Multiplex Madness
Dream Scenario
⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson
Off-beat comedy sees Nicolas Cage play a mundane college professor who suddenly becomes a figure that appears in people's dreams around the world, becoming an accidental celebrity overnight and buckles under his sudden fame. Dream Scenario ponders quite a bit through its premise, like subliminal influences and the fragile and often erratic nature of fame. Cage's character is not someone who really aspires to be seen, though he does appreciate acknowledgment. At first, he thinks it's a bit of a treat, but like a lot of things that are constantly in the spotlight, things tend to go sour. It's not explicitly stated in the film, but his demeanor in the dreams changes depending on his mental state. When he's ignorant of it, he does nothing in the dreams. When he's intimate with his wife, he starts hearing of more sexual encounters. When he starts growing irritated, he becomes hostile in them. How the public perceives him shifts depends on how he handles himself, but for someone so unprepared for attention, things grow out of hand. The film becomes a commentary on the scrutiny that comes with celebrity, when everything someone does is followed so closely that just something as simple as normal human emotion can be seen as an extreme that must be judged. The movie gives the audience a surprising amount to chew on, though my one issue being that it's probably not memorable enough to keep these ideas in my head. But in the moment, it was interesting to think about.
Godzilla Minus One
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Genre: Thriller, Science Fiction, Disaster
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Starring: Ryunosuki Kamaki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki
It's like the people who made Godzilla Minus One heard some nerd make the oft repeated sentiment that nobody sees a Godzilla movie for the human characters, and they decided to respond "Challenge accepted."
Considering this is yet another Godzilla origins tale that comes seven years after we got the last one with Shin Godzilla, which came two years after the one before that with Godzilla 2014, Godzilla Minus One can feel a bit superfluous in concept. The movie actually has a interesting little history to it how it came to being. Minus One was directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who, back in 2007, he directed the sequel Always: Sunset on Third Street 2. The film opened with a pretty great, if limited, dream sequence that was made mostly with CGI, featuring the cast in a Godzilla rampage. The sequence was so well received that Yamazaki had been in-demand to helm a new Godzilla movie for a while now, and, apparently, he had even been asked to do it, but turned it down because he didn't feel Japan's CGI industry was up to the task yet. He felt more encouraged to develop his own Godzilla film after seeing the effects work in Shin Godzilla, which looked photorealistic during its best moments. He hammered out the screenplay for the film during a lengthy development process during lockdown in the Covid pandemic.
The resulting film that seems like the Godzilla fanbase has been waiting fifteen years for takes the franchise back to its World War II roots, which is welcome, because while Godzilla's relevance to generations since has evolved (from Captain Planet pollution fighter to angry souls of fallem military), his original themes always suited him best. This film even takes things a step further, setting the film in the 1940's instead of the 50's, where the original Godzilla film was set. This also makes the movie the only real period piece of the Godzilla franchise, unless one counts the time travel sequence in 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The film centers on a disgraced kamikaze pilot who fled the line of duty in a doomed mission at the end of the war. While contemplating his own self-preservation while his colleagues all died for the mission, he finds himself in a face-to-face encounter with a giant lizard, that also kills the soldiers around him while he chooses to save his own life. Returning home, he tries to rebuild his life with an accidental family that he creates along the way with fellow refugees. Several years later, the lizard he encountered, now mutated and much larger from the nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll, appears in Japan and wrecks havoc. Now with friends and family to protect, he finds that he has something to fight for and maybe something to die for.
Character pieces are not the Godzilla franchise's strong point. Like most disaster movies, the franchise is more plot-driven than not, as it's hard to be character-driven when your characters can't really do much to influence the actions of something much bigger than they are (and when it does, it's usually through a silly plot device, like the Orca machine from 2019's King of the Monsters). Minus One's characters are the focal point of this particular film, as it's more interested in telling a story about regret and loss than the story of a giant lizard stepping on people. This approach ties in so well with the original themes of Godzilla, as we start out with characters who are at their lowest point, having to cope with living in actual ruins. The film turns into a thematic metaphor for the rebuilding: as Tokyo rebuilds itself, we see our protagonist rebuild his own life, creating something lovely with a woman who lost her family in the air raids and a baby who likewise lost her parents, becoming a family of three unrelated people who love and depend on each other. This is a beautiful addendum to the war-horror themes of the franchise, showcasing the way life can emerge victorious like a flower blooming out of a world covered in ash. This story is the most intimate storyline in the franchise's history and may even bring a few tears out of its audience.
On the Godzilla side of things, while the CGI creature chaos doesn't reach the best moments of Shin Godzilla, it also doesn't reach Shin's worst moments of "Okay, look, we had a time crunch" either. The movie's effects work is steady and consistent, and it does look stylish and engrossing even if it rarely looks entirely realistic. Godzilla spends most of his time in the water, only coming to shore for a prologue opening and his centerpiece Ginza attack. Other than that, we spend a lot of time in boats chasing the creature down and coming up with ways to kill him, kinda like Jaws but with Godzilla. The sea-faring stuff is fun, throwing in some some of the more entertaining elements from 1955's Godzilla Raids Again to hit those high-notes of man vs. monster action.
There is a caveat to this, and while it isn't movie-breaking, it does make the film feel less than it probably could be. While the film's focus on human characters and compelling drama is to be commended, Godzilla does come off as an incidental nuisance rather than something that needs to be in the movie. Plotwise, Godzilla is used as something left over from the war that is haunting our protagonist, and he is primarily a device to tear down his built life to propel him into being the soldier that he never had the courage to be, while also driving him to have the internal conflict of dying in war to save his family versus fleeing war to continue to be with his family. Godzilla could be replaced in this movie with probably a half-dozen other plot devices and the film wouldn't be much different. The movie even seems like it was written in case erasing Godzilla from it entirely would be necessary for whatever reason, as the creature seems to hold little relevance to anybody else (even when he's destroying the city) than our main character. There are moments in the film where he relates the trauma of his past to other people, often casually mentioning a fire-breathing dinosaur and moving on, with supporting cast giving very little reaction to it when they really should be responding with "Wait, hold on, back it up. I'm sorry that happened to you, but what's this noise about a monster?" Godzilla still works in the narrative because his traditional echos-of-war themes keep him just relevant enough, but that's through the legwork of other movies in this franchise, particularly the original, and not this one in general.
But that almost feels like a trivial thing to be troubled about when faced with a monster movie that is this good. Godzilla Minus One is easily the best film of Godzilla's resurgence since 2014 (Shin Godzilla fans might throw a tantrum about that, but Minus One is a better laid out movie from top to bottom). Hell, it's easily the best Godzilla movie in twenty-five years. Some might even claim it's the best since the original and it would be hard to argue with. I'd even say it's not outside probability that some might prefer it to the original, though my argument in the original's favor is that it's a more completely balanced movie with all of its elements in place while Minus One is a great movie that is missing just a couple of them to make it function a little less efficiently. But whatever side of the spectrum a Godzilla fan may fall on, there is really no going wrong with either.
The Shift
⭐
Genre: Science Fiction, Faith
Director: Brock Heasley
Starring: Kristoffer Polsha, Niel McDonough, Elizabeth Tabish, Rose Reid, John Billingsley, Paras Patel, Jordon Alexandra, Sean Astin
Multiverses are hot lately, what with Everything Everywhere All at Once winning Best Picture, the MCU deep diving into it, and this year's Across the Spider-Verse making a one-movie art gallery out of the concept. Now faith filmmaking wants in on the action.
Oh, I feel so blessed.
The Shift revolves around some dude who has been "shifted" out of his dimension to an authoritarian dimension ruled by Neil McDonough, who I guess is supposed to be the Devil. Anyway, Devil McDonough recruits this guy in every dimension for...reasons. What he needs this dude for is unclear, but this guy turns him down and gets trapped in an alternate reality, trying to find a way to get back home. It's like Sliders if they were flung through the multiverse by the Devil for shits and giggles, prayed for a portal to other dimensions, and preached the word of God in every universe they visit. I'll give this movie credit for one thing, it's a rare religious movie that shows faith and science working harmoniously instead of being polar opposites at war with each other. The movie works itself earnestly to try and make something out of itself too. It just doesn't. It's a cluttered mess of the movie that wants to deliver a message of one's faith being tested that's bloated by an overly complicated premise that it doesn't even try to do justice to because it's gaslighting its religious audience. On top of that, the themes of faith are undercut because of its complicated storyline. What the movie ambitions is to be a modern day spin on a trials of faith tale, where one goes through hardship and finds his own faith to be the guiding light in his darkest hour, using sci-fi to achieve means to an end, without finding a way to make the sci-fi and fantasy actually mesh together rather than be just two separate things happening simultaneously. I almost consider giving this movie extra credit for its effort, especially as it doesn't get as condescending and intolerant as a faith/genre mesh can be (see: Nefarious), but the the unfortunate truth is that while it's a non-vindictive bad movie, it doesn't save it from being a bad movie.
Silent Night
⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Action
Director: John Woo
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Scott Mescudi, Harold Torres, Catalina Sandino Moreno
John Woo returns to Hollywood after all these years to make sure his last American film wasn't Paycheck starring Ben Affleck (or that terrible pilot for a Lost in Space series he made for the CW) with a rather simplistic revenge flick with a pantomime twist. Joel Kinnaman, who may or may not have been one of the non-Peter Weller RoboCops at one point in his career, plays a father who loses his son to gang violence at Christmas, as well as his vocal chords. He then preps for the next year to retaliate the following holiday. Thrills, chills, and bloodspills ensue. The film is made mostly without dialogue, like No One Will Save You, though less inspired with its execution. Sometimes it will stretch to make the format work, and sometimes it will use dialogue for light exposition, but not directly. Otherwise, it's a pretty well oiled machine of an action flick with Woo's sweet cinematic flair. It's probably not going to go down as a holiday themed action classic like Die Hard or Lethal Weapon, but as a work of stylized violence, there are admirable attributes to it that make it worth taking a look at its craft. Woo has always been an action movie technician, some movies just display that better than others. This one is nothing but that, so we might as well take it in.
Netflix & Chill
Candy Cane Lane
⭐1/2
Streaming On: Prime
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Director: Reginuld Hudlin
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jillian Bell, David Alan Grier
I appreciate a good attempt to think outside the box. I also appreciate grinding it out into something that works, giving the audience something that they didn't know that they would enjoy. At first glance, Candy Cane Lane feels like it could be a fun idea, as it's a weird occult-style holiday comedy starring Eddie Murphy. But given it's high concept premise and onscreen talent, I just expected this movie to be more...well, I expected it to be something. But it isn't, really. The film doesn't really play with its premise and as a comedy it really isn't very funny. The film has Murphy desperate to win a neighborhood Christmas decoration contest, so he buys some knockout decorations from a pop-up shop ran by elf/witch Jillian Bell. His ornaments then come to life and he must collect a series of golden rings from them to prevent being turned into a little glass figurine. It's silly, but there could be wacky hijinks if the movie was done correctly. But the hijinks are never wacky enough, nor do they ever become interesting. It's a dull plod of a movie that can't ever work up the energy to see potential in itself. And there is probably potential to be mined if it dug deep down. There's a quirky urban soul gospel tone to the movie that is interesting, but while it gives the movie a flavor, it's not exactly a spice. The movie also introduces a group of glass figurine people who are animated like they're straight out of a stop-motion Christmas special. They could be fun additions, and they're certainly big enough personalities, but nothing they do is ever funny or entertaining enough to warrant giving them screen time (even though they're arguably the most interesting thing in the movie). It's that experience that defines Candy Cane Lane, where there are ideas that could be embellished upon ignored for a general flat mundaneness. It's a movie equivalent of someone who puts on a holiday cheer face but is secretly dead inside because they just want Christmas to be over.
Family Switch
⭐1/2
Streaming On: Netflix
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Director: McG
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Ed Helms, Emma Myers, Brady Noon, Rita Moreno
Recently, Netflix made the announcement that they were scaling back their original content, claiming to want to focus more on quality instead of quantity. I can't get the idea out of my head that they came to this conclusion after watching Family Switch, which feels like a movie that had a script quickly skimmed and just stamped "Good Enough" and thrown into production.
The film is Freaky Friday, except........no, that's it. It's just Freaky Friday. There's the added bonus that there is a father and brother thrown in as an aside to the mother/daughter body swap comedy, but the idea is exactly the same. The "Ungrateful kid"/"You don't get me, mom and dad" personality traits leading to living a day in someone else's shoes has already been done, ad nauseam. Hell, Jennifer Garner's even done a body change comedy before, and this movie even references it by name (as well as 17 Again, starring the late Matthew Perry). Credit where credit is due, if this movie has one thing in its favor, it would be its cast. Everyone is putting in some A+ work playing their dual roles (again, Garner has done one of these before, so she gets it). The movie's scripting and craftwork keeps pulling the rug out from under them and preventing them from really delivering something charming. Even if this movie is unoriginal, these actors seem like they could deliver a movie that is ten times funnier than this, but their timing is being slanted by the way the movie is put together by Terminator: Salvation director McG. If I were to guess, I think McG is pulling them back intentionally, because it feels like he wants this movie to just have the tone of a goofy holiday diversion for parents to tolerate while the kids laugh at the dog walking on hind legs or Jennifer Garner belching and farting in the middle of a business meeting. I don't think he wants this movie to venture too far outside that tone, which is a shame. Every once in a while, the cast manages to elevate a lackluster gag with a surprisingly expert delivery and actually manage to make me bark a laugh in the middle of all the defeated sighs. If only they were able to play this movie at their full capacity, maybe something could be made of it.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (no)
Killers of the Flower Moon ⭐⭐⭐1/2
The Marvels ⭐⭐1/2
Napoleon ⭐⭐1/2
Next Goal Wins ⭐⭐1/2
Priscilla ⭐⭐⭐
Saltburn ⭐⭐⭐
Thanksgiving ⭐⭐1/2
Trolls Band Together ⭐⭐1/2
Wish ⭐⭐1/2
New To Digital
The Holdovers ⭐⭐⭐
New To Physical
Coming Soon!
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