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GODZILLA: KING OF MONSTERS (3/22/19)
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Opens here next week. Likely to go the following week when it’s quieter after the school half-term holidays.

Definitely looks like the first occidental Godzilla film done right. 

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IGN: Godzilla: King of the Monsters Review

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Right from the start, Godzilla: King of the Monsters makes it clear that it is not going to be another hide-the-monsters exercise like its predecessor, 2014’s Godzilla. Whereas that movie, which rebooted the king of the monsters for modern audiences, aimed for a more contemplative if stingy approach to portraying the iconic beast, this new film gives us a huge scene -- with a huge monster! -- within its first few minutes.The message is clear: This Godzilla movie is gonna be wall to wall with the monsters, contemplativeness be damned.

 

Where King of the Monster does stumble, unfortunately, is in how needlessly convoluted its -script can be at times. When, in the middle of dire emergency circumstances, Farmiga’s character lays out a plan that somehow includes spur-of-the-moment video montages and infographics of what she’s talking about, monstrous giggles from the audience would be excused. That also goes for Chandler’s so very serious main character, who apparently knows better than the generals, scientists and other experts around him at every clutch moment. And then there’s Game of Thrones’ Charles Dance, who’s one of the film’s villains but who ultimately has almost no bearing on the story for some reason.

But hey, this is a Godzilla movie, and what we’re really here for is to see him kick some serious monster butt. And King of the Monsters pays off in that regard time and again, including an explosive, extended final battle royale between all the monsters. But the film also finds it in its monstrous heart to provide some fairly… dare we say it… contemplative bits as well. Ken Watanabe, back from the first film as a Monarch scientist and ultimate Godzilla fanboy, gets a particularly beautiful moment. Indeed, the movie manages to also pay homage to the Godzilla films of yesteryear with lots of little nerdy Easter eggs that will make fans quite happy, while also, of course, threading the needle of Legendary’s shared MonsterVerse past and future with just enough references.

 

Overall Score: 7.8/10.0

 

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/FILM: ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ Review: A Massive Monster Mash Dragged Down By Those Pesky Humans

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Mass extinction has never looked so gorgeous. Over a period of 132 mind-numbing minutes, Michael Dougherty‘s Godzilla: King of the Monsters lays waste to humanity with stunning tableaus colored in ghostly blues and faded golds, resulting in visual landscapes worthy of Aivazovsky’s brush. It’s a pity the world built around all that jaw-dropping monster mayhem is so damn dull. Cities are leveled, Lovecraftian monsters reign supreme, and the only thing I felt was a bad case of ennui. The ultimate kaiju smack-down shouldn’t be this boring.

 

The 2014 American reboot of Godzilla received praise for its few scenes of monster-inspired destruction, but most criticism of the film took aim at the lifeless human characters who got most of the screentime. In what can only be seen as an attempt to give the audience what it wants, the sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters ups the kaiju carnage tenfold while trying to inject some life into a new group of humans. But once again, it’s the monsters who reign supreme. It’s very hard to give a damn about any of the poor helpless mortals here, even when they’re played by talented folks Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, and Millie Bobby Brown.

 

There’s also the beautiful, ghostly Mothra, who may or may not have a thing for Godzilla. The best monster intro, though, belongs to the pteranodon Rodan, who enters the film via an exploding volcano, and proceeds to soar over a city with a wingspan so massive and so powerful that it has the ability to level buildings with the wind it kicks up. Dougherty and cinematographer Lawrence Sher capture all of this destruction with a painter’s eye. When the monsters arrive, the screen is painted in burnt oranges, corpse blues, and hot white streaks of lighting. The awe and majesty of these massive, god-like beings is rendered perfectly, and there’s a palpable sense of dread whenever they arrive. It’s suitably terrifying.

 

But this terror has an odd, and likely unwanted, side-effect. It’s clear that Dougherty wants to have his cake and eat it too, creating a big, scary monster movie that also entertains people with wrestling-inspired kaiju fights. The problem is, those two don’t mesh well here at all. Dougherty is perhaps attempting to jam together the mood and atmosphere of the original 1954 Godzilla movie with its endless, silly-yet-engaging sequels. I have no doubt there’s a way to make this work in some capacity, but Dougherty and his team haven’t figured it out. As a result, the monster brawls end up lookingamazing, but lack any real excitement. The visual of Godzilla body-slamming Ghidorah into a sports stadium shouldinspire thrills, but the end result is hollow and oddly lifeless. A film of this magnitude should inspire endless awe and excitement. I got the “awe” part every now and then. As for the excitement, well…there’s always Godzilla vs. Kong, I guess.

 

/Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10.0

 

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EW: Godzilla: King of the Monsters is radioactive alright

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I was tempted to start this review with some long, thoughtful wind-up about how every generation gets the Godzilla movie it deserves. But why bother tip-toeing around what needs to be said and said clearly right off the bat — Godzilla: King of the Monsters is not a good movie. In fact, it’s a pretty terrible one. Don’t shoot the messenger, Kaiju fans.

 

As the title promises, this sequel to 2014’s aggressively mediocre reboot is more than just a one-lizard show. It’s a globe-demolishing battle royale, pitting Godzilla against an oversized menagerie of monsters familiar to anyone who grew up watching deliciously cheesy Toho smackdowns on rainy Saturday afternoons – namely, Rodan, King Ghidorah, and Mothra (although that last one turns out to be more friend than foe). But you get the idea, this is one of those the-gang’s-all-here, bigger-is-better all-star jamborees that is, in fact, bigger but not better. The human characters (and I’m using the word “characters” loosely) are flavorless afterthoughts, spouting unintentionally laughable dialogue designed to do nothing more than move the risible plot from point A to point B.

 

King Ghidorah, a.k.a. Monster Zero, a winged, fire-breathing dragon-type creature with three hydra heads, is Godzilla’s chief nemesis – the Lex Luthor to his Superman. We’re told over and over again that he’s an “alpha”, as if Monster Island had some sort of high school social-clique pecking order. When you do get a moment or two to really feast your eyes on him (her?), he/she’s impressively destructive and majestic. But without any coherent context, he/she’s also just an expensive action figure tearing cities and landmarks to ribbons of rubble, including Boston’s Fenway Park (the failure to even attempt a “Green Monster” joke feels like a softball whiffed upon).

 

Before anyone reading this starts complaining that I just don’t get what movies like Godzilla: King of the Monsters are all about, that I’m the sort of killjoy who should just relax, let me say that it would be a lot easier to take it less seriously if the people who made the movie cared enough to take it more seriously.

 

Overall: C-

:whatthe:

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INDIE WIRE: ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ Review: A Sequel That’s Dark, Wet, and Inept

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Night sequences in the final season of “Game of Thrones” inspired a litany of complaints from fans and critics that they couldn’t see what the hell was going on. Now we have “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” — and with it, fresh inspiration for squinting. If you thought you couldn’t make out what was happening during The Battle of Winterfell, prepare thyself for an entire film built on the concept that, when giant monsters battle each other, they actually create tropical storms, gusting rain, and a baffling amount of cloud cover.

 

Bad weather is the least of the problems that beset Michael Dougherty’s inept sequel, the latest film in Warner Bros.’ growing MonsterVerse. Picking up five years after Gareth Edwards’ superior 2014 feature “Godzilla,” the new film attempts to imagine a post-monster (or, in “Godzilla” parlance, post-Titan) world. San Francisco is a memorial, the planet is dotted with secretive outposts run by “crypto-zoological agency” Monarch, and the government is hellbent on enacting a plan to kill the remaining monsters.

 

As the Titans continue to rise, Mark and his band of Monarch pals (including at least one with a secret twin, a footnote revealed for no discernible reason) manage to be everywhere they need to be at any given moment, thanks to a massive super-speed jet that seems directly inspired by a similar vehicle in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” never met a sci-fi film it didn’t want to rip off — brace yourself for a dramatic sequence that pulls so liberally from “Armageddon” that we can only assume Michael Bay is readying a lawsuit — and the result is a sloppy, stitched-together offering with no sense of self.

 

At least Godzilla seems to remember who he is — all the better to gear up for the next MonsterVerse film: 2020’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” — and when the biggest monster of them all appears, he slips right back into his role as Earth’s most unlikely defender. Godzilla’s interest in saving humanity never made much sense, but it’s this CGI creation with no dialogue that gives the film the continuity and character it lacks elsewhere. When Godzilla lights up his nuke-powered tail and lets loose his interminable scream, for just a moment, the MonsterVerse has something to offer.

 

Grade: C-

:whatthe:

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