Godzilla (2014)

It really doesn’t get much more summer blockbuster than this – an enormous and very loud creature destroying stuff in spectacular (meaning “like a spectacle”) fashion.  Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla, the umpteenth entry in a franchise now sixty years old, is not a perfect movie, but it is a more than enjoyable popcorn feature with plenty of eyeball kicks.

Fifteen years after a nuclear meltdown, physicist Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is convinced that the quarantine zone is a cover-up for something much more sinister.  His son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), however, believes his father is crazy.  While Ford is content to move on with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and their son, a mysterious scientist (Ken Watanabe) hopes to study a series of strange caverns and organic pods growing within...

I almost don’t want to reopen this old wound, but Godzilla is very nearly the film that I wanted Pacific Rim to be.  Where Pacific Rim was a rather empty and noisy experience, bereft of many of Filmmaking 101’s basic storytelling elements, Godzilla is much more smartly crafted.  Edwards, working with some very talented performers and with a solid debut screenplay by Max Borenstein, does good work pulling the audience into his story which zigs when it ought to but every once in a while zags in an unexpected way, which I really mustn’t spoil.

Let me get the bad news out of the way before I continue with the “effusive praise” bit, because I really did enjoy the film despite being aware of its shortcomings.  And I’ll do these in relatively rapid-fire order, because they’re not overwhelming problems.  Firstly, the film is, toward the middle, a bit too long; there’s maybe one subplot or character too many, and the narrative does meander a bit heading into the final act.  Conversely, there’s not enough Cranston in the film; Taylor-Johnson is not an incredibly charismatic protagonist, while Cranston continues to play at the top of his game.  And finally, there’s very nearly not enough monster stuff in the film – I think I could have used a few more minutes of action for this to be a perfect popcorn movie.

One senses, though, that Edwards is deliberately holding back on the creature-feature scenes.  Instead of bombarding us from frame one with terrible beasties in combat as Pacific Rim did, Godzilla imbues a very Spielbergian sense of awe by withholding the monsters for so long, teasing us with hints of exposition and glimpses at parts of the whole.  It’s very reminiscent of Cloverfield in this respect, and it allows us to get attached to more than just the visual elements.  We get lured into the story and end up caring about what happens.  I said “I think” in the previous paragraph because I’m not sure I actually do want more Godzilla in the film; one thing that really struck me as I exited the theater was just how much restraint there was in this film and how judiciously Edwards doled out the combat sequences.

And this is a very smart hand at the wheel.  Edwards films some very beautiful scenes here, as when the HALO jumpers trail red smoke into the drop zone over an eerie chorus straight out of the trailer for Ridley Scott’s Alien.  The homage to the original Toho films, when Godzilla lumbers through San Francisco’s Little Tokyo, is another highlight, but the real eyeball kicks come from the immense sense of scope, very finely intoned by Watanabe just before the film’s third act begins.  There is a terrifying sublimity to Godzilla, which most lesser horror films tend to overlook.

Not Edwards.  If he’s in any way involved in the inevitable sequel, perhaps he too will one day be crowned “king of the monsters.”

Postscript:  absolutely see this on the largest and loudest movie theater screen you can.  I’m talking about genuine chills running up my arms at the Godzilla roar.  I can’t imagine Godzilla working nearly as well on a smaller screen.

Godzilla is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence.”  There’s a ton of property damage, stuff blowing up, people running in terror, people getting stepped on by monsters – in the words of Godzilla vs. Biollante’s rating, “traditional Godzilla violence.”

Monday at the Movies - September 2, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies” – this week, we review two films that are really quite draining in an entirely delectable sense.

Drive (2011) – Here’s a movie that’s way more intense than I was expecting.  In Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver, moonlighting as a getaway driver, who becomes embroiled in the underworld after falling in love with his neighbor (Carey Mulligan).  I don’t really know what I thought I was getting into; I’d only heard rave reviews, and I’ve never seen a Gosling performance I didn’t like.  But Drive is such an oddball captivating flick, its glacial pace tempered by Refn’s keen cinematographic eye – the result is something closer to There Will Be Blood than 2001: A Space Odyssey.  All this is not to say that the film is boring; rather, Refn directs the daylights out of some car chases without resorting to shaky cameras or even quick cuts, relying on the natural tension of the narrative and a well-placed close-up on Gosling’s steely stare.  Drive is undeniably Gosling’s show (Refn’s direction, though, giving a run for his proverbial money), but an astounding array of supporters – Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, and Albert Brooks as a spooky mobster sans eyebrows – fill out the film with that who’s-who delight enjoyed by moviegoers such as myself.  But boy, is this a violent flick, with some of the most jarring violence I’ve seen in movies recently – and, remember, I loved Django Unchained.  But Refn’s use of violence is sparse, used to jar and interrupt and not to delight; essentially, it does what violence actually does in real life, which makes it all the more effective and/or disturbing.  Drive, then, comes highly recommended.

Take Shelter (2011) – Is there any working actor more intense than Michael Shannon?  He’s always wound tighter than Taft’s bathtub, but when that simmer boils over it’s explosively good fun to watch.  Take Shelter might have been a dull picture with any other front man, but Shannon does fantastic work in an Oscar-snubbed lead performance as Curtis, a family man haunted by nightmares of an impending apocalypse.  As his behavior becomes increasingly obsessive and erratic, Curtis risks alienating his wife (Jessica Chastain), who’s especially worried about the fate of their deaf daughter and what will happen to the family if Curtis’s burgeoning psychosis threatens his own employment as a construction worker.  This is not a movie where much happens; instead, the film relies on the capable performances of Shannon and Chastain, who are more than believable as beleaguered Midwestern spouses.  The film is undeniably Shannon’s, his clairvoyance/psychosis (depending on how you read the film) taking a clear toll on his wellbeing as he grimaces and twitches in quiet moments before squinting into the horizon or, in one of the film’s strongest moments, unleashing his manic frustrations on his friends.  While she stands in a long shadow, Chastain is the emotional anchor of the film, the audience’s point of interaction as voice to a thousand doubts and frustrations; I don’t know where she came from all of a sudden, but her work in the past few years (particularly Zero Dark Thirty) demonstrates that Hollywood needs more of her kind of actress.  More indie than blockbuster, Take Shelter flew low enough under the radar that more people ought to see it – especially those of us needing a little more intensity from General Zod.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  And don’t forget that this Saturday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month...

Argo (2012)

I’ve been on record as saying that Ben Affleck is a better director than an actor (the former often helping the latter), and with Argo Affleck three-peats with another suspenseful thriller that, despite a true-story foregone conclusion, ratchets up the anxiety.

In addition to working behind the camera, Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, the CIA’s top exfiltration agent.  Since he specializes in getting people out of hot spots, Mendez is called to consult on the case of six Americans in Iran who escaped the 1979 embassy hostage crisis but are holed up in the Canadian ambassador’s home.  To do so, he forms a fake movie company with the support of a prosthetics designer (John Goodman) and a once-was director (Alan Arkin).  Thus armed with “the best bad idea we’ve got,” Mendez flies to Iran to establish cover stories to disguise the refugee embassy workers as a film crew.

Surprisingly for the man who starred in such trainwrecks as Gigli and Daredevil, Ben Affleck is shaping up to be one of this generation’s better directors.  With Gone Baby Gone, Affleck established a cinematic style for himself that relied on tension and suspicion, while in The Town Affleck added himself in front of the camera, demonstrating both directorial consistency and better acting than he’d done in years.  Argo, then, completes the hat trick with another taut thriller in a nail-biting setting.

Affleck uses claustrophobia to great effect here, giving the sense that the walls are closing in.  Absent are the spacious CIA interiors we’ve come to expect since Homeland or the James Bond flicks; instead we get an intelligence office where the ceiling is too low, the lighting dim, and the tempers high.  Similarly, Iran is a place swarming with bodies, physically and ideologically oppressive.  All of this is captured in the film’s visual language, which builds an effective sense of discomfort even though we know that the ending is going to be a happy one.

But the film isn’t all gloom and doom.  In the best film tradition, the film defuses weighty subject matter with a talented cast of lighthearted characters, where the humor isn’t always dark.  As a CIA head honcho, Bryan Cranston continues his inter/post-Breaking Bad career revival by popping tense moments with an expertly timed one-liner (the result, no doubt, of his comedic training).  Also fun to watch are Goodman and Arkin, the film’s ostensible Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who manage to balance patriotism with pathos, solemnity with comedy; true, they play the same characters they’ve always played – the gregarious goliath and the cantankerous old man – but they play it well, their star power and recognizability even helping their performances as Hollywood power brokers.

Conversely, Affleck wisely casts relatively unfamiliar character actors as the escaped hostages.  You’ll probably recognize them in passing, in a “Where have I seen her” kind of way, but it won’t distract; rather, it underscores the universality of the story Affleck is telling.  Likewise, familiar face Victor Garber hides under a wig and thick glasses to portray the Canadian ambassador as a paternalistic shepherd.  The cast clearly has chemistry among themselves – the refugee hostages in particular – but they’re also quite good at subtle glances to indicate internal stress or some emotional backstory.

While it isn’t enough to put him in the same strata as Scorsese or Nolan, Argo does demonstrate that Ben Affleck’s recent string of successes has not been a fluke.  Rather, I’d say we’re looking at a contender once the Oscars roll around.


Argo is rated R “for language and some violent images.”  The F-word is dropped several times in the film, often as part of a hilarious catchphrase, and the film’s depiction of Islamic fundamentalists may be disturbing or frightening for some, though the film is mostly bloodless.

Come back on Wednesday for The Cinema King’s review of Looper – stay tuned!

Monday at the Movies - March 5, 2012

Welcome to Week Ten of “Monday at the Movies.” While I had never intended this series to be themed each week, it seems that it’s worked out that way so far. And so in that spirit, here are “Movies You Might Have to Watch in School!”

Persepolis (2007) – Adapted from Marjane Satrapi’s much-loved graphic novel, Persepolis is the memoiristic story of Marji’s coming of age during the events of the Iranian Revolution. The film captures the tone of the original perfectly, blending hilarious humor with profoundly moving pathos, and the unique visual style of the comic is not lost in translation to motion. There are a few interpolations – several color sequences and a delightful scene in which Grandma and Marji go to the movies to see Godzilla – which enhance the visual experience. While I haven’t watched the French language original, I can vouch for the English language track, featuring (among others) Chiara Mastroianni as Marji, Sean Penn as her father, Gena Rowlands as the wise yet witty Grandma, and Iggy Pop as the brave and heroic Uncle Anoosh. While there are moments when Penn seems to be phoning it in, Rowlands and Iggy Pop are perfect choices, as is Amethyste Frezignac, who voices young Marji with just the right amount of joie de vivre. The story is deeply affecting, nuanced without reducing the story to an endorsement or rejection of the Revolution, and it hits the audience on several important emotional levels – humor, tragedy, sympathy, love. The film lost “Best Animated Feature” to Ratatouille, but in this case I’m not convinced that Pixar made the better film that year (as much as I love Ratatouille and the idea of a red-headed protagonist).

The Tempest (2010) – If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s Shakespeare at the movies, and this film had enough to lure my butt to a seat: director Julie Taymor at the helm (I loved Across the Universe and especially her other Shakespeare flick, Titus, with Anthony Hopkins), striking visuals, great source material, and an intriguing gender reversal with Helen Mirren as Prospera in place of old wizard Prospero. I love Titus and could watch it many times over, but I’m less impressed with The Tempest; it’s a perfectly adequate adaptation, but it seems to rely too much on the Prospera gimmick without doing anything inventive with the rest of the material – especially when it comes to the setting, which is lifeless and uninspiring. It’s a classic case of “nothing wrong” – even Russell Brand as one of the drunken clowns (with Alfred Molina) isn’t irritating or offensive. Perhaps worse, the film doesn’t weigh in at all on the Caliban controversy, arguably the current focal point of the play’s cultural significance. While I admit to being bored to tears with postcolonial readings of this play in particular (there seem to be other things going on, as well), the fact that Taymor almost ignores Caliban, especially when Djimon Hounsou is doing such fascinating work. But she handles the comic scenes well, with sufficient clowning in abundance, although the effect is that one wishes more for a “Stefano and Trinculo” sitcom than for the rest of this adaptation.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - February 6, 2012

Welcome to Week Six of “Monday at the Movies,” in which I’m continuing our theme from last week. Since the only movie I watched this past week was Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (a full review is already available on this site), let’s take a look at three more Batman animated films and see how they stack up.

The Batman/Superman Movie (“World’s Finest,” 1996) – Bridging the gap between two Batman cartoon series and connecting Batman to the Superman animated mythos, this three-episode arc of Superman: The Animated Series works extremely well edited together as a short movie, in large part because of the strong voice cast (which I praised at length last week). Here, The Joker finds himself strapped of cash but in possession of a large quantity of Kryptonite; he offers his services to Lex Luthor, leading Batman and Superman to collaborate in order to stop this lethal alliance. Batman is placed out of his element, a dark knight in sunny Metropolis, but the film finds a good place for him, and the team-up with Superman feels neither forced nor guaranteed. That is, the film strikes a comfortable balance between Superman’s cheery disposition and Batman’s grim and brooding ethos, between Lex’s disdain and Joker’s anarchy. Caught in the middle is Lois Lane, whose emotional vacillations are nuanced perfectly by Dana Delaney. And the rest of the voice cast is spot-on, as with any DC animation from the era – Tim Daly as the omnipotent but vulnerable Superman, Kevin Conroy as distinctly both Batman and Bruce Wayne, Clancy Brown as a tight-lipped and gravelly Lex Luthor, and of course Mark Hamill back as the clown prince of crime, The Joker. While some resented the visual update to the Batman style, it’s only the redesign of The Joker that feels somewhat less than perfect (I miss the red lips). It’s somewhat lighter fare than Mask of the Phantasm, but it’s as close to a perfect Batman/Superman team-up that we’ve seen on film or television.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010) – Critical consensus suggests that this film is better than Mask of the Phantasm (100% on Rotten Tomatoes, as opposed to Phantasm’s 87%), and while I’m not willing to go that far, I will say that Under the Red Hood is the best animated Batman venture since. Grieving the murder of Jason Todd (Robin II) at the hands of The Joker, Batman is forced to reconcile with his past when a new player in town is murdering the Gotham mob, working his way up to the top boss, Black Mask. While I’m a big fan of Judd Winick’s original comic series on which this film was made, I was skeptical of the new voice cast being used. Fortunately, newcomers Bruce Greenwood (Batman) and John DiMaggio (The Joker) serve as worthy successors to Conroy and Hamill; even Neil Patrick Harris is undistracting as Nightwing, but Wade Williams steals the show with his over-the-top Black Mask, at once a self-parody and a fearsome tyrant. But beyond the voice cast, the film itself captures the emotional essence of Winick’s original, even if some plot points are changed along the way; we understand very readily what Jason Todd meant to Batman, and we can tell very early on why the Red Hood and Batman philosophically collide as they do. And if it didn’t make sense already, the movie’s haunting last scene – a flashback to Jason’s days as Robin – will leave you clamoring to experience the film once more.

Batman: Year One (2011) – Here’s another case of a classic comic adapted by a new voice cast, but this time the results are a bit more disappointing – though not unworthy of viewing. Frank Miller’s iconic soft reboot of Batman’s origins gets adapted with Benjamin McKenzie as Batman and Bryan Cranston as soon-to-be Commissioner Gordon in this retelling of the first year in which Batman and Gordon fight crime, first separately then collaboratively. Again my skepticism of the voice cast arose and for the most part was not unfounded; while McKenzie’s emotionless voiceover captures Bruce Wayne’s internal deadness, it’s less engaging than I feel Conroy would have made it. The real star, though, is Cranston’s Gordon, who’s given the most screen time and surpasses the voice work done by Bob Hastings in the 1990s cartoon, approaching the definitiveness of Gary Oldman in the Nolan films. The film’s biggest detriment, though, is its overzealous devotion to the source material, leading to a few dead ends that don’t quite work on film. The plotline with Catwoman, for example, doesn’t quite go anywhere (even the DVD back-up short doesn’t help), nor does the diminished presence of Batman do justice to his appearance on the cover. I can’t help feeling that if the film had been titled Jim Gordon: Year One, I wouldn’t have this same complaint. The movie does, however, do a good job translating Gordon’s rise and struggles, and Cranston ably proves himself a superb Gordon. (And who can resist Alex “Moe Greene” Rocco voicing Gotham’s top Mafioso Carmine Falcone?)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!