Blog Archives
Abigail (2024)
Abigail feels very much like a spiritual sister for 2019’s Ready or Not, as it is a follow-up from the same writers and directors. It’s a bloody, funny movie about a hunt in a big mansion with a heroine who is battling against supernatural forces over the course of one long hellish night. We have a team of thieves kidnapping the young daughter of a man with money and having to hold her overnight. They don’t know one another and there’s an initial bristle to their discovery, like when an ex-police detective (Dan Stevens) and a recovering addict (Melissa Berrera) have equal measure not to trust one another. Things get worse when it’s revealed that their hostage, the titular Abigail (Alisha Weir), is not what she seems, a fact spoiled in the trailer. What follows is a topsy-turvy game of cat and mouse with some effective creepy moments and some lively humor without losing sight of the escalating stakes as well as the acclimation of new rules. The acting ensemble is highly enjoyable, particularly Stevens as a scuzzy authority figure, Kevin Durand as a himbo with an emotional core, and Weir, who has tremendous range to pull off the changes her character goes through. It’s not as fulfilling and finely developed as Ready or Not, one of 2019’s best films and one of the best endings to a movie ever, but Abigail is a first-rate bloody B-movie that might not hit as high but still satisfies.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
In 2021, the Monsterverse series, begat from 2014’s Godzilla franchise kickstart, finally matched up its two chief prizefighters by pitting King Kong against the mighty Godzilla. It was also by far the most successful movie in the fledgling kaiju franchise, and Warner Brothers was eager to keep the good times running. Now it’s three years later, but Kong is older and weary, living in the Hollow Earth realm below our feet but feeling very alone, the last of the giant apes. Suddenly, he discovers a new world beneath his feet, another level where there are other apes like him. However, they’re ruled in fear from the vicious Scar King, and so Kong needs to call upon his former rival and now tentative ally Godzilla for the ultimate homecoming smack-down.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire finds a comfortable resting place as solid disposable fun, a work that knows its real appeal and doesn’t get in the way of it, so why does this movie work for me whereas I had trouble really celebrating the 2021 predecessor? I think it comes down to streamlining and limiting the “dumb fun” to a more manageable quotient. There is still plenty of junk science and goofy moments that will likely inspire their share of guffaws, but I was more pleased this time than overwhelmed in 2021. I had plenty of friends that absolutely loved the 2021 showdown, and I’ll admit the big bouts of monster action were well developed and staged, but for me the dumb was more present than my “dumb fun” threshold could bear. Again, that’s not to say that this newest adventure doesn’t evoke similar eye-rolling. The very revelation of ANOTHER subterranean world and hidden civilization just under the feet of the other subterranean hidden world makes me wonder if every successive sequel will just keep digging downwards, discovering yet another undiscovered world, until they reach the molten core.
This movie is broken into three storylines and only one of them has the human characters; the core of the movie is Kong’s exploration of the new subterranean world and this is told wordlessly and effectively. The 2021 movie had to juggle multiple human enclaves all having their own adventures and discovering components of our story that would ultimately prove helpful. There was the Godzilla Team and the Kong Team, but did you know that the 2021 movie included all these human characters: our unexpected lead of the Monsterverse now in Hall, the returning new characters from 2021 by Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kaylee Hottle, Alexander Skarsgard, Eiza Gonzalez, Julian Dennison, Demian Bichir, Lance Reddick, and the returning characters from 2019 by Millie Bobby Brown, Kyle Chandler, and the son of Ken Wantanabe’s deceased scientist. Top it off with the starring title bout of Kong v Godzilla, and that’s a lot of speaking roles to have to juggle over two hours of monster mash. Having only one human group and only one new significant character (Dan Stevens as a hip veterinarian) helps keep things moving and puts more emphasis on the real big star, Mr. Kong.
Godzilla is sidelined for the second movie in a row to give way for Kong, and it’s the right call as the giant ape is more of a wounded warrior, and his loneliness and desire for community is an easier emotional state to convey than anything from the large enigmatic lizard. Godzilla spends almost the whole movie, leading up to the climax, on a mission where he’s powering up, like it’s a filler Dragon Ball Z episode. It does build a sense of anticipation for his eventual return in the big arena, but it’s clear that Godzilla’s name should be second in the title. He’s presented almost like an angry cat, settling into the Colosseum as an impromptu nap den. With Kong, the emotional arc of a lonely creature seeking kinship is universal and easy to understand even without words. He believes he’s the last of his kind and then to discover a community of those like him, and adjust as an outsider, and then upset the power structure of a bully wrecking havoc. There’s even a budding stepfather-like relationship with a little ape who begins as quite an annoying little stinker and then warms up to this better paternal figure. It’s a simple story of discovery and reunification, as well as overthrowing a corrupt leader, but it’s enough to get you emotionally invested in this giant CGI monster and his giant sense of encroaching ennui.
The biggest appeal of any monster movie is its destructive action, and Godzilla x Kong delivers in this regard while keeping things fluid and fun. Returning director Adam Wingard (You’re Next) makes sure the big brawls are easy to follow with minimal edits to better orient the viewer. The big hits feel like they matter, and the rules of the different fights and fighters and the varying geography matter. There’s a climactic fight in the Hollow Earth where gravity becomes a second thought, and it’s a tremendous visual spectacle as well as rousing sequence of excitement to watch these giants suddenly weightless and zooming through the air in combat. Wingard also knows when to give his characters their big hero moments, and the team-up between Kong and Godzilla has the same rousing satisfaction as you would wish for two titans of mayhem. I enjoyed the new orangutan villain, the Scar King, a fearsome beast that cannot match Kong for sheer brutal strength but makes up for it in speed and agility, and a whip-like weapon that controls a frost-breathing kaiju through fear and pain. It’s an interesting character at least in design and contrast from our hero kaiju, so it’s not just more of the same but with a horn or something. I have to think anyone coming for some top-tier monster wrestling will leave the movie happy.
As for the human drama, it’s mostly kept along the fringes and there to introduce necessary plot elements that a grunting ape couldn’t more adequately convey. Hall has to worry about possibly losing her adoptive mute daughter who is herself the last of an older civilization. It’s pretty simplistic but acceptable as a parallel about finding one’s place in the world from feeling alone.
Godzilla x Kong is silly and stupid and stupidly fun, appealing to any kaiju fan’s inner child, working that same primordial wonder of monsters and destructive spectacle. For my money, it’s a step above the 2021 initial brawl thanks to scaling down its many assorted plotlines dealing with too many forgettable human characters. The action is rip-roaring and proof that even more can be ceded to Kong and a lack of dialogue to tell this story in a meaningful manner. Wingard still has a natural feel for elevated B-movie material, and clearly this movie is going in a very different route than 2023’s now Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, a shockingly affecting post-war human drama that just so happened to have Godzilla in it. It’s a perfect blockbuster to chow down popcorn and hoot and holler along with our giant avatars of childhood glee.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
The Rental (2020)
Dave Franco’s directorial debut showed me more promise than I’ve ever seen in big brother James Franco’s many, many directorial outings. The younger Franco also co-wrote The Rental with mumblecore/indie horror mainstay Joe Swanberg (Netflix’s Easy), and the movie is at its best when it feels like a really tense relationship drama with some creepy overtures for good measure. Two couples (Dan Stevens and Alison Brie, Sheila Vand and Jeremy Allen White) are renting a beautiful ocean-side cabin for the weekend. There’s a palpable tension early on as Vand’s character, a woman of Middle Eastern descent, challenges the homeowner why he chose to deny her bid over her white male co-worker. From there you quickly understand that she and Dan Steven’s character have a dangerous sexual attraction to one another and, after a drug-fueled night, circle each other hungrily and inevitably. I felt nervous simply waiting for them to cheat, and when they do, it sets the rest of the movie in motion because the evidence of their infidelity is what provides such an intriguing dimension of personal stakes. They discover a hidden camera in the shower head but it also means they are reluctant to go to the police because what if that proof is subsequently revealed? This delicious turn causes one half of our couples to conspire together and keep secrets from their significant others, and The Rental has a crafty and effective unease to it as the characters get more frantic, paranoid, and confrontational. There’s a solid hour of good material here with the relationship drama taking center stage in a creepy surveillance thriller setting. Franco also shows solid promise as a visual stylist. His ability to create an uncomfortable atmosphere of dread while maintaining pleasing, cleanly composed visuals is impressive. It reminded me at times of an Ari Aster A24 horror movie (Hereditary, Midsommar). Alas, it’s the last fifteen minutes that do The Rental in as it succumbs into being a boring slasher movie with a boring, and vague, killer. It fits with the parameters of the story being told but it’s the most boring and underwritten aspect, falling entirely on the mere iconography of slasher cinema to serve as external escalation. It’s a bit of a disappointment of an ending after such a promising and personal start. I definitely think Dave Franco shows promise as a filmmaker and a genre director who doesn’t sacrifice character for empty atmosphere, which is my most common complaint for much of atmospheric gonzo indie horror (see: Mandy, Neon Demon). At under 90 minutes, the movie doesn’t wear out its welcome and has enough juicy tension and drama to warrant at least one viewing. Hopefully, Dave Franco steps behind the camera again and hopefully he will write a better ending too.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
Lucy in the Sky (2019)
I don’t really know what this movie was trying to say. I think co-writer/director Noah Hawley (TV’s Fargo, Legion) was better trying to humanize the story of Lisa Novak, the astronaut who drove 900 miles, while wearing diapers to skip bathroom breaks, to confront the current lover of an ex-boyfriend, all three NASA employees. It was a story so bizarre, so tabloid ready, that a big screen adaptation was inevitable. What I wasn’t expecting was an artist to take this and discard the attention-grabbing details and turn this into a ponderous existential meditation. Lucy (Natalie Portman) has recently returned from Earth and our big blue planet doesn’t feel the same after she’s touched the majesty of space. Her life seems small, meaningless, boring, and she can’t shake her terrestrial depression. She begins an affair with a co-worker (Jon Hamm) to feel that same special sensation again, but she’s chasing something uniquely elusive. Lucy in the Sky is structured like a meandering Terrence Malick movie was crossbred with a heavy-handed addiction melodrama. It’s not a good fit. The ever-changing aspect ratios are meant to convey her emotional state, but just when I thought I had a handle on how to decode them, Hawley would frustratingly break the rules with them. As far as I can tell, the wider ratio (during space) is meant to convey… good things, and the smaller, boxier ratios (Earthbound) are meant to convey… not good things. But then wide shots will be filmed in super widescreen and it throws away that interpretation. It’s an annoying visual tic in a movie that feels over-directed. The blunt characterization for Lucy fails to open her up beyond that of a self-destructive addict. She had a demanding mother (Ellen Burstyn), an existential crisis, and a boring husband (Dan Stevens), so does that explain her behavior? Portman commits to the madness and I give her credit, though her thick Texas accent made me rear back (it sounded like Reba McEntire). The movie is almost worth watching just for her game performance, kind of like last year’s similar artistic misfire, Vox Lux. Lucy is definitely unhinged by the time she’s making her fateful cross-state road trip. She mutters that women are regarded as “too emotional” as a common slight to sideline, but her behavior isn’t exactly dispelling this criticism. Maybe trying to turn “diaper astronaut love triangle” into a symbol for female discrimination wasn’t exactly the best call. Lucy in the Sky is an arty mess that is trying so hard to say something profound but loses the very appeal of its source material. Either you embrace “diaper astronaut love triangle” or you don’t.
Nate’s Grade: C
Share this:
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Disney has been on a tear lately with its slate of live-action remakes but Beauty and the Beast is the first title to come from the relatively recent Renaissance period of the early 1990s. The 1991 classic, based upon the French fairy tale, was the first animated film ever nominated for Best Picture, and back when the Academy was only proffering five nominees for the category (Toy Story 3 and Up earned Best Picture nominations after the category expanded up to ten). This is a beloved movie still fresh in people’s minds. I was curious what Disney and director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) would do with the material, what potential new spins, and how faithful they might be. Regrettably, the 2017 Beauty and the Beast is a charmless, inferior remake of a Disney classic. In short, there is no reason for this movie to exist.
Belle (Emma Watson) is a small French town’s least favorite daughter, namely because she always has her nose in a book and wants “more than this provincial life.” Gaston (Luke Evans) is the most popular man in town and a dreamboat that ladies savor, and maybe also Gaston’s silly sidekick, LeFou (Josh Gad). The hunk is determined to marry Belle at all costs but she wants nothing to do with the brute. Belle’s father (Kevin Kline) falls prisoner to a ghastly Beast (Dan Stevens), a monster who used to be a prince who was cursed for his vanity. The Beast’s servants were also cursed, turned into living objects, like cowardly clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), lively lamp Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), and a tea kettle (Emma Thompson), feather duster (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), harpsichord (Stanley Tucci), dresser (Audra McDonald), and probably a chamber pot somewhere. Belle trades places with her father, becoming the Beast’s captive. The servants encourage the Beast to put on a charm offensive and change his ways to woo Belle, because if he cannot earn reciprocal love before the last pedal falls from an enchanted rose, then they will all be doomed to live their current fates.
I figured, at worst, I would be indifferent to the live-action version of a great animated musical, especially since they were following the plot fairly closely. I was not indifferent; I was bored silly, and as the boredom consumed me I felt the strong urge to simply get up and leave. Now I didn’t do that, dear reader, because I owed all of you my complete thoughts on the complete film. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I debated escape, which is a rarity for me (I’ve never walked out of a movie, but Beauty and the Beast now joins a small number of films where I considered the inclination). The source of my urges spring directly from the realization that I knew exactly what was going to be coming at every step, even down to shots, and I knew it was going to be worse than the source material. It felt like watching the soul slowly get sucked out of the 1991 film. It was imitation that squeezed out all the delightful feelings from the original, stamping out joy and replacing it with an awkward, stilted facsimile. There’s also the problem of live-action being a medium that distorts some of the charming elements from the animated movie. The anthropomorphic servants are especially unsettling to watch.
The new additions are few and completely unnecessary, adding a half hour to a classic’s efficient running time. It’s kind of like remaking Casablanca and adding forty minutes of stuff that doesn’t belong, which might as well be known today as Peter Jackson Syndrome. With Beauty and the Beast, there are four or five new songs added, and they are awful and needless. Two of them are back-stories for Belle and the Beast/Prince, both of which were already covered earlier either explicitly or implicitly. They are the clear clunkers and further evidence that the 2017 additions are artistic anchors hampering an otherwise great musical. The Prince is given more screentime pre-Beast transformation but it covers the same ground that a simple voice over achieves in the original. I don’t think much is added seeing Stevens get gussied up and partying with the pretty people of his village except as an excuse for costuming excess. Some of the elements added also feel remarkably tacked on and feebly integrated, like the Beast’s magic teleportation book. He has a book that will take the user anywhere in the world, which Belle uses once to visit her parents’ old home and learn redundant information. At no point is this powerful magical device ever used. Why introduce a teleporting book and never bring it up again, especially if only to reveal something superfluous? Why does the Beast need a magic mirror to spy on people if he can teleport there? These are the unintended questions that befall poorly planned story elements that nobody asked for.
The 2017 Beast also wants to celebrate itself for being more inclusive, feminist, and forward thinking than its predecessor, but this claim is overblown. Much has been made out of Condon’s claims of an “exclusively gay moment” in the movie devoted to LeFou, which wouldn’t be that surprising considering his Gaston-adoring behavior walks a homoerotic line in the original. This “exclusive” moment is LeFou dancing with another man and seeming to enjoy himself, or at least not hating the idea. It lasts for a grand total of two seconds on screen as part of a closing epilogue scanning across our happy characters reunited on the dance floor. It seems like much ado about nothing, especially since the 1991 film had the exact same comic beat of a man discovering an unknown joy of dressing in women’s clothing. Watson has been an outspoken actress, a UN human rights ambassador, and has said in multiple media interviews that it was important to make Belle a more actionable feminist figure. There was certainly room for improvement considering it’s a romance that many have cited as a clear case of Stockholm syndrome. If a modern remake of Beauty and the Beast were going to make socially conscious strides, it would be here, naturally. It’s pretty much the same movie except now she creates a washing machine by completely occupying the town fountain. That’s it. Considering that the movie added thirty minutes to the running time, you would think a majority of that would be judiciously devoted to building a plausible bridge from the Beast being Belle’s captor to being her lover. Nope. It’s a more forward thinking movie in fairly superficial ways that feel overly designed to warrant applause, like the inclusion of two interracial couples in the small staff of a seventeenth century French castle.
I went in and thought, if all else, I would at least have the instantly humable and highly pleasurable songs to fall back on. Then I realized this imagined respite was a fallacy. Like every other element in the film, the singing was going to be worse than the originals, and it was. The biggest aural offender belongs to our heroine, Miss Watson (The Bling Ring), whose singing vocals are Auto tuned within an inch of their lives. I have no idea what Watson’s singing voice sounds like in real life but I can almost assuredly bet it does not sound like what comes out of her mouth in this movie. The Auto tune effect was immediate, and overwhelming, and it felt like daggers in my ears for the entirety of the film. Auto tune flattens out a singer’s vocals and makes them sound tinny, unreal, almost like the comedown from sucking helium. I listened attentively to the other performers and it seemed like Watson was the only one given this exaggerated treatment. I’ve said before I’m not a fan of Watson as an actress, feeling she plateaued at a young age from the Harry Potter series, and her performance here will not change my mind. Similarly, the Beast’s vocals are so enhanced with bass that it would be hard to judge Stevens authentic singing voice. McGregor (T2 Trainspotting) has proven his singing chops before but a French accent was clearly something that got away from him. Evans (The Girl on the Train) is acceptable as a singer but lacks something of the brio that makes Gaston a larger-than-life pompous ass. Gad (Frozen) is right at home with musical theater. If I had to pick a musical highlight I would cite “Be Our Guest” simply for the visual barrage of colors and playful imagery that is absent most of a rather dreary looking movie. The other performers are adequate and sing their parts with equal parts gusto and reverence, but they’re all clearly weaker singers than the less known cast of the 1991 edition. It leaves one with the impression of a shabby celebrity karaoke version of a better movie.
Beauty and the Beast isn’t just a disappointment, it’s an artistic misfire on multiple fronts that is looking for applause but doing too little to even earn such consideration. It wants to be forward thinking for a contemporary audience but they’re empty gestures, as it just copies the 1991 movie down to similar shot selections. The 1991 movie is great, no question, but I don’t need a Gus van Sant Psycho-style remake that only serves to make me appreciate the original more. This movie has no reason to exist outside of the oodles of cash that Disney will probably collect from repackaging its much beloved classic to a new generation of fans and an older generation seeking out millennial nostalgia. The singing is off, especially from a painfully Auto tuned Watson, the new songs and scenes are pointless, and even some of the production design resembles a play that ran out of budget halfway through. If you’re a fan of the original, you may find entertainment just reliving the familiar beats and notes from the 1991 film, just to a patently lesser degree of success. It’s not like Disney’s other live-action remakes of their extensive back catalogue of titles. The Jungle Book and Pete’s Dragon were sizeable improvements, and the agreeable Cinderella found some welcomed maturity to go with its fairy dust. Those movies found new angles, and in some cases had little relationship to their original material as in the case of the wonderful and heartfelt Pete’s Dragon. These are examples of filmmakers who were inspired by their sources but told their own stories. Beauty and the Beast, in contrast, is just the hollowed out husk of the original, now made putrid.
Nate’s Grade: C
nathanzoebl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.