Irrational Man

Year 9, Day 308 - 11/4/17 - Movie #2,766

BEFORE: Emma Stone carries over from "La La Land", and I know what you're probably thinking - What happened to "Blade Runner 2049", that also has Ryan Gosling in it!  Well, I need that film to serve as an important link in about a week's time, so I'll post that review then.  I wasn't able to put all the Gosling films together if I was also going to get to this one, via the Emma Stone link.  And seeing as I watched "Cafe Society" already, which Woody Allen directed after this one, I couldn't just leave one of Woody's films unwatched.  His new film doesn't get released until December 1, so for about four weeks, I finally get to say that I've seen every released film directed by him.

It's a little bit weird that this one pops up now, with all the Hollywood scandals breaking over famous people and their patterns of sexual harassment and abuse.  Remember a few years back when everyone was freaking out because he married his step-daughter?  What happened, did everyone just sort of forget about that?  How come he still got to make a few more movies after that, but other people are getting blackballed right now?

THE PLOT: A tormented philosophy professor finds a will to live when he commits an existential act.

AFTER: This film is like a strange peek inside the mind of Woody Allen, and proves that's a really strange place to be.  It's mainly a riff on the old thought experiment about whether it would be moral to kill baby Hitler, if you knew that he was going to grow up and commit evil acts.  Only baby Hitler's never mentioned, instead this philosophy professor happens to find out about a judge whose rulings have made at least one person's life miserable, and he decides for that reason, the right thing to do would be to kill this judge.

And just as there's essentially only one music riff in this film - Ramsey Lewis' instrumental recording of "The In Crowd", which I guarantee you'll be sick of hearing after watching this film - the movie keeps going over the same argument, again and again, adding little or nothing to the reasoning each time.  Even after the deed is done, the professor keeps making the same arguments, as if to convince himself and others that he did the right thing, and made the world a better place.

Only the logic doesn't really work out, and it's not just because this judge's verdict made one woman's life miserable - and this is just based on what the main character overhears in a diner.  What if the woman wasn't telling the truth?  What if she was exaggerating her plight to gain sympathy from her friends?  What if the judge had one bad ruling in a career of mostly good ones, what if he was a great judge who had one really bad day, does he still deserve to die?   What if there are circumstances in the woman's life that justified giving custody of her children to her ex-husband, like if she was an alcoholic or an abusive parent?

It's surprising that a philosophy professor who's used to looking at the world from so many different viewpoints (those of the different philosophers he teaches about) could be so locked in to just one way of looking at the world.  Once he makes up his mind to make the world better through this act, it seems like nothing will change his mind or deter him from this course of action.  I'd be more likely to believe that a philosophy professor would be unable to act, because he'd be too busy considering the impact of his actions from so many angles.  Also surprising is the fact that this philosophy professor never once thinks that he's done something wrong - surely he must be aware that society has rules, and if those rules are allowed to be broken, then we risk the breakdown of society.

Meanwhile, there are two different women falling in love with him - clearly Woody Allen's fantasy - and one is his much younger student.  Nothing here about how wrong that is, for a student to begin dating her teacher, as if that's the most normal thing in the world.  I'm sure it happens, but in the real world this is usually discouraged, and there are repercussions when it does happen.  Not in this fantasy world, though.

And it's a big NITPICK POINT when the professor says, "You're not in love with your college professor, you're just in love with the idea of being in love with your college professor..."  What's the logical extension of this, if I turn it around on the filmmaker: Woody, you're not really in love with your step-daughter, you're just in love with the idea of being in love with your step-daughter?  Or what if someone were to apply this to people who don't approve of inter-racial relationships or same-sex relationships, it's a really dangerous line of thinking.

Worse than all this, however, is the fact that this entire plot is driven by coincidence and contrivance. Overhearing the woman in the diner is coincidence, and then so is everything from how the professor gets the materials to commit the crime, and then how his involvement is eventually discovered.  And then everything from the game of Russian roulette at a party to winning a prize at the carnival are just such obvious ways to set up future events - there's an incredible amount of bending the plot backwards just to put the elements in place that will be important later, with zero finesse.

Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "Inherent Vice"), Parker Posey (last seen in "Café Society"), Jamie Blackley (last seen in "The Fifth Estate"), Betsey Aidem (last seen in "Mr. Popper's Penguins"), Ethan Phillips (last seen in "Inside Llewyn Davis"), Sophie von Haselberg, Ben Rosenfield, Susan Pourfar, Tom Kemp (last seen in "Manchester By the Sea"), Joe Stapleton (last seen in "Spotlight"), Robert Petkoff, David Aaron Baker (last seen in "The Hoax").

RATING: 4 out of 10 piano lessons

La La Land

Year 9, Day 307 - 11/3/17 - Movie #2,765

BEFORE: Ryan Gosling carries over again from "The Nice Guys" and completes a nice little trilogy of films that are set in L.A.  Obviously anticipation is high for this one since it (seemingly) ALMOST won the Best Picture Oscar - that's enough to put it on my radar.  Plus it got a lot of buzz during its release and the last awards season.  Part of the most recent re-organization of film choices for November and December was for this exact reason, to prioritize the watchlist to try and get to the most important films first, even though there's a constantly shifting definition of what constitutes "important".

Today is my wedding anniversary, we've been so busy catching up after vacation that it kind of snuck up on us - OK, snuck up on me - but look, a romantic film appears on the schedule just in time.  These things do have a funny way of working out.

THE PLOT: While navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a pianist and an actress fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future.

AFTER: I admit that I fell asleep last night while watching this film - now I have been starting my films a little later than usual, because after a week's vacation both DVRs were close to full, so I'm still in panic mode trying to clear them, whether that means watching a couple shows per night or trying to clear some VHS tapes to dub things to.  Starting films at midnight or just after is a much better plan for staying awake during a whole film than what I'm currently doing. 

But I think it also says something about the film, which didn't hold my attention much during the first hour.  "Drive", by contrast, held my attention for its entire 100-minute length, while "The Nice Guys", at 2 hours 8 minutes, was more of a slog, but still I managed to stay awake.  To me that suggests that there's nothing really special about the first hour of "La La Land", where our two main characters, Sebastian and Mia, almost meet a couple of times - once in L.A. traffic and again at a club where he's playing Christmas carols on piano. 

The film then follows the eventual couple through four seasons - winter, spring, summer and fall - which is only odd because I thought the four seasons in L.A. were mudslides, earthquakes, brushfires and pilot season.  What becomes clear to me is that I have a lot of hatred for Los Angeles, I doubt I could ever live there or even spend much time there - San Diego is great, but the thought of L.A. makes my skin crawl.  I'd only consider spending time there if I manage to get on a winning streak while appearing on Jeopardy!...

And this first hour of "La La Land" more or less confirms everything I hate about L.A. - everyone is some kind of actor or musician or screenwriter, and is incredibly self-absorbed.  What other kind of person writes a one-man (or in this case, one-woman) show about their life?  Only the most self-obsessed, self-absorbed, self-indulgent people do that - "Hey, everybody, look at ME up on stage, talking about ME!"  Ugh. 

It doesn't even matter that when we meet Sebastian and Mia, neither one is very successful - she's working on a film lot, but as a barista, and he's got these grand notions of maybe opening up some kind of nightclub, but can't quite seem to get his act together enough to do it.  Combined, they've got a pile of hopes and aspirations and seem to be waiting for fate to tell them how to succeed, or for time to make them realize that it's all futile.  Despite this, they manage to come together and have some endearing dates (more-or-less) that follow the cinematic language of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly films.  They dance in sync in random places, they somehow float through space in a planetarium, and this calls reality into question because it messes with our ability to suspend disbelief, but does allow us to feel their love at least through metaphor.  Still, in the end, ho hum.

Because this is what Hollywood does - it shows us things that aren't real, so that we'll have dreams and aspirations of our own.  But now I wonder if these Hollywood-induced fantasies do more harm than good, because suddenly as audience members, we see the discrepancy between what THEY have on the screen and what WE have in our own lives, and we're made to feel "less than".  So as a New Yorker, I can say to Los Angeles - "See, THIS is why we hate you...you're not even real!"

I want to pause here and mention the fact that while on vacation last week, my wife and I visited Graceland, Elvis Presley's estate outside Memphis, TN.  And two things struck us - first was the excess of the man's life, since we paid the extra few bucks to see not only his house, but his collection of cars, studded jumpsuits and his private jets.  My wife remarked that "This is what happens when you give a 20-year-old millions of dollars..." and it's not hard to draw a line from Graceland to the culture of today's rich and self-entitled actors and recording artists, only now they're making billions instead of Elvis' millions. 

The second thing that hit us was that the life of Elvis presented by the museum exhibits was completely sanitized, there was no mention of infidelity, divorce, drug abuse, or Elvis shooting at the television set if he didn't like what was on.  Even his police badges from around the country was just presented as something Elvis liked to collect, rather than things that would allow him to commit crimes in just about any state.  Elvis was also a movie star, so again, that's what Hollywood does, it shows us the illusion, the distorted reality, when the truth is that so many actors and musicians have regular human failings and most are not good role models in any way - they're just richer and more well-known than most of us.

But thankfully there is something of a shift in "La La Land", without spoiling anything I think I can say that there is some trouble in the relationship, and it occurs when both people gain some measure of success.  The logical progression of this argument was fascinating to watch, because it was the closest that the film did come to reality.  Someone might want their partner to get a job and become successful, but then find themself regretting it when he (or she) then has to work overtime, or go out of town for work.  Well, do you want them to be successful, or not?

Plus, remember, we're talking about an actress and a musician here, two self-absorbed people at heart.  Can either of them possibly learn that relationships require sacrifice, sometimes putting the other person first?  Yeah, it's not looking good.  I don't want to say any more about it, except that this film really redeemed itself in my eyes in the last half-hour. 

Also starring Emma Stone (last heard in "The Croods"), John Legend, RoseMarie Dewitt, Finn Wittrock (last seen in "Unbroken"), Jessica Rothe, Sonoya Mizuno (last seen in "Ex Machina"), Callie Hernandez (last seen in "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Labor Day"), Tom Everett Scott (last seen in "Parental Guidance"), Meagan Fay, Damon Gupton (last seen in "Whiplash"), Jason Fuchs, Josh Pence (last seen in "Fun Size"), Terry Walters, and a cameo from the voice of Ian Wolfe (last seen in "Reds").

RATING: 6 out of 10 iced coffees

The Nice Guys

Year 9, Day 306 - 11/2/17 - Movie #2,764

BEFORE: Ryan Gosling carries over from "Drive" for the 2nd film of three in a row, but his third appearance (out of 5, probably) for the year.  I'm getting close to that point where I can feel like the remaining schedule for 2017 is locked in, and I can officially go through every film and tally up each actor's appearances.  Close, but I'm not quite there yet.  Maybe in December, which is getting closer every day.

I recorded this film to go on a DVD with "Body of Lies" - the two films appear to have nothing in common except Russell Crowe, and the titles rhyme.  Little things like that are helpful when I'm trying to remember what film I put on what disc, because they're arranged alphabetically on my shelf, but only by the name of the first film on each disc.  All this time, and I still haven't found a better system for organizing my films so I can locate the 2nd film on a DVD - sometimes I just have to scan through 6 big DVD cases until I find the film I'm looking for, or something sparks my memory regarding which film I paired it with, and therefore which disc I put it on.  "Drive" ended up on a DVD with "La La Land" just because both films premiered on PPV/premium cable around the same time.

THE PLOT: In 1970's Los Angeles, a mismatched pair of private eyes investigate a missing girl and the mysterious death of a porn star.

AFTER: Sometimes you can just tell that a movie was pitched to the studio as a combination of two or three other movies - this is sometimes called the "elevator pitch", as if you only had two minutes to describe an idea to a studio executive while riding on the elevator with him, so you have to resort to shorthand such as, "Imagine Groundhog Day meets Scream" and that's how you get the horror movie "Happy Death Day", which is in theaters now.  For "The Nice Guys" it was probably "L.A. Confidential" meets "Boogie Nights" meets "The Big Lebowski".

You take the Los Angeles setting, corrupt politicians and Russell Crowe/Kim Basinger combo from "L.A. Confidential", the 1970's time period and the porn-industry backdrop of "Boogie Nights", and mix in the ransom delivery, drunk/stoned detective work and porn-industry backdrop (again?) from "The Big Lebowski" and that should account for everything in "The Nice Guys".  It's a nice theory, but unfortunately it doesn't add up here to something greater than the sum of its parts.  Like a few years ago I caught on to beer floats, which take two things that I love, beer and ice cream, and put them together. If it's done correctly, it makes for a tasty dessert/beverage - like putting vanilla ice cream in a pumpkin stout, or maybe some chocolate ice cream in a tasty coffee stout, or vice versa.  Things like this make some culinary sense.

Last week I was at the Texas State Fair, home of many odd culinary creations (mostly deep-fried) but spotted a listing in the program for Oreo beer - say no more, I was sold, and I set out to find that booth with Oreo beer before the end of the day.  But whoever invented this drink just threw any old pilsner beer into a slushie machine, creating a sort of frozen beer sludge, covered that with more liquid beer, rimmed the cup with Oreo crumbs and put a whole Oreo on top.  It was disgusting, probably because someone didn't know there's more than one kind of beer (it MIGHT have worked with a nice Guinness, perhaps).  "The Nice Guys" is kind of like the Oreo beer of movies.

(NOTE: do not drink this, or even try this at home)

Seriously, for the majority of this film I could not even tell what was taking place, or what was supposed to be taking place.  I get that it's got something to do with a missing girl, but there's also a dead porn actress who apparently looks a lot like the missing girl (umm, even though they don't look a thing like each other) so the film has to bend over backwards to create a scenario in which every client of these detectives is old, senile and half-blind, or some combination thereof, just to create enough confusion to bring the two main characters together.  That feels really, really forced and therefore unbelievable.

What's more confusing is that the missing girl, Amelia, ALSO made a porn film, but she did it as some kind of political protest against the auto industry, which for some reason doesn't want to implement the use of catalytic converters or something (sorry, I'm not a car guy, I didn't get this part at all).  Another wild coincidence is that Amelia's mother has some high-level job with the Justice Department, but she's also being controlled by the auto industry, and I guess this is why there was so much smog in Los Angeles in the late 1970's?  But believe me, nothing's smoggier or foggier than this film's premise.

There are underworld thugs all over the place, that keep showing up to try to kill Amelia, or one or both of our hero P.I.'s, but for thugs, they're very well-dressed.  Again, it was the 1970's, and fashion was apparently everything.  But by this time our two detectives have stopped fighting with each other (though on one level, they never really do...) and have decided to work together to unravel this case.  They do this through a process of wild speculation, binge-drinking and attending parties at the home of porno producers.  Because you know, detective work.

Everyone connected to this case keeps turning up dead, so I guess that's how they know they're on the right track?  Also one of the detectives has a daughter, and she's somehow smarter than both of them put together.  This is a serious problem, because the film relies on her tagging along everywhere they go, just so they have someone to figure things out, and who then needs to be rescued every 5 minutes.

The actress playing the daughter does the best job she can to not be annoying, but since the part was written for a 15-year old who acts like a 30-year old, and appears to have ironic knowledge of what will happen in the 1990's, it's no use, the character still ends up being very annoying.

But at least I could understand her - between Russell Crowe being apparently unable to move his lips and Ryan Gosling depending on his looks to speak for him, I could barely understand a word either of the lead actors was saying.  How did someone make a mumble-core 1970's action comedy?  And more importantly, why?

When you throw so many disparate elements into a movie's plot, you risk the end result being complete nonsense, and that's what I think happened here.  The big climax of the film comes at the L.A. auto show, and the big plan was to secretly splice this porn film that satirizes the auto industry into the big company presentation - like, how would that even force anyone to take one step toward solving the smog problem? The worst that could happen would be that this car company would be embarrassed and force to apologize for screening a film with nudity, and then it would be back to business as usual.  Even on its best day, this plot is complete nonsense.

There's a bit at the end that leaves open the possibility of a sequel, and I pray this never comes to pass.

Also starring Russell Crowe (last seen in "Body of Lies"), Matt Bomer (last seen in "Winter's Tale"), Angourie Rice (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Keith David (last seen in "The Thing"), Kim Basinger (last seen in "Grudge Match"), Lois Smith (last seen in "Run All Night"), Gil Gerard (last seen in "Airport '77"), Margaret Qualley, Beau Knapp (last seen in "Southpaw"), Yaya daCosta (last seen in "The Butler"), Murielle Telio, Daisy Tahan, Jack Kilmer, Gary Weeks (also last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), with cameos from Elayne Boosler, Robert Downey, Jr. (also last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming") and the voice of Hannibal Buress (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"),

RATING: 4 out of 10 killer bees

Drive

Year 9, Day 305 - 11/1/17 - Movie #2,763

BEFORE: It's a new month, November, and I'm finally starting the chain that will take me to the end of the year.  I think it will be 20 films in November and 18 in December, with multiple appearances by Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, both Hemsworth brothers, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Peter Sarsgaard, Eric Roberts, John Waters, Christina Applegate, André Benjamin, Weird Al Yankovic, Tim Robbins, Fisher Stevens, Carrie Fisher, and Tom Hanks.  (There you go, an enterprising person could probably guess most of my remaining line-up from just those acting links...)

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.  Tonight Bryan Cranston carries over from "Godzilla" and let's start chipping away at the Ryan Gosling films.  I heard about this film a couple of years ago, it seems to have developed something of a cult following a few years after its 2011 release, so I kept an eye out for it.  But no premium channel seemed interested in playing it, so I waited and I waited and it was on my secondary watchlist for probably three years before it popped up on PPV for $2.99 a month or two ago.  If it hadn't, I probably would have paid that to watch it on iTunes today - as it now serves as important connective tissue.

THE PLOT: A mysterious Hollywood stuntman and mechanic moonlights as a getaway driver and finds himself in trouble when he helps out his neighbor.

AFTER: This seems like a very simple film at first - a man does what he does best, which is drive a car, and he does it in several different ways, as a stuntman and as a wanna-be race car driver.  (And he's a mechanic, and he's a getaway driver.  Where does he find the time to eat dinner and, you know, do his laundry and stuff?). But let's assume for the moment that one man can hold down these four jobs since he's good at the driving and stuff.

The problem seems to be one of crossover and contamination - for three of these jobs he's working for the same guy, who's a stunt coordinator/garage owner/wanna-be racing team coach.  Again, let's assume for the moment he's also a similarly skilled multi-tasker.  But through him all of these jobs are connected to the mob - the Jewish L.A. mob, but still, the mob.  (Surprisingly, the always-great Albert Brooks did not get an Oscar nomination for his turn here as the mobster who seems very nice on the surface, but probably isn't if you happen to cross him.).

And we really, really want to think that our nameless hero, the driver, is so good at what he does, that maybe he can pull off all these dangerous things and go on unscathed, that maybe he can lie down with dogs and not wake up with fleas, just because he's so good.  Or is he lucky?  I've heard it's better to be lucky than good - or is it the other way around?  He seems like a nice guy, very clean-cut, he's got a nice budding relationship with his cute neighbor and her son, and we want things to keep going his way.  But can they?  Or is his luck inevitably going to run out, one of these times.

The deal the driver's got going on the side - after he finishes his other three jobs and presumably grabs a meal and some shut-eye - is to show up at a particular time and place with a running car and an open door, and his client has five minutes to jump in the car.  No questions asked, and he won't carry a gun, but the client is in his car (assuming he makes the 5-minute window) then the driver's going to get him out of there.  Hey, he saw a niche in the marketplace - freelance getaway driver - and he made it his own.

And I want to keep on thinking that this film is very simple, and therefore very elegant in its simplicity, just because it's so stylized and very, very cool.  Ryan Gosling as a driving superhero of sorts in a white satin jacket.  Very cool, and this beat "Baby Driver" to the punch by a good four years!  With his knowledge of the L.A. streets, and knowing which cars blend in the best and the police tend to ignore, plus street smarts, plus pluck and spirit, and how can you not root for him?

But my fear is that if I start to pick this story apart, it's going to unravel like a poorly knitted sweater.  Coincidences abound, and maybe things could really happen this way, but it's all a little too pat, too compact, as if there's only 10 or 20 people in the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, and I know in my heart that can't be the case, it's a city of like 4 million people, right?  And if he's so good at getting lost in the city, how come the people who want to hurt him keep finding him, again and again?

I'm going to stop looking for NITPICK POINTS, because part of me just doesn't want to find them tonight.  I want to keep this one pure and honest, and simple and elegant.  It came into my life, it held my attention for 1 hour 40 minutes, and it did what it set out to do. So let's leave it at that.

Also starring Ryan Gosling (last seen in "The Big Short"), Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Pride & Prejudice"), Albert Brooks (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Ex Machina"), Ron Perlman (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Christina Hendricks (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Russ Tamblyn (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Joe Pingue (last seen in "Room"), Andy San Dimas, Kaden Leos, Jeff Wolfe, James Biberi.

RATING: 6 out of 10 driving gloves

Godzilla (2014)

Year 9, Day 304 - 10/31/17 - Movie #2,762

BEFORE: It's Halloween, and once more, scary monsters walk the land.  Don't worry, most of them are between the ages of 5 and 15, and they just want candy.  Unless you're in Hollywood, where most of the real monsters are powerful producers and directors, and we're hearing scarier and scarier stories about them every day now.  But I digress.

Godzilla carries over as a character from his first film, to his most recent - and it seems like Hollywood's already working on a sequel to this 2014 film that will be titled "Godzilla: King of the Monsters", due out next year.  Hmm, that title seems kind of familiar.  But again I digress.  Right before I started the Halloween chain I watched "Trumbo" with Bryan Cranston in it, so ending on this film sort of gets me back on track, picking up where I left off and all that.  And we'll see Mr. Cranston again tomorrow, barring some late-breaking scandal news out of Hollyweird.

Thanks to TCM and their focus on Dracula and Hammer Films this month, I wasn't able to make much of a dent in my list of horror films to watch - even though I watched 21 films this October, new films rushed in to take their places, and now I have 25 left, which might be more than I started with.  That's almost a full month of horror films to watch in 2018 - and that's why I may never finish this project.

THE PLOT: The world is beset by the appearance of monstrous creatures, but one of them may be the only one who can save humanity.

AFTER: This meshes with the history of Godzilla films, since he started out as a mindless villain, but then over time was shown battling even badder, more destructive monsters, so he became something of a hero, or at least an anti-hero.  The first part of this film seems to hearken back to the original 1954 film, since it mentions that date as his first attack on Tokyo.  Then we flash-forward to 1999, when a giant skeleton is found underground in a mine, along with two spores, one of which appears to have hatched.  Shortly thereafter, there's an attack on a nuclear reactor in Japan - and though we don't see a monster at this point, its presence is surely implied.  The American supervisor of this plant experiences a great loss during this attack as the plant is destroyed.

Fast-forward again to 2014, as the supervisor's son is all grown up, with a wife and son of his own, and is working as a bomb disposal expert for the U.S. Navy, but his father keeps getting in trouble with the Japanese government as he's still investigating the cause of the plant disaster - chasing monsters, as it were.  The son has to travel to Japan to bail out the father, and thus all the pieces are put into place.  Together they decide to investigate the old quarantine zone, and they discover a secret facility that appears to be drawing radiation from another giant monster, a winged creature that hatches and starts destroying everything in sight.

I'm afraid that's about as much sense as I can make out of this story, because after this it's extremely all-over-the-place.  There's junk science a-plenty - for example, was the plant drawing radiation from the creature, or was it feeding it radiation?  There's no real clear answer.  Aren't there much safer ways to generate energy than to siphon it off of monsters?  Or if they're feeding the monster radiation, for God's sake, why would they do that?  These non-Godzilla creatures are apparently called MUTOs, or "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms".

And then while we're focused on the MUTOs, we may not even notice that Godzilla doesn't even appear during the first HOUR of this film that bears his name.  He must have the same agent as Harrison Ford, to get such a killer deal.

While one MUTO attacks a Russian sub near Hawaii, another one emerges from its spore near Las Vegas (umm, how did it get there?) and tears up that city.  Meanwhile, Godzilla's swimming over from Japan, and they're all going to meet up in San Francisco.  Which just happens to be where our hero's wife and son are - geez, what a coincidence!  I mean, sure, San Francisco's nice and all that, but why leave Vegas, home of the casinos and buffets?  Plus all the entertainment options, the great climate, this makes no sense.  And the other MUTO leaves Hawaii to go to San Francisco?  Again, I don't understand, Hawaii's like a tropical paradise by comparison.

But the nonsense continues, after some non-logical statements like "The monster's heading for Las Vegas!  Quick, send the military to San Francisco!"  And there's also, "Use this bomb to blow up the monsters!  Only, not right away, set the timer for 90 minutes for no reason!"  And don't forget, "Set up the tanks on the Golden Gate Bridge!  No, don't bother to clear all the civilians off of it first, are you crazy?"  And that's NITPICK POINTS #1-3, right there.

But wait, there's more, what about sending paratroopers in to find the monster's nest, which is underground?  Umm, couldn't you have just driven the team there?  And if the paratroopers are trying to sky-dive in to conduct a sneak attack, why do they have to have those cool red smoke trails coming out of their suits?  The monsters have eyes, too, you know, and they could just track the smoke trails to have a tasty little snack drop right into their mouths... And let's not forget that these creatures feed on radiation, so by all means, let's use a nuclear warhead to try and kill them.  Idiotic.  And that's NITPICK POINTS #4-6.

And then we've got the hero's wife, who's a doctor, and seems pretty smart, but she can't follow the simple instruction from her husband, which is "Stay where you are, keep our son safe, I'll come get you."  Instead she gives her kid to a STRANGER to be evacuated, and then wanders off in some random direction.  What?  That kid ends up in the most dangerous situation possible, all because she couldn't focus on her son and her job at the same time?  This is not a great shining moment for women trying to have it all.  Forget multi-tasking, she can even handle tasking.

It's all part of the Hollywood patriarchy, I'm afraid, which demands that we have a MALE hero who's in the military, an expert on bombs - in fact he's apparently the ONLY one with the right bomb knowledge, how is that even possible - and then he has to find his wife and son and put the family back together after defeating the scary monsters.  Give me a break.  Why couldn't the bomb expert be a woman?  Why couldn't the film show any woman successfully accomplishing ANYTHING?  We're never going to fix the gender issues if we keep falling back into these rigid stereotypes about men being more successful.

The special effects have come a long way since 1954, that much is clear.  And Godzilla's back to his original look, after fans complained he was too lizard-like in the film released back in 1998.  But it's a shame that the story here starts at ridiculous and then ventures into complete nonsense, that seems like a giant evolutionary step backwards.

Also starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (last seen in "Savages"), Elizabeth Olsen (last seen in "Captain America: Civil War"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Trumbo"), Ken Watanabe (last seen in "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant"), Sally Hawkins (last seen in "Layer Cake"), Juliette Binoche (last seen in "The 33"), David Strathairn (last seen in "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Richard T. Jones (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Carson Bolde, CJ Adams (last seen in "Dan in Real Life"), Victor Rasuk (last seen in "Fifty Shades of Grey"), Patrick Sabongui, Jared Keeso (last seen in "Elysium"), Hiro Kanazawa (last seen in "The Age of Adeline"), Ken Yamamura (last seen in "The Wolverine"), Garry Chalk.

RATING: 5 out of 10 EMP strikes

Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

Year 9, Day 303 - 10/30/17 - Movie #2,761

BEFORE: You may be getting your costume ready or buying some last-minute candy for trick-or-treaters, but for me it's just about time to wrap up the Halloween season - I've got two slots left and two films about Godzilla in my possession.  They happen to be the first one and the most recent one.

I watched a lot of lousy Godzilla films in my day, as a kid they ran them all the time on TV in Boston, channel 38's "Creature Feature", so I've probably seen a bunch of them, where he fought Rodan, Gamora and even the Smog Monster.  But I've never seen the original film from 1956, either the Japanese or the U.S. version.  So here goes.

I had great plans for Godzilla films, like the Marx Brothers or Fred Astaire I was going to watch this forum to see a great number of them in a row, but I've only got the two right now.  Rather than wait to acquire more, I'm going to follow the linking that tells me to watch these two now - carpe diem and all that.  Frank Puglia from "20 Million Miles to Earth" was also in "Without Reservations" with Raymond Burr.  And just before I started my Halloween chain back on October 1, I watched another film with Mr. Burr in it, the Martin + Lewis film "You're Never Too Young".  So there's sort of a palindromic feel to my horror chain this year, it kind of ends how it began, with a silly film from the 1950's with low-quality special effects.  Tomorrow I'll start detailing my plans for the final 38 films of this year.

THE PLOT: A dinosaur-like beast, awoken from undersea hibernation off the Japanese coast by atomic bomb testing, attacks Tokyo.

AFTER: I know this is probably regarded as a classic, but I'm just not seeing it.  The effects are SO low rent, and it's SO obvious when Godzilla was being played by a guy in a suit and when it was essentially a hand puppet.  This is a joke, right?  This film was never meant to be taken seriously, I'm thinking, because even the giant ants in "Them!" and the insect in "The Deadly Mantis" looked more realistic than this rubberized giant lizard.

To make matters worse, the original Japanese film from 1954 was not released in U.S. theaters until they first added framing sequences with American actor Raymond Burr, so that the whole story about the suffering of thousands of injured Tokyo citizens could be seen from an American perspective.  That sells the U.S. audiences very short, I think, to suggest that they needed to view everything through a white person's eyes, as he narrates the tale.  Did the filmmakers think we wouldn't notice that Burr never interacted with the important Japanese characters?

(It's almost comical, Burr's reporter character - who happens to be named "Steve Martin" - keeps mentioning how these Japanese scientists are his college roommates, or long-time friends, but every time he tries to have dinner with them, some emergency comes up and they have to cancel by phone.  All because the Japanese actors were not available to re-shoot any scenes with the added actor.  Sure, they all went to that university that offers degrees in paleontology, nuclear science and news reporting - you know the one...)

Or maybe it's worse to think of this as some kind of cultural penance for having dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a decade before, to end World War II.  As it is, probably not enough Americans felt enough grief and sorrow for being part of the only country to use nuclear weapons on civilians, but I don't think adding a fictional giant lizard, awoken by the bombs, is going to create the right apologetic atmosphere, but what the heck do I know?

Several similarities to "The Creature From the Black Lagoon", since both films feature made-up creatures that were believed to be extinct millions of years ago, and the best defense offered against them is to fill the ocean with explosives, because that won't damage the environment or the local fishing economy at all.  And like the Creature, or Dracula, or Frankenstein's monster, Godzilla is seemingly beaten and/or deceased by the end of this film, only we all know that he came back, again and again.

Starring Raymond Burr (last seen in "You're Never Too Young"), Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kochi, Akira Takarada, Akihiko Hirata, Sachio Sakai, Fuyuki Murakami, Ren Yamamoto, Toyoaki Suzuki, Tadashi Okabe, Toranosuke Ogawa, Frank Iwanaga, Mikel Conrad.

RATING: 3 out of 10 electrical towers

20 Million Miles to Earth

Year 9, Day 302 - 10/29/17 - Movie #2,760                    

BEFORE: I'm back from vacation, and WOW, what a trip.  We covered 4 cities, Dallas to Little Rock to Memphis to Nashville in 8 days.  My wife drove us about 700 miles in 2 rental cars (we switched cars in Little Rock, long story...) and I navigated.  OK, my phone navigated, but still.  I was in charge of selecting the best BBQ restaurant in each city, based on all of the BBQ-based travel shows I've watched over the years, and we really made some great selections: Stubby's BBQ in Hot Springs, AR; the Bar-B-Q Shop in Memphis (selected by Food Network as #1 spot for ribs in the country); and Peg Leg Porker in Nashville.  By keeping it to one restaurant in each city, we hoped to not get burned out on barbecue (right, as if that's even possible).

Our focus was on food, but we changed it up, and only had BBQ about every other day.  We also hit the last day of the Texas State Fair in Dallas, where we ate everything that was weird and deep-fried - deep-fried brisket egg rolls, deep-fried red velvet cupcake, deep-fried cream puffs, deep-fried clam chowder (yep, that's possible).  Deep-fried stuffed chicken wings, deep-fried bacon, deep-fried Thanksgiving dinner balls.  Oh, and I drank Oreo beer, but the less said about that, the better.  Then we drove on, discovered the Waffle House and went there a few times, once in each state.  To change things up even more, we ate dinner on top of a giant pyramid in Memphis, where I had venison sausage and elk chops. Also in Memphis I ate catfish for the first time, and it was fantastic. I also had some sushi in Nashville that was unlike any I'd seen before, with little egg rolls and gyoza dumplings rolled right in.

But wait, there's more - we also visited Southfork Ranch, where they filmed the exteriors for the TV show "Dallas" (my wife has seen every episode).  It was a little disappointing to learn that all of the interiors were shot on a studio in L.A., so the house on the real ranch looks nothing own the inside like the one on the show, unless you count the TV movies in the 1990s.  In Memphis we visited another famous house, Graceland, and took pictures of all the memorabilia stored in the neighboring museums, including many of Elvis's jumpsuits, gold records, and his many, many cars.  After walking along the banks of the Mississippi River and down Beale St., and a quick visit to Sun Records, we struck out for Nashville, where we didn't have any specific agenda, so we took one of those trolley/bus tours around town to see everything.  Sure, there's the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Johnny Cash museum, the Patsy Cline museum, but we didn't care about any of that.  All I wanted to see was the giant full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Centennial Park, which is where the climactic concert scenes were filmed for the movie "Nashville".  Done, on to the BBQ restaurant.

There was some weather drama coming back, we got an alert from Delta Airlines that we might want to reschedule our flight at no charge, because thunderstorms were expected for today.  But we didn't panic, kept an eye on the weather and kept our options open.  The storms apparently dissipated and turned into just regular rain, which delayed our return by only an hour, which is not bad, all things considered.  Now we're back, full of barbecue and exhausted.  But I can't relax, I've got to get right back into my routine to finish October's chain on time.

William Hopper (the son of Hedda Hopper, for real...) carries over from "The Deadly Mantis", and I thought this would sort of circle back around to where I started this segment of the chain, with "The Thing From Another World", but I guess it doesn't.  Or if it did, I forgot how it was supposed to do that.  I think this one was supposed to follow "Five Million Years to Earth", which got dropped from the chain entirely, and so I moved it to here, to be a proper thematic introduction to tomorrow's film.  Just two films left in October, and then I can put all these silly horror + alien films with terrible effects behind me, and get on to more serious matters in my November and December films.  Just 40 films to go in 2017, but so much more to cover...

THE PLOT: The first U.S. spaceship to Venus crash-lands off the coast of Sicily on its return trip.  A dangerous lizard-like creature comes with it and quickly grows gigantic.

AFTER: Sorry, rest of the world, this one is our bad.  The U.S. is totally responsible, apparently we just HAD to go to Venus and back, and our astro-nuts screwed up and just had to bring back a pet lizard with them, and now all this has to happen.  Something in Earth's atmosphere really super-charged this lizard thing and made it grow all enormous (must be all the "nutrients") - see, this is why we really started polluting our air in the late 1950's, so that we humans could slowly build up a tolerance for smog and ozone, and any invading aliens wouldn't be able to handle it.  Makes sense.

Our spaceship makes it back to Earth, but crashes near Sicily.  Which is a little weird, I mean if the pilot could find Earth, a tiny island in the vast cosmic ocean, why couldn't he land on the right part of the planet?  Unless that's EXACTLY how accurate his space travel skills are, he can get you to the planet, but that's about it - finding the right spot on the globe to land is just too difficult.  (By the way, how DOES a returning astronaut know how to find the Earth?  I mean, it probably moved since he left it, so it would always be in a different place...)

A little Italian boy then finds a metal capsule on the beach, and so he sells the jelly-looking stuff inside to a freelance zoologist, Dr. Leonardo, because that's what you do, so he can buy a cowboy hat.  When the goop hatches into a little lizard that seems to be a new species, the doctor is amazed and then heads for the institute to show off his new discovery.  But the creature starts growing, and eventually becomes too big for any cage the doctor has.

The highlight of the film is Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation of the creature, and the fight that it has with an elephant from the Rome Zoo.  Though mixing in live-action footage of a real elephant does make the stop-motion elephant look a little fakey.  They probably should have left out the real footage, because the real elephant moves very fluid and natural-like, making the animated elephant look sort of herky-jerky by comparison. 

Once again, love blooms in the time of disaster - this time it's between the pilot (and sole survivor) of the space mission falling for the zoologist's granddaughter, who just HAPPENS to be the nursing student who takes care of the astronauts after the crash.  She must be a terrible nurse, if only one of her charges survives...

Also starring Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia (last seen in "The Caddy"), John Zaremba, Thomas Browne Henry (last seen in "The Robe"), Jan Arvan (ditto), Tito Vuolo (last seen in "Shadow of the Thin Man"), Arthur Space (last seen in "Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood"), Bart Braverman, with a cameo from Ray Harryhausen.

RATING: 4 out of 10 sulfur bags