Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire Review

Netflix is so desperate for a franchise to call their own that they've appeared to have written director Zack Snyder a blank check and said "make us "Star Wars."" And the end result, the mouthful-of-a-name "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire" is exactly that, only it has all the style and budget but absolutely none of the heart, soul, or reason for being.

This is not just a bad film, but also an ugly, needlessly long, cliche, tedious, monotonous, sterile, joyless, tired, absolutely plain old cinematic travesty. I'd call it a turkey, but it's more of a tofurkey, no real meat here.

It doesn't help that the apparently blank check the streaming titan provided didn't come with anyone to keep Snyder's energies in-check; this is perhaps the most self-indulgent piece of movie making I can recall seeing. My mouth laid agape as all his bad habits appeared in such excess that you wonder if he intentionally set out to make a terrible film. Dialogue is terse and often shouted, lacking the magic of a truly gifted screenwriter (or world-builder). We get this huge, sprawling world, highly stylized but devoid of personality, where all sorts of nasty people and even nastier creatures function in a society barely explained. Our main villain (Ed Skrein) at one point wears a white shirt and black tie, yet other characters are draped in flowing robes, loin-cloths and humble scrapes of fabric seemingly sewn by hand. When does this take place? Why do the horse-like creatures, Urakis, look just like regular horses with a tree-trunk taped to their heads? Why is Anthony Hopkins voicing a robot? Why is Anthony Hopkins barely in this? Why is he here at all? Does he really need a paycheck that badly?

His egregious overuse of slow motion, a trademark of the director, is easily the worst, we sit bored stiff as this laborious lemon of a movie shows us scenes including, but not limited to, slow motion walking, slow motion running, slow motion standing, slow motion falling snow, slow motion hand-to-hand combat, slow motion gunfire, slow motion space ships, slow motion removal of hats, and, my favorite, slow motion sword fights against a giant spider woman. What a hell of a sentence, I know.

The plot is a garbled mess of sci-fi stereotypes, one involving an evil empire called the Motherworld, who comes land one day on the small farming village of Veldt asking for demanding food supplies. The evil people do evil things to innocent people because that's what they do in cliches, and it takes only a few dozen minutes before there's an attempted rape on one of the local girls. Why in the world anyone thought this was a necessary plot point is beyond me, then again, it's directed and written by all men so, I dunno. You tell me what that means.

Our protagonist Kora (Sofia Boutella) saves her of course, by killing all the baddies left in the town, so the community decides that, well, better join "the resistance" now, because, cliche. Heading out with Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), a farmer who may have a lead on someone who'll get them in-touch with "the resistance." The two travel from one empty hull of a set piece to the next, searching for would-be warriors to join their cause in hopes of strengthening "the resistance." And yes, much of this is done in sloooooooooooowwwwwwwwww moooooottttttttiiiiiiiiiooooooooonnnnnnnnnn.

There is an awful lot of money on the screen, but there is not a single interesting character. There is not one piece of interesting dialogue. I counted two interesting moments, though. That's not a typo, there are truly only two genuinely amusing things that happen here, and one is the aforementioned spider woman fight. The other is this little creature who talks through a human host. It exists for the sake of moving the narrative along, still, it was a fun little visual effect in an effort so starved of excitement that I was happy to just have something new to look at.

A bit of interwebs searching brought me to the Rebel Moon wiki, because apparently that's a thing, and it tells me there's going to be a directors cut next year, alongside part 2, and it'll be rated R (this, um, "streaming cut" is PG-13). Considering they didn't have to worry about losing money to teenagers being unable to buy movie tickets (anyone with a non-kids account can probably access this), I suspect this is purely a marketing move. I do not look forward to seeing what other slow motion scenes were cut.

I went into "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire" with no context, I hadn't even seen the trailer. Had I watched it before, I probably wouldn't have added this to my Netflix watchlist.

Godzilla Minus Zero Review

Finding a screening of the latest installment in the "Godzilla" franchise, "Godzilla Minus Zero," was surprisingly difficult, especially considering I was able to see the last entry, "Shin Godzilla," theatrically twice. Why twice? Because I was so disappointed the first time that I thought, maybe, I had missed something.

Unfortunately, I hadn't.

When I did finally find a matinee (the real way to watch these films in the states, aside from maybe a UHF TV station), I was shocked that my local, usually premium, movie theater had it showing in one of those outdated arenas, one without those now-commonplace leather reclining chairs. It felt cramped and cheap, like the place didn't respect the literal King of the Monsters. All signs point to walking out, again, crestfallen, but I am more than pleased to say I walked out instead in awe.

"Godzilla Minus Zero" achieves the perfect balance of intimacy and spectacle, frequently simultaneously, something the franchise hasn't hit since the 1954 original (and no, not the one with Raymond Burr). Taking place during and after WW2, making this the literal first appearance of Godzilla, the narrative focuses on Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) a kamikaze pilot who cowards out of his mission, landing under the guise of mechanical problems on Odo Island. And like any good film in the series, Godzilla appears shortly after to cause destruction. He's the only gunner on the island, with only mechanics there during the battle, but he freezes behind the trigger, and all hell breaks loose.

But unlike almost every one of its predecessors, the titular monster doesn't just focus on environmental damage, but attacks like a dinosaur out of "Jurassic Park." It's the first time since I was a child that he'd been, for lack of a better word, scary.

Koichi makes it out alive, and is in shock of what happened. He suffers from survivors guilt, in addition to the shock of hearing his hometown was destroyed during the war, his parents killed too. Maybe he should have just done his mission, kamikaze or not. Maybe he'd stop the war. Or at least his mom and dad from dying. It is a dour opening, and a relentlessly cheerless film throughout, but what else could writer/director Takashi Yamazaki do? It's goddamn WW2! He understands what Godzilla means to the medium, and not the sullied reputation that the American dubs have been inflicting since the 50's.

Not long after first arriving, Koichi stumbles into thief Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), who's looking after a newborn her dying mother gave to her. They form an unlikely and mostly platonic relationship, both outcasts and both struggling to keep themselves (and infant Akiko) alive. The laser-focus on so few principal characters means you really get to know these imaginary movie-people, something that Hollywood continues to fail at.

Most of the runtime is dedicated to their survival, and eventual success, which inevitably leads to long stretches of dialogue. Being subtitled instead of dubbed, there are numerous awkward pauses, where scenes linger with a few seconds of needless fat. Possibly a side-effect of the English localization, but as I cannot speak Japanese, I will never know, and I can only review the film I saw.

But that's OK, because it only means that when Godzilla returns to throw another hissy fit, that you root for our main cast. It's a remarkable feat when you consider that you have to not only read the subtitles but quickly glance back to soak up the imagery. In short, I really, really enjoyed "Godzilla Minus Zero." It might not be a perfect film, but it's the perfect "Godzilla" film. It's dark and damn depressing, but without time-travel, talking kaiju, space or gymnastic rubber suits, it perfectly fits the tone Tomoyuki Tanaka, Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya intended way back when they first showed the world the cinematic horror of nuclear warfare.