This week I watched Almost Famous, Good Time, Mission: Impossible III, and a whole lot of Godzilla movies.
93. Almost Famous (2000) - April 9th
Crowe's work here reminds me a lot of Richard Linklater, with this sense of romantic verisimilitude. Everything that happens in the film feels real, but in the way that memories we have complex feelings about feel real; no matter how we view them, they're inherently depicted through our own emotional lens. I like it a lot, it makes the whole experience feel that much more human, with a meandering sense of making its way through a series of incidents that just happened to make a good story when put together, creating a collection of events any person can appreciate for their honesty, regardless of how truthful the events are depicted. - 8.5/10
94. All Monsters Attack (1969) (Also known as Godzilla's Revenge) - April 10th
This is the low point of the entire Godzilla series. No matter how bad it gets, I can't imagine it being worse than this. Godzilla's Revenge is everything that was bad about the Showa series up to this point, with none of the redeeming factors and more crap piled on. It's obvious that the film is completely directed at kids, but in the process they made everything about it about twice as noisy as it needed to be. The concept is actually ok, but its execution is of in just about every regard, from seizure-inducing editing to the the incredibly obnoxious opening theme song that was so bad I nearly switched the movie off immediately out of reflexive disgust. The movie is about a kid escaping bullying and an empty home by fantasising about hanging out with Minilla and watching Godzilla fight monsters to learn to stand up for himself and fight his own battles; hardly what you'd expect from a kaiju film, but an interesting turn to take nonetheless. It unfortunately tracks through this concept dreadfully, with little more than shameless stock footage from Son of Godzilla, Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, and Destroy All Monsters thrown in with a smattering of new footage, and more obnoxious music, before spiraling out of control as the plot turns in to a kidnapping story. It's all bad, all the time, and it's too obnoxious to be so bad it's good - 2/10
95. Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) (Also known as Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) - April 11th
Ok, so I said that the Godzilla series couldn't get worse after All Monsters Attack, and I stand by that; however, Godzilla vs. Hedorah made it clear that they can get weirder. I'm not sure whether I love it or hate it. On the one hand, there's little to no cohesion in the editing, with the film cutting harshly between disconnected scenes, from drug-fueled fish-based hallucinations to animations to Godzilla's strangest and most frank entrance, with consistently awful framing and unsuited music; on the other hand, the movie is so bizarre that I have to give the movie at least a little credit for doing all this weird stuff, like a children's variety hour mashed with some monstrous horror. Hedorah itself is definitely one of the more interesting monsters Godzilla has ever faced, a creature of sheer sludge that literally craps himself on to Godzilla as a way of fighting him, powered by the world's pollution (the metaphors were never meant to be subtle, seriously the film opens with a song called 'Save the World' and uses Godzilla as a champion of environmentalism, a factor of his character that actually gives it something in common with Legendary Pictures' version of Godzilla). It's really kind of crazy to see Godzilla as he is in this movie, and indeed All Monsters Attack. He's evolved from the image of atomic destruction that was his inception, with the mid-Showa-era movies making him a much more neutral party that ends up on the side of good purely by way of the other monsters being worse, but in these last couple of movies he's become an angry saviour of the world, marketed as a figure of authority for children to look up to; in this film the main kid literally calls him 'Superman'. It makes sense given the series' trajectory, but it's doubtful anyone post-Hiroshima would've guessed that one of the many symbols of their pain would be turned in to a cash-cow marketed to children. Anyway, I sort of like the movie, at least about as much as I dislike it; for all its technical failings and strange stylistic choices and awkwardly disconnected segues that essentially allow no time for plot in a movie whose genre isn't exactly known for plot, the film is so weird that it's undeniably engrossing, and it puts so much emphasis on the concentrated effects of pollution that it becomes effectively horrifying. It's an ugly, sticky, but awesome mess. Plus, it gave us this. - 5/10
96. Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) - April 11th
I think I may be sensing a pattern with these titles.
Once again, we have a movie that elevates Godzilla's hero status as a reflection of people's shift of opinion about the character, and a movie that's so strange from its conception that I can't help but like it a little. Godzilla vs. Gigan goes back to the sci-fi stuff that was so prominent in the mid-Showa movies; aliens that want to take over/destroy the world, big monsters as their heralds, less message derived from its monsters and more its monsters as a suggestion of societal demands. The mid-Showa stuff was sci-fi because global obsession with space was at an all-time high, and Gigan is sci-fi in the hopes of reigniting interest in the Godzilla films with a familiarly positive aesthetic. The movie also seems more cohesive with the re-tread of story beats, even though its comic book stylings don't do much for the movie, other than allowing the monsters to actually talk for the first time. At least when Hedorah was weird, it was weird with clear, allegorical vision and purpose. Beyond that, at least Gigan was committed enough to maintain the pro-environmentalist angle, keeping Godzilla as a symbol of protecting the world rather than destroying it. Overall, the movie is fine, at least from my perspective, largely no doubt due to still reeling from All Monsters Attack, and Gigan at least has the advantage of being a monster with a really cool design and a memorable fight. - 5/10
97. Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) - April 11th
This is about as bad as it gets before dropping in to All Monsters Attack territory. Here, the original focus of the Godzilla series on atomic destruction and the environmental message of later Showa-era Godzilla movies would come together at once. It's a shame that they couldn't make a better movie out of it. Atomic testing becomes the basis of a pro-environmental message in the form of an ancient subterranean cyborg beetle god named Megalon being unleashed upon the surface world by a subsurface human race called 'Seatopians' as revenge for atomic testing. Normally, with the Godzilla movies, they get a lot better if the human element is strong; the original Godzilla has a dark and intense focus on the humans as they face horrific deaths, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster had the crazy hilarious possessed princess assassination stuff that's so silly I have to love it, and even Godzilla vs. Gigan's comic book artist subplot has a bit of personality with his relationship with his agent. Here, the human element is tied directly in to the plot, which on paper is actually cleaner, but is otherwise executed with so little life it's a wonder that they bothered. They had to give a reason for Jet Jaguar's existence, I suppose. The rest of the movie doesn't fair much better, save for the absolutely insane monster rumble with one of Godzilla's more memorable moves, something so cool they felt the need to do it twice. The monster Megalon is in a similar boat to Ebirah, being very unmemorable (save for the ability to spit fire bombs), but unlike Ebirah, Megalon doesn't have a hilarious James Bond ripoff of a plot to fall back on. Jet Jaguar isn't exactly an inspired conclusion either, with his design unsurprisingly coming from the winner of a contest for primary school kids. Either way, this film is bad and forgettable, like a handful of other Showa-era Godzilla films, so I'm not so much examining this series any more so much as I am simply absorbing them. This doesn't have a scale like the Friday the 13th series where it started mediocre and then got consistently worse; with the exception of All Monsters Attack, the Godzilla franchise started great, then became very mediocre, and then stayed in the range of pretty bad to better than okay for the entire series, with only on significant change coming every few movies or so, such as the far campier tone adopted by King Kong vs. Godzilla and carried all the way through, or the more explicitly sci-fi aesthetic they adopted in Godzilla vs. The Astro-Monster; watching Godzilla vs. Megalon is only a slightly different, slightly worse version of the experience you get watching Godzilla vs. Gigan, to the point that they may as well always just be part of a double bill, blending together like a haze of monsters and environmental themes. I kind of expect a similar experience from the only Showa-era Godzilla movie I have yet to see, Terror of MechaGodzilla, in that it will probably be a slightly worse version of Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla that may as well always be a double billing because the two are largely the same in tone, themes and monsters. Anyway, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Godzilla vs. Megalon is bad in a lot of the ways that the lesser Showa-era Godzilla movies are bad. - 4/10
98. Terror of MechaGodzilla (1975) - April 12th
Now we come to the last movie of the Showa-era series (if you want to know what I thought of Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, you can find it in my journal here). After this, Godzilla would disappear from the silver screen for almost a decade and go through a significant reinvention.
Terror picks up shortly after Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla. After the fight, Godzilla is recovering, and a destroyed MechaGodzilla is being repaired by the ape aliens, the remains of MechaGodzilla protected by Titanosaurus, a kaiju controlled by a mad scientist obsessed with studying marine life. As far as monsters go, Titanosaurus is essentially Godzilla-but-fish, and doesn't have much particularly inspired about him, save for one move that allows him to create gale winds with his tail. The main event is the return of MechaGodzilla, and the fact that, for the first time in the series, Godzilla is fighting two proper threats at once with no back-up. Godzilla's taken on more than one enemy before, but it was always fodder or with the help of another kaiju, and for once, especially since this is the last film in the Showa series, there's some real tension to the fights as Godzilla struggles with two such difficult enemies on his own. It makes it that much more important when he loses. One of the key factors of Godzilla seems to be that he always loses when he isn't helped, before winning with the aid of others, in this case the military rather than another kaiju. There's also some real craft to the introduction of Godzilla in this one, not to the calibre of, say, Godzilla (2014), but nevertheless a really cool reveal that reminds the audience, one last time, of Godzilla as a hero. The human element is very similar to vs. MechaGodzilla, with the same aliens pulling the same shenanigans, and the only new stuff is using a cyborg to keep MechaGodzilla's controls safe, less focus on the ape aspect of the aliens, and a mad scientist for using Titanosaurus. There is one neat twist to the fight, where Godzilla rips off MechaGodzilla's head as he did in vs. MechaGodzilla, only for it to be revealed that they've created a countermeasure for this specific occurrence; it's a smart little move that makes the fight more engaging. Overall, this is much of what I expected, although slightly better; aside from Titanosaurus and a few not insignificant stylistic changes, this is largely the same as Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, which is to say decent; a little better than the average Showa-era Godzilla movies, and memorable by virtue of the continued use of one of Godzilla's best rivals. - 5.5/10
99. Good Time (2017) - April 12th
I know it's some of the lowest of low-hanging fruit, but I'm gonna say it: Good Time is a good time.
The film moves with a pulse, a clear but destructive life and focus that makes its premise of watching a toxic person do toxic things to the people around him for his own gain for a hundred minutes considerably compelling. It's abhorrent, but feels pointed in its pointlessness. Everyone afflicted by Pattinson's poisonous existence, specifically his brother, manages to recover beyond his reach in a position similar to where they started, and everyone who is as toxic or more toxic than him ends up just as bad or worse off than him. The fact that he's doing all this because he loves his brother is the icing on the cake, showing the extent to which something like love can be twisted on such a personal level. It's still an excuse for a malignant man to mercilessly milk what he can out of each person that he meets, but it at least carries with it the recognition of where all that behaviour can leave you and the people around you. The film's not saying much, but it is saying it well and with a lot of style. It also helps that Pattinson is giving one of the best performances of his career here, conning his way on to the lives of the audience as easily he does the people he meets, with a sharp wit and edged persona that is constantly the highlight of the movie. - 7/10
100. Mission: Impossible III (2006) - April 13th
Damn I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Mission Impossible III is the same essentially far-fetched an fast-paced espionage fun of the first two, but with a more tightly tuned plot and bigger, more exciting setpieces, as well as a really fantastically portrayed villain in Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian. It's largely business as usual, but that business is over the top action, and it has enough laid over the top of the surface to give the experience a heightened sense of thrill. It's better, even if it lost its almost cartoonish nature in the process, and thankfully needs no context from the previous films. - 7/10
101. Isle of Dogs (2018) - April 13th
Do you get the pun yet? This was really damn good, and I highly recommend it. My full review can be found here. - 8/10
102. Rampage (2018) - April 14th
Yeah, this was surprisingly good. Not great, but some mindless destruction with some actual heart is kind of nice. My full review can be found here. - 6/10
Published April 16th, 2018
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