Friday, March 29, 2024

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Last night I went to a Thursday preview of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and, as is the case with the other movies in the MonsterVerse (Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Godzilla vs. Kong), the monsters are compelling and so much fun to watch and the humans exist to provide boring convoluted exposition.  Kong has taken up residence in Hollow Earth but, because he is lonely, he ventures deeper and deeper into uncharted territory looking for other apes.  He finds a tribe, including a young ape named Suko and their brutal leader Skar King who controls the powerful ice titan Shimo.  The scientists working at a Monarch outpost, including Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), pick up an unexplained signal which is especially distressing to Jia (Kaylee Hottle) and triggers Godzilla to go on the move.  Andrews, Jia, a daredevil veterinarian named Trapper (Dan Stevens), and the conspiracy theory podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) travel to Hollow Earth and discover that the last remaining members of the Iwi tribe, from which Jia is descended, sent the signal requesting help against Shimo.  Kong fights Skar King and Shimo but is outmatched and wounded (prompting Trapper to give him a mechanized arm) so Jia awakens Mothra who convinces Godzilla to join forces with Kong.  An epic battle ensues.  The first two acts are kind of a slog to get through with a few fun moments, such as Brian Tyree Henry for comic relief and the touching relationship between Kong and his mini-me Suko, but the third act is amazing with exhilarating battle sequences both inside Hollow Earth and on Earth (the Iwi have technology that controls gravity because of course they do).  All of the visuals are absolutely incredible, especially the Iwi's civilization in Hollow Earth, Godzilla's dorsal plates when they light up, and Mothra's wings.  This is probably the most ridiculous and least interesting installment in the MonsterVerse but I would by lying if I said I didn't enjoy it!  I recommend it to fans of the franchise.

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Immaculate

I was very excited to see Immaculate after all of the positive reviews from SXSW but, after seeing it last night, I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney) is a devout young woman searching for God's will after being saved from a near death experience as a child and this search eventually brings her to a remote convent in the Italian countryside.  She takes her vows and attempts to integrate with life in the convent but begins noticing strange goings-on in the middle of the night.  Strangest of all is when she discovers that she is pregnant despite the fact that she is a virgin.  Cardinal Franco Merola (Giorgio Colangeli) and Father Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte) proclaim it to be a miracle and, while most of the nuns venerate her as a saint, one attempts to kill her which leads her to suspect that something more sinister is going on.  The first two acts are unsettling and slowly build a sense of dread with a gloomy location (lots of long corridors), atmospheric lighting (lots of glimmering candles), ominous sound design, and eerie religious chanting.  Then the final act becomes a suspenseful survival thriller with impressive amounts of gore and an ending that is incredibly bold (it won't be for everyone but I liked the focus on the evils of man rather than the supernatural).  Sweeney gives one of her best performances because her escalating fear and desperation are palpable, especially in a long tracking shot through catacombs and in a haunting final shot.  Character development is very surface level and there are some inconsistencies that are never fully resolved but the narrative is an interesting twist on religious horror and I appreciated the tension and the mood.  I really dug this and recommend it to fans of the genre.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Late Night with the Devil

The next movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Late Night with the Devil and it was fun seeing this with a large late-night crowd!  This begins like a documentary investigating a disturbing incident that happened during a live broadcast of a late night talk show called Night Owls with Jack Delroy on October 31, 1977.  We learn details about Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), including his career trajectory and competition with Johnny Carson, his mysterious connection to an exclusive men's club, the death of his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig) which has caused his show to suffer a steady decline, and his decision, against the objections of his sidekick Gus McConnell (Rhys Auteri), to do an occult-themed show on Halloween in order to boost ratings.  Then it shifts to the "found footage" from the episode featuring Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a medium, Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss), a former magician turned skeptic, Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), a parapsychologist, and her subject Lilly D'Abo (Ingrid Torelli), a survivor of a Satanic cult who seems to be possessed by a demon.  During the course of the broadcast, Jack and his producer Leo Fiske (Josh Quong Tart) convince June to summon the demon with terrifying results.  I found the premise to be very interesting but I was a bit disappointed with the ending because the message about the high cost of success is a bit jumbled.  However, I really loved Dastmalchian's performance because he nails the smarmy persona of the late night talk show hosts of the era (more about that) and he portrays Delroy's uncertainty about what is happening so well that the audience begins to question it as well.  The rest of the cast commits fully to the bit but Torelli is especially unnerving!  The 1970s vibe is absolutely brilliant and I loved the retro design of the brown and orange set, the cheesy theme music, the period costumes and hairstyles, the aspect ratio, and the grainy film aesthetic.  This is more unsettling than scary (although there are some suitably gory sequences) but it is really entertaining, especially with a crowd, and I recommend it.

Problemista

Last night I had another double feature at the Broadway starting with Problemista.  I saw a preview for this last fall and it really piqued my interest but it got delayed so I've been waiting a long time to see it.  It was worth the wait because I loved this imaginative and whimsical take on the American dream.  Alejandro (Julio Torres) is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador who keeps getting rejected from a development training program at Hasbro.  In the meantime, he works at a cryogenics facility and is tasked with monitoring the frozen body of an artist named Bobby (RZA) but an incident with the power generator gets him fired which puts his work visa in jeopardy.  On his way out he meets Bobby's eccentric wife Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an art critic who has alienated everyone in the art world with her outrageous and deranged behavior.  She decides to hire Alejandro, after he lies about knowing FileMaker Pro (a hilarious running joke), to help her curate a show of Bobby's paintings.  She promises him that she will sponsor him on his visa application if the show is a success but she is almost impossible to please and seems to create obstacle after obstacle.  However, he ends up being the one person who understands her and she ends up giving him the confidence to go after his dream.  As someone who has had dealings with the immigration system in the U.S., I found the surrealistic portrayal of the bureaucracy involved to be both hilarious and poignant, especially when Alejandro must climb through an endless maze that gets him nowhere as the sands in an hourglass fall faster and faster.  I also loved the personification of Craigslist (Larry Owens) as a genie, who Alejandro uses to find jobs that pay under the table, to be really clever.  Torres gives a subdued performance as Alejandro shuffles through (literally) all of the outlandish situations in which he finds himself and this is highly effective in juxtaposition to Swinton's over the top portrayal of entitlement on steroids.  This is definitely a social satire about inequality but it is one with a highly original vision that mostly succeeds and I couldn't stop laughing!

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

I actually had a lot of fun with Ghostbusters: Afterlife so I decided to see the latest installment in the franchise, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, last night.  There is a good movie in there somewhere but, unfortunately, it is overstuffed with nostalgia, unnecessary characters, and distracting subplots.  Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her children Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace), and her boyfriend Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) are now living in the iconic fire station in NYC and working as ghostbusters.  Their latest exploit leads to a lot of collateral damage which gets the attention of Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) who wants to shut them down.  He settles for suspending Phoebe because she is a minor.  This leads the rebellious Phoebe, who feels useless and left out, to befriend Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), a restless ghost desperate to reunite with her family who died in a fire.  Meanwhile, Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani) sells an ancient artifact once owned by his grandmother to Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) because he is now collecting cursed objects.  A demonic god named Garraka, who uses fear to lower the temperature to absolute zero, is trapped inside but Melody, who hopes that Garraka will reunite her with her family, uses Phoebe to free it from the artifact which unleashes a new ice age on NYC.  Phoebe must join forces with Melody and Razmaadi, who has heretofore unknown powers as the Fire Master, to stop it.  This story takes a really long time to get going but it is the best part of the movie.  However, it becomes a convoluted mess with the addition of nostalgia characters such as Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), and Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts), who do nothing but provide callbacks to the original movie, unnecessary characters such as Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O'Connor), who do nothing but provide callbacks to the last move, and characters, such as Dr. Lars Pinfield (James Acaster) and Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Osward), who exist only to provide endless exposition dumps.  There are also some subplots, including Trevor's desire to to be taken seriously as an adult, Gary's struggle to be a father figure, and Ray's fear of irrelevance, that don't really come together.  I liked Phoebe's arc and I really enjoyed Nanjiani because he provides a lot of comic relief but the rest of it is a slog to get through.  I wouldn't recommend it unless you are a die hard fan of the franchise but, honestly, Afterlife is a much better legacy sequel.

Note:  I think, going forward, the movies should only focus on the younger Spenglers or it might be time to end this franchise.

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