Death Stomps Again

A sort of review of GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019)

Directed by Michael Dougherty

Written by Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields

Cinematography by Lawrence Sher

Score by Bear McCreary

Staring Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Kyle Chandler, Ken Watanabe, Charles Dance, Ziyi Zhang, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidora, and Godzilla.

(This was mostly written the night of May 31st, going into June 1st. Life got in the way and I shelved this. Now it's out on home video, so I figured it was time to put it out. What follows is about 85% of the review I wrote for this movie. If you want a reaction closer to when I saw it, check out this episode of A Quality Interruption featuring Rafael Hernan Gamboa, he of The Long Take on Youtube and Violet, where among other things we do some fanfictioning on what this movie should have been.) 

ZERO DARK KAIJU

Godzilla (2014) was a reboot that was worthwhile. Instead of mining Godzilla for easy action set pieces, director Gareth Reynolds (Rogue One, Monsters) created a film with a unique tone and perspective that breathed fresh air into a flagging and ancient franchise. It brought terror and dread to the story, quietly resulting in one of the best action movies to come out in the past decade (one of the best monster movies, at least). There’s a reason they gave Edwards a Star Wars movie.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the sequel to that film (and the follow-up to the rather fun Kong: Skull Island) and it trades in majesty for volume. The restraint that made Godzilla (2014) worthwhile is gone, replaced with louder and bigger action scenes. Why inspire awe when you could just be awesome?

"Let them fight," huh? Am I right, guys? Guys?

The opening scene of King of the Monsters is vaguely reminiscent of Zero Dark Thirty (and, like all action blockbusters today, from Avengers to Game of Thrones, it’s a nice reminder that 9/11 drove us all insane*). This exists as both the high point and the low point of the movie. It's a moment that attempts to firmly establish King of the Monsters as a Serious Film about Loss and So Forth. It's also a moment that dispels any sort of tension. It's a movie where the worst has already happened. From there what could have been a serious monster movie, one with a unique point of view, instead sheds all of that in favor of being a bog-standard monster movie. A blockbuster to begin the blockbuster season. The opening of this film is a promise unfulfilled.

If there is something wrong with King of Monsters (and there is so very much wrong with it), you could probably diagnose its troubles by looking at its characters.

THE PROBLEM WITH NEVER SAYING NO

Of course, the frustrating thing is that the film isn’t entirely brain dead. You look at the art design, the special effects, and the attention to detail when it comes to the lore of Godzilla and you can see that all over the film. If not intelligent, King of the Monsters has an enthusiasm that is rare in tentpole entertainment.

This shot is beautiful and should be
taught in any film studies class

That also is at the heart of the movie's problem. It's a lot of good ideas that never form a cohesive whole. There's references to the Mothra twins, Mu, Castle Bravo, (copyright-free) X-1, and a whole underexplored sub-plot about Moby Dick (I think?), but without all of that informing the action (or the characters or their choices), it's like everything else in the movie: It's just stuff.

King of the Monsters doesn't ever rise above its influences. It doesn't ever use its toolkit to do anything other than to show off that it has a lot of nice tools.

Whereas the alleged sin of Godzilla (2014) is that it takes too long to get going and that you don't see the monster enough, King of the Monsters' sin is that the reveals never stop. There are never any moments too breathe or reflect. It's all kaiju all the time. Instead of two monsters fighting, it's four (with more on the way). Instead of one human villain, it's two. And, hey, let's throw in a Spielbergian child protagonist while we're at it. And a McGuffin and and and. . .

It's exhausting.

My friend Victor Perfecto, well-known kaiju nerd and podcast, described it as an “everything but the kitchen sink approach.” This helps temper some of my distaste toward the film in general. It's a failure, but at least it's a big failure. It's one that feels like there will never be another one of these ever again. It wanted to please fans and the average movie goer at the same time and in its attempt, it managed to please nobody.

On the plus side, one can’t complain about King of the Monsters leaving you bored. In a series full of shoddy special effects, bad acting, and poor editing, that's the worst sin there is.

GOOD AND "GOOD" MONSTER MOVIES

To rationalize for a moment—Godzilla movies are almost never good. Even the “good” movies aren’t very good. They’re poorly acted (with even worse dubbing). They’re cheap. They’re deeply silly and the action isn’t even that well choreographed. But—BUT! There’s something there in those films. In the cardboard sets and the fuzz of the VHS tapes. There is a kind of can-do charm that bigger movies just can't replicate. They've got gumption. They may not be good, but they are great.

Godzilla (2014) felt like a confirmation of what kaiju nerds like myself felt, which is that if you just had the budget and the time and you treated this material with respect, not only could you make a fun movie, but you could make and actual "good" movie out of Godzilla. One that you could show other people and you wouldn't have to explain why it's good.

King of the Monsters has the money. It has the power and yet, it’s this cold and unimpressive thing. It isn’t a movie that one can love. You can like it, probably. You can definitely have fun with it, but you can't love it, because for all of the art design and attention to detail, it isn't a film with any sort of heart.

And, again, if you can't make it properly thrilling and you can't make it charming, what do you have?

You have nothing. That's the crying shame of this movie. It isn't just that it misses the mark as a Godzilla movie, it's that it has so much going for it and the only memorable thing about it is that it's really loud.

Just to break up the monotony, here's an interview with mocap actor TJ Storm,
but also here's a ridiculous photo of mocap actor TJ Storm

THE KING THAT WAS PROMISED

King of the Monsters is about as standard of a summer blockbuster as you can get. It is awesome in place of awe-inspiring. It’s more explosions and more CGI creatures and it takes two hours or so and then it ends. There are plenty of these movies and there will be plenty more (not only this year, but in this franchise—Kong V. Godzilla is less than a year away, apparently). As a fan, it is hard for me to be too entirely down on it, though. It is competently made and the fan service does feel earned. Without my affection for the characters, there isn't much there.

Explosions. Sounds. Moving images. We have those aplenty. We only have one King of the Monsters and it would have been nice to see another movie live up to that name.

Personally, it makes me want to get out and see more movies. Not only ones in the theater like Booksmart or The Last Black Man in San Francisco, but dumber, even more far-out nonsense like Matango and The Mysterians. Because a movie doesn't have to be one or the other to be good. It can be both. It can be neither. It just has to be something and I love finding movies and I love finding things in those movies that are worthwhile and worth talking about. There is value in even bad art and, if nothing else, King of the Monsters is a reminder of that.

RELATED:

• My review of Godzilla (2014)
• My review of Shin Godzilla/Godzilla Resurgence (2016)
• My review of Pacific Rim, which I am only linking because I couldn't figure out a natural way to wedge it into the review
• The episode of AQI detailing this movie featuring Rafael Hernan Gamboa
• An AQI episode on The War of the Gargantuas
• An AQI episode on a lesser-known Toho monster movie Matango (AKA The Attack of the Mushroom People)

FOOTNOTES:

* Actually, I would really like to watch a procedural kaiju movie about a Driven Female Character trying to forensically determine how to kill a god.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and a big fan of big monsters. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him on kofi and Paypal. You can also support his podcasts on Patreon. It is suggested that you do all of the above. He deserves it.

Destroy Everything You Touch

A Review of DESTROYER (2018)
Directed by Karyn Kasuma
Written by Phil Hay and Mat Manfredi
Cinematography by Julie Kirkwood
Score by Theodore Shapiro
Staring Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Scoot McNairy, Bradley Whitford, Toby Huss, and Sebastian Stan

Stop me if you've heard this before, but, I have a soft spot for certain kinds of movies. European technothrillers are one of them. Cops-on-the-edge are another. There is just something deeply compelling about people with a strong sense of right and wrong headed for a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. Destroyer is definitely one of those and it's a pretty good one of those, at that.

The strength of Destroyer is that it's a film that does not want to be liked. It's characters are all assholes and they're all making obvious, if logical mistakes. It stays true to the sub-genre and doesn't ever feel the urge to make its characters have hearts of gold or secret doubts. No, they're just scared apes with shoes that are just smart enough to know that they'll be dead soon. It's a tragedy by way of a police procedural and while it isn't anything shocking or new, it is well put together

The plot of the film centers around Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman), a Los Angeles Police Department detective at the end of her tether. A body is found on the banks of the LA river and Bell, on her own accord, descends into the hell of an undercover case she worked from the beginning of her career. 

And, because we live in a post-True Detective world, her journey takes place across split times, weaving flashbacks into the narrative, showing Kidman’s Erin Bell before she was a complete waste-oid. The film bounces back and forth between young make-up and old make-up until the two narratives meet in a fairly unexpected way and, of course, Bell ends up where all bad cops in these sorts of movies end up: Exactly where she deserves.*

(It's also worth stating that in between the "beginning" of the film and the end of the film, we're treated to several botched bank robberies, lots of scenes of hangovers, and one of the saddest handjobs in all of cinema-- a point of distinction, to be sure.)

Nicole Kidman is the heart of this movie. Without her-- even with the odd bits of brilliant direction-- there is no film. As much as this movie throws wigs and dentures and weird make-up on top of her, Kidman never stops acting natural. She is believable as a bright-eyed young thing, as well as a boozed-up mom that should have been put out to pasture years ago. It's not so much intense as it is this slow motion garbage fire. It's a lot of fun to watch and it's the human heart beating at the center of what could have been an otherwise dreary bit of nihilism.**

One choice that stands out in the film is just how impervious Kidman's Bell is to cop one-liner bullshit. On multiple occasions, the older embittered Kidman character runs up against cops giving  her a ribbing and she just looks at them, as one should any time anyone tries to break your balls, with a look of confusion and contempt. It's a character choice and a script detail that I deeply connect with.

Would I say that I'm a Sebastian Stan stan? Yes, I would.

Sebastian Stan co-stars as a fellow cop/co-conspirator/lover and, as it typical with somebody juggling so many different jobs, it doesn't go great for him. It's always good to see Sebastian Stan and it's especially nice to see him acting in something that is more interesting than a house payment. I like him a lot, both in this movie and in general. I’ve liked him ever since Kings (a show that me and three other people watched). Anyways, go watch Kings.

Oh yeah, I guess he's pretty good in it. I mean, just look at him. He's great. But, also, I really just wanted to mention Kings. It was a great show and it had a lot going for it and the timing just wasn't right for it.

Man. Kings. . .

And speaking of fan favorites and True Detective, this movie has Scoot McNairy! And for once in his fucking career, he gets to play a normal guy who gets to live a normal life! I'll watch him in anything, but it's an especially nice change of pace when you're not counting down the minutes to him getting shot in the back of the head or whatever.

And, to clarify, Scoot was not in Kings, but you should still try to hunt it down anyways.***

The score from Theodore Shapiro is perfect for the film. Like the film itself, it vaccilates between these moments of well-composed beauty to ugly, droning heavy metal****. Like every great score, it both helps establish and amplify the sun-bleached horrorshow world of Destroyer.

Again, maybe I'm a sucker, but I do love me some sunbleached LA set to distorted violin strings. Or maybe it's because I'm American and I've got fuckin' taste.

Like a lot of movies, Destroyer is a movie that kind of came and went. And like a good chunk of those movies, it doesn't deserve that fate. While it isn't anything shockingly new, its stand out achievements in direction and acting elevate the picture above the usual morass of these sorts of stories-- and the sorts of movies that make all of the money these days. Destroyer is a work with a perspective and it sells its ideas with skill and with beauty-- albeit the beauty of a brush fire.

FOOTNOTES:
* And that's maybe why these movies are still tolerable: They're the only avenue in which bad cops actually get what they deserve. What a cool thing.

** On an ironic level, it's also fun to watch Nicole Kidman play "against type," meaning "what if she wasn't attractive?"

*** Seriously, watch Kings. It was only one season long and it's greatest sin was that it came out on network TV right before streaming and prestige TV blew up. It had Ian McShane and Bryan Cox on it!

**** I'm a little less hot on the droning metal part of the soundtrack. Again, as much as I'm a sucker for that sort of a thing, I do find it slightly annoying that, as a society, we all decided that traditional symphonic scores were just going to be replaced by synths being records in the next apartment over. I mean, whatever. It usually works. I shouldn't complain.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and does not smoke indoors. Must be losing his touch. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

Too Much, Too Late, Too Loud (A Kind of Review)

Some Thoughts on ASSASSINATION NATION (2018)

Written and Directed by Sam Levinson
Cinematography by Marcell Rév
Score by Ian Hultquist
Staring Abra, Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, and Hari Nef 

Assassination Nation is a film that wants to be Persona meets Sasori meets The Conversation. What is more is that it thinks it's all of these movies. If that sounds either intriguing or a mess to you, the answer is: Yes, yes it is.

Assassination Nation is a style in search of a story. It's a bold, strange movie that wants to tackle a hundred subjects at once and also wants to be 1980's trash horror movie-- and it wants you to take it seriously. Very seriously. It's admirable for its ambition, it is also maddening because none of it works as well as it needs to.

The gravest sin of Assassination Nation commits, style-wise is how over-written it is. I complained a week* or so ago about The Mule and how the big beats of that movie sound like a formula from Final Draft than they sound like people. Assassination Nation has a different, but related problem. The Mule is trying to write plot into peoples' mouths. This movie is trying to write agenda into peoples' mouths. It wants to shout what the point of all of this is and, oh, man, haven't I got you thinking now?

And I'm sitting there watching it, thinking, no, man, you don't. I'm here for the Female Prisoner #701 homage and you have vastly overestimated how much I care what you have to say, bro. And then it just keeps on going about What It All Means and how Current Events are Effecting The Youth. Perhaps if you don't have Twitter this might have some novelty. As a film it feels like a panicked treatise on everything that is wrong with the internet but also a letter on Sam Levinson's keyboard was broken.

The movie pulses with this sort of energy. There is nothing in this film that is at half-dosage. The acting, the direction, the lighting, the set design, the everything, is going as loud and as extreme as it possibly can. Even the quite moments in this film are a panoply of Final Cut editing tools and film school excess. This has some appeal, because at no point does the movie ever become boring. It’s a rocket exploding on the landing pad. Beautiful and loud and probably not what the builders intended.

And on the other hand, the value of Assassination Nation is that it's a sleazy exploitation movie (or a simulacrum of one, a trust fund baby wearing a Sex Pistol t-shirt), is that it's dealing with the regressive nature of the internet and the toxic personalities that it fosters. We're now living in a post-#MeToo world where the president of the United States, a game show host, won an election by convincing your brain-worm infested mee-maw that El Salvadorians were going to break into her house and make her a drug mule. It's wild out there and beyond The Purge and Riverdale there aren't a whole lot of piece of media that are dealing with this issue directly. That itself is a problem, because it also seems like most of the popular media dealing with these stories also seem to be dumber than shit (but I stand to be corrected).

If there is one redeeming quality in the movie, it's that it takes a very dim view of the internet as it stands. As much as we all love videos of capybaras in hot springs, it's also where budding young psychopaths are radicalized into the next school shooter. The internet is an untended garden and Sam Levinson seems to understand this. The internet in Assassination Nation, as in real life, is a platform in which the worst aspects of human nature are allowed to roam freely.

With that said, taking a stand against nihilism is hardly a brave or interesting point of view. Maybe it's a necessary one, but it doesn't feel like something you can hang a movie on-- or at least it's not something you can hang on this movie.

I mean, for a movie with as many Sarah-Connor-in-T2-ass sounding monologues as this movie has, it sure doesn't seem to actually say very much. Now Sarah Connor, there was a woman who had a problem with technology and could tell you what the solution was.

Assassination Nation is never quite lands. It's a film that has a lot going on, but none of it means much of anything. It's a movie that wraps itself around an issue, but ultimately has very little to say about the issue other than it exists (Hey, were you aware that the interent is a cess-pool? Me too!). It's a confused film that isn't entertaining enough to get away with it. It doesn’t seem so much ambitious as it does pretentious. Like the best internet videos, the most spectacular fails are the ones where they really go for it and I can't say that the cast and crew of this movie weren't going for it.

If only for that, Assassination Nation is a film worth watching. Maybe.

  

OTHER THOUGHTS:

• A better version of this "Too much, too now" type of film from 2018 is Sorry to Bother You-- which also happens to be my favorite movie from that year. It's a hell of a ride and, unlike Assassination Nation, all of its extraneous details and asides feel like part of a greater tapestry than stuff Boots Riley wrote into the movie.
• Notably, it objectifies male bodies in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever seen before in film. Good for them.
• This film stars a trans woman (Hari Nef) and it never goes out of its way to stress that she is trans. She's just one of the girls and that's that. Which is cool and more movies should follow this one's example when it comes to that sort of a thing. Where it gets really cool is that, as much rampant attempted murder as this film features, at no point does feel the need to us the t-word or misgender her-- because this film might be packed with jock douchebags and general-issue psychopaths, but they're not monsters. It's admirable that even a movie that seeks to shock knows that there's a line where it stops being fun.
• This film is directed by Sam Levinson, the son of Barry Levinson, so fuck this guy.
• I can't help but feel-- and I know this is fucked up to say-- that Assassination Nation is the type of movie that Max Landis thinks he's making.
• I was just thinking about Sasori: Female Prisoner #701 and, seriously, just watch that instead and then maybe wash it down with a re-watch of Hackers. Because Sasori and Hackers are ill as fuck. 
• For that matter, also go read Assassin Nation. It's a beaut of a comic. In stores now!

No, seriously, go watch Female Prisoner #701

FOOTNOTES:

* Okay, this took me, like, four months to put out for some reason. Not sure how. Not sure why. But, hey, here we are.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and hasn't had any internet death threats lately. Must be losing his touch. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.