Got to see Shin Godzilla in 4k yesterday at the new theater in town. It was my first time rewatching it after I caught it on the back of an airplane seat headed home from Japan in 2015. I was shocked to realize in all the memories I had of the movie, before seeing it again, I seemed to have completely forgot the less than ideal context I watched it in: which I think really is a testament to the movie. Anyway, it’s great, and was even better a second time.
But there is a scene in the movie where they are saying that if Godzilla reawakens sooner than expected, the US will also move forward the timeline to (with Japan’s permission) nuke Tokyo. Some characters respond with indignation about this. But one character then basically looks in the camera and says “No, they said that if this were happening to New York City they would do the same” and that made me want to check the truth of that by rewatching the awful Roland Emmerich 1990s US Godzilla movie that takes place in NYC. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid but I don’t remember them nuking NYC in that one!
Thought that was another good, funny dig at the US in Shin Godzilla.
As a Japanese resident that scene always takes my breath away as you say this deep national trauma once ripped open and exposed as the nation’s fate isn’t even their’s to decide.
I was talking to my partner afterwords and wondering if it must have had such an impact for some Japanese people. It seemed like it really could. Even as an American I was moved by the anger or resignation the characters were expressing.
BY DESIGN
A woman falls in love with a chair, wishes to become the chair, then does. She loves being sat on and being an object of envy and desire, while her soulless body lies at home in bed and is talked at by her family and friends as they regail her with their problems. Real “yeah same” energy. Leave me the fuck alone!
THE MASTERMIND
New Kelly Reichardt joint about an amateur art thief. Sort of like that movie THIEF where the heist is at the start of the movie, then the rest of the film is the fallout. STRAIGHT TIME is a good comparison too. Done in that chill Kelly Reichardt style, though. The main character in this film is not a good thief really, or a good person. He’s a god damned disaster, and fucks over his whole family for glory, despite not really thinking any of the heist through at all. Loved the 1970s mumblecore setting.
GOOD BOY
The whole gimmick of this movie is it’s a horror film from the perspective of a dog. The story itself is not that interesting, sort of just a haunted cabin in the woods story, but the vibes and showcase of dog acting is so good. I sort of get the impression the movie was assembled based on the kinds of scenes and reactions that the filmmakers could get, then the rest of the movie was put together after.
JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE
A documentary about the studies beginning in the 1960s to try and talk to dolphins. Sort of a sad look at all these poor dolphins who were subjected to unethical experiments like being dosed with LSD or seeing if they can be trained to find Soviet underwater mines. The experiments were compromised by John Lilly himself doing a shitload of drugs and becoming convinced the dolphins are trying to communicate with him telepathically. The story about that woman jerking off a dolphin? That’s in here too. Uses footage from Ecco The Dolphin which made me do the pointing at the screen meme. But yeah. Leave the dolphins alone, man.
old movie night was The Witches (1990). Dahl hated the film, a point in its favour. I liked how all the mildly-horrible character (the greedy boy, his uncouth father) do not get a baleful comeuppance. good, the pacing and development is well-handled by expert filmmakers. the ending anticlimax sucks, should have kept the version that made Dahl cry
I watched the last* movie I got from Tsutaya when they were all closing. It was BACKLASH, a Western staring Richard Widmark. He’s captivated my mind since I saw him in a Lee Denim Jacket in Warlock. He’s a stoic hard-man like they had then, who also doesn’t like it when a woman lies to him and he runs away crying.
It also has Donna Reed wearing a different incredible outfit in every scene. She does the most with the absolute nothing she is given. Her character has to fall in love with the hero, because he aggressively kisses her a few times. Ugh.
Still it is a fantastic western with large vistas and stupid villains and exciting chases. It all ends how you expect it too, and yet not.
This particular DVD was new when the store closed, it has horrible blasted color grading and it looks like they did interpolation or smearing over the image. I’d watch this movie again. I never want to watch this DVD again, it fills out my rental DVD shelf though.
I remember there were a lot of Toby Dammit fans here and yeah, it’s overlooked as one of Fellini’s best. Fellini gave Stamp perhaps my favorite direction of all-time, at 27:36 if it doesn’t embed
Weapons was a pretty good example of a movie kind of having a trash can ending but you’re invested enough that you forgive any flaws that show up in the last act.
I think the main thing that I got hung up on was I assumed the movie was about kids getting somehow, I dunno, brainwashed by some government program or something, like it was gonna be a creepy sci-fi thing, and then it turned out to be a witch and I was like… alright fine, I liked my idea better but OK…
Weapons wasn’t bad but I walked past the screen for Naked Gun on the way out and wondered if maybe I would have had a better time in there.
