MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 4 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Godzilla Minus One (Minus Color)

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Oscars Nominated: Best Visual Effects

Genre: Thriller, Science Fiction, Disaster

Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Starring: Ryunosuki Kamaki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki

I already covered Godzilla Minus One last month, but we had slim pickings at the theater this week and I'm fully committed to seeing this movie in every gimmick format possible. I've already seen it in IMAX, 4DX, and ScreenX, and now the film is ending what was supposed to be a week-long theatrical run that turned into nearly two months with a release of a black and white version. Normally I don't go for black and white reissues because black and white cinematography requires its own composition and framing itself that a transfer doesn't do justice, but congratulations to Zack Snyder for making his already ugly Justice League movie look like a four-hour grey smudge, I guess. Godzilla Minus One is an interesting film to do this with, because Godzilla is a franchise that has roots in black and white cinematography, but it also hasn't worked with it since almost its inception. There is something almost nostalgic about seeing a new Godzilla movie in the format, even if it's not the format proper. As for the transfer itself, for the most part, it looks good. Some shots are striking without color, while a large portion of the movie doesn't really benefit by it at all, or looks incorrect, but I'd call it a 60% success. The praised visual effects work (which it was recently Oscar nominated for) looks pretty handsome in the format, and it even masks some of the film's shakier moments. I'm more likely to watch the color version again over this, but if I had a print of Minus Color on hand in a home viewing format, it would be a fun triple feature with the original Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again.

Miller's Girl

⭐️1/2

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: Jade Halley Bartlett

Starring: Martin Freeman, Jenna Ortega, Dagmara Dominczyk, Bashir Salahuddin, Gideon Adlon

Erotic thriller sees Jenna Ortega playing a gifted writing student who is mentored by teacher Martin Freeman, which Ortega pushes the limits by slowly seducing him. Miller's Girl feels like a throwback to shitty teen steam movies aimed at youths with exponential hormones, not unlike Cruel Intentions. It's a movie that has mastered the vibe, but it's ambitions to be trashy and sophisticated at the same time come up short as it leans heavily on the former. By far, it's biggest strength lies in its two leads. Ortega has proven herself to be one of the most interesting performers of her generation, and Freeman is an excellent foil for her. Nothing else about the movie stacks up, though. Every other character is a wild caricature and the script comes off as self-published erotic fiction. That's before getting into the shady teacher/student storyline, which toes a line in its problematic nature. The movie never doesn't portray it as non-problematic, though the idea of the student being a black widow honeypot feels like a tall tale from the "Hey, if she didn't want to be treated like a sex object, why was wearing that?" boomer playbook. The film was written and directed by a woman, so I have doubts the movie was meant to be enabling to that sexist ideal, but a movie like this really needs to push itself to crawl out of the gutter. I imagine everyone involved thought it would. Ortega and Freeman are both above a movie like this. The fact that they both signed up for it tells me they thought that they could turn it into something elevated. Unfortunately, they weren't able to.

Netflix & Chill

Suitable Flesh

⭐️⭐️

Streaming On: Shudder

Genre: Thriller

Director: Joe Lynch

Starring: Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Barbara Crampton, Jonathon Schaech

Odd body swap flick sees Heather Graham as a therapist who has a patient who claims his dying father is switching places with him, and soon she begins to have out-of-body experiences as well. There are worse bodies to have than Heather Graham's, I suppose. The movie is flamboyant enough to be entertaining, but it's also melodramatic enough to be a complete pain in the ass. The tone of this movie is weird, because it's leaning hard into a very specific style of horror filmmaking, where it's a macabre psychological drama that's a little cuckoo but exploitive in a more interesting way than the norm. Suitible Flesh crosses its wires into the tone of a Cinemax softcore mystery seemingly by mistake more often than not, making it a less fun form of sleazy than it's going for. I wish it worked, but it gets messy when it's all said and done. Anybody whose lifelong ambition is to see a movie where Heather Graham dryhumps fully clothed every ten minutes or so will be in heaven, though.

Oscar Nominees

20 Days in Mariupol (N/A)

The ABCs of Book Banning (N/A)

The After (N/A)

American Fiction ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

American Symphany (N/A)

Anatomy of a Fall ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Barber of Little Rock (N/A)

Barbie ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Bobi Wine: The People's President (N/A)

The Boy and the Heron ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

El Conde (N/A)