A commercial for Three’s new 5G network with wacky predictions about the future that could also be used to protest against 5G expansion.
Tag Archives: Science Fiction
CAPSULE: EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988)
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DIRECTED BY: Julien Temple
FEATURING: Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayons, Jim Carrey, Charles Rocket
PLOT: Valerie discovers her fiancé is cheating on her, but finds her “Mister Right” when a trio of furry aliens crash land in her pool.
COMMENTS: Seeing as I’m on probation for recommending Apocrypha status for movie musicals, it was a dangerous decision to dive into Julien Temple’s cult classic, Earth Girls Are Easy. While I had my typical “so, this is weird…” reaction that I do with every musical I see, at least this time the environment wasn’t as off-kilter as a magnified downtown London; it was merely off kilter in a “Dear-God-1980s-Hollywood” kind of way. Temple’s film–which is really the brainchild of Julie Brown, the go-to Valley Girl at that time–runs longer than it should with plenty of awkward moments of stupidity. That said, once it finds its footing it hovers within a stone’s throw of recommendable.
Earth Girls Are Easy does not begin with said Earth girls, but with the aliens who discover them. Mac (Jeff Goldblum), Wiploc (Jim Carrey), and Zeebo (Damon Wayons) are a crew of brightly colored, fur-covered aliens on a mission of… well, it’s not clarified, and it doesn’t matter. While Mac is in stasis, Wiploc and Zeebo are puttering around the ship looking for a transmission signal, preferably one transmitting an image of hot women. When one of them prompts the navigation system to go haywire, they crash on a nearby planet, right into Valerie’s pool. Because she’s recovering from a spat with her now-ex-fiancé (lovely ’80s-slimy Charles Rocket), and because this is a musical, the plot becomes an engine for getting her together with one of the extraterrestrials. Dance numbers, big hair, and lite satire ensue.
A number of factors scream, “This movie merits no further thought.” It’s an ’80s movie about the ’80s, so its humor is obvious; it’s a musical, so its plot is of tertiary concern; and it’s directed by a guy with a music video career, so though the film’s look is lively, it breaks no new ground. However, the presence of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis lifts Earth Girls up from dreck to the lofty designation of “fun.” Goldblum, in particular, gives Mac a nuance, and at times a pathos, that the subject material doesn’t remotely deserve. During a night on the town, after the aliens have absorbed countless television soundbites, Mac inquires of Valerie, “Are we limp and hard to handle?”, giving this query from an advertisement a sensitivity that well explains why he’s one of his generation’s greatest actors.
Geena Davis, who co-starred opposite Goldblum in Cronenberg’s haunting version of The Fly, rekindles that tragic romance in a bubblegum setting. Golblum and Davis are cute together, and have a real connection; though this is really the only thing to recommend about Earth Girls, it gives it enough gravity to be worthwhile.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Paula. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
CAPSULE: GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (1971) AND THE “GODZILLA: THE SHOWA-ERA FILMS, 1954–1975” BOX SET
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DIRECTED BY: Yoshimitsu Banno
FEATURING: Akira Yamauchi, Toshie Kimura, Hiroyuki Kawase, Toshio Shiba, Keiko Mari
PLOT: Hedorah, a monster created from earth’s excessive pollution, wreaks havoc on Japan.
COMMENTS: “Hedorah is a monster of our own making.” In the intro we see Hedorah rise from some sludgy gloop floating in the ocean. The creature attacks freighters and factories and at the same time inhales the pollution they emit to grow larger and more powerful. A young boy and his marine biologist father are on the case, and soon discover the origins of the creature and why and how it is evolving.
The child is the film’s protagonist. He seems to have a connection with Godzilla. He knows Godzilla is coming before he appears. Like the original 1954 Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Hedorah comes with a strong message about the harm man can do: Godzilla was awoken by hydrogen bomb tests, Hedorah is an alien being made massive and powerful by pollution.
At this point in the Godzilla series, the King of the Monsters has been both an enemy of mankind, and sometimes somewhat of a hero. At the story’s climax walls of electricity are set up in hopes of frying Hedorah. When the generator fails, Godzilla lends man a hand with his breath. As a child, I loved Godzilla as the hero; it’s something I’ve never grown out of.
There is, of course, also a final battle between the two creatures. If you come to Godzilla flicks for the creature fights, you will be rather disappointed here. This Godzilla reminds me a little of one of the Three Stooges putting on goofy moves, shrugging and shuffling about. And Godzilla flying through the air?! What was that? I suppose Hedorah would be a slippery sucker to grab at, being a pollution monster. He starts out looking like a giant sperm, but evolves into a flying saucer shape, and eventually takes an upright form. Hedorah is not one of Toho’s more effective monsters, visually, but he does more damage than most.
Godzilla vs. Hedorah is a unique entry among the Godzilla Showa era films. It is the only film in the series that I am aware of that includes psychedelic imagery and animated sequences. These elements are unusual for Godzilla, but there is nothing particularly weird about them for a film from the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Godzilla vs. Hedorah has its goofy moments, but at times is actually quite grim. The poisonous toxin emitted by Hedorah kills instantly and the film has a significant body count . The harsh message of the animated sequences gives the pleasing and colorful animation a disturbing quality. I loved the addition of animation. I also loved the attractive young couple they added in as secondary characters. All the Continue reading CAPSULE: GODZILLA VS. HEDORAH (1971) AND THE “GODZILLA: THE SHOWA-ERA FILMS, 1954–1975” BOX SET
CAPSULE: THE SHASTA TRIANGLE (2019)
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DIRECTED BY: Barry W. Levy
FEATURING: Dani Lennon, Ayanna Berkshire, Helenna Santos, Deborah Lee Smith, Madeline Merritt
PLOT: Paula returns to her hometown of Shasta, CA where unexplained phenomena regularly occur, to look further into one such instance—the disappearance of her father. With the help of four childhood friends, they go into the surrounding woods looking for answers—which they do find, and quite a bit more.
COMMENTS: The Shasta Triangle is an above-average low-budget genre film of the type that you’d expect to see on the SyFy Channel on a Saturday night, and if you temper your expectations to that level, you’ll enjoy the film. There’s nothing that’s particularly new here in terms of playing with the tropes, but it is refreshing to have the “group going into the woods” be all-female in this variation. You might recognize some of the cast from other genre work, particularly Lennon, Berkshire and Santos (also a producer and the co-story writer). These three also give the film’s better performances.
The premise is solid for what’s essentially a friends-go-into-the-scary-woods movie. It all plays out fairly well, although the ending is somewhat muffed and may leave some dissatisfied; there’s a resolution, but it also feels like the filmmakers left themselves room to continue the story. Some may not feel a compelling need for them to do so.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972)
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DIRECTED BY: George Roy Hill
FEATURING: Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Valerie Perrine
PLOT: Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain’s assistant in the thick of WWII, comes unstuck in time and yet endures, partly through the philosophical guidance of aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: While this movie is no weirder than it has to be, it is the most faithful movie adaptation of as novel from one of the strangest geniuses in American literature, so it has that going for it. Standalone, it punches the same weight as the war movies we honor here, while taking a novel that was seemingly impossible to film and making it look so natural you wonder that it wasn’t written as a script in the first place.
COMMENTS: At last, our quest for the ideal Kurt Vonnegut adaptation brings us to Slaughterhouse-Five (1972). This is the Papa Kurt movie that comes most highly recommended, with a promising directorial credit. George Roy Hill also directed the film adaptation of The World According to Garp (1982), another difficult book-to-film challenge with another author of sophisticated black comedy, which he pulled off with somersaults. Hill’s resume is bursting with offbeat cleverness like Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), the weirdest musical about a roaring-20s flapper busting a human trafficking ring. Charged with putting Kurt Vonnegut’s most acclaimed novel to film , Hill made an effort which the author himself would go on to praise, miracles never cease! Now let us pause to quaff a shot of something that will make our breath smell of mustard gas and roses, and prepare to be thrilled. I will try to explain what it means to be unstuck in time: take a normal life as a deck of cards, then shuffle it. That’s all; there’s no time-traveling DeLorean here.
We open with Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) in an unexpectedly graceful setup: he’s typing a letter explaining how he is unstuck in time, jumping back and forth in his life, with no control over where or when… Then we segue into the war. Billy served as a chaplain’s assistant in the U.S. Army during WWII; he revisits this part of his life at random. He also shifts to the planet Tralfamadore, where he is held by aliens as an intergalactic exhibit with a mate, Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine), who was chosen for him by his alien hosts—who are quite pushy about having them breed. She’s sweetly Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972)