Movie Roundup #4
1. Shin Godzilla - I liked this! Rapid cuts between Godzilla stomping his way through Japan and bureaucrats sitting in meetings bickering over national defense regulations felt uncomfortably realistic. Also, A+ for the balanced special effects, which are realistic enough not to look overly silly, but also sufficiently "homemade" looking (I don't know what word I'm looking for here) to evoke the original films. Godzilla himself first emerges from the water as a wobbly, gilly, bug-eyed larval kaiju that was so bizarre-looking that I was almost disappointed when he evolved Pokémon-style into traditional Godzilla. I regrettably fell asleep for about 15 minutes of this movie, but I think that's my fault and not the movie's.
2. Memories of Murder - A lot of women die in this movie! Like, a lot of them! It was not immediately clear to me whether or not the movie was critiquing its bumbling, inept, and violently abusive police officer MCs, but we eventually got there. Plus, that might be me missing some context clues that were apparent to a Korean audience. Bong Joon-ho has a knack for making movies you can't look away from, even if you (like me) do need to cover your eyes fairly frequently because he really likes to zoom in on the grossness of things. A very good movie, but not for the squeamish. The special features with Guillermo del Toro are great too.
3. Strawberry Mansion - I never really felt like I understood what the word "twee" meant, but I think Strawberry Mansion might be it. This movie is at once sinister ("they" are putting advertisements into our very dreams) and also very cute. It's literally colorful and deliberately whimsical (it's dreams, after all), and there's a little turtle named Sugarbaby who is so tiny that it somehow made me feel sad. There's a manic pixie (literal) dream girl thing going on that annoys me on principle, but this is still a decent, entertaining movie. Bonus points for being 90 minutes, which is my favorite length of movie. On an ironic note, I looked up the review on rogerebert.com and the page was so stuffed with ads that I could hardly read it.
4. Splash - (a rewatch, obvs) Daryl Hannah as a fish out of water (ha) can do no wrong, and she deserves a medal for BITING THROUGH A REAL LOBSTER SHELL, which was actually stuffed with mashed potatoes because she's a vegetarian. Her sweet earnestness is so, so funny, as well as heartbreaking when Tom Hanks meanly asks her "Do they not have SARCASM where you come from?" and she simply replies, "No." John Candy's character is a creep, but he's always funny and it was nice to see him. Also, he is unexpectedly the first character to ask about Madison's well-being while Tom Hanks is busy feeling sorry for himself Oh, and I'd totally forgotten that Eugene Levy is there too! In top Eugene Levy form. Tom Hanks is perfectly fine as Madison's love interest, which I guess is all he really needed to be. I appreciate him for liking Madison (sidenote: was this the birth of Madison as a first name?!) in spite of how weird she is, but given how hot she is, I imagine one could overlook a lot. This is a nice gender twist on The Little Mermaid, where the man is the one who gives up his whole life to run away and join the merfolk he barely knows. By the way, I noticed that the movie Elf is basically the first half of Splash but Christmas, and that's a hill I will die on.