short part, was not lacking in dramatic gravitas.  He did play the hell out of it.  The rest of the film, we follow his adult son who is an officer in the US Navy and an trained bomb technician.

The other important actor is Ken Watanabe, who plays a scientist who has been tracking Godzilla since 1954 and is the closest any of them have to an expert on this anomaly that has cropped up in their midst.  His role is mostly restraining the gun toting military types, who are fortunately played as serious professionals, rather than overly dramatic heavies like is often done in films like this.  Which is one of the things that really helps bring up this film.

Finally, there's Godzilla himself.  Much has been made about his relatively little screen time.  And yeah, you want more of the Big G doing his thing.  But...he looks so good, sounds so good and is awesome in action when he is there...this being the first film back, I'm ok with it.  I love the fact that it is a faithful update, the creature and his abilities are true to what filmmakers expect, yet take advantage of modern special effects capability.  Especially when he finally cuts loose with that "radioactive breath", it looks like what it is, pretty much a plasma blast.  Oh yeah, and I like the bad monsters, the Mutos, better than most, it would seem.

It is what it is, and you like sfx driven films with monsters duking it out or don't.  The actors bring their game, but it really isn't their show.  They are there to react to the visuals and the circumstances.  They do.

Oh yeah, Elisabeth Olsen was there, and she does the human role.  But I was intrigued enough by her presence and ability that I'm really looking forward to her Scarlet Witch in Avengers-Age of Ultron.

Christmas is coming, and so are those ice chips out of everyone's shoulders...

     Coming up on the Winter Solstice and Bill O'Reilly's fake war on Christmas (it is fake, but atheists, leave those town nativity scenes alone. You want to make a better point? Put up a holiday display of your own. But let people have fun and/or enjoy a reminder of something positive over the holidays). The holiday greetings will come out. I don't want to hear about only ONE kind of greeting should be said here. A number can be. Use whichever one suits you best. That's number one.

      Number two, if someone does bother to give you a holiday greeting, whatever it is...don't get your festive panties in a bunch because it is a holiday you don't like, a greeting you don't like or whatever. A person stopped and directed something towards you with kind intent. Return your own greeting of choice or just say thank you. Don't be a douche about such a gesture because it isn't YOUR choice of holiday or you've got whatever agenda/political driven drivel running in the back of your head like so much white noise you can't get rid of for whatever reason. Just stop for once and realize someone sent good wishes, good intent your way. Accept it as such...return like for like if you feel it within...and get on with your Merry, Merry life.

      Merry Christmas.

The Heat-I Love Lady Cops

I love lady warriors.  Let us get that out of the way from the jump.  Two fisted, gun toting, tough talking, tall walking Valkyries, putting the sexy smackdown on various reprobates who start out underestimating them, much to their chagrin.  Be it the perps and villains they go up against or be it occasionally their less than supportive co-workers, they sometimes have to go it alone in the world to right a clear and present wrong.

In this case, we have FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock), a supremely skilled and trained FBI agent.  Her professional competence as a field agent is beyond reproach.  However, her ability to deal with people is not.  She knows she is skilled, educated and talented and wears it on her sleeve.  So her cocksure attitude and condescending arrogance turns off her comrades and hampers her efforts to reach management positions in the Bureau.  What little glimpse you get of her social life is the same, as she is single.  All caps SINGLE.  She even has to borrow the neighbor's cat.  Yeah.  Sad.

So, when she is given a chance to go to Boston on a convoluted drug perp case that might set her up for that management position she is gunning for, she gamely takes it on.  Which brings her into contact with Boston PD Detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthey), a skilled, streetwise, but foul mouthed bull in the China stop style street cop.  Where Sarah is awkward, shielded and "trained and polished by the book smooth", Shannon is no barriers, in your face, no sacred cows in her approach.  Sara is all logic and data, while Shannon is intuition, impulses and street awareness.    Naturally, the two of them don't mix well at first.

But eventually, as the two of them get to know each other and find out that they are both decent people who bring some real skills to this job and they are both needing a real friend in this business of the enforcement of law, both their natural reticence begins to melt away and they go from being reluctant team mates to true comrades in arms.

Which is good, because they aren't only dealing with the expected criminal element, but they have traitors in their own ranks.

Sandra Bullock does what she does.  She is the kind of actress with a particular style and you either   liker her or you don't.  I like her.  She most certainly plays the smart, capable but awkward Special Agent role well. 

Melissa McCarthy, I've never seen her in a film before.  She's been in a few, according to her bio.  She apparently was also in Gilmore Girls, which what very little I've seen, from what I can tell kinda dealt in sarcastic women as it's stock and trade.  That's pretty much what she did here, just with more physicality and F bombs.  I really enjoyed her Detective Mullins, in all her crassness and loneliness as well.

Paul Feig, going all the way back to Freaks and Geeks, pretty much has established himself as the kind of comedy writer who can do funny people without making them seem like just carriers for jokes, which is against type when it comes to much American comedy writing for TV and films.  His funny people are just people who can be funny, rather than characters who exist to be funny.

The distinction is important.

I enjoyed The Heat.  It was heartwarming on a cold, cold November day.

Interstellar-Staring the Deep Black in the FACE

That tears it.  Christopher Nolan may be just a bit of a pretentious douche.  I didn't care for his snarky remark about how "real" movies don't do those extra credit scenes, obviously a shot at marvel.  A stylistic difference, Mr. Nolan, you don't have to be a jerk about it.  That said, the man does have his own style and way of doing things.  And given his dual track record of critical acclaim and box office domination, you can't exactly dismiss his opinion, though you may disagree.  He is one of the auteurs on the modern Hollywood scene who not only is a master of modern film technology and techniques, but he is a storyteller supreme with his own style and approach.  In Nolan's case, he likes to tell tales of humans probing the edges of knowledge and perception.  Be it our own memories (Memento), dreamscapes (Inception), the fraying edges of civilization (his Batman/Dark Knight trilogy) or deep space (Interstellar), he is about going "out there" to peer deep inside the human heart.

Nothing new about things, it is well known he has a fascination with technology and human know how and most of his films feature this aspect of humanity in one way or another.  In this case, he sets up the scientific as the existential crisis of an Earth gone sour.  Our world's life supporting systems seem to be breaking down.  No one is sure why, but the food plants we rely on are going extinct and the atmosphere is becoming more and more problematic.  As the nations of the world go more and more into survival mode, energy and resources are spent mostly on food production.  There are no more militaries and space exploration is taught as fiction to school children.

Cooper (Matthew Mcconaughey) is a former engineer and test pilot turned farmer who is disturbed by this turn in education.  His son, Tom, has been written out of college and will likely run the family farm on down the line.  His daughter, Murphy, is brilliant and headstrong, causing fits with the school and her fascination with science and space (again, being taught as a fiction to kids).  Murphy also tells tales of weird activity in her room, calling it her ghost.  One day, the "ghost" leaves a message in the dust in Murphy's room that she and Cooper interpret as map coordinates.  They follow them and find a fenced off compound.  It turns out, they have located the new headquarters of NASA, now a tiny, secretly funded organization seeking an escape for humanity from their current global dilemma.  The apparent escape hatch?  A wormhole, apparently artificial in origin and leading to a potentially life supporting world or worlds on the other side.  NASA needs a hotshot pilot and invite Cooper on the mission.  After some soul searching, Cooper accepts, though the parting from his family, especially Murphy, isn't easy, and it wears at his soul as Cooper and his crew plunge through the wormhole and stare into the dark abyss of a black hole on the other side.

Through wormhole.  Onto the edge of a black hole.  And to the surface of alien worlds.  Dealing with strange environments and the twisty, bendy effects of space-time in extreme environments.  Further, throw in an unknown intelligence working behind the scenes, our four astronauts are put to the test in trying to puzzle out their circumstances and save those they left behind.

You have all that AND cute robots who are smart alecks yet not cloying and annoying.

This is a big, space bound epic.  Lots of science yet not at all lacking a human heart.  It aspires to the big picture, but never forgets about that which drives us to push these barriers in the first place.

Interstellar is stellar.  If you like big, smart, heartfelt space epics, this is a must see film

So...boldly go.

Pretty In Pink-Please don't let Political Correctness Ruin this Classic...

One of the Brat Pack classics, this one was written but not directed by the legendary John Hughes.  Rather, Howard Deutsch is captaining this ship (still in the trade, mostly TV nowadays, notably True Blood).  Classic 80s high school film which stars Molly Ringwald as Andie Walsh, a smart, hard working high school senior girl from the wrong side of the tracks.  She works at a record store with Iona (Annie Potts) and her best friend is Duckie (John Cryer), who is madly in love with her, but plays it off for yucks (one of the classic defensive moves in dealing with pain).   She also admires from afar Blaine (Andrew McCarthy), but dangit, he is a rich kid and the social pressure...oh, just awful.  This is hammered home by a young pre Dr. Daniel Jackson/Blacklist/Utron James Spader (Steff), who, after being shot down by Andie, goes into a vile sour grapes mode and tries to pee in Blaine's pool, under the pretense of "friendship". 

That is most of our players and most of the variables in play, and it proceeds in a fairly predictable path, sold mostly by the skill of our thespians, the 80s high school trappings, the real relatable humanity on display by most and a really, really good soundtrack.

In recent years, under the category of "some people have forgotten what it is like to be young and have too much time on their hands", the "friend zone" concept is now under fire by some in the feminist camp.  Which is just weird.  The rationale is the woman's humanity does not matter, only her as an object to be possessed, and "friendship" is the consolation prize.  Further, that the woman is one more  sexual conquest denied and that is what the bad name of the "friend zone" spins out from.  So...it is bad.  This, of course, is nonsense.  Romance isn't just about lust.  Because you can bone someone without feeling affectionate.  You can lust for them physically without an ounce of tenderness.  A crush is a combo of physical desire combined with a sense of wanting a deeper connection.  It is even more painful when a friendship is indeed in place.  The sense of being "friend zoned" is the knowledge that a big blastproof door has been slammed down on the most tender part of that longing.

That sucks.  Even when not a teenager, though it doesn't happen as often in the later years.

What sucks even worse, though, is politically obsessed, agenda driven types who have forgotten their youth try to take something painful, yet exquisite about the experience  and sully it with their spin, no doubt dressing up painful experiences of their own with an attempt to try to turn it into some kind of misguided social crusade.

Just stop it.

The "friend zone" sucks.  But you deal with it.  It isn't oppressing anyone.

Stop trying to suck the recognizable humanity, the sweet and sour out of the life experience.

Oh, and Pretty In Pink is a great film, with such great artists as the Psychedelic Furs.

The Fisher King-In the Midst of Dysfunction, Make Me Care...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

AM1200-Listening to back country radio used to be a comfort.

Anyone who has driven the country roads and backways of America has had the experience of flipping through the radio dials and hearing those voices permeating the atmosphere.  Even in the days post Telecom 96, unique voices sound off on the dial.  Besides, no matter where you go, when you are spinning through the frequencies, on FM and especially AM, you can get a public radio station broadcasting NPR.  You can get some country music.  And usually you can get some religious programming, often a ranting, podium thumping pastor going on about sin and hellfire.  When you are by yourself on the dark backroads, especially late at night, the image of sinners resting their hedonistic bones in the hands of an angry God doesn't comfort.  Of course, it isn't intended to be comfortable.  But little do those thundering theologians know that it is future horror story tellers they are inspiring.  Stephen King would be one.  He has used such vignettes in several of his stories, most notably "Children of the Corn".  Then...there is AM 1200. 

The story sets up Eric Lange, who apparently is a money handling type who has done something wrong and is now making his getaway.  He finds himself in the back roads of Montana, driving to exhaustion to put some distance between himself and whatever lays behind.  Late at night, he picks up a radio station, AM 1200, and apparently someone is sending out a distress call and wants help sent to the station.  And "coincidentally", Eric finds himself driving near the station.  The night is pitch black with little outdoor lighting and it makes things hard to see and super creepy.  As if the radio signal wasn't enough.  Eric eventually finds the station and a man handcuffed to a poll inside the station (John Billingsly).  Things get really weird at that point.

The unknown.  The step beyond the comfortable.  No good can come of this.  And the thought of a voice from the ether reaching you from the invisible, radio alone, though we tell ourselves we have categorized and have it pretty well figured out...the mysterious voices from the dark always serve to draw and fascinate.  But what if, at the end of the message lies...

...that would be telling.


Great film.  See it.

Space Station 76-A Polyester Time Capsule

It is interesting to think that when we get to the future, it will look, sound and feel like the past.  Or more to the point, looking at older science fiction in literature and other mediums, and seeing that though they are visions of the future, they are very much products of their times.  Space Station 76 takes that idea and pumps it up to the nth degree, with a bleak yet tongue in cheek look at times to come through a decade long passed.

Space Station 76 takes place on Omega 76, an interstellar depot, intended to be a way station for travelers as well as a refueling and maintenance depot.  The human crew here is relatively small and lots of the station's functions are automated.  So you have this crew on this huge station that seems relatively isolated and alone when not doing their jobs.  Right off the bat, there seems to be some baggage. Captain Glenn (Patrick Wilson) seems especially isolated from his crew, even for someone in command, and is clearly struggling with some kind of demons which include the reassignment of the station's previous executive officer.  The new XO, Jessica (Liv Tyler) steps in, her skills and experience where they need to be, ready to do the gig.  Unlike the Captain, she tries to connect with the crew, but has trouble both with her position being a barrier and her sex, as the human crew is still functioning under the cultural mores of the 70s when it comes to relations between the sexes, which was an era far more in flux than it is now.

Later, you see scenes with various crew members interacting with each other, using technology that is clearly outdated by our current level of knowledge, and existing in a world that seems at times cold and awkward. Even the Christmas party which sets the stage for the denoument is purely surface and function, even more perfunctory than your worst office Christmas party you can imagine.

Right when the movie kicks off, the opening music is some rock psychedelia, setting the cosmic, existentialist tone of the film, firmly placing you in that retro future that the film is shooting for.   Many of the effects and the sets have a physical look to them.  They are functional and beautiful, with a tactile sense to them that the more CGI driven films of now lack at times.  The costumes, pure retro, harkening to Space 1999.   Later, as the film develops, you see more cultural drops place in that feel organic, yet clearly fill out that retro timelessness the film is going for, including easily recognizable pop tunes from the 70s.

Look, feel, technology and cultural mores put down those layers which make the sci fi salad of Space Station 76 work.  But the true nailing down of this is that the creators clearly know their 70s science fiction.  The 70s were an era that relatively few science fiction films were made, but many of them that were had a distinctly...if not fatalistic outlook, at least one of pessimism and existentialist angst, even crisis.  They had the idea that we can get out on the edge of space and time, looking for the answers.  But the real deep ones will continue to elude us and when we turn to each other, we will find the same confusion and difficulty of connecting we always have.  If we are lucky, occasionally, we will breach those barriers and make a connection that has a chance to transcend.

On the surface, Space Station 76 is a comedy about 70s science fiction tropes.  But much deeper, it is a wandering through all the things of the 70s, not just science fiction, that made it such a unique cultural period, and yet, especially through the lense of science fiction, manages to be timeless.

It is a thought movie.  Not a yuck yuck comedy and NOT one driven by 'splosions.  It is almost all dialogue.  But if the above thought exercise appeals to you and the decade exploration is something you can relate to...especially if you remember the 70s and love the science fiction of that decade, this film is for you.