Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire

When I originally saw the trailer for Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire I thought Wait didn't we already see this movie? Everything in the trailer looked like something from Adam Wingard's 2021 offering Godzilla vs. Kong. As it turns out, this is a sequel to that movie, and it has new monsters if not new visuals.

 

I love monsters, so yes I went to see this movie, but I didn't like Godzilla vs. Kong, so I also went in knowing what I was going to get and expecting it to be nonsense. The monsters were cool. I was especially into the new pink Gojira and the Ice Princess Gojira. But y’all this movie is so dumb. The script, especially, is so. fucking. dumb. Honestly the most fun part of the movie was making jokes about it with my companion.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but Mothra shows up as a kind of hippy Grandmother Willow in act three, and Brian Tyree Henry’s explanations of the faux-Indigenous science and engineering in this movie are so stupid they make Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs seem like Oppenheimer by comparison. 

 One thing I did find cute: Godzilla curls up to sleep in the Coliseum. I guess we know how often he thinks of the Roman Empire.

Oscar Nominations 2023: 9 of 9 (with Final Predictions)

I just barely squeezed through! Neon finally released Perfect Days for VOD on Tuesday, and so I was able to watch it last night. None of these movies will win on Sunday, but they are our last three:

Perfect Days

1 nomination

• International Feature: Japan (Drive My Car, Shoplifters, Departures, The Twilight Samurai, Muddy River, Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior, Sandakan No. 8, Dodes'ka-den, Portrait of Chieko, Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidon, Koto, Immortal Love, The Burmese Harp, Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, Gate of Hell, Rashomon)

Director: Wim Wenders

Cast: Yakusho Kōji, Nakano Arisa, Yamada Aoi, Emoto Tokio, Asō Yumi, Ishikawa Sayuri, Miura Tomokazu, Tanaka Min

This is very good. It is a simple, quiet film (the main character, Hirayama, hardly speaks at all) about approaching each day with happiness. We do not know, really, what has happened to Hirayama before the film, and though we gradually learn a bit about his previous life, we mostly just spend time in the present. This, of course, is what the film is about, and Hirayama greets each day positively and richly. While I was watching this film, I felt like I got it, like the film's ideas made sense to me, but I think Perfect Days is better and better the more I think about it. It is sticking with me, and asking me to think more deeply about what it showed me. This is a very good movie.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #27 out of 82

Das Lehrerzimmer (The Teachers' Lounge)

1 nomination

• International Feature: Germany (All Quiet on the Western Front, Never Look Away, Toni Erdmann, The White Ribbon, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, Downfall, Nowhere in Africa, Beyond Silence, Schtonk, The Nasty Girl)

Director: İlker Çatak

Cast: Leonie Benesch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Rafael Stachowiak, Sarah Bauerett, Kathrin Wehlisch, Leonard Stettnisch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Katharina M. Schubert, Uygar Tamer, Özgür Karadeniz, Tim Porath, Kersten Reimann

İlker Çatak’s film is a modern nightmare of right and wrong set in a middle school. It’s truly terrifying. We watch a young, righteous teacher navigate between moral choices but seemingly misunderstand the human beings in her community. The Teachers' Lounge is a tense, ticking time bomb of a movie structured like one of Asghar Farhadi’s films, where a seemingly small injustice spins the characters out of control and into a terrifying world. The Farhadi structure is important here, because the way İlker Çatak and Johannes Duncker's script works is really modeled after movies like A Separation and The Salesman, but I don't think Çatak works his way toward finality of any kind, and the end of The Teachers' Lounge is unsatisfying. It is an exciting ride, though, with its taut, horror-film score and its building tension. Good stuff.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #47 out of 82

Io Capitano

1 nomination

• International Feature: Italy (The Hand of God, The Great Beauty, Don't Tell, Life Is Beautiful, The Starmaker, Mediterraneo, Open Doors, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, La Famiglia, Three Brothers, Dimenticare Venezia, The New Monsters, A Special Day, Seven Beauties, Scent of a Woman, Amarcord, Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, La Ragazza con la Pistola, The Battle of Algiers, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 8 1/2, The Four Days of Naples, La Grande Guerra, Kapò, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Shoeshine)

Director: Matteo Garrone

Cast: Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, Issaka Sawadogo, Hichem Yacoubi, Doodou Sagna, Khady Sy, Venus Gueye, Cheick Oumar Diaw, Joe Lassana, Mamadou Sani, Bamar Kane, Beatrice Gnonko, Flaure B.B. Kabore

This definitely tugged at my heartstrings, but it felt like an Italian movie from the 1990s. Très romantique! It has a kind of triumphal, soaring, beat-the-odds quality that I associate with a kind 1990s filmmaking. This is a grueling portrait of young men attempting to leave their home in Senegal for what they believe will be a better life in Italy. The odyssey from Senegal to Mali to Niger to Libya is insane and almost unimaginably dangerous. And then there's the boat ride to Italy, which is also nearly impossible. This is an extraordinary portrait of young men (and the many, many other people who the film pictures only briefly), who are not given the freedom to move through the world, who are restricted by government violence and militamen, who are exploited by grifters because governments do not let people move freely. Still, the movie didn't quite work for me because it treats all of these things rather like small obstacles for our main characters that don't need their own interrogation. The world these young men have to navigate has been created by irresponsible governments in all of these countries (including Italy), but because we focus on the boys – their wonder, their difficulties, their tenacity – Garrone's portrait of this world takes on a romantic hue. Io Capitano is very well made, but this kind of thing is not what I want from Matteo Garrone and his usual portraits of crime.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: 2024 release – unranked

My earlier Oscar posts for 2023:

1. Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, Maestro

2. Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, The Holdovers, American Fiction

3. Napoleon, Past Lives, Nyad, Society of the Snow

4. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, The Creator, Rustin, May December

5. The Color Purple, El Conde, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

6. Animated Features

7. Godzilla Minus One, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Golda, American Symphony, Flamin' Hot

8. Animated Short Films

My Predictions for Sunday:

• Best Picture: Oppenheimer
• Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
• Best Actor: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
• Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
• Best Original Screenplay: David Hemingson, The Holdovers
• Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
• Best Supporting Actress: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
• Best International Feature: United Kingdom, The Zone of Interest
• Best Animated Feature: The Boy and the Heron
• Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol
• Best Film Editing: Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer
• Best Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
• Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, Barbie
• Best Original Score: Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon
• Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Barbie
• Best Sound: Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers, The Zone of Interest
• Best Visual Effects: Nojima Tatsuji, Shibuya Kiyoko, Takahashi Masaki, and Yamazaki Takashi, Godzilla Minus One
• Best Makeup & Hairstyling: Mark Coulier, Nadia Stacey, and Josh Weston, Poor Things
• Best Original Song: Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell, Barbie
• Best Animated Short Film: War Is Over!
• Best Documentary Short Film: The ABCs of Book Banning
• Best Live-action Short Film: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Oscar Nominations 2023: 8 of 9 (Animated Shorts)

Here are the five animated short films. (I've decided to skip the documentary short films and the live-action short films – they're always so bad, and I've already suffered through Golda and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.)

War Is Over!

1 nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Dave Mullins

This is a sweet fantasy in the realm of Joyeux Noël, where the soldiers from both sides in World War I have a relationship with one another and don't really want to kill one another, but the warlords and the ruling class push a war. In this little film, the men play chess by writing their moves on paper and then sending a pigeon to the other side (this is not actually possible, but for the sake of this fantasy, I guess we accept it). Anyway, this is sweet but very much a fantasy, which is why I guess I expect it to win.

Will win: Animated Short Film

Could win: N/A

My rating: #4 out of 5

Ninety-five Senses

1 nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess

Cast: Tim Blake Nelson

Easily the best film of the group, this beautiful movie is an exploration of the five senses by an older gentleman who tells us things he knows about the five senses. More is revealed about the man as the film progresses, and we learn about him and the choices that he has made – and about the choices he hasn't made but have been made for him. The film is a powerful, extraordinary description of human being, of bravery in the face of death, and of the terrible power of the state. I absolutely wept, and I loved this so much. It deserves to win, and maybe it will.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Short Film

My rating: #1 out of 5

Pachyderme (Pachyderm)

1 nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Stéphanie Clément

Cast: Christa Théret

This is a story of a young girl staying with her grandmother and grandfather in the country. It's mysterious and scary, and takes us to unexpected places. The animation style is beautiful but slightly surreal, almost in a kind of art nouveau kind of way. We experience things with the young protagonist and aren't sure what's real or not. The film clarifies at the end, though, and we understand what has been happening and why the surrealism is there, as well. The movie moves in dream logic, and that logic is smart and well crafted and beautiful.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Short Film

My rating: #2 out of 5

Letter to a Pig

1 nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Tal Kantor

Cast: Alexander Peleg, Moriyah Meerson, Ayelet Margalit

I will have the most to say about this movie, perhaps. In Tal Kantor's movie, a survivor of the Shoah escaped from the Nazis and hid with pigs. The pigs protected him, and so he has written a letter to the pig, which he reads to a bunch of kids in a Jewish school. In the letter, however, he begins to spout racist hate, saying other people are no better than animals, and he seemingly forgets that he began by praising an animal. The children take this in with varying levels of boredom, but we move into a fantasy in which they find a pig and torture it. The film then shifts again and the pig gets younger and younger and younger until the protagonist – a young girl – pets the pig, snuggles with it, and then lets the pig go. In other words, the plot of Letter to a Pig is very interesting! But the film is not, actually, and I liked it the least of all of these. The reason for this is that the animation is startlingly ugly, and I'm not sure why. The people are partially drawn and drawn to be uglier than usual. There are parts of each body that move into a kind of beautiful realism, but those are frequently just a hand or a strand of hair. Mostly we're stuck with ugly drawings of people doing awful things. It's a film with a central idea that I really liked, but I just could not enjoy this. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Short

My rating: #5 out of 5

Our Uniform

1 nomination

• Animated Short Film

Director: Yegane Moghaddam

Cast: Moghaddam

This is perhaps the simplest and most unassuming of the films. Yegane Moghaddam's movie is animated on clothes, which you can see in the still above. She tells the story of growing up in Iran and being required to cover her hair. Even more, the film is about the ways that we separate girls from boys, and transform them into "females" instead of people who might have a future and be anything they wish. This is not an exciting or bold movie in any way, but it is simple and clear and charming, and I enjoyed it.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #3 out of 5

More posts coming soon:

1. Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, Maestro

2. Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, The Holdovers, American Fiction

3. Napoleon, Past Lives, Nyad, Society of the Snow

4. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, The Creator, Rustin, May December

5. The Color Purple, El Conde, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

6. Animated Features

7. Godzilla Minus One, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Golda, American Symphony, Flamin' Hot

9. Perfect Days, The Teachers' Lounge, Io Capitano