Colossal

     I suppose It's no wonder we love our monster movies,

...as we're currently  loving  "Alien Covenant,"  the most recent blockbuster in the saga of a ruthless, faceless, soulless, but exceptionally opportunistic  and seemingly   inexterminable alien,

...who lurks in its dark habitat just waiting to pounce upon, terrorize  and destroy humanity, even though it was humans who haplessly gave it  ascendancy through our own folly, naivete, and greed.

     No wonder we find this particular monster so engaging.  
    But while   "Alien Covenant" continues to rule number one at box offices nationwide, another monster movie has, sadly,  been languishing under the radar, at least here in Columbus, Ohio.

The movie "Colossal" never made it to the local mainstream theaters,

...nor even to the Drexel, our home for independent and arty film,

...but was relegated to the Gateway Film Center across from Ohio State,

...which shows the artiest, most out-there, weirdest movies that come to Columbus,

...among which "Colossal" probably is,

...yet in a weirdly wonderful way.

     Anyway, the movie is a monster movie/dark comedy starring Anne Hathaway,

...in the kind of role she could probably do in her sleep.
      She plays a young woman named Gloria who has lost herself in a sea of drinking and partying, has been fired from her job in New York and dropped by her boyfriend, who kicks her out of the apartment they shared together.

     Broke and at loose ends,

...Gloria has no option but to move back to her small, down-on-its-luck Midwestern home town and live in the vacant house left to her by her parents.
     She meets up with Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, a local slacker she went to school with who offers her a job in the run-down bar he inherited,

...which facilitates the continuation of her drink-all-night-sleep-all-day lifestyle.

     Meanwhile the rest of the world is in shock and uproar over a Godzilla-like monster that has  materialized in Seoul, South Korea, wreaking death and destruction upon the city.

      Gloria eventually becomes aware that the monster has the same nervous tics as she does,

...and stomps around Seoul every night at the same time as she's stumbling home every morning in a drunken haze.
     The rest of the movie is a wildly entertaining metaphor for...well...that's what one could stay up all night discussing:

      The destructive manifestation of repressed hurt, fear, emotional trauma, rage, jealousy, and/or self-loathing?

      The Freudian theory that one must uncover the origins of one's dysfunction before one can deal with one's dysfunction?

       Whether the need to control is  a manifestation of abuse or whether abuse is the manifestation of a need to control?

     Monsters can beget monsters can  beget monsters can beget monsters; so conquering your own monster may well involve conquering a correlative monster?

     All of the above?  None of the above?  

     Tom, with whom I saw "Colossal,"

..came up with what I thought was a brilliant deduction about the movie: That Seoul was chosen as the setting because this is a city that lives with the danger that two foreign powers with destructive capabilities could play out their hostilities on South Korea's soil.
     An awesome observation, say I.
     As I write this "Colossal" is still playing in one lone theater at the Gateway Film Center. 
     If anybody goes to see it let me know.  We can talk about it afterwards.