All-Out Giant Monster Attack! Episode 21 - The Giant Behemoth

Originally the plan was that Episode 21 would be a review of "Varan the Unbelievable".  However, little did I know that "Varan the Unbelievable" is perhaps the most painfully unremarkable movie ever made, more or less completely indistinguishable to spending an hour and a half watching an empty white wall.   "Varan" was so truly depressing that I wondered if this countdown should end right here and there*.  I refuse to write anything more about that movie.  Luckily there was "The Giant Behemoth" to pull me back up and remind me just how much fun giant monster movies can be.

"The Giant Behemoth" is a 1959 film that curiously was a cooperative British and American venture, produced by the American Allied Artists and the British studio, Eros Pictures.  In the UK there was a slightly different cut and the movie was known as "Behemoth, the Sea Monster".  The plot is well described by the poster:  a giant radioactive dinosaur marches into London and causing a very significant ruckus.  This was a film directed by Eugene Lourie, who previously in 1953 started the giant monster craze with "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", inspiring pretty much every movie on this countdown that came afterwards.  "The Giant Behemoth" is basically a retread of that original concept, only moving the monster to London and featuring a very different human plot.  While "20,000 Fathoms"' effects were done by Ray Harryhausen, "The Giant Behemoth" is the last major film to show-off the work of Willis O'Brien, the effects master on "King Kong" and Harryhausen's master.  The 1950s had not been a very fertile time for O'Brien, who mainly shuffled between various unfinished projects and created a terrible low-budget film called "The Black Scorpion", so really "The Giant Behemoth" is his last hurrah.  However, this is not the last time we'll hear from that man, as his cinematic influence would go on to inspire the films "Godzilla vs. King Kong" and "The Valley of Gwangi".

As Western 1950s giant monster films go, "The Giant Behemoth" is cut out of pure stock template.  The Behemoth is a yet another ancient creature awakened by the folly of human nuclear testing, who inevitably finds his way to a major metropolitan area for a spectacular final climax.  Most of the film focuses on scientists in a lab trying to uncover what is causing strange attacks on the English coastline, and the story is so serviceable that they did not even bother including a major female character for a weak romantic sideplot.  Yet, I had to say "The Giant Behemoth" was still a great deal of fun, even with stock motion clearly inferior to contemporary Harryhausen creations and the aforementioned plot issues.  The pacing is excellent, the monster's radioactive powers are both excellently cheesy and actually make for an interesting threat, and the movie knows exactly what kind of audience its going to please.  Its original and exciting enough to keep you watching and there is much to enjoy.

The Croods

I've been following the career of Chris Sanders for a few years now, even since I saw his excellent "Lilo & Stitch".  Chris Sanders has a fairly legendary status amongst animation fans, as he can be seen as something of a modern Don Bluth.  He's a former Disney worker who jumped ship after his movie, "American Dog", became transformed into the painfully generic "Bolt".  However, after joining DreamWorks, I wonder if Sanders really has gotten that intellectual freedom he was looking for when he left Disney.  "How to Train Your Dragon" is probably still the best DreamWorks animated film since "The Prince of Egypt", and as much as I liked that movie, nothing about it felt like a Chris Sanders movie.  Only a few dragon designs really seemed to show off his original art style.  And comparisons to "Lilo & Stitch" would make pretty much any movie look inferior, so I'll quiet my tongue there.

When the first trailers for "The Croods" came out, I was actually very much into it.  I could see immediately in the facial structure and luscious thighs of the Cavegirl, Eeb, that this was going to be a movie with the full Chris Sanders flair.  Yeah, it was in 3D, but you could still see his distinctive style at work.  Which is why it pains me so much to say, "The Croods" is probably the most generic animated film I've ever seen.  You plot out a graph using every cartoon of the last ten years as a point, and there will be "The Croods" sitting at dead mediocre center.  Chris Sanders has made a gorgeous movie, about as beautiful as anything you will ever see in a theater.  His world design is top-notch and every frame looks like the prettiest moments of a JRPG like "Xenoblade".  But the plot is pure service.  This is mostly because Chris Sanders has decided to partner up with a man named Kirk DeMicco, whose most successful movie so far is "Space Chimps".  Yes, "Space Chimps".  That really says it all.

I wonder if a movie like this even needed a plot.  Since mostly its a series of gags from start to finish.  The best jokes in the movie are about as old as the prehistoric character themselves, being homages to old Chuck Jones and Bob Camplett "Looney Tunes" shorts.  Unfortunately, with all the animated madness its hard to actually shift gears when the movie bothers to grow serious.  And then, the story itself isn't revolutionary, it doesn't challenge in any way, and it feels like its only there to justify making a movie that really only wanted to be jokes.  "The Croods" is wonderfully beautiful, and I believe a great movie might have existed in Chris Sanders mind at some point, but the DreamWorks ethic of batting low and aiming for easy laughs over risking for really experimental filmmaking seems to have gotten to him.  Little kids will love this, adults looking for nothing more than a way to keep their kids quiet will be satisfied, but I am not.

Spring Breakers

"Spring Breakers" represents something I'd like to see more often:  an art house director taking on a genre that is usually made for the lowest common denominator and pushing it in a dark new direction.  Let's see Lars von Trier direct "Transformers 4", David Lynch do "Paranormal Activity 5", and Terrence Malick can do a Tyler Perry film.  Then Michael Bay can spend seven hours filming a helicopter from seven directions and have Megan Fox float by an exploding dinosaur and we can call it "Tree of Life 2:  Way of Nature Strikes Back".  Essentially that seems to be the concept of "Spring Breakers", directed by Harmony Korine - taking the lowest common denominator party comedies, and transforming them into a freakish spiritual journey into the American college student's Heart of Darkness, Spring Break.

What Harmony Korine has done here is collect two Disney channel creations, such as Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, along with the non-Disney branded Ashely Benson (but her filmography is so vapid she might as well be a Disney creation), and finally his wife, Rachel Korine, and put them together on a strange journey to the promised land of the Key West at Spring Break.  The plot sounds like something out of a 90s teenage comedy, these four girls live in Texas and are endlessly bored, so they use a squirt gun to rob a diner and then drive off to spring break for the party of their lives.  There they meet the hilariously wacky James Franco, an off-the-hook rapper/gangster and they go on a short crime spree in pink ski masks.  But then you see the movie, and that sentence transforms into:  "four desperately lost college girls violently rob a bank, go to Spring Break which is a hideous nightmare of gyrating madness, almost get sold into sexual slavery by James Franco, a grotesque nightmare of lawlessness and self-delusion, and then brutally assault and murder dozens of people as they abandon every moral and logic of the world they grew up in."

Clearly, "Spring Breakers" is not a regular movie.  The advertisements might fool some teenagers into believing they're going to see some mild escapist fun with hot chicks and maybe some gross-out humor.  But within ten minutes they'll realize they went to the wrong movie, because this isn't a parody, this is satire.  And satire of the most severe and mindbending form.  You want to break all the rules to go out and party and have fun?  Well, let's have a movie where the main characters actually break all the rules, and go so far off the deep end to pure barbarian madness that the audience doesn't know which way is up any more.  Yeah, there are gross-out moments and grotesques, but these aren't gags.  "Project X" might claim it portrays every parents' worst nightmare and everybody can have fun with it, but "Spring Breakers" isn't just your Mommy and Daddy's worst case scenario, its your own.

BlueHighwind Plays Bubsy 3D

Its the worst thing ever.  This is just me playing fifteen minutes of the game on an emulator, and I couldn't take a single second more.  More or less, this is a bonus video to the Final Fantasy VIII Let's Play, created because... I ruined a recording last night and I did this to show how terribly sorry I am.

I haven't really played any of the great legendarily bad video games like "Superman 64" or "Action 52" or anything.  But "Bubsy 3D" is a brand new step into the realm of horror.  It doesn't even feel like a real video game company made it, it feels like a terrible student project, or failed internal studio experiment that was never meant to see the inside of the light of day.  No surprise, its awful.

Hopefully I won't continue to make terribly mistakes on the FFVIII Let's Play, or else I'm going to have to find even more bad games to play as penitence.

Stoker

Was driving fifteen miles into the dark post-apocalyptic nightmare of destitution and wild cannibalism called Pennsylvania worth it to see the new drama thriller "Stoker"?  Yes.  Yes it was.

First of all, "Stoker" is not a vampire movie.  I thought its title was a reference to "Bram Stoker", the author of the original "Dracula" novel, turns out none of the characters are vampires in any way.  Instead its a family drama film... starring murderers and psychopaths.  There are points where the movie tends to swerve into the horror genre, particularly with all the murders and mild hints of super human abilities, but it never becomes campy and it keeps its head high the entire running time, proudly creating a weird psychological adventure where you cannot be sure if the protagonist is any less insane than the apparent antagonist.  This is the first English-language film to be directed by Park Chan-wook, best known for directing the insane Korean movie, "Oldboy" and he actually did make a vampire film called "Thirst", which I haven't seen.

The title actually refers to the "Stoker Family".  If all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, the Stokers definitely need some special note for originally.  You aren't entirely sure what is going on behind the scenes, but it is clear that there is something terribly wrong with the Stoker family, and it doesn't end with the murder of the father of our heroine, India.  India's life is turned even more upsidedown by the arrival of her mysterious Uncle Charlie, this very handsome man that clearly has some kind of deep ulterior motive and is definitely not what he seems.  He also seems to be shacking up with her mother, played by a very horny Nicole Kidman, and you aren't quite sure what India's mother knows, or if she's a Gertrude to India's Hamlet.  And India herself is a very deep enigma, played with a creepy intensity by Mia Wasikowska.  She's just a little too quite and too focused, you can tell something is very off about her.

"Stoker" is easily the best movie I've seen so far in 2013, being a serious but very deliciously twisted tale of growing up.  Just what India grows up to be is part of the fun.  I'd say it isn't perfect though, there are a few stunningly well-produced scenes and great acting and directing all around, the script really doesn't make very much sense in the end, and much of it is muddled by red herrings - and I'm not even sure if those were intentional or not.  Still, this is a much heavier time at the movies than most of the manufactured non-controversial Hollywood stuff I've been watching all year, so it definitely stands out.