🦖 “I just saw it! A creature from the Jurassic era!”
This week: Godzilla, Malcolm X, and my new podcast.
Hey all - this week’s newsletter is later than usual because I’ve been heads-down this week on a very special project: My first original podcast at BumbleCast, Follow Friday! It’s a weekly interview show about the best people on the internet and why you should follow them, and the first episode is an interview with Avery Trufelman from The Cut.
Please check it out, tell your friends, and follow the show on Instagram and Twitter! We’ll have new episodes every Friday, and I’ll try to remember to mention them here, but the best way to stay up to date on the show is to subscribe to it (free!) in your favorite podcast app. Just search for “Follow Friday” and click the one with the ducks.
🦆🦆🦆🦆
“I was filled with horror at the power I’d unleashed”
In some ways like Marilyn Monroe, we’re long overdue for a cultural re-evaluation of Godzilla. I rewatched the 1954 film that started it all this week (the original Japanese cut, to be sure) and was blown away by all the things it isn’t.
It isn’t simple; it isn’t disaster porn; and it isn’t a bombastic celebration of urban destruction. Released less than a decade after America dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is a reckoning with the trauma and anxiety of the atomic age, and the realization that scientific progress often comes at a cost.
The best part of this movie is the fact that we see how the emergence of Godzilla affects all levels of society, from political leaders debating how much the public deserves to know, to regular people who find that half of their island is suddenly irradiated, to journalists attempting to explain the inexplicable. It’s heartbreaking at times and most of the special effects hold up quite well, with a few exceptions.
I haven’t seen the later films in the Godzilla series, except for the 2014 reboot (good!) and the 1998 reboot (worse than you can possibly imagine!). I’m not sure if I want to keep going, because I suspect our shared cultural understanding of Godzilla is partly informed by later, cheesier, worse movies. But if you have the chance, this one is well worth your time. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max, Kanopy, The Criterion Channel, and TCM. ★★★★
Other stuff I’ve watched recently
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) ★★★★½ - An excellent movie with one of the strongest climactic battle scenes ever committed to film. The various plots are a little weirdly paced, and there’s some necessary table-setting for the final chapter, but the great parts amply make up for the questionable ones. On Hulu and HBO Max (theatrical edition). Extended edition available on Blu-Ray/DVD.
Jackie Brown ★★★★½ - My second-favorite Quentin Tarantino movie, and for good reason: It’s his most mature and least violent movie, and addressed the idea of being adrift in middle age way before he returned to the theme in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — and he did it better here. The movie deserves an Oscar for the soundtrack alone. Available to rent/buy on digital platforms.
In & Of Itself ★★★★½ - A live theater show starring Derek DelGaudio that’s been magnificently adapted to film by Frank Oz. I am not going to tell you anything else about it, except that you should watch it, and go in blind like I did. On Hulu.
About Time ★★★★ - A timey-wimey rom-com with enormous heart. The pacing is a little off in the first hour, and there are some scenes in the first hour where it seems like the movie doesn’t exactly know where it’s headed. But it finds its footing and soars in the second half. On Netflix.
One Night in Miami ★★★★ - Despite what the title sounds like, this is not a rom-com. Adapted by Kemp Powers from his own play, it’s an impactful and perfectly acted drama about four Black icons — Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Jim Brown — at a historic juncture. Kingsley Ben-Adir deserves an Oscar, and we all need to come to an agreement: Leslie Odom, Jr. is so good in everything that casting him is cheating, right? On Amazon Prime.
The Gondoliers ★★★½ - A well-made 1982 adaptation of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, with a much better cast and direction than the same company’s adaptation of HMS Pinafore, which I reviewed a few months ago in my old newsletter. I had never seen this play in any form, but I liked the silly story and many of the songs, even though I quickly forgot them. On DVD.
Jurassic Park III ★★½ - When you’re going to put your main characters in life-or-death situations, it really helps the dramatic stakes if you’re not actively rooting for several of them to die. Seeing Sam Neill again was nice, but the rest of the main cast here was deeply unlikable, and the overused over-shiny CGI recalled the worst parts of the Star Wars prequels. On Peacock.
P.S.
You can follow me on Twitter and Letterboxd. The latter is where you’ll also find my (ongoing) list of every movie I’ve seen in 2021, ranked.
My podcast Follow Friday is available for free wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
Leave your reactions, questions, recommendations, and Tarantino hot takes in the comments below.