GENOCIDE (1968) is the last of that Shochiku boxed set from Japan, and it’s another strange mash-up. An American military plane crashes with a nuke aboard. A search leads to the crew’s bodies but what are the strange marks on their body? The result, it turns out, of a mad scientist (driven insane from her time in a Nazi death camp) scheming to breed a race of deadly venomous insects — not, as her employer assumes, to target Americans but to destroy all of humanity. As if that’s not bad enough, the insects are sentient and want to kill us to save their own kind from nuclear holocaust.
I wouldn’t say the results are good but they are interesting. The end is strikingly anti-American: to destroy the mad doctor’s lab and the insects, the military nukes her island lab without giving the Japanese residents a chance to evacuate. “I just love insects because they never lie.”
I wasn’t particularly excited at the thought of seeing THE ODYSSEY (2026) but TYG liked the idea so I said sure. It turned out much better than I expected.
Based on Homer’s poem (which I’d think obvious, but some of the discussion here indicates not everyone knows it), this tells the story of how Odysseus (a surprisingly effective Matt Damon) won the Trojan War by conceiving the Trojan Horse ruse. The journey home has proven far longer than planned, ending up with him amnesiac on the island of the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron). The loss of memory is a change from the source as an alternative to him simply spending several years banging Calypso while Penelope (Anne Hathaway) is grieving at home.
Speaking of Penelope, she and Odysseus’ son Telemachus (Tom Holland) have spent the years fending off suitors, most notably the slimy Antinous (Robert Pattinson) from seizing both the throne and the queen of Ithaca. Telemachus heads off for proof of Odysseus’ survival; Antinous decides it would be better if he doesn’t return home. In Odysseus’ flashbacks and the stories Telemachus hears we get the encounters with Polyphemous the Cyclops, the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and more. Also in the cast: Zendaya as Athena, Elliott Page as a doomed soldier and Lupita N’yongo as both Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra (she’s good-looking enough for Helen and effective as an actor in both).
Overall we really liked this though TYG was put off by the loud soundtrack (it didn’t bother me at all). I was disappointed they didn’t use more of Odysseus’ trickster skills, such as the story of how he tried to avoid going to Troy by pretending to be insane (I’m fond of tricksters — they seemed much more someone I could aspire to be than musclemen like Hector and Achilles). The effort to make the destruction of Troy (this goes with the theory it was all about control of trade routes) a symbol of civilization falling apart didn’t quite work, though it didn’t wreck the movie. If you have three hours to spare, this is worth catching in the theater. “It was the song of all the promises I’d failed to keep.
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