Spectacular Effects vs. Brainless Script.

If you came for the monster fights, you died and went to daikaiju heaven; but if you came for anything else – characterization, story, dramatic arcs – and you left disappointed, well I know how old you are – over 12.

Sometimes I WISH I could disconnect my brain and enjoy polished turds like GODZILLA VS. KONG. Because, as promised, the monster fights are excellent, but as soon as that CGI polishing stops, the script is for mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits…

Godzilla is running amok. Demian Bichir is a scientist making a robot to stop Godzilla. He needs power from the Hollow Earth (Reason? No reason), so enlists a Hollow Earth archaeologist to go get it, and the archaeologist enlists an anthropologist studying Kong, to entice Kong into leading the way underground. The producers walk in:
“Hey hey hey what’s all this plot? Can you computer nerds make Godzilla pixels fight Kong pixels?”
“Uh, yes, but the screenwriters Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein have written this screenplay—
“Fuck the screenplay, make the lizard hit the monkey!”

And the computer nerds – started polishing…

Alexander Skarsgard is the Hollow Earth archaeologist that Demian hires, regarded as a crackpot by the science community – even though Titans like Godzilla and Mothra and all those new ones they invented for the last GODZILLA movie use the Hollow Earth to travel across the globe. And – he was Tarzan – so he knows ape. Rebecca Hall is the anthropologist studying Kong, who begrudgingly allows them to use Kong. No talk of money or contracts or how to make Kong lead them underground. Rebecca has adopted the last survivor of Kong’s home, Skull Island (after a storm killed everyone or something) – a little girl named Jia (8-year-old Kaylee Hottle), who STEALS THE MOVIE from the adults and the computer fights with her brilliant empathy and acting chops. She is a calming presence for Kong. Usually I hate these little-girl-bonds-to-big-beasts – like the Godzilla Heisei Series – in 6 of those 7 films, there was the character of Miki, who had a “psychic connection” to Godzilla. (Reason? No reason) Here, at least the connection is based in sign language (well, as Flash would say: gorilla sign language). Deaf in real life, and playing deaf here, Kaylee is the heart of the movie, and the audience’s connection to Kong. And she conveys 20 more emotions than all the other actors combined. Which means she conveys 20 emotions.

I’m glad Demian Bichir and Kyle Chandler made it back to Earth from THE MIDNIGHT SKY. Didn’t they say in that movie that humanity went underground? — ah, Hollow Earth – it all makes sense now. The Monsterverse IS the Clooneyverse.

Amongst this stellar cast of the A-story there is the chick with obvious breasts, who can’t act; keeps calling Kong a “monkey” disparagingly. Her character just screams “Expendable shrike that gets killed in the second act.” Happens.

Diametrically opposite to Kaylee is Millie Bobby Brown. Yes, SHE was the heart of the previous Godzilla movie, KING OF THE MONSTERS, and pulled a lot of emotional weight there. Reprising her role here, she is adrift in a subplot that never needs to happen. Looking like a thirteen-year-old wearing her mother’s makeup, swishing about like she’s in some kind of romantic comedy – she’s not miscast, but misdirected. While people are dying and Japan is being annihilated, she’s having a GOONIES adventure with her fat Friend-Zoned sidekick, Julian Dennison. (And I mention “fat” not to shame the poor boy — that’s the device Hollywood uses, to tell us there will be no romantic connection between these two teens. So Friend Zone away!) Along for the ride is a conspiracy podcaster – who pretty much confirms why we want to punch all conspiracy podcasters in the nuts – Brian Tyree Henry… overacting? Power-acting? Alternate acting? I don’t know what you call it but it’s not acting as defined by Hoyle. Again, not his fault – I had to pull up his dramatic scene from IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK just to wash this performance out of my mouth.

It’s like director Adam Wingard gave this B-plot to an intern to direct. The tone is lost completely every time the movie switches to Millie and Julian and Brian’s wacky adventures. I know what Wingard is trying to do – trying to balance the ferocity of the life-or-death battles with levity. But, ironically, he’s lessening the impact of his battle scenes. Wingard also helmed 2017’s DEATH NOTE, another Japanese property that suffered from a clashing of tones in his finished product. When Wingard said to Screen Crush: “I really want you to take those characters seriously. I want you to be emotionally invested, not just in the human characters, but actually in the monsters,” he forgot to tell the intern that directed Millie Bobby Brown. Although, all the teen boy viewers, won’t be concerned one iota with tone. They’ll be focusing on Millie’s Hermione Quotient – yeh, remember those days, boys, when another Harry Potter film would come out and you’d suddenly realize what team you were playing on? Ahh, so that’s why she’s wearing her mother’s makeup…

– – – – – SPOILERS AHEAD – – – – –

Apparently, Godzilla is only going crazy because he can sense there’s a Mechagodzilla being built. So… Demian is building a Mecha to stop Godzilla if he goes crazy, but causing him to go crazy by building a Mecha. So – is he a GOOD guy? But Millie cements Demian as the bad guy when she says without any evidence: “You caused all of this… Godzilla had left us in peace. You provoked him into war.” (Reason? No reason.)

The Mecha is being powered by Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) psychically – from a dead Ghidorah skull. See? And you thought I was just kidding when I said the plot makes zero sense. By the way, this is a plot point from the 1993 film GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA II, and it made no sense back then either. And is Ren related to Ken Watanabe’s Serizawa? Script doesn’t say. Is movie trying to connect with 1954’s Serizawa, from the first and greatest GODZILLA film?! And then the dead brain of Ghidorah actually takes over Mecha – because: Ghidorah has a soul? Because he’s Hindu? Because producer said so? (Reason? No reason.)

Here’s another example of muddled motivation: Demian says he’s building Mechagodzilla to protect against Godzilla. But haven’t all the titans proven they are maintaining the balance of the Earth? Back when Mecha first appeared in the Showa Era he was a tool of aliens against Friendly Godzilla – a Reason!; in the Heisei and Millennium Eras he was constructed to fight off a Godzilla who was mad bad and dangerous to know – a Reason! But why make Mecha now? Godzilla is helping the Earth, uh, destroying property, uh, angry at something, uh, attacking Kong because, uh, keeping balance…uh, and the filmmakers have retconned themselves into a corner.

Kong finds an axe in the Hollow Earth made from a dorsal spike of a past Godzilla – wait, so he’s a species now? From ancient times? Did anyone proof-read this script at all? Godzilla ends up in Japan, the Glowy District, and shoots an atomic blast down to the Hollow Earth because he senses his ancestor back-spike or something. And Kong comes back up this hole, to Japan – from Antarctica, where he entered. The script is now on meth…

Another fight, which is shock and awe for its technicality and creativity, with some shots designed to look like the creatures are wearing bodycams, to get us right amongst the action. We can really smell what The Rock is cooking.

---

Kong first met Godzilla in 1962’s KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, when they were both rubber suits. In that film, Kong also got transported by boat and then by airlift, the filmmakers back then, like today, clumsily cramming human interaction into the monster mix. Kong won back then, but considering the fight resembled the Batley Townswomen’s Guild reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor – we ALL lost.

Now, in 2021 – nobody wins, nobody loses. What’d you think, Movie Maniacs? These two intellectual properties – Kong (created 1933) and Godzilla (created 1954) – are so beloved that the filmmakers would not risk alienating either the whole Western World or the whole Eastern world. Or the whole twit world. Instead, both the King Kong mythos and Godzilla mythos have suffered so much reappropriating and retconning and rebooting abuse over the decades that it comes as no surprise when they BOTH become good guys in this very film, and double-team Mechagodzilla.

5 STARS…

… because if you came for the monster fights, GODZILLA VS KONG is the best CGI you will ever see on this Hollow Earth; the hair, the spittle, the weight, the shadows, the musculature. It’s 10 stars for the realization of these titans in every aspect, from their choreography, to the smallest details in their design and interaction with their environment. From the Titans’ point of view, it’s a solid story of two alpha predators in nature, forced to put aside their differences to defeat an abomination NOT of nature. It’s almost touching in the final scene, where Kong and Godz wordlessly accept a truce.

Trouble is: the human interaction story is like a first draft with all the plotholes left in – confused, contradictory, clunky, convenient, and cringe. And truly, if they lost ALL the Millie Bobby Brown scenes, that killed the movie’s tone every five minutes, this might have been a reasonable 7-star movie. Instead, they made it for muggers, buggerers, bushwackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bulldykes, train robbers, bank robbers, asskickers, shitkickers… and Methodists.

END

Tragedy Insufferably Painted as Redemption.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY is indecisive on whether to be a human drama set in space, or a science fiction film loaded with human drama. It ends up sacrificing both genres to George Clooney’s beard.

A worldwide catastrophe has made the Earth’s surface uninhabitable – something to do with republiKKKans blocking climate change legislation, I’m guessing – and whoever’s not dead or republiKKKan is fleeing to underground bunkers. As his scientific arctic outpost evacuates, Augustine (George Clooney) – an astrophysicist dying of cancer – decides to stay. He finds purpose when he realizes he must signal a returning spaceship, from one of Jupiter’s moons, to tell the crew they can’t land because the whole Earth is now shithole countries.

In the process, Augustine finds redemption for his lonely life, caring for a young mute girl named Iris, left behind during the evacuation. And the crew of the spaceship finds that the habitable moon they just explored will be their salvation. Here’s why both these redemptions are garbage.

– – – – – SPOILERS – – – – –

THE MIDNIGHT SKY, is “inspired” by Lily Brooks-Dalton’s book, Good Morning Midnight, which is a study of loss and regret; in the movie, screenwriter Mark L. Smith allows the protagonist to find a spiritual redemption, but the bigger picture is: there’s no redemption for the human species if the Earth’s only interstellar space ship is turned back around to Jupiter with only 2 humans onboard.

I gotta say, Clooney does an exceptional acting job; bearded like Santa Claus on christmas eve, he looks and feels old, showing off his Tragic Face #3 all the way to Tragic Face #9. He’s got The Movie Cancer – which makes him cough sometimes and throw up neatly in the toilet – and his waking-up scenes sell his dishevelment – we learned the importance of Waking Up Scenes from Tony Soprano – to make us feel the question, “Why am I still here?”

Onboard the Jupiter ship called Aether, this film rewrites all the book’s characters, writing Felicity Jones’s real-life pregnancy into her character Sully, and making her married to the captain (David Oyelowo as Adewole). There’s Kyle Chandler as the Something Space Guy, Demian Bichir as the Other Something Space Guy and a black chick that dies first (Tiffany Boone as Maya). Their mission was to reconnoiter a Jupiter moon called K23 that Augustine himself discovered might harbor life. They are bringing back confirmation he was right.

Movie doesn’t quite successfully flit back and forth between the crew onboard the spaceship and Augustine’s life at the outpost, further diluting our interest when it flashbacks to young Augustine (Ethan Peck) and the woman who shared his bed (Sophie Rundle).

Young Augustine is indifferent while his girlfriend nags that while he tries to find life on other worlds, his own life is slipping away… It’s that old axiom that SEEMS like it’s true – but it’s not! [sigh] It’s just another trope of the dedicated scientist and the dreamkiller girlfriend; what she means is: HER life is slipping away bothering him to pay more attention to HER, while HE is using his life to its fullest potential. She tells him tearfully she is not pregnant. He is serene about it, which only makes her weep harder. Phew, “high maintenance!” Later, after they’ve separated, from afar he sees her daughter. He knows he dodged a bullet – only to have it come back at him with the screenplay— oh I get it, the little girl is the surrogate daughter he never met. And she’s also the device that allows him to explain his plans out loud: “We have to get to a bigger antenna.” You mean: We have to get to bigger human drama.

In space, it seems writers can’t come up with anything other than meteor showers as adversity – so – unless space debris is used in starkly new visual ways – as in GRAVITY or the new LOST IN SPACE series – it ends up just the same old boogeyman; there’s the spacewalk to fix the antenna – and during the spacewalk – more unoriginality – I mean, more debris while they’re on EVA – see, you’ve heard ALL these tropes before! After the debris storm, Maya discovers she’s bleeding inside her suit – instead of rushing to get her inside they have a dramatic moment outside first because, Earth may not be able to hear them – but Oscar is always listening.

And it’s the same unoriginal baloney with Augustine trekking through the arctic wasteland – he and Iris discover a plane wreck, escape a sinking ice floe, caught in a snowstorm, arctic wolves – stop me if I say anything original!

Clooney is also director. I commend him for his style and elegance through each vignette; the cinematography is beautiful to look at, and I especially like the interior of the ship, crafted like the pneumatized bones of birds with criss-crossing struts for strength and stability. Problem is, it also falls to the director to stitch all this beauty together into a cohesive narrative. Whenever Clooney switches between vignettes, we live in them so long we forget where we are. Even when Augustine makes contact with Aether, intertwining their fates, the stakes are so amorphous we still feel like someone has cut our tether and we’re just adrift between Jupiter and Give-A-Shit.

You’d think the first thing Augustine would tell Aether is the science behind the planetwide catastrophe – instead, he opens with: “I’m afraid we didn’t do a very good job of looking after the place while you were away.” Really? Jesus christ they’re astronauts, not landlords – they need the atmospheric and ground-based logistics so as to work the problem. This is not the time for rhetoric!

Here’s the annoying part: Sully asks him, “Do you have information on the transmission blackout” and he does answer, but we the audience don’t get to hear any technical talk due to him cutting out with static, but in reality, the filmmakers are keeping this information from us because they don’t want it to intrude on the human emotion bullshit!

Even Sully talks in riddles: Maya “suffered an accident during the flight” – tell him she’s dead. He’s a technician, not a priest. This is what I mean by the human drama intruding on the science fiction.

Kyle The Space Whatever views Earth from a satellite – it’s covered in yellow icky stuff. And Augustine advises the Aether to slingshot back to K23. Then the ASTRONAUTS on the ship use civilian language to explain it to each other because apparently some of them didn’t finish astronaut school.

Kyle and Demian The Other Space Whatever take one of the landers to return to Earth,  while pregnant Sully and her Captain return to K23 – BUT – if two of these guys can make it back to Earth – why not all of them? They’re not implying it’s a suicide mission – they’re going back to a) find Kyle’s family and b) return dead Maya to her homeland – but has anyone considered these two giant tasks? First, they’ll land in the water, and without a pickup from NASA, how do they get to shore? This isn’t a boat, it’s got no paddles. Also, the Earth is toxic so obviously they’ve got to wear their suits as if they’re on an alien planet, which means they’ve got to have their own supply of food and water… then Kyle takes off for his family in a bunker somewhere – how? In a stolen car? Leaving Demian to drag Maya’s casket to her home by himself? Where is her home? Everyone’s underground! Is he also going to steal a car, or is he going to call Uber? When survival is paramount, is it really worth all this effort guys?

Now, I understand THE MIDNIGHT SKY is dealing in symbolism – and that these two returning to Earth symbolize “hope” – but hope is oversold as something real when it’s actually the absence of something real, and the spaceship symbolizes a new beginning for Mankind – but how do you restart the human race with two people and a baby? Are Sully and her husband planning on incesting their children to start society again? They’re all gonna die there, so why not land on Earth and maybe give your kid the chance to spawn another generation with someone in a bunker? Another generation who might find a way to get an actual society up to K23 in that last ever solar system spaceship.

In making the movie symbolic, they’ve pared down the roles and dialogue and science to their barest bones; in doing so, sacrificing science for insufferable Oscar moments.

As he gazes at the midnight sky knowing Aether is leaving, Augustine at last realizes that Sully is his daughter Iris, and that his mute Iris is an hallucination! It is implied that Augustine has subsumed his loneliness all these years in never having met her, and is at least redeemed in being able to save her from Earth’s republiKKKans. BUT – if he didn’t spend his life researching K23, he would never have been able to save her life this way. Which means the high maintenance girlfriend was wrong – his life didn’t slip away – he found life on other worlds to give life to his daughter. See? You were sad that he wasted his life without his daughter. But now you’re weeping for the opposite beautiful reason – that his life did have meaning.

In the end THE MIDNIGHT SKY would appeal to weepy romanticists, but it only holds a lot of potential as a great science fiction tale – and potential is also the absence of something real.

END

In space, no one can hear you mandroid.

Back in 1979, ALIEN was all about the Aliens. Now it’s about the mandroids. And no wonder. The resident mandroid in ALIEN: COVENANT is Michael Fassbender.

And haven’t I always effused over Michael Fassbender’s magnetic onscreen presence? Unwittingly or not, he has become the focal point of the modern ALIEN saga. Since the last ALIEN installment, PROMETHEUS (2012), his “synthetic human” David has been searching for the purpose of his existence almost as sagaciously as his human crewmate counterparts. In COVENANT, he finds his truth. The hissing, stabbing, disemboweling titular Alien xenomorphs are mere stepping stones in his path to robot redemption…

And I love it! I can already hear the whining that this particular story tack does not serve the greater ALIEN universe, and I can surely see the problems inherent in trying to pass this movie off as mid-part of a trilogy that is prequel to the original ALIEN movie, however, writer-director Ridley Scott (though he creates connectivity with ALIEN through the gradual appearance of the opening titles, camera techniques, sound design and creature design) opens a compelling hive of ideas in making Mankind’s ultimate fate decided by Mankind’s own creation.

This ain’t your daddy’s Bishop…

ALIEN: COVENANT is a majestic, foaming, throat-rending serpent of a film with concepts that will blow your mind as well as your chest cavity, production values that stun with their technical detail, shot through with a stark, madness-inducing soundtrack (by Jed Kurzel) that is not so much music as steel teeth on shoulder blades.

It is 2104. On her seven-year journey to the nearest habitable planet, the colonization starship named Covenant, transporting 2000 hypersleeping humans and 1000 embryos, with a crew of 15. Woken from their slumber by a solar flare, the crew receives an emergency transmission from a passing planet. They detour to investigate… (hmm, this sure sounds like an ALIEN movie, like, you know – ALIEN).

A malfunction in their sleeping pods burns their captain alive (James Franco cameo) and makes the crew uneager to resume their hypersleep to the distant planet, so, discovering the passing planet is habitable, they ponder on putting down roots. Until something in the air infiltrates two crew members and bursts fully-formed from their spines. Until something comes screeching from the dark to take chunks out of their hides. Until something leaps onto someone’s face and drives its feeding tube down their gullet…

In a prologue, we meet Fassbender as android David, already cultured and educated at his “awakening” by his creator Weyland (Guy Pearce). He names himself when he casts his gaze over Michelangelo’s David. Last we saw of him, David’s dismembered body (and still-functioning head) was onboard a “horseshoe” alien craft piloted by Noomi Rapace, bound for the planet of the Engineers…

The spaceship Covenant also has its Fassbender, the same model android called Walter. (But – because it’s Fassbender – Walter has a different accent and demeanor to David!) As Walter helps the crew against a night attack by ferocious assailants, a hooded David comes to their rescue. One of the coolest moments in the film is when David pulls back his hood – and no one is surprised it’s a Fassbender android. Besides, what’s better than one Fassbender? Why, TWO Fassbenders of course!

David, his Iggy Pop hair long and stringy, gives Walter a curt “Hello brother,” as he passes him.

What incredible visuals! By the time David is leading the crew to a stony haven through a city of scorched corpses, we have already been inundated by so many jaw-dropping sights: the solar sail on the ship (as Sagan once predicted), seeing storms in the atmosphere of the planet as they descend, the landing pod coming in over the lake, between mountains; as the emergency beacon is neared, the scarred jungle and then – one of the most satisfying payoffs in recent cinematic history – the crash-landed horseshoe spaceship!

To say nothing of the subtle visuals – like the two Fassbender androids onscreen at the same time, where the camera is panning across and around them constantly, seamlessly; they both put their hands on a recorder to play it together, they fight in closeup, they – kiss! (Even Fassbender cannot resist Fassbender!)

Ridley Scott once again populates his crew with tough females, but their roles pale beside that of the android; they now seem like stock inclusions, vestigial ghost notes of Ripley. When The Fassbender is onscreen, no one is usurping his spotlight.

Katherine Waterston is Daniels, ad hoc Ripley. Billy Crudup is ad hoc captain, Oram. And in a daring bit of stunt casting, Danny McBride is Texan pilot Tennessee (replete with cowboy hat and toughguy cred). The rest of the crew (Demian Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, Jussie Smollett) is here to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner for the Aliens. Viewers have complained that the ship’s crew being paired into married couples does not stir much empathy when their characters are never fleshed out enough to care. (Feasting Alien looks up: “Someone say ‘flesh out’?”) Thus, Daniels lost not only her captain in Franco but her husband. A shred of empathy peeks through, but not enough to– (Feasting Alien: “Someone say ‘shred’?”)

For those who complain ALIEN: COVENANT does not ask the “big questions,” there’s not much bigger than the origin of our species itself. And just like discovering the universe makes us small and insignificant, what humbling speculation to ponder on better genomes than ours inventing us as offhandedly as we would any robot, to entertain and serve at their behest, and then to discard without any compunction.

To us, David’s quandary may seem: Is he Adam, the first of a species, instilled with the right to spawn his own kind? Or is he Lucifer, the light bringer, the fallen angel ripped from heaven, bequeathed powers that he is exhorted not to use? (David: “Serve in Heaven or reign in Hell?”) His ultimate actions tell us David sees himself as much more celestial than those earthbound entities – he considers himself a god; hence, his amorality, when it comes to his part in the fates of the Engineers and Noomi Rapace…

As we, the creations, see ourselves as the heroes against our creators, the Engineers, Ridley Scott has re-framed the ALIEN franchise as peeking out through the eyes of the android, David, who sees himself as the hero against his creators, Humans. Endowed with the will to create, he has no time for empathy or frailty. He said in PROMETHEUS: “Sometimes to create, one must first destroy.”

Here, with his secret Alien breeding experiments, he has graduated to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.” He does well to quote that poem, for the rest of it details the ruins of a colossal monument, around which nothing survives.

---

As COVENANT ramps toward its rendezvous with 1979’s ALIEN, we see more connections – the computer is called Mother again, there are corridor scenes following blips on a radar that recall ALIEN, the Aliens start to look humanoid – and we discover WHY these interstellar Aliens mimic our physiognomy. The clues were in ALIEN 3 and ALIEN: RESURRECTION; when that Alien burst from the Rottweiler and assumed a bestial stance, and when Ripley’s genes were combined with the Alien Queen birthing that humanoid monstrosity.

All due to… mandroid Fassbender. We can safely say it was Fassbender artificially selecting Alien-Human hybrids in 2104 that led directly to Sigourney Weaver getting down to her panties in 1979.

END

Eight is Enough to fill our hearts with dingus.

THE THING meets CAPTAIN RON. And all Snake Plissken breaks loose.

Wyoming. Post-Civil War. At a snowbound outpost, eight strangers must survive the stormy night. And each other.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino‘s THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a slow burn; a firecracker waiting to be ignited in a nunnery. Unlike many of his films, we are not bled with anxiety in the first scenes. It can be said this is Tarantino’s first linear plotline. Or is it?

This eighth film by the master of mayhem is styled along the lines of the master of mystery, Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945) and TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1965), and, due to the snow and Kurt Russell, holds more than a little resemblance to John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982). Or does it?

Isolated strangers, hidden agendas, mysterious deaths. The Tarantino fan – and the casual Western buff or thriller buff – must wait a good way into the film to discover it is one big ulterior motive waiting to happen. Or is it?– Okay, that’s enough of that. Just asking contrary questions doesn’t create tension, y’know… Or does it?

Opening scene finds bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell, sporting a mustache that is more mungabush than handlebar) as he dashes through the snow in a stagecoach, headed for the town of Red Rock, racing a storm, with his cuffed bounty, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh in a primal, dangerous-funny role). Ruth aims to see her hang and collect his $10,000 reward. They are stopped by a stranger in the street sitting on a pile of dead bodies – Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), another bounty hunter who is begrudgingly allowed to share Ruth’s expensive coach. Soon they come upon yet another strandling in the snow, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims to be the new Sheriff of Red Rock, in transit to his new post, without a badge or official paperwork yet. John Ruth trusts no one – not while he’s chained to a $10K bounty that others might kill for – yet he lets Mannix aboard on the indisputable logic that “If you want to collect your bounty in Red Rock, I’m the one that’s gotta pay you!”

Forced to stop at a way station called Minnie’s Haberdashery, to let the storm blow over, these four strangers encounter four more stranded strangers in transit: the hangman of Red Rock, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), a cowpuncher writing his autobiography (Michael Madsen), a Confederate General looking for his son (Bruce Dern), and Bob the caretaker (Demian Bishir), who says he is taking care of the place while Minnie is on vacation.

Even at this point, there is still none of that characteristic Tarantino tension. And the dialogue is not up to par with Tarantino’s usual repartee that keeps us glued to our seats through Nothing Happening (foot massage from PULP FICTION, Superman’s idea of humanity from KILL BILL VOL 2, et al). The strangers are somehow all linked in tenuous ways, and though John Ruth blusters his way around the tavern, eking out everyone’s motivation on the pretense of knowing who his mustache is spending the night with (while getting everyone’s backstory exposited for screenplay purposes), we find ourselves almost anxiety-ridden that there IS no anxiety.

Then comes Chapter Four.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is told in Six Chapters (starting with Last Stage to Red Rock), and in Chapter Four (Domergue’s Got a Secret), something dark starts to rise like a shadow in a corner. As introduction to this Chapter, we hear Tarantino himself in voiceover – like a storyteller – detailing a plot point that only one character sees (even we the audience did not see it). It’s strange, it breaks filmmaking rules, but we are home! Coming out of nowhere as it does, it disorients us – yet we suddenly feel that Tarantino paranoia embrace us like a lost lover…

Tarantino has become such a force in movies for contravening convention so fearlessly. Only to create new conventions that others adopt in their filmmaking vernacular. Or he uses techniques that have fallen out of favor, like his penchant for cartoonish titles showing character names or information; techniques that have become such staples in hip movies nowadays that a younger viewer might easily mistake Tarantino for copying his own copycats. So though we titter for the voiceover’s obvious invasiveness, it gives the movie Tarantino’s unique stamp. They’ll be copying this raw invasiveness soon enough…

Suddenly – like piano wire tightening around our throats – everything gets slanted, everyone becomes a suspect, everywhere is a big black dingus.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is filled with all the tiny details that make a good film great. Firstly, it is shot “in glorious 70mm.” (Ultra Panavision widescreen filmstock that hardly exists in reality. Tarantino’s DP, Robert Richardson, tells us this is only the 11th feature made on Ultra Panavision.) It was Tarantino’s recurring descriptive in his script notes, and not so much a detail, as an overarching ethos. Tarantino wanted to isolate his cast and crew to ensconce them in 1800’s frontier survival mode. Even though only a few moments capture the breadth of the exterior snowbound vistas, we’re told the interior cabin shots are also out there. The indoors was in fact outdoors.

Details like hammering two boards on the front door to shut out the raging tempest. Why not just one board? Authenticity. The amount of time spent for characters to hammer two boards into the front door every time someone kicks it in to enter the cabin, is enough to get you drunk if you’re playing the drinking game.

Details like hat brims: Jackson’s character is in Bichir’s face, shouting at him. Their hat brims touch. But then Jackson moves into Bichir’s personal space – signified by their hat brims starting to overlap, as Jackson’s slides under Bichir’s and inches closer. Excellent.

Details like Jackson’s lascivious story describing what a freezing man did for a warm blanket, revolving around what he terms alternately his “big black pecker,” “big black johnson” and – wait for it! – his “warm black dingus.”

Details like the Lincoln Letter: A key element that opens doors for African-American bounty hunter Major Warren. Until Mannix smirks, “The nigger in the stable has a letter from Abraham Lincoln?!” the phrasing of which tells us why he must carry that letter.

Details like nigger: Yes, Tarantino’s characters have no compunction blurting his second favorite word. With Tim Roth putting British spin on it, “…my Nubian friend…” Activist groups get another chance to feel relevant as they twitter their faux-outrage…

And this is not a detail – but a coup: composer Ennio Morricone! Whereas Tarantino has used this giant’s soundtrack music in previous films, (KILL BILL, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, DJANGO UNCHAINED), at last he hires the man himself – 89-year-old master of Westernized Mexican music – Ennio Morricone!

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is not structured to convention. You will find no character that arcs or finds redemption. None do, and no one does. Like the best bucking of convention, the galloping story subsumes the subtexts. By Chapter Five: The Four Passengers, the stagecoach is running off the rails. And we pray to a non-existent god that when it ramps over a cliff, we can keep our crotches safe.

Strangely enough, though Jackson, Madsen and Roth are Tarantino veterans, though Leigh ravages the screen with her savagery, though Dern is an old seadog, though Kurt’s mustache is ten times the badger it was in TOMBSTONE, this movie belongs to – Walton Goggins!

Walton Goggins, perennial creepy-guy character actor (Steve Buscemi-adjacent), a Junior Bruce Dern – here sharing scenes with ACTUAL Bruce Dern, and blossoming as we watch him! He’s been co-star on series like JUSTIFIED and SONS OF ANARCHY, but never red meat like this primo role. Though one of the B-characters, he grabs the reins like an A-Lister and steals the show. He’s at first goofy, then steadfast, and comes out damn righteous. Tarantino had to cast someone who could emerge from amongst the stellar ensemble to shoulder the denouement, and after Goggins’s small, unimpressive turn in Tarantino’s DJANGO, it’s pleasantly surprising that he was chosen to carry this beast to its intriguing conclusion.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT is intelligent, well-paced, gory and mungabush. Enough to fill our hearts with dread. Or a big black dingus.

END

Cutting Coyote Comedy.

I can’t tell whether MACHETE KILLS is stupider than EXPENDABLES 2 or smarter than JACK REACHER.

Knowing that director/co-writer Robert Rodriguez intentionally crafts this movie with tongue planted firmly in Danny Trejo‘s ass cheek (sorry about the visual) affords it some leeway, however the hyper-reality clashes so discordantly with the ultra-stupidity that Wile E. Coyote called and said he wanted his Acme products back.

In this cartoonish sequel to the equally-cartoonish MACHETE (2010), body-inked, runnel-faced Trejo returns as the unkillable ex-Federale Machete, who is sent on a mission by the president to stop a Mexican terrorist from blowing up Washington DC.

Machete (the kewl pronunciation, of course: “Ma-CHET-ay”) prefers machetes, knives and swords to guns. He has a penchant for speaking of himself in the third person (“Machete don’t tweet!”), and he escapes bullets by running.

The American President Rathbone is credited “and introducing Carlos Estevez” – yep, it’s Charlie Sheen; overacting, underacting – I don’t know what that’s called. Jessica Alba reprises her character from the past movie for a few seconds and is shot immediately (y’know, I agree her acting is so bad that even Zooey Deschanel called and asked for lessons, but putting a bullet in her brain seemed quite extreme). Cuba Gooding Jnr. in a solid few minutes as a gritty assassin (why isn’t this great actor getting more great roles like this?). Lady Gaga takes her clothes off as an assassin, once again trying to distract us from her big Italian nose with her medium-sized dirty pillows. Antonio Banderas plays an American playing a Mexican; so… just playing himself then.

Michelle Rodriguez returns as eyepatched freedom fighter Luz, who escapes bullets by wearing hardly any clothes – because going into battle three-quarters naked is the best way to avoid being shot. I’ve always thought of Sofia Vergara as “Soft Viagra.” I know what you’re thinking, “Who needs Viagra with a curvaceous hoo-er like that?” Coincidentally, here she plays a curvaceous hoo-er – but with a nails-down-blackboard voice that guarantees the need for dick pills. Speaking of dick pills, Amber Heard; only good for two things on this Earth – and neither of them are acting.

Tom Savini (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN) is looking haggard. He killed Machete’s brother (Cheech Marin) in MACHETE; explained into this plot as a good guy because, uh, because he’s friends with the director.

Cool Demian Bichir (CHE, 2008) is multi-personality villain Mendez. At first it’s his bomb, then the real villain appears – Mel Gibson.

One of the great actors of our generation, brought low by his big mouth, Gibson has somehow lost his acting talent, but retains his big mouth. Like every cartoonish villain in action movies, he gushes to our Hero of his grand plan for no reason, reading pages of dialogue as exposition as if he’s reading pages of dialogue as exposition.

Serendipitously, he delivers half of his exposition while riding a replica of a landspeeder – a prop used in one of the renowned non-acting gigs in the universe.

MACHETE KILLS is one of those movies where bad guys constantly train guns on our Hero and never shoot him. Then when he’s running or leaping to escape them, they’re shooting like maniacs who literally can’t hit the side of a helicopter. In this movie where knives make a “shink” noise every time they’re moved through thin air, is it any wonder helicopters play into some of the most egregious stunts that only 7-year-olds will find entertaining (intestines into the blades, Machete swinging around on the blades chopping people, etc.)?

And the most egregious stunt/plagiarism of all: Machete riding a bomb (a la DR STRANGELOVE) while it is flying toward Washington. Using all his Wile E. Coyote skills, Machete saves the day by cutting the blue wire (it’s always the blue wire, isn’t it?).

It’s actually the eighth time Danny Trejo has sliced into the character of Machete, starting with SPY KIDS (2001), SPY KIDS 2, SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER, GRINDHOUSE, PLANET TERROR, MACHETE, SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. There is hilarious promo for another sequel: MACHETE KILLS AGAIN… IN SPACE!, but that’s purely just Danny Trejo’s ass cheek talking…

END