Movies – Page 2 – JG Judgementally Comments…

Godzilla Minus One

Godzilla’s back and, for the very first time, Oscar-nominated! But does G-1 deserve the plaudits?

What’s The Movie? Godzilla Minus One

What’s It All About, JG? In 1945, a kamikaze pilot, Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), lands his plane at a repair station on Odo Island, pretending it’s malfunctioning in order to avoid completing his mission. While there, Godzilla (a relatively small version) emerges and smashes the place to smithereens. Shikishima is ordered to his plane to use the gun but freezes up and can’t open fire so almost the whole population is wiped out. Returning to Tokyo and riddled with survivor’s guilt, he first discovers his parents have been killed, then takes in Noriko Ōishi and the orphaned baby she’s caring for. Over the course of a year they slowly grow closer while Shikishima gets a job clearing mines with a whacky collection of crew (“Doc”, “The Kid”) that both sides put down during the war. At the same time, the nuclear testing mutates Godzilla and he becomes a… bigger rampaging monster? Yep! They witness Godzilla destroy a naval ship then it heads landward to wreck as much of Japan as the special effects budget can stretch to. During this attack, Noriko sacrifices herself to save Shikishima. Finally, Godzilla uses its heat ray to trigger what is very obviously a nuclear explosion, before returning to the sea. Doc, along with a collection of citizens and some decommissioned ships, contrives a plan to take out Godzilla by sinking it to the bottom of the sea and then shooting it back up again while Shikishima distracts it from the air in the lone plane Japan has post World War II. Shikishima, now suicidal after the loss of Noriko, sees this as his chance to redeem the deaths on Odo Island, and once Godzilla has been sunk and resurfaced, flies the plane loaded with explosives into Godzilla’s mouth… only to eject at the last second. Godzilla is stopped and, in the final scene, we discover Norkio survived and is in hospital.

And in the final shot… Godzilla survived too.

One Hand Clapping – Paul McCartney and Wings

After 50 years the movie version of One Hand Clapping finally sees a cinematic release. But was it worth the wait?

What’s The Movie? One Hand Clapping

What’s It All About, JG? It’s an in-the-studio recording of one of (many) Wings line-ups, this ~~week~~ time including Geoff Britton on drums and Jimmy McCulloch on guitar, alongside regulars Denny Laine, Paul McCartney, and Linda McCartney. We get to see them messing about in the studio, running through a few tracks, faffing about in the control room and so on. There’s also “The Backyard” tacked on the end, which is literally McCartney sitting in Abbey Road’s backyard with an acoustic guitar, running through a small handful of classic rock and roll numbers. The whole thing is topped and tailed by 2024-vintage McCartney doing a specially-recorded introduction.

Stop Making Sense

What’s The Movie? The 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.

What’s It All About, JG? Watching a band at the absolute pinnacle of their abilities perform what is arguably the greatest concert film ever put together. Capturing the band towards the end of 1983, promoting the Speaking In Tongues album and just before they tilted over into the full-on pop of Little Creatures, Stop Making Sense highlights the band’s back catalogue but changed, warped, adjusted, and generally rearranged for the film. It was shot at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles over four nights, the final result being a blend of footage from different nights. The whole of Stop Making Sense was conceived of from the word go as a concert that would be filmed, and David Byrne serves as artistic director, pulling the whole project together. It’s directed by Jonathan Demme in his first outing behind the camera, not that you’d know it from looking at the – frankly amazing – footage. Why cover a 1984 film now? Well, because it’s been re-released back into the cinema in a glorious 4K IMAX restoration to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the original release.

Barbie

What’s the Movie? Barbie

What’s It All About, JG? Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives a perfect life in Barbieland with lots of other different Barbies and Kens. One day she has strange, rather existential thoughts about dying and her world slowly moves away from its perfect state as she becomes more human. To correct this, she visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) who advises her to go to The Real World and figure out who’s playing with her and fix the problem. Travelling to the real work (well, LA) with Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie is shocked to discover that men run the world, feminism hasn’t been solved and that the girl she thought was playing with her, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), in fact hates her. Turns out it was the girl’s Mum, Gloria, (America Ferrera) that loved playing with the doll and, after escaping from Mattel, they all return to Barbieland. However, Ken has learned about the patriarchy and tries to overthrow the rule of the various Barbies by having men – men! – take control. With guile, cunning and intelligence, the various Barbies defeat the men and “our” Barbie chooses to leave the perfection of Barbieland behind for the real world and becomes human.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

What’s The Movie? Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

What’s It All About, JG? Testing my patience. However, for the record, roguish and presumably-charming Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and the subtly-named barbarian Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), escape from prison to try and resurrect his dead wife and reconnect with his estranged daughter, Kira (an insufferably brattish Chloe Coleman). In the absence of her jailed father and her dead mother, she’s fallen under the “care and protection” of Forge Fitzwilliam (an equally insufferable Hugh Grant) who has some plan about getting rich or something but it’s really difficult to give a shit. A Red Wizard was responsible for Edgin and Kilgore’s arrest so must be perfunctorily defeated by the end of the movie. Edgin puts together a motley band consisting of Kilgore, half-arsed sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith), tiefling druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), and paladin Xenk Yendar (Regé-Jean Page). The rest of the movie is basically a heist as they first try and get the Tablet of Reawakening to bring back Edgin’s missus, then rescue his daughter from Forge’s nefarious clutches. In the end, there’s a far-from-spectacular battle, Forge is defeated but escapes to fight another day, and the Tablet is used to save Kilgore, fatally wounded in the “climactic” battle with the Red Wizard, rather than the absent wife.

Knock At The Cabin

Can M Night Shyamalan knock this one out of the park? No. No he cannot.

What’s The Movie? Knock At The Cabin

What’s It All About, JG? A gay couple, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their daughter Wen (Kristin Cui) are vacationing at an isolated cabin somewhere in the woods. Wen is approached by Leonard (Dave Bautista) while out collecting grasshoppers. Turns out Leonard and three of his cohorts believe the world is about to end in a religious apocalypse and the only thing that can prevent it is one member of the family killing another. They must decide who should die and they have to do the deed – suicide won’t cut it. So who will die, the gay guy, the other gay guy, or the young girl? And are the four cultists/zealots right in what they say about the end of the world? They believe so fervently that every time the family refuses to murder each other, the zealots kill one of their number while a terrible natural disaster occurs. Eventually, one member of the family does indeed kill another as the evidence for an Actual Apocalypse adds up. Is it real? Anyway, the world is saved but only after all four cultists are dead. Was it all just in their heads? Na.

Plane

A throwback action movie! But is it… plane sailing? (Note: This pun better than any dialogue in actual movie!)

What’s The Movie? Plane

What’s It All About, JG? Well, there’s this plane, you see. And the pilot of the plane, Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler, every bit as convincing a pilot as I am), takes the plane to the place where the plane needs to go to but the plane hits some bad weather and is damaged so the plane has to make an emergency landing on a jungle island and then Torrance and convicted-prisoner-being-transported Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter) leave the plane to get help but then the passengers and first officer Samuel Dele (Yoson An) gets captured by… uh, locals (?) and they have to get back to the plane and then fix enough of the plane to take off while under fire and also there are some mercenaries who try to help with the rescue of the the plane and sort-of do but also Garpare doesn’t make it on to the plane and runs off with a big bag of money instead and then the plane takes off but has to do an emergency landing on the next island over but one which actually has an airport and then the plane lands and that’s it.

Plane.

The Batman

The Bat’s back – not that it feels like he’s ever been away. But can the new, somehow-even-grimmer-than-last-time, Batman movie work with all that darkness?

What’s The Movie? The Batman

What’s It All About, JG? Batman (Robert Pattinson) morosely investigates the murder of Gotham mayor Don Mitchell by the Riddler (Paul Dano). Following a series of morose clues, Batman morosely stumbles around Gotham as the Riddler picks off a few people one by one, while bumping into/helping/not being helped by Selina Kyle / Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz). We eventually find out that the Riddler has a personal vendetta against the Waynes, having grown up in an orphanage they had funded, and he leaks information that Thomas Wayne was corrupt after apparently paying Falcone (John Turturro) to kill a journalist. Also Falcone is Selina’s Dad, if not a good one. The Riddler send a bomb to take out Bruce Wayne as part of his revenge but instead manages to get Alfred (Andy Serkis), the lone non-morose presence in the movie. Selina plans to kill Falcone, but the Riddler beats her to it and is sent to Arkham, where he tells Batman that he was an inspiration- irony! The Riddler has also placed seven car bombs at the city walls which blow and flood Gotham, as a way to assassinate the mayor by forcing her into the “shelter of last resort” along with most of the city’s population and some rooftop assassins. A touch baroque, perhaps? Anyway it doesn’t work and Batman and Catwoman go their separate ways at the end of the movie. Morosely.

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure / 해적: 도깨비 깃발

A Korean swashbuckling pirate epic! But can this film balance comedy and adventure on the high seas?

What’s The Movie? The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure / 해적: 도깨비 깃발

What’s It All About, JG? Pirates. And treasure. You might just possibly be able to infer what kind of movie this is, but let’s do the necessary. A bunch of bandits, led by the spectacularly-haired Woo Moo-chi (Kang Ha-neul), are adrift at sea when they are rescued by Hae-rang (Han Hyo-joo). She’s the owner of a pirate ship and is on the search for – you guessed it – the royal treasure of Goryeo, which vanished at sea without a trace. The rest of the movie is basically a quest to find said treasure, which leads to all sorts of what can only be described as shenanigans – nearly dying via a herd of CGI cows, getting sucked into a vortex, sword battles in the middle of lightning storms, that sort of thing. Ranged against our unlikely band are Bu Heung-soo (Kwon Sang-woo) and his crew, rebels who are also after the treasure. It all ends with comedy penguins and sailing off into the sunset. Yup, it’s that kind of pirate movie.

All The Old Knives

I spy, with Amazon’s eye, something beginning with…

What’s The Movie? All The Old Knives

What’s It All About, JG? Two former CIA operatives, Henry Pelham (Chris Pine) and the now-retired Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton) meet up in a luxurious restaurant to discuss a case from 2012. A plane was hijacked in Vienna and despite the CIA’s best efforts all the passengers and terrorists were killed. New information has come to light years later that there may have been a mole, and Henry has been tasked with getting to the bottom of what happened. What follows is two stories told in parallel. Firstly there’s a series of flashbacks to the 2012 incident itself, including the psychosexual relationship between Henry and Celia, which outlines the events and characters involved. Secondly, and interwoven with the flashbacks, there’s the contemporary scenes set in the restaurant where the two former lovers play cat-and-mouse with each other, before the final reveal of what really happened and the consequences of it.