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.

Gojira, the original kaiju

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Legends & Myths / Personal Reminiscences4 Comments

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At the end of most Godzilla films, the audience is led to believe the giant reptile has finally been killed off. Blown up, defeated by another monster, killed by technology, sunk to the bottom of the ocean or suffered some similar fate. And yet there he*** is, hale and hearty in the next film, rampaging through Japan once again, and facing yet another kaiju (giant monster) – or often several. After 32 films, Godzilla still comes back. And so do I.* I was thinking about … click below for more ↓

Guillermo, monsters and me

Arts / Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Pop CultureOne Comment

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Tucked away at the bottom of a tall display case in the ‘At Home With Monsters’ exhibit at the AGO is a small collection of seven old, well-thumbed books, all by the 19th century French naturalist and entomologist, Jean-Henri Fabre. At the very bottom of the pile, its title almost hidden in the shadows, is The Life of the Spider, first translated into English in 1913, but not translated again until 1971. The books subtly reflect the importance director and artist Guillermo del Toro places … click below for more ↓

Kong and his films

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Media / Pop Culture4 Comments

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Kong: Skull Island is the 19th movie in my collection about apes.* Or at least ape-ish creatures (not including those about cave people or yetis). We watched the recently-released Kong: Skull Island this past weekend, even devouring all of the special features on the second disc. I give Kong: Skull Island second place in the great ape/Kong pantheon because it’s well done, fun, action-packed, and not nearly as bloated as Peter Jackson’s 2005 epic. Despite some lukewarm or critical reviews, it’s worth watching and collecting if … click below for more ↓

Legends of Horror

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Legends of Horror is the title of one multi-DVD collections of films I own. Fifty films in this package. They’re B-films for the most part (and a few of lesser quality), dating from 1927 (silent) to 1980, mostly in B&W, but those dating from the mid-1960s on are usually colour. The collection title is misleading: it’s really a mix of early horror, mystery and suspense. It’s one of several similar sets and single DVDs that make up my personal collection of B films (a very … click below for more ↓

The Dude, the Tao and the Dharma

Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Cults / Faith / Film & Reviews / Philosophy / Religion / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I suppose it all began with Benjamin Hoff. Hoff was one of the first contemporary writers to attempt to distill Taoism in a lighthearted form for Westerners when he wrote The Tao of Pooh in 1981, a very successful book still in print. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 49 weeks. A decade later, he followed with The Te of Piglet, less successful (its message somewhat diluted by Hoff’s extraneous political and social commentary) but also still in print. Not that … click below for more ↓

It’s Not a Wonderful Life

Critical Thinking / Culture / Film & Reviews / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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I’m convinced many Americans – Donald Trump among them – think Frank Capra’s famous film, It’s a Wonderful Life, was a documentary, not entertainment. It has all the elements of Trumpist utopia: a white, Christian, unquestionably patriotic, male-dominated, patriarchal culture where the bad guy gets away with stealing from others, and making himself rich at everyone else’s expense. No one stops him and everyone still lives happily ever after.* Married women in the film are mostly housewives; those women who work are secretaries and clerks … click below for more ↓

Wrinkles: a review

Aging / Culture / Film & Reviews / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. It’s the phrase that highlights the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno. It could just as easily by carved above the entrances to many nursing and retirement homes. I recalled that phrase as we watched the 2011 animated film, Wrinkles, last night. Susan thought it the most depressing film she’d ever seen. I rather liked it: it was honest and artistically interesting. But not uplifting, I’ll agree. There is a sense of redemption at the end, but it … click below for more ↓

Transcendance

Culture / Film & Reviews / Memes; Internet & Social / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / Technology & GadgetsLeave a comment

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It’s not surprising that AI replaced the biological form in the popular Frankenstein monster trope. In fact the smart-evil-machine scenario has been done so often this past decade or so that I’m more surprised any film writer or director can manage to give it some semblance of uniqueness that differs it from all the others. Transcendence tries, tries very hard and almost makes it. But the brass ring remains out of reach. Still, it’s worth watching if you’re a scifi buff because, well, it’s scifi.* And even … click below for more ↓

Mildly Angry Max

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The latest Mad Max movie isn’t so much about Max as it is about the political-feminist message of the film. Max himself seems somewhat perturbed, sometimes cross, but not really mad in the sense of going berserk. Mildly angry most of the time. Grumpy Max. Not like the original, fast-quipping, fast-shooting, troubled character played by Mel Gibson in the B-flick that went viral back in the late 1970s. The new Max is more phlegmatic. And not nearly as good a shot. Despite some great effects … click below for more ↓

Cowboy Noir

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I hadn’t previously considered western movies as film noir – I always thought of them as crime dramas – until I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance over the holidays, perhaps my third viewing of the 1962 movie. The gloomy shadows, the dark sets, the agony of the characters. And then it struck me: cowboy noir. But why not? Noir is, after all not a theme as much as an atmosphere. As one reviewer of cowboy noir put it, Noir is like a disease. Its symptoms are … click below for more ↓

The Last Case of Sherlock Holmes

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Sherlock Holmes. Iconic detective, 93 years old. Tending his bees in bucolic self-exile near the Dover coast. Mycroft gone. Watson gone. Mrs. Hudson gone. Even the band of villains and criminals who made him who he was are gone. All he has left are his memories and his bees. And his memories are failing. It’s 1947 and the countryside still bears the visible scars of the recent war. Holmes (Ian McKellen) has just returned from a trip to Japan to see a mysterious contact who … click below for more ↓

The Signal

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One of the oddest – but most intriguing – scifi films I’ve seen recently was the 2014 movie, the Signal. It is a small-budget film that premiered at the Sundance Festival last year and seems to have gone to DVD soon after. I picked up a copy recently at a nearby HMV and watched it over the weekend. It stars Laurence Fishburne as the only big-name actor, while the main role is played by newcomer Brenton Thwaites. The film reminded me somewhat of George Lucas’s first … click below for more ↓

Ex Machina

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Ex Machina – “from the machine” – is a British film that is more about philosophy and morality than science. It opens a can or worms, philosophically, that underscores issues now being raised by advancing and increasingly intelligent technology. Its spare but crisp production reminds me of George Lucas’s first film, THX-1138. Spoiler alert, by the way… It is, in its essence, a modern exploration of the themes presented in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, using artificial intelligence as the  fulcrum, rather than the reanimating … click below for more ↓

The Missing Frankenstein Movies

Culture / Film & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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I was worried when I saw a new package for the Frankenstein films in WalMart recently. Labelled the “Complete Legacy Collection,” it offered eight original films on the Frankenstein theme, from 1931 to 1948. I snapped it up and read the back. I had to have it. (I always check the films they bring in pre-Halloween, in case they have any classics I don’t yet have….) Oh oh, I said to myself as I read the cover. I had purchased all of the Legacy monster … click below for more ↓

Victor Hugo’s Hunchback

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I have just finished listening to a well-read audio book (in English) of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, Hunchback of Notre Dame, or more properly, Notre Dame de Paris, as the original title was written. I had read the novel several years ago in a more recent Penguin edition, but hearing it on my peregrinations around town with the dogs gave me time to focus on some sections I had glossed over in the written form. Unlike the abysmal Disney animation of 1996, and unlike all the films and TV … click below for more ↓

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