Author: BRWC

My Kaiju-thon Weekender! Day Two

By Last Caress.

KAIJU! (again)

It’s Day two of my Kaiju Marathon Weekender (check out Day One HERE), with four more monster movies ready to stomp their way into my front room. What’s That? Strictly Come Dancing‘s on? Yeah, right; you can poke that straight up your Pacific Rim. Mind you, Bruce Forsyth’s a Kaiju, isn’t he?

GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE

Giving radioactive nuclear waste a much-needed day off and instead looking at the folly of man playing God with biotechnology, Godzilla vs Biollante (Kazuki, 1989) sees Godzilla squaring up to a creature built by accident in a lab. So, what exactly is Biollante? Well, it’s a clutch of cells from Godzilla’s own body, spliced with… ready?… a haunted rose bush. That’s right everybody, Biollante is a bloody great rosebush, with a healthy dollop of Kaiju plus the soul of some scientist’s dead daughter thrown in for shits and giggles. But hey – don’t let that rather limp description dissuade you. Biollante is MASSIVE, maybe the biggest Kaiju in any Godzilla picture. And yes, it’s got a flowering rose for a head, but it’s also a writhing tangle of viney tentacles and teeth. Teeth everywhere. As it rises from the water, it looks like Cthulhu himself.

It’s not quite the same fun-ride as Godzilla’s more traditional throwdowns, but Biollante is a truly unique adversary and, just as uniquely, Godzilla vs. Biollante has more depth to it than any Godzilla pic since the 1954 original.

GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF LEGION

Following on directly from yesterday’s Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (Kaneko, 1995) comes Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (Kaneko, 1996), the second part of a self-contained trilogy for Gamera during the “Heisei” period (guess which Gamera movie I’ll be watching tomorrow). Keeping with the bio-monster plant vibe of Godzilla vs. Biollante, Gamera has to tackle some nefarious plant life too, but the plants here are not human engineering errors, they’re alien, altering the atmosphere and being nurtured all the way by a “Legion” of insect-like beasties, all of which of course are being spawned somewhere along the line by a queen. Ripleeeey! No… I mean: Gameraaaaa!

But is it any good? Well, let’s be clear: The Heisei Gamera trilogy is as good as anything the Kaiju genre has to offer. If you ever even smiled fondly at a Godzilla pic or a Kong movie, you owe it to yourself to give these three films a try. This incarnation of Gamera is every bit the equal of his more illustrious counterparts.

THE HOST

Following years of toxic waste dumping into the Han River and amid a frantic government cover-up to deflect public condemnation, a foul, vaguely amphibian creature announces his existence by hopping out of the Han and running amok through the cityfolk and daytrippers who had previously been enjoying the Seoul sun. Gobbling up civilians as it goes and, in a final flourish, swiping up the daughter of nice-but-dim riverside caterer Gang-du (the inimitable Song Kang-ho) for consumption back at its lair, so begins The Host (Bong, 2006), a wonderful monster movie from South Korea which is also a moving family drama, an indictment on the “freedom” of the free world and, often, a lively comedy. The creature – by far the smallest here at my Kaiju weekender – is one of the most impressive-looking of the lot but, as grotesquely magnificent as he is, The Host is stolen from under the monster’s nose (does he have a nose?) by Song Kang-ho, who is simultaneously heartbreaking, infuriating, daft and lovable.

KING KONG

Too long. Too mawkish. Hilariously overindulgent. Adds nothing to the tale already told over seventy years ago, save the bells and whistles of 21st century CGI and special effects (and even that lot pales in relative comparison to the stop-motion alchemy of 1933). Subplots which go f*cking nowhere. A mind-bending amount of screen time spent on the bloody boat to Skull Island, during which time the whole movie grinds to a halt and we, the audience, all lose the will to live.

Yes, all of that. But, dammit, if this tale of love ‘twixt a Vaudevillian chorus girl and a 25ft tall gorilla can overcome all of that, it truly is one of the greatest love stories ever told. And that’s exactly what Peter Jackson’s 2005 retelling of King Kong is. I mean, Kong always loved Ann Darrow but, in 1933, Fay Wray didn’t love him back. She couldn’t quite see past the monster. Naomi Watts’ Ann sees Kong, truly sees him. Maybe it’s because the Kong of 1933 is a monstrous creature, ape-like but not an ape, not anything we recognise, whereas Jackson’s Kong is a feasible evolution; a gorilla, plain and simple. A massive gorilla, but not incomprehensibly so. One of God’s creatures, not some toxic blasphemy coughed up out of the Earth’s crust. Ann Darrow relates, and so do we. When I watch Gamera, I think of Gamera, and cheer. Godzilla, ditto. When I watch Peter Jackson’s Kong share the awesome majesty of a sunset with his only friend… I think of me and my kitty-kat, peering out of the kitchen window together, watching the birdies flying over here, over there. Don’t fucking laugh, I’m all choked up here!

Anyway, it’s been eight-and-a-half hours of giant-sized smashy-smashy action, but that’s that for today. Four more tomorrow to wrap up my Kaiju Marathon Weekender.

15th October 2016
My Kaiju-thon Weekender! Day One

By Last Caress.

KAIJU!

From the Japanese for “Strange Beast”, Kaiju is a genre of films which generally feature an oversized monster smashing up parts of a city; Tokyo, usually, although it could be New York, Seoul, London or anywhere. And who amongst us hasn’t dreamt of being enlarged by radioactivity to 300ft in size and then pulverizing our local town to f*cking rubble? I know I have. I’m fantasizing about it right now, in fact: Take that, Asda! Up yours, Debenhams! Hit ME with extortionate parking fees would you, Eastgate Shopping Centre?? Ha!

Anyway, enough of that. This weekend, I thought I’d try to watch a bunch of my favourite Kaiju pictures. Twelve of them, no less. Over three days. I can almost hear the divorce lawyers up and down the county firing up their laptops and emailing my wife to see if they can be of assistance at all. Well, tough luck, you grasping leeches; in recognition of my wife tolerating a dozen monster movies this weekend, I’ve agreed to sit with her while we watch Me Before bloody You, which I think is a more-than-fair exchange.

Right: Let’s get ready to rumble, eh?

KING KONG ESCAPES

Kicking off my Kaiju Marathon Weekender is King Kong Escapes, released in 1967 and directed by Kaiju maestro Ishiro Honda, writer/director of the original Godzilla (1954) as well as many others. Part Bond, part monster mash-up, part pile of crap (in the good way), King Kong Escapes finds the nefarious Dr. Who – no, not that one; this one is more of a “Dr. No” knock-off – trying to extract the radioactive Element X from the frozen Arctic Tundra using his creation: Mechani-Kong, a robotic version of our favourite 50ft gorilla. When the radiation fries Mechani-Kong’s circuits, Dr. Who – no, not that one! I’ve already told you! – opts to seek out the real thing, currently lording it on Mondo Island. A lot of fun, King Kong Escapes was Kaiju production specialists Toho’s second and best crack at a Kong movie, following on from 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, also directed by Honda.

GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE

Produced by the Daiei Film Co in 1965 in order to capitalize on Toho’s flourishing Godzilla franchise, Gamera told of a giant, prehistoric rocket-powered turtle – no, really – who, awoken by atomic testing, comes to wreak havok upon Japan. However, in the mid/late sixties Toho elected to make Godzilla an anti-hero, and Daiei quickly followed suit with Gamera, making him a hugely kiddie-centric creature. Targeting their Kaiju at a youngster demographic proved detrimental to both franchises however; Terror of Mechagodzilla (Honda 1975) was Godzilla’s last picture for ten years, and Gamera: Super Monster (Yuasa, 1980) was Gamera’s last for fifteen years.

Leap forward to 1995 and Daiei decided to get Gamera out of mothballs for a trilogy of movies, the first of which was Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, directed by Shusuke Kaneko and repurposing Gamera as a bioengineered protector of mankind, created by Atlanteans to battle another creation of theirs which turned on them, the batlike bioweapon Gyaos (first seen back in 1967 in Gamera vs. Gyaos). The Gamera movies of the 1990’s start well and get progressively better, and as a trilogy represent some of the best material of the Kaiju genre.

GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA

We’ve already seen a mechanized version of King Kong, and now it’s time to say howdy to a mechanized Godzilla in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (Tezuka, 2002), arguably the best Mechagodzilla pic (it’s either this one or its direct sequel, 2003’s Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.) and not to be confused with either Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Fukuda, 1974) or, um, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Okawara, 1993), often referred to as Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II so as to avoid confusion, even though it’s not a sequel in any way and is in fact the third Mechagodzilla pic. Hm. Anyway, this one sees the Japanese military create a biomechanical simile of Godzilla from the skeleton of the original Godzilla who was defeated in the original 1954 picture, to combat another Godzilla should one ever arise. And arise, one certainly does. An absolute blast, this picture; for my money it’s everything a Godzilla movie should be.

CLOVERFIELD

Finishing off day one of my Kaiju Marathon Weekender is a US picture: Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008), produced by Star Trek/Star Wars‘ J.J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard, director of 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods, in which the footage on a camcorder found in the ominously-titled “Area US447, formerly known as Central Park” chronicles the trials and tribulations of a small band of friends frantically trying to escape Manhattan while a Kaiju smashes the island to pieces. Despite being over 250 feet tall, the nameless Kaiju of Cloverfield was designed by the filmmakers to be an infant of its species, smashing its way through New York City because it’s lost, confused and panicked; in many ways a way scarier prospect than the carnage wrought by something which knows what it’s doing. I love Cloverfield, I think it’s a mightily impressive Kaiju pic, considerably darker than one might assume it to be and a terrific way to wind up proceedings for today.

Four more tomorrow!

14th October 2016
Five Of The Best Dwayne Johnson Movies

According to Variety, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is now officially the highest paid actor in Hollywood. He’s also regularly cited as the nicest, the most hard working and one of the smartest. Not bad for someone who started their career up to their eyes in spandex amid the pantomime theatrics of the world of professional wrestling? As CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE hits Digital Download on October 17^th before arriving on Blu-ray and DVD on October 31^st, we take a look at his rise to fame, marking out five of his best performances to date:

Central Intelligence (2016)

Central Intelligence is easily one of the most likeable comedies of 2016 – something more than verified by its global box office returns. The film takes the traditional buddy comedy and spins the usual tropes so that stand-up sensation Kevin Hart is ostensibly the straight man to Johnson’s leftfield CIA oddball. The film also explores the weight of expectation placed on High School successes as opposed to the cold, hard reality of life after education. Johnson is Bob Stone, formerly and quite literally the butt of every joke at school until his ultimate humiliation on graduation day leads him to transform every aspect of his life; ultimately becoming a secret agent. Hart is Calvin Joyner, the high school jock turned put-upon accountant. When Stone comes crashing back into his life, though, Joyner has to ask himself if his unhinged former friend is really anything more than a walking ball of paranoid delusions. Oh, and people keep trying to blow them both up. The film works on multiple levels but perhaps its most efficient trick comes from subverting what you expect. Johnson also delivers a remarkably camp performance that carries Central Intelligence to new comic heights.

San Andreas (2015)

Despite being saddled with the distinctly un-heroic moniker of ‘Raymond’, Johnson once again proves that you can’t judge a book by its cover as he single-handedly rescues most of LA (well, his ex-wife and daughter) from the worst earthquake in the city’s history. Right from the opening scenes where he pals around with Colton Haynes before executing a daring helicopter rescue, you know you’re on wonderfully safe ground even as the fault lines in downtown LA start to say otherwise. San Andreas might have divided critics somewhat but the blueprint for all that is great about a Dwayne Johnson movie (namely, Dwayne Johnson) was firmly set by now and audiences lapped up the earth-shattering drama to the point that we’re all set for San Andreas 2 in the not too distant future.

The Fast & The Furious franchise (2011 onwards)

The Fast and the Furious franchise has been racing along from its first Paul Walker/Vin Diesel outing in 2001, building up a back story and a roster of regular cast members that slowly but surely hooked more and more fans. Unusually for a long-running franchise the fifth entry in the series brings in The Rock, working on the entirely sensible theory that he makes everything better. With Paul Walker’s character having switched sides from law enforcement to rebel on the run, Johnson’s ‘Hobbs’ came in as a tough, morally upright cop hot on the heels of our collection of loveable rogues. He’s as good with his fists as he is behind the wheel of a car. Johnson is now deeply entrenched in the franchise which is about to hit its eighth outing.

Race To Witch Mountain (2009)

It’s a brave man who takes a classic Disney story (starring Christopher Lee and Bette Davis, no less) and then remakes it with The Rock, no? Brave, but ultimately smart, it seems, since Race To Witch Mountain is a pure, unadulterated joy. Johnson stars as a Vegas cab driver with a criminal past who inadvertently picks up two alien children trying to find their way back to their home planet, whilst outrunning the intergalactic hitman out to ensure that they don’t. What follows is an enormously good-natured romp featuring evil CIA agents, a genuinely scary, Terminator-esque alien villain and the by – now – familiar spark that Johnson brings to almost every project he touches.

Welcome To The Jungle (2003 – AKA The Rundown)

An early entry in Johnson’s catalogue, Welcome To The Jungle was also an early alert to the star potential of its hero. Johnson is a bounty hunter sent to the Amazon rainforest to retrieve a mobster’s wayward son (Sean William Scott, AKA Stifler from American Pie). Once there, Johnson realises Scott is searching for a long lost city and being bank-rolled/threatened/chased by Christopher Walken’s outright crazy local kingpin. There’s great fun to be had watching Walken and Johnson eyeball one another and even if that’s not for you, Johnson hits Sean William Scott in the face. A lot.

Central Intelligence is available on Digital Download on October 17^th and on Blu-ray and DVD on October 31^st

9th October 2016
Everything I Know, I Learned From The Movies

Your parents probably told you at least once or twice that they only way to really learn life skills to to live life on your own in the real world. While their advice is spot on (and because parents are often right), there are a lot of life skills you can learn from watching movies. Why not learn and be entertained at the same time? It beats living a life of trial and error.

Cooking

An important part of life is having the ability to cook. Sure, you could attempt to live a life of takeout, but cooking is healthier, less expensive, and can even impress your future life partner. While there are countless documentaries on food preparation, they can be somewhat dry (not something you want when cooking). Some popular choices for picking up some culinary tips include watching Jon Favreau making Cuban sandwiches on his food truck in Chef (2014), Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in Julia & Julia (2009) or even a basic, yet delicious, soup in Pixar’s Ratatouille (2007).

Animal Companionship

Having a pet when you’re a kid is one thing because there’s a good chance your parents did a lot more of the caring for your beloved dog than you did, but if you’re living alone and trying to decide if you’re ready for an animal companion, consider watching a movie first. It seems that every film ever made about dogs will make you cry, such as Old Yeller or Marley & Me, but there are some that can make you think long, hard, and responsibly about pet ownership. For instance, if you were a child of the 1980’s or ‘90s, remember the big, drooly and lovable St. Bernard, Beethoven? Watch Beethoven (1992) again as an adult and you may think twice to getting a dog of any size, once you see the destruction.

Work

Being employed is one of those important life skills that often seems overrated, but it pays the bills and allows you to be able to have a hobby or two. If you have a job you love, consider yourself lucky. If you hate what you do, you should start browsing the classifieds, but if you’re just having a stressful day at work, like all of us do sometimes, you may find some inspiration from Peter’s laissez-faire attitude in the ever-popular workplace comedy, Office Space (1999), avoid seeking inspiration from Horrible Bosses (2011) and if you need to feel a little bit better about your own job, watch Clerks (1994).

In Your Free Time

Work is important, but so is having free time. If you make no room in your life for hobbies or things you enjoy, it’s time to reassess what you’re doing (or not doing). Like to play poker with friends on a Friday night? If you need some gambling tutorials, check out Rounders (1998) or The Gambler (2014) for a few winning tips.

If you love the idea of spending the day fishing, these movies may inspire you and offer a few angling tips: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Salmon Fishing in Yemen (2011), and A River Runs Through It (1992).

Finally, if you’d rather celebrate your inner artist, regardless of your preferred medium, Butter (2011) can teach you a few things about sculpting, in general, and American Splendor (2003) may inspire you to tell your life story in the form of a graphic novel.

5th October 2016
Timothy J Cox: Three Short Films

By Last Caress.

Today BRWC looks at three short films featuring the talents of Philadelphia-born New Yorker Timothy J. Cox, described variously as “the busiest man in indie cinema” and “the Johnny Depp of indie cinema”. I’m the Johnny Depp of independent film review, you know. Well, we’ve both played Hunter S. Thompson. Well, I say I’ve played Hunter S. Thompson, I mean I’ve done a lot of drugs. Well, I say I’ve done a lot of drugs, I mean I’ve gone through two tubes of Anusol this week already, and it’s only Monday. Chafes, it does!

Anyway, the movies:

What Jack Built (Matthew Mahler, 2015)

Jack is building, in his workshed. A cigarillo is clenched almost perpetually ‘twixt his teeth. He drills. He planes. He smokes. He welds. He grinds. He smokes. He pores over diagrams. He rummages for parts. He smokes. Wood. Screws. Hinges. Circuit boards. Motherboards. Keyboards. A mixing deck. A cassette player (remember those?). What’s he building? Pensively, he takes these bits and bobs out into the woods, where he begins to assemble them, running yards and yards of power cords from an outlet. It appears to be some manner of motion-triggered box trap, around which he places cameras through which he can monitor the trap’s success from his workshed. But what is he trying to catch?

What Jack Built has no dialogue whatsoever, no other characters apart from the titular Jack played by our man Timothy J. Cox, the ambiguous ending isn’t quite satisfying enough and, even at a lean eleven minutes, much of Jack’s construction could probably have been pared by as much as half and still maintained the film’s effect. Nevertheless, it’s a strangely intriguing piece; hypnotic almost, like a lava lamp. And Mr. Cox – along with his director Matthew Mahler – still somehow manages to disarm Jack and keep him likeable, and his antics interesting.

Check out What Jack Built HERE

Total Performance (Sean Meehan, 2015)

Tory Berner, director Sean Meehan and Timothy J. Cox

Cori (Tory Berner) and Tim (Steven Conroy) are on a date. A first date, and it’s going quite well. Cori is explaining to Tim what she does for a living, and he is fascinated. Mind you, he would be; what Cori does is fascinating. She works for “Total Performance”, an agency which hires out actors like Cori to clients who wish to use them, as Cori puts it, as “sparring dummies” upon whom the clients can practice difficult verbal exchanges which they obviously envisage having to tackle at some point in their immediate future: Confronting a cheating spouse perhaps, or an underperforming work colleague, or maybe telling your loving partner that you’re not feeling it anymore, and it’s over.

Anyway, the date ends, Cori and Tim kiss goodnight, and the next day Cori goes about her business, taking an appointment with a client, auditioning for a film role. Upon returning from her audition, she’s handed another client: Tim. But who does he need to confront, and why?

If I’m honest, the conclusion doesn’t quite live up to the reams of potential provided by the build-up in the rest of the movie, but on the whole Total Performance is a good-looking, flowing piece, shot and framed confidently by writer/director Sean Meehan and anchored by the natural, unfussy performances of Steven Conroy and particularly of Tory Berner, the star and standout performer in this short (our man Timothy J. Cox, also with a producer credit on Total Performance, has a cameo playing a CEO who wants to rehearse a scenario wherein he is to fire his best friend from his company).

Check out Total Performance HERE

Dirty Books (Zachary Lapierre, 2016)

Timothy J. Cox and Noah Bailey

High school student David Burrow (Noah Bailey) is the editor-in-chief of the Prichard Hall Gazette, the weekly high school one-sheet. However, with little to report past changes to the school cafeteria output, added to the spiralling costs of producing barely-read printed media, the inevitable has happened and school principal Dr. Bradley (Timothy J. Cox) has called David in to inform him that, regrettably, the Gazette cannot continue in its current form and will have to transition to a much more 21st century user-friendly online blog form or cease altogether. When David passes this on to the other students involved in the Gazette’s publication they’re fine with it; it makes a lot of sense to switch to online media, really. David himself however, is furious. They’re killing the printed word! But what can he do? Well, if he can manufacture some sensationalist news by anonymously committing a series of pranks and then reporting them exclusively in the Gazette as a big mystery, interest will grow as well as readership numbers, and the Gazette will be saved. Hurrah!

But why is David so angry at the Gazette’s impending demise, anyway? Well, Dirty Books isn’t really about the Gazette and neither is David’s ire. Clearly not one of the “cool” kids, David has begun to define himself by his editor-in-chief position at the newspaper, even though said newspaper is little more than a leaflet and the entire Gazette enterprise is simply an after-school club. And in committing these pranks in order to try to save his editor-in-chief self, he’s inadvertently stumbled upon a potential definition of self which is even more tantalizing: The kids are all talking about him now! Of course, they’re not quite talking about him as such because this prankster who has caught everybody’s attention is anonymous but, still! Talking! And if it all eventually falls in on him, which it is bound to at some point, he’ll be infamous and they’ll be talking about him – actually, him – for years! Of course, he’ll likely be ridiculed as a fraud rather than revered, and he’ll have done a fair bit of damage to his academic achievements too but, still! Talking! Let’s just hope his friend Owens (Isaiah Lapierre) doesn’t lose that journal of his, into which he writes everything, including all of David’s confessions of being the Blanchard Hall Prankster, eh?

David’s big scheme for saving the paper and becoming a celebrity in the process is riddled with flaws, however. The “U”-rated pranks he commits are quite lame (when they’re not entirely implausible altogether, such as his moving a bunch of furniture into the cafeteria and arranging it to resemble a living room), and this jeopardizes his conviction that these pranks will pass into school-hall legend as the years roll on, long past his time at the school. And how would these pranks save the Gazette, anyway? Wouldn’t the school just want these items reported upon in the new online school blog? The student body wouldn’t need to read about these pranks in a newsletter at the end of the week, they’d bear witness to them each day as they happened. And David has no guarantee whatsoever that any written reporting of the pranks will be exclusive to the newsletter; anybody at the school could tweet about it to the entire world, if they wanted. But this all further paints for us the picture of David, an unremarkable lad just beginning on the road to discovering exactly who he is and who he wants to be, dazzled as so many are by the bright lights atop the school-student caste system, sinking into an obsession with becoming “somebody” amongst his peers, and suffering delusions of grandeur as a result. “So, this is where I make my exit?” He proclaims, Nixon-like, at the film’s end. “Don’t be so dramatic, David. It’s just suspension,” replies the principal.

Director Zachary Lapierre has made quite a thoughtful piece underneath its gently humorous, light-hearted frippery, making keen observations about the skewed perception of status amongst school kids. Mr. Lapierre’s composition is surefooted and oftentimes Dirty Books is wonderfully evocative of simpler times in our lives. The terrific soundtrack helps greatly in this regard, giving the movie an almost Clerks-like feel here and there. The inexperience of the cast is admittedly something of an issue throughout (Timothy J. Cox excepted) but, whilst Dirty Books is nowhere near as polished as Total Performance, it’s my favourite from the three shorts.

Check out Dirty Books HERE

3rd October 2016