Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

King Kong and Godzilla are BUSY. King Kong is trying to trap and kill dog/monster things with a bad tooth. Godzilla’s stomping around the world trying to charge up like an electric car for some TBD fiery showdown. Life is hard for the big monsters. Good thing we have Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry to narrate the important points. “Kong is trying to reach the surface!” “Godzilla’s preparing for something…” It’s impossible to look at this with any kind of cinematic critical thinking. The director of Pop Skull has made a computer-generated nature documentary bereft of sophistication or subtext. It doesn’t seem to be an allegory for World War II anymore. It’s epic, but it’s coherent, believe it or not. The busy plot hampers the desired monster-movie playfulness, but there’s still a crescendo of roaring and city-smooshing to please my monkey brain.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Watching this is a surreal experience. Numerous times I had to stop and ask myself, “Did I fall asleep? Did I miss something?” Scenes stop in the middle. Costumes change. Characters refer to previous scenes that aren’t in the movie. Characters seem to know things that they had no time to learn. It’s like it was edited with a chainsaw. It’s a mess. The cast is good. It’s too bad the story/plot/subplot/continuity/dramatic tension/climax are in shambles. What happened??

Death in Venice

I’ve never read the Agatha Christie book, but I’d be willing to bet it’s significantly less exciting than this adaptation by Kenneth Branagh. He knows he has his work cut-out for him, and in some ways overcompensates with a dancing camera and gothic sets from the Guillermo del Toro design guide. The result is a serviceable thriller/airplane movie with a strong cast and the requisite number of murders and twists.

Dream Scenario

Extremely heart-felt and well-made tragedy about an ordinary schlub who, for unknown reasons, is suddenly put on display, ostracized, and persecuted by the universe. Among other things, it’s a metaphor for cancel culture. But in this case, the ordinary guy, played neurotically and expertly by Nick Cage, did absolutely nothing wrong. The people around him don’t acknowledge this and participate in the pile on, because, well, you’ve got to stone SOMEBODY to death, right? Otherwise it could be you. When the persecution begins to drive him crazy, the schlub starts to make mistakes, which would be the normal human reaction. And then of course, to the people around him this reinforces the originally unfounded belief that he’s a bad man. And the spiral down hastens. It’s incredibly sad.

Cabrini

The cinematography in this is gorgeous by a photog who’s shot other “faith-based” films. The “faith based” marketing of this movie feels incongruous, since the story involved helping impoverished refugees and orphans, something the evangelicals are completely opposed to. It’s a highly stylized true story, and plays more like a Dickens/”Oliver Twist” heartwarming tragedy than a docudrama. It would have been a LOT better if it didn’t have 20 minutes of terrible faith-based previews before it. It’s well-meaning, but impossible to market, and cynically speaking, that’s the purpose of the faith-based movies – marketing. Church for sale.

Easy Rider

Re-watched this trailblazing hippie odyssey in 4K. The music is great. But the story, like the hippies I suppose, is sort of drifty and pointless. For better or worse, they believed that everyone was trying to kill them.

Kong: Skull Island

Re-watched this as a refresher for the Monarch “Monsterverse” sequels in the pipeline. It’s only so-so, but thankfully short.

Anatomy of a Fall

Performances are sharp in this Alpine murder mystery (including the dog!). It’s an astute procedural, akin to Law and Order, and details and depiction of the French Courts is intriguing. I wouldn’t say it’s Best Picture material, but it was emotional and watchable.