Kong: Skull Island

Kong: Skull Island poster

Kong: Skull Island

Apocalypse Kong

You would be well within your rights to have deliberately skipped Kong: Skull Island when it was in theaters. Every sequel and reboot of King Kong after the original 1933 film has been disappointing. Even Peter Jackson's 2005 remake while better than most pales in comparison to the black and white classic of six decades prior. And that's before we even talk about how many other tedious CGI monster films there've been lately.

But if you did skip it - you might want to go back and check it out. One of my favorite parts of the original 1933 King Kong are the scenes on Skull Island where soldiers armed with modern firearms and grenades have to take on the dinosaurs of the island. I always wanted to see an entire movie of that. I always thought a huge opportunity was lost to follow up the film Jurassic Park III with a special forces search-and-destroy mission like the movie Aliens except with dinosaurs. Well Kong: Skull Island is that film.

Some really memorable characters like Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a mercenary named Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), a photojournalist peacenik (Brie Larson), a WWII MIA vet (John C. Reilly). and a cryptozoologist (John Goodman) lead a rag-tag group of scientists and soldiers (read: monster chow) on a mission to a newly discovered island in the South Pacific in 1973.

If you can't tell from the obvious homage in the poster above, Kong: Skull Island derives its inspiration not just from the King Kong films, but from Apocalypse Now as well. Featuring music by Jefferson Airplane, Black Sabbath, The Stooges, The Hollies, and that staple of Vietnam-era films, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Kong: Skull Island is an obvious precursor of more to come. But it's been a dozen years since the 2005 King Kong. The custodians of the Kong franchise could've done what so many superhero franchises have done and just cranked out yet another remake fo the original. Instead they went with a fresh take on the material - and we should all be glad they did.

**** out of *****

Rampage

Rampage - yes, it's exactly what you expect

Rampage

I have to confess, I love giant monster movies. That's why one of my all-time favorite arcade games is Rampage. I remember the first time I saw it in the mid-1980s. You get to play a giant monster on a rampage. Unlike most multiplayer arcade games where you either fight the other players (Street Fighter) or cooperate with them to achieve a goal (Gauntlet), Rampage had no rules it was a giant sandbox of buildings to destroy, helicopters to smash, and people to eat. You want to attack the other monsters? You can. You want to go around stomping on cars? You can do that too. It was an unapologetic homage to films like King Kong and Godzilla - there was no deeper meaning to it.

And that is what makes Rampage so great, or terrible depending on your point of view. It may very well be the best movie adaptation of a video game yet (a low bar I know). It promises very little. There will be the three classic monsters from the game, Lizzie the giant lizard, Ralph the giant wolf, and George the giant gorilla, and they will rampage and destroy stuff. And like the video game, it delivers exactly that. No more, no less.

Well, that's not entirely true - it delivers a little more - Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a primatologist (stop laughing!), a shady genetics research company that might as well be the same one from the Jurassic Park movies, and a bunch of other forgettable characters. Actually it's a little better than that - the giant monsters are actually created using CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) or the latest "genetic editing" technique en vogue - so points to the film for injecting some actual science fiction, and while the acting is mostly bad but unimportant, except for Dwayne Johnson's trademark one-liners, it's worth mentioning that Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a real standout as a government agent that freely admits he's an a-hole.

I could go into more detail, but any more I tell you will just spoil what little plot there is. And make no mistake the plot is not bad - just simple. Like the video game. And for some of us, that's good enough. Now shut up - Tokyo, New York, London, San Francisco, D.C., and L.A. get destroyed all the time. It's time to see a bunch of giant monsters rampaging through Chicago.

***1/2 out of *****

The Mysterians

The Mysterians movie poster

The Mysterians

Japan began making science fiction films with Gojira (Godzilla) in 1954. Most of the earliest Japanese sci-fi movies were kaiju (giant monster) movies. There's some debate as to whether The Mysterians qualifies as a kaiju film, it does feature a giant robot, but technically kaiju refer to creatures, however since giant robots have since become a staple of the genre, it's up to personal preference.

Regardless of how you classify it, The Mysterians is one of the earliest Japanese science fiction pictures, and as such should be graded on a curve. The special effects in these films generally rely on extensive use of what are obviously scale models, and one's ability to enjoy them is directly related to one's ability to suspend disbelief in viewing them.

But for those who can make the necessary leap, The Mysterians is an enjoyable pastiche of early Cold War American sci-fi tropes packaged in a fast moving story about aliens who come to earth to conquer and breed with human females. And effects aside, The Mysterians actually outdoes many of it's U.S. B-movie counterparts like Mars Needs Women.

King Kong vs. Godzilla

Godzilla. King Kong. Let's get it on like... uh... Donkey Kong?

King Kong vs. Godzilla

A fight 30 years in the making

I'm a sucker for a great kaiju film, who isn't? So, like every fan of the genre, I have to mention what was the ultimate fan service giant kaiju film of the early 60s - King Kong vs. Godzilla.

Kaiju films are a genre unto themselves in Japan. For those unfamiliar with the term, "kaiju" roughly translates from the Japanese as "strange beast", but is generally used to refer to monsters, and often of the giant variety. The origins of the giant kaiju movies lies with the 1933 film King Kong. The  Japanese movie studio Toho wanted to create their own version of King Kong, so they created a giant gorilla / whale / lizard hybrid whose name was a portmanteau of those words in Japanese: "Gojira" that name became Westernized as "Godzilla". The original Gojira was a massive success which spawned numerous other giant monster movies, so it was only a matter of time before someone decided to bring the two grandaddies of the genre together. (Actually the behind-the-scenes story behind how Kong and Godzilla came together onscreen could fill a book, but I digress)

Now while the original King Kong, and the original Gojira are both A-list classics, few of the other kaiju films even come close. Sadly during the 1960s and 1970s Toho and its imitators cranked out scores of giant monster movies that are generally an hour + of boring exposition followed by the giant battle scene in the last 20 minutes. Not so with King Kong vs. Godzilla. This movie is pretty much goofy fun from start to finish. It suffers from a lot of silly pseudoscience, poor translations, and plot holes you could hide a Godzilla in... but if you're a fan of the genre, you really have to check it out.

*** out of *****

Los Bandaleros

Los Bandaleros is The Fast and the Furious film you probably never saw

Most people don't know that Vin Diesel started his career as a director, and a pretty decent one too. Following the runaway success of The Fast and the Furious (2001) he's been squarely pigeonholed as an action star, so it's kind of fitting that The Fast and the Furious franchise marked his return to the director's chair after more than a decade.

And, unlike the other The Fast and the Furious short film, Turbo Charged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious, which was pretty much just a glorified music video probably culled from the opening credits of 2 Fast 2 Furious in the interest of shortening the runtime, Los Bandaleros is actually worth searching out.

At over 20 minutes, it's also much longer than that other short and, surprisingly, there are no car chases in Los Bandaleros. Instead it focuses on a day-in-the-life of Dominic Toretto, living in exile in the Dominican Republic. It reintroduces Han and Letty, and sets up the heist that will open Fast & Furious.

This is a wonderful little short with a lot of heart. It's mostly in Dominican Spanish with English subtitles, and beautifully shot whether it be scenes in a Dominican prison, the barrios, the Salsa clubs, the open road, or the beautiful Dominican beaches. And under all that is a humanist message - the film revolves around how the very real gas shortage that was occurring at the time was impacting the poor people of the Dominican Republic.

This short film makes us miss Vin Diesel the director, and begs the question, why hasn't he never been tapped to direct one of the full length F&F films?

Thankfully, for those who might have missed it, Los Bandoleros can be found on many free streaming sites online (just Google it).

Fast & Furious

Poster from Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious

Low on gas, the Fast and Furious franchise begins to remake itself

The Fast and the Furious has been a strange ride so far. It started with a Roger Corman movie in the 1950s about a driver on the lam escaping to Mexico under cover of a car race. Then almost a half century later the title rights are secured, but instead of a remake, 2001's The Fast and the Furious remakes surfer / heist film Point Break with custom cars with budding star Vin Diesel, and a new franchise is born.

But when it came time for the first sequel, Diesel drops out, the location is moved from SoCal to Miami, and it somehow morphs from a heist film to a car-guys-take-on-international-drug-kingpin story. This was a mistake since Bad Boys already did it better, and Paul Walker and Tyrese Gibson are no substitute for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence even if they do have cooler cars.

Having ripped-off Point Break and Bad Boys for the first two films, the series then attempts to recreate the magic of The Karate Kid in the third film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, with some modicum of success.

So what's next? Reboot the franchise! Now just called Fast & Furious the series returns to L.A. in a remake of 2 Fast 2 Furious, another car-guys-take-on-international-drug-kingpin-story. Except what film will the fourth in the series pick to rip off? Bad Boys II, of course! For those unfamiliar with the plot of Bad Boys II, briefly, it takes place several years after the previous film and the two guys attempt to take down a cartel but, after a botched drug raid, (and of course a firefight and car chase) the pair take the battle to the kingpin himself south of the border (in this case Cuba). Complicating things is tension between the two men because one is dating the other's sister. It's also revealed one of them secretly knew the other's girlfriend was in danger, secretly working undercover for the DEA. This is pretty much the exact plot of Fast & Furious, substituting L.A. and Mexico for Miami and Cuba.

Widely regarded one of the weakest in the series, Fast & Furious seems to lack the spark of the original, or even Tokyo Drift. Certainly the idea of taking a film ostensibly about street racing, and removing most of the street racing (the most notable car chase here is through some tunnels in the desert) probably wasn't the wisest decision. Furthermore, it's strangely missing most of the eye and ear candy which give the series it's charm: there's hardly any bikini babes, a boring soundtrack by the likes of Pitbull and Robin Thicke, and honestly not that many cool cars, with a fair number of generic pickups and whatnot driven by cartel thugs.

**1/2 out of *****

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift poster

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

The misfit third 'Furious' film was better than we thought at the time

First let's get this out of the way - fans of the Fast and Furious franchise hate The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Probably because it least resembles all the other Furious films, and pretty boy star Paul Walker is nowhere to be found. In a way, it's kind of detached from the others, but is that really a bad thing? In some ways the film's greatest strength is the freshness it brings by serving up a slice of a different kind of street racing culture than the others - in this case the Japanese "drifting" style of racing on winding tracks.

The story is about a high school kid who has to move in with a single parent and attend a new school thousands of miles from home. On his first night there he runs afoul of the locals by hitting on the girlfriend of their leader who publicly humiliates him. A local Japanese guy takes him under his wing and teaches him the skills he needs. He then goes to the bad guys lair and confronts them, but gets them to agree to settle it in a competition.

If that sounds like the plot to The Karate Kid, that's because it is. If there's one thing The Fast and the Furious franchise does well, it's rip-off other, better movies. Remember this is the franchise that began with a remake of Point Break that just substituted street racing for surfing. So when you really get down to it, the F&F franchise is all about the window dressing: car show models in booty shorts, party music, and of course fast cars. And on those three essentials, it delivers.

Basically aside from star power, nearly every criticism you can level at The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift could equally be said about any other film in the series. Vacuous - yup. Bad acting - check. Annoying wisecracking hip hop sidekick - yo. Celebration of materialism and conspicuous consumption - indeed. Actors that look way too old to be doing this shit - yeah, that too. But on those three basic ingredients: cars, girls, and music, Tokyo Drift has nothing to be ashamed of. The cars of course are generally of the candy colored Japanese subcompact variety, but a few old fashioned American muscle cars do make appearances. On the attractive female front, the film co-stars Peruvian born Nathalie Kelley, arguably the hottest "hot chick" of all the Furious films. And with a soundtrack that features DJ Shadow,  Kid Rock, The 5, 6, 7, 8s, Shonen Knife, The Crystal Method, Atari Teenage Riot, Prodigy and others, it boasts the best soundtrack of the eight(!) Fast and Furious movies to date.

If sitting through what feels like to two hours of import auto trade show promo videos sounds like torture, you're going to hate The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, it wasn't made for you. But those who like that kind of thing may find the much-maligned Tokyo Drift was actually the unsung apotheosis of the F&F franchise.

**1/2 out of *****

The Fast and the Furious

Lobby card for The Fast and the Furious

The Fast and the Furious (1954)

"When a Wanted Man - Meets a Wanting Woman!"

Roger Corman's career really took off when he negotiated a three picture deal with the company that would become American International Pictures (AIP). In what is sort of a remake of his first picture Highway Dragnet, Corman wrote and Produced (and Directed the Second Unit - and stunt drove!) in a film about Frank Webster (John Ireland) a truck driver wrongly convicted for murder who kidnaps race car driver Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone) and flees the country in her Jaguar XK120 via an international sports car race that crosses the U.S. / Mexico border.

The film suffers from John Ireland splitting his time behind the wheel and behind the camera, and the hokey romance seems to lack any real chemistry. In fact all the finest performances are by the day players in supporting roles. And while it's true Roger Corman would go on to produce better race car films (including Death Race 2000, and Ron Howard's directorial debut, Grand Theft Auto), The Fast and the Furious is worth seeking out because the story itself (one of only a handful Corman wrote in his prodigious producing career) isn't bad, and the race scenes are some of the best that had ever been filmed up to that time.

The film was remade - no, not as the 2001 Paul Walker / Vin Diesel film that purchased the rights to the title - as a 1994 action-comedy starring Charlie Sheen called The Chase.

**1/2 out of *****

"Night of the Whirring Death"

Doctor Loveless invents the electric toy train

***1/2

(Feb. 18, 1966)

The twentieth episode of The Wild Wild West was a bit of a Christmas episode (even though it didn't make it to air util February). It shows a definite Dickens influence.

Dr. Loveless (Michael Dunn is back again, along with his assistant Voltaire (Richard Kiel). This time he plans to use toys to take over California and make it a place for children (if only he could see 100 years into the future!).

The episode has some great things to watch for, including in the supporting cast, Norman Fell (Mr. Roper on "Three's Company"), and not one but two babes, Pamela Austin and Barbara Nichols.

Other highlights:

• anachronism: Loveless invents the electric toy train - then blowing it up Gomez Addams style
• Artemus undercover as an opera singer in one of the episodes 2 musical numbers
• tech watch: the wax cylinder gramaphone
• anachronism: a Raggedy Ann doll about 40 years too early
• campy fun: Loveless' distinctly modern looking toys

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Finally a Spider-Man film that isn't a reboot

Spider-Man: Homecoming

The title Spider-Man: Homecoming is a bit of a double entendre. The plot involves the Spider-man's alter ego, Peter Parker attending his school's homecoming dance - but it's also a meta reference to the character, long the property of licensees (Columbia, and SONY) finally coming home to Marvel Studios to be integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). While the first two Spider-Man films, by low-brow auteur Sam Raimi, remain among the best superhero films ever made, the series stumbled on the third installment, and a hasty reboot and sequel (complete with Jamie Foxx playing a cringe-worthy villain reminiscent of Richard Pryor in Superman III) continued the downward spiral. SONY maintained a tight rein on the character, and wasn't going to let go, no matter how many times it flopped at the box office. But then came the SONY email hack, and when the dust settled, the way was paved for a joint venture Spider-Man film that would satisfy both studios.

Without creating another superfluous reboot, The Spider-Man Homecoming quietly "resets" Peter Parker's age to 15 and picks up the story sometime early in his crime-fighting career. And once again we have a truer-to-the-comics Peter who has to juggle school, dating, and web-slinging. And wouldn't you know, his biggest challenge

But the real highlight here is Michael Keaton as the antagonist, The Vulture. At first it might seem a little disappointing to see a healthy looking Keaton playing one of the few scrawny, elderly supervillains in the comics, but the reimagining is so worth it. Standing in what is undeniably a parallel to the post 9/11 Ground Zero site, Keaton is completely believable, and sympathetic even, as a NYC demolitions worker whose company is nearly bankrupted by corrupt government over-reach. He retools his demolitions company into a purveyor of destructive implements made from salvaged alien Kree technology, saving the best - a set of flying robotic wings - for himself.

If that reminds you of Keaton's recent appearance as Birdman, you're probably not alone. In another meta-twist, there seems to be a distinct reference to Keaton's Batman in Birdman, and to Keaton's Birdman in his portrayal of Vulture.

Spider-Man: Homecoming, feels like a homecoming in another way too. While all of the previous Spider-Man films also take place in NYC, this one feels the most authentically New York-ish. There really isn't the kind of rampant crime that existed in the city at the time the comic was originally created, and Peter discovers this as he tries to patrol for crime, only to discover nothing worse than bicycle theft. Previous films featured such recognizable locations as Times Square, The Flatiron Building, and The Brooklyn Bridge, this film features, in addition to the aforementioned fictional destruction site that resembles Ground Zero, the Staten Island Ferry, and locations in other boroughs like Brooklyn and especially Forest Hills, Queens, home of Peter Parker and Aunt May. In a perfect pairing of music to location the film uses music from The Ramones, a band actually from Forest Hills that has long been associated with comic books, and Spider-Man in particular (why didn't anyone think of this before?) Though the filmmakers must be excused for using "Blitzkrieg Bop" rather than The Ramones excellent cover of the "Spider-Man Theme Song" instead.

**** out of *****

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Agents of Hydra

Agents of Hydra was the third and final story arc of Season 4

 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Agents of Hydra

Final story arc of season 4 does not disappoint

Do you remember the Star Trek episode, Mirror Mirror? The writers of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. do. In that episode, the crew visit a parallel universe where they meet the evil versions of themselves. That's exactly what happens in the third and final major story arc of season 4, "Agents of Hydra". This is familiar territory for Marvel, while it was D.C. Comics that first added the concept of parallel worlds to the pop culture landscape with the now infamous "Flash of Two Worlds" storyline, it was Marvel that ran with it in a regular comic called What if..? that explored alternate versions of it's heroes and villains. In tribute to that monthly comic that ran from 1977-1984, the first episode of this story arc is named, appropriately, "What if...".

Following on the heels of the "LMD" story arc, AIDA has captured most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and has them unconscious, living in a virtual world connected directly to their brains. It's up to Quake and Simmons to enter the Framework - think The Matrix - and find some red pill to snap them out of it. There they find a Neo-Nazi America (shades of another Star Trek episode), ruled by AIDA and a Josef Mengle-esque Fitz.

Like the arc where Simmons was on another planet, this arc is shot with a limited color palette and also tends to get a little relentlessly dark toward the middle. But at times it's also a very incisive commentary on the state of America today. And if that's not enough, it also features some great acting by all the primary cast members in twists on their usual characters.

***1/2 out of *****

Jonah Hex "Night of the White Lotus"

Mei Ling returns to the series

Jonah Hex: "Night of the White Lotus"

After taking their infant son and leaving back in issue No. 53, Jonah Hex's wife Mei Ling was been absent from the series for several issues. But as evidenced by this issue, neither has been far from the others' mind.

When Jonah encounters a strange Chinese visitor from Nanking named Wu Song Phat, however, the stage seems to be set for some adventure that will reunite them.

"Night of the White Lotus" isn't particularly notable as the series goes, but as the setup of an arc that deals with the long running Jonah / Mei Ling relationship, it's pretty important to Jonah's character arc.

The backup El Diablo story, "The Hypnotist and the Devil" reads like something out of the Silver Age Weird Western stories in that supernatural powers are all-powerful and every bad guy gets his comeuppance. Think of an early Spectre story set in the Old West and you have a pretty good idea of what it's like.
**1/2 out of *****

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD is the second major story arc of Season 4

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD

In Season 4, the best season of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to this point follows up the excellent "Ghost Rider" story line,  with "LMD" which switches gears from the supernatural to the high-tech. Despite Agent MacKenzie's dire predictions that any attempt to create autonomous androids inevitably leads to a robot uprising, Fitz nevertheless assists Dr. Radcliffe in developing them. As predicted, the First Law of Robotics pretty much goes out the window fast.

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has touched on some robot and android related issues, particularly with Ultron and Vision, "LMD" takes advantage of the longer form TV medium to go deeper.

LMD stands for "Life Model Decoy", androids that have been part of the S.H.I.E.L.D. comics since the mid-1960s, and it's interesting to see their long-awaited integration into the show. While we experienced something similar in past seasons with the face-changing mask, now the show goes whole hog with the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, who-can-you-trust situations.

All-in-all, one of the series' better story arcs.

**** out of *****

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider appears in Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; "Ghost Rider"

Ghost Rider rides again in Season four's first major story arc

When last we left the Ghost Rider saga, Johnny Blaze rode off into the Turkish sunset after saving a young boy. Now he has reappeared in Los Angeles where he's possessed Robbie Reyes, a young latino who drives a supercharged '69 Dodge Charger (why doesn't Ghost Rider ever possess some random dude who drives a beat up old Ford Taurus?).

Normally I hate reboots where the main character is drastically changed, but I am O.K. when it's with characters like Green Lantern, or Ghost Rider, which are really just offices held by different people. So I didn't mind Marvel's obvious attempt to bring diversity to its roster and court the massively growing Latin-American segment of the populace, but I have to admit to being more than a little surprised and pleased to see him popping up in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Ghost Rider story arc comprises the first 9 episodes of Season 4. Up to this point the supernatural in the on screen Marvel Universe has been comprised of the Jack Kirby, Asgardian, is-it-really-magic-or-is-it-science-so-advanced-it-seems-like-magic variety. With the release of the film Doctor Strange, magic proper is introduced, and in the Ghost Rider arc, the infamous Darkhold from the comics appears. But Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. dials it back a bit, keeping it still a bit ambiguous - is it really magic, or is it inter-dimensional travel. Although, as Coulson puts it at one point when talking to Fitz:

Coulson: He claims he made a deal with the devil.

Fitz: Which is nonsense.
Coulson: You know, the rationalist in me wants to agree, but the skull on fire makes a pretty compelling argument for "Hail Satan".

The Ghost Rider story arc represents a welcome change of pace for the series. Frankly, the Human vs. Inhuman storyline was starting to wear pretty thin, especially since the X-Men films and the Heroes TV shows already explored the concept pretty extensively. It also takes this show into really high end superpower territory (really, can Ghost Rider even be killed?), but fortunately the showrunners have wisely chosen to make this a complete arc in only a third of the season rather than stretch it to a full 24 episodes.

***1/2 / *****