Godzilla (12A.)
Directed by Gareth Edwards.
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn and Bryan Cranston. 131 mins
Godzilla is big, dumb and full of fun. Cities are levelled; people are squashed underfoot and giant monsters rise up from the ocean. It is everything you might want from a Godzilla movie and touchingly true to the original. Though the special effects are magnificent and often realistic, there is something about the way he moves and the whole feel of the movie that makes you think that in some ways this latest Godzilla could still be a man in a monster suit rampaging through a model city just like the first one.
If you want Big Screen Spectacle this is it; anything else and you will be disappointed. Director Edwards's only previous film, Monsters, was a micro-budget, DIY effort where all the effects were done on his laptop. His first film suggested he had a keen eye, a sure hand with actors and some storytelling skill. His second suggests that one out of three isn't bad.
The casting has gone for quality over stardom, which indicates they were initially going for realism. But having rounded up a top-notch cast it has them flap about like 50s B-movie actors. Cranston and, briefly, Juliette Binoche retain their dignity but most do not. Watanabe looks particularly bewildered. It makes little sense to cast someone like Taylor-Johnson in the lead and then write the role like it was a star vehicle. His character is helicoptered, shipped, flown and trained into every major action sequence in much the same way Bruce Willis is transported around in Die Hard films. It is assumed that he is an essential element of every sequence, which would make sense if it was Channing Tatum or the like, but I doubt the average Friday night crowd would really be that bothered by the absence of the third lead in Anna Karenina.
The storytelling is borderline incoherent. It's like the traumatised gibberings of an eyewitness survivor. Stories are rushed through or left unfinished. A character will be in peril and then the film will cut away and literally leave them hanging. At some stage, this must've been an epic-length film that didn't play at all, so the decision was made just to keep all the good bits and to hell with it if it doesn't make any sense. Luckily the good bits are good enough for this not to really matter.
Directed by Gareth Edwards.
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn and Bryan Cranston. 131 mins
Godzilla is big, dumb and full of fun. Cities are levelled; people are squashed underfoot and giant monsters rise up from the ocean. It is everything you might want from a Godzilla movie and touchingly true to the original. Though the special effects are magnificent and often realistic, there is something about the way he moves and the whole feel of the movie that makes you think that in some ways this latest Godzilla could still be a man in a monster suit rampaging through a model city just like the first one.
If you want Big Screen Spectacle this is it; anything else and you will be disappointed. Director Edwards's only previous film, Monsters, was a micro-budget, DIY effort where all the effects were done on his laptop. His first film suggested he had a keen eye, a sure hand with actors and some storytelling skill. His second suggests that one out of three isn't bad.
The casting has gone for quality over stardom, which indicates they were initially going for realism. But having rounded up a top-notch cast it has them flap about like 50s B-movie actors. Cranston and, briefly, Juliette Binoche retain their dignity but most do not. Watanabe looks particularly bewildered. It makes little sense to cast someone like Taylor-Johnson in the lead and then write the role like it was a star vehicle. His character is helicoptered, shipped, flown and trained into every major action sequence in much the same way Bruce Willis is transported around in Die Hard films. It is assumed that he is an essential element of every sequence, which would make sense if it was Channing Tatum or the like, but I doubt the average Friday night crowd would really be that bothered by the absence of the third lead in Anna Karenina.
The storytelling is borderline incoherent. It's like the traumatised gibberings of an eyewitness survivor. Stories are rushed through or left unfinished. A character will be in peril and then the film will cut away and literally leave them hanging. At some stage, this must've been an epic-length film that didn't play at all, so the decision was made just to keep all the good bits and to hell with it if it doesn't make any sense. Luckily the good bits are good enough for this not to really matter.
