Alexander Skarsgard

‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Movie and Blu-ray Review

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit correspondent, Tony Farinella.

In the interest of full-disclosure, “Godzilla vs. Kong” is not usually the type of film I’m known to seek out.  While I try to keep an open mind about every film, which I believe is one of the most vital parts of being a film critic, there are certain genres that are not my cup of tea.  On paper, however, this film had a lot of good things going for it: Adam Wingard (“You’re Next,” “Blair Witch“ and “The Guest”) as director, a stellar cast, and a concept which was ripe for a 21st century upgrade.  In the end, I’m glad I watched it because I can say I’ve seen it, but my feelings about most big blockbuster science fiction movies remain unchanged.

The major problem with the film lies in the severely unwritten and undeveloped characters we are spending time with here. With five writers attached to the film in some way, I’m not quite sure how they overlooked such an important aspect.  Perhaps they were too focused on the main event stars of Godzilla and King Kong.  When you have actors like Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Demián Bichir and even Kyle Chandler, they need to be more fleshed-out.  There is a lot of talk in this movie, but not a lot of it means anything or amounts to much.

Keep in mind, I barely remember any “Godzilla” or “King Kong” films, so I can’t vouch for how it holds up compared to older versions or how faithful it is.  I know it is big with a lot of genre fans. In “Godzilla vs. Kong,” King Kong is being watched very closely by Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), an expert on all things Kong, linguistics and anthropology. She has an adopted hearing-impaired daughter named Jia she looks after who is played brilliantly by Kaylee Hottle. Much like Ilene, King Kong feels a special bond with young Jia.  Jia and Ilene Andrews sign to one another, and Jia is able to describe when Kong is scared or angry. Kong takes care of Jia in his own sweet, fatherly way.

There is also another side-story which is completely unnecessary and all over the map involving a conspiracy theorist podcaster played by Brian Tyree Henry.  He’s a tremendous actor with great range, and he is a true force on the hit FX show “Atlanta,” but here he’s unfunny and just silly.  While comic relief can be necessary at times, in a film like this it feels so forced by the screenwriters. It’s not his fault the dialogue written for him is flat out lame. He’s doing the best he can with a really bad script. Two young teenagers played by Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison join him in his quest to find out why Godzilla is acting so strangely. It just seemed a bit odd to have a grown man running around with two teenagers. In today’s day and age of children being safe on the Internet, it’s just not a good idea to put in a film.

There is also Dr. Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), another Kong expert much like Ilene with vast experience in maps and geology. He’s a bit of a goofball, and at times his performance feels goofy and like he’s hamming it up.  Once again, I’m going to blame the writers.  Of course, there are evil mustache-twirling villains in the film who are once again overplayed, and they just ruin the film.  Even though I’m putting a lot of blame on the writers, as actors can only deliver their lines as written, maybe they could have brought something a little extra to the proceedings.  It would have been nice if the actors at least tried to make something out of this mess.

As for the battle scenes with Godzilla and Kong, they are pretty forgettable.  While I’m a huge fan of director Wingard, I can’t help but wonder if he was really the right guy for this project.  He’s mostly known for horror films, and this is not to say he can’t branch out and try different genres. Visually and stylistically, I don’t think he brought a whole lot to the film. It has a lot going on from start to finish, but it jumps back and forth between characters, stories and events. There are things to like in “Godzilla vs. Kong,” but they are few and far between.

* ½ out of * * * *

Blu-Ray Info: “Godzilla vs. Kong” is released on a two-disc Blu-Ray Combo Pack from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment.  The combo pack also comes with a digital copy of the film as well. It is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of creature violence/destruction and brief language.  It has a running time of 113 minutes.

Audio and Video Info: The film is presented in 1080p High Definition.  The audio is Dolby Atmos True HD: English, Dolby Digital: English Descriptive Audio, English, Spanish, and French.  It also has subtitles in English, Spanish and French.

Special Features:

Kong Discovers Hollow Earth

Kong Leaves Home

Behold Kong’s Temple

The Evolution of Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World

Godzilla Attacks

The Phenomenon of GŌJIRA, King of the Monsters

Round One: Battle at Sea

Round Two: One Will Fall

Titan Tag Team: The God and the King

The Rise of MechaGodzilla

Commentary by Director Adam Wingard

Should You Buy It?

I’m so disappointed to have to give this film such a negative review and rating.  I don’t think you should buy it, and I don’t even think it’s worth a rental.  Maybe I’m not the audience for this film.  I can recognize and acknowledge that.  If you like these types of films, maybe you will enjoy “Godzilla vs. Kong,” but I found it laborious and quite tedious.  I received very little enjoyment out of it.  I will say there are plenty of special features on this Blu-ray Combo Pack.  So, if you did enjoy this film and are a fan of Godzilla and King Kong, maybe you will see in the film what I didn’t. I’ll say this, if you were not a fan of these two superstar monsters before watching this movie, I don’t think you will become a fan after watching it.  There isn’t much to hang your hat on here.

**Disclaimer** I received a Blu-ray copy of this film from Warner Brothers to review for free.  The opinions and statements in the review are mine and mine alone.

Marielle Heller and Bel Powley Discuss ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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“The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” based on the graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, follows 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley, in a star-making performance) as she goes on a journey for love and acceptance, and as the movie begins she has already started to experience her sexual awakening. She becomes embroiled in an affair with Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgard) who also happens to be her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend. What results is an honest version of what it’s like to be a teenage girl, and the movie isn’t so much about sex as it is about finding your own self-worth which is very important for young people making their way through this crazy world we all inhabit.

This movie marks the directorial debut of actress and writer Marielle Heller, and I got to talk with her and Bel Powley while they were at The London Hotel in West Hollywood, California. One of the things I remarked about it was how beautiful the movie looked and of how it really transported the audience back to the 70’s. Granted, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” does take place in San Francisco, California which, after all these years, hasn’t changed much since the 70’s, but director of photography Brandon Trost still did terrific work in bringing us back to a time period which is gone but not forgotten.

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Marielle Heller: I love telling people that the same person who shot this movie also shot movies like “The Interview” and “Neighbors” because they couldn’t be more different in terms of content. But he is a real artist and I think he just did the most incredible job. He was so dedicated to making this film look and feel exactly how we envisioned it which was in some ways like an old Polaroid picture, but not with a hipster grossness on it. We wanted it to be really authentic to the story and to the characters.

Those who know Heller best know that she has been in love with Gloeckner’s graphic novel ever since her sister gave her a copy of it 8 years ago. She spent a long time trying to get the rights to adapt the book into a stage play, and she performed the role of Minnie Goetze herself in an acclaimed off-Broadway production. From there, Heller went on to develop “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” into a screenplay at the Sundance Labs, and the film eventually debuted at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Having spent so many years with Gloeckner’s graphic novel, I asked Heller how her view of it has evolved from when she first read the book to when she began turning it into a movie.

Marielle Heller: The film version of the book had to take on its own new life and really shift and change because the narrative structure of a film has to have a different build than a novel can. You read a book and you put it down and you pick it up and you put it down and it can have a really episodic feel, and a movie has to have a really specific kind of emotional build. I had such reverence for Phoebe’s book. I loved it more than anything I had ever read before, which is sort of a problematic place to start an adaption from. It was too much love, too much reverence, and at some point I had to sort of give myself permission to destroy parts of what I loved too and let go of it and let the reverence go away. Things changed, storylines changed, so that was a big process and luckily Phoebe really understood that because she’s such an artist herself.

Heller also remarked about a conversation she had with Gloeckner during the making of the film:

Marielle Heller: She was like, “You have to do what you have to do for this process. I took my real diaries and I wanted to make them into a piece of art. I didn’t want to write a memoir. I wanted to change them and let them become something new and let them become a book, and so I put them through this big grinder and it came out the other side hopefully with some truth intact. But it was something new, and then you took it and you put it through another kind of meat grinder and out the other end came this other project and it’s something new and hopefully that kernel of truth is still the same.” So it’s been a long process and in some ways I internalized the whole book. I got to know it inside and out and then stopped looking at it and wouldn’t let myself look at it and let the movie just grow into something totally new.

Watching “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” reminded me of my favorite movies which dealt with adolescence and being a teenager like “Pump up the Volume,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I love movies which take adolescence seriously as so many others treat it like life won’t get any better than when you’re young. I asked Heller and Powley what their favorite teen movies which they felt treated being a teenager honestly were, and their answer pointed out how those movies are missing a particular point of view.

Marielle Heller: I think there are a lot of movies that deal with adolescence in an honest way for boys. I hadn’t really come across ones that really dealt with girls in an honest way which is why I think we wanted to make this movie. I know I really related to movies like “Stand by Me” or “Harold and Maude;” movies that felt like they were, like you said, really respecting the characters and giving adolescents a voice in it. And John Hughes’ movies too like “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles.” Movies like that really did give voice to the teenager in a real way. And I guess actually that John Hughes did make movies about girls. “Sixteen Candles” was about being a girl, but we’re a long time from “Sixteen Candles.” We’re due for another one.

Bel Powley: I was a teenager six years ago (laughs), and I don’t think I related to anything. I found it really hard, and I think it honestly made me feel like really isolated and really alone. I think young female characters are presented in such flat, two dimensional ways especially when it came to sex. Like if you did have sex then you were this high school slut, or if you didn’t then you’re either frigid or you’re like this virgin waiting for your Prince Charming. I remember being so excited when “Juno” was coming out, and then it came out and it was like, well no one speaks like that. And also, she’s made to be kind of asexual. It was just so confusing to me, and I honestly didn’t relate to anything until “Girls” (the HBO series), and that was when I was like 19.

Hearing Heller and Powley say that makes you realize how important “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is in today’s cinematic landscape. For once we have a movie that deals with the life of a teenage girl honestly, and that makes it all the more important for audiences to seek it out in the midst of another overcrowded summer movie season. It is truly one of the best adolescent movies made in recent memory, and it deserves your attention far more than many others in this genre.

“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.

Alexander Skarsgard talks about ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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Alexander Skarsgard stars in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” as Monroe, an emotionally stunted man who finds himself in San Francisco, California and in a relationship with the free-spirited Charlotte Goetze (Kristen Wiig). But then he meets her daughter Minnie (Bel Powley) who is in the midst of her own sexual awakening, and she begins a complex love affair with him that will lead to even more awakenings about each other and their own self-worth.

I got to hang out with Skarsgard along with a few other journalists while he was at The London Hotel in West Hollywood, California to do press for “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Greg Srisavasdi of the website Deepest Dream asked Skarsgard how he goes about preparing for a role, and his answer illustrates why his performance as Monroe is so good.

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Alexander Skarsgard: The very first step is to connect with the material obviously. In this case, I thought it would be a really interesting challenge to play Monroe. I felt he could easily be a villain or just like a predator and I wanted to avoid that. I felt like I don’t think it will be interesting if you play it that way, and you make it too easy for the audience if they can just lean back and go, “Oh, bad guy,” and it’s not going to be interesting to the film. And that really intrigued me and I thought this would be a cool challenge to make this real and find moments where you might feel empathy and you might connect with him and almost like him, and moments where you don’t. I think it’s important to not have an opinion (about the character) in the beginning and to be open, and that’s when you go into that creative process of discovering and developing that character. You have to be very non-judgmental and be very open.”

Skarsgard is best known for playing the vampire Eric Northman on the HBO series “True Blood,” and he has turned in memorable performances in movies like “What Maisie Knew,” “Melancholia” and “Kill Your Darlings.” What’s interesting about him as an actor is how he is able to derive such strong complexity in each character he plays. It made me wonder just how much he brought to the role of Monroe which wasn’t in the script, and I asked him if he prefers playing characters like Monroe over others. For Skarsgard, it all comes down to one thing.

AS: It’s all about finding depth and it doesn’t matter in what genre it is. I just wrapped a movie called “War on Everyone” which is a comedy by John Michael McDonagh who did “The Guard” and “Calvary.” It’s a weird, fucked up comedy about corrupt cops in Albuquerque. I play a coke-snorting alcoholic cop who beats up criminals and steals their money with Michael Pena as my colleague. I had an amazing time. It was so much fun and, tonally, very different from “Tarzan” that I finished just before that or this one. But what it’s always about is that you need to find depth in the character even if it is comedy. You can’t play a caricature, or you can but I just don’t find it interesting. I don’t subscribe to good versus evil unless it’s within you. I think we’re all struggling with that, good and bad, and I think we’re all capable of good deeds and bad deeds. It’s interesting in literature or movies when you find characters that are struggling with that, and if there’s no inner struggle then it’s not interesting to me.

Watching “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” reminded me of just how much I love movies which take adolescence seriously. Some of my favorite examples of those movies are “Pump up the Volume” and “The Breakfast Club,” and I’m convinced that everyone has their own favorite movies which really spoke to them about life as a teenager. When I asked Skarsgard to name a movie that spoke to him about the truth about adolescence, he instead thought of a book.

AS: The most obvious example would be “Catcher in the Rye.” I guess as a boy growing up, as a teenager you’re like yeah, I get it dude. But I don’t have one movie that stands out or where watching it was a pivotal moment of my adolescence. What was I into as a teenager? It was the 80’s, so it was “Star Wars” I guess.

Watching Alexander Skarsgard in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is proof of just how gifted an actor he is. The role of Monroe could have been reduced to being a mere one-dimensional character, but Skarsgard dove right into the complexities of this character and made him an empathetic one even though no one can condone his actions. It’s a fascinating portrait of a man who still needs to grow up, and it’s one of the many reasons to check out this movie on DVD, Blu-ray or Digital at your earliest convenience.

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War on Everyone

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

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With a title like “War on Everyone,” you might expect something along the lines of a Donald Trump documentary as it seems to perfectly describe his state of mind as he goes about pissing world leaders for no good reason. But it is actually a black comedy, with special emphasis on the word “black.” I find black comedies endlessly fascinating because, when they are done right, filmmakers can get me to laugh at things I have no business laughing at any other time or place. Every once in a while, we need a comedy with a bit of edge as movies can’t afford to be polite or politically correct all the time.

Having said that, “War on Everyone,” despite having a very talented filmmaker behind the camera and terrific actors in front of it, proves to be a big disappointment. There are some clever lines of dialogue here and there, but while writer and director John Michael McDonagh is in love with his own words and story to where the fun he had with his material seemed contagious, this fun does not translate over to the audience. Considering the talent involved, it should have been so much better.

Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bob Bolano (Michael Pena) are police detectives who are infinitely corrupt and do not allow rules and regulations to get in the way of blackmailing criminals who make the mistake of making a left turn into Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like Alec Baldwin in “Miami Blues,” they rob from people who rob from people, but they don’t give the money back to the poor. They are always on the lookout for a big payoff to help finance houses and apartments no cop could possibly afford on their own salary and pay for video games their kids will waste countless hours on.

But then they run afoul of British crime boss and unrepentant junkie James Mangan (Theo James), and he is not the average law-breaking citizen they typically deal with. Soon, Terry and Bob find themselves in a desperate situation which eventually becomes less about money and instead about settling a personal score.

McDonagh previously gave us the critically acclaimed buddy cop comedy “The Guard” as well as one of my favorite movies from 2014, “Calvary.” The latter made me very eager to check out “War on Everyone” as he looked like he could do no wrong. But this movie falls apart from the get go as the majority of the material left little in the way of laughs, and we get stuck with a couple of characters who frankly nowhere as interesting as McDonagh wants them to be,

Now characters don’t have to be likable for a movie to work, but they do have to at the very least be interesting. Terry and Bob feel more like they are made out of spare parts left over from a dozen other cop movies to where they barely exist as human beings. I didn’t care about their plight nor did I care about whether they lived or died. These are just two guys who hate everything and everybody in equal measure, and there isn’t much more to them.

It’s especially frustrating to say this because Skarsgard is typically a strong actor, and Pena is awesome in just about any movie he appears in. But Skarsgard is forced to play a character who is perpetually drunk and careless about life, and the only thing notable about him is his love of Glen Campbell music. As for Pena, he has terrific comedic skills but is unable to lift the material he has been given out of the dreary depths it is stuck in. In fact, he proves to be funnier in the trailer for the upcoming “CHiPS” movie than he does here, and that one looks terrible.

The other big problem with “War on Everyone” is the tone seems to be all over the place. McDonagh can’t seem to decide whether he wants the material to be broad or playfully realistic and, as a result, it feels like the other characters seem to be occupying different movies while inhabiting the same one. Caleb Landry Jones plays a jittery strip club manager named Birdwell, but he’s a little too edgy to where I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at or be fearful of him. Malcolm Barrett plays Reggie X, a black Muslim and ex-con, and his character goes in different directions to where it felt like McDonagh couldn’t decide what to do with him. Theo James plays Mangan as your typically cold villain to where any jokes he has fall flat because his performance feels depressingly one-note. And then there’s Paul Reiser who is wasted in a small role as Stanton, Terry and Bob’s boss. When Reiser isn’t able to make material like this funny, you know you’re in trouble.

“War on Everyone” feels like a jumble of ideas and situations which can’t find a cohesive plot on which to lay them on. It really sucks to say this because I still think McDonagh is a very talented filmmaker, and I have confidence he will bounce back from this misfire quickly. It’s clear he has watched a ton of cop movies and TV shows, but his screenplay feels like he threw a lot of elements in the air and then pinned them down at exactly where they landed.

This movie is being released a couple of weeks after Donald Trump became President, and it’s hard to watch it without thinking of how he has treated various ethnicities throughout the world (Muslims and Mexicans in particular). It’s hard to laugh at or with Bob and Terry as they spout off their objections of criminals based on the race or background as we are forced to deal with a new era of politics, so the timing of this movie’s release is unfortunate. Still, had it been released before all the Trump hoopla, I’m not sure it would have made much of a difference.

There are a number of great black comedies worth checking out like Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” or Jody Hill’s “Observe and Report,” which coincidentally co-stars Pena, and they are far more worth your time than “War on Everyone.”

* ½ out of * * * *

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