Category: Film & Reviews

About movies and sometimes TV series I’ve watched; comments on historical accuracy, acting, directing, cinematography, sets, dialogue and quality. Sometimes films are rated.

The Stepford Wives in Novel, Film, and MAGA Policy

Books & Reviews / Film & Reviews / MAGA cultists / Rightwing claptrap2 Comments

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They never stop, these Stepford wives;/The work like robots all their lives. That little ditty is said by Joanna, the protagonist in Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, The Stepford Wives. She said it to herself while watching a neighbouring woman through a window, as the other mechanically polishes one of her husband’s athletic trophies. It’s a tell: we are soon to learn that the neighbour is — and most of the other women in Stepford are — really a robot controlled by their husbands. Which, we know now, is the perfect MAGA wife: a sexbot that can cook and do the … click below for more ↓

Musings on Colour vs B&W

Culture / Film & Reviews / Musings / TVLeave a comment

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I grew up in the technological end of the black-and-white era. In the 1950s and early ’60s, our TV was black and white (technically called monochrome). So was everyone else’s, as were all TV broadcasts for the first decade. I watched everything in greyscale, and the day ended with a test pattern. Movies at the theatre were sometimes in colour, sure, but a lot were still in B&W. Colour filming was a more expensive and complicated process, and ballooning budgets mattered enough to keep many producers using B&W. I remember going to a drive-in theatre with my parents in the … click below for more ↓

Godzilla Minus One: Some Thoughts

Film & Reviews / GodzillaLeave a comment

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I have been watching Godzilla films since the late 1950s or early ’60s, when the edited American version (1956) of the 1954 Japanese original was released and was finally shown on TV. I have since seen all 37 films in the franchise at least twice, some even more, and still enjoy watching them (readers here will recall my previous posts about Godzilla and the films…).* The ’54 original film became my favourite of the franchise when I first watched it in the early 2000s (it was not released to North American audiences until 2004; until then all we had was … click below for more ↓

Jurassic Park: Some Thoughts About the Franchise Part 2

Culture / Evolution & Paleontology / Film & Reviews / MusingsLeave a comment

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Charles Darwin knew the score. In Chapter 11 of his famous and brilliant book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, he wrote, “We can clearly understand why a species once lost should never reappear, even if the very same conditions of life, organic and inorganic, should recur.” But despite Darwin’s warning, the evil, greedy corporations of the Jurassic Park films kept bringing species of dinosaurs and other extinct lizards back to life. In many of the films, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) plays the role of those ancient oracles who warned of impending catastrophe, only to be ignored. With, … click below for more ↓

Jurassic Park: Some Thoughts About the Franchise Part 1

Culture / Evolution & Paleontology / Film & Reviews / MusingsOne Comment

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There’s one particular scene in the first Jurassic Park movie, about twenty minutes in, when Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler see the dinosaurs walking wild in the open for the first time on Isla Nublar; that still chokes me up, every time almost bringing me to tears. Even on my fourth or fifth viewing of the film last week, that scene still moves me. The kid in me is still agog with wonder when I see that brachiosaurus… even though my knees tell me I’m long past that childhood. As a lifelong dinosaur aficionado (who wanted to become … click below for more ↓

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Culture / Film & Reviews / Pop CultureLeave a comment

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Maybe I’m just old and jaded, but after watching the 2023 movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I couldn’t figure out why the film wasn’t in WalMart’s $5 bin rather than on the racks at $15. This is from a fan not only of fantasy novels and movies, but someone who actually played the game back in the ’70s and has played most of the computer knock-offs since. But the film left me cold. It came across as formulaic, predictable, and flat. Worse, a rather good cast put what seemed to be a merely ordinary effort to make their … click below for more ↓

Musings on The Lone Ranger, Tonto, and Cultural Appropriation

Arts / Culture / Film & Reviews / Politics2 Comments

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Yes, I get the reason some people might have been outraged that a white guy (Johnny Depp) played an indigenous person in the 2013 movie version of The Lone Ranger. It seemed, at least from the outside at the time — before watching it — to reinforce stereotypes and denigrate native Indians. Cultural appropriation and all that. What was Disney thinking? Facepalm! Whitewashing! But wait… Time magazine had a review with the title, Johnny Depp as Tonto: Is The Lone Ranger Racist? NPR’s reviewer asked Does Disney’s Tonto Reinforce Stereotypes Or Overcome Them? Maclean’s magazine asked: A white man as … click below for more ↓

Review: The Banshees of Inisherin

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I had expected comedy. Maybe not laugh-aloud, rib-splitting stuff. Not slapstick and pratfalls. But humour of the British sort. Oscar-Wilde-ish witty dialogue. Banter like that from Fry and Laurie. Joycean innuendo and joie-de-vivre. And a resolution that brought an appropriate closure to the end. Instead, what I got was a Greek tragedy of unresolved pathos, violence, poverty, and misery that left the story — and audience —hanging. Not what the trailers of The Banshees of Inisherin had led me to expect. One Guardian review called it a “flawless tragicomedy of male friendship gone sour.” I couldn’t make out the comedy … click below for more ↓

Accuracy, Licence, and the Death of Stalin

Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / History & Biography / PoliticsOne Comment

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One of my favourite movies in my collection — seen three times already on DVD or Blu-ray but likely to be seen more — is the 2017 satire, The Death of Stalin, directed by Armando Iannucci. Wikipedia describes it as depicting: “…the internal social and political power struggle among the members of Council of Ministers following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953.” That’s a bit vague; it doesn’t include the antics, the scheming, the occasional slapstick moment, the brutality of those members, nor what happens with the people outside the Politburo whose parts are also brought into … click below for more ↓

Barbie: A Review for Conservatives

Culture / Film & Reviews / Ideologies / Pop Culture2 Comments

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Hey there, conservatives (especially you conservative males!), let’s talk about the Barbie movie. Yes, I know nothing makes you want to take your AR-15 to the local Toys ‘R Us for a well-deserved shoot-up than a film about a girl’s toy (please don’t do it!). I mean, how dare anyone make a movie without guns, car chases, explosions, bullet storms, babes in skimpy outfits, and a beefy male action hero like Jason Statham or Daniel Craig to deal mayhem and death to all and sundry? A girlie movie that stars women who aren’t there just as eye candy, sending a … click below for more ↓

Review 9: Son of Godzilla

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / MusingsLeave a comment

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I‘ve hesitated to write this review because, of all the films in the Godzilla franchise, I dislike the campy-cute, family-friendly Minilla, the so-called “son” of Godzilla. Minilla appears in three films: Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, and Godzilla: Finals Wars, but the most saccharine of them is this one: Son of Godzilla. And it is, by my standards anyway, one of the worst of the franchise in many ways, not least of all in the remade Godzilla suit, but also in the cheapness of the sets, and the increasingly anthropomorphic kaiju. Unlike earlier films, Godzilla appears right at the … click below for more ↓

Review 8: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep – 1966

Culture / Film & Reviews / GodzillaOne Comment

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In 1966, the original director of the Godzilla series, Ishiro Honda, left to do other projects and left the next film — Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, aka Godzilla vs the Sea Monster — in the hands of director Jun Fukuda. At the same time, composer Akira Ifukube was replaced by Masuro Sato, and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya was replaced by Sadamasa Arikawa. Names, of course, that mean little or nothing outside aficionados of the franchise or Japanese cinema, but for Godzilla watchers, it was a whole new crew at the helm. While they weren’t the originals of the … click below for more ↓

65: A Catalogue of Disappointments

Culture / Evolution & Paleontology / Film & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Can a movie featuring aliens, dinosaurs, spaceships, one of the main actors from Star Wars, and a giant asteroid about to crash into the planet be bad? Sadly, yes. The movie 65 manages to take what could a been another Godzilla or Kong: Skull Island. instead, it’s a watered-down Jurassic Park. Severely diluted. I love scifi and fantasy. I’ve been reading it since the mid-1950s when I got my first Tom Swift jr book. I read Jules Verne at age 10, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series by age 12. I read Dune when it was first released in ’65. … click below for more ↓

Review 7: Invasion of Astro Monster – 1965

Culture / Film & Reviews / GodzillaLeave a comment

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Godzilla films had already begun to move into the cultural camp mode from the second film, Godzilla Raids Again, and away from the monster-threat-to-Earth and Atomic-bomb-symbol of the first film. It was firmly planted into it by the time 1965’s Invasion of Astro Monster came along (aka Great Monster War). It’s a rollicking, madhouse of a movie. Camp — a term that entered the language in 1909 but remains notoriously difficult to define — was described by Susan Sontag in a 1964 essay as, “the spirit of extravagance.” She also said camp was playful, “anti-serious,” exaggerated, and artificial. Her analogy … click below for more ↓

Review 6: Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster – 1964

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / MusingsLeave a comment

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Toho didn’t waste any time cashing in on the popularity of the latest Godzilla movie, and released two G films in quick succession that same year (the only year to ever see two Godzilla films released). But this time, they went all-out in a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink manner because they were rushed to get the second film out. By this time, they must have realized Godzilla wasn’t just a character, but was the keystone of a growing franchise and one that could link Toho’s other monster films in a way no other films had ever done. I imagine a scene where all … click below for more ↓

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