2014: The Year in Film: "Godzilla" Review

Godzilla is just one of those things that's REALLY famous because, in all honesty, popular culture 40 years ago sucked, and now that "Boomers" are the only people with money, they get to pretend like everything that was around in their formative is extremely significant and mind-blowing. Don't get me wrong, a giant lizard/dinosaur thing that breathes fire and destroys major cities is pretty awesome in a big, loud, crazy way, and undoubtedly Godzilla is a big freaking deal in Japan, which has its own reasons to be concerned about the nuclear age, but I feel that we're doing the entire endeavor a serious disservice by pretending that Godzilla is a BIG FREAKING DEAL. This is my preface to the entire affair for a reason that I'll delve into a little later on in this post.  1998's Godzilla is an absolutely toilet movie. It makes no sense, it's disgustingly corporate in that awful 90's way, it's horribly acted, worse written, and doesn't even pretend to make sense. Plus, Godzilla looks like a T-Rex because Roland Emmerich likes Jurassic Park, I guess? The 90's was a strange era, one where Jeff Goldblum could headline Hollywood blockbusters, so I understand the motivation behind casting Matthew Broderick, but it's safe to say that the entire affair was an unmitigated disaster. It is weirdly fun to recall, however, that snippet of time in the mid-to-late 90's when movie soundtracks were a THING and sold millions of albums, as the Godzilla soundtrack was pretty damn hyped up and featured that godawful Puff Daddy (with Jimmy Page!) abortion of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

Enter 2014's Godzilla, a film that brought on acclaimed indie monster movie director Gareth Edwards and a massive budget to redeem the character of Godzilla and the film franchise as a whole. We're introduced to a world where man's entry to the nuclear age awoke some very ancient and very powerful creatures from earth's past who were powered by the now faded naturally occurring radiation produced from the young earth. A disaster at a Japanese nuclear power plant in the 90's and a series of bizarre happenings around the world led a group of scientists to discover mysterious creatures - deemed MUTOs. As these MUTOs begin to ransack the greater Pacific, it becomes clear that another creature is out there. Godzilla.

The Good: This film looks great. It really does service to the massive scale of the production as the effects and scenes of destruction are really convincing and often pretty to look at. The monster scenes are well-done, the destruction convincing, and the climatic battle between Godzilla and the MUTOs is actually pretty awesome. I really appreciate the effort to make Godzilla real-feeling and bring a convincing cinematic treatment to bear, even if it wasn't always effective, I appreciate it. While the acting isn't this film's strong suit, Bryan Cranston (Heisenberg!) is memorable, and really does a lot with the material that he's given.



The Bad: Ultimately, the decision to try to "science-up" Godzilla was a stupid one. You're not going to be able to craft a convincing scientific explanation for an 800 foot tall monster, so why even try? The film goes to great lengths in the first half to explain how and why its monsters came to be, and then throws all of that pretext out the window so they can have a cool battle. If you knew the film was going to end with monsters smashing cities as they fought, (including a scientist actually saying "Let them fight") why bother with the scientific pretext? It's a silly decision that ultimately cheapens the film and makes the whole thing actually feel dumber than if they hadn't tried at all. But this film has bigger problems than science. For its long runtime, there's surprisingly little Godzilla. You see the MUTOs much more than you see Godzilla himself, and while I understand that sometimes 'less is more', it's also undoubtedly true that you should feature the titular character as much as possible. What is in the 2 hours of movie that don't feature Godzilla, you ask? Well, NOT BRYAN CRANSTON. He dies WAY too early, considering that he's the only actor featured in all of the film's marketing. Instead we get generic military dude Aaron "Kickass" Taylor-Johnson who just kind of deadpans everything while playing a humorless bore lacking either the charisma or the gravitas to properly ground a monster movie. And he's not the only boring member of his own family: we also get his wife (Elizabeth Olson) who does nothing at all other than get pointlessly put in harm's way as if we needed an emotional center to have it sink in that an entire city was being destroyed. Guys, the "damsel in distress" ploy went out of style 20 years ago. We aren't going to be emotionally invested just because a random pretty chick who we never even got to know is in peril. This relationship has no stakes because it's never developed, and it's portrayed by two actors who have utterly mailed the entire thing in. The film would have been infinitely better if Taylor-Johnson's scenes all went to Cranston, and Olson wasn't in the film at all. The choice to feature humans OVER Godzilla could have worked if the human characters were developed or interesting at all. They weren't and they aren't. Ultimately, the whole film feels lazy and like an excuse to have Godzilla tear off another monster's head. THAT'S TOTALLY AWESOME, BUT IT'S NOT ENOUGH FOR 120 BORING MINUTES.

If you're interested in boring, poorly-acted characters masquerading as military dudes and nurses, or never paid attention in science class and think a movie is worthwhile if it features a cool monster Mortal Kombat-style "Finish Him" death at the expense of every other element that makes a good film, congratulations, Godzilla is for you. If you're a human being who has a brain and appreciates it when filmmakers don't treat you like an easily-manipulated child who gets amazed by shiny things and automatically sympathizes for a couple with a small child even if they're the most boring people on earth, don't watch Godzilla, unless you're planning on making fun of everything. This film was extremely disappointing for me, because it seriously looked great, and the Godzilla scenes are all REALLY well done, but ultimately it just felt cheap and lazy and thrown together, and it threw away the best character in the film for no reason other than Cranston had to go shoot something else or whatever the reason was. Either make a "serious" Godzilla film, or make a movie where Godzilla rips off heads, but you can't have it both ways. Ultimately, the decision to have this film be the bipolar offspring of a fun action flick and serious sci-fi drama completely torpedoed the whole thing from the jump. Without the benefit of having a memorable or even strong performance at its core, the film just feels lost. Let's put it this way: one of the guys I saw the flick with legitimately thought there were two Godzillas, and I can totally see why he would think that. WHEN PEOPLE CAN'T TELL HOW MANY GODZILLAS ARE IN YOUR MOVIE YOU HAVEN'T DONE YOUR JOB, GUYS.

4/10.

2012: The Year in Film: "Argo" Review.

I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this one a week before it hits theaters (it comes out Friday, October 12), and this flick has been one I've been excited for since I first saw the trailer. (Check the 2012 Movie Preview if you don't believe me.) Based on a "truth is stranger than fiction" style true story, (Best told in this Wired Story) during the Iran Hostage Crisis of '79-'80, where Iranian students and radicals stormed the American embassy during the Iranian revolution, taking 52 embassy workers hostage and holding them for 444 days. Well, the lesser known part of the story is that 6 embassy workers escaped during the storming of the embassy, simply walking out the front door and seeking refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador to Iran. As the Iranian forces desperately sought out any and all Americans still in Iran to punish and use as leverage against the American government that had long supported the brutal Shah, the CIA faced a race against time and a possible diplomatic and PR crisis.

This is a story that seems custom-made for the screen, as the CIA and other government agencies seek to formulate a plan, any plan, to get these still-hidden Americans out before they face capture and likely worse by an angry and violently anti-American Iranian regime.  CIA specialist Tony Mendez formulates a plan that seems utterly preposterous, but may be the only option - create a phony movie studio with legitimate Hollywood types and a false Star Wars rip-off, complete with a cast and a script, that's seeking to film in Iran, and all of the Americans can leave together as a Canadian film crew.  You can't make this stuff up.

With a premise like that, the primary job of the filmmaker is simply going to be to don't screw it up.  It's an amazing premise, but one that could easily descend into camp or worse simply by virtue of having to many moving parts.  You need to take your premise as serious as it actually was while still recognizing that yes, this was completely ridiculous.  The good news?  Director Ben Affleck (who is slowly but surely moving up the list of quality American filmmakers..) surely does not screw this one up.  This flick is part insider Hollywood comedy, part political thriller/race against time, but the two parts fit and make this amazing story worth telling into a legitimately great movie.

The Good:  The film moves back and forth from Hollywood to political intrigue seamlessly, and Affleck never once lets the plot get away from him.  Everything is designed to ratchet the tension to higher and higher levels, so that by the final escape attempt, you're literally on the edge of your seat.  This flick is hilarious at times (Alan Arkin and John Goodman, especially, chew up scenery and really knock their Hollywood insider roles out of the park) and almost unbearably tense at times (I think I bit off all of my fingernails during the last 45 minutes) but it seamlessly comes together into one greater whole.  The performances are more than adequate (personally, I'd have loved to have seen more of Bryan Cranston), but this flick is about pacing, about atmosphere, and about scenery.  Everything is meticulously re-created, a series of pictures during the credits will show you just HOW MUCH everyone and everything looks exactly like it was, and that labor pays huge dividends as this is a flick that looks great and is one of the more effectively entertaining adult flicks I've seen in years.  This is the kind of movie that Spielberg has been trying to make for 20 years and just can't make anymore because he's too damn sentimental.  When you're able to be THAT tense and THAT suspenseful, despite the fact that EVERYONE knows that none of the embassy staff were killed in the Iran Hostage Crisis (or, I hope they do), you're doing something right.  And this flick is doing a lot right.

 

The bad: I don't know if it's Affleck's performance or the screenplay's treatment of him, but Tony Mendez as a character could have really benefited from some meatier development.  This guy is an American hero, and the flick mainly uses him to ferry about from plot point to plot point.  He's given some anguished scenes and a small family sub-plot, but one of the greatest agents in the history of the CIA (Jimmy Carter's words) could have benefited from a more charismatic performance and meatier development.  All of the characters, in general, are slightly under-developed.  Now, I get that this is a political thriller and escape movie at its root, so character is secondary to the plot and suspense, but we don't care as much about some of these people as we should.  Note: I'm nit-picking at this point.  This is one of the best movies of the year.

In all, this is an incredibly well-done flick.  Affleck is one of the finest American filmmakers working today (he's currently 3-3 as a director, with "Gone Baby Gone" and "The Town" already both winning wide acclaim), and I for one can't wait to see him continue to grow as a director.  This is total awards bait, and although it might not win a lot at the Oscars (this year's slate will be STACKED), it will certainly be nominated, and rightfully so.  This is a great film.  One of the better and more watchable films I've seen in quite some time.  The final act is near perfection.

9/10.