Like the process shots of old, Godzilla rages above a foreground of running people. What would Eiji Tsuburaya say?

Giant Lizard and Big Ape against Big Lizard and Giant Ape.

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE is another Monsterverse CGI glutfest that removes all gravitas, fear and nobility from the titular creatures and replaces it – with punchaboo.

Remember KONG: SKULL ISLAND? Where’s that enraged beast that brooked no interaction or interference from humankind? Remember 2014’s GODZILLA? Where’s that beast that killed threats to its planet without an inkling of thought to the human victims who ended up merely collateral damage… well, uh, actually, that guy is still here…

Kong, now a docile puss who needs to have a tooth removed by a human dentist pinup boy (Dan Stevens), goes exploring in his subterranean world and discovers a society of giant apes led by a tyrant red ape, who has enslaved a whole bunch of giant apes to move rocks from here to there. [Reason? No reason.] Red Ape carries a blade talisman that keeps a giant frost dragon under heel, who acts as his ride and his enforcer. Cute. (Kinda reminds me of those big “fluffy” creatures from HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2.)

Well, when Red Ape encounters Kong, he suddenly wants to invade our upper world. [Reason? No reason?] He’s not looking for territory – he’s already king of his domain; he’s not looking for mates (unless he has a predilection for tiny blonde humans); he’s not short of food – he’s the goddam tyrant of his subterranean world. Maybe he’s just looking for more rocks for his slaves to haul for reasons no reasons.

In this direct sequel to 2021’s GODZILLA VS KONG, beautiful Rebecca Hall returns as Ilene, the Kong scientist; still with an inconsequential role, but also saddled with a bowl haircut– Why do women (and producers who want to make women “strong”) DO this to women? And how come whenever a woman commits this abomination, she has to be told it looks nice? In this instance, the conspiracy podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry): “Oh, you cut your hair, highlights too, it’s nice.” Why this insecurity? If it was alluring in the first place, you wouldn’t need the constant affirmation.

Tyree Henry is once again comic relief, and thankfully not saddled with overactor Millie Bobby Brown as sidekick. Director/co-writer Adam Wingard explains that Brown’s role was just not needed – but in reality, her “role” (that of tween boy bait) is actually being fulfilled by someone else in the cast, and Wingard knows this, but is canny enough not to rankle the wokesters by saying it out loud.

Saddled with the role of tween boy bait is Kaylee Hottle as Jia, Kong’s sign-language human connection; in the previous movie, real-life mute Kaylee was a youngster, now a tween (with hips and those things and that), not only fulfilling Brown’s job description, but still being the best actor in the movie.

And who woulda thunk that Jia would be Mothra’s little human apprentice (a role usually fulfilled by twin girls)? The awakening of Mothra is one of the coolest aspects of this film; always a Godzilla sidekick/apprentice through the first three Godzilla Eras (Showa, Heisei, Millennium), displaying minimal power except the shooting of that sticky jism and the showering of her shimmering bling, here her powers have been brought in line with those of her compatriots (Godz and Kong).

“I’m just gonna stand upright like a reg’lar ole homo sapiens, if that’s alright with you.”

Suddenly – a bionic arm for Kong: a contrived piece of screenwriting that involved the pilot of the scientists’ underground craft dying without any fanfare, the dreamy dentist guy just “knowing” how to pilot the craft, flying it to a destroyed way-station that happened to be working on a giant bionic exoskeleton, and retrieving the iron arm as easily as picking up a rock, then installing the arm on Kong easier than installing Word on your pc. In one fell swoop, Monsterverse throws down more magic who cares fuck you than all four AVENGERS films combined.

Godzilla is so pink now, he looks delicious. It’s funny how Kong just walks around totally upright now. He’s as bad at emulating a gorilla as the actors who walked around upright in their gorilla suits in KING KONG LIVES.

Climactic scenes of protagonists battling against antagonists with exactly the same powers as them – Monsterverse learned well from Marvel – while buildings are being knocked down hither and thither with, I’m presuming, at least 100,000 casualties that are never seen nor mentioned. Against a backdrop of the most baffling needle-drops that throw us bodily out of the tone of the movie, including: KISS’s I Was Made for Loving you, Badfinger’s Day After Day, Golden Earring’s Twilight Zone, Loverboy’s Turn Me Loose…

GODZILLA X KONG is hella fun to watch (just that scene of Godz and Kong exploding from underground and running running RUNNING towards us together is simultaneously exhilarating and idiotic and juvenile and inspiring), but rated X for XTRA STUPID.

END

To rival the Mexican donkey shows in Tijuana, Georgia premieres its bear shows in Chattahoochee.

Cocaine is a helluva pic-a-nic basket!

Black bear. White powder. Black comedy.

When a drug runner dumps his airplane cargo of cocaine bricks over a Georgia forest, a black bear ingests some, and becomes as obsessed with finding more blow as Yogi Bear in his quest for pic-a-nic baskets. Only more junkie. As he finds more bricks and eats them, unlike Yogi, this CGI ferocity kills a lotta fools along the way.

Inspired by the 1985 true story of a black bear in the Chattahoochee National Forest that ingested over 40 kilos of illegal dumped cocaine and died, COCAINE BEAR is fanciful storytelling from the moment the bear continued to live after eating the bricks of cocaine. The real-life smugglers dumped the shipment over Tennessee, the bear was found dead in Georgia (one state south), and its body is mounted in a mall in Kentucky (two states north).

Ray Liotta is the drug boss who wants his coke back, sending two low-rent thugs to retrieve it – his son (Alden Ehrenreich) and O’Shea Jackson Jr.

Around this tale of thugs pursuing their missing cocaine, a gaggle of other characters are thrown in, for improbable stories and gory deaths.

Improbable Story #1: Keri Russell is a mother searching for her pre-teen daughter (Brooklynn Prince), who has run off to “paint a waterfall” (whatever that means). When she finds the little boy her daughter was with (Christian Convery), the fact that she never keeps asking him constantly: “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!” drops us out of the story on our heads. (And Keri Russell is so far above the rest of the cast in stunning movie-star looks, she seems miscast as a frazzled mother. With that pearbottom, it’s a tough sell.)

I am so far removed from American pre-teens, I have no idea if Prince and Convery are doing any kind of authentic justice to this pre-teen portrayal at all! American cinema only has one “type” for pre-teens – this fucking precocious and annoying type. With way too much foresight into adulthood (the young girl knowing her mother is taking extra shifts to flirt with another employee; the boy knowing he’s going to be affected by witnessing the bear killing, “It’s the type of thing that stays with a man”). This is not how kids talk. This is how kids in movies talk.

American pre-teens in Cinema: self-absorbed, precocious, irritating, back-talking, mollycoddled smartasses. And they won’t even get killed for it.

Improbable Story #2: Jackson is accosted by three young thugs (led by Aaron Holliday), after which he enlists one of them to lead him to a stash of coke. Holliday plays his thug as a jovial, likeable guy who bonds with Ehrenreich’s character along the hike, even though he is a leechy thief. By the time the bear appears, we viewers are being asked to forgive this prick his past indecencies. Nope.

Ehrenreich is flat on the ground, face-down, and the bear passes out on top of him, its body in the same position as his, although being bigger, it covers him completely. I belabor describing this position because we get this stupid joke: “its vagina is on my ear.” Unless the bear’s anatomy is unlike any mammal on Earth, its vagina should be down near HIS vagina. Who knows – maybe the CGI guys were meant to render the bear in a different position?

Then the bear gets ahold of Ehrenreich, bear-hugging him and pawing him. It’s meant to be in the throes of another brick of coke, but even if it’s not being malignant, its claws alone in the proximity of delicate human flesh would leave such gashes… Any injuries? Nope. While two other guys with guns stand around NOT shooting the bear.

Yes, it’s a dark and gory comedy, and we’re not meant to take any of this seriously, but still, be consistent within the world you are creating.

Other characters on the menu: a detective on the trail of Liotta (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a park ranger (Margo Martindale) and her beau (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), ambulance drivers (Kahyun Kim and Scott Seiss).

I’ve over-emphasized its demerits, but COCAINE BEAR is an entertaining diversion, bucking convention in many ways (likeable characters get killed, and others are killed without cause or arc), while it sticks to convention in other ways (i.e. NO WAY the two kids are getting killed; neither was the blameless animal going to be harmed – by either humans or the coke – as it lives on to bump another day).

Full marks to director Elizabeth Banks! Firstly, for even tackling this insane-on-paper project (written by Jimmy Warden), and then for pulling off the balancing act of comedy-tragedy-thriller. I don’t know her personally, but I’m proud of her! I feel this sense of seeing her grow (reminiscing on her funny fluff role in 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN) into this writing/acting/directing force in movies steadily gaining power, whilst never actually “breaking out” with any one overblown project. Kinda like Clint Eastwood, plugging away in the background on the job of making movies, until one day – respected as an icon of American Cinema. Banks’s two previous directorial efforts were PITCH PERFECT 2 and CHARLIES ANGELS 2019 (in which she cast herself in minor roles). With COCAINE BEAR, she is not onscreen, although she still far out-stuns even Keri Russell in the looks department.

She’s a powerful women’s advocate, an ambitious filmmaker, and a cutie to boot. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’d like to have her vagina on my ear.

END

“Someone’s always giving me the arse!”

Tits and Guns and Blood and Tits.

Jason Statham‘s big-dick energy once again sees him running rampage in Los Angeles streets, mowing down gangsters, and getting laid in public.

This movie’s predecessor, CRANK (2006) followed hitman Chev Chelios (Statham) after he was injected with a drug that would kill him if his adrenalin dropped below a certain level. Think SPEED on, uh, crank… It made for a ramped non-stop actioner as Chelios hunted the gangsters who injected him, whilst keeping his heart beating at suicide levels. Now, in CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, a Chinese mob boss, impressed with the indestructible masculinity of Chelios’s heart, has taken it for himself and transplanted Chelios with a mechanical one that needs constant jolts of electricity to continue pumping – sending Chelios on another ultra-octane quest: chasing down his heart-nappers to get it back!

Sorry, did I mention CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE is batshit insane? The fact it doesn’t take itself seriously makes it blackly hilarious as well.

The Chinese mob boss Poon Dong (who else but David Carradine?!) doesn’t simply kill Chelios, due to the One-Line Plothole-Fix: to harvest all of Chelios’s manly organs one at a time.

HIGH VOLTAGE features new brain-addled characters, like hooker Bai Ling, more repulsive than even Miley Cyrus; thug Joseph Julian Soria (who recently displayed his next-level chops in HAMLET 2), and Art Hsu as slimy Johnny Yang, who is roughed up so much while grasping a cooler with Chelios’s heart in it, I’m sure it must be mush by now.

Other eccentric side-characters from CRANK return, sprinkled into the mucky-muck like shards of glass in pudding: girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart), whom Chelios discovers stripping (“I thought you were dead!” – so that’s a reason to become a stripper? She would ride Chelios reverse-cowboy in public on the horse track, while real jockeys race by them); Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakum), “I was a certified heart surgeon – at least I was – I’m pretty sure I can put your heart back in”; and Efren Ramirez in a hilarious turn as Venus, the (wink wink) “twin brother” of Kaylo, Chelios’s transvestite pal who got killed in the last movie.

Allying with Chelios to avenge his brother’s murder, Venus reveals he has “Full Body Tourette’s” that spasms his whole body at the worst of times. Is this a real condition? Hell, no! ALL Tourette’s affects your “full body” – uncontrollable tics, shrugs, grimacing are all symptoms of Tourette’s, not just– motherfucker piss shit cunt–

The funny thing is, these once-unimportant characters being reprised by the same actors in this installment somehow makes them important in this universe, and therefore warrant mentioning – hell, even Glenn Howerton returns as The Intern (in 2006, ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA was finding its feet – by this movie’s release, everyone knows the sociopath Dennis Reynolds…

“I’ve got that Best Director On Roller Skates award on LOCK!”

Released in April 2009, almost like an April Fool’s joke on cinema with its hyper-reality and ultra-violence and mega-resilient human bodies, co-writers-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor smash-cut HIGH VOLTAGE like a runaway 18-wheeler around the grimiest, slimiest parts of Los Angeles; in other words – Los Angeles.

And they put Chev Chelios through the ringer – cops beat him with nightsticks until they tase him and he explodes out from under them, stealing the taser to use on himself until the charge runs out; he sees a man mistreating a dog with an electric collar, puts the collar on himself and makes the owner press the button; he attaches himself to jumper cables – one on the nip, one on the tongue; he creates friction by rubbing himself on a terrified old lady, who tells reporters: “He looked like one of those trainspotting fellows!”; he chases Johnny Yang to – what else? – a high voltage plant, where he makes Fluffy Movie Sparks fly to his heart’s content…

The filmmaking is like Robert Rodriguez meeting Danny Boyle, both accosting Edgar Wright. Filmed with filters wide open, making the sunny day look sweltering; crash-cuts, slamming cams, Dutch angles, titles onscreen, diabolical inserts and music cues; Ron Jeremy cameo!; Jennifer’s dad from BREAKING BAD is news anchor!; soundtrack by Mike Patton (Faith No More); Clifton Collins Jr chews scenery as the Big Bad, making thug Soria cut off his own nipples for losing Chelios!; Verona, Big Bad from CRANK, is now a head in cryo-liquid (think: FUTURAMA), just being kept alive to see Chelios defeated! Not with that Big Dick energy he won’t be!… Disturbing. Hilarious. Insane.

Guns. Blood. Tits. Big dick.

END

Ooh yeh, let me get in the middle of that Fate sandwich…

So much potential, so little Fate…

HENRY CAVILL IS BACK! No, wait – aw shit! – he’s gone again…

Black Adam awakens from a 5000-year slumber. And only James Bond can sing him back to sleep.

Born from the same magic as Captain Marvel (i.e. by pronouncing the word “SHAZAM!”), ancient protector Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson) is awakened by archaeologist Adrianna (Sarah Shahi, looking like a DARK CRYSTAL muppet), who seeks an ancient Crown of Sabbac in the land of Kahndaq. (It’s a fictional country, but just think Afghanistan, Iran, anywhere al Qaeda.) Legend tells of a Champion that will return when Kahndaq is most oppressed – even though Adrianna summoned him to help her escape bad guys called Intergang, that also seek the Crown of MacGuffin, which counts as “most oppressed” I guess, if you’re the hot female lead.

After Adam slaughters Intergang members, Agent Waller (the SUICIDE SQUAD bitch) sends in members of the Justice Society of America to quell him. Enter A-Listers Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan), and D-Listers Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), all trying to trick Adam into saying “Shazam” to turn him back to a mortal. Movie is mostly Hawkman losing his temper, the two Millennial dweeb-supers doing fuck-all, and Dr. Fate being cooler than Vision and James Bond put together.

Then a demon appears, which is affected surprisingly adversely by human punchaboo. Which leads us to the BLACK ADAM Top 5 Bottom 5…

Bottom 5 – TWO HAWKEYES

Who ARE these people? Along for the ride with Fate and Hawkman, the Golden Age greats of the Justice Society (created 1940, twenty years prior to the Justice League), are two D-list nobodies, both created in 1996: Cyclone (granddaughter to the original Red Tornado), and Atom Smasher (who becomes an ally to Black Adam in the comics); only here for the Young Adult demo, with the Disney ethos of the girl being smarter and more adept than the boy, who’s like a teen who can’t control his erections.

Cyclone breaks wind (real worthwhile against a superhuman), and Atom Smasher becomes big and hard (what’d I say about erections?). (The classic DC hero Atom wasn’t good enough for this film? Copyright hassles? ANT-MAN got there first?) One would think Atom Smasher’s blows could rend atoms apart, thereby negating a being’s existence – he even attributes his big appetite to “taking lots of energy to smash atoms” – nope, just normal punching while being giant and looking like Deadpool.

Bottom 4 – PUNCHABOO DEMON

A half-rendered CGI demon rises up for the special effects third act sky beam trope. It’s not the effects at fault here (the poor CGI guys are underpaid and overworked) – it’s the fact that his prosaic goal is to simply sit on a stone throne, and he is stopped by – punchaboo. One would think a supernatural entity would not be affected by mere human physical fists, but even Giant Guy and Wind Girl go to town on his ass, which is apparently affected just like any guy being punched in this dimension. The lack of creative thought in superhero movies is astounding.

Using the George Lucas Method of Making Shit Up As You Go Along, the anti-climactic climax sees Dr Fate sacrifice himself (for no reason), people fighting zombies in the streets (for no reason), Adrianna’s son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) saving the day by making the Van Halen sign (because – Running With The Devil, I guess), and Adam and Hawkman punching the demon, with Hawkman using Dr Fate’s helmet, because apparently, you can do that in times of demon. (My question: if Hawkman can use Fate’s helmet to battle alongside Adam, why didn’t Fate use his own helmet and battle alongside Adam, instead of dying? Why do the filmmakers pretend that the majestic Doctor Fate couldn’t have annihilated this supernatural foe with one hand tied behind his cosmic back?) Refrain: The lack of creative thought in superhero movies is astounding.

Bottom 3 – WALLER’S CONFUSED HYPOCRISY

The weak-sauce premise in BLACK ADAM is that the JSA is pitted against Adam for killing Intergang members without trial. You’re kidding me, right? Agent Waller (Viola Davis) is a fine one to talk, after her ethics in SUICIDE SQUAD (i.e. killing her own staff in cold blood because they had no authorization, blackmailing a merc with his daughter, etc.). Now, most government agents are hypocrites – Do As I Say, Not As I Do – so we accept her hypocrisy on that level… but she is supposedly working to abolish terrorism in the world, and Intergang are unequivocally terrorists, so what does she care if they are killed without trial? End result is the same – less terrorism.

Hawkman says: “We’re the Justice Society. Our mission is to protect global stability. And we will use force if necessary!” Well, Adam is using necessary force to protect global stability. So Hawkman’s antagonism toward Adam is unfounded and his admonitions naïve; both the JSA and Adam are against the tyrannical Intergang, so why not approach Adam with words instead of punchaboo? Adam maintains, “I’m no hero,” yet if he’s only killing those who threaten the lives of the innocent, then he IS. It seemed like the filmmakers just wanted to make JSA and Adam work together “begrudgingly” against Intergang because they read somewhere that it was good screenwriting.

90% of the fighting in this movie is irrelevant.

Why are they trying to un-super Adam anyway? When they succeed, Waller imprisons him in a submersion chamber – only for Fate to revive him immediately when the demon rises.

Bottom 2 – BACKSTORUS MAXIMUS

“Five thousand years ago, the city of Kahndaq… blah blah…” – who’s paying ANY attention to this narration, over gorgeous visuals that bombard our thinking nerves? Except twelve comicbook nerds who are only here to pick apart the mistakes in canon. Movie flashes back time and again to overwrought backstory about the king of Kahndaq and Adam as slave, Adam’s son, Djimon Hounsou’s wizard, Adam’s wife who looks like Sarah Shahi and— It could have been compressed into one minute of text crawl.

In one flashback, we discover Adam was not a force for good, but inadvertently destroyed Kahndaq in a rage of revenge against the evil king. Which is why the JSA wants to ensure it doesn’t happen again. So there is nuance, there is moral ambiguity, there are touching moments between Adam as father to the slave boy who led the revolt, and we can argue that Adam’s arc is from anti-hero to hero… but all is lost in these bombastic flashbacks with too much visual gluttony assaulting our senses.

Bottom 1 – THE HENRY AFFAIR

The worst thing about BLACK ADAM is that the best thing about BLACK ADAM was snatched from us – Superman! Henry Cavill’s Superman.

It was already known that Cavill would not be reprising his Superman in the DCEU – not through any fault of his, but because of the skewed vision of one man, made autocratic creative head of the DCEU at Warner Bros, James Gunn, who announced that none of the Snyderverse actors would reprise their roles (i.e. no Cavill’s Superman, Affleck’s Batman, Miller’s Flash, Gadot’s Wonder Woman…). Dwayne Johnson, as producer, star, and box office megalodon, fought to reinstate Cavill (game knows game), and in the movie’s coda, for a few hard-won seconds, the greatest ever Man of Steel:

“It’s been a while since anyone’s made the world this nervous… Black Adam. We should talk.”

And as suddenly as he was reinstated, Warner Bros. changed its mind, and tossed Henry out… As disappointed as WE are, think about what it must have done to the man. Not only is it a high prominence, high-paying job, it’s one that he must prep for extremely physically, and he has been quoted as being proud to be a steward of the character. His equanimity in the face of such dashing gloom is laudable; an educated gentleman amongst a world of valley girls, chuds, karens and republiKKKans; a true Superman.

And for Johnson’s efforts in pleasing the fans, he went against the dictator – so found himself inadvertently kicked out of the Black Adam role. Our ecstasy was short-lived. And the world returns to the whirlpool of muck it has always been.

Bottom – Honorable Mention: DON’T MESS WITH THE MAESTRO
A snatch of Ennio Morricone’s immortal music used in a standoff between Adam and soldiers –misused in every sense. The filmmakers (writers Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, and director Jaume Collet-Sara, NON-STOP, RUN ALL NIGHT, JUNGLE CRUISE) foreshadow this bit on a TV playing the standoff scene from THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY. In that movie, we didn’t know who might be the faster draw (Clint, Angel Eyes or Tuco) – but here, there is no such tension as we’ve just witnessed Adam taking down an army, complete with tanks and helicopters. Facing down a few soldiers is cheesecake.

Top – Honorable Mention: AAAAY!
Henry Winkler cameos as the original Atom Smasher, uncle of the youth onscreen. He’s not the actual Atom, just stunt casting another D-character. Still, The Fonz deserves an honorable mention.

Top 5 – BLACK HAWKMAN

Hawkman is reimagined as an Angry Black Man. I love the design of the suit, but I’m not too happy about its “nanobot” tech (i.e. helmet and wings appearing out of nowhere). And really – did they have to make the black guy the irrational antagonistic member of the Justice Society?

They’ve changed his name from Katar Hol (from the planet Thanagar) to just some millionaire named Carter Hall (which was Hawkman’s alter-ego amongst society). He lives in a castle, flies a jet outfitted like a spacecraft, wields a magic mace (by that I mean, it appears out of nowhere whenever he wants to use it), and berates Adam just a little too much.

Top 4 – SUPER SUPER EFFECTS

2013’s MAN OF STEEL visualized a whole new way of a super man existing in our environment; how he hovered, flew, super-sped, and fought in mid-air. Those elements have improved exponentially in BLACK ADAM. If only Henry Cavill could’ve benefitted from this technology in sequels to MAN OF STEEL.

Fuck Warner Bros.

Top 3 – BLACK DWAYNE

With his trapezius outgrowing his costume, Dwayne Johnson is the visual embodiment of the comicbook anti-hero, Black Adam (sans widow’s peak)!  With super-speed, invincibility, super-strength, flight, lightning from his hands, he is the dark version of Superman. Eternium is his kryptonite – which the Crown of McGuff is made from.

Though there are continual back-and-forths about whether he is a hero or not, he continually proves himself one, as he touchingly allies with Adrianna and her son Amon (who looks like my past super roadie Stefan – there’s a Top 5 trait right there!), who suggests the change of name from Teth to Black. In flashbacks, we see a de-muscled Rock (which is unintentionally funny), and we glean his arc from one of selfishness to charity.

And Johnson brings with him a comedic sensibility – not too dry, and not too Marvel.

Top 2 – SON OF BLACK

Adam fights to preserve the memory of a massive statue that was once erected in his honor, now weather-beaten… The reveal of the statue’s identity brings a tear to the eye: it is not of Teth-Adam, the destroyer of Kahndaq in his rage – it is his son (Jalon Christian), the slave who led the revolt as the original Shazam.

Top 1 – DOCTOR FATE

The best thing about BLACK ADAM is – Doctor Fate! Always my favorite visual design for a superhero, when I first saw that golden helmet as a kid, I was sold! If it weren’t for that helmet, Boba Fett would never have existed, his helmet an echo descendant of this dark sorcerer. They’ve removed the eye-holes – and that just makes him cooler!

Fate is Kent Nelson here, the original character from the 1940 comics, with the coolest superhero costume in the history of superhero costumes; his helmet from another dimension, Egyptian ankh on his chest; his magic who cares fuck you represented as golden crystalline shards materializing in the air around him, his voice a booming thunderclap, with the regal countenance of Pierce Brosnan simply sealing the gravitas and perfect imperious demeanor of Earth’s Mightiest Sorcerer.

First, they LETHAL WEAPON him (he tells Hawkman he’s getting too old for this shit), then they George Lucas him (he lost the will to live), as he sacrifices himself to the James Gunn takeover.

So there you have the BLACK ADAM Top 5 Bottom 5, Movie Maniacs. I could be wrong… but you know I’m right.

END

What-the-fuck-is-THIS-osaurus?

Kylo Ren: Before The Dark Side.

65 million years ago, Kylo Ren crash-lands on Earth the day before the asteroid hits.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, exuding Keanu energy, leaves his home planet Somaris on an interstellar mission that would separate him from his ailing daughter (Chloe Coleman) for 2 years, but would earn him the cost of her treatment. Snoke obviously wasn’t paying him enough to afford health care.

Hitting an asteroid field, his ship goes down. We see the title card, “65” – underneath it, a sentence continues, “… million years ago, a visitor landed on – Earth.”

Kylo’s trek begins, with the only other crash survivor (young Ariana Greenblatt as Koa), to find his ship’s crashed escape pod. While battling dinosaurs!…

With his 3D-hologram Siri-thing, Kylo locates the pod, but it also alerts him to something in the sky on a collision course with the planet, here at the tail end of the Cretaceous (a period in Earth’s prehistory that would only be named 65 million years later). Such a grand, audacious concept! The Chicxulub asteroid, on its death-dive to the Yucatan Peninsula! This premise alone gives the movie heft – oh, and Adam Driver as Mills aka Kylo. Another interesting premise is that on a planet across the universe, convergent evolution made anthropoid creatures that look like Adam Driver, with that same fruity half-goatee.

The beautifully-rendered dinos are the other feature of this movie, which is otherwise a boring chase movie with all the requisite clichés, with the ticking clock being THE asteroid, whose crater was theorized and discovered by Luis and Walter Alvarez 65 million years later.

That misshapen final dino that looks like a quadruped tyrannosaur is apparently a Fasolasuchus. Kudos to the filmmakers (co-writers-directors Bryan Woods and Scott Beck) for not simply jogging out Ole Faithful (T-rex), but demerits for making that Faso so anatomically incorrect (wrong size, wrong bone structure, wrong period – it was Triassic, not Cretaceous, and it is definitely the Cretaceous here, because it’s the day the asteroid demarcated the K-T boundary). And in the finale, why is it chasing Mills when there are two freshly-killed tyrannosaurs at its feet? Well, at least they got velociraptors right: dog-sized therapods hunting in groups.

At one point, Mills wipes out a whole herd of carnivorous, long-bodied dinos (that are probably junior Fasolasuchus?). I wonder how that affected the evolutionary tree. Is that why Hitler got born? Is that why unicorns don’t exist?

John Wick: Prehistoric Jedi Master.

When Mills finds Koa, I lose all interest in the emasculating dotage (same with any movie that foists a woman onto a man to protect, thereby cramping their masculinity – THE TRANSPORTER, WATERWORLD, THE POSTMAN, MIDNIGHT SKY, et al – and masking it under the male character’s “journey”).

And now it gives Mills an excuse to dialogue. And because Koa doesn’t speak his language, Mills speaks as he might to a young child, or a golden retriever (for the American audience); it also gives him the surrogate father ethos, and a reason to get rescued. And she, of course, is annoying at every turn (leaving Mills to extricate himself from a cave after he saves her, using up all the explosives at once, getting mad at Mills that her parents are dead). Read all about it in the Idiot’s Guide To Screenwriting Tropes.

And there’s that same conceit with learning language: he tells her “Quiet,” and she repeats, “quiet”; then he says, “and move” and she just repeats “move” – what happened to the “and”? How did she figure “and” was an unimportant conjunction? When he says, “It’s just water,” she repeats, “water” – how did she pick the subject noun?! But she says it as if reading it: “Wahh-terr” – why are you extemporizing?! Just say it in the accent you heard HIM say it!

After their craft experiences catastrophic damage in the final anatomically-incorrect dino attack, they take flight – because fluffy Movie Sparks don’t really mean anything’s broken. They turn back to see Earth immolated. Mills must be thinking – Wow, that’s the end of that planet… but he had no idea that WE would come along – the REAL destroyers of the planet. Not as powerful as a Death Star or Starkiller Base, but just wait’ll he gets a load of our hydrogen bombs pointed at each other that we’re going to set off soon.

Someone should make a movie about THAT apocalypse… I’m betting they can still call it “65” as in 2065…

END

Now THAT is scary. Also, there’s a mysterious figure in the background.

The Horror of Being Human.

The scariest thing in this movie is Helen Hunt’s face.

Hunt is Jackie, married to Detective Harper (Jon Tenney), with a teen son Connor (Judah Lewis). And she’s just had an affair that has driven her family apart irreconcilably. And something supernatural is going on in her house.

I SEE YOU starts as a generic supernatural horror (doors closing by themselves, TV turned on, records playing; Detective Harper even wakes up one night having wet his bed mysteriously!), and ends somewhere completely different. In a good way and a bad way.

THE GOOD

I SEE YOU moseys along its supernatural path with a certain throughline: boys are being abducted mysteriously, and the detective on the case also has a son in the age range of the abductees; his wife’s affair keeps the family dynamic estranged, and she believes that the unexplained occurrences around the house are the fault of their son acting up against her. Until midway, when the movie suddenly re-visits the whole first act from a different point of view, surprising us with its daring recant of what it was trying to set up as supernatural all along! But this turn is actually more dire than anything from the spirit world. Because ghosties don’t exist – but real-life ghouls do.

Written by first-timer Devon Graye and directed by relative newcomer Adam Randall (iBOY), with atmospheric soundtrack dissonance by William Arcane, I SEE YOU shows us how humanity is never all black and white, but shades of selfishness. Everyone is doing something that they feel benefits them, in the long or short run. And everyone is wrong. We feel we should root for certain characters and then our allegiances are turned on a twist, but then we realize that the person we are now rooting for is still doing something wrong. It’s the horror of being human.

The best scene has to be where Jackie must seek help from her husband – to bury the now-dead body of her lover! How it came to this blighted juncture is screenwriting gold: the Lover appeared at her door unannounced, is injured by a mug from the roof (thrown by son? by a haunting entity?), and is hidden in the basement until Jackie returns from taking her son to school. While in the basement, Lover is clubbed on the head by an unseen assailant, dies. Jackie returns to find him dead, thinking it was complications from the original wound – and her Detective husband is the only person she can realistically tell without her being dragged through the judicial system as a murder suspect!

And when we see the murder from the other point of view, the twists start coming thick and dirty.

THE BAD

It could be construed as jarring – the sudden left turn from supernatural horror to home invasion thriller – if you invested your emotions into viewing a certain genre of movie and are now being forced to watch a genre you never clicked on. It wasn’t a deal-breaker for me, but I felt the skid marks. Movie also introduces an eccentricity we’ve only encountered on the dark web and those disturbing YouTube cautionary tales – phrogging. (Home invaders who surreptitiously squat in your basement or attic, avail themselves of your wares when you’re out, and leave after a short period without being detected. And yes, their minute effect on your household would look “supernatural.”)

Mindy (Libe Barer) is the veteran phrogger – always filming and narrating, as is this wastrel generation’s wont – with Alec (Owen Teague) tagging along as the phrogger-in-training, whose boredom drives him to be as intrusive as possible without being discovered. It’s the horror of being human. We can now put a face to the doors slamming and records playing – but really, who would sleep through someone pissing on them? Unless you’re into that shit, Detective…

And is it too clever-clever then, for the family to JUST HAPPEN TO HAVE a frog mask lying around, for Alec to wear in trailers, as if he might be an apparition?

THE UGLY

Uh, Helen… Look, I don’t want to shame the poor woman, who is only succumbing to the ravages of time, like we all will (she was 56 at the time of filming), however, she always looked a little Romulan, even when young, and those features have been accentuated – her tilted eyes, the downward lines on the sides of her mouth, making her look like a puppet, and her dour, haggard resting face. YouTuber FoundFlix describes Hunt being in “a drugged-out haze” – but he’s being kind. Unless the drug he means is Botox.

And honestly, I don’t know whether that IS Botox or the lack thereof. Her face just looks… scary. It’s the horror of being human.

So the movie succeeds on all fronts.

END

Behind The Scenes: After they make Arnold and Sly punch and fight, the guys that hold them up are edited out with CGI.

Rocky and Terminator: Retirement Plan.

A man who analyzes prison weaknesses by escaping from them is imprisoned in one of his own creations by people who want him disappeared. Now he’s gotta do it for reals!

Former rivals, now old pals, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger team up in ESCAPE PLAN, a brawling actioner that never strays too far from all those prison-escape beats that keep us popcorning; incarcerated under false pretenses, kidnapped and taken off the grid, dick-measuring fights, inter-jail gangs, sadistic warden, bully guard, warring jail factions cooperating for the escape plan, and of course, Getting To The Chah-Pah! Formulaic, yes, but dare I opine, guilty pleasure.

Stallone is escape expert Breslin, who is offered a job to escape a black site, that raises all the red flags. His team (coordinator Amy Ryan, and hacker Curtis Jackson aka 50 Cent) warn him against it, but his boss (Vincent D’Onofrio, treacherous as always) sends Breslin in. We would find out later he was paid off to make Breslin disappear.

By the time Breslin realizes he’s been set up, he’s already been kidnapped and thrown into a Perspex madhouse, his locator chip destroyed, and the warden denying he knows anything about his escape analyst job. The icy warden is Jim Caviezel, the son of God himself (!) – no wonder he’s so eeevil – voice never rising above a whisper, even when distraught or angry, which makes him more chilling. Warden designed this extreme prison consulting Breslin’s own book on the subject.

Vinnie Jones is head guard – of COURSE he’s a sadist. Sam Neill is the prison doctor – of COURSE he’s a sympathetic accomplice. And Schwarzenegger is inmate Rottmayer – of COURSE he forms a begrudging alliance with Breslin.

Faran Tahir is Javed, the prison muslim insurrectionist; he’s the modern go-to Arab Guy (IRON MAN, ELYSIUM, STAR TREK 2009); once it was Art Malik, now – this guy. In his final touching sacrifice, Javed would whisper to Caviezel, “allah ackbar” (“god is great”), before Caviezel shoots him in the head, with the retort, “Yeh, whatever.” Maybe he was mad that Javed was praising the wrong god?

On the inside, the hardest plot point to believe is that prison expert Breslin trusts Rottmayer so quickly, blabbing his escape plans to Rottmayer less than a week after being incarcerated. Movie is depending on us believing that Arnold is a good guy because he’s Arnold (and we’re right, of course – same reason they hired the other stars, for their well-known character traits).

Stallone looks as puffy as a puffer fish, while Arnold is aging better, with a grand little goatee. Remember back in the 80s when these two were invincible? Yet every time they get into a brawl here, I’m flinching that they’re gonna hurt their knee or break their wrist… They escape, of course, after the Doctor remembers his oath to aid aging action stars, after a climax fight between Vinnie and Sly, after Jesus is sent to a fiery fate, and after Arnold gets to the chah-pah. And Vincent D’Onofrio gets his comeuppance more painfully than when a raptor bit off his arm.

END

Giant Cyclops, Tiny Science.

First of all, that title – There Were Giants In The Earth. This ain’t Earth. And that fact alone should make the Space Family Robinson think twice about any interaction they have with the native fauna or flora… it doesn’t, as they go about eating the flora and killing the fauna, even though the movie year is 1997 and they must have seen some of those CROCODILE HUNTER episodes regarding “Conservyshun”… (maybe they couldn’t understand his accent?…)

The last episode ended with the Robot (Bob May) threatening Will (Bill Mumy), a cliffhanger easily resolved when Will speaks “Dr. Smith” to it.

Though Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) was still the scheming attempted murderer of the Robinsons in the previous episode, this episode sees a turning point in how the filmmakers want us to perceive him. Oh, his plans are still fatal, yet the filmmakers have slyly skewed Smith to a “kooky troublemaker” now, as evidenced in the scene where he is assigned tasks to help family members and he lies his way out of every duty (thereby shirking responsibilities that are detrimental, if not life-threatening, on a space mission!), yet an obviously comical OBOE THEME accompanies his every move, which lessens the gravity of his intent, urging us to now chuckle at what were once horrific misdeeds.

The Robot becomes more likeable as well, as he acts froozy when Will reconnects his power pack.

Also in this episode (which seems to pour on the characterizations that would last the whole series), Professor Robinson (Guy Williams) becomes Mike Brady and Fred MacMurray and Eddie’s Father all rolled into one, as he gives Will a heart-to-heart about Will’s responsibilities, accompanied by that touching father-son theme.

The family realize that the soil is making their plants grow to enormous size, which is merely a foreshadow of the Cyclops to come. When Prof. Robinson and Don (Mark Goddard) check their weather monitor on a mountaintop, a 50-foot Cyclops throws rocks at them. Footage from unaired Episode 00. Will comes to the rescue with a laser gun, although with the knowledge that this planet’s soil causes gigantism, it seems irresponsible of the men not to have armed themselves against potential enlarged gophers or coyotes.

We witness the 1960’s mentality when Will brazenly kills the Cyclops. When the men took cover from the Cyclops’ rocks, there was not a word said about them being the intruders on this planet, and that they are the invasive species encroaching on the Cyclops’ territory. Yes, humans (and every other animal) fights for its own survival over others, yet humans pride ourselves on being aware of why an animal might attack – and it’s never through malice. Yet this encounter is played like the Cyclops is just madly trying to kill John and Don for no reason, which is why it’s totally justified that Will murder it. Robinsons, YOU are in the wrong — and you killed the CYCLOPS just for defending his home?!

Due to freezing temperatures, the Robinsons decide to abandon the Jupiter 2 and go south in the Chariot… although, if the spaceship has already insulated them against the vacuum of space (i.e., temperatures below any kind of terrestrial weather!), there is no reason they can’t stay in it. Again, they are using a science precept to drive the plot – but it’s completely specious! And if they think it’s fatal to stay in the ship, why do they allow Smith to stay behind?

Before they leave, Penny (Angela Cartwright) has gone missing, which gives John the opportunity to break out his batshit-sexy jet-pack to look for her! (In December of this same year, James Bond would thrust skyward with his own jet-pack in THUNDERBALL.) And there’s that breezy jet-pack theme we’ve grown to associate with Professor Robinson zipping around (in front of a rear projection in closeups, but actually flying through the air in exterior long shots! – or at least suspended by a cable).

When John finds Penny, we once again witness the 1960’s mindset regarding the differing roles of men and women back then: Will is painted as an ambitious young man, trying to prove himself an alpha male in the tribe, and is scolded many times by his father for mishandling his responsibilities; the girls, on the other hand are never given the opportunity for ANY responsibilities, and when Penny disappears like a moron as they are prepping to leave, it is never even considered that John might scold her (because, of course – dumb woman who doesn’t know any better), and she is greeted with joy when John returns with her on his jet-pack. It’s like they’re welcoming a lost pet back home.

It is also amazing to notice with adult eyes how Judy (Marta Kristen) is always gravitating toward Don: staying behind to fall in line with him, cozying up to him while walking, unspoken looks between them… In an interview, Kristen expressed her wishes that she was given more to do as Judy, and that the writers could have explored more of the relationship between Judy and Don. Mark Goddard felt the same way about Don. (And though Goddard maintains both he and Kristen stayed true to their married partners at the time, no one can convince me that a little space-panky wasn’t going on…)

At camp, Will serenades us on guitar with Greensleeves. Really? I woulda thought a tween like him would be more into the current acts of that future time of 1997, like Coolio or Foo Fighters…

END

Bubble-Headed Badboy and Deadly Dr. Smith.

Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams) has gone out the airlock of the Jupiter to apparently “fly” down to the planet they are orbiting to scope it out. One would think there are instruments onboard the spaceship that would carry out all that spectroscopy and visual reconnaissance. Nope. The only piece of tech the writers allow John are little rockets on his arms (called parajets). They’re meant to slow his descent into the atmosphere, so that he doesn’t incinerate. Okay – but they malfunction. So why does the family think that John is still alive if he dove headfirst into an atmosphere with no braking?

Major Don West (Mark Goddard) ignores all the evidence of physics reality to augur the spaceship in for a crash-landing, “to find John,” who should be a blackened cinder by now, if not completely ashes in the ionosphere. (I always loved the exterior shots of the Jupiter 2 coming in low over the mountains for a crash landing on a planet; pretty legit shots, that looked like a real-sized ship in the reality of a rugged mountainscape.)

Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), uncaring of the family’s horror and loss (probably because the cast weren’t giving those emotions enough oomph in the acting department) suggests it would be easier to fly back to Earth now, without the added weight of John. Which raises talk that he might have sabotaged both the parajets and the ship for everything to malfunction so conveniently.

On the planet surface, Don actually sends out the Robot to check the atmosphere first (this act would become less frequent as the series wore on, as the writers realized that every single planet in the universe has breathable oxygen). Robot has a little soil sampler in his tread – so cool! Real science! – and comes back in with a verbal report, as well as a ticker-tape readout from his bellybutton area.

The Chariot! We all wanted a piece of this nifty machine!

Don says, “I’ll assemble the chariot” – ah, I always thought it was in the lower decks fully assembled. Since no one saw the unaired pilot, this is the first reveal of that tank-treaded, windowed, batshit-sexy science mobile!

Robot and Dr. Smith are very sinister in this episode, Smith taking control of the Robot (basically by telling the Robot to be under his control) and using Robot to threaten the Robinsons with actual death if they don’t comply with his wishes to leave this “island in the sky,” making Robot crush a helmet (waste of equipment!). It’s an easy fix, though, as Will (Bill Mumy) takes back control of Robot by imitating Dr. Smith’s voice.

Leaving Smith on the ship, Don drives the Chariot into lush jungle, all the scientists onboard ignoring the massively variegated life on this planet – until they find that stupid ape (a small chimpanzee outfitted with an oversized head and pointy ears). Its existence means there’s an ecosystem here, with bipedal terrestrial life that is humanoid! But again, absolutely zero amazement or scientific curiosity regarding this product of convergent evolution towards a mammal-like creature on this unknown planet! Penny (Angela Cartwright) wants to keep the ape as a pet, but mother Maureen (June Lockhart) vetoes. Penny pouts. And Maureen relents. It wasn’t like Maureen had any scientific reason NOT to take it, like quarantining for alien bacteria or diseases, another mouth to feed, requiring more fuel for liftoff, creating more waste, etc. – so Penny gets her wish through ignorance of science.

When they board the Chariot, the family has changed into civilian clothes – those womanly woolens (with Judy sporting the pointiest bra of all). In black and white, these clothes were simply grays, and they further removed the perception of the Robinsons as a Space Family. Essentially, the family was grounded, so it seemed weird keeping them in silver spacesuits, which is understandable, but with every space aspect slowly being abandoned, the series was devolving toward Average American Sitcom.

Saint Zachary the First and Saint Bubble of Booby.

Smith orders the Robot to systematically wipe out the Robinsons: “When unessential personnel are found alone – destroy!” aiming to adopt a façade of cooperation with them to avoid blame, dubbing himself Saint Zachary the First. (Of course, on a space mission, every body is an essential part of the functioning of the mission, with duties farmed out to all personnel so that all the weight is not on the captain’s shoulders. The writers never could get that through their heads, still considering the women kitcheneers and Will a hapless child. Robot should have replied: “There are NO unessential personnel on board the Jupiter 2.”)

After the family finds John, the Chariot malfunctions on the way back to the ship and the family walks the remaining distance.

CLIFFHANGER: That night, Will sneaks out (as usual!) to fix the Chariot. Robot follows, intent on killing Will, repeating his mantra about “unessential personnel” and shooting 40,000 volts out of his claws at nearby vegetation to prove how lethal he is… the paradox being that Will is actually displaying “essential” skills right there, as the Robot is threatening him. Now if only Robot would shoot his electricity AT Will, he might complete his mission, or  maybe his circuits are jamming because with his big bubble brain, he can see the paradox…

END

Devil: 1. God: 0. Again.

A charlatan spirit medium discovers her daughter can actually contact spirits through a Ouija board. And all, uh, hell breaks loose.

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL is a prequel to 2014’s OUIJA; set in the late ‘60s, we meet the young family that would become the ghosts of the 2014 film, and we experience their harrowing haunting that caused the ghost daughter Doris in the 2014 film to have her mouth sewn shut. It’s the usual fare of jumpscares, indistinct whispering, ominous visuals and unnecessary uplighting under faces; it’s even got the blankets-being-pulled-off-your-sleeping-body gag! This movie has everything for the discerning nine-year-old!

Regardless of its trope-laden content, ORIGIN is better written and scarier than its predecessor, with a filmic look like it was shot in the 1960s (Kodachrome-type sheen, period cars and attire, and even cue marks on the filmstock – those oval-shaped blips in the top right-hand corner, to let the projectionist know when to change reels! Like I said, this movie has everything!)

Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser), a widowed mother, makes ends meet for her two daughters (teen Lina (Annalise Basso) who just wants to party with her friends, and young Doris (Lulu Wilson) who misses her dead daddy) by enlisting them to aid her fake seances. Her clients’ gratitude in “contacting” their loved ones make Alice feel she is not scamming them, but giving them closure.

Alice introduces a Ouija board into her tool set, setting it up with magnets to enable her to manipulate the planchette with her knees. She soon discovers Doris communicating effortlessly with the actual spirit world, joyfully watching the planchette fly across the board by itself, spelling out messages. Alice revels in using Doris’s newfound power with clients (“We can actually do what we’ve been pretending to do!”) – they all think it’s dad helping from beyond… until Elliott from E.T. tells them it’s NOT dad…

Henry Thomas (forever Elliott to me!) is the local priest, who tricks the demon possessing Doris into revealing itself. Not long before HE is possessed as well, because God is powerless against ACTUAL evil. Just ask any exorcist. Parker Mack is Lina’s new boyfriend, if he can avoid getting killed by Doris first. At one point, Doris describes to him what it’s like to be strangled. (In this film, it’s quite creepy, although someone must have learned that from someone actually going through the steps of strangulation! That’s even creepier.)

The team that brought you those atmospheric thrillers GERALD’S GAME, OCULUS and BEFORE I WAKE (writer-director Mike Flanagan and longtime writing partner Jeff Howard) have crafted ORIGIN along the same lines, although in trying to make it connect to the inferior source material, it does track into illogical:

For example, the demon inside Doris possesses her to have “a voice” (we presume that’s also why the demon likes to gape her mouth wider than humanly possible, reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, a visage made popular by Wes Craven’s homage film SCREAM). And that’s why Lina ends up stitching Doris’ mouth shut (in a scene reminiscent of a Hitchcock sequence, where we focus on the upraised hand with the needle in it over and over again), but why not try to exorcise the demon first, rather than stitching the poor girl’s mouth shut?!

And across the two movies, if you pay attention – character inconsistencies: y’see, everyone is redeemed in this movie’s climax (with mother Alice dying and seeing dad-ghost and Doris-ghost waiting for her in white clothes — oh, so this movie is a CATHOLIC grooming! Also, good thing CLOTHES have souls too, otherwise they’d be naked), yet in OUIJA, Doris is evil when they dig up her body. Lina is shown sewing up poor Doris’s mouth, yet when she calls on Doris in the final scene, Doris is prancing around upside-down on the ceiling like the demon has possessed her again… Explain yourself, Mr. Writer-Director.

The funniest thing about any possession movie is that in a storyline where the devil exists, God exists as well, as the counterpoint to evil, yet no man of God can ever stand up to the almighty evil of the low-rent demons possessing the antagonists. I mean, it’s never even major demons like Lucifer or Beelzebub; most of the time they are just nameless spirits, and the vessels that the Big Man Himself has called to represent him on Earth (i.e., priests) are always weak-principled impotent pawns that the evil spirit invariably has their way with. Now is that a commentary on God or the child-raping priests that represent him?

Ooooh, and that’s where we get the subtitle of the film: Priests – the Origin of Evil.

END