Two shits, two legits.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

As King Kong and Godzilla roared to each other as loud as they could, my sleep apneaic snores matched them note for note. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has to be the most boring, one-note, soulless mainstream action blockbuster released this year. I felt absolutely nothing watching it except intense drowsiness and mild contempt, even during the fight sequences. I was expecting the scenes of human interaction to be dreadful and lifeless (it’s a Godzilla vs. Kong movie), but I wasn’t expecting the action to match that level of excitement. Perhaps it’s because everything on screen is so obviously fake – this is a CGI Jackson Pollock diarrhea nightmare explosion if I’ve ever seen one, and trust me, I watch a lot of shit. Ultimately I can’t believe this is what people want from the movies. I refuse to accept that. I just can’t.

Going into this, I was a bit lost because while I saw the previous film, 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong, I don’t remember anything about it. Look, it was the tail end of quarantine, and everything was a blur. I was mainlining 5 to 6 movies a day and drowning my fears and sorrows in a pool of Snapple Iced Tea and Nachos Bell Grande. I was a fucking mess, and I’m usually a mess, so I was like a super mess to the point where I could probably join the MonsterVerse. Anyway, Warner Bros released their entire 2021 catalog onto HBOMax, so I was consuming content I probably wouldn’t ever pay to see in theaters. Godzilla vs Kong was one of these movies – you can see my review here. I was underwhelmed, but even more so with the sequel…I think.

While I don’t remember the actual process of watching Godzilla vs Kong, I do say in my 2021 review that, “I’d be happier with just a short film of monsters smashing…” I think that scratches at what the real problem is here, there’s not enough material for a 115-minute film. There are only so many variations of monkey shenanigans a human being can take in one evening. The film casts great actors like Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, and Dan Stevens (were they in the original?), but they can’t do anything to improve the nothing dialogue and soup-bowl-deep characters. Brian Tyree Henry in particular is really off here as the “comic relief”, which is shocking because he’s almost always the best part of whatever he’s in – even that poopy Child’s Play remake with the AI Mark Hamill.

The only scene I enjoyed in this was when King Kong had to have a tooth removed. He had an infected incisor, that was broken off midway to the gum line. They had to give Kong a bunch of novocaine and what I’m assuming was a Lexus worth of sleeping pills so he didn’t attack the helicopter dentist. Then, Dan Stevens, the helicopter dentist but also like an adventurer jungle man person, ties a rope and a big piece of machinery to Kong’s tooth while the helicopter flies away, extracting it. They ended up replacing that tooth with what looked like a flipper, so I’m sure that thing had to come loose at one point during Kong’s many tedious battles. This is the ultimate quality test of a motion picture – does it make you focus on things like general dentistry? Thumbs down for me, dawg. Grade: D+ (Max)

The Beast

One of the most frustrating films I’ve seen all year is The Beast, French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello‘s (Nocturama, Saint Laurent) science-fiction drama about a future where AI is the boss of humans. The Beast is certainly not lacking in the idea department, as the film offers some truly compelling and plausible theories about the grim future our dumb asses are most definitely heading. It’s just a very uneven film with a first half that drags major ass and a second half that’s legitimately thrilling but not without flaws. Let’s dig in.

In 2044, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) is unfulfilled by her menial job. The problem is that AI controls which humans get the good jobs, and Gabrielle is deemed too governed by emotion to hold a post with value. To get a good job, she must undergo a DNA purification process that allows her to travel back to past lives to try and correct her emotional behavior. I guess experiencing your past life allows you to disassociate from the trauma it holds over you. The whole thing sounds a little Scientology to me, but anyway…The first stop is 1910 France, and this timeline plays out like a very stiff costume drama. Here, Gabrielle is a somewhat famous pianist as well as the wealthy wife of a doll factory owner. In this life, she meets Louis (1917’s George Mackay). If you subscribe to the whole past lives theory, you may believe there is a close-knit circle of people/souls who follow you from life to life. Louis is one of those people, cosmically bonded to Gabrielle’s soul. He’s a nice enough man, polite, and clearly someone she’s sexually attracted to.

The second and final timeline takes place in 2014 in Los Angeles. Gabrielle is an aspiring actress who is beginning to see the way AI is taking over the industry. In a real LOL scene, Gabrielle is filming a commercial on a green screen where everything will be added in the post. Even the actor who plays her son will be added in post. While in LA, Gabrielle is living as a housesitter for some rich asshole in a very swanky mansion. She spends her days acting and her nights partying at nightclubs. Everything seems to be going well except for a weird sense of dread following her. Outside her mansion lurks Louis, now an incredibly disturbed incel who blames his celibacy on the conspiracy chicks have against him. After a big earthquake, Louis strikes up an odd relationship with Gabrielle in this timeline, one that will absolutely not lead to sex.

In between the two timelines is a fascinating glimpse into 2044. AI controls the nightclubs and programs them to be named after different decades. “EVERY SONG HERE IS FROM 1972!” a drunken clubgoer shouts to Gabrielle one night. She returns later when the same club is programmed to be 80s night. When she goes back for 1963 night, hardly anyone is there. Guess nobody wants to bop that music. The third central character that exists exclusively in the 2044 timeline is an AI chaperone of Gabrielle, referred to as a “doll.” She’s played very well by French actress Guslagie Malanda who if you’re an arthouse goon like me, you probably recognize from 2022’s Saint Omer. Everything concludes in the 2044 timeline with an ending that’s genuinely inspired and well-executed, one that Rod Serling himself would surely finger-snap during.

The Beast is frustrating because while it never fails to engage you on a cerebral level, it never once succeeds in engaging you on an emotional one. It’s upsetting and ironic for a movie about AI inheriting the future. Then again, I suspected that perhaps The Beast was hinting that Big AI was distorting Gabrielle’s past life memories. Maybe the movie is stiff and awkward because it’s about a character undergoing simulations secretly written by AI. That still doesn’t excuse the sleep-inducing first act in boring-ass 1910 France. There are also failed attempts at Lynchian-esque humor in the second half which reminded me that no filmmaker can do humor of the absurd in terrifying situations quite like David Lynch and almost everyone who tries fails miserably. These scenes involve Gabrielle browsing on her laptop. When she tries to look up her acting reel all she finds are clips of Harmony Korine‘s Trash Humpers. I shit you not. Grade: B (Available $6 rental on VOD)

The Last Stop in Yuma County

If you thought the Tarantino movie clones died out in the early 2000s, think again! Filmmaker Francis Gallupi‘s The Last Stop in Yuma County so desperately desires to be a Tarantino film, with kooky and perverse characters, slick dialogue, and ironic plot twists. Of course, you can’t make a Tarantino movie without the maestro of toe jam himself, so what you’re left with is something that inherently feels like a knock-off. As far as that goes, this is one of the better ones. It’s a simple but effective premise about a handful of strangers converging on a gas station diner in Yuma where two bank robbers are hiding from the police.

Taking place sometime during the 1970s, our story begins with a mysterious knife salesman (the great DIY superstar Jim Cummings) who is trying to get some gas. A stereotypical fat mechanic (Faison Love) rolls up to his window to inform him that their fuel delivery has been delayed and that there isn’t another gas station for 100 miles. He’s stuck there. Inside the diner next door is a waitress (Jocelin Donahue) who is married to the local sheriff (Michael Abbott, Jr.). On the radio, a special bulletin about two bank robbers who escaped a bank heist in Buckeye in a Green Pinto plays. Sure enough, that same Green Pinto pulls up to the gas station, and the bank robbers, a seasoned veteran (the always underrated Richard Brake) and a squirrely amateur (Nicholas Logan) come into the fold. Everyone is stuck there with little to no gas, and few are aware of the shit show they just walked into. After that, more people stop by to complicate the situation – a bickering old couple on vacation (Robin Bartlett and Gene Jones), a sociopathic young couple looking for trouble (Sierra McCormick and Ryan Masson), a Barney Fife-esque deputy (Connor Paolo), and a local rancher (Jon Proudstar) with a full tank of gas.

The first hour or so of the film carefully sets up all the chess pieces before the plot predictably descends into multiple gunshots, double-crosses, and a lot of dead bodies. That’s not exactly a detractor as this is always how these things go – what ultimately holds The Last Stop in Yuma County back from being a truly good crime picture are the little details. The characters and dialogue are a little flat here, and besides Cummings‘ knife salesman, none are particularly interesting or unique creations. We’ve seen all these guys and gals before, often in better movies with more compelling motivations. If there was ever a movie released in the past five years that I would love to remake, it would be this. The overall premise and plot heightening are great and genuinely unpredictable, but they’re served by shallow characters we ultimately don’t care about and dialogue that’s trying way too hard. I’d actually love to see what Tarantino himself would do with this. Grade: B- ($5 rental on VOD)

No Way Up

I wasn’t expecting much from No Way Up even though the premise sounded intriguing – a commercial flight crashes into the ocean, and the survivors get stuck in an air pocket at the back of the plane as it gradually sinks lower and lower into the Pacific. When it seems like maybe they can find a way to swim to the surface, a gaggle of ravenous sharks begin circling the trapped fuselage looking for their next meal. The trailer for No Way Up teases dumb fun, but the movie only delivers on the dumb part. Sure, this is a very low-budget production and I expected the effects to be cheesy, but I didn’t expect the narrative to be so aggressively dull.

Instead of focusing on action or suspense, as you would for a movie about sharks attacking an airplane, the film spends most of its runtime introducing you to a smorgasbord of unlikeable, one-dimensional characters. They bicker with each other and offer dumb solutions to their problem. They also drop comedic one-liners that land about as successfully as the plane. Trapped in the fuselage, we have the terminally boring daughter of a U.S. Senator up for re-election and her two travel mates – her meek boyfriend and their obnoxious, homophobic edge lord friend. While the movie very clearly wants you to root for the idiot friend’s death, you actually end up rooting for all three to become shark food. Also traveling with the Senator’s daughter is her bodyguard played by the only name in the cast, Irish heavy Colm Meaney (Con Air, Under Siege, L4YER CAKE), who sleepwalks his way to an easy paycheck. Good for you, Colm, make that money! We also get a gay flight attendant who is the only character that didn’t make me want to peel my face off, and a little girl and her grandma.

In the end, very few survive and most of the deaths happen off-screen. No Way Up ultimately doesn’t fail because of its lack of budget but because it never fully leans into the ridiculousness of its premise. It should be fun and goofy, but the movie takes itself so seriously you cringe at its sincerity. It’s one step above an Asylum picture and not worth your time. Grade: D- (AMC+)