Recent Movie Sightings 1: Aladdin, Godzilla King Of the Monsters, Portrait In Black

For someone who claims to be a movie buff, it seems inconceivable that I haven't darkened the doors of a motion picture palace since last September. I'm not sure what happened—the last film we'd seen (something with Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick) had been enjoyable enough, if instantly forgettable—but the combined pleasures of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and PBS, along with my addiction to purchasing blu-rays from Amazon, effectively stalled any efforts we may have made towards actually going out to see a movie these past months.

Then, last week, C noticed that Aladdin was opening. I'd seen the animated Disney version numerous times, and later, C and I saw the stage musical on Broadway. Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed both versions but why on earth was Disney resurrecting yet another of its most venerated animated efforts as a live-action movie? Well, we all know why—as long as the cow keeps giving milk, why let her rest? My own feelings about Disney are complicated but I was determined to go into this latest incarnation of Aladdin with an open mind.

Aladdin certainly looks great—the desert kingdom is beautifully realized and highly inviting, the type of place a kid—or adult—might want to hang out in for awhile. In many films, CGI effects intended to replace real-life locales look crummy (the needless Kenneth Branagh remake of Murder On the Orient Express immediately comes to mind) but in the case of Aladdin, the CGI looks great! The one big “name” in the movie (and the standout) is Will Smith, cast as the genie, a part formerly owned by the late Robin Williams. Smith is a nice surprise, bringing his own unique spin and personality to the role; he's funny and energetic in a way that complements the part without copying its progenitor. The rest of the cast—largely unknown—have varying degrees of success, although it's Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine, and Nasim Pedram as her handmaiden, who are most memorable. Lead actor, Mena Massoud, playing Aladdin, is sleek and nimble, much like the animated character, but he just didn't do much for me. It's hard to imagine what smart, charismatic Princess Jasmine sees in him (on the other hand, the genie and handmaiden have great chemistry!). Marwan Kenzari, as the villain, Jafar, is also underwhelming: his evil presence should feel b-b-b-bad to the bone but it's all surface posturing (although the kiddies in the audience probably won't mind).

I had forgotten that Guy Ritchie (ex-Mr. Madonna, and he of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch fame) directed this until I saw his name in the credits. I was a little surprised because I never would have considered Ritchie a suitable director for any type of musical. He does okay here, though. His wild and wooly style matches nicely with the antics of his material, and his visual sense in Aladdin is a vast improvement over anything seen in those execrable Sherlock Holmes movies he did with Robert Downey, Jr.

I recently heard someone defending these Disney remakes, saying that today's kids should have their own “classics” to enjoy in the future, even if they're remakes of earlier classics. Hogwash. What does that even mean? A classic is a classic. They don't date, they're a part of the era in which they're made. Why would they need updating? Aladdin 2019 doesn't improve on Aladdin 1992, and the remake seems superfluous. It's good enough, I suppose, for what it is, but it's certainly no classic.

And then came Godzilla, King of the Monsters. I'll admit this one was all my idea. I'm a giant monster movie fan from way-back-when. I still remember the first time I watched Godzilla on an old black and white TV set with my dad grumbling in the background. I would have been 7 or 8 but, oh, how I loved that guy stomping around in a rubber monster suit making rubbish out of miniature Tokyo's. After that, I was all in for every giant monster that came down the pike. King Kong, the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the Monster That Challenged the World, gigantic spiders, oversized ants, man-eating crabs, 50-foot tall socialites with drinking problems, gelatinous globs of ooze—I was all over that shit! I especially loved those Japanese monsters: Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Rodan, Mothra, Mecha-Godzilla, Barugon, those giant caveman-Frankensteins, even the moth-eaten King Kongs that paraded through a couple of Toho features. But, my all-time favorite was Godzilla, in all his gloriously radioactive splendor. The Americans decided to try their own hand at rebooting Godzilla in a misbegotten 1998 update that had Matthew Broderick—Matthew Fucking Broderick, of all people—chasing Godzilla around New York with French action star, Jean Reno (similar ideas were much better realized in 1953's Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and, again, in the 2008 hit, Cloverfield). After that version of Godzilla notably bombed, Hollywood passed the torch back to Japan, who had a much better track record with the beast. But, since Hollywood never seems to learn anything, they were back at it in 2014 with another brand-new, improved version, simply titled Godzilla. To be fair, this movie wasn't all that bad. Godzilla, at least, bore a passing resemblance to his former self (unlike the creature in the 1998 film) and the action sequences with the Kaiju are very exciting. Aaron Taylor-Johnson led a decorative cast with impressive credentials, although their acting talents were largely limited to expressing various degrees of alarm.

Which brings us to the second sequel to that 2014 film (2016's Kong: Skull Island was the first): Godzilla, King of the Monsters. First of all, the enormous, three-headed King Ghidorah, that fiercest of all Godzilla foes is, appropriately, front and center, disintegrating everyone within spitting distance by hacking up blazingly lethal lugies. Anyway, King Ghidorah is, far and away, the best looking and most fully realized of the giant monsters on display in this film, so good, in fact, that he almost deserves a film franchise of his own. The CGI effects really do the creature justice, even more than the (admittedly awesome) man in the rubber suit in those 1950's-60's films. Rodan, another flying reptilian of titanic proportions, explodes out of a volcano, making almost (but not quite) as impressive an entrance as King Ghidorah. The great moth, Mothra, also has a couple of brief layovers during the movie but this Toho legend only gets passing nods from the filmmakers; after an impressive opening sequence featuring Mothra as an enormous larva, it basically disappears from the film for a lengthy period until finally bursting out of its cocoon later on. The least successful of the creatures, I think, is Godzilla, himself. The CGI effects fail the lead monster in a most unfortunate way. First of all, he's mostly seen in fuzzy night or underwater shots, and secondly, when we do get a good glimpse of him, he's so phony-looking that he seems to belong in a completely different movie than these other splendid creatures.

The movie begins with Norma Bates—I mean, Vera Farmiga--playing a slightly less demented (but not by much) variation of her Bates Motel character: she's a scientist trying to coax the dormant Mothra awake in a top-secret research facility in the Chinese rainforest (really,there's a Chinese rainforest?). Of course, Norma, whose parenting skills have always been suspect, has ill-advisedly brought her daughter (Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things) along for the ride. Just as Mothra crankily awakens from a long larval nap, a gang of eco-terrorists led by British actor, Charles Dance, who excels in playing this type of role, bursts in, shooting up the place and taking hostages of the few—count 'em, two—survivors (conveniently, Norma and Millie Bobby). It's up to Norma's ex, Kyle Chandler (veteran of Friday Night Lights and several giant monster films) to come in and save the day. Only Norma, being Norma, doesn't want the day saved. Suffice it to say, both Norma and Kyle have a lot of angst and guilt on account of their son being killed when Godzilla ate San Francisco back in '14, a tragedy that left them on opposite sides of the monster-resurrecting fence. We find out that this secret research program has monster-containment facilities throughout the world and that other creatures are currently in stasis. But, uh-oh, Dance and his evil eco-emissaries plan on reawakening these ancient monsters, because, you know, once they're unleashed, they will stomp the living shit out of the planet, decimating the world population, and somehow restoring balance to the earth, which mankind, unsurprisingly, has totally fucked up. This is exactly why we can't have nice things, dammit!

Norma, meanwhile, has her usual sturm und drang—really, Vera Farmiga will always be Norma Bates, even though her character's name is Dr. Emma Russell in this movie—and Kyle reaches new heights in cinematic hand-wringing before the shit finally hits the fan at Boston's Fenway Park, no less, which is where the climactic showdown between Godzilla and the other monsters takes place. I wonder if the screenwriter is a Yankees fan?

If you're still with me, kudos to you. The movie goes on and on and on, for a good 2+ more hours after Norma and Millie Bobby are snatched, and it's all explosions, monsters bellowing and punching each other out, people getting squashed, melted, char-broiled and eaten at deafening decibels, plot turns that make zero sense, and a jaw-dropping, moronic ending that sets us up for the next sequel, Kong Vs. Godzilla, to be released in 2020. Along the way, such acting luminaries as Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Zhang Ziyi and Bradley Whitford wander in and out, pondering what drove them to appear in this mess (apparently they needed the $$$); at least, Hawkins merits the good fortune of an early exit.

I once saw a film where Kim Novak's character quips to a producer, “I could eat a can of Kodak and puke a better movie.” I think that pretty much sums up my feelings about Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

In between bouts of movie-going, I received two new blu-rays I'd ordered off amazon. The first one was an old glam-o-rama I remembered seeing on TV when I was a kid at home. Portrait In Black is melodrama with a capitol M, starring Lana Turner as the horny, long-suffering wife of ailing shipping tycoon, Lloyd Nolan. Lloyd, as it happens is bedridden and a real bastard to poor Lana, who lives only to please Lloyd during those agonizing 3 minutes each morning when the old sod commands her presence for her daily ass-chewing. After that type of trauma, a girl needs those expensive shopping expeditions to downtown San Francisco, along with a little extramarital canoodling in the arms of Lloyd's doctor (Anthony Quinn).

Elsewhere, Lana's stepdaughter (Sandra Dee) is having her own fling with handsome John Saxon, who has something to do with boats and wants a contract with Nolan's shipping line. Dee, ever suspicious of Lana's intentions, dotes on Daddy, though conveniently never enters his sickroom (in fact, Nolan and Dee never appear together onscreen at all). Then there's Nolan's business partner, played by a slimy Richard Basehart, who is scheming to get into Lana's pants, while executive secretary Virginia Grey furrows her brow and looks like she's pining for someone (hint: she is). Back at the manse, in the downstairs quarters, housekeeper Anna May Wong disapproves of gambling no-goodnik chauffeur Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian!) and reams him a new one almost as often as Lloyd reams Lana, which is pretty darn often. Finally, with all this reaming going on, and Lana pulling out her glamorous, platinum-blonde coif because she and Anthony Quinn can't be together, and Anthony, himself, smoking and pacing (he's supposed to be leaving for Switzerland in a day or two, for Christ's sake), and all the upstairs/downstairs/sneaky business partner stuff going on, someone is bound to get killed. And they do. Note, I said they. Sure enough, one bad deed begets another.

Portrait In Black has been called a neo-noir thriller but Ross Hunter, the producer, was noted for uber-glam soap opera-ish, big-budget souffles like Magnificent Obsession, Imitation of Life and Pillow Talk. Portrait In Black has the basic elements of a neo-noir; at least the plot points that way. But this is no Body Heat, a true neo-noir in every sense of the word. Lana Turner's adulterous wife is definitely a femme, and decidedly fatal, but she's no prototype for Kathleen Turner's treacherous Matty Walker. With her over-the-top histrionics, the spoiled whining, general sense of entitlement and pre-women's lib demeanor of helplessness, Lana's got none of the gutsy instincts of such tough gals as Gloria Grahame or Jane Greer—the true femmes fatale of noir. Swimming in a sea of estrogen, swathed in furs and turbans, and chauffered around in a yacht-size--DODGE??--Turner is riotous, emoting within an inch of her life, and she is perfectly matched in every overwrought expression and exaggerated gesture by a shockingly hammy Anthony Quinn. Was he also swimming in Turner's sea? Sure seems like it. Really, I never thought much of Lana Turner's acting, but Anthony Quinn!? Viva Zapata, Lust For Life, Lawrence Of Arabia, ZORBA THE FUCKING GREEK!! Portrait In Black? How does this happen? It doesn't really matter because Portrait In Black is such a hog wallow of a movie, such a chicly unrestrained mess, that it's almost sublime. It's not a stretch to picture Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman playing these roles just as they're written: it would still be hilarious! Pedro Almodovar could work wonders with this material, and now that I think about it, maybe he already has. No surprise that this perfectly awful movie has managed to endear itself to me. It's completely nuts and great fun!

The last movie I meant to include in this post really needs an entry of its own. It's David Lynch's horror/neo-noir classic Blue Velvet, which I just got from the Criterion Collection last week. Yes, I already know that BV is not universally adored, but it's in my list of top ten favorites and, besides, I feel a weird sort of connection to Blue Velvet. I'll explain later.  So, until next time, farewell, au revoir, hasta la vista and aloha from the islands!