GODZILLA MINUS ONE (202 ) lives up to its press clippings as a first rate kaiju film. WW II is over and a failed kamikaze pilot is dealing with his guilt over not dying heroically as well as his obligations as part of a found family with a young woman and an orphan girl. On top of which a large reptilian monster is rising out of the water and it’s very angry …
This works both for the monster stomping Japan and for the personal drama, though the latter makes me curious what Japan made of this — it’s very much a rejection of code of Death Before Dishonor (“I forbid you to die!”) in favor of living for others. I also wonder, given how much recent films emphasize Godzilla as a thing of terror, what younger fans would make of the original series’ wave of friendly, if not cute Godzilla characterization.
As Camestros Felapton says, while Godzilla Minus One acknowledges the horrors of war and warmongering it presents them as something done to well-meaning Japanese soldiers, not reflecting anything they did to others (which would make it a good double-bill with Rambo). Nevertheless, the film works well. “It’s my fault for thinking I could dream again.”
DICK (1999) is the Watergate comedy in which presidential dogwalkers and White House “Secret Youth Advisers” Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst end the Vietnam War, bring about the SALT treaty, expose Watergate to Woodward and Bernstein and ultimately bring down Nixon (Dan Hedaya) not to mention causing the 18.5 minute tape gap. With Terri Garr as Williams’ mom, Will Farrell as Bob Woodward, David French as a talking head, Saul Rubinek as Henry Kissinger, Dave Foley as Haldeman and a lot of period detail. TYG enjoyed this one, particularly the lines like “You can’t let Dick rule your life!” — so apparently being too young to remember Watergate doesn’t hurt the movie. “I don’t understand the title of that porn movie.”
Funny, I know I enjoyed OCEAN’S 12 (2004) when I saw it in theaters but rewatching it, it didn’t work at all. For one thing the premise of this sequel is that casino boss Andy Garcia hunts down Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and “Ocean’s Eleven” (“Wait, why do you get top billing?”) and demands they pull off a big enough heist to repay him for the lost money — seriously, what kind of caper film has “repay the guy we robbed” as the motive? Another problem is that the cast spends way too much in supposedly clever conversations to the point the caper gets lost. This does have better women’s roles than Ocean’s Eleven, though, with Julia Roberts participating in the con and cop Catherine Zeta-Jones trying to thwart it. “I want the last check I write … to bounce.”
The second season of My Adventures With Superman is an excellent follow-up to the first season. Superman finally gets to talk with the hologram of Jor-El, learns he has a cousin who survived Krypton’s destruction. He also has to deal with Lois worrying the world’s mightiest man can’t possibly stay interested in her. Less successfully we have Amanda Waller ruthlessly pursuing her agenda of destroying Superman as a threat. I hate Waller as an outright villain (which she’s become in the comics too) and I’m heartily sick of purges against metahumans, mutants or whoever. Overall, though, the good far outweighed the bad. “I’ll be a beautiful widow and you’ll be the bodyguard who loves me but can’t express his feelings.”
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