All posts by David DeMoss
Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part IX
Episode 10 – Bird of Paradise
Inside the sweaty jungles of what the title card tells us is the Yucatan, a red-headed backpacker finds himself face to face with an Aztec pyramid, built into the side of a volcano. “There you are,” he says, as if greeting an old friend. Inside the pyramid, our Dollar Store Indiana Jones discovers a secret passage into the volcano’s crater, complete with sacrificial alter and emerald-eyed bird statue. Because Aztec engineers were just that cool, touching said statue makes the emerald eye glow and sets off a small eruption. A screaming, red shape escapes from the resulting blast of lava and noxious fumes. Cue credits.
Meanwhile, back at H.E.A.T. Headquarters, all’s right with the world. Godzilla’s eating fish, Dr. Nick’s making notes, and Randy continues to labor under the delusion that he’s funny. Dr. Elsie Chapman and DGSE Agent Monique Dupre are caught up in that great American pastime: watching television. (Some scientists you all turned to be.) Good thing, too. Otherwise they might never have learned about the, “mysterious wave of destruction sweeping across southern Mexico.” Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part IX
The Island (2005)
I expected to hate The Island. But 2005 was a real bi-polar year. We all learned what it means to miss New Orleans, but look on the bright side: Batman came back to unexpectedly-viable life, I was enjoying all the benefits of dating a Reed College student, and Michael Bay directed a film that doesn’t totally suck. It’s not good…but it fits in with the general tone of this site a whole hell of a lot better than, say, The Rock. I’m a Sci-Fi geek through and through. Gave up making apologies for that sometime in the early-90s, around the time Star Trek started rocking my world.
As such, I could care less about frat boy circle jerks, like the Bad Boys duology or Pearl Harbor. This film faced longer odds then a sailor on the U.S.S. Arizona on December 7, 1941. And yet it…kinda…sorta…beat them. Continue reading The Island (2005)
Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VIII
Episode 9 – Hive
On the vaguely-Pacific island of Santa Marta, a species of enormous, animate plant disturbs a band of youthful-looking looters come to scavenge the island’s hastily-evacuated luxury resort. So, in five seconds we have a deserted island, a grumbling volcano, and plants trying to build up their Hentai street-cred. Just another day in Godzilla: The Series.
And, like any other day, H.E.A.T. arrives after the credits, and team lead Nick Tatopolus is quick to claim the moral high ground. “We’re not just here on their word,” meaning the word of those damned looters. “The resort company also asked us to check it out.” The increasingly-annoying Randy, for once, delivers some useful information with his follow-up quip. “And he asked in the universal language: moolah.”
So there’s one groovy mystery solved. We know now that H.E.A.T., like the Ghostbusters before them, works on spec. Probably offering “professional megafauna investigation and elimination.” Or, in the managerial argot of the late-90s, “innovative, giant monster relocation services and solutions.” Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VIII
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Or, The One Everyone Hates. And I mean really, really, really hates. That’d be Part V for me, but I understand why everyone pretends that false start of A New Beginning never happened. And I understand the hatred of this…thing.
Seriously, this is Friday the 13th Lite, a cringing, half-hearted attempt to shift the series toward (of all things) respectability. It ended up disappointing everyone from casual movie watchers to the stuffed suits at the top of Paramount’s food chain by exceeding even the most cynical critic’s lowest expectations. Bucking a trend for the series, turned out to be derivative and dull. How did this happen? How did one of the most iconic horror franchises in history sink so low? Continue reading Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Supplementary viewing: Gilligan’s Friday the 13th
Insomnia and the hole in my head’s allowed me plenty of time to screw around this week. So here’s a little something-something I cut together, mostly just to see if I could and (hopefully) get a few laughs from you fine people. Consider it a video supplement for tomorrow’s review.
Bad Boys II (2003)
Instead of doing my normal thing, I thought I’d summarize this film from the perspective of an actual Michael Bay fan. So I went and kidnapped one: Mr. Daniel Ichluguer. After a few days of torturous medical experimentation by my Mad Scientist alter-ego (some of us had one back in ’99, before it was cool) I think I’ve finally got him to the point where he’ll do pretty much whatever I want, so long as I use his control phrase. So, Daniel…would you kindly summarize the film for my reading audience?
Dude! So there’s like, this guy, right? And he’s all like, tryin’ to be all that in the Miami drug scene, know what I mean, playah? He’s like, smuggling ecstasy outta Amsterdam (cuz that’s where drugs come from) in like, coffins and shit, cuz he own this funeral home as a front, right? Like those queers on Six Feet Under. But it ain’t like, a gay thing: it’s a man thing. Martin Lawrence even says so. Continue reading Bad Boys II (2003)
Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VII
Episode 8 – What Dreams May Come
The Series follows up (arguably) one of its better episodes with one of its silliest. But at least this is more traditional daikaiju fare than last week’s voyage to the bottom of the sea. We open in Queens, New York, where a a fifty-foot-tall, six-limbed, godawfully ugly thing interrupts an obnoxiously “Nu Yawk” couple’s spat over the electric bill by reducing their five-story walk-up to scrap.
Morning finds H.E.A.T. at the attack site (minus team-spy Monique Dupre, who must be off…I don’t know…spying on something) and they seem to be the only municipal agency at work in New York City. Seriously, I know we had a garbage strike back in Talkin Trash but where’s the Fire Department? Where are the EMTs? Isn’t this a city under the constant shadow of perpetual Godzilla “attacks”? Where rednecks with Army surplus missile launchers and giant rats terrorize the streets with regularity? Why does anyone still chose to live in this New York City, anyway? Then again, why does anyone chose to live in Metropolis? Or Marvel Comic’s version of the City That Never Sleeps? Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VII
The Rock (1996)
Michael Bay didn’t know it at the time, but he made this movie for my mother. She’s an actor junkie who came of age in a time when movie stars were movie stars and the mainstream culture still surrounded them with auras of “respectability.” As such, she prefers her leading men play flawed-but-noble heroes…though she’s not opposed to the occasional flight of hyper-masculine fantasy (after all, she married my dad). So putting Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery in the same film was like ringing her personal dinner bell. And since I was thirteen at the time, I had no choice but to suffer through this at her side.
This was my – and a lot of people’s – real introduction to Michael Bay. Sure, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence might’ve headlined their own TV shows, but neither boasted the box office draw of the original James Bond…or the original Ben Sanderson. Continue reading The Rock (1996)
Bad Boys (1995)
You know, Inner Circle’s song “Bad Boys” is probably responsible for more crap than the rest of reggae combined. And I say that as a man who has never and will probably never be able to get into reggae, no matter how many stoners I may or may not hang out with. Apart from that great commercial for the coming Police State, COPS, we can also thank Inner Circle for Michael Bay’s career as a feature film director.
No, not entirely. But they aren’t exactly blameless. If not for that bad song, this bad film wouldn’t exist. At the very least, it wouldn’t have such a readily marketable title. By the time this premiered, COPS had drilled this song into America’s head with a rusty bit and a slow grind, like something out of…I don’t know…Driller Killer. Is that even real or did I just make it up…? Holy shit, it’s real and I didn’t. The more you know. Add that to the list of films we could all be watching right now…or could’ve been at the time. Continue reading Bad Boys (1995)