Culture Shock 07.31.14: Wonder Woman plays hard to get

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in "Batman V. Superman:
Dawn of Justice."

For some inexplicable reason, Wonder Woman is a hard sell.

A movie that features a talking raccoon and Vin Diesel portraying a tree? Piece of cake. It's called "Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy," and it opens Friday at a theater near you. But a movie starring an iconic character known the world over? Yeah, I don't know about that. That's a tough nut to crack.

Superman has his own movies. Batman has his own movies. Even Iron Man, who was second-tier at best until Marvel Entertainment took a gamble on Robert Downey Jr., has his own movies.

But Wonder Woman? Too risky. So, Warner Bros. is giving Wonder Woman her big-screen debut as a supporting character in "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice," currently scheduled for release May 6, 2016, depending on who blinks first, WB or Disney. (Disney has staked out the same date for Marvel's third "Captain America" installment. If I were Warner, I'd blink.)

Gal Gadot (of the "Fast & Furious" franchise) won the role, and the first image of Gadot in her Wonder Woman getup debuted this past weekend at Comic-Con in San Diego.

With all the color leached from her costume and a sword in her hand, this is a Wonder Woman who looks more like Xena, Warrior Princess than she does Wonder Woman. Too bad she arrives 15 years too late for Lucy Lawless to play the part.

Is it really so difficult to give us a Wonder Woman who looks and behaves like Wonder Woman? Does she have to look like she just stumbled in from the set of "300"? Given "300" director Zack Snyder is also directing "Batman V. Superman," that's probably a yes. But bringing Wonder Woman to life is something that has baffled Warner Bros. executives for years. They managed to drop the ball even when they had a Joss Whedon script.

The all-around cluelessness when it comes to Wonder Woman extends all the way down WB's corporate pyramid to DC Comics. Apart from William Moulton Marston (her creator) and George Perez (who revamped her in the 1980s), no one seems to have an inkling how to handle Wonder Woman. Recent portrayals in print depict her as a fierce Amazon warrior, which is clearly the direction Snyder's version is headed, too.

This Wonder Woman is more soldier than superhero. Unlike Superman and Batman, she has no rule against killing. It's all far removed from the Wonder Woman most of us grew up with.

If any character should have a moral code prohibiting the taking of human life, it's Wonder Woman. It makes more sense for her than it does even for Superman and Batman.

Although raised among Amazons, Wonder Woman's mission to "Man's World" — her whole reason for being Wonder Woman — is to embody a message of peace. That's explicit from her earliest stories in the 1940s on through most of the '80s. It's one reason why, through most of her comic book adventures, the only "weapon" Wonder Woman carries is her golden Lasso of Truth, which isn't a weapon at all.

I don't think anyone expects Wonder Woman to go back to her roots entirely. And no one — almost no one, anyway — suggests Wonder Woman go back to Marston's risque obsessions with spankings and female supremacy. It's a much simpler request: that Wonder Woman go back to being an optimistic, inspirational figure.

Wonder Woman left her home on Paradise Island, giving up her Amazon sisters and her immortality, to be an example of hope and peace in a war-torn world.

That was relevant during World War II, and it remains relevant today.

But if DC Comics can't figure Wonder Woman out, and if Warner Bros. can't figure her out, maybe it's just as well she isn't starring in a movie of her own. Do audiences more familiar with the heroic icon than the blood-soaked warrior want Warner's dark Wonder Woman? A Wonder Woman movie like that might just flop. (Or not. Who can figure out audiences, anyway?) And Wonder Woman would get the blame, even though the character onscreen wasn't really Wonder Woman.

And the naysayers would say, "See? I told you Wonder Woman was a hard sell."

Culture Shock 07.24.14: Love claims its '10th Victim'

Early in "The 10th Victim," we see a person gunned down in broad daylight. The shooter, caught red-handed, gets only a parking ticket. Murder may be legal, but mind where you leave your car.

Long before "The Purge" and its sequel slapped audiences with heavy-handed political allegory, director Elio Petri applied a lighter touch in his delightful 1965 satire "The 10th Victim," based on a story by science fiction writer Robert Sheckley and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress.

"The 10th Victim" is available on Blu-ray and DVD, as well as on video on demand from Amazon.

In the near future, psychopaths have a legal outlet for their violent tendencies. That outlet is the Big Hunt, a globe-spanning contest pitting some of the world's most dangerous people against one another in a game of kill or be killed. At stake are the thrill of the hunt and cash prizes. But, alas, there are no parting gifts, not even a home version of the game.

The object is to survive 10 hunts, half as hunter and half as hunted. The hunters know all about their intended victims, but the victims know nothing about who is after them. They must be on constant alert if they hope to survive. And if either hunter or hunted kills an innocent person by mistake, that's an automatic 30 years in prison.

There are other rules, too. In Italy there's no hunting in churches, restaurants, hospitals or orphanages. For veteran hunter Caroline Meredith (Andress) those rules are just a nuisance.

"In America we don't have such restrictions," she says.

Only 15 players have survived 10 hunts, and Caroline is looking to become the 16th. Her target is Italian contestant Marcello Poletti (Mastroianni).

All that remains is for Caroline to lure Marcello to his doom, which, naturally, is more complicated than it seems. But if all goes according to plan, their destination is Rome's Temple of Venus, where Caroline's final kill — if she's successful — is to be broadcast on live television, sponsored by Ming Tea.

"Ming Tea makes better lovers!" as their slogan goes, and all is fair in love and you know what.

Caroline is a killer with few qualms about what she does, but Marcello is by turns fatalistic, morose and neurotic, although he prefers to think of himself as a romantic.

Still, when the penniless Marcello, who plays the Big Hunt for the money, begins to suspect that not only is Caroline his hunter but that she has a commercial endorsement, he arranges an endorsement deal of his own. It is a diabolically good idea, after all.

"The 10th Victim" has more in its sights than just contemporary society's blasé attitude toward violence. The elderly are shipped off to the Center for the Aged so they won't get in the way of everyone else's fun. And the only books anyone reads are comic books. Vintage titles like "The Phantom" are "the classics."

At the height of 1960s youth culture, "The 10th Victim" stands athwart history and tells those noisy kids to get off its lawn. There's more to life than kids' stuff.

Forty years later, hardly anyone reads comic books. But just about the only movies anyone sees are based on comic book characters. And like those superhero movies, "The 10th Victim" is about a timeless battle. Not good vs. evil, though, but the battle of the sexes.

It's Marcello vs. Caroline or, if you prefer, Marcello vs. Ursula.

Mastroianni, as he did on several other occasions, including Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," portrays a character who shares his name, blurring the line between character and actor.

The same goes for Andress, who first achieved fame as the original Bond girl. The sex goddess who arose from the surf in "Dr. No" is as strong a metaphor for the love goddess Venus as you're likely to see. No wonder their showdown is destined for the Temple of Venus. Anywhere else would be sacrilegious — and would ruin the joke.

In the end, the line between love and death is no clearer than the line between Marcello and Marcello, or between Venus and Venus.

Culture Shock 07.17.14: 'Death Spa' membership costs an arm and a leg

Some of you younger folks may have a difficult time believing this, but there once was a time when gyms and health clubs weren't all over town making you feel guilty about not going to them.

Then the 1980s came along, and before any of us realized what had happened, we were wearing spandex and sweatbands, Jane Fonda had a second act selling workout tapes, and "jazzercise" became a normal word normal people used in normal conversation. It was terrifying.

Ironically, we were all thinner then, too, which leads me to wonder if science really has worked out the causal relationship between exercise and being fat. But I digress.

If ever there were a craze ripe for treatment in a horror movie, the '80s aerobics craze is it. David A. Prior's 1987 slasher flick "Killer Workout" got to theaters first, but Michael Fischa's "Death Spa" (1989) is the first to stage a comeback on Blu-ray.

Gorgon Video, best known for releasing the infamous "Faces of Death" series back in VHS's heyday, has resurrected "Death Spa" in glorious high definition. Gorgon's Blu-ray/DVD combo set  presents "Death Spa" with all the eye-popping color that made the '80s either gnarly or nightmarish, depending on your point of view. It comes topped with bonus features that include the director's audio commentary, a making-of featurette and trailers. (Amazon offers a movie-only "Death Spa" for purchase or rental on video on demand.)

Fischa knows his stuff. He kicks things off with a tracking shot that might remind horror aficionados of the one that opens John Carpenter's "Halloween." But that's where the similarities end. "Halloween" seems pretty tame in retrospect, but "Death Spa" comes across just as splattery and excessive as ever.

The premise is too much to pass up. Take a bunch of narcissistic, body-obsessed yuppie types (the forerunners of today's dude-bros and woo-girls) and put them in a haunted health spa where the equipment tries to kill them in increasingly gruesome ways. It's body horror for people who listen to Huey Lewis and the News' "Hip to Be Square" unironically. Imagine Patrick Bateman of "American Psycho" torn apart by a possessed elliptical machine, and you'll get the idea.

But to get to all of this death and dismemberment, we have to have a plot of some sort.

Our hero is Michael, played by William Bumiller, who's probably best known for a late-'90s stint on "Guiding Light." Michael is the spa's manager and part-owner. He's also dating one of his employees, the lovely Laura (the underrated Brenda Bakke of "Hot Shots! Part Deux"). And that doesn't sit well with his ex-brother-in-law, David, played by the late Merritt Butrick of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" in his final role. It's "ex-brother-in-law" because David's sister, Catherine, committed suicide.

David blames Michael for Catherine's death. Yet despite that simmering hostility, David sticks around the spa because he is the only person who can run its state-of-the-art computer system, which controls everything from the temperature in the steam rooms to the resistance of the weight machines.

You know, it would be a catastrophe if Catherine (Shari Shattuck, who was the replacement Ashley Abbott on "The Young and the Restless" in the '90s) returned as a vengeful spirit, possessed David's computer and then proceeded to maim and kill Michael's customers left and right.

If only Michael could close the spa until he figures out what's up. But the spa's other owners insist on keeping it open for a big Mardi Gras celebration, because that's something health clubs do.

Everyone plays it straight, except for well-traveled character actor Frank McCarthy in the time-honored role of Comic Relief Police Officer. But Fischa cranks up the gore — fake blood, rubber body parts and what looks like ground chuck — to absurdist levels. It's as ridiculous as it is grotesque, but it never fails to be entertaining.

Fischa is having a joke at the expense of every overly macho mullet-head who ever pumped iron. When Michael feeds Laura — temporarily blinded by a spa mishap — a limp stalk of asparagus during a "romantic" dinner, it says it all so obviously you don't even need Sigmund Freud to explain it.

Culture Shock 07.10.14: Ed Wood's 'Plan 9' rewards revisiting

Edward D. Wood Jr.'s reputation again needs rehabilitation. Once enshrined as the worst filmmaker of all time, Wood's place atop the auteurs of awful is in jeopardy.

It's an unexpected turn for the man who wrote and directed standouts of shlock such as "Bride of the Monster" (1955) and the semi-autobiographical "Glen or Glenda" (1953).

"Mystery Science Theater 3000," home video and the Syfy channel have exposed audiences to horrors poor Ed could scarcely have imagined. Compared to the films of Coleman Francis ("Skydivers" and "Red Zone Cuba"), rediscovered obscurities such as "Manos: The Hands of Fate" and "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats," and Syfy originals such as "Mansquito," Wood's films barely stand out anymore. They seem almost ordinary, common, unremarkable.

Wood's tin star has dimmed since Michael and Harry Medved first spit on it in their 1980 book "The Golden Turkey Awards," giving Wood a notoriety in death he never had in life. Even Tim Burton's Oscar-winning 1994 biopic "Ed Wood" seems just a distant and sad memory of when Burton and Johnny Depp still made great movies. It's more about them now than it is Wood.

Perhaps we've been looking at Wood's films the wrong way. Maybe they're more than just bad movies. Can your heart stand the shocking facts, my friends?

The obvious place to start digging is Wood's 1959 magnum opus, "Plan 9 from Outer Space."

For decades "Plan 9" has fooled everyone, critics and fans alike. At first glance, it seems like a movie about extraterrestrials coming to Earth and raising the dead. The aliens' plan (their ninth) is to stop humanity from developing a weapon that could destroy the entire universe. (Wood never does anything halfway.) In other words, "Plan 9" looks like a technically inept, dollar store remake of 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still." But despite itself, "Plan 9" is much more than that.

The addition of zombies to the plot is a commercial consideration. It plays to the Cold War fears of the drive-in frequenting youth audience, inculcated since grade school with a dread for the mindless, conformist Red Menace. Yet Wood mines this for an ironic comment on America's Red Scare paranoia. One of his alien visitors, named Eros after the Greek god of love, says, "It's an interesting thing when you consider, the Earth people, who can think, are so frightened by those who cannot: the dead."

Whether intentional or not, Wood both deflates the dead ideology of communism and lampoons a nervous America's dangerous overreaction to it. Only with hindsight and the collapse of the Soviet Union does it become clear.

Tor Johnson, left, and Vampira in "Plan 9 from Outer Space."

Wood's eye toward his teen audience also provides the film with its star power. TV horror movie host Vampira, pro wrestler Tor Johnson and the late Bela Lugosi (plus his stand-in) are the closest "Plan 9" comes to stars, yet all portray the resurrected undead. By accident, Wood gives us a sly take on how the old Hollywood studio system treated its contract players. It brings to mind the quote attributed to Alfred Hitchcock: "Actors are cattle." Here they are less than cattle; they're dead, especially Lugosi, who really is dead and appears only in stock footage Wood clumsily works into the final film.

In the end "Plan 9" is ahead of its time. It plays as a movie about the artifice of Hollywood. From the rickety sets and unspeakable dialogue to the non-acting actors and disregard for basic continuity from one shot to the next, "Plan 9" practically screams, "I am not real! I am only a movie!"

Perhaps "Plan 9" belongs in a different pantheon, among the great movies about movie-making: "Singin' in the Rain," Robert Altman's "The Player," and Federico Fellini's "8½." (OK. Maybe not.)

Wood didn't just make bad, incompetent, baffling films. He made bad, incompetent, baffling films that strove for deeper meaning. When he failed as a filmmaker, which was almost always, he failed magnificently. By a strange combination of delusional ambition and fortunate accident, he made terrible movies that not only are fun to watch but that surprise us with something new every time we revisit them. That is why Wood remains the Orson Welles of ineptitude.

Culture Shock 07.03.14: America still ambivalent about soccer

I harbor no illusions. Every four years, the World Cup rolls around. Americans suddenly show a modicum of interest in the world's most popular sport. And people wonder if this, at long last, is the breakthrough year for soccer in the U.S. of A.

Then Team USA gets knocked out of the tournament, and everything goes back to the way it was.

Well, almost. Soccer emerges ever so slightly more popular than it was, getting a tiny boost in its slow, yet inexorable climb. It's not a lot, but it's something. And a few more kids who would have gone out for football or basketball try soccer instead. Critical mass is just around the corner.

Still, if ever there were a World Cup to ignite Americans' passion for the sport, it's this one. The U.S. team survived the "group of death" only to lose a heartbreaker to Belgium despite goalkeeper Tim Howard's heroics. But scoring is up and even the draws have been exciting. Normally there is nothing worse than a game decided by a tie-breaking penalty shootout. But in the first match of the knockout round, Brazil and Chile managed to make even that outcome compelling.

This World Cup also gives us heroes and villains. Everyone loves Argentina's reserved Lionel Messi. Everyone hates Portugal's prima donna Cristiano Ronaldo. Everyone just shakes their heads at Uruguay’s serial biter Luis Suarez. It's almost like professional wrestling, except not scripted, although there's just enough dodgy officiating to make one wonder. (Thanks, FIFA!)

Team USA is led by Clint Dempsey, who goes by the nickname Captain America. Meanwhile, host team Brazil has a Hulk, aka Givanildo Vieira de Souza. Somehow Disney, which owns both ESPN and Marvel Comics, dropped the ball on this marketing tie-in opportunity. But it's just one more bit of flourish for the fans. (Hulk's goal disallowed on a bogus hand ball? Hulk smash!)

It's all much too much for America's steadfast anti-soccer faction, which views soccer as foreign, slightly sinister and undoubtedly a threat to American Exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism has always been something of a myth. Most of the things that supposedly make America unique were invented elsewhere. Capitalism? Representative government? Individualism? Sorry, but the English, Scots and Dutch all got there first. We invented jazz, but only the Europeans and the Japanese ever appreciated it. But soccer apathy? That does set us apart.

For the soccer fan in America, that apathy is a mixed bag. If you want to follow top-notch soccer, Major League Soccer isn't there yet. Following the best of the best means following the English Premier League.

England's national team may be a source of constant disappointment, but the Premier League is anything but, largely because its teams are loaded with foreigners. If you're watching the World Cup, you've seen them. Suarez may play for Uruguay's national team, but he plays his club ball for Liverpool, or he will as soon as he completes his four-month suspension.

I upgraded my cable mainly so I can watch Premier League matches — specifically Manchester City — on NBCSN. This is not an inexpensive habit. You can't count on the local sports bar's telly being tuned to soccer, except during the World Cup. The rest of the time, you have better luck finding soccer on TV at a Mexican restaurant, and then it's likely a Spanish-language broadcast. (Unfortunately, I studied German rather than Spanish in school. Not one of my wiser decisions, all said. Dummkopf!)

There is, however, a sunny side to this. American soccer apathy means you can escape soccer when you want. One might complain of "too much" World Cup hype, but that's one month every four years. Try escaping college football in America, to say nothing of in Alabama. It's impossible. It's all some people talk about. And while I'm not a mental health professional, I am worried about some of you. If your vehicle has more than two bumper stickers proclaiming your preferred college football team, you probably have too much of your self esteem wrapped up in the team's success.

But that's just one layman's assessment. Regardless, I've no delusions about soccer's place in America's sportsball pecking order. But where it sits isn't all bad.

Culture Shock 06.19.14: 'Deadlier Than the Male' is an underrated classic of the spy craze

Elke Sommer, left, and Sylva Koscina are "Deadlier Than the Male."

When you've seen as many films as I have, the overlooked jewels become increasingly rare. Seams run dry. But still, on occasion, you stumble across a movie that leaves you wondering how you haven't seen it before.

"Deadlier Than the Male" is just such a movie, and I'm kicking myself for only now getting to it.

One of a flood of movies released during the James Bond-inspired spy craze, "Deadlier Than the Male" (1967) gets lost among its better-known contemporaries. Dean Martin's Matt Helm films and James Coburn's "Our Man Flint" receive far more repeat airplay. Sometimes, sadly, even Turner Classic Movies falls down on the job.

Yet unlike those straight-up parodies of Sean Connery's 007 outings, "Deadlier Than the Male" could almost be a Bond film. It opens with an airborne assassination that would easily be ranked among the best pre-credit set pieces of the Bond series.

Hen's Tooth Video released "Deadlier Than the Male" on DVD, but an upgrade on that decade-old pressing is in order. Hen's Tooth's disc is widescreen but non-anamorphic. That said, it's still colorfully vivid on my HDTV, even in zoom mode.

Richard Johnson (1963's "The Haunting") stars as Hugh Drummond — like Bond, a character with literary origins, in this case H.C. McNeile's 1920s gentleman hero "Bulldog" Drummond. Updated for the swinging '60s, Johnson's Drummond is an insurance investigator assigned to look into some very expensive and deadly "accidents."

The trail leads to a scheme to eliminate stubborn businessmen who stand in the way of — well, that would be telling. Let's just say someone has a rather aggressive idea of a "hostile" takeover.

Johnson turned down the role of James Bond, not wanting to commit to a long-term contract. His loss was Connery's gain — and ours. But "Deadlier Than the Male" gives us an idea what kind of 007 Johnson would have made. With his slighter build, less-rugged appearance and greater refinement, Johnson comes across as a Pierce Brosnan-type Bond in a Connery-type Bond movie. The approach works surprisingly well, hinting that the problem with the Brosnan-era 007 movies was never Brosnan.

Yet's Johnson's charming, unflappable Drummond is destined to be overshadowed.

The "deadlier than the male" assassins referenced in the title (and the catchy title tune by the Walker Brothers) take the shapely forms of Irma Eckman, played by Elke Sommer ("A Shot in the Dark") and Sylva Koscina ("Hercules," "Hercules Unchained"). When the two emerge bikini-clad from the Mediterranean to carry out a spear-gun assassination, it's Ursula Andress times two. Calling Dr. Yes.

Sommer's trademark "Teutonic temptress" — really, even her Internet Movie Database bio calls her that — is more than a match for any man, except maybe Bulldog Drummond. But as captivating a screen presence as she is, even she is outdone by Koscina, who would also be her co-star in Mario Bava's ghostly 1972 masterpiece "Lisa and the Devil." Koscina's playfully sadistic Penelope steals the show, especially when she's called upon to torture Drummond's clueless nephew (Steve Carlson) for information, or when she's "borrowing" from Irma's wardrobe. With their banter and bickering, Penelope and Irma are like a couple of mismatched college roommates, which adds humor without quite falling into camp — as befell the Bond series starting with "Diamonds are Forever."

Rounding out the cast is underrated British character actor Nigel Green, perhaps best remembered as Hercules in 1963's "Jason and the Argonauts." Indeed, there's a lot of under-appreciated talent here, in front of and behind the camera. "Deadlier Than the Male" boasts a story by Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster ("Horror of Dracula"), gorgeous cinematography by Ernest Steward (the "Carry On" films) and a swinging spy-fi score by Malcolm Lockyer (1965's "Dr. Who and the Daleks").

If some company wants to revisit "Deadlier Than the Male" for a much-needed Blu-ray upgrade, throwing in a bonus CD of the score wouldn't make any enemies.

Culture Shock 06.12.14: 'I, Frankenstein' never comes to life

Like its main character, "I, Frankenstein" is a patchwork. The difference is while Frankenstein's monster is stitched together with corpses retrieved from the morgue, "I, Frankenstein" is cobbled together from dead movies.

"I, Frankenstein" is "Frankenstein" meets "Highlander II: The Quickening" meets "The Matrix" meets "The Prophecy." As its poster helpfully warns, it's from the producers of "Underworld," so there's quite a bit of that, too. The result — directed by Stuart Beattie from a screenplay he co-wrote — is a shambling wreck, with its constituent parts pulling in different directions.

Frankenstein's monster — a one-note Aaron Eckhart, who seems as bored as I was — doesn't know who he is, philosophically speaking. And "I, Frankenstein" (now on Blu-ray and DVD) doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be. The former is expected when it comes to Frankenstein tales, but the latter is disastrous. Yet one thing is sure: "I, Frankenstein" doesn't think much of its audience.

It opens with the monster relating his life story in a tedious monotone. It's a story most of us learned in childhood, but this is a movie that assumes no prior knowledge. Prior knowledge probably just gets in the way.

"I, Frankenstein" picks up where Mary Shelley's novel ends. Victor Frankenstein and his monster have chased one another to the arctic wastes. Now Victor is dead from exposure, and the monster is left to wander until he, too, dies. Only he doesn't. Instead, the monster takes Victor's body back to the Frankensteins' ancestral home and is busy burying it when he is unexpectedly attacked.

The monster's attackers, as it happens, are demons. So now he is caught in the middle of a centuries-old war between demons and gargoyles. That's right: gargoyles, not angels, because angels would be too cliché. But these gargoyles are a lot like angels, especially when in their human form, which they are most of the time to save on the effects budget.

The gargoyles' queen, Leonore (Miranda Otto of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy), names the monster Adam, because apparently that's not too cliché.

Now you might think Adam, consumed with questions about his creation and all that, would take advantage of being in the presence of an angel — sorry — gargoyle queen with a direct line to God. But then you'd be confusing "I, Frankenstein" with a good movie, or at least one that follows its own logic. Instead, Adam leaves, goes as far away from civilization as possible and presumably hones his fighting skills so, 200 years later in the present day, he can walk the streets of an unnamed metropolis and kill demons, which amounts to "descending" them back to hell.

In the end, there can be only one — sorry, wrong movie.

Meanwhile, the demons, led by Prince Naberius (Bill Nighy, playing roughly the same role he did in "Underworld") have determined the soulless, man-created Adam is the key to finally winning their war against the angels — I mean gargoyles.

There's also a scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) who is trying to recreate Dr. Frankenstein's experiments. But none of that really matters. Mainly, "I, Frankenstein" is a movie in which Frankenstein's monster beats up a lot of CGI demons who beat up a lot of CGI gargoyles. Occasionally, for a change of pace, the monster beats up some gargoyles, too. He's not a people person.

Like "Underworld," "I, Frankenstein" tries to turn a Gothic horror character into an action hero. Also like "Underworld," it fails utterly. Just as the vampires in "Underworld" are too busy with their gun fights and wire-fu to behave like vampires, Adam doesn't do much you'd expect of a reanimated corpse. He's far too preoccupied with hitting things with his Franken-fu.

"I, Frankenstein" is Hollywood's latest attempt to remove anything monstrous from our monsters,  turning them into superheroes who brood even more than Batman.

First it was vampires, then werewolves and now Dr. Frankenstein's creation. All of our monsters have been domesticated.

Culture Shock 06.05.14: Influential Japanese anime 'Space Adventure Cobra' comes to US

With an overly literal title like "Space Adventure Cobra," you know it has to be translated from Japanese.

Like "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" (aka "Robotech"), "Beast King GoLion" ("Voltron"), "Space Battleship Yamato" ("Starblazers") and "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman" ("Battle of the Planets"), "Space Adventure Cobra" hails from the golden age of Japanese animation. But unlike them, it didn't make the trip to America in the late 1970s and early '80s. It was something we first-generation anime fans could only read about, unless we were lucky enough to score bootleg VHS tapes that some other fan had subtitled. So it never got an Americanized title like "Sailor Moon" (known in Japan as "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon").

One fan was alt rocker Matthew Sweet, whose music video for his breakout 1991 hit "Girlfriend" is mostly footage from the 1982 "Space Adventure Cobra" movie.

Back then we knew only that "Space Adventure Cobra" was about a pirate named Cobra who had adventures in space, and that it looked pretty cool. Turns out both are true.

The "Cobra" movie finally hit VHS in 1998 and was released on DVD just two years ago.

Now American anime fans can finally see the 31-episode TV series, too. Right Stuf, one of America's most venerable anime distributors, has released "Space Adventure Cobra" in two DVD box sets, which retail for roughly $40 each. Complete episodes are also online at Right Stuf's YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/nozomient.

Set in the far future, the series starts by borrowing from Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which later became the 1990 movie "Total Recall."

A bored office worker can't afford a vacation, so he instead opts to have one implanted in his brain, so he can remember it as if it really happened. Instead, the implantation process awakens repressed memories: The office worker is really Cobra, a legendary space pirate who five years earlier changed his face, wiped his memory and went into hiding from the sinister Pirate Guild.

Now that Cobra remembers who he is, he decides to hit the spaceways again, even if that means avoiding both the Guild, which still wants him either to join or die, and the Galactic Patrol.

So, along with Lady, his android partner, Cobra sets out in his starship to have adventures, which, oddly enough, don't involve any real piracy, although he isn't averse to a heist or two for a good cause.

Cobra is the prototype for the heroes and anti-heroes who would come along later in "Cowboy Bebop," "Trigun" and "Outlaw Star."

His first adventure, which in heavily altered form is also the basis for the 1982 movie, involves a beautiful bounty hunter named Jane, her two twin sisters and a map to their father's hidden treasure.

Naturally, Cobra isn't the only pirate on the trail. The Pirate Guild's most dangerous member, the cold, calculating Crystal Bowie, is after it, too.

How to describe Crystal Bowie? Imagine a homicidal robot encased in a clear, laser-proof shell. Now imagine that robot is named after David Bowie.

Cobra's life of adventure is pure wish fulfillment. He has the best ship. He's surrounded by beautiful women. And concealed in his left arm is the "psycho-gun," a deadly weapon that never misses its target. How did he get such a magical device? It's not important. But it is enough to make you wonder if maybe this whole Cobra thing is really just the bored office worker's virtual vacation after all.

Even though it's 30 years old, "Space Adventure Cobra" holds up well compared to a lot of other animation from the same period. That's mostly because of the series' lush, airbrushed style. Almost any random frame of "Space Adventure Cobra" would look great painted on the side of a van — the sort of van on which you don't come a knockin' when it's a rockin'.

That's apt, because that's exactly the sort of van Cobra would drive if he didn't have a spaceship.

Culture Shock 05.29.14: 'Days of Future Past' gives X-Men a second chance

Given the obstacles it must overcome, that "X-Men: Days of Future Past" works at all is a pleasant surprise. That it's one of the best superhero movies to date qualifies as a minor miracle.

The X-Men franchise is one of the few Marvel Comics properties still outside Marvel and Disney's carefully constructed Marvel Cinematic Universe. That has its pluses and minuses.

The X-Men work better when kept at a distance from Marvel's other superheroes, who get in the way of the mutant vs. human dynamic that's central to the premise. That said, Fox's track record with Marvel's mutants is mixed. Only "X2: X-Men United" and "X-Men: First Class" are in the same league as Marvel's in-house productions.

But with Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men outings, returning to the helm, "Days of Future Past" not only hangs with the best of them — "The Avengers," "Iron Man" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" — in many ways it raises the bar.

Singer and Fox have a message for Joss Whedon and Marvel/Disney: "Game on, bub."

Adapted from a 1981 story by Chris Claremont and John Byrne ("Uncanny X-Men" Vol. 1, Nos. 141-142), "Days of Future Past" opens in the near future, where a war between humans and mutants has laid waste to everything and left most of the mutant population dead or imprisoned in concentration camps. The only mutants still roaming free are a handful of X-Men and their former enemy Magneto (Ian McKellen). They're just steps ahead of the Sentinels, an army of robots that can adapt to combat any mutant, no matter his or her abilities.

With no other options left to them, Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto hatch a plan to save the future by changing the past. That means sending someone back in time to prevent the act that ultimately leads to mutantkind's annihilation.

There's some explanatory handwaving, but eventually they send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973, where he wakes up in his younger body with a mission to find the younger Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), whom we met in "First Class."

Only together can they stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), a weapons designer who believes mutants herald humanity's extinction.

Trask's answer to the "mutant problem" is the Sentinels. But ironically, it's his assassination that leads the government to fund the Sentinel program, which it had previously passed on.

Mystique's solution is actually the problem it's meant to solve.

Wolverine's mission has just two complications. First, the young Xavier, deep in a depression following the events of "First Class," has given up on his dream of mutants and humans living together in peace. Second, Magneto is imprisoned beneath the world's most secure building. And even if Wolverine can bring them together, they hate and distrust one another.

Even with all that story to deal with, Singer delivers plenty of well-staged action.

Singer wisely dispenses with the "First Class" supporting cast, keeping only Nicholas Hoult's Beast, to focus on the main characters and what they do with their second chance. Even franchise mainstay Storm (Halle Berry) gets only a few lines, although she does finally get to show off her powers.

Storm kicking butt minus Berry's wooden line readings equals a win-win for the audience.

That leaves room for a few new additions, of whom Quicksilver (Evan Peters) is the undisputed scene stealer. No spoilers, but Quicksilver's big scene, improbably set to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," will have you smiling.

As much as "Days of Future Past" is about second chances for the characters, it's a second chance for Singer, too. He walked away from the third X-Men film to direct 2006's "Superman Returns," a misguided effort that led to Warner Bros. starting over last year with "Man of Steel." In his absence, Brett Ratner directed 2006's wretched "X-Men: The Last Stand."

With "Days of Future Past," Singer sets the X-Men right in more ways than one.

Culture Shock 05.22.14: 'Godzilla' takes its time but is worth the wait

In the first half of Gareth Edwards' re-imagined "Godzilla," we only glimpse the title character.

Dorsal spikes cut through the water like a shark's fin as Godzilla crosses the Pacific trailed by a U.S. Navy carrier battle group. In one memorable shot, the partially submerged Godzilla dwarfs an aircraft carrier sailing beside him. You half expect someone to say, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Just in case that doesn't remind you of "Jaws," most of the main characters are named Brody.

The 2014 model "Godzilla" is the second attempt by an American studio to adapt Japan's most recognizable cinema icon. The widely reviled 1998 "Godzilla" pitted a giant iguana against "Ferris Buller's Day Off" star Matthew Broderick, with a script that was "Jurassic Park" meets Dino De Laurentiis' campy 1976 "King Kong." Whatever it was, it wasn't a Godzilla movie.

This one takes some inspiration from Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," but at its heart, this "Godzilla" is surprisingly faithful to the Japanese version, especially as depicted in the "Heisei series" films Toho produced from 1984 to 1995.

As a bonus, instead of Ferris Buller, we get Heisenberg.

Fifteen years ago, an accident destroyed a Japanese nuclear power plant where Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad") was an engineer. The accident also killed Joe's wife (Juliette Binoche in a glorified cameo) and rendered the surrounding city a no man's land.

In the present day, Joe is still in Japan, searching for answers to a disaster he doesn't believe was caused by an earthquake or other natural occurrence. Just so you know he's obsessed, he wallpapers his apartment with newspaper clippings, because that's what borderline psychos in movies do.

Half a world away in San Francisco, Joe's son Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of "Kick-Ass") is a bomb disposal expert returning home to his wife and son (Elizabeth Olsen and Carson Bolde) from a 14-month tour of duty. He's barely unpacked when a call comes from Japan: His dad tried to break into the quarantine zone and needs Ford to come bail him out. This is a movie with giant monsters but no Western Union, but it gets the Brody boys together for when the action starts.

Of course, Joe is right. The nuclear plant was destroyed by a prehistoric monster that's still cocooned at ground zero, feeding on the radiation. And a secret organization led by Ken Watanabe's Dr. Ichiro Serizawa has been studying such creatures since the first one reawakened in 1954. (One guess which monster that is.) But before Joe and Serizawa can compare notes, the cocooned monster — designated MUTO for "massive unidentified terrestrial organism" — wakes up, lays waste to everything and flies east toward California, where Ford's wife and son live. Bummer, right?

By this point, you may be wondering where Godzilla comes in. Serizawa has been talking about him from the start, and his presence looms over everything, but it takes Godzilla an hour to show up.

Fortunately, when he does, he doesn't disappoint. This is no oversized iguana.

Be very, very quiet. Godzilla is hunting MUTOs.

Cranston can chew scenery with the best of them, and Watanabe's Serizawa ably fills the traditional role of the one person who is sympathetic to Godzilla. But otherwise it's hard to care about any of the human characters, and the Navy's plan to nuke the monsters is so stupid you wonder if humanity even deserves to survive. Fortunately, the slow buildup pays off when the monsters fight, and at least the monsters' motivations, driven by the most Darwinian of instincts, make sense.

Also, you can't deny that Edwards and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey ("The Avengers") have shot one of the best-looking Godzilla movies ever.

If there is a message here — and Godzilla movies usually have a message — it's that nature is chaotic but self-correcting. The MUTO awakes, but so does Godzilla, "the alpha predator." If humans don't upset the balance, order will return — after two or three cities have been flattened, give or take.

It's the Tao of Godzilla. When Serizawa says, "Let them fight," he's speaking for the movie as well as for the audience.

Culture Shock 05.15.14: Changing Godzilla reflects a nation's mood

Godzilla first stomps Tokyo in 1954's "Godzilla."

One of my earliest movie-going memories is my grandmother taking me to a Saturday matinee showing of "Godzilla on Monster Island," aka "Godzilla vs. Gigan."

This was Godzilla smack in the middle of his kid-friendly phase. During the 1970s, Godzilla kiddie matinees were common. It was the high tide of Godzilla's popularity in America.

Blue Oyster Cult released its 1977 album "Spectres," which included the single "Godzilla." Mattel produced a popular Godzilla toy (with spring-loaded claw and flicking tongue) that now fetches hundreds of dollars on eBay. NBC aired Hanna-Barbera's now-infamous "Godzilla" cartoon featuring Godzilla's dorky nephew Godzooky. And Marvel Comics published 24 issues of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," which saw Godzilla square off against the Avengers, SHIELD and other Marvel heroes.

Godzilla vs. the Avengers!

Apart from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, about which the less said the better, these American Godzillas kept him in his original role — a chaotic and destructive force of nature — rather than adopting the "protector of Earth" role Godzilla had by then assumed in Japan. For many Americans, Godzilla's hero period is yet another inexplicable artifact from the culture that is Japan.

In the Japanese context, it makes perfect sense. Many things about Godzilla may change, but for 60 years one thing has remained constant: Godzilla is Japan's most reliable mood indicator.

The original "Godzilla," aka "Gojira," opened in Japanese cinemas on Nov. 3, 1954, less than a decade after Japan's defeat in World War II and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is a bleak and somber film, much more so than the Raymond Burr version most Americans have seen.

The '54 "Godzilla" is the product of a Japan still reeling from defeat, and Godzilla, a prehistoric creature awakened by atomic bomb tests, is a terrifying reminder of nuclear disaster.

That's the part Godzilla would play until the mid-'60s. With 1964's "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster," Godzilla began to change. Toho, the studio that produced the Godzilla films, began pushing the character in a more heroic direction, having him team up with two other monsters, Rodan and Mothra, to fight the outer-space menace of Ghidorah. By "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" two years later, the transformation was complete. In that film, Godzilla defeats a terrorist army and its giant lobster monster, and in the process helps save the terrorists' captives.

Godzilla's flying dropkick in "Godzilla vs. Megalon" (1973).

Godzilla's change coincided with increasing Japanese confidence. In the '60s, Japan was a growing economic power. Also, it had begun building its first nuclear power facilities, taming for peaceful purposes the same atomic power that had leveled two of its cities and given birth to Godzilla in the first place. If the atom could be tamed, Godzilla could be, too.

Nowhere is the transformation more pronounced than in 1971's "Godzilla vs. Hedorah," aka "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster," which pits Godzilla against a monster literally made of pollution. Godzilla here is completely domesticated. Children play with Godzilla toys, while Godzilla might as well be a cheerleader for nuclear power over smoke-belching factories.

The next change comes in the 1980s. Godzilla returns to his "force of nature" mode just as Japan reaches a peak of national prestige. Then by 1991's "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah," Godzilla is saving Japan from time travelers who want to prevent Japan from becoming the future's dominant world power. Ironically, that was just as Japan's "lost decade" of stagnation began — pride before a fall.

So, Toho killed off Godzilla in 1995's "Godzilla vs. Destoroyah" only to revive him as a leaner and meaner monster in 1999's "Godzilla 2000," a symbol of what Japan needed to become to regain its confidence. (The Japanese don't regard the 1998 American-made "Godzilla" as a true Godzilla, and neither do I.) Then, after five more films, Fukushima happened.

So, now comes a new, American-made "Godzilla," the first Godzilla film since 2011's tsunami-spawned Fukushima meltdown. As Blue Oyster Cult sang, "History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men."

In Fukushima's wake, Japan's answer is to let someone else deal with Godzilla for a while.

Culture Shock 05.08.14: WGN's 'Salem' is a Salem you've never seen

George Sibley knows a secret. There are witches in Salem, and his wife Mary is one of them.

But George will never tell. You see, he has a frog in his throat — literally. Mary put it there so she can control him, because she's a witch and that's apparently something witches do. And since Sibley is the most powerful man in Salem, that makes Mary the real power in Salem.

If WGN America's first scripted series weren't trying so hard to convince us it's a serious drama, one would swear at times it's a comedy. To say the least, it's a strange retelling of the witch trials. It even has you almost rooting for the infamous Puritan minister and pamphleteer Cotton Mather, author of the best-selling anti-dancing manifesto "A Cloud of Witness Against Balls and Dances."

The Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693, during which 20 people were executed, have never been portrayed quite like this. In this telling, the witches are real, meaning they have supernatural abilities straight out of the Brothers Grimm. They're also the force behind Salem's witch-hunting hysteria, throwing suspicion on unsuspecting citizens so as to divert attention from their own schemes. The Puritans are just pawns, unwittingly bringing about their own destruction.

The big brain behind "Salem" is Brannon Braga, who does here to American history what he did to the laws of physics back when he was writing "Star Trek." Among other transgressions, Braga wrote the episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" in which Capt. Janeway and Lt. Paris travel faster than warp 10, turn into salamanders and have salamander babies together.

"Salem" isn't the first time Braga has gotten all weird with amphibians.

The story starts with John Alden (Shane West, "Nikita") going off to fight in King William's War. John is the son of one of Salem's founders, but he's so fed up with the Puritans he'd just as soon go off to fight the French. That also means leaving behind the woman he loves, the not-yet Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery), who is secretly pregnant with his child.

So John goes off, gets captured by the Indians, spends years missing and presumed dead, and returns only to learn Mary is married to wealthy invalid George Sibley (Michael Mulheren).

Oh, and while he was away, Mary underwent a ritual that rid her of her unborn child in exchange for membership in Salem's witch coven, which sounds like Pat Robertson's worst nightmare.

Mary wants revenge on Salem's Puritan ruling class, whom she blames for taking away everything she ever loved. By the time John comes strolling back into the village, alive and bitter, her plans are too far along to abandon.

The coven's plan is to tear Salem apart by fomenting hysteria and framing innocent people for witchcraft. And their No. 1 pawn is Mather, played by Seth Gabel ("Fringe").

This is not a portrayal the historical Cotton Mather would recognize. While Gabel's Mather shares the original's religious fervor and daddy issues, he retreats from his burdens by drinking heavily and having relations with women of the night.

Both activities were big no-nos in Puritan circles — although drinking and legal bordellos were common in the other colonies. The real Mather would be aghast.

For that matter, he'd find everything about "Salem" objectionable. This is a sexed-up Salem that pushes the boundaries of basic cable. Expect regular helpings of bare backsides and sideboobs, to go along with the gruesome executions and brandings.

Gabel's Mather, with all his doubts, is more compelling and sympathetic than either West's bland Alden or Montgomery's Mary. Mary's willingness to sacrifice the innocent in her quest for power loses her our sympathy almost from the start. At least when Mather executes someone it's because he's been duped and manipulated. Mary knows exactly what she's doing.

"Salem" plays like an alternate history of America's founding. If the witches turn out to be the Illuminati, secretly manipulating America since it's founding days, I won't be the least surprised.

"Salem" airs Sunday nights at 9 CT on WGN America. New episodes appear Mondays on Hulu Plus.

Culture Shock 05.01.14: Syfy looks to shake up its 'Sharknado' image

In television, as in any business, branding matters. You can have the greatest product on Earth, and it won't matter a bit if your brand sends customers fleeing.

TNT knows drama. USA is where characters are welcome. AMC is all about advertising executives and zombies, which has a kind of synergy if you think about it.

And Syfy is the "Sharknado" channel, although that may be about to change.

There are worse fates. Never mind the lack of music, MTV is more like VTM nowadays, as in "Vacuous Teenage Moms." "Sharknado," on the other hand, was the surprise hit of 2013 on social media and gained viewers with repeat airings. The third broadcast attracted 2.1 million viewers, a record for a Syfy original movie repeat, according to Entertainment Weekly.

There's a lot to be said for cheesy movies. If I had my way, there would be a channel that aired nothing but reruns of "USA Up All Night." I'll take USA Network's early 1990s late-night schedule of "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama," "Chopping Mall" and "Hell Comes to Frogtown" over yet another "NCIS" marathon any day.

Come to think about it, 2014 Syfy is a lot like 1990s USA. Back them, USA Network was known for cheesy movies, WWF wrestling and originals such as "Silk Stalkings" and "La Femme Nikita" (a Canadian co-production). Today, Syfy is known for cheesy movies, WWE wrestling and originals such as "Warehouse 13" and "Continuum" (a Canadian co-production). All entertaining, but apart from the rare "Sharknado" fluke, nothing that gets viewers talking the next morning.

Syfy used to air a show that did have its audience talking: "Battlestar Galactica." Then, for reasons that make sense only to television executives, Syfy declared a moratorium on shows set in space. An odd decision for a channel originally called The Sci-Fi Channel, I know.

But Syfy is also the channel that didn't know what to do with "Doctor Who," and Syfy's loss is  BBC America's highest-rated program and a reliable buzz generator. Meanwhile, Syfy has "Sharknado," "Ghost Shark," "Sharktopus," "Dinoshark" and the TV movie that kickstarted Syfy's love affair with monster-hybrid insanity, "Mansquito," which is oddly shark-free.

You have to figure Syfy's execs are just a little jealous of the science fiction and fantasy programming generating buzz for their competition, whether it's "Doctor Who" or "The Walking Dead"  on AMC or "Game of Thrones" on HBO. Syfy is an also-ran in the genre it used to own.

So, it's big news that Syfy is showing interest in its reason for being. The channel is heading back into space, embracing tech-heavy science fiction and, like all those other channels, looking to adapt best-selling novels.

One project already has a 10-episode order, and it will likely be the most ambitious series Syfy has aired to date, to say nothing of having the hardest science of any Syfy series. Maybe the success of "Gravity" has changed the mindset around the Syfy offices.

If Syfy is looking for its own "Game of Thrones," it may have found it in "The Expanse," based on "Leviathan Wakes" and its sequels by James S.A. Corey (the pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). And wouldn't you know it, the cover of "Leviathan Wakes" has a nice blurb from "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin.

"Leviathan Wakes" has warring factions, pitched battles and lots of unexpected death. So it is a bit like "Game of Thrones," only in space and without all the sex. So maybe it's not like "Game of Thrones" at all. Never mind. But it can air on basic cable without upsetting the usual suspects.

But even if "The Expanse" is good, will anyone tune in? Syfy has an established brand, one it spent years cultivating. And that brand doesn't scream intelligent, sophisticated, science-literate entertainment.

It's a brand that screams we're gonna need a bigger boat — and probably a bigger flyswatter, too.

Culture Shock 04.24.14: The king is dead, and I feel fine

He's dead, Jim.

I hope you're up to speed on "Game of Thrones." Spoilers are coming.

While the TV series deviates from the novels in many respects, HBO's "Game of Thrones" doesn't shy away from the one thing for which author George R.R. Martin has become best known: killing off your favorite characters in the most shocking, gruesome and heartbreaking ways possible.

It can be devastating. And since most "Game of Thrones" viewers evidently haven't read the books, Twitter explodes every time a major character dies. (Twitter is so much better than a water cooler.)

First it was poor Ned Stark. We'd been led to believe he was the star of the show, then boom. At the end of season 1, his head's on a pike.

We should have suspected as much. Dying is what Sean Bean's characters do best.

Then came the "Red Wedding." You can Google it. Some viewers are still in therapy for that one.

So, occasionally, as if in some half-hearted attempt to make it up to us, Martin kills off someone we  want to see dead. Two episodes into season 4, the TV show caught up to the most satisfying "Game of Thrones" death of them all.

Here lies Joffrey Baratheon, the most hated character on television. Indeed, possibly the most hated character in all of fiction. Hated by readers. Hated by viewers. Hated by small, inoffensive woodland creatures. And hated, most of all, by his fellow "Game of Thrones" characters, one of whom decided to do him in.

King Joffrey died as he lived, as a royal pain to all around him. He played second fiddle to no one. He may have been stupid, arrogant, petty, murderous, selfish, ignorant and, above all, a whiner, but no one came close to stoking the white hot burning hatred he did. He generated enough seething hatred to keep winter at bay.

And now he's gone — poisoned at his own royal wedding. He choked, he gagged, he turned an amusing shade of purple and then he died, crying in his mother's arms like the pathetic little loser brat he always was. The Red Wedding was tragic, but the "Purple Wedding," as fans call it, was a party.

Did I remember to mention Joffrey's mother is also his aunt, making him the slow-witted, inbred spawn of an incestuous relationship between sister and brother? I don't know how that could have slipped my mind.

Joffrey's mother/aunt Cersei (Lena Headey) is the only character who didn't hate Joffrey, and her lack of hatred is why everyone hates her. She knew full well the sort of monster she was raising. It brings to mind the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who said, "I am nursing a viper in Rome's bosom."

That viper was the mad Emperor Caligula, who, coincidentally, had a fondness for incest.

The only problem with Joffrey's death is it didn't take long enough. I think most of us would have happily watched an entire hour of Joffrey retching his liquefied guts out while crying for Mommy.

Joffrey's demise is probably the most satisfying screen death since Anne Archer unloaded a handgun into Glenn Close.

Yes, Martin deserves credit for creating such a despicable character in the first place, for dredging up such a hateful beast from the dark recesses of his sick, twisted mind. But most of the credit goes to Jack Gleeson, who brought the towheaded twerp to life — and death.

If anyone in the "Game of Thrones" cast deserves an Emmy, it's Gleeson, who had the thankless task of giving us someone to hate, and he excelled beyond all our hopes. In a show full of characters deserving of painful, lingering deaths, he outdid them all.

And Gleeson did it without much of a character to work with, really. Other screen villains at least get to be witty or smart. Not Joffrey. He was pure awfulness, with no redeeming or even faintly humanizing qualities. He was nothing but id.

In terms of the story, King Joffrey's death means little. Westeros is still a brutal land besieged by bloodthirsty tyrants and soft-hearted fools. But for a brief moment, it brought America together.

Culture Shock 04.17.14: 'Oculus' is a clever chiller that exceeds expectations

Any movie starring Karen Gillan ("Doctor Who”) and Katee Sackhoff ("Battlestar Galactica”) seems bound to raise some unrealistic expectations.

But surprisingly, director/screenwriter Mike Flanagan's "Oculus” meets expectations and more.

"Oculus” is a creepy, clever horror film that challenges both its cast and the audience to keep up.

The story unfolds half in flashback. We learn that 11 years ago, Alan Russell (Rory Cochrane, "CSI: Miami”) tortured and murdered his wife Marie (Sackhoff). He then tried to kill the couple's two children, 12-year-old Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and 10-year-old Tim (Garrett Ryan).

But Tim managed to grab his father's gun and kill him first. That's the official story, anyway.

Ever since, Tim has been in a psychiatric hospital, where the doctors have helped him come to terms with what he had to do.

In the present day, the now 21-year-old Tim (Brenton Thwaites of the upcoming "Maleficent”) is ready to leave the hospital and start living his life, as near normal as he can. But his older sister (Gillan) expects him to help take care of unfinished business first.

That unfinished business involves an antique mirror their father kept in his home office – a mirror Kaylie believes is possessed by an evil that drove both of their parents mad. But that's exactly the ghost story Tim's doctors convinced him was a delusion, a fantasy concocted by a frightened boy to avoid the reality of his having killed his father.

"They really did a number on your head,” Kaylie tells Tim when she learns he no longer believes in the magic mirror, the ghosts inside it, or that it possessed their father and turned him into a deranged killer.

As far as Tim is concerned, that's crazy talk. What's more likely, he asks, that a couple of scared kids made up a story or that a mirror is haunted? He has a point. Then he repeats the psychological explanation his doctors gave him, how memories aren't like recordings. Instead, they're as much invention as reality. Another good point, and one to keep and mind, if you can.

For Kaylie, who bounced between foster homes and endured the taunts of classmates, the mirror is an obsession. It's implied she took a job in an auction house just so she could track down the mirror, which was sold off following her parents' deaths. Now the mirror is in Kaylie's possession at last, and she has just a few days before it goes off to its next unlucky owner.

That's a few days to prove the mirror is evil and her father wasn't a murderer but a victim.

Some of the film's most harrowing moments come during the flashbacks, and Sackhoff delivers most of them. The mirror plays with Marie's head almost from the start, toying with her insecurities even as one of the spirits inside it (Kate Siegel) seduces her husband.

Gillan is equally good as the confident and determined older Kaylie, whose ingenious plan to make the mirror reveal itself may be just a bit too ingenious for her and Tim's own good.

Basso and Ryan, as the young Kaylie and Tim, are a pleasant surprise. In a genre where children usually run the gamut from grating to insufferable, they deliver emotional performances that elicit our sympathy rather than our annoyance.

While "Oculus” shouldn't be confused with Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset recently acquired by Facebook, it does much the same thing. It makes the unreal seem real. Where "Oculus” excels is in making us almost as disoriented as the characters onscreen.

Flanagan's Escher painting of a narrative jumps between past and present, illusion and (maybe) reality. If you come away thinking the story has resolved into a neat conclusion, think again.

Is the mirror even haunted, or is it all a delusion? And if it is a delusion, whose delusion is it?

Even the final scene should keep you guessing. We see through the movie darkly.

Culture Shock 04.10.14: 'Captain America' pits patriotism vs. the government

Since he defrosted 50 years ago in "The Avengers" Vol. 1, No. 4, Captain America has been at odds with his government almost as often as he's been on its payroll.

The world of Vietnam and Watergate into which Steve Rogers awoke is nowhere near as black and white as the world of Hitler and Tojo he left behind. In a 1974 "Captain America" storyline, Rogers becomes so disillusioned he abandons his Captain America alter ego, taking on a new costume and a new name: Nomad. He becomes a patriot without a country.

His Nomad persona was short-lived, but not so the idea behind it. Ever since, Captain America, the iconic symbol of freedom and patriotism, has drawn a bright line between serving America's ideals and serving its government. That's the Captain America we get in the ninth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." And it's one of the franchise's best.

Picking up where "The Avengers" left off, Captain America (Chris Evans) is still working for the global spy agency SHIELD and still catching up on everything he missed since going into deep freeze in 1945. (He still hasn't crossed "Star Wars" off his to-do list.)

Cap's latest mission teams him with an elite SHIELD strike force and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow to rescue a ship hijacked by pirates. From the start things aren't all they seem. The ship isn't just any ship. It's crewed by SHIELD personnel on a classified mission, and Rogers is already getting tired of cleaning up SHIELD's little accidents.

Back at headquarters, Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) decides it's time to bring Cap in on the big secret. SHIELD is about to launch Project Insight. Three specially designed SHIELD helicarriers will stay airborne at all times, identifying and eliminating threats before they happen.

Project Insight is preemptive war meets the National Security Agency, and Rogers is far from convinced. "This isn't freedom," he says in a trailer-worthy summation. "This is fear."

Like the underrated "Iron Man 3," this is a superhero movie with more going on than the surface pyrotechnics. This is the comic book equivalent of a post-Watergate thriller. It's no coincidence that Fury's immediate superior in the SHIELD hierarchy is played by Robert Redford ("Three Days of the Condor," "All the President's Men"). Redford brings more than gravitas; he brings a direct link to 1970s paranoia. But like they say, are you paranoid if they're really out to get you?

When an attempt is made on Fury's life, all signs point to an inside job. SHIELD has been compromised, and Cap isn't sure he can trust anyone. Even the Black Widow, who helped Cap save the world during the Battle of New York, isn't above suspicion.

The only person to whom Cap can turn is a fellow Army vet, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and even Sam has a secret, although one that's not a secret to readers of the "Captain America" comic.

All the while, threats from Cap's past keep cropping up, from Hydra, the formerly Nazi-backed super-science cult, to mad scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) to the mysterious assassin known only as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

While that may seem like too much for one movie, directors Anthony and Joe Russo skillfully juggle all the balls screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely throw at them. And they still find time to stage some of the best action sequences in any of the Marvel films to date.

In her third supporting outing as the Black Widow, Johansson proves it's past time the Widow got her own movie. And Mackie is instantly likable in his sidekick role. But it's Evans who must and does carry the film, giving Cap a humanity other iconic characters often lack. (I'm thinking of Henry Cavill's Superman in "Man of Steel," who always seems to be faking it.)

By the time "The Winter Soldier" reaches its climax, Captain America stands ready to reveal everyone's dirty secrets. He has become Marvel's Edward Snowden, which is only appropriate, given Snowden has become the real world's Nomad.

Culture Shock 04.03.14: 'Ms. 45' gives audience a lot to think about

Thana is a seamstress working in New York's garment district. Every day after work, she and her co-workers run a gauntlet.

Judging by director Abel Ferrara's 1981 film "Ms. 45," men in New York City have little to do but stand on street corners and hurl lewd comments at every woman who walks by. Thana's friends, being New Yorkers, give as good as they get. But Thana (Zoë Lund) is mute. All she can do is passively absorb each unwelcome come-on.

Then Ferrara cuts to Thana shopping in a supermarket. She's in the meat department, of course. She has moved from one kind of meat market to another.

It's easy to read one's sexual politics into "Ms. 45." Ferrara, who also directed the even more controversial "Bad Lieutenant" with Harvey Keitel, and Nicholas St. John, Ferrara's go-to screenwriter, give us a lot to work with. But at its core, "Ms. 45" is simpler than that.

"Ms. 45" is what can happen when the voiceless fight back.

Long out of print, "Ms. 45" returns looking better than ever. Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the Austin, Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse theater, has restored and released "Ms. 45" on Blu-ray, DVD and Amazon's video on demand. And early-'80s New York's grime and seediness have seldom been reproduced in such clarity and detail.

"Ms. 45" deserves no less. While overshadowed by "Bad Lieutenant," "Ms. 45" is Ferrara's masterpiece, anchored by Lund's affecting performance. The multi-talented Lund, who died in 1999, wrote the screenplay for "Bad Lieutenant," but in "Ms. 45," she is Ferrara's muse.

Ferrara wastes no time taking Thana's situation from bad to worse. On one of her walks home, a man in a clown mask (Ferrara) pulls Thana into an alley and sexually assaults her. Afterward, she walks home, dazed, only to walk in on a burglar, who then assaults her a second time.

The double attacks recall the most infamous of rape/revenge films: 1978's "I Spit on Your Grave," which wore its feminist revenge fantasy ambitions on its sleeve when originally released under the title "Day of the Woman."

"Ms. 45" is a direct descendant of "I Spit on Your Grave" and 1972's "The Last House on the Left," although it's more stylish and less lurid then either of those polarizing exploitation flicks.

When Thana turns the tables and kills her second attacker, the symbolism is ripe. First she sends him reeling with a blow from a glass apple paperweight, then she finishes him off with an iron. The overworked symbols of woman's deception and domesticity get their revenge.

And so does Thana.

When she kills a pimp, she strikes a blow for women everywhere. And when she kills an Arab oil sheik looking for a good time, it's almost was if she were standing up for all America. This is just a few years after the Arab oil embargo, after all.

In the film's most memorable scene, Ferrara stages a standoff that could have come out of a Sergio Leone Western. She lures a half dozen would-be attackers into an alley and guns them down with the kind of cold-blooded precision that would impress Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name.

As perversely playful as the scene is, though, it's also a sign Thana has crossed the line. From here, her vigilante justice descends into indiscriminate violence. No man is innocent, and no man is safe. The heroine's dark turn is what sets "Ms. 45" apart from the rape/revenge films that came before it. You might not agree with Camille Keaton's bloody rampage in "I Spit on Your Grave," but you at least know her victims have it coming.

By the time Thana dons her Halloween party costume — a nun's habit — she has become an angel of death. Unable to speak, unable to make others listen, Thana's story comes down to this.

Deprived of her voice for so long, Thana finds it again only at the very end. And in the end, all she can do is scream.

Culture Shock 03.27.14: Lack of facts keeps Flight 370 compelling

Planes similar to Flight 19, which disappeared in 1945 in the Bermuda
Triangle.

It is Sunday. It has been 17 days since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and CNN's Martin Savidge is still inside the flight simulator.

He always seems to be there. Night or day, CNN anchors throw to him so he can explain what might have happened to Flight 370, based on the latest theories and conjectures, fragments and wild guesses.

"It's official. I am now known on the street as 'The cockpit guy'," he tweets.

This is how reporters become minor celebrities. It's not exactly Bernard Shaw reporting by phone from beneath a table in his hotel room as the missiles rain down on Baghdad during the first Iraq War, but at least there's little risk of becoming collateral damage. That's a plus.

The fate of Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew is morbidly fascinating all out of proportion to its intrinsic newsworthiness. Is the coverage too much? Maybe. But it's not exactly as if a steady stream of cable news pundits war-gaming the Crimean War 2.0 on live TV is particularly enlightening either. If you want to know what's up with Crimea, you're better off reading a history book and drawing your own conclusions.

But if you want to know what's up with that missing airplane in the Indian Ocean, your guess is as good as anyone's, and almost everyone has a guess.

Terrorism experts suspect terrorism. Engineers suspect mechanical failure.

Before the plane's debris was found in the ocean, a retired general known for his off-the-wall views was sure the plane was hijacked and taken to Pakistan because something something al-Qaida.

Did you know UFO sightings in and around Malaysia surged right before Flight 370 disappeared? I read that on the Internet, which is great if you believe everything you read on the Internet.

Is it possible Flight 370 went through a wormhole caused by the Large Hadron Collider? I just made that up, but does that make it not true? You can't prove it isn't.

The Flight 370 story is ill-suited to continuous, 24/7 news coverage. We know almost nothing. Facts we think we know one day end up disproved the next. And as far as American viewers are concerned, it's all taking place a world away. When it's daytime here, it's nighttime there. Most of our speculation occurs during the dead period when the search has been scaled back for the night.

When it comes to Flight 370, most of our "breaking news" is neither.

But CNN's ratings spike doesn't lie. A lot of us are addicted to Flight 370 news, even when it isn't news. Maybe especially when it isn't news.

It's the mystery that captivates because it's so unlikely. A large passenger jet vanishes for 17 days with barely a trace? In 2014? The government has spy satellites that can read your mail from orbit. So, how does a Boeing 777 just disappear?

Mundane explanations, the sort that invoke the science of how things like satellites and GPS and cellphones really work, don't satisfy. Never mind if they're true. Psychologically speaking, big mysteries demand big answers. Missing airplanes are by definition big mysteries. That's how we get six seasons of "Lost" on TV and Stephen King's "The Langoliers."

That's how we get the Bermuda Triangle. In 1945, Flight 19, composed of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, disappeared in the triangle. The most likely explanation is the pilots, mostly trainees, got lost and ditched their plans in rough waters as they ran out of fuel. The pilots and their planes were never found, but they were last seen in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

You disappear into history, and you reappear as mythology.

Before there were airplanes, there were ships. The Mary Celeste was discovered adrift at sea, its crew missing. Books and movies followed, but few hard facts.

Hard facts would only get in the way. When there are facts, everyone gets to call it a day.

If only there were more facts, Martin Savidge might get to go home.

Culture Shock 03.20.14: New 'Cosmos' gets A for science, D- for history

Neil deGrasse Tyson takes the conn.

Astrophysicist and science populizer Neil deGrasse Tyson begins our tour of the cosmos — and his new Fox TV series "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey" — with a trip through the solar system.

Past Mars we go, then on to the outer planets: the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and finally Neptune, discovered only in 1846, which should tell you something about the reliability of the 4,000-year-old practice of astrology.

Next, on to the icy bodies beyond the planets. One of those icy bodies is Pluto, cast out of the planetary pantheon in part because of Tyson's tireless anti-Pluto campaign. The murderer has returned to the scene of his crime.

My personal grudge aside, Tyson is the natural successor to Carl Sagan, who brought the wonders of the universe, from faraway stars to the atoms in our bodies, into our living rooms in his 1980 PBS series "Cosmos."

To an 8-year-old, even one watching on a snowy, rabbit-eared, black-and-white TV, Sagan's "Cosmos" was enthralling and illuminating. It was even a little bit haunting, thanks to liberal use of music by ambient composer Vangelis ("Chariots of Fire") and Sagan's reminders of just how small we are compared to the immensity of the cosmos.

Sagan's "Cosmos" was filled with spiritual awe. Like Albert Einstein before him, Sagan flirted with the pantheism of Benedict de Spinoza, the heretical, 17th century Jewish philosopher.

Spinoza defined the cosmos and God as one and the same. That view doesn't put humanity at the center of the universe, but it does give us a crucial role.

"We're made of star-stuff," Sagan said. "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

We are still getting to know the cosmos, and Tyson gives us a refresher course.

If Sagan was a spiritualist, Tyson is a kid in a candy store, a wide-eyed 8-year-old with an adult astrophysicist's knowledge and a natural storyteller's gifts. He's no less in awe of the universe, but he is equally in awe of following in Sagan's footsteps on what Sagan called the "shore of the cosmic ocean."

Tyson starts where Sagan did. We tour the universe in a "spaceship of the imagination," only with better special effects. We see what all of cosmic history would look like compressed into a single year.

Hint: All of our written history takes place in the last minute of the last hour of the last day.

Science moves on. New discoveries happen all the time, and we've learned a lot since 1980. Back then Pluto was still a planet.

The new "Cosmos" also adds animated history lessons. They dramatize the lives of scientists who have expanded our knowledge. This is where we most see the influence of executive producer Seth MacFarlane (yes, the creator of "Family Guy").

Unfortunately, this is also where the new "Cosmos" trips up.

The first episode focuses on 16th century Italian friar Giordano Bruno, who believed, contrary to prevailing views of the time, that the universe was infinite. The Roman Inquisition burned Bruno at the stake, and "Cosmos" holds him up as a martyr for free inquiry.

Actually, Bruno's theological — not scientific — speculation about the universe's size played little role in his ending up on the Inquisition’s naughty list. The church was more put off by his heretical views on the divinity of Christ. Anyone can Google it, so there is no excuse for "Cosmos" getting it wrong.

The second episode is on more solid ground, in more ways than one. The action shifts from outer space to inner space, to the molecular processes that drive evolution. What humans did over thousands of years, turning wolves into every breed of dog we see, natural selection did over hundreds of millions of years, turning single cells into every plant, every animal and every slime mold.

The story of the cosmos remains as vibrant now as when Sagan was our guide, and not just because today's 8-year-olds get to watch on better TVs.

Culture Shock 03.13.14: '300' follow-up unaware of its own absurdity

"300: Rise of an Empire" won't win any awards for truth in labeling. It probably won't win any awards at all, unless there is an award for sheer ferocity of screen presence. In that case, Eva Green has it all sown up.

The "300" refers to the 300 Spartans who died at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Their story was told in Zack Snyder's 2006 film "300," but this follow-up isn't about them.

"The Rise of an Empire" could refer to the Persians, led by the "god-king" Xerxes, ruler of history's largest empire up to that time. But this is a tale of the Persian Empire at its greatest extent, not during its rise to glory.

Maybe "Rise of an Empire" refers to the rise of the Athenian Empire? That would make sense.

After defending its freedom from the encroaching Persians, the Athenian democracy would go on to lord it over most of the other city-states in the Athenian sphere of influence. That would precipitate a disastrous war with Sparta and ultimately leave Greece vulnerable to the Macedonians, who conquered Greece, then Persia and finally all of the known world.

History is full of ironies like that. Nations become what they most hate and fear, then fall because of it. One might even draw parallels to the present day, if one were moderately ambitious.

But "300: Rise of an Empire" isn't ambitious at all. It's a movie about people hacking other people to bits in slow motion, while director Noam Murro splashes CGI blood on the screen like a homicidal Jackson Pollock. Either that is your sort of thing or prepare to be bored after the first five minutes. Like the "Matrix" films' "bullet time," the slow-fast-slow butchery of the "300" franchise gets old fast.

There's no shame in making a mindless action movie, even if a little extra effort could produce something more. But there is something shameful about making a mindless action movie that takes itself far too seriously. "300: Rise of an Empire" never cracks a smile, much less a joke. It's all deadly serious business, no matter how absurd it gets. And boy does it get absurd.

When the Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) recounts Xerxes' origin story, it sounds like the prologue to one of Stephen Sommers' "Mummy" films. Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) goes on a vision quest and returns a bald giant who thinks he's a god. This Xerxes, a caricature created by comic-book auteur Frank Miller, is more supervillain than historical figure. Yet Murro and co-screenwriter/co-producer Snyder intend us to think of Xerxes as terrifying rather than laughable.

Also too serious for his own good is the Greek leader Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton). In "300," the Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) is so over the top he explodes into scene-chewing camp. Stapleton's level-headed Athenian is too sober for that. He's a better leader and also a more introspective one, although that isn't saying much. But he isn't exactly interesting to watch.

He's a bundle of warrior cliches, and Snyder's script calls on him to give not one, but two "rally the troops" speeches. Even Shakespeare’s King Henry V wasn't so bold as to give more than one.

None of the characters are developed, and we don't care who lives and who dies. We know the Greeks will win despite the odds, relying on their faster ships, superior strategy and seemingly divine luck. But Murro reduces all that to severed limbs and smashed ships.

The one thing that stands out is Eva Green's portrayal of the Persian naval commander Artemisia.

Green's feral warrior queen, a Greek with a grudge against the Greeks, is a welcome change from the first film's overbearing machismo. Artemisia prowls through every scene like a great cat, owning each second of her screen time. Alone among the cast and crew, Green knows "Rise of an Empire" is a joke. She brings a delightful madness to Artemisia's quest for revenge.

Artemisia has no time for hollow platitudes about democracy or freedom, and when she gleefully kisses the severed head of a general who has failed her, it almost makes enduring the rest of the movie worthwhile. Almost.