Between 1945 and 1950, five people disappeared from its unmarked borders without explanation. Per narrator Mark Matzke, “The facts are few; the stories are many.”
And how! Interviewees talk of floating orbs, haunted homes, the sound of crying babies in the forest, ancient stone structures and a teleportation vortex. They also talk of UFOs, shadow people and a Bigfoot “built like a brick shithouse.” Covering so many ascribed theories in a short amount of time, it’s a veritable paranormalpalooza!
As always, director Seth Breedlove turns in a well-researched, well-made and largely well-oiled hour or so that explores a ton of questions to leave unanswered. High Strangeness feels more skeptical than his previous efforts I’ve seen, in that Breedlove seems more game to explicitly acknowledge the existence of what his core audience likely doesn’t want: plausible explanations and, quoting Matzke, “how rumor becomes record.”
That said, Breedlove saves the most outlandish Bennington Triangle encounter for last, as composer and vegetable farmer Robert Singley tells of his experience there, when time and distance suddenly became malleable. One of his lines could double as the Small Town Monsters motto: “That don’t make no sense.” —Rod Lott
Just because a film is a classic doesn’t mean I want to read an exhaustive account of its making, Of course, 1933’s King Kong is an exception, and Ray Morton’s King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon the authoritative last word on the subject — especially now that the book been significantly expanded and revised since its initial publication in 2005.
Researched to the point of minutiae and lavishly illustrated with a host of photographs, illustrations and storyboards, this History lesson begins with a brief overview of Kong creator Merian C. Cooper. If you’ve read Mark Cotta Vaz’s Cooper biography, Living Dangerously, this short chapter yields no new information. But it’s a mere appetizer to the meat: a long, hard look at Kong itself.
Arguably, the story behind the movie is more interesting than the story of the movie. With so many egos vying for control, movie sets are a hotbed of in-fighting, and Kong was hardly immune. Drawing Cooper’s particular ire was special effects genius Willis O’Brien, who soon would suffer a string of tragic events. The revelations are not limited to the original Kong, either, as Morton’s book devotes lengthy chapters to every sequel and remake thereafter, including the rushed Son of Kong and Japan’s one-two punch of the kiddie-matinee faves King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes.
For example, had Dino De Laurentiis had his way, his ’76 Kong would have outgrossed Jaws and been directed by Roman Polanski. At the time, Universal was trying to develop its own remake with a Bo Goldman script, which turned into a huge legal battle for Dino. He won, of course, leading the way for his Jessica Lange-starrer (wrongly thought of as a flop today) and its turkey of a follow-up, King Kong Lives, which screenwriter Ronald Shusett insists was written as a spoof, though not shot that way. The shooting of Lives may be the most interesting section of the book, as the process of an ill-fated film from idea to box-office bomb is something I always find fascinating.
Morton goes further to include a look at the King Kong films “that never were,” from a project announced by Roger Corman to a John Landis remake. (However, his scope pales next to John LeMay’s Kong Unmade.) Furthermore, Morton discusses the franchise’s various parodies, rip-offs, TV incarnations and mass merchandising efforts, with lots of photos of long-forgotten memorabilia.
With this second edition for Bloomsbury, Morton’s been able to cover Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning blockbuster in full, as well as the recent Broadway musical and Warner Bros.’ current “Monsterverse” franchise with such hits as Kong: Skull Island. The beast remains alive and well. (Note: While this Bloomsbury edition has more content, owners of the Applause original may want to keep that one on shelves for being in color, which this new one is not.)
At more than 350 oversized pages, Morton’s History of a Movie Icon is an absolute treasure trove for Kong-philes, overflowing with more information than you ever knew before (and possibly wanted to) about filmdom’s most famous “Giant Terror Gorilla,” as Cooper so fondly referred to him.
If there’s a negative aspect to the book, it’s the beat-by-beat plot summaries of each film covered; they’re simply not needed and tiresome. That said, it’s obvious Morton undertook the project seriously and, more importantly, with genuine love. —Rod Lott
After a bank closes on Easter Saturday, three men burst in to clean out the safe. To help ensure a scot-free getaway, the trio locks the bank manager (Colin Gordon, The Pink Panther) and his cashier (Ann Lynn, A Shot in the Dark) in the vault.
Because the vault is airtight, the looters risk their simple robbery being upgraded to a double murder. One of the thieves (Derren Nesbitt, The Playbirds) has enough of a heart and soul to return to the scene of the crime to free the employees before they run out of oxygen. Through a series of extraordinary circumstances best left to your discovery, that proves easier said than done.
All of 80 minutes, Strongroom qualifies as a ticking-clock thriller, even though director Vernon Sewell (The Blood Beast Terror) approaches the material with a low-key manner typical of the British film industry’s buttoned-up B pictures of the era. In the second half, it even takes something of a sojourn into pavement-pounding detective work to allow a police sergeant (John Dearth, ITV’s The Adventures of Robin Hood) to assemble the puzzle. It’s confidently taut without breaking a sweat.
None of that is to be taken as a weakness. But if you’re looking for one, allow me to point you to the bank manager unwilling to dial or answer a telephone on his own, because that’s what women were for. Anyway, Stronghold: economic storytelling without surrendering anything in return, as one hell of an ending coldly corroborates. —Rod Lott
Italy is neither the first nor fifth country that comes to mind for exporting martial-arts movies, yet that’s hardly stopped director/co-writer Gabriele Mainetti (They Call Me Jeeg) from crafting an epic one with The Forbidden City.
From China, Mei (Yaxi Liu, 2024’s Second Life) arrives in Rome to look for her missing sister, potentially forced into a prostitution ring. Her search puts restaurant cook Marcello (Enrico Borello, Netflix’s Supersex) on her radar. Not coincidentally, Marcello’s father also has disappeared. The setup for — and connections among — each runs deeper than your patience would have for print, so just know this: Mei tells Marcello, “I must have revenge.”
And boy, does she possess the skills to back that up. In lightning-fast skirmishes with gangsters from two crime bosses, Mei uses feet, fists and anything else that catches her fancy: cheese graters, floral arrangements, boiling noodles, market-fresh fish and music CDs cracked into jagged halves. Liu’s main career as a stunt performer makes all the difference in presenting Mei as an imposing threat.
Mainetti could stand some restraint; at 138 minutes, The Forbidden City starts wearing thin. But at no time does his film not look like the proverbial million bucks, applying his country’s bold giallo coloring to the backdrops of Liu’s lively feats of acrobatics. Providing excellent support are The Great Beauty’s Sabrina Ferilli, ACAB’s Marco Giallini and iRobot’s Roomba. —Rod Lott
Where trust exists, scammers scurry ’round to exploit it. Case in point, as Ben McKenzie proves several times over in his first feature as writer and director: crypto. The erstwhile star of Fox’s The O.C. and Gotham turns “undercover econ nerd” with Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, a highly engaging plunge into Bitcoin and all its suspect siblings.
“This is a film about a thing called cryptocurrency,” he says straight to camera in the prologue. “It’s pretty stupid.”
He means the topic, of course, not the documentary (based on his 2024 book with Jacob Silverman, Easy Money). When an investment tip from a college friend leads him down the crypto rabbit hole, McKenzie doesn’t like what he finds. In fact, he smells a scam — a Ponzi scheme, to be clear — and possibly a cult. His investigation into what’s legit and what’s bluster begins in El Salvador’s much-ballyhooed “Bitcoin City” and ends with him testifying before Congress in Washington, D.C.
In between, we get glimpses of his home life with wife Morena Baccarin — must be rough. In London, he visits her on the set of Greenland 2, where Gerard Butler shares crypto has served his wallet well. It’s the only scene I wish he’d left out, because it’s staged for laughs.
If this acting thing doesn’t pan out, McKenzie’s side hustle as a Michael Moore-style documentarian — but with GQ looks — is now all but assured. He more than holds his own interviewing Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. That both men since have become convicted fraudsters is not a spoiler for the film, but a testament to McKenzie’s bullshit detector, shoe-leather reporting and, yes, bravery.
Who knew this former teen idol was going to be one of this year’s American heroes? Great job, Ben. Now do AI! —Rod Lott
