Ford_Dent

Godzilla: The Planet Eater: Hooooooo boy, I've been rubbing my hands together, Birdman-style, waiting for this particular turd of a film to finally show up on Netflix for my enjoyment, and over the weekend I finally sat down to give it a look. I guess spoilers follow, but I'll mark the bits that were... I guess surprises?

So hey, remember when I said the film's endgame would probably end up being Princess Mononoke but with an atomic, firebreathing lizard? Well, do I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR YOU.

It totally was. Well, sort of.

So the movie picks up where the last one left off, which is to say that our brave dipshit of a hero has failed to save anyone from Godzilla and, in fact, destroyed the only thing that could probably take Godzilla out (look, watch the last one if you want to learn how precisely he fucked up). Not only that, the lady that he screwed over everyone to save is brain dead and the tech aliens want him dead because, well, he fucked them all over. Granted, he did so at least partially because the tech aliens wanted to enact a grey goo scenario which probably would've been bad for everyone but the tech aliens, but still. Motherfucker wanted to kill Godzilla, he should've thought long and hard about what that cost would be. That would require him to have any self-awareness ever, though, so whatever. He made his bed and here he will lie.

Anyway, the guy who has been all but twirling a moustache the whole time turns out to be the head priest in a death cult that worships the titular Planet Eater, aka King Ghidorah, aka Monster Zero, aka one of MF DOOM's best side projects, which surprises no one. Ghidorah gets summoned, but not before our hero looks at the comatose girl he banged last film and then goes off to bang one of the Mothra people, bringing the insect/human fucking quotient up to where it needs to be for this film. I literally can't tell which of the twins he banged, if it was the quiet one or the angry one, because Who Fucking Cares. I watched the movie to chew bubble gum and watch a three headed dragon destroy shit, and I was all out of bubble gum.

Unfortunately it's kind of a let-down. Ghidorah has an interesting new look, and essentially is like a Hungry Black Hole Creature or something that bends time and space, so much so that in one scene a bunch of people get told by their computer that they're dead a good five minutes before they actually die. That was cool! Unfortunately Ghidorah only really manifests as a bunch of really long dragon necks sticking out of some holes in the sky, and the few shots you get of the full meal deal are depressingly short. The fight with Godzilla is also pretty short and almost perfunctory (and follows the formula from the second film: Godzilla gets his ass handed to him, then our hero does something to give Godzilla the advantage, then Godzilla whips ass). Oh, and Mothra shows up briefly to help our hero fight the death cult priest.

Most of the movie takes place in a psychic landscape which is code for "oh shit we are running out of money, huh?" (I would also accept "up its own ass" as the setting for these scenes) and is just the death cult priest trying to convince the hero that nihilism is really cool. He does so by putting forth the arguments we all heard in high school from the one weird kid who got super into Neitzsche, but then Mothra is like "hey remember you banged one of my daughter(?)s" and we reject it. The film ends with a literal slide show of the few humans left over integrating into the whole Mothra society, except then it remembers that our hero is a dumbass and also that it had a Message To Send, Man, so our hero takes his comatose ex, gets into the one remaining functional mech, and flies off to get killed by Godzilla, thus (presumably) ending the cycle of revenge (oh and abandoning his moth wife and unborn moth child, by the way) and preventing Ghidorah's return by... I dunno? I guess making sure society stays primitive, since Ghidorah seems to like eating societies that are advanced enough? Or something? The moral of the story is Technology Bad, which seems like the sort of moral someone who half-watched Princess Mononoke would come away with, which is what I presume the writers of this film did.

Oh, and there's a post-credit sequence where we see the moth religion now includes burning a wicker man full of the tribe's fears shaped like the mech our hero flew off to die in. Also the twins are old now.

So basically, this movie sucked and could have been better. I feel like the three films were one long decline, each worse than the last, with this being the nadir of the series. The other films were saved by Godzilla doing his thing, but this one doesn't have enough of the big man to really make up for the fact that the plot is terrible. Hey, at least the end credits song is better than the last one (although it fails to reach the heights of the first film's eurotrash-meets-J-pop stylings). Anyway, if you've watched the other two, I guess watch this one, if nothing else to just see the story more or less wrap up. If you haven't watched any of these films, take my advice and uh... maybe don't do that. Or maybe do! It's a fun experience if you know what you're getting, which is some rubbish storytelling that occasionally features Godzilla shooting his atomic breff at dudes.

2 horny moth ladies out of 5.

Series Grade

3 Princess Mononoke Knock-offs out of 5

@nutter: Yeah The Rock is an easy dude to watch! Even his characters are relentlessly positive, it's amazing. I think he's a good fuckin' actor! But man, for a movie that was pitched to me as "it's Die Hard, but the Rock is in it" it sure didn't come that close. The definition of a mindless, inoffensive action film, more or less.

Well, that didn't take long. Here's the other ones I saw:

The Predator: This is a movie that I wanted very much to like, but it kind of kept tripping over its own dick. Also I can't decide if its whole "kids on the spectrum are the next stage of human evolution" was offensive or just dumb. Shane Black sure does write quippy dialogue though! Too bad this movie kind of blows! 2 Praydaters out of 5

Skyscraper: This is like, an action film you'd see on local access from the 80s that happens to have the Rock (and Neve Campbell! Remember Neve Campbell?) in it. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it felt kind of like a foreign film in its sensibilities (which is to say, from the standards of an American action film, there would have been more swearing, at least one pair of tits (briefly shown to maintain a PG-13 rating), and more gunfire). Also the way a lot of the movie focused on a crowd of onlookers watching everything unfold on a giant screen felt like a pretty obvious set of directions from the film on how you as the audience were supposed to feel/react to everything. It was almost anodyne in its inoffensiveness. Also super-weird that like, the whole reason things go wrong is the billionaire relying on dirty money to start his fortune but... he kind of doesn't suffer any Official Consequences for that? Like, the government doesn't seem to give a shit about how laughably corrupt he is. Maybe that's the most realistic thing in this whole movie. I do like the Rock, though! 3 super-skyscrapers out of 5

The Meg: Boy this movie's dumb, but in a great way. It is also anodyne in the way that Skyscraper is anodyne, which is to say that like, the love interest and Jason Steak-um's never even kiss, because that would be immoral as they aren't married. It's wild. The precocious youngster's pretty good, and hearing Steak-um's say "megolodon" in his Very British accent is great. But in the end, I barely remember most of this movie, and the writing is so goddamn clunky in parts that it actually caused me physical pain. That might have just been the uncomfortable fuckin' seat though. 2 giant sharks out of 5

Jurassic World the Second One, Who Cares: Real talk: I didn't finish this movie, both because it fucking sucked and we started our descent with about an hour and change of movie left and I didn't feel like having the plane announcements breaking up the action and murdering my eardrums. I don't especially feel any need to finish it, because I stopped giving a shit about anyone or anything happening in that film about twenty minutes in. 0 exploding islands out of 5

Did some intercontinental travel, which means I watched some movies:

Hotel Artemis: I have a huge weakness for goodass low budget sci-fi, and this movie delivers. Jodie Foster is fucking incredible, and they keep things nice and simple - the future tech is understated (and, naturally, easy to do the special effects for), the plot is simple as can be, and everyone turns in a solid performance. Charlie Day even proves that he can play not just shouty Charlie Day characters (although he's still kind of shouty)! I enjoyed it immensely. 4 3D Printer Accidents out of 5

Solo: A Star Wars Story: Imagine a Star Wars movie that is just kind of there, and while you're watching it you think it's okay, but after it's over you don't really think about it anymore. After really loving Rogue One and finding Last Jedi to be straight-up maybe the best Star Wars movie period, this was a brutal comedown, but still kind of okay. It tried real hard, I guess, and that counts for something. 2 homoerotic Wookie shower scenes out of 5

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse: Look this movie is a 5 out of 5 on the strength of its visuals alone, but they added in an incredibly well-done story, a Spider-Gwen that is still in a punk band (something I wasn't sure would make it to the movies, because I feel like punk is not Kid Friendly Enough), a lady Doctor Octopus who was friends with Aunt May at some point (spoilered because it was a delightful surprise for me), schlubby Spider-Man, who ruled, and Miles fucking Morales, who was exquisite. As an added bonus, they threw in a fucking Spider-Man 2099 cameo after the credits, which as someone who has a super enormous soft spot for those comics was totally fucking delightful. Also, I'm pretty sure they are teasing Aunt May as Madame Web? Fuck, this movie owns. Best Spider-Man in... forever. 5 Rubik's Cubes out of 5

Spider-Man: Homecoming: Whenever the movie wasn't busy dropping hooks into the rest of the bloated-ass Marvel Cinematic Universe, it fucking ruled (although the beginning look in on Civil War was good). Tom Holland is a great Spider-Man, and I'm really happy with what they did with Mary Jane! If I'd seen this before Into the Spiderverse, I would say this was the best one, but alas! Its crown belongs to another now. 3 repurposed alien flight suits out of 5

I 100% watched some other movies, but I can't fucking remember them right now! So I'll come back with another post later when I remember what the fuck they were. Clearly they weren't that great though, seeing as how I don't fucking remember them at all.

@arbitrarywater: I've been spending a lot of time in SFV recently, as I continue my endless dance with the game - I am getting more comfortable (finally, maybe) with the way Sakura works in this game. That or she's gotten some significant buffs recently? Who knows. The point is, I am still having fun with this game around 200 hours in. Also I bought Cammy's Jill Valentine outfit because pants for Cammy (I also bought Sakura's holiday outfit because goth Sakura). Season 4's character pass might be the first one I skip, as I've less than zero interest in last-second-Halloween-costume Ryu (credit to Jeff Gerstmann for the apt description). Maybe when they announce the other characters I'll reconsider, but I didn't like playing as Evil Ryu in USFIV and I didn't like playing against Evil Ryu, so this is a cause of negative excitement for me.

Speaking of anime fighters though... you know what's good? Melty Blood is good. I played around with that some over the weekend and now I've got to find some people willing to play that with me.

I've been following the development from the beginning (and donated possibly too much money to the project, if we're being honest), but I too find myself more or less unable to actually believe the game is actually gonna have a release soon(ish). I'm so goddamn excited about it! It's fucking wild. For a while I kept going back to the alpha build and running around in it just to run around, although now I'm considering whether or not to go back to finish my run through Pathologic HD (even though I'm pretty sure I'm doomed).

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

At the risk of sounding like an old video game magazine, I found this to be a mixed bag. I think the film's at its best when it's leaning completely into the weird, and significantly less-good when the Coen Brothers fall into their usual nihilistic habits (not that I particularly dislike their usual nihilistic habits, it can just... be a little too much sometimes). This is an anthology of six stories, none of which could carry their own film, but all of which are soild enough on their own merits. Tom Waits is a delight as a prospector, who is doing his half-crazy old man schtick in the best Tom Waits way (I could listen to him shout at MISTER PAHKET all day, honestly), and everyone in the final story is frankly incredible (some quality singing from Brendan Gleeson in there, let me tell you). Unfortunately only half the stories are great, while the other three range from Pretty Good to Oh Come On This Sucks. 4 out of 6 singing cowboy murder machines

The Thin Man (1934)

So I've always really enjoyed older crime films, and the premise of this film: former detective turned society gadabout and drunk manages to get sucked into a labyrinthine murder plot, prodded along by his (also social gadabout and drunk) wife, who is straight-up fucking delightful. The two (Nick and Nora) show up in a bunch of sequels to solve other mysteries, but I haven't seen those. They were all written by Dashiell Hammett, who also wrote The Maltese Falcon. It's mostly a comedy, and has some real excellent one-liners which I'm a sucker for. I might end up checking out the other films in the series, although I can see the premise wearing thin. It doesn't have much style in terms of the way it's shot, but god damn are Nick and Nora charming as fuck. 3 out of 5 martinis consumed with reckless abandon.

@not_a_bumblebee: I submit that nobody has ever had as much fun on a film set as Sharlto Copley had doing Hardcore Henry. Absolutely loved that movie.

@praisedasun: Yeah, I just got to the big split last night - Based on how my version of Geralt has been playing since Witcher 1 (and because I wanted to see this supposed peasant queen everyone kept talking about), I sided with the Scoia'tael and promptly got dropped on a haunted-ass battlefield. Like I said, I'll probably run the series again once I get through it all the first time, because there was some stuff in Witcher 1 that I'd like to see too.

I agree the combat in TW2 and 3 is way better than in TW1 - for starters, I like lounging on my couch using a controller more than a keyboard and mouse these days - but there's something about the combat in 1 that still tickles my fancy.

@xanadu: The Witcher books are surprisingly good! I just got through the last of them earlier this week - apparently the English translation only released earlier this year, and I have to say it was an absolute fucking delight.

@muftyriots: Oh man yeah, Jacques de Aldersberg throwing stuff back in my face that I'd definitely said earlier was really fucking cool. I really like that the game doesn't hit you over the head with who he (probably) is, apart from the amulet - and some of the clues are only really there if you spend time talking to Triss. Even with all that there's still a whiff of ambiguity to it, which is perfect.