Woe Unto the State of SF

 

I may not have made millions over the course of my life, may not have moved the culture with my writing, may not have influenced a generation of musicians with my music. But one thing I have done is gained an in-depth appreciation and understanding of science fiction, going way, way, all the way back to my single digits. That boy who spent second grade sick in bed devouring black-and-white 1950s sci fi, who eagerly tore into that Asimov five-pack of paperbacks Santa left under the tree (and dozens and dozens of other authors afterwards), who wrote his first science fiction story on a twenty-five pound metal typewriter he could barely lift, now sadly laments the state of science fiction.

 

More concisely, corporate science fiction, as in, but not exclusive to, Disney.

 

If you want to know where Hopper stands, consider the following:

 

Star Wars ended in 1983.

 

Star Trek ended in 1994.

 

The Alien franchise ended in 1992.

 

The Terminator movies ended in 1991.

 

Superhero movies, of which there really were only two, ended in 1980.

 

The Indiana Jones movies wrapped up nicely in 1989.

 

There was only one Matrix movie, released in 1999.

 

Likewise, there was only one Jurassic Park movie, in 1993.

 

Every franchise movie released after these dates is either bad or gross or both. Wokeness, DEI, and greed, ruins all.

 

Hopper hath spoken.

 

Sidenote: Wasn’t the 90s a great time to be a moviegoer?

 

A Complete Unkown

 

My oldest daughter, Little One, now age 20, has been a Bob Dylan fan for quite a while. She has a hippie streak, music-wise, liking a lot of 60s and 70s folksy stuff, such as the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and such. She ranges to more popular stuff of that era, such as the Beatles, the Kinks, early Rolling Stones, and Neil Young. And, as a disclaimer, she plugged into current era stuff too, of which I’m blissfully ignorant.

 

Anyway, she’s been wanting to see the Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown since she first heard of it sometime last year. Unfortunately, none of her friends are into it. I bought her a Dylan biography for her birthday back in September (the “definitive” one, naturally), and got her a Dylan 2025 wall calendar for Christmas. So I was the one who had to step up to the plate – wanted to, actually, for her – and took her to the local cineplex to see it.

 

What did I think? Especially now, since it’s been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound. Whew. It’s almost like Dylan was transgender. I can honestly say the flick should definitely win in one category, and maybe three others.

 

Caveat: I am not a Bob Dylan fan. I’ve heard the half-dozen radio-friendly songs over the years, and I’ve listened to two albums at Little One’s behest (his debut 1962 album and 1966’s Blonde on Blonde). I have never been impressed and just don’t understand it. I may respect it (and honestly I’m not really sure if I do or not), but I can only shake my head.

 

With that in mind, I didn’t like the movie. I didn’t hate it, either. I kinda enjoyed it, as a piece of archaeology of a forgotten era. The movie roughly covers the years 1962-65, when Dylan makes his first impression among the New York folk circuit to when he wreaked havoc by “going electric” and betrayed the faith at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. From that perspective, I found it informative. Hagiographic, yes, almost to a fault. I had to chuckle inwardly every time a character on screen attained glowing nirvana on his or her first listen to Bob’s warbly voice and plucking and strumming.

 

Timothy Chalamet earned the Best Actor nomination. He becomes Bob Dylan, is Bob Dylan, and I remembered Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Jim Morrison way back in the 1991 Doors movie. His singing and guitar playing is admirable and quite the carbon copy. He portrays Dylan as kind of a jerk, which I guess is his real personality, as Little One told me Dylan had script approval. He treats everyone as a pawn in his holy quest to attain whatever it is he is trying to attain. Pure artistry, I guess. But he pretty much comes across as a narcissistic user of folks (last word used intentionally).

 

The other two Oscar categories it may win would be Best Costume Design and Best Sound. Watching the flick you feel transported to the 60s. Everyone is year-appropriate-grubby. And the sound is pretty damn good, I must admit, everything from Dylan’s solo singing and guitar playing in a cabin to him on stage with his “electric” band.

 

The only performance I feel deserves the Academy Award win is Best Supporting Actor. Edward Norton becomes Pete Seeger. Watching Chalamet as Dylan, I knew I was watching an extremely talented mime. But with Norton it was a complete disappearance into a role. Now, I don’t know Pete Seeger other than as a footnote in the history of contemporary American music, and I seem to recall mainstream America regarded him as a proto-Communist back in the day. But Norton becomes Seeger so completely that I didn’t even realize it was him (Norton) until halfway through the movie. He almost steals the show. Despite my antipathy to the historical character, I enjoyed him immensely every time he was onscreen (and I am aware he was portrayed in the most saintly, humanizing way possible).

 

Funny anecdote: On the way home I mentioned to Little One my enjoyment of Norton’s Pete Seeger character, with this disclaimer: “I am not a violent man. But if I was locked in a room with Pete Seeger and his banjo, I’d end up beating him to death with that damn banjo after four hours, tops.”

 

I’d give the movie a B-minus for the average man, and a solid A for Dylan fans. It kept my attention for two hours and fifteen minutes, but I would not watch it again. It was a one-time labor of love to my daughter, who’ll gladly watch any crazy science fiction movie I’m into anytime and anywhere.

 

There’s one small scene I think about often. 21-year-old Dylan is quietly walking through a park, eating an apple, going through his mail. There’s a letter from the record company. He opens it, and inside is a check written out to BOB DYLAN for $10,000. (About $100,000 in today’s money). He acknowledges it silently and without emotion and tucks it in his pocket. And that’s that. Even if it never happened, can you imagine how freeing it must be to be totally divorced from the concept of money, of earning it, of paying bills, paying down debt, of buying stuff, of security against tomorrow’s trials? I can’t, and that’s a peace of mind I would give almost anything to have.

Alien First Names

 

I know I’ve written extensively about Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien. About how influential it was to me as a young lad. About how into it I was back in those ancient pre-internet times. But I just learned something new about the characters in the movie (and the Alan Dean Foster novelization, I suppose).

 

Their first names.

 

Much like The Lord of the Rings, I feel maligned that now two whole generations of fans (millions of them!) have absorbed this wonderful thing from my youth seemingly known only to me and a small group of pals. So be it; I’ve made my peace with it, and I spend my time actively seeking out and/or revisiting other things that have not found their way into the zeitgeist. But it is always fun and exciting to learn something new about something I thought I knew all about.

 

Alien entered my life when I was 11. I was too young to see it in the movie theaters way back then, I had to make due with Foster’s novelization. Which I read over and over and over again, during this magical time in my life poised midway between childhood and teen adolescence. One of the things that struck me as odd was that none of the characters had first names. In the entirety of the novel the cast of seven were referred to – and called each other by – only their surnames. I was reading a lot of science fiction paperbacks at the time, and I’m sure this happened in other novels, but it was rare enough to stand out.

 

Sure, as the sole survivor of the crew of the Nostromo signing off in the final lines of Alien Ripley mentions her first name – Ellen. And I think there’s a line in the novel where they ask a post-face-hugged-but-still-alive Kane if he knew who he was and he says, “Thomas Kane.” So that’s two first names of our characters.

 

But to my knowledge nothing else. All we knew the crew as was – Captain Dallas, Lambert, Ash, Brett, and Parker.

 

Now I stumbled upon an Alien-universe wiki and within a few minutes I knew all their first names. It was not as I pictured them in my head:

 

  Captain Dallas (Tom Skerrit) – Arthur

   Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) – Joan (OK, she looks like a “Joan”)

   Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) – Samuel

   Parker (Yaphet Kotto) – Dennis (Dennis?! Really?)

 

Only Ash, the last-minute replacement science officer who harbors a mysterious secret (OK, it’s been 45 years – he’s an android trying to bring back a xenomorph specimen), remains first-name-less, at least to my ten minutes of internet searching, and perhaps this was a wise choice to compliment his shadowy past.

 

I feel satisfied. Another childhood mystery solved, to my partial satisfaction.

 

 … “Dennis” …

My Dinner with My Dinner with Andre

Found myself on my own last night for a few hours, a rare occurrence believe it or not. So I picked up some Chinese food and settled down into a movie night as I was pretty fatigued from a full day of work chased by mowing the back yard in early-April 85-degree Texas weather.

I settled on a flick that’s been on my radar for many years. And by that I mean I noticed it once a year, said, “I really should give that a watch,” and then promptly forgot about it. The movie in question was My Dinner with Andre, a 1981 “avant garde” film. I put avant garde in quotes because while the phrase generally connotes something unusual or experimental, I think most civilians regard it as, well, crappy and unwatchable. My Dinner with Andre is unusual and experimental, but if you have a bookish mind, a mind for ideas, I think it just might appeal to you.

(After all, most of Hollywood’s production since 2015 or so have been crappy and unwatchable, but we don’t label those flicks as avant garde.)

Anyway, the movie’s running time is 1 hour and 52 minutes. Aside from a few minutes of introductory setup and a minute or so of concluding wrap up, the entirety of the movie is a conversation at a table in a restaurant between two men, Wallace and Andre. Both are in the arts – Wallace is an unsuccessful struggling playwright, and Andre is/was a theater director, currently returning after a several-year hiatus to discover what that something is he feels is lacking within himself.

It would be impossible to summarize this conversation, but I found myself riveted. It flows along many intertwining currents. After some pleasantries and re-acquainting verbal dances, the talk delves into art, the theater, experimental theater, globe travelling for new experiences, and before we realize it we are discussing, and eventually debating, philosophy, existentialism, the individual as one and as part of society, spirituality, and what it means to become an authentic human being. Heidegger comes up, physics and math comes up somewhat peripherally, as does the Little Prince and Saint-Exupery, synchronicity, messages from the future, and the fight for meaning and transcendence when the damn mailbox is overflowing with bills. With all that on the menu, I was hooked.

The movie was written by, well, Wallace and Andre, who play fictionalized versions of themselves and references real people and situations in their talk. At the end of the conversation, the restaurant has emptied, and I felt a little empty myself. And after the last minute of Wallace’s monologue (he narrates the beginning and ending), I actually had goose bumps up and down my arms, particularly the last four words he speaks.

A+, but a strict warning that it is not for the average; prerequisite in self-dissatisfaction and an openness to engage and evaluate new ideas is a definite requirement.

And for the record, I feel that, like just about everything in life, the real answer lies somewhere between the extremes. Were I to place myself with these two men at this table in this restaurant, I’d probably fall somewhere around 60% Andre and 40% Wallace.

Oppenheimer Cleaned Up

 

Last night at the Oscars. We didn’t watch, of course, but I did see the movie with the Mrs. back in July. When I read the news this morning, here’s what I texted her:

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

 

So I was genuinely excited a few months back when I first learned that a major motion picture of the life and career of Napoleon Bonaparte would be released in November. This was completely under the radar for me; I hadn’t read or saw anything about it on the webs until I saw the trailer while watching Oppenheimer in the theater with the wife last summer.

I was cautiously optimistic. Why? I’ll get into that in a moment.

I’ve written elsewhere here about my obscure interest in the French Emperor. The “First Antichrist” if Orson Welles and Nostradamus are to be believed. Might have something to do with the old rags-to-riches story. Or military genius. Boldness. Or the influence of a favorite history teacher at college.

I’ve read two thick biographies of the man (one around 1995 and the other in 2017) and a detailed manual on his military campaigns. I’ve also been moseying my way through Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series. Sharpe is an English rifleman who fights his way through life and primarily against the Emperor’s French over the course of 15 years, in India, Spain, Holland, and, later I guess, St. Helena. Haven’t read the last novel as I’m only 8 books through the 13 Santa bought me two years ago, but I think Sharpe meets Bonaparte at the end of the General’s short life, in exile in the middle of the Atlantic.

Hence the excitement of a legitimate big screen adaptation of the Napoleonic era.

However … (and it’s a big however …)

This is Hollywood we’re talking about here. 2023 Hollywood.

And it’s Ridley Scott, as director.

Neither have been known to scrupulously adhere to reality in their historical epics. Much has to be sacrificed at the altar of Agenda. I am fearful that what thousands of people will see on the big screen will be some ignoramus’s idea of what Napoleon should have been like.

I am worried about –

The casting of Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon. Too old and probably too tall, and rockin’ an American accent. I like him and his movies, but I’m on the fence about this.

The irresistible temptation to make Josephine a girlboss, the real “power” behind the throne.

The other irresistible temptation to make Napoleon, a white man, a brutish, stupid neanderthal. (I do recognize the arguments against his life’s actions and works, but by no means could he be called a brutish, stupid neanderthal.)

The inaccuracies in battle tactics. I already read that the “squares” the infantry form in the flick to defend against cavalry attacks do not align with how they formed in the real world; indeed, in the movie they’d probably wind up shooting each other rather than the attacking enemy.

The dreary color saturation and dirtiness of the film. I realize that the battlefield is not the optimal place for cleanliness, but I gather everyone in the palaces and in the towns will look grimy, stinky and unhygienic.

(Plus, I heard an interesting theory that filmmakers tint their movies in different colors to psychologically affect the way the viewer interprets what’s happening on the screen, or the “message” they want to convey, and some movies are tinted differently depending on which country the film is being marketed to. Don’t know much about this, but it is interesting enough for me to look into the phenomenon.)

We’ll see. I may have to sneak into a movie theater myself on the second weekend of release to check it out, before seeing it with the Mrs. or the not-so-little Little Ones.

Alien Aliens

 

So the plague has visited my home this past week. No, not the Wu Flu. No, this was its older, more mature cousin: the upper respiratory tract infection. Little One brought it home from high school and spent four days at home after I took her to the local Care Now for diagnosis. She passed it along to my wife, who then spent three days at home. Me, since I work from home, I have been exposed to these sickos all week, but since for some unknown reason God has made my immune system Schwarzeneggerian, I simply laughed at their attempts to infect me.

One thing I did with the Little One was have a movie Saturday. And what did we watch? The classic, classic science fiction movie, 1979’s Alien. We tried to rope Patch into experiencing it with us, but she would have none of that, off on her own tangents creating this and that. Instead, the two of us dug into our sub sandwiches and chips while watching the horror from LV426 unfold upon the crew of the Nostromo. But before I let you know what a Gen Z thinks of one of my all-time favorite SF movies, note that when we finished she immediately said, “Let’s watch Aliens.”

So we did. We spent about five hours in front of the tube this past Saturday. And we both loved it.

I first was exposed to the Alien way back in 1979. Since I had just turned 12, and my parents weren’t exactly moviegoers, I didn’t get to see it in the theaters. But my uncle bought me the paperback novelization, which I devoured in no time. Soon I was creating my own version of the alien story, with different characters and scenarios. I remember playing with my Star Wars action figures and using a curved rock as the alien creature. I even wrote a short story about it, long lost to the ages.

But I didn’t see the movie until video rentals became a thing, probably three or four years later. Surprisingly, I have no memory of the first time I watched it. But since I conservatively estimate I have watched it a minimum of twenty times.

A few years later I saw James Cameron’s Aliens in the theaters the summer of ’86 with my friends. That was one of only two movies to ever physically jar me as I watched it. (The other was the 2005 War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise.) Physically shaking. Incredible, but true. As we were leaving, my pal noticed and said, “Don’t worry. If an alien jumps on the car I’ll just do this – ” and he switched on the windshield wipers.

About a decade ago my wife bought me the Alien Quadrilogy for a birthday. Four movie collection on eight disks, though I’m not a big fan at all of the last two movies. I’ve watched these DVDs maybe half a dozen times over the years. The last time was with Little One when she was about 12. The same age as me when I first encountered the Xenomorphs.

Well, as of last Saturday, she insisted she barely remembered anything about the flicks this time around. Which was kind of a good thing, because she went into it with fresh eyes. And, I’m pleased to say, she was hooked into it right from the start. When the Nostromo first crash lands on LV426 to investigate that “distress” signal. She remembered the groundbreaking chestbursting scene, but that was about it.

Immediately after we threw Aliens on. She remembered more of this one. She remembered Hicks, Hudson, and Newt. Also she recalled the climactic battle with the alien queen. I think she enjoyed this one better, which struck me as a bit odd, as she has a huge preference of haunted house horror over the typical fights and explosions action flick. And the tagline that Alien is just a haunted house in space is, well, in fact, true.

These first two movies of the Alien franchise are undoubtedly my best movie-sequel pair. A runner up could possibly be Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Godfather I and II. Terminator and T2. Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade would qualify had it not been for that icky middle movie. I dunno what else. Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein? Regardless, I think Little One would agree with my Alien assessment.

What a great way for a father to bond with his daughter. I heartily recommend it … but only if you’re slightly askew as we are here at Chez Hopper.

Saturn 3

 

Amidst all the busyness of getting the house in order to sell, getting Little One ready for her SATs, getting Patch to her various soccer practices, games, and workouts, and celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary with the Mrs., I ran into a spell of insomnia in the wee early morning hours of Saturday.

I woke around 2:30 am, tossed and turned, visited the bathroom and the medicine cabinet, went back to bed, got up to switch the fan on, turned and tossed some more. Thirty minutes later I realized there was no more sleep for me this day. So I got up, trudged down two flights of stairs to my writing desk, flipped on the laptop and set to my favorite timewaster of late, Youtube.

However, this time was different.

In my feed was a review of the little-remembered, sparsely-accoladed science fiction flick, 1980’s Saturn 3. That instantly brought back memories. Well, memories of memories. Because while I recall the movie existing (I was 12 years old the summer of 1980), I don’t think I ever saw more than a few scenes here and there.

So why watch a review of it online when I can, possibly, find the movie in its entirety? And sure enough, I did, all 88 minutes of it, right on that there Youtube.

I knew that the movie had a bad reputation, and that knowledge was epistemologically confirmed.

But I enjoyed it.

Saturn 3’s a bad movie, suffering always from bad-movie syndrome typically found in Hollywood: a visionary first-time director who shouldn’t be directing; an established Hollywood icon whose ego runs amuck; a sex symbol who can’t act her way out of a paper bag; a moody villain portrayed by a moody actor who hates the film; a producer who has no experience with making SF films; film execs who slash the budget mid-way through production.

I’ve read that the original script was good and was what got the film greenlit. And then all the above kicked it, forcing re-writes, edits, 180-degree turns and more chefs in the kitchen. The result is blah bland but not terrible. There is a shell of a movie here (perhaps on a cutting-room floor and stored in some long-forgotten vault), but what struck me is that it was made by people who had no idea what SF fans want. And since it’s also billed as a “horror” flick, it’s not particularly horrifying.

So what is Saturn 3, exactly?

In 1979 and 1980 I was enraptured fully and completely with absolutely one movie: Alien. My parents bought me the picture book and an uncle bought me the novelization. That alien egg commercial relentlessly aired on TV haunted and fascinated me (much like the commercial for Magic with that psychotic ventriloquist dummy). But I wasn’t allowed to see it since I was only 12. My imagination though more than made up for it. In this weird stage where I was no longer a kid but not yet a teen, I played out versions of the alien-killing-everyone-on-a-spaceship plotline with the action figures and SF toys I still had not yet phased out of my life.

Saturn 3 is kind of like Alien with a robot. The robot, “Hector” in the movie, is a headless eight foot cross between an arthritic Xenomorph and an automobile radiator. Here, see:

Hector basically turns evil when plugged into evil Captain Benson’s brain for programming, and spends the next hour chasing Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett around a space station that looks strangely like the set design of the Engineer’s ship from Alien. Hmm. That sentence I just wrote is more suspenseful and terrifying than anything in the entire movie. There’s long sequences of an oddly overdubbed Harvey Keitel pontificating about God-knows-what and scantily clad Kirk Douglas romping around with scantily clad Farrah Fawcett, thirty-year age difference be damned. The denouement is routine and unexciting, neither clever nor original.

But the atmosphere! While the model work was slightly above workmanlike,  the interior of the Saturn 3 station is worthy of praise. Not a surprise since the original story – and the film’s first director – was John Barry, an interior designer who worked on such films as A Clockwork Orange, Superman, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Plus there’s a real sinister element to Hector the robot that’s there on the surface, if not exactly fleshed out, no pun intended since the future Frankenstein’s monsters winds up wearing his creator’s head.

I guess ultimately the movie falls into that catch-all called childhood nostalgia. I remember pal’ing around with a bunch of guys in summer art school, reading those SF magazines, talking about the latest Star Wars and James Bond, Alien and The Incredible Melting Man, horror flicks like Phantasm and Prophecy, among countless forgotten and partially-remembered others. Saturn 3 fits snugly in there, and feels quite at home.

Grade: C

Godzilla vs Kong

All right, indulge me for a moment. Or rather, the child in me.

King Kong vs. Godzilla was one of my favorite movies growing up in the 70s. I must have watched it a dozen times, and this was the era before VHS tapes, DVDs, DVRs, and Netflix. You had to wait for it to come on one of the dozen or so TV channels we had, and been lucky enough to catch it. But catch it I did. This 1963 extravaganza, along with some Harryhausen films like Jason and the Argonauts and classic 50s sci fi flicks like The Thing and The Day the Earth Stood Still made my childhood magical.

Over the years I’ve been disappointed with the remakes, to say the least. First was that awful flick in the late 90s, then was fat Godzilla in 2014. Terrible. But I got wind a few years ago that Kong was now going to be in the picture and, I have to confess, I got a little excited.

This would be a perfect movie to bond with my youngest daughter, I remember thinking. Alas, too many years passed and now, firmly ensconced at the fulcrum between tween and teen, she decided to take a hard pass on it when my friend invited me over this past weekend to watch it.

Now, this is the guy I go to movies with – or used to, pre-Wu Flu – to catch the horror and SF flicks the wife showed no interest in. (And, corollary-wise, she’d go see chick flicks and Rom-Coms with my friend’s wife – it’s a win-win all around!) We’d make our movie-going an adventure, usually hitting up a bar for a few beers and shooting the breeze before going in. But since the theaters are still locked down, something was missing.

But he more than made up for it. Somehow he came across six authentic movie theater chairs. Modern ones. You know, the ones that recline and have the food tray swivel across your lap and the hole for your 64-ounce soda. He installed them in two rows of three in his den, with the row behind raised a foot on a carpeted wooded dais. Then he installed a massive flat screen with all the acoustical trappings – bass, overhead speakers, side speakers, you name it. It is as close to being in a movie theater that one can get.

So he wanted to know if I wanted to watch it with him last Friday night. Now, I still apologize to him for dragging him to Godzilla 2014 all those years ago. But a quick google of Godzilla vs. Kong showed that it was actually getting positive reviews. I agreed and drove over, stopping at Liquorland for a six-pack of Yuengling to split.

What did I think of Godzilla vs Kong?

I really, really enjoyed it. I knew what I was signing up for, and it wasn’t going to be Citizen Kane, or even a more modern classic like John Carpenter’s The Thing or James Cameron’s Aliens. But for what it was, two giant monsters slugging it out Sumo-style (with Kong hurling a right cross that could fell Tyson), it was pretty darn good.

Yeah, all the human characters are cardboard.

Yeah, the plot is completely unhinged from reality ( – Hollow Earth? Really?)

Yeah, you get the feeling entire subplots had been edited into oblivion, so the resulting story makes little sense if thought about too hard.

Yeah, the dialogue is LOL goofy at times.

Yeah, twists can be seen a continent away.

But the CGI was phenomenal. There were futuristic hovercrafts and a world where gravity worked in weird ways. I bought into the special effects completely, wholly, and in totality. That is the secret of this big loud dumb fun flick.

Was it the fact I saw it on a giant TV screen? Sure. Was it the fact that every Kong or Godzilla roar or stomp thudded my heart a couple millimeters to the side without fail? Yep. Was it the fact I was enjoying a film with my friend and some delicious beers in the Covid Apocalypse? You know it.

I won’t rehash the plot, such as it was, here. But the bottom line is based on the brawling of the behemoth beasts –

   Godzilla > Kong

   Kong > Mecha-Godzilla

   Mecha-Godzilla > Godzilla

My favorite scene? When Mecha-Godzilla attains sentience in the background behind moustache-twirling bad guy’s final monologue.

Grade: solid A for pure childhood entertainment.

Movie Review: The Lighthouse

I appreciate a good descent into madness flick. That being the case, I picked up The Lighthouse on a distant memory of hearing someone somewhere say something good about it, and popped it on during my sick day off of work this past Wednesday.

What the heck did I just watch?

In grim black-and-white, on a square-ish screen reminiscent of so many 50s sci fi/horror movies I absorbed as a kid, the seemingly mundane existence of a pair of lighthouse keepers – “wickies” – over the course of five weeks plays out. Yes, there is a storm. Yes, one or perhaps both go insane. Yes, an axe is hurled about.

But this movie far exceeds your typical Hollywood lowest-common-denominator thriller. There are no spring-loaded cats. There are no jump scares with accompanying blasts of screeching soundtrack. Instead, what we have here is a multi-layered, Bergmanesque tale rife with symbolism and food for thought. To truly appreciate this rare gem of a film – and for some reason “rare gem” is not something I think I want to label The Lighthouse – to truly appreciate it you need to watch it twice. Then a third time, with the audio commentary on. If you are a student of the weird, as I sometimes find myself, it’ll be worth it.

Before I try my hand at a brief synopsis, hold these thoughts in your mind for a moment:

Herman Melville meets Eraserhead. Or, Moby Dick, as penned by H. P. Lovecraft.

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson portray Tom and Tom, two wickies manning a lighthouse on a rock off the coast of Nova Scotia circa 1890. Old Tom is a retired sea man, Young Tom an ex-logger who may be hiding something in his past. They speak in the linguistics of the time, which means sometimes it is hard to understand the dialogue, especially when Old Willem gets a-rollin’ with the cursin’.

However, no one speaks for the first ten minutes of the movie as we see Old and Young about their drab routine. There’s tension between the two, generational tension and something more, something undefined. Old Tom is a hard taskmaster; Young Tom seems the type of feller who’ll clock the man ridin’ him too hard. One’s a drinker, one’s not, though that changes midway in the film far for the worse.

But it’s not just a psychological thriller with a bloody climax. No, there’s something more here, something supernatural that’s hinted at. It took me a second watch and some commentary to catch it. As the film barrels towards its conclusion, it becomes more and more obvious, but there are also lots of forshadowey bits of dialogue and imagery. First off, the warning not to kill a sea bird, cuz “in ’em’s the souls of dead sailors,” is disobeyed, and immediately the Old Gods are not pleased: in a nicely done scene the weather vane stops, pauses, and reverses direction. Then, the storm.

Then, the light. And what lies behind it. Or in it.

Three scenes from this movie I will always remember. First is one about midway through based on this 19th-century painting:

After this image splashed across the screen, I realized this was not a Stephen King adaptation.

Second is the penultimate scene, the opening of the revolving Fresnel light at the top of the lighthouse. My God, what an evil, otherworldly thing this Fresnel light, yet something that was apparently used for years with no ill effect. I’ve always written Robert Pattison off as that somewhat effeminate dude from the vampire movies, however I’ll grant him this: he still may not win an awards acting, but man O man is he willing to go all out. Once you see it you’ll see what I mean.

And the final scene, well, to describe it would take away its impact. For those who know their Greek mythology, or those who can search the internet quickly and effectively, it hearkens back to Prometheus, spoken of in a diatribe by Old Tom that includes the shapeshifting Proteus and good old King Neptune himself, “our father,” as the elder wickie calls him.

I absolutely appreciated the authenticity of this film. It pays. I love the super attention to detail. I love a filmmaker not treating me like I’m some ill-educated dolt who needs everything explained to him. The mythological references, the homages to Lovecraft, coupled with great cinematography and phenomenal acting (Dafoe should be nominated for his accent alone, as well as his “eye acting”) made this a good movie experience.

Though I still find it unsettling. It’s not a feel-good movie. But if you’re an aficionado, as I am, I want you to check it out.

Grade: A-minus.

1917

Don’t know much about this year’s Oscars (nor do I really care), but I know one thing:

Joaquin Phoenix should win Best Actor for portraying Arthur Fleck, i.e., the Joker, hands down, and 1917 should win Best Editing and Best Cinematography.

Yes, I saw 1917 in the blurry enfilade of the last ten days.

Yes, it was good, and if I was an Oscar voter, I’d vote for it for Best Picture, too.

But, damn, I’ve never, ever, ever been as impressed with cinematography – cinematography! – in a movie as I was in this one. And I’ve seen a lot of movies. The landscapes, about a half-dozen set pieces or so, are so iconic, such cinescapes of hell, that I couldn’t be but overawed. The bombed out city with crawling, seeking shadows from swirling searchlights, the infamous “No-Man’s Land” cesspools of WWI, the trenches – of different coloration due to, I guess, the shifting geologies of the geographies traversed by our two protagonists … that is what I took away, and will long remember. Along with the horrible, terrible grandeur of war, and of the human spirit.

As far as Best Editing goes, well, the whole movie plays as one long, unbroken camera sequence, which literally puts you on the ground with Privates Schofield and Blake.

And yes, I highly, highly recommend 1917.

Which reminds me, I still need to see Peter Jackson’s World War I homage, They Shall Not Grow Old.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

© 2019

One major part of my life growing up in the 70s, between the ages of, say, eight and ten, was Godzilla. The original Japanese gorilla-whale. How I loved Godzilla as a kid! From the murky, mature, somewhat adult original Godzilla of 1951 to the acid-rock 1971 Godzilla vs the Smog Monster to all those silly “monster island” movies with baby Godzilla, aliens with funky sunglasses and mecha-monsters such as Mecha-Godzilla and Mecha-Kong. My all-time favorite, which I still watch every couple of years when it’s on regular TV, is 1963’s Godzilla vs. King Kong. Every Saturday morning there’d be a Godzilla flick on, and WABC channel 7 would play a Godzilla-themed week several times a year as their 4:30 movie.

So, a half-dozen years ago, the little boy in me was quite excited when it was announced that a “real” revisioning of Godzilla was coming out. Forget that 1997 Roland Emmerich mistake. This time, though made by an American studio, this new Godzilla would be phenomenal and iconic.

Well, I reviewed that piece of garbage here. My wounded inner child graded it a C-minus.

Then, two years ago, that damn little kid got all worked up again over the Godzilla sequel, where the King of the Monsters would prove he was, uh, king of the monsters by kicking the combined asses of Ghidora, Rodan, and Mothra.

I was more than willing to forgive them for 2014.

Then, last week, I watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

I hated it. Hated, hated, hated it.

But not in an emotional way. More in an existential way. Not as in, “why does this movie exist?” Yes, we all know, to cash in on the hopes and dreams of middle-aged men who grew up on Godzilla decades ago, and also on their CGI-indoctrinated children. But as I watched the flick I was blanketed with a Satrian sense of ennui. Boredom. Existential boredom, where I questioned my own existence. Why was I watching this film? What did I do wrong? Where did I go wrong? Was I being punished for something? If existence precedes essence, why the hell is this sentient entity stretched out in his favorite comfy chair munching on his daughters’ Halloween candy doing watching this wretched excuse for cinema?

I had to take my revenge.

Therefore, I did something I never did before. Before the movie was over, around the halfway point, in fact, I reached for pad and pen and began taking notes on everything that I despised about and disappointed me with this movie.

In no particular order –

– Fat Godzilla’s back. Man, is he huge. More whale than gorilla. BMI greater than the number of Tokyo elderly. It was literally embarrassing to watch him on the screen. All jokes aside, fat monsters are not intimidating. How frightened were you of Jabba the Hut?

– Blurry CGI. Every special effect is seen either in the rain, or through a dust cloud, or at night, or on a TV screen in the movie, or through a camera lens. I know it’s to hide the cheap shoddiness of the final product. It annoyed me early on and all the way through.

– Roller-coaster camera work / camera never stands still. This is perhaps the number one thing I despise about movies today. I’m dizzy after ten minutes of any movie made after the Bourne Identity movies. It’s all shaky cam, even a Godzilla movie. I watched LA Confidential while I was laid up with a sprained ankle this past weekend and the static, unmoving camera work amazed me. I could enjoy the dialogue, the plot developments, the action, on a placid screen without reaching for a barf bag.

– Color-washed film with drab colors. Ugh. Why must the entire movie be various shades and hues of blue? Or sepia? Is it to instill a sense of unreality in the viewer? Not this one. It just took me out of the film entirely.

– Un-scary monster roars. Another peeve of mine. Monster roars are not scary. This goes even for Jurassic Park. Every flick with a monster bigger than a man has to have it roar at 110 decibels. Not scary. Godzilla’s roar is iconic. It is not scary.

– Unrealistic diversity and Mary Sues. Know what a “Mary Sue” is? Google it if you don’t. As soon as I saw the bald 105-point hit woman – the bad guy’s right-hand-man – I began counting all the diversity checkmarks in this film.

– Technically proficient teen daughter cliché. This was a cliché way back in 1993 with Jurassic Park. Teen girls don’t do Information Technology. Sorry, feminists and beta comic book fans. I have two daughters, fifteen and eleven, and though they could work their iPhones in a sandstorm during a midnight apocalypse, they laugh at computer nerds. So do their friends.

– Monsters still second fiddle to humans. This was not as bad as the first movie, where Godzilla was only seen in the background on TV screens in the film, but it was still bad. No one cares about the scientist family. The audience of this movie wanted to see 250-foot tall monsters beating the hell out of each other.

– Obligatory self-sacrifice scene with operatic dirge. This was just schmaltzy. Plus, I am not quite sure the sacrificee had to be sacrificed. But by that point I was completely out of the movie, and probably missed some important detail. Or maybe not.

– Something like ninety percent of the movie filmed before a green screen (background effects digitally added). Nothing seemed real. Everything looked kinda fakey-fake. I wouldn’t be surprised even if the kitchen scenes were done in a green-screen studio.

I do not hate you, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That would imply much more enthusiasm than I have for you. No, you simply underwhelmed me and wasted two hours and twelve minutes of my life.

Grade: D.

N.B. They’ve been teasing a Godzilla versus King Kong remake, and Kong actually had a two-second cameo (on a video screen, natch, in a military war room) in the movie. Please hold me to this vow not to see that sure atrocity when it arrives in three-to-five years!