The latest film releases are Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, La Chimera, The Shadowless Tower, and Wicked Little Letters. Weighing in are Alonso Duralde and Dave White, film critics and co-hosts of the podcast Linoleum Knife.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Adam Wingard directs this fifth Godzilla film in the MonsterVerse franchise from Legendary Pictures, and calls it a “monster character study.” The action flick features cameos from Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Dan Stevens.
Duralde: “Wingard previously directed Godzilla vs. Kong. And if you're a Godzilla fan, you are annoyed by how much Kong there was in that movie and not enough Godzilla. And this time, I think he's doing a better job of trying to balance it. The plot is very rarely the point. … I will say that among the American movies that Warner and Legendary have been doing, this is one of the better ones just because that climactic battle is pretty great. And along the way, you get little mini battles to keep you interested, because certainly it's not the people that we really care about here.”
White: “There is nothing that you need to understand about any of this. There are giant monsters, and they fight. I'm so old that I saw my first Godzilla movie when I was 8 in 1972, that was Destroy All Monsters. Now I get the senior discount at the West Hollywood aquatic center. So I have an affection for vintage Godzilla. And I always have to adjust my expectations when I'm walking into what are the current crop because everything is digital. … I've resigned myself to the dispiriting march of time that will never again allow for a person in a rubber monster costume to fight on a set of miniature buildings.
It's okay. There are many pleasures to be had, even in this digital landscape. There is a big bad orange Kong-like creature riding an ice lizard like a big skateboard. It's not June yet, it's not Pride Month yet, but Godzilla lights up with a big pink spine and I just felt, ‘Oh, gay pride.’”
La Chimera
Alice Rohrwacher writes and directs this magical realist film, which stars Josh O’Connor as a British expat in Italy who’s leading a group of grave robbers. The plot digs into memory and our relationship to the past. Other cast members are Carol Duarte and Isabella Rossellini.
Duralde: “[Rohrwacher] has this great in-through-the-backdoor way of narrative, where you're watching her films and you're not quite sure why things are happening in the way they're happening, or in the order that they're happening, or why she's jumping around from this character to that character. But somehow by the end of it, it all makes sense. And she has told you a complete story. And she had to tell it in that way, where there's this chaotic orbit of characters and incidents circling around each other until they come and fuse in a perfect point in the middle.
And so this is a movie that is about theft, but it's also about the value of art and antiquities. It's about the tissue that lies between life and death. And it's told in a way that no other filmmaker right now, I think, would do it except for Rohrwacher.”
White: “Josh O’Connor’s performance is like something from a silent film. He hasn't got a lot of dialogue. And what you learn about him and who he is comes very much from his increasingly disheveled appearance and his very conflicted, sorrowful expression. … [Rohrwacher] is her own artistic force. And she leads you into wonderful, and at times, mysterious places. And if you're the right kind of viewer, you're always happy to be led there.”
The Shadowless Tower
From Chinese arthouse writer/director Zhang Lu, this follows a disaffected man in Beijing as he tries to reconnect with his father.
White: “The title … refers to a white pagoda, which is a 13th-century temple in Beijing. And because of its unique design, its shadow is very difficult to see. And that has given birth to a saying that that shadow can be seen 2000 miles away in Tibet. So what that has to do with this film is about … a meandering middle-aged food critic named Gu Wentong and his relationships that are familial and romantic, that can be found in Zhang Lu’s other career, he's a novelist and a filmmaker. So he builds his characters around this fixed center, we see that the past is looming over them like this tower, all of the mistakes, all of the broken family and friendship ties … we see the people intersect.
There are visual and character-based ideas that repeat themselves. And this is a very quietly observational style of filmmaking that ultimately, I think, emphasizes a calm acceptance of all the things that brought you to where you are, both the things that you can change and what you can't or won't. It's a very beautiful, thoughtful film, and it's about really the choices that you have in life, and you only have one, and that's to get on with it.”
Duralde: “There's a recurrent motif here about people walking backwards, which I think really characterizes so many people in the film. … They are dwelling on the past and where they've already been, and how that's put them where they are now. And you also see these generational developments where fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters do the same things, whether consciously or unconsciously. And so, it brings up that famous phrase about ‘the past is never done with us, it's not even past.’”
Wicked Little Letters
This is based on a true story: the Littlehampton poison-pen scandal of 1923. Thea Sharrock directs, and Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley are the stars.
White: “It is based on a true story, although the film here is immensely fictionalized. There was a poison-pen letter scandal in this little seaside town in England. And there was a young … nonconformist Irish woman who was accused of doing it, but there was very little evidence to convict her other than that she wouldn't behave herself properly in public. And she uses a lot of profanity. So you think this sets you up for a cozy mystery thing. And it does, until it doesn't. And about midway through the film, they solve the mystery, and then the film becomes about something else.
… It wants to be about misogyny, but also keep its distance by returning to the contents of these wildly naughty letters. … This movie doesn't fully come together the way you want it to. But it is really funny, and I think I would recommend it anyway.”
Duralde: “There's definitely a feminist messaging about … the traps laid for women by society in 20th century England, and how those get overcome. … It definitely falls under that cozy period piece mantle. These aren't wealthy people. It's not like you're there to look at the tea sets and the tweeds. But it definitely has that level of charm to it. And sometimes the charm and the performances are all it has going for it, but that's enough.”