‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ just the mindless monster matchup to lure us back to theaters
As big screens reopen, two cinematic beasts go mindlessly into battle in ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’
“Kong bows to no one.”
Actual for-real line of dialogue from “Godzilla vs. Kong”
When it comes to good old-fashioned movie monsters, even in this CGI world, King Kong and Godzilla would have to be No. 1 seeds in everyone’s brackets, right? Who are you going to counter with — some Creature from the Black Lagoon, or a Mothra or a Modan or a Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster? Come on. Don’t play.
In the incredibly loud and admittedly stupid and keenly self-aware and fantastically mindless “Godzilla vs. Kong,” you’ve got your classic matchup between the two perennial powerhouses, who first faced off in the 1962 Japanese kaiju film “King Kong v. Godzilla.” This is the first movie I’ve screened in a theater since last summer — under COVID-19 precautions and with just a handful of other folks spaced about the auditorium — and in a way it was the perfect B-movie vehicle for a return to the multiplex. “Godzilla vs. Kong” arrives in theaters and streams on HBO Max on March 31, and though I completely understand and respect why many moviegoers aren’t quite ready to actually GO to the movies, if the conditions are right and you’re up for it, this is definitely the kind of wonderfully escapist spectacle fare that plays best in theaters with oversized screens and teeth-rattling sound systems.
“Godzilla vs. Kong” takes place nearly 50 years after the 1970s Monsterverse epic “Kong: Skull Island” (2017) and just a few years after “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” (2019), and it’s more fun if you’ve seen those two films. But we’re not exactly talking the Dark Knight trilogy or even the first three “Lethal Weapon” films here, so you’ll be just fine if you come into this one cold.
Godzilla has been chilling in the waterways the last few years, but suddenly ol’ Atomic Breath attacks the Florida base of the globally influential Apex Cybernetics (I guess Acme Corp. was already taken), seemingly without reason — though we know if a monster movie features a giant tech company, said company is probably up to something nefarious.
“Godzilla is out there and he’s hurting people and we don’t know why!” exclaims Kyle Chandler’s Dr. Mark Russell, a holdover from the 2019 film, as is Millie Bobbie Brown as Mark’s daughter Madison, who is convinced there’s something amiss at Apex and teams up with her nerdy best friend Josh (Julian Dennison) and a seemingly wacko conspiracy theorist podcaster named Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) to expose the dark secrets of Apex and its megalomaniacal CEO Walter Simmons (Demian Bichir, basically playing a Bond villain in a monster movie). Meanwhile, on Skull Island controversial scientist Dr. Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgard) pleads with Rebecca Hall’s anthropologist Dr. Ilene Andrews, a.k.a. the Kong Whisperer, to go along with a plan by which they’ll sedate Kong and transport him out to the deep sea where he can defeat Godzilla and save the planet.
Movie Law: The moment when a gigantic monster is sedated and shackled is the moment we know the sedative will wear off and the shackles will be broken as if they’re made of paper.
Kong makes for a more sympathetic creature than Godzilla, given he’s a much more anthropomorphic entity, with a vast array of facial expressions and even the ability to communicate via sign language with a young girl named Jia (Kaylee Hottle) who is hearing and speech impaired. Godzilla is more powerful, what with the atomic breath and all, but seems dumber and definitely less cuddly. Screenwriters Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein come up with a pretty clever way to deal with that issue, while director Adam Wingard wisely peppers in one gigantic battle scene after another, with bombs bursting in air and monsters squaring off as if they’re in a heavyweight title bout. The exposition scenes are increasingly ludicrous, but credit must be given to accomplished actors such as Hall, Skarskgard, Chandler and Bichir for delivering their lines with all the seriousness they’d bring to a prestige character-driven drama. (Well, most of the seriousness.)
“Godzilla vs. Kong” is the kind of movie you can pretty much forget about almost instantly after you’ve seen it — but it’s also the kind of movie that makes you forget about everything else in your life while you’re watching it.
Laundry stains have met their match. Meet Patric Richardson, the selfproclaimed “Evangelist of Laundry” and star of the new series “The Laundry Guy,” premiering March 31 on Discovery+ (with a onetime airing at 9 p.m. on HGTV). The series is filled with plenty of tips on how to pre-treat, wash, hang dry and properly fold all that laundry. But there are also the stories behind the people and the items themselves — everything from wedding gowns to baby blankets to vintage clothing.
Born and raised in the eastern Kentucky foothills of Appalachian Mountains, Richardson began his love of all things laundry at the age of 2½, during the times spent with his grandmother in the small town of Grayson, Kentucky.
“My granny used to drive to Columbus, Ohio, to shop. And she would buy these beautiful clothes. And when she was young, there were no dry cleaners in town. So she figured out how to wash things that weren’t washable,” Richardson recalls during a recent phone chat. “And that kind of got me started, because one of my earliest memories [of doing laundry] was handing her clothespins because she would hang
everything on the clothesline.” Richardson went on to study apparel, merchandising and textiles at the University of Kentucky, quickly discovering that a college student’s budget left little funds for dry cleaning. Ultimately one of his professors gave him a life-changing revelation, telling Richardson, “you know, all that stuff is washable.”
Jobs at Neiman Marcus and as a manager and buyer of designer apparel at Nordstrom exposed Richardson to the world’s most luxurious fabrics and labels. Eventually, Richardson opened a designer resale store, where he also sold a detergent he created to specifically wash the vintage haute couture. He says if you can’t pronounce the ingredients in a laundry soap, don’t buy it. “Plantbased detergents are the best.”
His customer base became increasingly focused on how best to care for their purchases —including the dreaded “dry clean only” ones — as well as their existing closet inventory. This led to weekly “laundry camps” — part social gatherings, part washday tips, or as he calls them, an evening of “clean clothes and dirty martinis.”
When asked, Richardson is happy to debunk some of the most popular laundry myths.
Silk: “Silk is the second-strongest fabric known to man. (Snail’s teeth from the European limpet snails are the strongest natural material in the world, he reveals.) It’s very durable, that’s why they make parachutes from it. If you want to wash it by hand that’s fine, but I recommend putting it in a mesh laundry/lingerie bag from the dollar store and throwing it in the washer on warm water. Hang dry.”
Water temperature: “Never use cold, even on silk or wool. Warm is warm enough to activate the detergent, but it allows you to speed up the process. The thing that is scariest about the washing machine isn’t the water, it’s the abrasion. That’s what really causes your problems. If you bring up the water temperature you can shorten the cycle. Express on warm is so much better for your clothes than cold with a long cycle. . . . You’d be surprised how much less water you use and how much less energy.”
Pre-soaking: “I am not a fan,” he says. “I treat the stain and then I wash.”
Dryer versus hang-drying: “Hang dry everything. The abrasion in the dryer will ruin your clothes.”
So what are his must-have tools of the trade?
Vinegar, vodka, oxygen bleach, mild soap and a horsehair brush.
And never blot a stain, especially on upholstery or rugs. But if you must, use vodka.
“Vodka is a great stain remover,” Richardson says. “Ever come home from a restaurant still smelling like the cuisine, or been somewhere people are smoking or around a campfire? Spray yourself [or your clothes] with a mist of vodka from a spray bottle, and the odors will disappear.
“It’s also great on car seats. It dries fast, is odorless and colorless and leaves no water ring.” Richardson’s first book, “Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore” (with Karin B. Miller, Flatiron Books) comes out Tuesday and features his “revolutionary methods” for doing laundry and having fun doing it.