Wow. I’m not sure what this film is, or even what it wants to be. I am confident I don’t like it, although I was pretty entertained throughout most of the film. Afraid of the Dark is a horror (?) film centered on hallucinations and daydreams, but came dangerously close to putting me to sleep so I could create my own more sensible nightmares. While starting off with a bang, the film quickly lost my interest after the fourth or fifth time it pulled the floor out from under me. I don’t even want to try and discern a plot from the flick, but its on Netflix Watch Instantly right now if you are interested. If you watch it or have already seen it, please let me know what it was about and if I should like it or not in the comment section.
Grown-Ups banner posterThey added last year’s annual Adam Sandler comedy Grown-Ups to Instant Watch recently, so I took the opportunity to re-watch it with my wife. The last time I saw the film I was on hour 7 of a 13-hour plane ride to South Korea, so I decided to give it another chance. Still stupid, but never the less I laughed more this time around. My wife laughed more than I did, but she also loves the film Hot Chick so take that for what its worth. Check out my original review of the film if you are interested.
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I re-watched Jackass 3D on Blu-ray, and while the poop and penises look spectacular in hi-def, I was left wanting after the credits. The special features are pretty much what you would expect; however the lack of a cast commentary (which has been a staple since the release of the first Jackass) really let me down. It has a red/blue 3d version on one of the extra discs, and it shipped with four 3d glasses, but I will never watch that version of the film so let me know how it is if you do. Still, I love watching this particular group of guys come together, however uninspired they may be. Check my original review of the film if you are interested.
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Forty Guns film posterWhile many directors took advantage of the western to thematically examine social issues of their time, director Sam Fuller, quite unashamedly, exploits the typically testosterone-soaked genre to investigate America’s (on-going) fascination with sex and violence. A film like Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), a brutally violent western whose own success owes a great debt to Fuller, was by all accounts a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor for the United States’ shameless mercenary-esque presence in Vietnam. While perhaps even more deliberately on the nose, the connection between arousal and violence is so apparent in Forty Guns (1959) that Forty Phalluses may be a more apt title. Innuendo is key, and Fuller’s script is stuffed with overt symbolism and double entendres. One of the defining scenes in the film is during a conversation between the film’s stoic lead Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), a former gun-for-hire and now U.S. Marshall in town to make an arrest, and Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck), the powerful matriarch that governs the dusty Arizona town and commands her personal posse, the titular Forty Guns. Taking a cue from the ponderously censored noirs of the 1930s-40s, Griff and Jessica hide the immediate and obvious sexual tension between them through conversations like when she playfully asks to feel the lawman’s pistol and he wryly grins and responds, “it might go off in your face,” to which she knowingly replies, “I’ll take a chance.” Built on a foundation of play-on-words, the film’s plot is only essential to support its greater themes. Fuller, it seems, is far more interested in allegory than continuity, willingly sacrificing sense for his own sensibilities.
Even for all of its narrative faults and contrivances, Forty Guns succeeds at delivering a tonally and emotionally varied film. Within a few select cuts Fuller masterfully changes the films temper; moments of sincere romance like the candid scene shared between Griff and Jessica after the sandstorm effortlessly transition to roguish showdowns and shoot-outs. Fuller never strays from his sexual curiosities, structuring the film not unlike the lurid act itself. At first the director introduces the players and plot in an exciting foreplay of bullets, blonde hair, and machismo, all in an effort to entice and excite the audience. Slowing down in the 2nd act, Fuller takes his time to build up stimulation and anticipation with promises of blood, finally delivering in the film’s 3rd act a hot-blooded and melodramatically charged expulsion of violence and passion that does not fail to satisfy.
Barbara Stanwyck in Forty Guns
Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns is a successful attempt at mashing as many B-movie clichés into a single genre film as possible. Equal parts western, romance, and gangster picture, Fuller has no problems throwing Raymond Chandler inspired hardboiled vernacular and low-budget special effects into the mix, and even sprinkles his own avant-garde sensibilities atop the film to finally create a truly one of a kind western. As entertaining as it is different from other films in the genre, Forty Guns’ unexpected obsession with the correlation between sex and violence only enhances its pleasure, offering a most unique cinematic experience.
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Godzilla / Gojira posterThe monster movie, or what the Japanese call “daikaijueigai” films, is a long standing genre that successfully elicits fear in the audience, while at the same time projects a deeper symbolic meaning onto the screen. From the moment King Kong fell to his death from atop the Empire State Building, directors have been taking advantage of the monsters found in this genre to sympathetically manipulate audience’s expectations and emotions. In 1954 Toho director Ishiro Honda took advantage of the medium to define the “creature feature.” Fueled by the destruction caused by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II by American forces, Honda created the prehistoric Gojira, the grotesque and terrifying physical embodiment of nuclear fallout. Godzilla (American translation) is a symbol of not only an unspeakable past, but also serves as an omen, a warning against human kind’s inherent instinct to destroy each other. Unfortunately, 90-minutes of a man in a dinosaur suit destroying detailed models of Tokyo does not a movie make, and the contrived characters and plot that accompany the titular behemoth do little to enhance the already clumsy narrative.
Perhaps indicative of the genre’s immaturity, or Honda’s own shortcomings as a screenwriter so early on in his career, Godzilla’s metaphors and themes are as heavy-handed as the monster itself, taking cues from historical incidents that seem so on-the-nose that it is surprising it was taken seriously at all. The film opens effectively enough, the heinous metallic roar of the mysterious giant washes out the terrified screams of innocent men and women. The fishing vessel Eiko-Maru (an obvious acknowledgment to the “Lucky Dragon,” a tuna trawler whose crew was killed by radiation sickness after an American H-bomb unexpectedly sent nuclear fallout across a 7000 mile radius) comes into view as its crew desperately clings to the ship for support, their howls disappearing into the darkness that surrounds them while their imminent doom is all but guaranteed by the attacking monster. It is within these opening moments the film is most successful, Honda brilliantly manipulates the murky shadows the monster inhabits to great effect, obscuring it from view and creating an ominous reality of confusion and dread. Promising a horror film crafted by a disciplined director, once Godzilla is brought into full view, the film sadly relinquishes itself to the same campy compulsions that have handicapped the monster-movie genre since its inception.Professor Yamane (Takeshi Shimura)
After the monster attacks a small village in Odo, a team of scientists lead by Professor Yamane (Takeshi Shimura) is sent to investigate. After finding high amounts of radiation in a footprint left by Godzilla, Yamane eventually surmises the same atomic weapons that guaranteed Japan’s defeat in WWII in fact birthed the creature. Shimura offers the same benevolent performance as Yamane as he did in many of his most famous films, and while the professor does not provide the same range that the dying bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe did in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), Shimura portrays Yamane with a kindly melodramatic charm that contrasts perfectly with the calamitous Godzilla. Yamane, amidst the destruction caused by the monster, immediately sympathizes with the beast, sensing a correlation of a brutal cause-and-effect both of them share. Just as Godzilla was created by the nuclear blasts caused by war, so to is Yamane a creature of the past, a relic who has been dismantled and reformed by his imperialistic homeland. Both man and monster are the tattered results of war, and it is a sweetly humanistic allegory that is too easily diminished by its own trappings. The dialogue spoken throughout the film, especially in scenes of noticeable importance, is unimaginative and elementary, typically grinding any moment not focusing on a fire-breathing reptile down to a slow and punishing halt. Usually as ham-fisted as the film’s metaphors, dialogue tends to read like an expository handbook; like when Yamane pleads to a commanding military officer, “ I can’t believe that Godzilla was the only surviving member of its species… but if we continue conducting nuclear tests its possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again.” Now, no one is expecting Oscar Wilde, but it must be said that Godzilla, a film that inspired over 20 sequels and spin-offs as well as countless other monster movies, laid the groundwork for the drivel that was to follow, and the success of this film, regardless of its amateurish colloquy, is the only excuse subsequent filmmakers will ever need.
Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata)There is a love story in Godzilla, and unfortunately it is not between professor Yamane and Godzilla itself. Yamane is accompanied to the island of Odo by his beautiful young daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi), and her secret lover, a handsome naval officer named Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada). Their affair must be kept in the dark because Emiko is actually engaged to Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), a reclusive scientist with an eye patch and a laboratory that would make Dr. Frankenstein insecure. Ogata, in love with Emiko and fully aware of her relationship with Serizawa (her father’s first choice for a husband), out of duty asks Emiko to venture down into Serizawa’s laboratory and seek his assistance on how to destroy Godzilla before it is too late.
Serizawa is possibly the most interesting character in the film, going so far as to be even more enigmatic and bewildering than Godzilla. He is presented with little context, and this lack of explanation only heightens his ridiculousness. This is an intense man, with the weight of the film on his shoulders and he knows it. He could kill Godzilla right now with his rumored secret weapon, the aptly named “Oxygen Destroyer,” if it wasn’t for the possible consequences. With destructive capabilities far greater than the atomic bomb, Serizawa is understandably worried about how such a weapon would be handled if put in the wrong hands.Godzilla / Gojira
That is until Godzilla finally arrives in Tokyo. In what could be considered the film’s biggest highlight, the giant lizard wreaks havoc on the port-town, laying waste to anything and anyone that crosses his past. The buildings of Tokyo are toppled faster than a Lego-structure in a playschool, and unfortunately the special effects do not strive to look much better. Offering ample time to fetch a good look at the creature, Godzilla looks more like a homeless man covered in black plastic trash bags than a fire-breathing dinosaur from the Jurassic period. Even compared to the monster movies that came before it, like the aforementioned King Kong or 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla’s effects must have been instantly outdated.
Godzilla / Gojira poster
The wavering Serizawa eventually employs the Oxygen Destroyer to terminate Godzilla, but at the cost of volunteering his own life in the process. His brave martyrdom is a serious affair, however overshadowed by the campiness that oppresses the moment.
Godzilla’s maladroit parable works in spite of itself. While the special effects and crippled dialogue do the film’s allegorical ambition a great disservice, it is understandable that Honda’s 1953 “daikaijueigai” has inspired the loyal and rampant following that it has. Godzilla may not be the prettiest, or even the most eloquent movie about a giant metaphorical reptile gone berserk ever made, but its reputation is proof that for many film fans, it is quantity over quality.
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Highly regarded for doing a lot with very little, director Gareth Edwards took an economical approach to his latest sci-fi road movie Monsters, creating a fascinating world inhabited by beautifully surreal extra-terrestrials and the humans that must survive them. When American photographer Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) Monsters film 2010is on assignment in Mexico to document the alien life forms that have settled there, he is unwittingly tasked with the unfortunate job of escorting his boss’s daughter back into U.S. territory. When things predictably don’t go as expected, the would-be adventurers must survive the trek through the dangerous “Infected Zone,” a quarantined area of Mexico that has been taken over by both the creatures and American bombing raids. Not nearly as showy as the Peter Jackson produced District 9 (2009), Monsters is a more delicate fare, concerned less with how much destruction they can generate on screen, but instead the very personal effect such destruction has had on its American protagonists. Injected with a pacing that may be too slow for some, Monsters sacrifices frills for substance, something that I welcome amidst the increasingly calculated sci-fi films as of late. Also similar to District 9 was Monsters’s admittedly heavy-handed socio-political context. While subtler than 9’s metaphorical take on South African apartheid, Monsters’ message concerning the ongoing immigration problem had between the U.S. and Mexican borders is simple and on-the-nose. Thankfully Edwards suppresses any extreme urges, keeping the film balanced and leaving any and all conclusions up to the audience. Monsters film 2010
Monsters is a film that deserves to be seen for all its merits, least of which are the filmmakers’ graphical and artistic abilities. Kaulder and his companion Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) take a journey of self-exploration that culminates in an arrestingly passionate climax that is as beautiful as it is captivating. For me, it was a much-needed experience.
If you have taken the time to watch Gareth Edwards’ film Monsters then let me know what you thought in the comments section. If you haven’t seen it yet, then I cannot recommend it more highly, and I am happy to tell you all that it is currently streaming on Netflix. Like always, please take the time to click the “share” button below and help get ControllerUnplugged out there.
A movie with this much promise, this much leeway, should not be this boring! What is being dubbed “Cagesploitation,” Drive Angry 3D falls in line with most of Nic Cage’s cinematic endeavors of the last decade or so. He shows up, he grimaces, he screams, and then he collects his check. I am a huge Cage apologist, and although I was unable to defend The Wicker Man remake, I am usually able to find at least a modicum of enjoyment from most of his films. Well, Drive Angry is not Wicker Man bad, but not nearly as genre bending envelope-pushing cinema that it claims to be. For a film called Drive Angry it really should have more driving. I am not joking, Cage is behind the wheel of a car for maybe 40% of the film, and I would hardly call him angry, closer to “concerned” or perhaps “focused.” Cage’s performance is oddly subdued, playing his escapee from Hell as a loving father instead of a man that busted through the burning bars of eternal damnation for deserved retribution. The film’s “big-bad” is a modern-day witch lazily performed by Billy Burke who I recognized from a so-so episode of Monk, seems like a poor-man’s Michael C. Hall. Amber Heard is gorgeous, and actually looks like she is having some fun. Not surprisingly William Fichtner steals every scene he is in. I love this guy, like J.K. Simmons and Jeffrey Wright, he should just be in every movie ever made – ever.
William Fichtner in Drive Angry 3D
The action is pretty exciting, the dialogue is campy, and the plot is impressively ridiculous. I loved the David Morse cameo, and the 3D was serviceable, but completely unnecessary. This is a fun flick, mostly for the right reasons, but not the balls out no-nonsense/all-nonsense B-movie spectacle I had hoped.
Monday, April 4, 2011 at 4:04PM 
Wow. I’m not sure what this film is, or even what it wants to be. I am confident I don’t like it, although I was pretty entertained throughout most of the film. Afraid of the Dark is a horror (?) film centered on hallucinations and daydreams, but came dangerously close to putting me to sleep so I could create my own more sensible nightmares. While starting off with a bang, the film quickly lost my interest after the fourth or fifth time it pulled the floor out from under me. I don’t even want to try and discern a plot from the flick, but its on Netflix Watch Instantly right now if you are interested. If you watch it or have already seen it, please let me know what it was about and if I should like it or not in the comment section.
