GODZILLA: Not Godawful Like The '98 One So There's That

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

GODZILLA (Dir.Gareth Edwards, 2014)

When I was a kid I loved GODZILLA movies. Well, I loved laughing at them. 

It was the '70s run of the series, so it was the iconic overgrown fire-breathing creature at its cheesiest. The gigantic lizard (a stunt actor in a rubber suit) was portrayed as a friend to the people who'd save Toyko or whatever Japanese city from an attacking monster, then wave to the cheering masses and head back into the sea. Even toddlers could tell how ridiculous those movies were. 

This new American remake/re-boot/re-imagining/re-whatever wisely acts like the godawful 1998 Roland Emmerich version never happened. Max Borenstein's screenplay neatly builds upon Godzilla's atomic age origin story from the 1954 original, with a  set-up featuring an intense Bryan Cranston as a Nuclear Power Plant supervisor in Japan convinced that there's a cover-up surrounding a massive meltdown that took the life of his wife (Juliette Binoche).

As Cranston's Navy officer son, and the movie's real protagonist, Aaron Taylor-Johnson flies to Japan, leaving behind his nurse wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and young son (Carson Bolde), to bail out his now thought to be crazy father after he was arrested for trespassing in the quarantined are where they lived when the tragic accident occurred in 1999 - hey, that's not far off from when the tragic accident that was the '98 GODZILLA happened but I digress.

Cranston and Taylor Johnson trespass on the property again and are taken into custody to some sort of secret installation where the plant was, which now has an insanely large chrysalis pod being studied by scientists played by Ken Watanbe and Sally Hawkins. Watanbe seems to have only been hired so that he can dramatically say “Godzilla” (or “Gojira”) in his thick Japanese accent.

There's all this layered plotting to get through before we even catch a glimpse of Godzilla, but the build-up has a lot of genuine suspense and Cranston's great emotional gravitas going for it. 

However, once Godzilla finally rears his spiky, scaly reptilian head and roars his trademark roar in an in-your-face close-up (one of the many times I was glad I wasn't seeing it in 3D), the movie is all about the big battle scenes with the human element and the science whatnot taking a backseat.

So a terrifically thrilling first half bleeds into a tiresomely bombastic second hour that apparently has the sole goal of outdoing MAN OF STEEL in the amount of devastating destruction it can fill the screen with.

Godzilla chases the Winged Muto (I think that's right) that hatched from the pod at the plant site across the ocean from Japan so we get to see Honolulu, San Francisco (Jesus, how many times do I have to see the Golden Gate Bridge getting destroyed in the movies?), and Las Vegas get destroyed. Like usual we don't see many people get killed, because this is a popcorn picture and that would bum us out I suppose.

It is a major improvement over the '98 one, and I like that this American film by a British director based on a Japanese commodity takes its source so seriously, but I was bored to tears by the messy, noisy battles. 

I'll give them that they succeeded in wringing some instances of excitement out of CGI creatures wailing on each other, but I think I had more fun in my youth watching men in bulky costumes with obvious zippers slugging it out with tacky backgrounds covered with unconvincing miniatures and models.

But here, the cluttered visuals here looked so much like every other event films' visuals that I kept expecting a superhero to show up.

There's also the attempt at a Spielbergian sense of awe that director Edwards, whose modest low budget debut film MONSTERS was a dry run for this ginormous genre exercise, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (THE AVENGERS), and thousands of special effects artists just can't pull off.

It could be that beyond the campiness I enjoyed back then, I never really cared much for the whole Godzilla thing. I mean, I appreciate the anti-nuclear subtext of Ishirō Honda 60-year old original - perhaps the only essential entry of the series - but can anyone claim that any of the nearly 30 sequels that followed is quality cinema?

I know, I know - they're not supposed to be high art, they're supposed to be big ass popcorn movies with monsters mashing, buildings being smashed, missiles exploding (or getting eaten), and mass hysteria.

This has all that in spades, so Godzilla fans and audiences seeking mindless thrills will eat it up, but, in my case, I'm going to borrow the words of Butthead (of Beavis and Butthead fame, of course) commenting on a long forgotten video: “Usually, demolition and destruction is pretty cool, too, but I don't know, like here, it's like, here it just, it falls flat.”

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The Laughably Bad Victorian-Era Romantic Thriller IN SECRET

Now playing at an art house near you, in my case the Colony Theater in Raleigh:

IN SECRET (Dir. Charlie Stratton, 2013)

Charlie Stratton’s adaptation of Neal Bell’s stage play, which was based on the 1867 novel “Therese Racquin” by Émile Zola, is such an overwrought exercise with simplistic soap opera dialogue that it sometimes plays like a parody of an Victorian era romantic thriller. A very bad parody, that is.

Set in France in the 1860s, the story sets up Elizabeth Olsen as a woman trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage to a sickly Tom Felton (best known as Draco Malfoy in the HARRY POTTER films), that was arranged by Jessica Lange as Malfoy’s, I mean Felton’s cold evil-eyed mother. Lange is also Olsen’s aunt so there’s that.

I’ve often thought that Lange sometimes brings a mental instability to characters that don’t necessarily call for it, but this one sure does. The power she wields over Olsen is unexplained as I kept wondering why doesn’t the girl just run away when told she has to marry Felton? Olsen in an aside says she didn’t think she had the strength to make it on her own, but I’m not buying it.

Shortly after the couple and matriarch Lange move to Paris to open up a some sort of fabric shop (that never has any customers), while Felton works in an office, Oscar Isaac (currently starring as the title character in the Coen brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS) pops up as a childhood friend of Felton’s. Isaac is a suave charming aspiring artist who Olsen falls madly in love with in a series of overly artsy soft focus sex scenes (one even has the light through a window glaring on the lens). Imagine gruff movie trailer announcer’s voice: “The love they had could only be shared…In Secret.”

Because of the times or whatever, Olsen and Isaac can’t just run away together so the word “accident” comes up regarding Felton, which is a shame because he’s the only one here with the appropriate accent. The three go on a boat trip that ends in murder as Isaac drowns Felton. We don’t see this happen except for fleeting flashbacks later in the film, but we get what happened when Olsen and Isaac come back wet and screaming, claiming that Felton was standing, dancing I think, and tipped the boat over. 

Not sure why they felt it was necessary to show us a ghastly shot of Felton's corpse - it creeped me out more than it did Isaac when he went to the morgue to identify the body.

The lovers have to wait to get together or else they’ll be suspected for murder, and guess what, the heat has died off for some reason. The plotting gets more and more ludicrous in the last third, with Lange developing some disease that causes her to lose her voice so she’s unable to point out to anyone that Olsen and Isaac murdered her son. Lange even goes to the length to spell it out in messy ink on the store’s floor.

The swelling strings of Gabriel Yared's (THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, COLD MOUNTAIN) score try to intensify the events but come off as laughably bad as everything else.

When I’m watching a film that I know is an adaptation of a book I haven’t read, I sometimes find myself thinking ‘oh, this is probably a lot more compelling or plausible on the page.’ I thought that a lot during this film, but folks who’ve read the original novel may get a lot more out of it than me - I'm fairly certain Zola's text wasn't the trashy romance novel that this film makes it look like.

Stratton's full length feature directorial debut, IN SECRET is a dreadful melodrama, that wastes the energy of talented actors (for some reason they cast Mackenzie Crook, best known as Gareth from The Office UK, to just stand around and make obvious observations), while its contrivances waste the time of the audience. For sure, one of the first of the worst movies of the year.

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MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE: The Film Babble Blog Review

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (Dir. Sean Durkin, 2011)

If you can get past the title, this is a stunner.

Elizabeth Olsen is Martha, but while she was living with a cult for 2 years in the Catskills she was called “Marcy May.” “Marlene” is the name all the women group members are given to identify themselves when answering the phone (the men go by “Michael”).

Got it?

The film begins with Olsen fleeing the cult’s farm, and calling her older sister (Sarah Paulson) to come pick her up. Olsen stays with her sister and her husband (Hugh Dancy) at their Connecticut vacation house as she recovers.

But getting back to normal is going to be difficult as she is haunted by memories of what she’s been through.

“Do you ever have that feeling where you can’t tell if something is a memory or if it’s something you dreamed?” She asks Paulson, summing up what most of the movie is like.

As many scenes form, we are unsure if what is happening is past or present. We see flashbacks involving John Hawkes as the cult’s leader, who is as scary as he is charismatic. Hawkes trains the cult members how to handle guns, perform home invasions, and participate in forced sex rituals. Even when softly singing an old ‘60s folk song (aptly titled “Marcy’s Song), Hawkes is creepy as can be.

Olsen is understandably frightened about being abducted again, constantly feeling she’s being watched. Her behavior is unnerving to Paulson and Dancy who are trying to have a baby. At one point Olsen climbs into bed with them as they are having sex. Yep, the girl ain’t right.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a disturbing, unsettling experience. A lot of it drifts like a dream, but the kind of dream that's on the edge of a nightmare.

First time writer-director Durkin has crafted a stirring film, a different kind of psychological thriller than the formulaic fodder that usually goes by that label.

The material here may be a bit vague – we never get much of a backstory to the cult, and don’t get how Olsen got caught up with them in the first place – but this is a movie about moods and a fractured mindset, it’s not about details or exposition.

The ambiguous ending is sure to put many people off, but I found it to be fitting in keeping with the film’s eerie atmosphere.

Olsen’s performance never falters. It’s a challenging character that she infuses with an effective frazzled fragility, which is really impressive for her first leading role in a feature film.

Recently it was reported that the President ordered up this film for a screening at the White House.

Interesting choice. Maybe that will add some Obama buzz to the hugely favorable reviews this has already gathered. This is not a film to be ignored, and since the Commander in Chief himself sought it out, with hope many moviegoers will follow suit.

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