Quarantine Control #30: We Can’t Get Out of This

It could not have been made clearer this week that we won’t be rid of Covid-19 for a long while, as cases are rising rapidly across the United States. It’s tough to blame anyone for being fatigued with being locked down thanks to the virus, one of the possible reasons for the recent spread, especially when a non-functioning government like what the US has is deliberately not doing anything. Not to mention other countries are going back into lockdown again. The best place is still in the home, though there are plenty of reasons to take to the streets these days. No, not for fighting lockdowns.

 

Geoffrey Barnes

Us (2019)
Source: HBO on Demand
Episodes: 1 movie

Us, the horror spiritual successor to Get Out from director Jordan Peele, reveals exactly what it will be right from the start. It begins on the Santa Cruz pier in 1986, where young Adelaide (Madison Curry) gets lost in the hall of mirrors and sees a horrifying sight that will scar her for years — even into adulthood (when Lupita Nyong’o takes over). It couldn’t be clearer that this is a foreshadowing for the horrors to come, though the movie takes its time building up the main characters before introducing the central opposition. There’s plenty of time to get to know Adelaide’s family, including her husband (Winston Duke) and two children, and their friends (the adults played by Tim Heidecker — yes, that Tim — and Elizabeth Moss). It’s full of twists a first-time viewer who’s gone in mostly blind won’t see coming.

What’s funny and eventually entertaining about Us is how it makes the viewer feel like they should have seen the biggest twists coming when they happen, including the main “gotcha” at the end. There are clues as to precisely how some events and characters aren’t what they seem very early on, but only if you’ve seen or remember other media being referenced. Other clues are plain obvious, but difficult to deduce while lacking context. There’s nothing lazy about this. They’re actually clever when paired with the prevalence of red herrings.

The only key issue I had with the movie was how the more thought I gave to some twists and background info, the less sense they made. Explaining too much of this would involve delving into massive spoilers, but at the heart of the movie is a conspiracy that involves bizarre logic and mysteries barely touched upon. This fortunately doesn’t ruin the main twists, but it’s difficult not to have this lingering feeling after finishing the film.

Us isn’t quite as effective as Get Out in its message and how much it resonates with society as a whole, nor is it quite as memetic (think about how many times you’ve seen references to the Sunken Place over the years). But it’s nonetheless an entertaining film that contains relevant themes. It’s worth a watch wherever you can see it, especially for this current season.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Source: HBO on Demand
Episodes: 1 movie (though it’s a sequel)

When Godzilla: King of the Monsters first released in theaters, critics faulted its story being little more than an excuse to have a series of monsters fight each other. They’re right.

Not that I cared. The first Godzilla film from 2014 was more character driven compared to other films in the franchise’s long lineage, with a considerably higher budget and bereft of the corniness. It took the concept from the well-meaning through ultimately misguided 1998 film and did justice to it, with solid acting, action sequences, and special effects, though the level of action was lighter compared to the average kaiju film. Not so with King of the Monsters, which breaks from the previous American-made Godzilla films by fully embracing the kaiju tropes. It’s less, say, traditionally dramatic for a Hollywood film, but fun in the same way most other Godzilla films are.

The concept involving why all these monsters, several of which either originate from other Japanese-made Godzilla films or have their own films, is left ambiguous at first. That is, until one of the masterminds explains their true purpose for freeing them. I won’t spoil it here, but it’s the most generic and corny plan imaginable, in true Godzilla glory. It’s evident from here and how stuffed with special effects the overall film is that director Michael Dougherty and the assisting production team listened to longtime fans who wished the 2014 film was, well, more of a Godzilla film, albeit with a Hollywood-level budget.

This switch in filmmaking approach comes at the expense of the character development. The two most memorable characters are both returning faces from the previous film: Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins). The only new character the movie develops adequately enough is young Madison Russel (Millie Bobby Brown), the daughter of two central characters. This follows the trend laid out above, in how the characters are as deep as those from a kaiju film; it’s clear they’re not what’s really important here.

I wouldn’t call King of the Monsters a great movie, but serves its purpose a fun shut-your-brain-off entertainment. That’s sometimes all that’s necessary, like a good kaiju film.

 

Joseph Daniels

This is the thirtieth week since we began recommending ways with which to endure the wait for the COVID-19 crisis to be over, although the virus itself has been around for more than thirty weeks.  I think it’s safe to say that no amount of fictional worldwide pandemics in movies and on television could’ve prepared us for just how stupid people would be in real life, but then it’s also safe to say that the writers of these movies and television shows had less faith in humanity than they should’ve.  It turns out that, while there are some places where the population seems hell bent on killing themselves, there are other places that are trying their hardest to keep the spread of this thing at an absolute minimum.  Every virus is different and we should be thankful it’s not as virulent as SARS, especially with how long those with COVID-19 can go without showing symptoms.

Being an essential worker, and still getting paid the local minimum wage, it feels like I don’t have a choice in the matter.  I could choose to stay home for a while to protect my family, but I’ve had a few, shall we say, unfortunate disputes with my employers in the past regarding my attempts to get time off from the job to help out at another, so I feel like if I were to try to put family first, I’ll be completely without a job and then have to wait for the pandemic to be over before I can find another one.  There simply aren’t enough systems in place to help those people like me who would rather put the safety of his family first but knows that he can’t afford to.  Capitalism is failing even harder now than it did before the pandemic and it feels like very few people in charge even care.

I’d rather not go into work today and deal with the public but I guess I have no choice if I want to keep my job.

Aggretsuko (2018)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 30 + 1 special

With a third season having been recently released, now’s probably a good time to get into Aggretsuko, especially since people like me can relate to Retsuko having to work in a sometimes hostile work environment.  Retsuko has a way to cope, though: death metal karaoke.  She even makes up lyrics which pertain to the situations she finds herself in.

The current season puts Retsuko in a situation where she’s railroaded into becoming the financial manager to an idol group, none of which seem to know what they’re doing.  Their social media presence is being run by creepy fans until Retsuko finally registers an official account for them.  Their merchandise is barely selling while at the same time they keep ordering more.  They can’t even afford a real studio to record in, so they go to a karaoke bar to record their songs (not sure if that would work in real life, but it’s how the series justifies the group’s manager finding out Retsuko’s secret).

Also in season three, it’s Haida’s turn to find himself distracted away from the “will they or won’t they” relationship between himself and Retsuko, when he meets a lovely girl named Inui.  They hit it off pretty quickly and ideally, this would be the start of a relationship.  I think it’s inevitable that neither Retsuko, nor Haida will ever enter into a permanent, full time relationship with someone else when there’s still room to tease their relationship with each other to the show’s fans.  I know it sounds like I’m spoiling here, but be honest: did you really expect the relationship to last between Haida and Inui when he still very clearly carries a torch for Retsuko?

The one drawback to this series is that episodes are generally fifteen minutes long, and while this means that they know enough not to waste time on frivolous plot, I sort of wish that I got to see more of Inui this season since like Tadano in season two, it’s likely we’ll never see her again.

It feels like the show’s writers had at least three seasons planned, too, since a line at the climax of episode five name dropped the show’s title and gave me chills as a result.  It made me wonder if this really was the plan all along or if they just got lucky.

 

This year has been all-around bad, with the virus and the reasons to quarantine being one among way too many reasons to list here, and there’s always potential for it to get worse. I’m not just talking about media that blatantly exploits our current situation. Stay safe and stay alive.