Kinds of Kindness (3/5 Stars)

Director Darren Aronofosky once commented in an interview while on the press circuit for “Black Swan” that the type of acting Natalie Portman was doing in that movie was the kind of acting that actors like doing. (See it and you can see why he was being a little defensive.) Actors want to perform scenes of heightened. The movie crew's job is to facilitate the same. Scenes of heightened emotion may not be easy, but easy is not the point. Ambition requires that the task be hard. Christian Bale doesn’t need to transform his body to play any particular role. Makeup and fats suits do exist. Christian Bale wants to do it.

I can only imagine that this sort of ambition draws actors to the projects of Director Yorgos Lanthimos and Writer Efthimis Fillippou, a pair of auteurs that deal primarily with the bizarre recesses of human behavior. Emma Stone is a seasoned veteran now having starred in several movies. Willem Dafoe returns with her from the latest Lanthimos movie, Poor Things, which was about a recently deceased woman who has her brain removed and replaced with the brain of her unborn child by a mad scientist. Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Mamoudou Athie, and Hong Chau are all rookies. Jesse Plemons, in particular, is an actor that specializes in being the square white guy in the room. He is flexing muscles here that he doesn’t usually get to flex. Like many Lanthimos projects, Kinds of Kindness is an exercise in stunt acting.

There is a fine line here when it comes to placing strange characters in bizarre situations and watching how they react. If the characters are too strange and the situations too bizarre, then the drama fails because there is no empathetic connection. There needs to be something that the audience can latch onto in order to feel what the characters are feeling.

“Kinds of Kindness” is a three-hour movie composed of three separate stories, one hour each. The actors are the same for all three movies, but they play different characters in each of them. Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone are the main characters. The titles of the stories refer to the only character that finds itself in all three movies, a man by the initials of R.M.F. And here you will have a good test of the movie reviewer. If the reviewer claims to understand why R.M.F. is important or what he can mean, then they might just be pretentious windbags. R.M.F., if he is anything, is an inside joke. The stories, for all intents and purposes, are in fact separate stories. They just employ the same actors.

The stories, like Lanthimos' career, are hit and miss. The first hews the closest to reality and thus works the best. The second works until its last fifteen minutes when it gets cold feet and breaks point of view. The third straight-up employs miracles, which have the strange effect of legitimizing what is otherwise utterly bizarre behavior. We will take them one at a time.

The first stars Jesse Plemons in an interesting turn. His character works for Willem Dafoe, but not in any worldly employment. Willem Dafoe orders him and Plemons complies in doing things so specific and disturbing that one would naturally suppose that Plemons is being blackmailed. But, apparently, Plemons isn't being blackmailed. Instead, he is just so needy and pathetic that he can't function without someone telling him what to do.  In fact, this neediness is so absolute that by the end of the story, you may start wondering whether it is Willem Dafoe that has the short end of the stick. And since the movie employs no magic, adheres to its internal logic, and is well acted by consummate professionals, it is inherently interesting to watch.

The second story is strong until it commits a perplexing error. It too stars Jesse Plemons as a police officer whose wife, Emma Stone, survived a plane crash and several weeks on a deserted island before being rescued and returned home. The thing is, for whatever reason, Jesse Plemons isn’t sure that the Emma Stone who returned is the same woman who left. He thinks that maybe she is an imposter, perhaps an alien. So, either he is insane or she is an imposter. Because this is a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, both could be a possibility and for most of this story, it is fun trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, about three quarters of the way through, the movie switches its point of view from Jesse Plemons to Emma Stone and gives away the game. Like a movie trick that is explained, it loses its luster. Its feels like Yorgos may have gotten cold feet.

The third story stars Emma Stone as a woman who has abandoned her family to work for a religious cult. The cult is obsessed with purity, but not in any scientific way. As an example, to cleanse their sinners, they subject to them to hours in a sauna. Then they lick their sweat to test, based on the taste I guess, whether the purification rite worked. The catch is that this cult is on the search for a great healer of a certain gender, height, and weight, who can cure people just by touching them. This person ends up existing. And if she exists, well maybe you can test whether someone is pure by licking their sweat. As far as I can tell, the cult's plan is to find, kidnap, and imprison this healer on a boat and then, (maybe), sell tickets to visiting sick people. This story does end in a rather satisfying way, whereupon Emma Stone does a cool dance and nothing that took place before matters. Then R.M.F eats a sandwich, which also doesn’t mean anything.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (3/5 Stars)

When telling a story, there are details that need to be explained and others that don’t, and yet others that seem like they should be explained, but actually, not really. And some things it is best to not provide an explanation for at all.

Perhaps the best non-explanation of a thing in the history of moviedom is Back to the Future’s treatment of time travel. Doc Brown points to what looks like (and is) three neon tubes and explains “this is what makes time travel possible, the flux capacitor”....aaand that’s it for the movie’s explanation of time travel. But my point is that this is the best way to explain time travel because time travel is impossible, so there is no point in spending an inordinate amount of time trying to justify it. We’re trying to watch a movie here. In this movie it’s possible because of the flux capacitor and we’re moving on.

The Mad Max series of movies (until this last one) are very good examples of movies not explaining things that are best not explained. We are told that the plot takes place in some future dystopian wasteland where nothing grows and the most prized resource in the world is gasoline. Gasoline is important because seemingly every technology but the internal combustion engine has vanished off the face of the earth giving armed stockcar and motorcycle gangs military superiority. And before you can really question how likely that scenario is, here are 90 minutes of awesome car chases.

A specific example of something not being explained in the last movie, Mad Max: Fury Road, was the missing arm of the female protagonist Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). She shows up as a highly capable warrior who can drive and shoot and fight and she doesn’t have her left arm. No explanation is given or attempted. What did the audience think of this? Well, if they were like me, they would have just assumed she was either born without it (this is a toxic wasteland) or she lost it doing something badass.

In Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, we are treated to the explanation for how her arm was lost. And now that I have experienced both knowing and not knowing, I can tell you that I prefer not knowing how the arm was lost. In fact, consider this alternate take on the Furiosa movie. The movie starts with a two-armed child. She gets kidnapped by bikers and grows up at the Citadel. Later in the movie, as the character switches actresses from child to Anya Taylor-Joy (late 20s now), she is reintroduced without her arm, the idea being that she lost it somehow, and there is still no explanation given. Think about it, wouldn’t that be kind of awesome.

There is way too much explaining going on in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Just look at the run time, 2 hours 38 minutes. Max Mad: Road Warrior from 1982 was a brisk 96 minutes. Mad Max: Fury Road was the longest of the movies at 2 hours, but still its plot was deceptively simple. That movie starts with a car chase that goes one way and then they turn around and go back to where they started. It’s all over within a few days of movie time.

Here we have a plot heavy movie for the first time and much of it is not the kind of plot that we line up to see a Mad Max movie for, that is, it doesn’t involve car chases in the desert. Sorely missing is the exhilaration of Nicholas Hoult’s performance as the delirious and excitable War Boy Nux in the Fury Road movie (“What a Lovely Day!”). There is a notable big rig fight with a bad guy called the Octoboss, but that is too small a part in this movie, which is full of too many things that mean something. Since the world is impossible, it is best not to dwell too much on what makes it work. I’m not sure I need to understand the political machinations between the Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gas Town.

Did Anya Taylor-Joy do a good job? That is hard to say. She certainly wasn’t memorable in the way that Charlize Theron was. Then again, she is not given much to work with. She has next to no lines, and didn’t do anything that would establish her as an action star. We have Chris Hemsworth chewing up the scenery, but there is either not enough of him, or just too much of other things.

I was very impressed by the look of Mad Max: Fury Road when I saw it all the way back in 2015. I had a similar experience watching Furiosa this year that I just had watching Dune 2. That is, I was less impressed by the visuals. I wonder whether it is because the world is not being introduced to me for the first time or because I saw the movie at home on a smaller screen. It is hard to say, though I do believe that the action in Furiosa is inferior to Fury Road. Something about it, well, I just know sometimes when I am watching a CGI car crash or a CGI blood spatter, and it isn't exciting. I wish the creators just figured out some way to do actions scenes without it. Ultimately, CGI is a crutch not a solution. Just watch Road Warrior. I am continually amazed by how well those 1982 action scenes work with no computers at all to rely on. They just have to do a little bit less in frame and employ a little more creativity.

Hundreds of Beavers (4/5)

Hundred of Beavers was written by Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews (you don’t know them) sometime around 2018. It was shot over the winter of 2019-2020 in Wisconsin with a crew of six. Mike Cheslik directed and Ryland Tews starred. The movie was edited by Mike Cheslik for two years using mainly Adobe After Effects ($22.99/month subscription). The total budget was $150,000. The movie premiered at the Fantastic Fest in 2022, which is a film festival in Austin, TX, that is not SXSW. From there, it hopped from film festival to film festival in 2023. It was released on streaming in April 2024. A select few theaters in NYC showed it for a couple of weeks.

The above storyline you should find intriguing. Because a film made by nobody and coming from nowhere usually doesn’t eventually get to a wide distribution. What usually happens if the movie is bad or even mediocre is that it dies a quiet death before anyone who doesn’t regularly attend film festivals even hears of it. But here “Hundreds of Beavers” is, and it is possible that you can see it. You probably should, simply because it exists and there is nothing else much like it.

Hundreds of Beavers is a slapstick comedy about an apple cider brewer named Jean Kayak that loses his apple groves and applejack liquor business in a catastrophic instance of beaver sabotage. He wakes up in the middle of a snowy winter with nothing and spends the first third of the movie just trying to survive in the wilderness. The movie is in black and white (not deliberate, just cheaper to edit and create special effects) and lacks dialogue (deliberate for purposes of humor). Jean Kayak’s attempts to feed himself resemble the plot of an extended Wile E. Coyote cartoon. He concocts elaborate plans and traps to snare his dinner, rabbits and beavers, which routinely veer off into bizarre and humorous outcomes. The movie employs human actors for all parts, even the rabbits and beavers are played by humans in rabbits and beavers costumes. But beyond that, it is hard to tell what in-frame is real and what is an aftereffect. For practical purposes, the movie may be categorized better as animated.

The second third of the movie plays like a video game in which Jean Kayak reinvents himself as a fur trapper and starts concocting elaborate schemes to kill beavers and sell their pelts to the local merchant in exchange for increasingly valuable prizes (the most valuable of which being the hand of his daughter in marriage, worth "hundreds of beavers"). This part of the movie gets a little tedious, not necessarily because any one part of it is not funny, but because there are too many separate parts. After all, the perfect length of a Looney Tunes cartoon is about five minutes long. This movie is 108 minutes. You can only take so much of this type of fast-paced humor before being gassed. I'm not sure what part should have been cut, but its about 18 minutes too long.

But in the third third, well, that is where the movie truly gets special. For the beavers aren’t just ordinary beavers. They have been chewing through the forest in order to gather enough logs to build something extraordinary on the lake. Indeed, what exactly they are building argues that Jean Kayak’s increasingly systematic harvesting of their pelts amounts to something close to a murderous rampage, if not an outright genocide. When Jean Kayak is Beaver captured, he is even given a Beaver trial and provided a Beaver lawyer. This Beaver society has the rule of law.

There are some truly ingenious scenarios and setups in this movie. The opening song is a lot of fun. The hunting party and the wolves that follow it provide amusing horror/suspense. The merchant’s daughter is a good pole dancer. And I happen to think that men in big beaver costumes are inherently funny, especially so when they are fighting. I eagerly anticipate what Cheslik and Tews could do with a budget. Someone should give them a bunch of money so we can all find out.

I think this movie would make a great double feature with Avatar. Avatar is one of the most expensive movies ever, made by as high-profile of creators as you can get, and has such a self-serious pro-nature bent that it is technically anti-human. Whereas Hundreds of Beavers couldn’t be cheaper, is made by nobodies and is unapologetically, perhaps even unethically, pro-human. The latter would be a great antidote to the former.

Road House (2024) (3/5 Stars)

They have remade "Road House" the 1989 classic action-comedy starring Patrick Swayze. This gives me another excuse to talk about Roger Ebert, whose review of the same I am incorporating entirely at the bottom of this review. I have read at least a thousand of Roger's reviews. His review of Road House is arguably his best one. I share this review more than I share any other of Roger's reviews. On the "Road House" DVD, one of the audio commentaries is done by superfan Kevin Smith (Clerks) who takes the time to bring up and read the entirety of Roger's review during the movie. In the history of DVD audio commentaries (as far as I know) it has only happened once that a movie review is recited for the record, and that was Roger's review of Road House.

It is notable that Roger didn't think the movie was good, but this only proves one of his better philosophies: that it isn't the reviewer’s job to get it right, that is to correctly judge whether a movie is "good" or "bad". (thumbs notwithstanding, Roger would always direct his audience to his writing column for his full opinion. He reviewed far more movies in writing than on his TV show.) No, the job of a reviewer is to describe the movie accurately. This is the only way a reviewer can be helpful because different people want to and like to see different types of movies. Now, with that idea in mind, I suggest you peruse Roger's review. By the end of it, I guarantee that you will have a pretty good idea as to whether or not you are the type of person who would want to see Road House (1989).

The remake of “Road House” has a decent enough pedigree on paper. Doug Liman (Swingers, Edge of Tomorrow) is directing. Jake Gyllenhaal has replaced Patrick Swayze as Dalton. Billy Magnussen is the lead bad guy and Conor McGregor, the UFC fighter, is a crazy henchman. But producing a remake, particularly a remake of an already perfect movie like Road House (1989), is tricky. After all, if the original movie is great, why remake it? Why not just watch the original. Case in point: West Side Story (1961) and West Side Story (2021).

A remake only makes sense when the original movie is good with room to improve, is hampered by a lack of budget/outdated technology, or has a cultural barrier like a foreign language. Great remakes include Scarface (1933) and Scarface (1983), Ocean’s Eleven (1960) and Ocean’s Eleven (2001), and Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla Minus One (2023). Scarface is a good example of an update in time and place, taking a 1920s Italian immigrant smuggling booze in NYC and replacing it with a 1980s Mariel Boatlift immigrant smuggling cocaine in Miami. Ocean’s Eleven is a good example of taking an ordinary heist plot and adding on lots of intricacies and smooth editing. Godzilla Minus One is arguably the best remake I have seen, introducing a superior drama as well as 21st century special effects to a B-movie that utilized men in godzilla suits.

What I am saying is that doing the same thing in a remake doesn’t make sense. Something should change. The tricky part is deciding what should change when so much of the original movie worked. And Road House (2024) is a lesson in changing the wrong things.

The update in time and place is neutral. The original Road House took place in 1989 in Missouri. The new Road House takes place now in Florida. Whatever.

However, the biggest and most inexplicable change is the backstory of the main character, Dalton. In the original movie, Dalton is the world’s best bouncer. He gets head hunted by a corporate man who owns a bar that he wants to remodel and expand. Dalton doesn’t drink or smoke, starts his mornings with some half-naked Tai Chi (or something), and tells his subordinate bouncers to be nice to rowdy customers. In the remake, Dalton does not have this back story. In fact, he isn’t a professional bouncer at all. Instead, he is a UFC fighter that got blackballed from the sport because he killed an opponent in the ring with an illegal hit. The owner of the new Road House (Jessica Williams) hires Dalton not because she wants him to stop fights, but because she wants Dalton to win them.

The bad guys have changed too. In the original, the big bad guy, Brad Wesley, was a hedonist who threw extravagant Playboy style parties in his mansion (Seemingly financed all by shaking down local businesses, which as Roger Ebert accurately pointed out, seemed to be limited to three locations). Here the bad guys are young angry men on yachts engaged in the well-worn subplot of a real estate developer trying to force out the one last remaining business on the block so they can get on with their planned super-development. There also seems to be a drugs subplot, which would be in the running with the former for the most well-worn subplot in the history of movie subplots. The bad guys have a lot less fun than Brad Wesley did in the first movie. They have no women. There is no nudity.

That the bad guys are a lot less fun and that Dalton is unprofessional removes one of the elements that made the original Road House unique. How to put this? You see, Dalton (1989) works in a corporate capacity. His stated purpose is to help the owner’s business by calming down the joint so that patrons can feel safer and spend more money. Dalton is polite until he cannot be polite. He has a degree in philosophy. He’s monogamous. In other words, Dalton is a square and the original Road House (1989) is a conservative movie. Now, I say that even though the original movie is wall-to-wall sex and violence. But this is one of the things that movies can do. They can reinforce ideals in the good guys while simultaneously allowing a vicarious experience of the opposite through the bad guys. Road House (1989) allows the squares to have it both ways. The new Road House (2024) removes this guilty pleasure.

Instead, Dalton (2024) is but a reincarnation of John Wick and an endless multitude of other older violent vigilantes, a man who nominally wants to be peaceful but becomes super dangerous if angered enough. I don’t understand why that would be the change to be made in this remake. Road House (2024) has ditched the one thing that made the original unique and, in turn, has transformed this intellectual property into something you’ve already seen a bunch of times.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a good actor. He has done fine work in a multitude of movies (Zodiac, Prisoners, Okja). Having said that, I don’t really buy him as an action star. Even with all the muscles. He does his best work as Emo (Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, Nocturnal Animals). I find it hard to believe that he could beat Conor McGregor in a fist-fight. Weird thing is, I don’t think he is necessarily miscast as Dalton, but I mean the 1989 Dalton that only drinks coffee and tries really hard to be polite. He is miscast as this Dalton, which tries to be the poor man's version of Liam Neeson and/or Keanu Reeves.

Also, where are all the fat men getting into fistfights like the original movie? And the good music? Or the G-String contest? Could we get at least one ridiculously large explosion of a barn? How about a shot of Jake Gyllenhaal’s ass (McGregor’s ass does not count)? You couldn’t fit the line “Pain Don’t Hurt” anywhere? And, and, and….

-----------------

Roger Ebert, May 19 1989

The guiding spirit of "Road House" can be glimpsed in one particular scene, which is set in the trophy room of an evil sadist who holds a helpless town in his iron grasp. His hunting trophies include not only the usual deer and elk and antelopes, but also orangutans, llamas and a matched set of tropical monkeys. This guy went hunting in the zoo.

We are expected to believe that the sadist financed these hunting expeditions by shaking down the businesmen in a town that, on the visible evidence, contains a bar, a general store, a Ford dealership and two residences. "Road House" is the kind of movie that leaves reality so far behind that you have to accept it on its own terms.

Was it intended as a parody? I have no idea, but I laughed more during this movie than during any of the so-called comedies I saw during the same week. Consider, for example, the movie's hero, a barroom bouncer named Dalton and played by Patrick Swayze (last seen in "Dirty Dancing"). Here is a man known as the best bouncer in the business - and the business must pay well, since he owns a Mercedes convertible. But he is not simply your average tough guy. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University and is capable of deep insights into his trade, such as, "In a fight, nobody wins." Dalton is summoned to a small Missouri town where the Double Deuce, the local nightclub, is terrorized nightly by the local goons and louts. His assignment: Bring peace to the bar so the owner can remodel and expand. His enemies: the hired guns of Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), the extortionist with the exotic trophy room. (Everyone in this movie has names out of a Western - not only Dalton and Brad Wesley, but also such characters as Wade Garrett, Doc, Emmet, and Cody. Doc is a girl, but never mind.) Dalton wades into the fray on opening night and finds himself in the middle of a fight in which the furnishings of the Double Deuce are reduced to matchsticks. Wounded by a knife cut, he goes to the hospital, where the gash is sewn closed by Doc (Kelly Lynch), a beautiful blond who is impressed by Dalton's doctorate in philosophy and his ability to withstand pain.

In no time at all, Dalton and Doc are making love on the porch roof outside Dalton's rented room - a roof that can clearly be seen by the evil Wesley, who once entertained hopes of becoming Doc's lover.

(These two houses, on either side of a river, seem to be the only homes in town, and most of what goes on in each house seems to be staged for the benefit of the other.) Dalton sees he needs help to clean up the bar. So he calls in his best friend, Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott), who is the second-best barroom bouncer in the world. (Note to cable TV operators: The world finals of bouncing might pull in decent ratings.) This upsets Wesley no end, since his income depends on maintaining an iron rule of terror over the local townspeople.

"Road House" is said to be based on an actual case in Missouri where the local bad guy, universally hated by everyone in town, was murdered in broad daylight - and no one in town seems to have seen a thing. If that is the genesis for the story, everything else in it seems to have come from a cheerful willingness to go over the top in every way possible.

This is the first movie in a long time to use the line, "Prepare to die!" And how long has it been since the same movie contained a) a dash into an exploding building to save an occupant; b) a rock 'n' roll band protected by a Plexiglas shield; c) goons who line up for instructions and call the bad guy "boss"; d) a lecture on the fine points of bouncing; e) a sexy woman doctor who goes all the way on the first date, and f) random quotations from the great Western philosophers? This movie is so top-heavy with plot, it can even afford to ignore some obvious possibilities. For example, Swayze's rented room is on a ranching spread across the river from Gazzara, and Gazzara is so busy with his other villainous duties that he doesn't have time for the standard subplot in which he wants to run the rancher off the land so he can build a subdivision. Of course, in a town with two residences, there may not be much pent-up housing demand.

"Road House" exists right on the edge between the "good-bad movie" and the merely bad. I hesitate to recommend it, because so much depends on the ironic vision of the viewer. This is not a good movie.

But viewed in the right frame of mind, it is not a boring one, either.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Not Boring)

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 by Russ Meyer, an auteur that produced, directed, and sometimes wrote low budget B-movies that prominently and constantly featured women with large breasts.

I am writing a movie review about it for a couple reasons. The first is that I saw it last week in a movie theater, Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, NYC, to be exact. The original rule of this blog was that I would write a review for every new release movie I saw in a movie theater. There were some exceptions to that rule over the the years, but given that I watch less and less new releases in theaters (my son, my work, the fact that there isn’t a movie theater in my neighborhood), I may as well expand the rule to every movie I see in a theater, regardless of whether it is a new release. I would like to write at least two reviews a month, and at least 20 movie reviews a year, and writing a review about every theatrical experience will help narrow what movies I write about. After all, I’m not really seeing less movies. Also the movie reviews will be fairer. For instance, I was considering writing a review for Dune: Part Two, but would that be truly fair since I saw the movie at home instead of where I should have seen it, on the big screen (I was about to write that the visual aspect of it was not as impressive the second time around, but is that because it wasn’t or because I saw on a television set?). This review will also give me the chance to write about the theatrical experience, and perhaps, the future of it. Stay tuned for that after the movie.

What can we say about this movie? It takes place somewhere in the Southern Californian desert where our three large breasted heroines (villains?) spend their time drag racing convertibles. There is Varla (Tura Satana) who has black hair, a violent nature and a short temper, Billie (Lorie Williams) a blonde, playful and sexually reckless, and Rosie (Haji) who is Italian much in the same way that Chico Marx is Italian. That is, she speaks in an Italian accent and that’s it. On the other hand, her lack of a personality defaults her as the relatively sane one.

The first half of the movie concerns this trio’s terrorizing of a young couple. It starts out friendly, and I’m still not quite sure what happened, but ends in a murder of the guy and the kidnapping of the girl. Then as the trio are filling their gas tanks, the station attendant tips them off on an old man living in a nearby ranch that might be hoarding a large amount of money. He lives with his two sons, one of which reminded me of Dr. Frankenfurter’s creation in Rocky Horror Picture Show, i.e. he’s hot and very stupid. The old man is, like immediately, revealed to be sexually degenerate, and somehow this movie turns from a story about the trio kidnapping the girl to maybe saving her from this guy.

In between all of this nonsense are fast cars, fast women, a few murders, two sex scenes that both start and end inexplicably, one fried chicken lunch, and several lame but not annoying attempts at humor. I enjoyed it. As Roger Ebert (movie critic, and former screenwriter for Russ Meyer) wisely put it: a B-movie can’t be good in the classic sense, but they can achieve a certain level of distinction by not being boring. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Is the perfect example that statement. You can say a lot about what it is or isn’t, and the arguments will continue for as long as the movie is still watched, but something we can all agree is that it is not boring.

At the showing, the movie was (briefly) introduced by a film historian who informed me that the movie was a favorite amongst homosexuals and that Russ Meyer was an honorary member of the gay community. (This movie was part of a film series at Nitehawk titled Be Gay, Do Crime!). That is sort of news to me. Like, I was aware that gay film directors like breasts (see Almodovar and Penelope Cruz), so it was not hard for me to realize the connection with Russ Meyer when it was pointed out. But I think the connection is even simpler than that. The women in this movie don’t really act like women. (Of course, neither do the men act like men. The story isn’t written well enough). They do however, act and look like drag queens. Drag queens are the combination of the worst stereotypes of both men and women, the aggression and entitlement of the man, the vanity and vapidity of the woman. And although we can argue about whether being so extra is socially acceptable, I think we can all agree that drag queens are not boring. I like them well enough at a distance, like on a movie screen.

I am happy to report that Nitehawk Cinema showed Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! In its main theater for a 9:30 p.m. showing on a Monday night and that the performance was sold out. Importantly, because the movie is not a new release, Nitehawk will be able to keep most, if not near all of the take from the tickets receipts. On top of that haul, Nitehawk sells good food and alcohol, which probably bring in more money than the tickets.

I believe Nitehawk is the future of movie theaters. Not as many people see new releases in theaters nowadays because of their ability to see movies on streaming services or on demand at home on big high definition television set for less money and less travel. But the experience of watching a movie that cannot be paused in a dark room on a giant screen with a group of people (all of which intensifies reactions and minimizes distractions) is still the best way to watch a movie. Add catered food and mixed cocktails and you've got a high value experience. With the advent of social media, it is now easier for movie theaters to advertise for special events like the showing of old movies. And since tickets can be purchased online several weeks, sometimes months, in advance, the theater will have a pretty good idea of whether the night will be well attended and adapt accordingly. I expect Nitehawk could have even switched the theaters from the large room to the small room depending on demand if it was so required.

Another good development that I have heard of but not yet experienced has taken place. Movie studios are now able to own movie theaters. (The news is that Sony has purchased Alamo Drafthouse). This vertical integration was long barred because of monopoly restrictions, but (I am assuming) the splintering of American culture and diversification of ways to experience content has rendered those monopoly concerns moot. In the best case scenario, what this should do is allow more opportunity for smaller films to be seen in movie theaters. As it is, since movie theaters have to give a substantial amount of their take to the studios for new releases, movie theaters have an incentive to show only big blockbuster films that they know will sell a lot of high-price tickets. If the theaters don’t have to share the take (because the studio owns the theater) and they can serve food and alcohol (all you have to do is remove zoning laws) then the price of the movie ticket could conceivably remain low enough for people to be willing to watch a smaller movie in the theater. We will cross our fingers and see.

Godzilla Minus One (5/5 Stars)

“I have a question. Does this plan of yours mean certain death?”

“Of course it doesn’t.”

“Okay, well, those odds are better than the war.”

So goes a conversation in Godzilla Minus One in which a naval commander attempts to persuade a room of Japanese men to volunteer for a mission to fight back against Godzilla, a monster mutated to gigantic proportions by radioactive discharge of H-Bombs tests in the Pacific Ocean in post-war Japan. It is an extraordinary scene given the historical context. The first notable detail is that the commander is requesting cooperation, not demanding compliance. Japan, and particularly imperial Japan, before and during the war, was extremely hierarchical. Not only did figures of authority demand complete obedience (infamously to the point of death), but the subjects usually obeyed without compunction. The second notable detail is that enough men actually agree to the mission, after, importantly, others do not without shame or consequence. This is right after defeat in World War II, a conflict whose damage to Japan and its people was exacerbated by the imperial leadership’s willingness to sacrifice its soldiers/pilots in suicide attacks and its people in bombing raids far beyond the point of any realistic hope of victory (and, of course, the American’s stunning capacity for ruthlessness in carrying out the same). These men aren’t agreeing to this dangerous mission simply because the authorities are expecting them to. They accept it on their own terms and, specifically, they aren’t willing to risk their lives for nothing. They insist on a plan that makes sense and has a chance to succeed. In one movie scene, you can feel Japanese culture feeling around for the middle ground between gung-ho aggression and total pacifism.

In the annals of human history, there are not many parallels to a society being so thoroughly laid low as Japan was in World War II. What exactly happened has rarely been directly addressed in the history of cinema, American or Japanese. One of the best war movies ever made, Grave of the Fireflies, showed a fire bombing raid, a mother covered head to toe in bandages dying from burns, a sister slowly starving to death. Thankfully, it was animated. The subject matter was so intense that it would have been very hard to watch if the medium itself wasn’t one removed from reality. Godzilla has always been a giant metaphor for nuclear war of course, but here he becomes more than that, a giant metaphor for war itself. How the characters react to Godzilla reveals their feelings toward war, the present one with Godzilla, yes, but also the one that has just devastated the country. In East Asian fashion, the people still pull their punches when it comes to criticizing their leaders, but the metaphor presents the opportunity to indirectly express these feelings, and the writing by Takashi Yamasaki (also the director) is exemplary in this regard. The main dramatic through is the character of Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot that either smartly and/or disgracefully did not complete a suicide mission during WWII, and how he seeks to redeem himself against Godzilla.

After seeing this movie (and being floored by how good it was), I looked up the original movies from 1954. An apt comparison of Godzilla Minus One is the first Daniel Craig era reboot of the James Bond franchise Casino Royale. A similar idea behind both being: what if we took this very popular pulp entertainment and rebooted it as a well-made and produced, dramatically competent, movie. Well, here it is. According to Wikipedia there are 38 other Godzilla movies. I’ve only seen five of them (1954, 1998, 2014, 2021, and 2024) but I would be very surprised if Godzilla Minus One isn’t the best one. This isn’t just a great monster movie. It’s one of the best movies of the year.

Godzilla himself is a fearsome monster. He has come a long way from a man in a suit knocking over skyscraper models. There is the iconic scene of crowds of people running away from him as he stomps through Tokyo. Godzilla’s heat ray is a straight up atomic blast that prompts an extraordinary scene of not just physical destruction but emotional devastation. The movie won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects and, somehow, this is a low-budget movie. Or at least relatively low, like 30 million dollars. I frankly don’t understand how that is possible, except to say that everyone else in the industry has much they can learn from it.

Unfrosted (3/5 Stars)

 

There is a scene in Unfrosted, a movie that parodies the making of the original Pop-Tarts, in which the product is tested in the labs over there at Kellog’s. The brains behind the operation, Bob Cabana (played by Jerry Seinfeld) and Donna Stankowski (played by Melissa McCarthy) are stationed behind sandbags, plate glass and barb wire while Steve Schwinn (played by Jack McBryer) dressed as an astronaut tests out the products ability to interact with an ordinary kitchen toaster. This takes place on Earth, but Steve Schwinn moves in slow motion as if miming the low gravity of the moon. Then Bob Cabana looks over at Donna Stankowski and mugs, “Isn’t this a bit much?”

Take a moment to consider the context. Kellog’s didn’t test the first pop-tart this way. Indeed, Kellog’s didn’t even make up this story as part of an advertising campaign for the Pop-Tart. So it doesn’t make sense for the joke to be on a self-serious and unaware Kellog’s. Actually, the reason why the making of the Pop-Tart is being treated as if it is a NASA mission is because of Jerry Seinfeld. It is Jerry Seinfeld that really likes Pop-Tarts. It is Jerry Seinfeld that co-wrote this movie, directed it, and cast himself as the lead. So when Jerry Seinfeld remarks, “Isn’t this a bit much?” there is only one person who can be the object of that joke, himself. But the character Bob Cabana doesn’t seem to understand this, and really, the movie doesn’t understand it either, which is the main reason why the majority of it fails comedically.

Jerry Seinfeld once remarked that making a sitcom episode is like running with an egg. A movie is a compartmentalized and cooperative process and a joke is a fragile thing. For the joke to survive from inspiration to showtime, it needs to successfully survive writing, production, editing etc. Sometimes you can pinpoint, where exactly in the process the joke fails. Unfrosted is an example of a movie failing at the starting gun. The idea is wrong. The movie doesn’t know where the joke is.

If Unfrosted was going to work, then Jerry Seinfeld and his obsession with highly processed breakfast options needed to be the object of satire. To do this, he should have cast himself as the CEO of Kellog’s and he should have played the part straight with no winking. Then Jim Gaffigan should have been the long-suffering and weirdly obsequious Bob Cabana. Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan should have switched parts.

Then when the CEO of Kellog’s, Jerry Seinfeld, insists that competitors are to be spied upon, that a head scientist from NASA is to be poached, and that a coterie of crazy persons are hired to perform research (don’t change any of this, definitely keep Bobby Moynihan as Chef Boy Ardee), this will be funny because Jerry Seinfeld really is crazy about Pop-Tarts and everyone in Hollywood would gladly do anything he wanted. Just take a look at the cast herein, if you don’t believe me on that note. Jerry Seinfeld has such tremendous good will stored up from his TV show, which itself made so much money, that a rolled up red carpet follows him around on the off-chance he might want to do something, anything, other than stand-up comedy. (I heard he once remarked off the cuff something about bees being interesting. A year later, you had The Bee Movie.) That reality can be funny, particularly in the context of an unimportant breakfast option, but this movie doesn’t see that potential. It is frustrating to see so much not quite work and so much left on the table.

Here is an example of something left on the table. Melissa McCarthy, a NASA food scientist, is poached by Jerry Seinfeld. He argues to her that Pop-Tarts are an exciting innovative frontier in food and that it is a waste of her time to be working on the moon because that is never going to happen. Walk on the moon, Jerry scoffs, come on. Okay, that is funny enough. But where is the scene where NASA actually does put men on the moon and Melissa gets angry at Kellog’s because she missed it to work on Pop-Tarts. (This would be the dramatic end of Act II, a development that threatens to pull the team apart for good). And now imagine Melissa getting mad at Jim Gaffigan instead of Jerry Seinfeld because I switched the characters. Same goes for the Pablo Escobar and the Milk Thugs scenes. I mean, Jim Gaffigan can actually act ashamed/scared. Or to put it another way, Jim Gaffigan can actually act.

And wouldn’t it be funnier if Jon Hamm and Jon Slattery had a good idea for the marketing of Pop-Tarts, which Jerry Seinfeld rejects because he wants the moon. (That’s a MadMen reference). And wouldn’t it be funnier if, but I should stop here, I don’t want to be too obvious about wanting to work with Jerry Seinfeld.

The Boy and the Heron (3/5 Stars)

I saw my first Miyazaki movie, Spirited Away, when I was in college. It had come out a few years before that and had won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was part of a cultural wave that took subtitles into the mainstream. I thought it was a good movie without fully understanding it. A few years ago, I decided to watch it again, thinking that I would have a better grasp of what was going on within it. After all, I had twenty more years of life experience, saw many more movies, and had married a Japanese woman. The second time around, I understood it less than I thought it would. I still don’t quite get many parts of it. (Why is the furnace guy, half-spider?) I reread Roger Ebert’s review of it, and I don’t think Roger fully understood it either, but that wouldn’t stop either of us from admitting that it is a great movie. Sometimes, on a very basic level, you can just tell.

Indeed, having watched several of Miyazaki’s other movies and now The Boy and the Heron, it occurs to me that maybe these movies aren’t just replete with references that only the Japanese would know naturally. Maybe these movies are universally weird. It is hard to say.

Not that I can’t grasp the basics. I understand the basic emotional throughline. The movie takes place in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The boy’s mother died in a fire-bombing. After the war, his father moves his family to the countryside and he marries the sister. But the spirit of the mother still haunts the boy and this takes form in a strange building that is either a portal into another spiritual dimension, a temporal plane that takes place in the much distant past, and/or the product of space aliens. A grey heron, creepy and then funny, pesters the boy into following him into this fantasy land whereupon he happens upon many magical creatures and has several adventures. I think he succeeds in the end, in that sort of coming-of-age non-material maturation way.

I have a full knowledge of Aesop’s fables, greek mythology, arthurian legends, Grimm’s tales and other western folklore. I can only imagine that much of what is here might be references to past versions of Eastern folklore. The heron probably has some significance as may the carnivorous parakeets. But I do not know for sure. What I can tell you is that the movie is visually arresting, that it moves along at a fair pace and that there is always something to either marvel at or ponder over. The grey heron is a bit of a scene stealer, in particular, the way that it is animated so it is both an actual bird and some sort of costume for a small fat man.

In any event, I am very glad I saw it in a movie theater. And I’m pretty sure it would have been just fine without the subtitles too.