Netflix Halloween 2014 : “You’re Next”

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Okay, so here’s the deal : over at my “main” site — http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com , for those up you not aware — I’m spending the month of October looking at various horror flicks currently available in Netflix’s instant streaming queue. So far there have been some semi-winners, some semi-losers, and some real clunkers, but I promised myself that if I ever found one that was an absolute, indisputable home run, I’d write about here on TTSL and thereby hopefully spread the word about it a bit father and wider than a post on my blog alone would accomplish. I’m pleased to say I’ve found just such a film.

I’m not sure why or how I missed “splat back”/”mumblegore” director Adam Wingard’s 2011 offering, You’re Next, when it hit theaters — I certainly found the ads for it intriguing and meant to go check it out, but I never did. My loss — but not anymore, since I finally caught it the other night and damn, was I impressed.

Seriously, this has everything you want in a horror movie : an involving premise, a few characters you want to see live, even more you’d love to see die, plenty of first-rate gore, suspense, intrigue, and all kinds of ass-kicking. You might ask for more, I suppose, if you’re picky, but come on — how often do you get it?

Anyway, friends, you know how it goes — you’re gathered together for a family reunion full of not-so-subtle tension and disdain (think the kind of situation where everyone would be stabbing each other in the back, except for the fact that they’re doing it out in the open), when suddenly assailants in animal masks armed with crossbows start firing away and, presto! Next thing you know, you’re all under siege and fighting for your lives.

What? That’s never happened to you? Well, it’s what happens to the family here (who, curiously enough, are never given a last name), a very well-heeled clan who have gathered at their family’s palatial “summer estate” to celebrate their mother and father’s 35th wedding anniversary. Roll call : there’s struggling- academic brother Crispian (AJ Bowen) and his Aussie girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vison); douchebag brother Drake (Joe Swanberg) and his wife, Kelly (Sarah Myers); younger douchebag brother Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and his emo/goth “squeeze,” Zee (Wendy Glenn); darling baby sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz); and presiding over the whole houseful of ungrateful, self-centered whelps we have dad Paul (Rob Moran) and mom Aubrey (the still-drop-dead-gorgeous Barbara Crampton). We get to know each of these characters just enough to give the first half-hour or so a strong dose of Woody Allen-esque upper-class dysfunction when the shit starts hitting the fan.

And when it hits, boy does it ever. Aside from the mere fact that it’s gleeful fun (well, at least for me) to see members of the 1% finally get what’s coming to them, Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett are to be commended for not taking their collective foot off the gas pedal until the end credits are rolling, and while we quickly learn that only Erin has the smarts and guts to survive the situation thanks to her weird survivalist upbringing in the Outback, the other character revelations along the way come in measured steps and and at just the right points (usually as a means of breaking up what would otherwise be a non-stop series of creatively brutal slayings). Still, you probably won’t see the end coming, simply because you’ll figure you’ve got the whole thing sussed out already — even though, trust me, you don’t.

To be completely fair, I do have some relatively minor gripes with said ending — I think there was a way Wingard could have made it even more shocking, but shit, I’m not gonna complain. The conclusion he serves up is still a doozy even if it’s not exactly the one I would have gone for. If I think I’m so fucking good at this kind of thing, then maybe I should just go and direct my own movie, right?

Add in fun little cameos from the likes of fellow “new horror” icon Ti West and some wink-and-nudge homages to other genre classics, throw in a throbbing musical score that’s more than just a bit reminiscent of Goblin (hold your horses, I’m not saying it’s as good as Goblin, only that it’s stylistically similar to their justly- legendary efforts), keep the blood flowing, and you’ve got a recipe for a sure winner. Whatever you’re doing right now can wait — if you’ve got a Netflix subscription, You’re Next deserves your immediate attention.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “22 Jump Street”

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

I know, I know, go on and say it — I’m getting to the party pretty late with this one and anyone who wants to see 22 Jump Street has probably already done so. Fair enough. But, see, that’s the reason I’m getting to it so late — I had absolutely no interest in catching this flick three years from now on a boring Saturday afternoon in the middle of winter, much less paying to watch it on the big screen, but last weekend my brother wanted to go see a movie, this was playing at the local discount house up the street (the historic Riverview on 38th Street in south Minneapolis), and so we went. Better late than never, right?

Actually, um, no. I admit I wasn’t expecting much from this flick, but even by the admittedly dire standards of the Hollywood “bromance comedy,” this is atrocious, unfunny, subpar stuff with absolutely nothing going for it.

Let me qualify that statement, though, for the sake of fairness — it has nothing going for it unless you’re into movies loaded down with self-referential “in-jokes” that make fun of the production itself on a “meta” level, or movies with tired-ass “say no to drugs” messages, or movies that make incompetent cops look like harmless nincompoops rather than walking, breathing weapons of potential mass destruction (ask the folks in Ferguson if inept, bungling, cover-your-ass policework is a laughing matter), or movies loaded with lowest-common-denominator racial and sexual “humor” designed to already divide a fractured society along cultural fault lines under the thin veneer of “uniting us in shared laughter.” If you enjoy any — or all — of that bullshit, then I’m sure you’ll find 22 Jump Street a rollicking good time, even if half (or more) of the jokes fall completely flat even under the risible set of circumstances I just outlined.

Anyway, here’s the deal, plot-wise : Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are back as undercover 21st-century Keystone Kops Schmidt and Jenko, respectively, Ice Cube is back as their boss in another role poking fun at his formerly-bad-ass-image, and this time his two charges are headed off to college to bust up a new “designer drug” ring rather than doing it in high school again like, I take it, they did in the first film (which I haven’t seen). Stupid shit happens, Jenko ends up on the football team, Schmidt ends up fucking Ice Cube’s daughter (played by Amber Stevens), and just when you think this steaming pile of racist, misogynist dogshit is over, they tack on about another half-hour to send the gang down to spring break in Mexico, and set this film’s place in history as the only spring break movie ever without so much as one naked female breast on display.

That’s about it as far as restraint goes, though, in this little opus from co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (who, I take it, helmed 2012’s 21 Jump Street as well). Subtle is just not a word in these guys’ vocabulary. Shit, even at the end they keep piling it on as the credits roll, showing us one purportedly “funny” undercover scenario after another for our two “heroes,” wearing out the gag’s welcome to a degree that anyone with two functioning brain cells would consider cruel.

And then it hit me — the “two-functioning-brain-cells” crowd isn’t who flicks like this are made for. Nor is that the “target audience” for anything coming out of Hollywood’s blockbuster comedy machine these days. Dear God, there’s an entire generation of comedy “stars” who would be flipping burgers or digging ditches for a living if the public at large had any taste. Roll call : Johan Hill, Channing Tatum, Seth Rogen, Seann William Scott, Andy Samberg, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, James Franco, Danny McBride, Owen Wilson, Zack Galifianikis, Melissa McCarthy, Steve Carrell, David Spade, and the worst offenders of all, the wretchedly untalented Vince Vaughn and Adam Sandler.

Whew! I’m exhausted just from pouring out that list, and I’m sure it’s not even a comprehensive one. Point is : none of these people are funny, they never have been, and they never will be.

Look, I have no desire to sound like a curmudgeon (whoops, too late!), but we’ve got to face facts here : the state of the Hollywood comedy is no laughing matter. We’re in deep trouble. This shit is stupid, these supposed “A-listers” can’t carry a film, and the “demographic” they’re pitching this crap to is, plain and simple, the idiot crowd. If a truly inventive and talented comic performer like Bill Murray, or Richard Pryor, or Gene Wilder, or the late, great Robin Williams came along today, Hollywood wouldn’t have the first idea how to utilize their talents. “Come back to us with some fat jokes or fart jokes and we’ll see if we can’t find you some work. Oh, and do you know how to make fun of Mexicans? That’s always good for a laugh.”

Honestly, news coverage of wars or humanitarian disasters is funnier than tripe like 22 Jump Street. Just because a film is openly aware of its own absurdity doesn’t make it instantly less absurd in and of itself — in fact, quite the reverse, because it gives lazy filmmakers a crutch — “let’s admit we’re stupid so we can spend the whole rest of the movie making fun of how stupid we are.” The most talented folks in the comedy game have always understood how to point out and lampoon all of life’s admitted absurdities without insulting the intelligence of their audience. This new crop today? They think you’re such a lame-brained asshole that they can spend two hours calling you a lame-brained asshole to your face and you won’t even get upset because, hey, they’re saying that they’re lame-brained assholes, too!

If you want to keep playing along with this ruse, that’s your business, but I’m through with it. This is the last mainstream Hollywood comedy I see — even at discount prices — until they get their shit together.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Guardians Of The Galaxy”

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Here’s a question I can’t see any rational human being asking themselves, but apparently someone did : what would happen if you took bog-standard Marvel Studios super-hero fare, threw in a couple dozen extra jokes, and scooped a heavy layer of incredibly lame ’70s “power-pop” numbers like “Please Go All The Way” and “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” on top?

The answer, of course, is director James Gunn’s newly-released Guardians Of The Galaxy, and if I’d been that hypothetical irrational person I just alluded to maybe I’d be a couple million bucks richer thanks to this film rather than sitting at home writing a review of it. So kudos to you, whoever you are, for your idea to bring this C-grade (at best) team of also-rans from their frequently-cancelled printed pages (there have been, what? Four or five Guardians series to this point, and none has lasted more than a couple of years) to the big screen and making DisMar — a studio that has apparently entered “too big to fail” territory — hundreds of millions in box office receipts. I hope they compensate you handsomely, though given their track record I wouldn’t bet on it.

As for the rest of us, well — if you like this sort of thing, then this will be the sort of thing you like, but if you don’t, you won’t find much here over and above what you’ve already come to expect, despite the best efforts of Gunn (who also co-wrote the script with Nicole Perlman) to inject a little bit of personality into the proceedings. Any Troma alumnus who makes it to the big leagues like this (which reminds me, be on the lookout for a “blink and you’ll miss it” cameo from Lloyd Kaufman — oh, and one from Rob Zombie, too — and one from Nathan Fillion — and one from — well, you get the point here) deserves a pat on the back, to be sure, but there’s only so much our intrepid former low-budget maestro can do in the face of Marvel’s juggernaut-by-the-numbers style of production. Truth of the matter is, take out those couple dozen extra jokes and horeshit songs I mentioned and this thing is completely indistinguishable from its peers like Iron Man, The Avengers, or Captain America. Not that many folks seem to mind — but we’ll get to the sociological implications of this flick in due course.

First off, credit where it’s due : Chris Pratt has displays admirable “regular-guy charisma” as Peter Quill, the self-proclaimed “Star Lord,” leader of our planet-hopping mercenary crew; Zoe Saldana continues to her series of impressive acting turns as Gamora (and looks damn good in green body paint); pro wrestling star Dave Bautista showcases a surprising level of humanity for a bulky alien brute; and Bradley Cooper brings a fair degree of enthusiasm to his voice-over work for Rocket Raccoon. Vin Diesel could probably be said to do a decent enough job as Groot, the living tree, as well, but I think he just recorded one line that they play over and over again in an endless loop, so let’s not go too overboard in praising his efforts.

Anyway, the cast is good — even if its two most accomplished members, Glenn Close and John C. Reilly, are given precious little to do — but the material they have to work with is positively atrocious, and you know the old line about trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. By and large the “humor” in this film feels forced and pre-planned (“okay, it’s been two minutes — time for another semi-snappy one-liner”), and when Gunn tries to play it straight, the emotional “beats” he’s going for fall flat and and hit the ground with a thud. Some of the pseudo-momentous dialogue in the “important, character-defining” scenes is so strained I literally had to wince. Ladies and gentleman, this script is just plain bad.

It’s also incredibly simple and, frankly, hackneyed. At the end of the day all we’ve got going on here is a regulation-issue “misfits forced by circumstances to work together and find their inner heroism”-type story, with a dash of “keeping a dangerous object out of the hands of the wrong people” thrown in for good measure. All the CGI in the world (and frankly some of that is surprisingly half-assed given this flick’s enormous budget) can’t cover that fact up, nor can all the precisely-timed melodrama, cribbed-from-a-greeting-card catch phrases, or mega-noisy battle sequences. I give Gunn props for trying to bluff his way to being the last guy at the table, but in the end he can’t do much about the fact that Marvel has dealt him an empty hand. Shoot — his two most interesting characters are pieces of computer animation that aren’t even really fucking there.

I do believe the director and his cast tried their best to incorporate some heart into their beast — the kind of heart that Rocket’s creator, Bill Mantlo (and please, I implore you, do what I did and donate the same amount of money you paid for a ticket to this movie to help pay for Mr. Mantlo’s continued medical care by visiting gregpak.com/love-rocket-raccoon-please-consider-donating-to-writer-bill-mantlos-ongoing-care/ —- last I heard, Marvel’s not giving this guy a dime) always brought to his scripts — but the “Marvel Method” for films is as set in stone as it always has been for comics : give the punters the illusion of something different, but for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, make sure you’re not actually doing anything truly different at all.

I’m slowly coming to a depressing conclusion, though — maybe the problem isn’t everyone else, maybe it’s me. The entire goddamn world is part of the Merry Marvel Marching Society now, and try as I might, I just can’t get on board. When Gunn shows Stan Lee behaving like a lecherous old creep in Lee’s studio-mandated cameo this time around, the audience in the theater howled with laughter and all I could think was “hey, wait a minute, don’t they get it? This is what the guy is really like!”

And then it occurred to me — maybe they do get it, they just don’t care. Yeah, Lee is a rather slimy individual who takes a lot more credit that he deserves for pretty much everything, and yeah, he’s left a trail of destitute and broken actual creators in his wake, and sure, he even stole the idea for “his” Stiperella TV show from an honest-to-goodness stripper who he regularly spent all that money he earned from other people’s labor on, but — Stan Lee “won.” And American society loves a winner, right? We barely blink an eye when Wall Street scumbags fleece us out of trillions of dollars in order to save them from a mess they created by dint of their own greed and hubris, but when poor single mothers get a paltry $200 a month, we’re up in arms. We even have the temerity to call them “takers,” while referring to those just-mentioned white-collar crooks as “the productive class.”

Yeah, they’re so “productive” that they can’t even run banks that make a profit while getting free money from the rest of us in one hand and charging us interest with the other. But I digress. America is no longer a nation that roots for the underdogs, or the “have-nots” — we’re too busy giving everything we’ve got the the “already-haves.” And maybe it’s high time I learned to check my brain in at the door and play along. It would save me a lot of grey hair and I’d probably find it really easy to make new friends.

What kind of friends would I be making, though? The folks in the theater I saw Guardians Of The Galaxy at laughed at every one of those cookie-cutter one-liners I was bitching about earlier. They got lumps in their throats at all the plastic-passioned “emotional turning points.” They hooted and hollered at the pre-determined outcomes of every generic battle. They did exactly what they were supposed to do, exactly when they were supposed to do it — and all I wanted to do was stand up and scream at the top of my lungs : “Dear God, is this really all you fucking people want?”

Apparently, it is.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Hercules”

Posted on July 26, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

It’s been a weird week at the movies for yours truly, my friends : first off, I went to the theater three times this week, which almost never happens anymore (what do you think I am, rich?), and secondly, while I enjoyed The Purge : Anarchy about as much as I expected to (which is to say quite a bit), the other two flicks I saw both took me by surprise for different reasons : I was far less impressed with Richard Linklater’s much-celebrated Boyhood than I expected to be, and I ended up liking Brett Ratner’s new take on Hercules waaaaaayyyy more than I figured I was going to.

Though not because of anything Ratner himself did. But we’ll get to all that in a minute.

Full disclosure : I only went to see Hercules because my dad wanted to check it out. He’s a sucker for this kind of thing (he absolutely loves the old Kevin Sorbo TV series), and my mom wouldn’t touch a movie like this with a ten-foot pole, so when he mentioned he was hoping to check it out, I said I’d go with him. We’ve all gotta spend time with our parents while they’re still with us, right? But it’s fair to say, given Ratner’s involvement with this thing, that I wasn’t expecting much.

And ya know? He doesn’t deliver much — the direction here isn’t actively bad by any means, but it’s pretty straightforward stuff : the numerous “big battle” scenes are handled competently, and the actors by and large turn in decent enough performances, but there’s no real unique authorial stamp on any of the proceedings, and frankly, a lot of the CGI is several rungs below what we’ve come to expect from these mega-budget summer popcorn flicks. All in all, technically speaking, it’s a fairly mixed bag.

Why, then, did I find myself pleasantly surprised by this latest (and third so far this year alone, by my count) take on Greek mythology’s most famous demi-god warrior? Simply put, the script offers a neat revisionist take on the hero, and is smart, intelligent, engaging, and surprising — it’s entirely unlike any iteration of the character we’ve seen before, and for my part, I really dug it.

Before I give all of the (or even any) credit to screenwriters Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos for this film’s suceess, though, let me state for the record that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is perfectly likable in the title role, and while he may be a pretty conservative casting choice, that’s okay — he’s more or less pitch-perfect and his supporting actors (including Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, and Ingrid Bolso Berdal as members of his mostly-merry mercenary band and John Hurt and Joseph Fiennes as the film’s principal villains) do their jobs well, too. So kudos to everyone for putting in an honest day’s labor all the way through here. But let’s get back to the novel new twist on the whole legend/premise here, shall we?

This Hercules is radically different to his predecessors not just because he can actually talk (something Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, and Steve Reeves really weren’t so great at when they tackled the role), but because he a) may not actually be the son of Zeus; b) is leader of a group of freelance soldiers-for-hire; and c) was driven from his home after having name dragged through the mud for supposedly killing his own family. Told’ja this was a new set-up, didn’t I?

There are also some intriguing moral complexities woven into the story that I won’t give away here — hey, I want to keep things at least nominally “spoiler-free” when and where I can — and the interpersonal relationships between Hercules and his fellow travelers — as well as those they lend/sell their services to along the way — have considerably more depth than any reasonable human being would expect from action movie fare such as this. I was both mightily impressed by this intriguing series of twists, and frankly taken more than just a little aback by them. It wasn’t until the end credits rolled that my “aha!” moment came and I realized I shouldn’t have been shocked at all, if only I’d done a little bit of homework beforehand.

As it turns out, Ratner’s film is an adaptation of a comics series (well, two comics series, actually) penned by the late, great Steve Moore. I don’t know much about the publisher of these books, an outfit called Radical Comics , but I do know plenty about Steve Moore, and you should, too. Moore, who passed away from natural causes at his home earlier this year, is probably best known to comics fans as Alan Moore’s best friend (no relation despite sharing the same last name), and was a genuinely remarkable talent and, by all accounts, a genuinely remarkable human being. His comics work was sporadic, but he was at the forefront of the “British Invasion” of the early 1980s with works such as the criminally-underappreciated Laser Eraser And Pressbutton, and outside the field of comics he was a regular contributor to Fortean Times magazine as well as being a part-time musician and experienced occultist. He lived his entire life in the house he was born in and apparently carried on a decades-long erotic/romantic relationship with a moon goddess entity known as Cybele. All in all, then, a thoroughly interesting guy, as well as being an insanely talented creative force.

I wish I’d known about his Herclues comics when they came out — I don’t know if they just didn’t get very good US distribution or what (the cover of the first issue is pictured above), but I honestly don’t recall ever seeing a single copy of any of them out on the shelves at my local comic shop, and I’m there every week. A quick search on Amazon shows that two trade paperback collections of the series are available, but one is out of print and commanding rather high prices. Oh well, think I’ll probably order it up anyway.

Here’s the kicker, though — as much as I enjoyed this flick, now I feel kinda bad for having shelled out any cash on it. Why, you ask? Because Steve Moore’s surviving family isn’t getting a dime off it. A quick Google search shows that Alan Moore has been absolutely up in arms about how his recently-deceased friend (and, in many respects, mentor) has been screwed over by the producers of the film, and he’s called for a boycott of it. I know, I know — Moore’s got a reputation for being a curmudgeon and for telling people not to buy, well, anything, but the damn thing is, more often than not, he’s absolutely right. The cinematic adaptation of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen was, in fact, every bit as horrendous as he claimed it was going to be, the Before Watchmen comics were by and large positively awful, and the V For Vendetta movie was an atrocious dumbing-down of his far superior original work. Yeah, he was none too pleased about the Watchmen film, either, but I won’t use that as an example of him being correct because by and large I kinda liked that one. Still, his criticisms are spot-on more often than not.

So here’s what I’m thinking knowing what I know now : Ratner’s Hercules is, in fact, a far superior effort than I felt sure it would be going in, yes — but it’s probably nowhere near as good as the comics it was based on, and the fact that Steve Moore got swindled — even (and especially) after death — from seeing so much as a penny from a big-budget adaptation of his work is positively unconscionable. Again, I haven’t read any of these comics yet, but it’s a safe bet that anything good that survived the translation from the printed page to the screen is only there because Steve Moore put it there in the first place. In short, he’s the main reason this movie is actually pretty damn good, and that makes perfect sense when you think about it because you know full well Ratner isn’t capable of delivering the goods on his own. We all remember Red Dragon, don’t we?

Okay, fair enough — I’ve tried my best to put that out of my mind, too.

So in the end I guess I’m left with something of an ethical conundrum here — I liked Herclues. I really did. But mostly for its unique and original story. And now that I know the story behind that story (whoops, I’m being repetitious here, sorry), I sorta wish I’d never seen the thing. Okay, on that note. I’m off to Amazon to order up these books.

Wasted Youth : Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood”

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

It’s safe to say that there’s no film other film in 2014 that I was more predisposed toward liking before ever having seen in that Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Anyone who follows my “byline” at any of the various sites I write for (please! Get something better to do with your time!) even occasionally will know that I’m a tremendous fan of the director’s other works — from his superb animated efforts such as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life to his honest and heartfelt live-action films such as Bernie, School Of Rock, Fast Food Nation, Dazed And Confused, and his breakthrough hit, Slacker (which I just recently reviewed through decidedly rose-tinted nostalgic lenses), the guy just has the magic touch, in my opinion. Heck, even his Bad News Bears remake was kinda fun, if you ask me. And, of course, the three films in his hopefully-still-ongoing “Before” series aren’t just great movies, but flat-out events in my life when they come out. I love ’em to pieces and make no apologies for it. Jesse and Celine may not be real people, but they’re still my fucking friends, goddamnit.

And yet for one reason or another it seems Linklater always flies below the radar. Maybe it’s because his naturalistic, unforced style doesn’t command attention. He’s not one to overpower you with sentimentality or melodrama, and the almost nonchalant nature of his work trusts the audience to be smart enough to make up its own collective mind about the stories he’s bringing to the screen. I like that. I think we need more filmmakers who aren’t out to either manipulate our emotions or “wow” us with their technique. Linklater goes about his business with respect for his stories, his characters, and his viewership — and while that may not win him a ton of awards, it certainly earns him my respect.

All that’s changing now, though. After over two decades operating, for the most part, on the margins (not that he doesn’t have a devoted fan base, it’s just not a terribly large one, comparatively speaking), the finished result of his grand 12-year-epic centered on young actor Ellar Coltrane as he ages from 7 to 19, Boyhood (originally titled 12 Years but re-named at the last minute to avoid confusion with recent Academy Award best picture winner 12 Years A Slave) is finally here, and Linklater’s richly-deserved moment in the spotlight has finally arrived. He’s made it to the to the top of the mountain. He’s the talk of the town. The man of the hour. The toast of Hollywood.

And ya know what? He deserves to be. I’m just not so sure he deserves it for this particular film.

Don’t get me wrong — Boyhood is pretty good stuff in many respects. What Linklater’s pulled off here is certainly remarkable — getting essentially the same cast together year in and year out (the principle players being Coltrane as growing boy Mason, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as his divorced-from-the-film’s-outset parents, and the writer/director’s own daughter, Lorelei, as older sister Samantha) to make a series of short films that would eventually be assembled into one “grand work” is ambitious and bold and frankly just plain tough to work out logistically. So my hat’s off to to him for even realizing a project of this scope and magnitude.

I just wish the finished product were anywhere near as powerful, affecting, and awe-inspiring as we’re being told it is by the paid dictators of consensus opinion out there. The exploration of aging and the different stages we go through on, to sound unbearably pompous for a moment, life’s journey aren’t even particularly new themes for Linklater to explore — as a matter of fact, it’s what the “Before” series is all about, and they tackle the subject much better than this flick does. So maybe the folks who make their living telling us all what to think are just making up for lost time by showering accolades all over Boyhood after largely ignoring last year’s Before Midnight. Or maybe they honestly just like this one better because their taste isn’t all that great, I dunno.

In any case, I’ve still got a few good things to say about this before I lay out my gripes, so let me say that Linklater is to be commended for the smooth, easy flow with which he transitions from one scene to the next, and for letting events in the story take their time and “breathe” a bit without resorting to strict formulas of, say, 15 minutes per year or somesuch. Each and every actor is also to be congratulated for their work here, as the performances are quite simply astonishing. Yeah, Coltrane is obviously the star of the show, and watching him grow up in front of our eyes is every bit the amazing experience everyone makes it out to be, but all the other major players turn in terrific work, as well, as do many of the minor ones (Marco Perella deserves special mention here for his role as Mason’s troubled — and troubling — stepfather-for-a-time). So kudos to everybody involved for some truly great work.

Here’s the rub, though (you knew it was coming) — the material they’ve got to work with just ain’t all that hot. Linklater has taken his non-manipulative approach (you know, the one I was just praising him for) to near-pathological extremes here and the end result is a film that feels almost clinically removed from its own subjects. Add in the disappointing fact that many of his characters are one-note ciphers — Mason’s mother gets an education and improves her economic and social standing over the years but still can’t help but marry one alcoholic loser after another, while his father laregely remains a go-nowhere “slacker” for ages (Hawke spends the first half of the film essentially playing Jesse Wallace) before undergoing an instant transformation and getting a new wife, new baby, new mustache, and, apparently, his shit together all at the same time — and what we wind up with is a movie that never transcends its origins as a cinematic experiment, as well as one that’s populated not by leaving, breathing people so much as specimens floating around in a celluloid petri dish.

I’m not foolish enough to think that unfairly-high expectations going in didn’t have something to do with why I left the theater feeling so flat after this one — shit, a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes is flat-out unheard of — but even if this had been made by somebody I’d never heard of and landed on our screens out of nowhere, I’d still be less than awestruck by the finished product. I fully appreciate everything Linklater was trying to do here, sure, but what he’s ended up doing is completing what amounts to a 12-year-long sociological study that’s so concerned with preserving the integrity of its ground rules (don’t force anything, adhere to faux-documentary stylings at all costs, let things play out as absolutely naturally as you can possibly manage given you’re still working from a script, etc.) that it forgets it has an audience to win over. I admire Linklater for protecting his characters from directorial heavy-handedness, to be sure, but it’s a shame he wasn’t able to find a way to share their story that would have let us in while still keeping the melodrama and schmaltz out.

So yeah, Boyhood definitely came up short for this armchair critic, despite the fact that I was rooting for it as hard as anyone. Walling off your characters to prevent Lifetime-movie-of-the-week-style syrup from oozing into their protective membrane is one thing, but walling them off from from genuine viewer involvement results in a film that feels oddly disconnected, even divorced, from events that could be so much more effectively communicated if given even an ounce of immediacy. We want to care about Mason and his family beyond the level that Linklater allows us to , but he never lets us, or himself, get that close, and its for that reason that Boyhood will always remain much more interesting for what it does than for what it actually is. Maybe he’ll give us another installment in 2026 that corrects the mistakes he made here? Chuckle at the idea all you want, but no one saw a sequel to Before Sunrise coming, either.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes”

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

This is gonna be one easy review to write because it all boils down to this : you really can believe all the hype, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is flat-out fucking awesome, and you need to go out and see this flick immediately.

My job is done, I’m finished, goodnight.

But I guess I do have at least a little bit more to say —

I wasn’t a big fan of Cloverfield by any means, but I’m turning into a big fan of Matt Reeves. I know it’s heresy to some, but I thought that Let Me In was every bit as good as its Swedish progenitor, and with this latest — and, frankly, best — installment in the venerable Apes franchise, Reeves has shown himself to be a director who is fully hitting his stride. The bigger and bolder the project, the more he seems to rise to the occasion. I frankly don’t even know how you go about eliciting good performances from actors who are only there for the purpose of having a bunch of hair overlaid onto their faces via computer, but he did it here. Andy Serkis, as ape leader Caesar, and Toby Kebbell, as his primary (and creepily duplicitous) rival, Koba, both turn in Oscar-caliber work on the basis of their facial expressions alone. They’re gonna wow you, folks, no lie.

As for the human actors playing — well, human parts, Jason Clarke is solid as stand-up guy Malcolm, apparent real-life asshole in the extreme Gary Oldman does typically competent (if, to be perfectly fair, unspectacular) work as survivalist head honcho Dreyfus, and Kodi Smit-McPhee is extremely convincing as Malcolm’s teenage son, Alexander (plus, he can be seen reading Charles Burns’ Black Hole, so bonus points for that). About the only weak link comes by way of nominal love interest Keri Russell, whose “concerned as shit” look at all times begins to grate pretty early on. But when you consider the fact that all these people spent pretty much the entire time in front of a blue (or maybe it was green) screen, getting only one subpar performance from the bunch is pretty good. And who knows? Maybe Russell simply can’t help coming off as worried 24/7.

My only other minor quibble here is with the title — when a film called Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is followed by one called Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, you gotta wonder when the buildup is going to stop and we’re finally gonna get down to the shit. Or maybe we’re looking at a 20-part story here and we’ve still got plenty of stage-setting to go, in which case we’ll be treated to Prelude To The Planet Of The Apes and We’re Still Getting To The Planet Of The Apes next.

Hey, I did say it was a minor quibble, did I not?

Apart from that, this has everything you’d want in a big-budget summer blockbuster, and quite a bit more than you’d honestly expect : there’s pathos, melodrama, palace (if your palace is a tree) intrigue, cheap scares, high-octane thrills, elaborately-staged battle sequences, and a genuine sense of urgency to the proceedings. Events — and tension — gradually build to the point of inevitability, and the film’s third act actually delivers in terms of its promised payoff. And for those of you who are tired of James Franco’s ever-evolving shtick — whatever it is — rest assured that he doesn’t even pop up in a flashback sequence.

Ya know what? Let’s not even do Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes the disservice of comparing it to other summer popcorn flicks — this leaves typical blockbuster fare like The Avengers or Star Trek so far back in the dust it’s not even funny. What Reeves has made here is one of the very best films you’ll see all year, even if big-budget sci-fi grandiosity is not your thing. This is eloquent, spectacular, undeniably powerful drama of the highest order. It’s everything and the kitchen sink plus one of those nifty fancy programmable faucets all attached to a fancy-ass 300-pound granite countertop.

Okay, I’m finished with the italics, promise. If you don’t like this, you don’t like movies. My job here really is done.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Transformers : Age Of Extinction”

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

You can accuse Michael Bay of many things — overblown spectacle, formulaic hackery, using CGI as a massive crutch, general lack of anything resembling original vision — but false advertising ins’t among them : when you go see a Bay-directed flick, particularly a Bay-directed Transfomers flick, you know exactly what you’re in for.

Oh, sure, his latest — Transformers : Age Of Extinction — alters the basic cosmetic trappings somewhat, most notably by banishing Shia LaBeouf to whatever hell for dead careers Megan Fox was earlier castigated to in favor of proven “action hero” star Mark Wahlberg, and yeah, Stanley Tucci is about the only major holdover (as far as human beings go) from previous entries in this series (look for more newcomers in the form of Kelsey Grammer and Nicola Peltz as Wahlberg’s daughter), but this is no reboot, by any stretch.

For one thing, the story continues directly on from the previous efforts, with the Transformers having been “driven underground,” so to speak, thanks to a government witch-hunt until no less than Optimus Prime himself is discovered and “resurrected” by Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager (there’s a focus-group-tested name if I’ve ever heard one) character, who —

Oh, fuck it. Does this even matter? Does even the most hard-core fan of this franchise — and that’s precisely what it is, a franchise — care what the plots of these films are about? If so, you have to feel a sort of pity for them, because Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (who was supposed to be the “next big thing” once upon a time for a few minutes there) clearly don’t. Every single “slow” or “quiet” scene is obviously just set-up to carry us into the next big CGI set piece, so we won’t waste our time here with a terribly detailed breakdown of the story. Sound fair?

All in all, Transformers : Age Of Extinction is all about getting the job done, slapping the finished product up on the screen, and opening up those cash register drawers. In that respect — and that one only — you’ve gotta say “mission accomplished” here. This movie is making money hand over fist and evidently the public’s appetite for more and more robo-carnage is proving to be flat-out insatiable. We apparently love this shit.

The question I have is — who’s “we”? Like the ever-ephemeral “they” of “well, they say you should — ” and “they say it’s not good for you to —” fame, the target audience for these films eludes me. I don’t like ’em. Nobody I know likes ’em. Nobody whose reviews I read online likes ’em. Nobody anywhere seems to like ’em.

And yet there it is — an 87% CinemaScore rating and another sequel already germinating somewhere in the pipeline. How, exactly, does this happen?

The short answer is — I don’t know. There’s obviously an appreciative audience for these things out there somewhere, but I can’t figure out where it is, beyond perhaps in junior high schoolyards. That’s not enough to explain the phenomenon, though. I know it’s purely anecdotal, but when I went to see this film, the theater had maybe 30 or 40 people in it, and the crowd remained silent throughout. No clapping and cheering. No gasping in awe. No chuckles at the limp one-liners. And yet it wasn’t a rapturous, devotional silence these folks were in the midst of — it was just a kind of “blah” sense of resignation. We were here. This was happening. Everything, apparently, was as it should be. Until the end credits rolled, and we all left to do whatever it is we were supposed to do next.

And maybe that’s the genius and/or malevolence of what Bay and company have come up with here in a nutshell : Tranfromers movies, for all their empty-hearted and empty-headed spectacle, aren’t huge pop culture events anymore. But a lot of us — myself included — keep going to them because they’re supposed to be. And we’re supposed to be there for them. It’s almost like a kind of Orwellian mass conditioning going on : we’re told this is a big deal and, lemmings that we are, we don’t want to miss out on that. Final score : Michael Bay and Paramount Pictures 1, hope for humanity 0.

Pessimistic? Sure. But is there any reason not to be? A family of four left the theater at exactly the same time I did and their car was parked right next to mine. We followed the same route for a few blocks (I wasn’t purposely tailing them, I promise!) — until they pulled into a McDonald’s. And that pretty much says it all right there.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Maleficent”

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Is it just me, or is this year’s summer blockbuster season incredibly front-loaded? Not only did it get off to a ridiculously early start in April with the release of Captain America : The Winter Soldier, but it seems that, with the notable exception of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, which is slated for a July release, everything that I was interested in seeing came out prior to the Memorial Day weekend — which was, in years past, the time when Hollywood’s blockbuster onslaught usually began.

Oh well. I guess there’s still some stuff I have some sort of low-level semi-interest in hitting theaters, with Disney’s Maleficent being a prime example of what I’m talking about. I wasn’t “hyped” for it, per se, but on a rainy Saturday afternoon with nothing else going on, what the hell — it’ll do in a pinch. Anybody with a functioning neural cortex pretty much knows what they’re getting into with something like this — a purportedly “modern re-telling” of a classic fairy tale (in this case Sleeping Beauty) that’s also, perhaps paradoxically, billed as being “truer to the roots” of the story than the universally-known animated version. Maybe everything that’s old really is new again.

In any case, the pattern these kinds of thing inevitably follow was set fairly firmly by Snow White And The Huntsman a couple summers back, and with a live (well, okay, live plus lots of CGI) action version of Cinderella already in the pipeline, it looks like “modernized fairy tales” (that are, again, supposedly “closer” to the “source material”) is a full-blown trend in Tinseltown. At least until one flops spectacularly.

Maleficent is too precise, clinical, and by-the-numbers to be that first big flop, of course, as this is thoroughly audience-tested material from start to finish, and while that same uber-conservative approach definitely sucks any sort of life or individuality from the proceedings, it does ensure that Disney will almost certainly turn a healthy profit off this thing, even with a budget estimated in the neighborhood of $200 million. It is, for all intents and purposes, a can’t-miss investment, and that’s what it plays out as.

Which isn’t the same thing as me saying that Maleficent is actively bad — it’s just that it’s not particularly good, either. Oh, sure, Angelina Jolie is perfect in the title role (there’s already Oscar talk) and it really does feel like it’s a part she was born to play, and the CGI work is spectacular and breathtaking and jaw-dropping and all that, and yeah, Elle Fanning as Aurora ( that’s what we call her now, folks, not “Sleeping Beauty”) leads a very talented supporting case that also includes the likes of Imelda Staunton, Sharlto Copley, Juno Temple, and Brenton Thwaites, all of whom do good work, but it’s all in service to the most pedestrian, production-line cinematic engineering possible. First-time director Robert Stromberg, who hails from a CG effects background, most likely knows what he’s doing here, but he’s given so little room to maneuver that failure just simply isn’t an option. This is a film that literally could have been directed by nearly anyone with at least some sort of cinematic background and turned out okay.

And maybe that’s what bugged me about it the most : just that sort of hyper-aggressive okay-ness. Given the opportunity to completely re-set the table, the Disney execs who originated and then green-lit this idea were more than happy to just tinker around the edges and “update” things without actually changing them. We all know the story, and while we’re admittedly getting a heavily-padded version of it told from the perspective of the “bad guy,” the fact remains that at the end of the day, all we’re left with is a more expensive, glitzier take on what we’ve already seen.

Maybe I missed a bit by just seeing this in 2-D, but let’s face it : any flick that leans upon the crutches of 3-D,Imax, and all that crap to “get the most from it” is one that’s entirely reliant upon bells and whistles — and while those bells and whistles are, no two ways about it, most impressive in this case, there’s just no substitute for a genuinely involving script, and Maleficent doesn’t have one. Mind you, it doesn’t have a bad script, either, it just — has a script. And the job of that script is to provide some sort of plausible set-up for one admittedly magnificent effects sequence after another. It’s cool and all for about a half hour, but after two full hours of Stromberg and company having to top themselves every five to ten minutes, you just end up feeling sort of worn down by events rather than invested in them.

Still, I suspect that Maleficent is going to prove to be pretty well “review-proof” and enjoy a healthy run in theaters before going on to do equal, if not even greater, business on home video. This is a film that’s precisely engineered to do exactly what it’s supposed to and nothing less (or more). Kinda like a robot. And it’s that robotic, auto-pilot, cruise control sensation that prevents this movie from being at all memorable — for good or ill.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “X-Men : Days Of Future Past”

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

At this point, I freely admit to being a little bit confused : X-Men : Days Of Future Past opens to a somewhat lower box office take than The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did, which was only slightly behind the opening-frame receipts generated for Captain America : The Winter Soldier, and yet Cap and the X-Men are both considered “successes,” while Spidey’s considered a “disappointment” — even though, last I checked, its’ total gross ticket sales were only about $50 million behind Cap’s despite the fact that it opened a full month later? Chances are probably good that it will even end up closing the gap here at some point, but no matter — the die appears to have already been cast. The stench of that rat I mentioned smelling in my Spider-Man review a couple weeks back? It’s getting a lot stronger now.

Needless to say, I’ve got a theory as to what’s going on here, and it builds upon my theory already expounded upon in that just-mentioned prior review : Disney/Marvel actively wants the Spider-Man franchise back, but the X-Men? Not so much. At least not yet.

How else to explain this clearly-orchestrated PR campaign? Look, internet movie critics are an easy bunch to buy off : for a free ticket, or even the promise of some kind of other free swag in the future, you can get thousands of people to say whatever you want them to. And from there, you can get thousands of others to mimic the already-established meme of whether a given flick is “successful” or not, because gosh, who would dare contradict the well-established critics and box-office analysts who have already passed judgment on the merits of a particular work? For the price of probably less than $10,000 in either payments or promises, DisMar has the movie-going public right where they want us, echoing their nonsensical party line and unsupported-by-the-facts pronouncements.

Needless to say, I don’t feel like playing along — for the most part. But there’s one area where I do agree with the general consensus, even if the fix is in : X-Men : Days Of Future Past is a really good superhero flick. And that might just throw a wrench in Marvel’s “this one’s dying on the vine, let’s just wait it out and see what happens” game plan.

Seriously, friends, this one has everything and the kitchen sink going on, but somehow returning director Bryan Singer (more on him in a minute) juggles every ball thrown in the air and makes it work : the “divergent timelines” conceit that forms the core of the plot never gets confusing even though it easily could; the action sequences are brisk and spectacular; the characters are uniformly believable and compelling; and the performances, from perhaps the most star-studded cast ever assembled for a comic-book film, are all first rate. When you’ve got Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Ellen Page, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Halle Berry, Michael Lerner, Booboo Stewart, Omar Sy, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Paquin, James Marsden and Famke Janssen all punching the same time clock, it goes without saying that some are going to have more to do than others, but nobody seems intent on stealing the show for themselves, which is no mean feat considering the sheer number of sizable egos that must be involved here. Sure, the script puts most of the onus of Wolverine, the young Professor Xavier, the young Magneto, the young Beast, the young Mystique, and the villainous Dr. Bolivar Trask, but that doesn’t mean everybody else doesn’t give their admittedly smaller parts at least a reasonable effort. Shit, I’m not sure how you even get stars of the stature of Page, Berry and Paquin to even accept what are essentially tertiary-at-best roles (does Paquin even have a line of dialogue?), but somehow they keep showing up for X-Men flicks, and in this case the place doesn’t even seem that crowded. Shit, Singer even manages to sneak in quick cameo for Wolverine co-creator Len Wein.

In many ways what makes Days Of Future Past so successful is that fact that it’s actually more a direct sequel to First Class (which I also thoroughly enjoyed) than it is the initial X-trilogy, and some of the continuity changes that the end results of this film apparently seal into place even seem to undo how those first three films “wound up,” but whatever — the end result here is a franchise that feels like it’s been given a new lease on life after treading water for a good half-decade or so. I mentioned just a moment ago that I really dug First Class, but you can’t get by on prequels forever. At some point a movie needed to come along that propelled the X-Men franchise forward, and this does so with plenty of style and flair.

Plus, the whole thing’s a lot of fun — sure, some of the dialogue is overly- verbose and clunky and painfully expository, but those instances are rare, and actually stand out in contrast to the general ease and flow of the rest of the film. And while the premise itself requires a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief, let’s be honest here — what super-hero movie doesn’t? At least this one rewards your willingness to go with the flow in ways that even highly-touted fare like Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (a favorite target of my ire, I admit, but only because it really does suck, no matter what anyone else thinks) could never hope to manage. Plus, audiences get a chance so see Dinklage prove that he can” bring it” in each and every role he takes on, not just on Game Of Thrones — something those of us who have been fans of his work ever since The Station Agent have long maintained.

In case it weren’t painfully obvious already, I thoroughly enjoyed X-Men : Days Of Future Past, and after appearing to flounder in the wake of the risible Valkyrie, my faith in Bryan Singer as a director has probably never been higher — unfortunately (here’s where that “more on him in a minute” comes in), I can’t say the same in regards to my faith in Bryan Singer as a human being. I won’t kid you — the sexual abuse allegations that have been leveled against him really bother the shit out of me. And no, it has nothing to do with Singer’s sexual orientation : I don’t care if a person is straight, gay, or somewhere in between, any and all relationships — whether serious, casual, or less than casual — between consenting adults are fine by me. Everybody likes to get laid, have at it. But age of consent laws are there for a reason, and kids and teens are, and should be, off limits to grown adults. The fact that the “fan” community seems so eager to point out that Singer’s accuser has filed civil rather than criminal charges and that he’s apparently done so in the past is both irrelevant to the reality of what may or may not have occurred, and represents a clear case of reprehensible victim-shaming of the highest order. Sure, everyone’s innocent until proven guilty, but assuming, or even implying, that somebody who’s been brave enough to come forward with claims this serious just has to be a liar because they’re choosing to address this issue in ways that others either don’t understand or approve of is beneath contempt. Maybe we’ll never know the whole truth of this matter, but if Singer did what’s he’s been accused of, then he’s got some serious issues and needs some serious help and sure, I feel some amount if sympathy for whatever turmoil is boiling away inside his mind — but not half as much as I do for the teen boy (s) that he’s victimized (if he has). I don’t want to see him condemned in the court of public opinion if he’s completely innocent, but I don’t want to see his accuser condemned, either, and that’s what’s been happening. Sex between adults and those not legally deemed to be adults (in most states that’s 18, in some 16) is against the law, period, and if Singer did, in fact, engage in the sort of behavior that’s been alleged, then I’m done with him from here on out. End of rant.

Regardless of what’s he’s done in his off-hours, though, the perhaps-tragic fact (depending on how legal proceedings play out) remains that what he’s done while on company time just can’t be denied in this case. I wish I could love X-Men : Days Of Future Past with a totally clean conscience, sure, but I can’t deny that I loved it just because it may have been directed by a guy whose personal behavior is both sleazy and illegal. It’s a complex set of circumstances to weigh in one’s mind, to be sure, but so goes life. I wish its murky waters were easier to navigate, but they never have been, and they’re never going to be.

As for the future of all things X-Men, I’ll make one easy prediction right now : when this thing hits home viewing “platforms” in a few months’ time, look for a bevy of reviews along the lines of “ya know, maybe this this isn’t quite as good as we thought at first” and “on second viewing, the flaws in this one are obvious” — not because such sentiments will be true, but because Days Of Future Past is so well-done, and opens up so many possible avenues for the franchise going forward, that Marvel’s gonna want to start one of their infamous “whisper campaigns” to try to undermine the public’s confidence in having it in “other hands” and get it back in their own grubby, greedy paws.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Godzilla”

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Here’s the thing when it comes to any and all Westernized takes on Japan’s most famous movie monster — Hollywood’s just never going to “get it” because, frankly, it can’t. Oh, sure, Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla is head and shoulders above Roland Emmerich’s 1998 abomination of a film, but the simple fact is that the Big Green Guy and all of his scaly, serpentine brethren that came to us courtesy of the venerable Toho studios were, at their core, celluloid manifestations of a deep-seated atomic angst that only a country that had been on the receiving end of, as Sting put it, “Oppenheimer’s deadly toy” could ever really give birth to. And while Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Ichiro Serizawa character does, in fact, explicitly mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki in this flick, it’s pure window dressing — Edwards and screenwriters Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham didn’t actually live through a time when they had to actively wonder what sort of nuclear fission-induced mutations were lurking beneath the waves just a few miles offshore, so they just can’t communicate that sort of unease with the same authenticity that the original Godzilla did.

And to those who would argue that a young Japanese filmmaker wouldn’t be able to imbue a project such as this with any more immediacy than Edwards does because they wouldn’t have lived though those horrific final days of WWII either, I’ve got one word for you : Fukushima.

There’s also something about CGI in these flicks that always has, and always will, suck, no matter how “good” it is : you know, in the back of your mind, that it’s just not there. To be sure, Edwards and his visual effects crew do a bang-up job of realizing their monster once they do, finally, reveal him, but no matter how “unrealistic” watching the original Godzilla smash cardboard miniatures of buildings may be by today’s standards, it still feels more “real” than the essentially flawless computer graphics of 2014 can ever hope to. But maybe that’s just me —-

Still, don’t get the wrong idea : I’m not so much “down on” the new Godzilla as I am completely indifferent to it. To be sure, Edwards’ heart seem to be in the right place here, and he’s very likely doing the best job that he can do — it’s just that his best is nowhere near good enough. A slow-burn plot doesn’t help matters much, either, and while I’m all for a prolonged buildup that leads to a big payoff, frankly the “character arcs” of all the principal players are so dull and uninvolving that when Compu-Zilla finally does make the scene, it feels more like a relief from soap opera-style tedium than anything else. Thankfully, there’s some effectively-realized mass destruction to bump up the “wow” factor a bit, and Godzilla doesn’t turn out to a solo act (that’s all I’ll say about that), but it’s still definitely a case of “too little, too late” as far as excitement here goes and a smorgasbord of good performances (Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn, Sally Hawkins, and the aforementioned Ken Watanabe) and bad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen) find themselves having equally gone, more or less, to waste when the proverbial train finally leaves the station.

Plot recaps probably make as much sense here as they do for a Hulk comic book — sure, the set-up matters on some level, but it’s all about “Hulk smash!” at the end of the day, isn’t it? Suffice to say that the main reason the various intermingling sub-plots here really don’t work is because the film goes from small-scale to so-big-it’s-off-the-scale at the drop of hat, with no transition period in between for either the characters or the audience. It’s all just a bit jarring — but maybe that’s not such a bad thing when I think about it because, truth be told, I was getting a little sleepy.

The “who are the real monsters?” theme that Edwards toys with is frankly a little bit old, too, and honestly represents something of a cop-out ( and here’s where my “Westerners will never get this right” thesis comes into play, by the way) : sure, humans are bad news, we’re destroying everything, etc. I know that. But some of us are worse than others, and any side willing to drop a nuclear bomb and murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people in order to “win” a war is due for some special criticism, in my view . The makers of the original Godzilla understood that fact, even if they couldn’t say so explicitly, while in the franchise’s 2014 iteration we just all suck. No one, specifically, is to blame, and hey, it’s too late for recriminations anyway when you’ve got an overgrown reptile tearing up the town. Or something like that.

Still, the film’s third act is enough to make even a hardened cynic like me gasp in awe on numerous occasions, and the “childlike wonder factor,” for lack of a batter term, really does kick into high gear here as events steamroll toward their conclusion. It’s worth the price of admission for the awesome (even if it is computer-generated) spectacle the final 45-or-so-minutes deliver. Sure, I wish we’d gotten nothing but a bad ride on a bumpy road from start to finish, but I guess I’m still willing to take what I can get. Felling like you’re 12 years old all over again for even a little while is better than never feeling like it at all.

And yet — in addition to being this film’s greatest (perhaps even only) saving grace, perhaps that last act is also its greatest weakness, because it exposes the essential, unavoidable truth at the heart of Edwards’ Godzilla : it’s good enough to make you remember why you love monster movies in the first place, but nowhere near good enough to actually be one of those monster movies that you love.