Category Archives: Reviews
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
In all the annuls of X-Men history, no creative team is so beloved as the human one-two punch that was Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Between 1977 and ’81, those two turned a no-class, Rainbow Coalition of E-, F-, and G-list characters into the X-Men we know, love, and occasionally loathe today: the Gold Standard of Superhero Team Soap Operatics. And out of all the stories they made together – Claremont writing, Byrne drawing, both arguing over which character should die that month – none is more beloved than “Days of Future Past.”
Except, of course, for the Phoenix Saga. Which X-Men: The Last Stand fucked right up. Now, the screenwriter most directly responsible for that mess (at least, according to the WGA), Simon Kinberg, has teamed with the director of Superman Returns to bring us this. My cup runeth over. Continue reading X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Godzilla (2014)
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
So it came to pass that greed and short-sighted foolishness saved Godzilla from an early death after 1968’s Destroy All Monsters. The next year’s entry, Godzilla’s Revenge, was a half-thought-out desperation play, rushed into theaters before anyone could notice just how final the final shots of Destroy All Monsters really were…especially that long pull-back of Godzilla and Son as the two literally wave goodbye to the camera…
…as much as they could in those suits. Continue reading Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
This, the sixth Gamera film, (released in the U.S. as Gamera vs. Monster X) is really the third part in a Pentalogy that ends the series, all following the same basic outline. A New Monster arises, Gamera loses his first fight, and spends half the movie down for the count as the Military/Scientific/Industrial Complex fails to combat the latest kaiju threat. A pair of Annoying Kids (one Japanese, on Token Anglo), Designated as Our Duel Protagonists, take it upon themselves to deal with a human-sized problem, and their plucky spirits rouse Gamera, Friend to All Children, from his mid-movie stupor. He wins the Climactic Battle as the Kids watch from Minimum Safe Distance, ruining the fun for everyone with their high-pitched color commentary. Cue credits.
With this one, I can’t even escape the opening credits without deducting points for stock-footage. Someone’s mom obviously told them to “put their best foot forward,” but I doubt “reuse fight scenes from the previous five films” is what she really meant. In fairness, the is the last we’ll see of previous battles…though not, as I’ll discuss later, the last time we’ll see stock footage. However, Gamera vs. Jiger can still boast the least amount of stock footage in any Gamera film since Gamera vs. Gaos. Marvel at that for a moment. It’s almost as if Team Gamera enjoyed a budget increase after their success with vs. Viras and vs. Guiron. If so, it only accelerated Daiei Studios collapse into bankruptcy. But we’ve one more film before that happens. Continue reading Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
I’ve never been able to take pirates seriously. I blame Peter Pan. Neverland-centric adventures were the only context in which I encountered pirates during my land-locked childhood. Seeing them perpetually made fools of by a pack of flying children (who may or may not have been vampires, led by one of the darkest Dark Princes since Dracula…and his house-fairy) did not endear pirates to me, and tales of so-called “adventure” on the Early Modern Era’s high seas always struck me as horror stories by another name.
If you’ve read them, you know what I’m talking about: there are parts of Moby Dick fit to make even the hardest hardcore Saw fan curl up into a ball of tears and barf (which is why Moby Dick‘s screen adaptions usually omit those parts). Really-real life accounts of long sea voyages during that First Great Age of Colonialism are all about misery, deprivation and discomfort. I swear, before the invention of mass media, people could not shut the fuck up about their toothaches. Or “the scurvy.” And if it wasn’t “the scurvy” it was “the pox.” If it wasn’t “the pox” it was “consumption.” And if it wasn’t “consumption…”
You get the idea. Hopefully, by now, you’ll also have some idea as to why most Pirate Movies are fanciful romps, set in highly-romanticized alternate universes where grown ass men can spend their whole lives at sea but still come ashore with perfect teeth. Men like Douglas Fairbanks, or Erol Flynn. Or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Or Burt Lancaster. By the time my mother was in grade school, pirate movies had at least grown the balls to cast unattractive dudes as sea dogs – like Robert Newton. Or Yul Brenner. But that didn’t last. The year I was born was also the year Pirates of Penzance came out, thrilling absolutely no one and proving not a goddamn thing had changed since the Silent Era. Continue reading Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)