Romancing the Stone (1984)

 

I vaguely remember seeing this shortly after it came out and I have to assume it was one I went and saw with my then girlfriend "Anna Maria" who liked to get amorous at the movies because I recall next to nothing about it.  Now, I have to admit, I'm not much of a Michael Douglas fan, I don't hate him, I just don't seek out his work.   Same for Kathleen Turner to be honest. I liked her as Chandler Bing's father and I remember seeing her in V. I. Warshawski which was produced by Jeffrey Laurie who also owns my beloved Philadelphia Eagles.

 

  Don't remember much about that film either. Saw that one with my erstwhile partner in crime Cerpts, he's on Blogger as well, you can find him here: http://landofcerptsandhoney.blogspot.com/ look him up, he watches way more films than I do. And like "Anna Marie", he puts out at the movies as well.

 

Maybe that's why I don't remember anything about that film either.  Now that I examine those facts, it seems I should have seen more Kathleen Turner films in the theater.

 

 But I digest.

 

 Back to Romancing the Stone; it's OK. Nothing special. I think, since at the time, Turner was being compared to Lauren Bacall, maybe they were trying to form a Bogey and Bacall feel to it but there's no way you can compare them. It's no contest! Also, most times I find Michael Douglas can get a little annoying, here he never got there for me. When "he isn't annoying" is the best thing you can say about someone perhaps there is an issue there.

 

Danny DeVito helps to save the movie a bit but when it all comes down to it Romancing the Stone feels like the plain rice cake of movies. So with all that said, the best I can do for Romancing the Stone is give it two and a half treasure maps out of five. Thankfully Robert Zemeckis would move on from this (after he was fired from directing Cocoon) to direct Back to the Future.

 

 

 
 

Jesus Christ Superstar: Live Arena Tour ( 2012)

 

 

A belated Happy Easter to my Christian friends, an early Happy Easter to my Greek Orthodox friends, Happy "Didn't We Do All This A Couple Of Weeks Ago?" to my Pagan friends.  Oh and I wag a finger at my Jewish friends while jokingly ask "What did you do?".  Now I don't celebrate the entirety of the holiday but most of my family does so I follow suit.  One of the things I have made it a custom of doing is watching the '73 Jesus Christ Superstar movie based on the musical.  For a couple of years now I have wanted to see the live rock opera version starring Tim Minchin as Judas.  Well this was the year.  Aside from Minchin, the performance also features Ben Forster (who won an American Idol type contest named Superstar to win the role) as Jesus Christ, and Melanie Chisholm as Mary Magdalane.  Chisholm is also known as Mel C who was Sporty Spice in The Spice Girls.  Every version I have seen has had a somewhat campy performance from whoever plays King Herod.  I saw Alice Cooper play the part in the TV version from 2018,  for Christ sake, and even that was pretty good.

 

 

Oh, pardon the pun!  I don't want to forget to mention Josh Mostel's version in the '73 film which is absolutely sublime!  Playing the part here is English radio and TV personality Chris Moyles.  Now I wouldn't know Moyles if I tripped over him in the street but he does an excellent job as well with it even if the part is only about ten minutes long.  The other person I wanted to mention is veteran stage actor Alexander Hanson because his version of Pilate is like none I have ever seen.  Not that it is better than the (at times) shocking portrayal by Barry Dennen, for I think without his version, we would never have gotten the version we have here.  Hanson is all at once sympathetic and accusatory to Jesus and his choices but you can see the sadness inside him even as he spouts vitriol while condemning Christ to death.  His words say "Crucify Him!" but his face begs the crowd for their forgiveness of Jesus.

 

 

The stage is mostly just bare bones black risers with the occasional prop or scenery used in a very updated (but certainly acceptable) way.  One who knows about JCS knows it's filled with anachronisms and this version is no different.  It's always interesting to see how each version will be updated.  The orchestra, which is really more of a rock band, is divided in half on either side of the stage with several different levels of the stage being used for them.  This of course leads to the audience down in front getting a great view of the action.  Also on either side of the stage, scattered throughout the band, is the production crew with some monitors where you could see for a few split seconds here and there stage directors giving different actors their cues.  At least that's what it looked to me, I don't know much about the stage.  That's not really a complaint about it either, but what do I know.

 

 

This concert tour/performance was the first time that composer Andrew Lloyd Webber actually saw his original vision fully realized.  He even makes a point of coming on stage afterwards to say so.  As much as I liked this version (which I am leaning towards rating higher than I do the '73 film which is so far the best version I have seen) there is a couple things keeping it from being perfect for me.  One is due to a few decisions (wrong ones to me) by the director of the film Nick Morris who has made his living off of filming musicals.  The main one that stood out to me is during the song Hosanna which is when Jesus gets a idea that he's going to die for his actions. His followers are seemingly asking him to prove his love to them by doing so.  In the '73 version when Jesus makes this realization the change in looks that overcomes the face of actor Ted Neeley's clearly foreshadows what Jesus already knows is to come.  Here, Jesus is hardly shown feeling one way or another, in fact it isn't until the Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say) performance do we really know that Jesus is aware of his coming fate.

 

 

The other and more glaring part is while Tim Minchin is hands down the best part of the show, I mean it's not even close,  his performance is the only one that is auto-tuned.  As far as I can tell it also seems unnecessary.  Upon further investigation, Minchin himself was furious when he found out about it.  This two things are pretty much all I have to complain about.  I know what the '73 film was trying to achieve and that was put a musical in a wider area than a stage can afford.  Which it does well.  I mean it looks incredible but (and here comes the hate mail) I always thought the actual vocals by the actors were the third most important part of the film.  Don't get me wrong, the performances are some of the most iconic in rock opera history, if not in all musical film history.  I just feel cinematography and acting was valued more than the vocals.  With all that in mind I highly recommend this version regardless if you've seen the film before.  Either way see this and let me know how you feel about it.  Watch both, compare them, and then talk to me.  Until I am convinced differently this is my new favorite version and I will give it four and a half apostles out of five.

 

 
 


 
 

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

 

On a snowy Fat Tuesday, the Horror Honey and I celebrated the 22nd anniversary of our first date by dragging our bodies out of the house and to the moving picture show to see Lisa Frankenstein.  The film stars Kathryn Newton (Lady Bird and Freaky) as Lisa (Swallows is her last name here not Frankenstein), a high school student whose mother is killed when a serial killer breaks into her home.  A little while later her dad gets remarried to Janet, played by Carla Gugino (Night at the Museum and Watchmen), who is a nurse in a mental hospital.  Lisa also has a step-sister named Taffy, Liza Soberano (Alone/Together and My Ex and Whys), who is a beauty queen, a cheerleader, and prom queen.  After Lisa's dad marries Janet, Lisa has to go live in a new town and attend a new school.

 

 

Surprisingly, Taffy and Lisa actually get along well with Taffy going out of her way to try and get her new sister to be accepted in her new school.  Lisa works as a seamstress in a tailor's shop.  She has a crush on a boy in her new school named Michael who is also the editor of the school paper.  Michael loves the poems Lisa presents to him for publication.  One day, at an abandoned cemetery in her new town, Lisa does some grave rubbings.  One of the rubbings she does is on a monument with a statue of a young man on it.  The name on the statue is Frankenstein.  Lisa develops a one sided relationship with the statue as she goes there often and talks to him.  At the beginning of the new school year, Taffy takes Lisa to a party.  At the party, Lisa, on a dare, drinks from a glass that contains some spiked alcohol.

 

 

While Lisa is heavily under the influence of whatever the drink was spiked with, Lisa's lab partner Doug, Bryce Romero (Maggie and Eagle and the Albatross), tries to help her by holding her hair back while she pukes, to taking her somewhere quiet to sober up.  Of course this leads to a bedroom where Doug grabs Lisa's chest and puts her hand on his crotch.  Lisa is able to get away from Doug and heads for the cemetery.  Right after she leaves, a huge bolt of lightening strikes the cemetery.  Later, Lisa is left home alone and The Creature, as it is called in the credits and played by Cole Sprouse (Five Feet Apart and Big Daddy), breaks in and chases Lisa around the house.  I gotta say when I was watching the film, I had no idea who Cole Sprouse was, in fact it wasn't until I looked him up on IMDb that I realized he was one of the boys playing opposite Adam Sandler in Big Daddy.

 

 

Sprouse gives off some serious Johnny Depp from Edward Scissorhands vibes.  Now that I think about it Newton reminds me a little of Winona Ryder as well.  The Ryder character she reminds me of isn't the one she played in Scissorhands however, but rather the character she plays in Beetlejuice.  I guess what I'm ultimately saying here is the movie reminds me of a Tim Burton film.  Is that good or bad?  Honestly, I dunno but I'm not mad at it.  Lisa slowly realizes that the creature she is fighting off is the animated corpse of the young man from the cemetery.  The Creature is more zombie than Frankenstein monster.  He is missing both ears, one of his hands, and cannot talk.  After that, people around town start to go missing and then things really start getting weird.

 

 

Lisa Frankenstein is written by Diablo Cody who also wrote Juno and Jennifer's Body and directed by Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams in her full length feature debut.  Also starring is the music we hear in the movie which is taken right from the 1980's. At one time or another my entire record collection from that era is included here.  Which, for those of you keeping score, I would have been around 21 years of age myself.  Sometimes music is just there and often taken for granted, here, the music is often a driving force in the film.  Songs take us not only from scene to scene but also they play a part in molding scenes and making them even better than they are to begin with.  Is it perfect?  No, and without giving away spoilers, I cannot go into it further why I deducted points.  Most of it is tiny details but they add.

  

 

As The Horror Honey pointed out to me early on during the film, this is a chick flick, and I'm OK with that as it's not the first one I've seen.  I'm not tricked into seeing many though, like I sort of was here because this is NOT a horror movie as I thought.  I knew nothing but the title going into it but figured it was at least a horror comedy.  It's more of a comedy romance or a romcom if you will.  With some roots in horror though as it definitely pays homage to Frankenstein as well as zombie films.  In fact Romero's Day of the Dead can be seen playing on the TV in Lisa's house.  I will say another thing about the film and that is it really pissed me off for a split second.  When Lisa's father, Joe Chrest (Gifted and The Perfect Date), asks his step-daughter Taffy if she wants to go to Fuddruckers for dinner it hit that nostalgic spot in my heart that made me miss the 80's.  It also reminded me I can't go to Fuddruckers anymore because there are none near me now. But, I'm OK with it now and I will gladly give Lady Frankenstein three and a half tears that smell like a hot toilet at a carnival out of five.

 

 

GODZILLA (2023)

 

 Sometimes a film comes along and I have a hard time deciding how to grade it. Throughout watching this I went from complaining to myself that it was made to look old, which of course it does. It's supposed to take place prior to the original film from 1955 so it needs to look older. Which I have to recognize that it's hard to make something look old in 2023, so one of the things I am complaining about is also something I will compliment it on. See, that's my issue in a nutshell. Seeing it in RPX on the big screen was a nice added touch as well, I add points for that.

 

 

Probably surprising to some is that I went to the theater to see a movie that is subtitled. For someone who has Parasite, The Wailing, I Saw the Devil, and a couple other films with subtitles waiting in a pile of blue rays to watch because, let's face, if I wanted to read, I'd pick up a book so seeing this says something in it's favor.  Some things, like Godzilla the King of the Kaiju, is well worth my time. It still doesn't stop me from hating myself for it though. The good part is, it's a Godzilla movie, how much dialog can it have? And for that matter, just how do you subtitle "GRRRRREEEEEYYYOOOOONNNKKK!"?  Well, I gotta admit, it had more dialogue than I expected so again, I don't know how that effects my grade and the fact that I dislike subtitles doesn't necessarily mean I hate subtitled movies.

 

 

 

Moving on, the actors all do a masterful job, even down to the young girl playing little Akiko so there's no complaints there. The story is just as good and while I can still say a Godzilla film has never made me cry, this one came pretty close to it, so it gets some points for that as well. The final thing I wanted to mention is the digital effects on Godzilla himself. Herself? Did we ever know? Maybe we'll just go Godzilla themself. Itself sounds insulting, I think and now I'm sure I'm overthinking this. But anyway, the digital effect made Godzilla look so much meaner and more aggressive than ever before. Also worth mentioning is the effect used when Godzilla prepared to unleash the heat ray. The scales standing up on Godzilla's back in ascending order as the attack loaded was a sight to behold. Plus there was the original 50's music announcing the presence for every scene Godzilla is in, won't really add anything for that but not having it would for sure cost it a couple points.

 

 

 

 Leaving the theater I wasn't sure if this was going to get three or three and a half stars. The more I thought about it, the more I went to three and a half. Now, after writing this I'm stuck between three and a half and four stars.  See, writing these reviews are just as cathartic for me as they are informative for you reading this. So I ended us somewhere in the middle and that's what I'll give it here on Blogger even if I did give it four stars on Lettrboxd (because you can't do a quarter star rating there), three and three quarter tugboats out of five. Good job Toho.