ONCE UPON A TIME....IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)
Quentin's Love Letter to the 60s

*****

I'm a child of the Sixties.  I grew up watching the crappy westerns that permeated television - but to me they were not crappy.  Have Gun Will Travel and Branded were among my favorites.  So, when Quentin Tarantino set his latest movie, "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" in these halcyon days, I was quite excited.  I was more excited when I heard the bare minimum of the plot which involved television westerns and the Manson Family.  I said "okay, let's see how Tarantino wraps these together."  And boy, oh boy, does he.

Up front I will say this movie is not only one of Quentin Tarantino’s best movies. It is certainly one of his most audacious movies, if not one of his most personal movies - a love letter to the age of Hollywood he loves and evidently misses. Wickedly funny yet tense owing to the movie’s time setting and my self-imposed expectations, the first hour and a half moseyed along like the TV westerns it so amiably recreates until it explodes in true Tarantino fashion.  I sat in my seat saying "where the hell is this movie going?  Is it about filmmaking?  Is it about Manson?"  I calmed myself down and let Tarantino take me on his ride, along with his customary foot fetishes and references to his prior movies (Can you say Antonio Margheriti?).

However as good as the writing and directing is, this movie truly works because of its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt - and a dog named Brandy that nearly steals the show.  It's been a long time since I've enjoyed the buddy aspect of a movie as much as I did here and with these two megastars seemingly going with the flow as equals and delivering their best performances in years (I think both will be nominated for an Oscar and that Pitt will win) the movie just had the easy-breezy feel of the Swinging 60s.

 

Brandy the Scene Stealing Dog

DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, a soon to be over the hill television actor who had a lead on a TV western that was long since cancelled but who has been relegated to weekly guest spots on TV shows as the bad guy. He is the dozens of actors I watched as a kid on TV, including Jack Cassidy, Stuart Whitman and Patrick O’Neal who showed up as "special guest stars," but I digress. Rick exhibits all of the insecurities you would think that a has been might exhibit. He may or may not have been up for the lead role in The Great Escape but didn’t get it. 

Rick Dalton in a guest stint on the FBI and in a Western Film

Brad Pitt plays Cliff Booth, Rick’s best friend and stunt double. Brad Pitt is channeling his inner Aldo Raine. Cool as a cucumber, Cliff exhibits the machismo of the sixties- Cliff IS the Marlboro man.  And while Cliff is Rick's best friend, sometimes it appears that Rick doesn't know it.  To him, Cliff is a confidante but he is also a driver, a handyman and a housesitter.  It's not until the end of the movie does Rick realize what a good friend Cliff has been.  Cliff’s constant pep talks to Rick to boost the latter’s confidence ("Hey! You're Rick fucking Dalton, don't you forget it".) show that Cliff thinks they are best buds even if Rick may look at him as a friendly employee.   And it's the relationship between the two of these guys that is the singular focus of the picture.   Everything else in the movie drives the plot but this is a movie about friendship in a town where true friendships are hard to come by.

 

Cliff hanging with the Manson Family

This movie belongs to Pitt and DiCaprio in a couple of star making performances (ha-ha) but they are surrounded by a supporting cast that helps propel the story along.

Margot Robbie has a great, but smaller role, as Sharon Tate, fresh off the success of her role in Valley of the Dolls and now in a larger funnier role in Dean Martin’s The Wrecking Crew, which she goes into a theater to see, loving the adulation the audience shows when her character is on the screen.  More importantly she is Rick Dalton’s next door neighbor along with her husband Roman Polanski (insert history lesson here).   

Kurt Russell, who looks like he stepped out of "Death Proof" pulls double duty as a stunt coordinator and narrator and based on articles that I’ve read helped give the movie its real 60s feel.  There are smaller cameos by Bruce Dern as the old creepy George Spahn who owned a ranch where they used to film westerns but which has become a hangout for the Manson Family; Dakota Fanning, who plays Squeaky Fromme - wow!; Timothy Olyphant and the late great Luke Perry as a fellow actor; and, lastly but not least, Mike Moh as Bruce Lee in one of the funniest scenes in the movie.  And let's not forget the appearance of smaller character actor by the name of Al Pacino.  Anyone remember him?

 

Kurt Russell (of course)

Mike Moh as Bruce Lee

 

Minor Character Actor

But besides the writing, the direction and the acting the real star of this movie (besides Brandy the Dog)  is the production design. I felt like I was watching a movie from the sixties. I felt like when Brad Pitt was driving down the Hollywood Boulevard of 50 years ago, I was there with him.. And as to the cinematography, in a thoroughly Tarantinoesque move, DiCaprio is actually inserted into The Great Escape speaking with the Commandant of the prison camp and speaking McQueen’s lines as well as being inserted into an episode of the FBI.  These insertions were done seamlessly, matching the originals, giving a great air of authenticity.

Hollywood Boulevard Reimagined

I, personally, liked "Inglorious Basterds" better because well, you know, killing Nazis is good stuff but this movie is right at the top of the Tarantino oeuvre.

I need to see this movie again - I know there are a lot of visual and pop references I missed while focusing on the plot.  But I also need to see it again because it was Cinema, with a capital "C". It is pure Tarantino- unrestrained, unhinged, brutal and funny.

5/5 because why the hell not.   Hey! He's Quentin fucking Tarantino, don't you forget it.

APOLLO 11 THE MOVIE (2019) 
WHEN ASTRONAUTS WERE GODS

Rating *****

The Grateful Dead once sang:

Standing on the moon/I got no cobweb on my shoe/ Standing on the moon/ I'm feeling so alone and blue.




I have to think that is decidedly NOT how Neil Armstrong felt for the first 23 minutes he spent alone on the lunar surface.

The mark of a great movie is when you know the outcome yet are nevertheless held in rapt attention.

Using a lot of never before seen footage, along with original voice recordings and no narration, filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller has created a wondrous film. This regales a time when Astronauts were Gods.  In the picture below, they are just hanging out after being picked up at sea.  On takeoff, Buzz Aldrin's heart rate was 88 - I've been there walking up the stairs - Jeezaloo!!!!

The film is presented in a neat chronological order.   As Miller told it, "We did have kind of our own mission rules. We said, if it didn't happen on that day at that specific time, we're not using it."  And it works. The footage, which I am guessing is restored, was taken by not only people at NASA but by the Apollo 11 astronauts as well.  As a result, the flight crew was given honorary memberships in the American society of cinematographers.




The scenes in Mission Control are equally compelling and much of the footage looks restored.  the celebrating at each step as well as the normal workaday occurrences take place (such as discussing Chappaquiddick, which occurred at the same time)

Even the footage of Armstrong stepping out onto the lunar surface was from a different angle than the oft-seen TV Broadcast angle.

And one of my favorite clips that I had never seen before was Aldrin leaving the LEM, joking that he was “closing the hatch door, making sure it doesn’t lock”.   Good ol' Buzz!

My only regret is not seeing this on the big screen.
WATCH THE NEW DOCUMENTARY Apollo 11. IT IS NOW ON HULU

5/5

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998): In Honor of the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

RATING: *****

When I first watched Saving Private Ryan I really liked the movie, but I didn’t love it. Sure, the Normandy landing scene and the final battle scene are two of the most amazing scenes committed to film. For those scenes alone, Steven Spielberg deserved winning Best Director. But I couldn’t help but think that most of the middle of the movie was very reminiscent of A Walk In The Sun, the really good, but not brilliant, World War II picture detailing a military unit going through Italy in search of a bridge to blow up and in the course of their travails they encounter battle. But between battles, there is just a lot of talking. Sounds the same, right?

Luckily, and probably because Spielberg is one of my favorite directors, I stuck with the film and, after repeated viewings, have accorded it brilliant - if not legendary - status.

Because what I did not get at first was that the real terror of war was not the battle but the silence between the battles, that time when a soldier searched for some semblance of normalcy before the bullets began flying and mortars started exploding around them again.

Having never served, this was lost on me until I asked my dad who served in the Second World War. Dad got over to Europe just as the war ended and was part of the post-surrender occupation forces for the most part but he always had his guard up. “Michael,” he’d say, “you’d just never know when there’d be an unfriendly.” Dad is 92 and a half now and most of his marbles are missing but he can still talk about the war. And, by the way, he didn’t use the word “unfriendly”.

Saving Private Ryan takes its story from that of the Sullivan brothers, five brothers who served on the same ship in World War II and, when that ship was sunk, died together.

James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) has three brothers, two of whom died during the Normandy landing on June 6, 1944 and another one who died a week earlier in New Guinea. Chief of Staff General George Marshall plainly states that James Ryan is alive and he will be rescued and brought home to his mother.

Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) is recruited to take his platoon into France and find Ryan. Miller is Hanks and Hanks is Miller, an Everyman school teacher who doesn’t want to be there - he sobs in private and he has tremors in his hand - but for his men he is a rock. Forget about Forrest Gump or Philadelphia. Miller is Hanks’ most nuanced and fully actualized character.

The rest of the platoon is made up of actors who look the part, world weary and battle scarred. From Tom Sizemore as the platoon sergeant Horvath to Ed Burns as the platoon coward Rieben to Barry Pepper as the platoon sniper Jackson all of these actors look like the real deal, most likely owing to the boot camp training Spielberg sent all the actors through, courtesy of veteran movie technical expert Dale Dye who did the same thing for the actors in the movie Platoon.

Two of the standouts in the cast are Adam Goldberg, who plays Private Mellish, and who is involved in one of the most intense scenes ever filmed and Jeremy Davies who plays the very wet behind the ears Corporal Upham, a desk jockey recruited into the mission because he speaks French and German. And Upham is the one who grows the most in the film, despite being thoroughly scared throughout most of it.

One of the things - out of many - that Spielberg gets right is the absolute disdain that Hanks’ company has for Private Ryan, a man they have never met. And once they meet Ryan, they dislike him even more because he refuses to go home.  And you can feel the disdain for Damon from the other actors as I recall reading that Damon was kept separate from the rest of the actors during boot camp so no camaraderie would be felt.

Do they leave him or do they stick by his side. As Sergeant Horvath says “what if by some miracle we stay, then actually make it out of here. Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess. Like you said, Captain, maybe we do that, we all earn the right to go home.”

And this sets up the final hour of the film, as Miller’s platoon joins up with Ryan’s company for the final battle in Ramelle, a spectacle that needs to be seen to be believed.  Again, Dad didn't see any battles like this but he knows guys who did and they said it was realistic.  Take that to the bank.

Which leads me to give a brief mention to the incredible production design and cinematography in this picture. Ramble, where the final battle takes place, looks like it could be the real thing, a leftover from World War II that has never been repaired. And the cinematography, dulled and sepia-toned, gives the film a documentary feel.

So my original opinion of the film has changed and I now watch this every year, during the first week in June to honor all those who fought, including my dad, and I find something new with each viewing.

If you’ve never seen it, rush out and watch it - America is not about politics; it’s about men and women fighting for the country to keep us free and in a democracy.

If you’ve seen it, watch it again. Your time will not be wasted.

To those surviving World War II veterans (and from the news stories showing many returning to Normandy for the 75th anniversary, there are quite a few), I salute you on this, the 75th anniversary of D-Day. We can never repay our debt of gratitude but we thank you for your service.  Never Forget.

For those who died in World War II - and, of course all other wars defending this great Country,  I quote from “the Bixby Letter” referenced by General Marshall in the film:

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln.

5/5

The First of Many Movie Reviews - GODZILLA 2019

A LITTLE - VERY LITTLE - ABOUT ME

I've been watching movies since before I could walk and since I've retired from the big Insurance Industry after 38 years, I have watched more movies than I care to admit.  Yet, people still come to me and say 'hey Mike, what's a good movie?' and of course I give my views.

So I said to myself, self, you have a Blogger account.  Create a new blog with movie reviews.

And thus I do so now.

And the first movie (because I saw it yesterday) is:

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019)   
*** (out of 5) - add a star if you are a Godzilla Geek

Right up front, I'm going to let you know that I am a big fan of old school Godzilla.  As a kid I watched what I now know to be the horribly Americanized 1956 Godzilla : King of the Monsters! in which all of the voices were dubbed into unaccented American - along with horrific scenes of Raymond Burr as a reporter named Steve Martin (? such a talented guy) - relaying the play by play as Godzilla ravaged Tokyo.  It wasn't until later in life that I found and learned to love the 1954 Japanese language version (Gojira)which starred one of the greatest Japanese actors of all time, Takeshi Shimura, who exuded such sadness at his beloved Tokyo being destroyed.

But still it was Godzilla and along with Mothra, Rodan and Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster, that made me happy.  Whenever these played on our local television station (usually WOR-TV, channel 9), my friends and I would sit in one another's house after school or on the weekend watching these monsters ravage Japan.

(I'm also going to mention here - as an aside - that I am one of the few who liked - not loved - the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla, simply because the Big G destroyed New York and the movie had a very funny New York sense of humor - I am fully aware that Roger Ebert panned the movie and said "Going to see "Godzilla" at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica." - so this like is on me, as a Godzilla fan - or, more likely, a Roland Emmerich fan)

I also enjoyed 2016's Japanese reboot of the franchise, Shin Godzilla.  I may follow up on a separate review because the movie really deserves it but what I marveled at was the fact the filmmakers combined a Godzilla movie and yet managed to focus on Japanese politicians and bureaucrats fumbling around to deal with this disaster with uncertainty and lack of direction (I don't think I am going out on too much of a limb when I say that this is a veiled critique of the Japanese government's response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster)

Anyway, to the new movie.

Sort of - Legendary Pictures has this movie as (at least) the third entry into their Monster-verse which began with the Godzilla reboot from 2014, continued with Kong: Skull Island and which will (may?) conclude with next year's  Godzilla v. King Kong.

I really cannot understand why many of the critics derided this movie - it should be noted that the Rotten Tomatoes score was in the 40% from critics but in 86% from moviegoers.  A lot of the criticisms appeared to be along the lines of the film having too much focus on the humans and not enough focus on the monsters - I am not going to pretend I understand that- If you just want destruction, go to a demolition derby.  Plus monsters don't talk - they roar, so you need humans around for exposition.

This movie picks up at the end of 2014's Godzilla and then fast forwards a few years.  Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) live apart from Madison's dad (Kyle Chandler), who are estranged because Godzilla's destruction of San Francisco took their young son.  What sounds and feels like an earthquake causes Emma and Madison, who are having a nice quiet breakfast chat about their dysfunctional family, to look up from their little breakfast nook and we see that they are near an Aztec (or is it Incan? I could never tell) Temple which is an outpost for Monarch, the organization that has been looking for these Titans since the 2014 film. Emma takes Madison to the outpost where we see that there is some movement and birthing of a large creature whom we come to know is Mothra.  Emma's work surrounds a device called an Orca which replicates audio signals and creates an Alpha signal that quiets down and controls the Titans.  And, of course, in pure movie tropedom, she activates the Orca right before she and Madison are about to pummeled by this new larva.  And then with more movie trope-dom, eco-terrorists led by the always suavely evil Charles Dance storm the facility.

You have to thank these eco-terrorists for doing this because without them there is no movie - their insidious plot is to awaken all of the Titans (sounds like release the Kraken, no?) to destroy most of the improvements added to the earth so that the earth will turn into its lushly foliaged self that it was before man destroyed it (because what else are eco-terrorists going to do, right?)

Well, enter estranged dad, Mark, who used to work for Monarch and off goes the military and Monarch personnel in search of Godzilla who is our only hope to destroy all of the other Titans that Dance and his eco-terrorists have released.  Aisha Hinds has a great role as a Colonel in charge of the military expedition and the always great Ken Watanabe reprises his role from the first two movies as Ishiro Serizawa (it is unclear if he is the same Dr. Serizawa as in 1954's Gojira or if he is the son of the prior Doctor) and pulls it off with such sincerity, echoing Shimura's role in the first movie.  Vera Farmiga is good as the anguished mom and Kyle Chandler is getting some heavy dad mileage out of his recent movie roles.  Good in supporting roles are Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleitch and TV's Bradley Whitford.  The cast gives what they need to give.

That's the plot- it's fairly threadbare but who cares?  My belief is that I give as little plot as possible to avoid any spoilers; however, the city that gets destroyed this time is Boston, in case anyone wondered.

If you are going to see a Godzilla movie, you should know that you will like this - My biggest complaint is that, unlike Shin Godzilla, which took place in bright sunlight and had the opportunity for some great cinematography, the movie here - as with 2014's Godzilla - is filmed darkly, for the most part.  The skies are clouded over and I don't know if this is supposed to be some metaphor for a hard fought battle or a way to dull the edges of the special effects.  Perhaps this is my only complaint with the film- and it is a minor criticism at that. 

I along with others applauded when the movie was over - and not in a bad way.

I'm still getting used to the idea of Godzilla as a good guy but that is not a difficult hurdle for me to surmount.   The pure joy was in seeing the four movie monsters from my youth, updated and hitting the screen again and fighting each other.  The special effects were just great - Godzilla loomed large, Rodan looked every bit the Pteranodon he was and Ghidorah was especially evil looking.  What was really impressive was the beauty given to Queen Mothra.  In the original movies, she looked like a larva and than a large moth - here they gave her an iridescence that finally gave Mothra her due.  And the final scene whetted the audiences appetite for more destruction in the upcoming films

I enjoyed it - it was just the right lenght, moved briskly and kept the viewer engaged.

Go see it - Great summer fun.

THERE IS A POST-CREDIT SCENE SO STICK AROUND

3/5 (or 4/5 if you are a Godzilla geek)