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 *****