Godzilla, King of the [Movies]
This is a thread for discussing movies.
Do not be a dick, or Godzilla will stomp you to death.
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Come on and slam!
https://youtu.be/5R-rbzcEM8A
Plus the story is way better than Godzilla 2014 so I don't know why that movie reviewed so well when this one didn't. Maybe Disney was afraid that Godzilla: King of the Monsters would blow away Aladdin at the box office so they bribed critics into giving it bad reviews??? Much more likely is that G14 was concerned with being "realistic" whereas this movie threw realism out the goddamn window.
For example:
- Ghidorah is an alien (who can regenerate his heads in a really freaky manner)
- Mothra is very likely supernatural; she's intelligent, moths flock nearby as she emerges from her cocoon, she knows where the human characters are and what they need to do, she seemingly heals Godzilla at one point, even after she "dies" healing Godzilla you hear her cry as he attacks, and the human character most knowledgable about her comes from a family where every female born has a twin
- The "Hollow Earth" theory is true, a hidden ancient civilization dwelt there and worshipped monsters in colossal temples, and Godzilla lives in one of them!
I had only slept four hours the previous night and had been up since 3 AM. The movie started at 7 PM and let out after 9, and honestly I'm wide awake now. I was literally on the edge of my seat and leaning forwards for the last thirty minutes or so.
Further random thoughts and observations:
- The term "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism" getting thrown out in favor of "Titan" is an early indicator that the franchise has stepped away from pretending at realism to instead portray a more fantastical setting, one with ancient subterranean monster-worshiping civilizations, hurricane-generating alien dragons, and a very-likely supernatural moth goddess.
- In the original Godzilla movie Dr. Serizawa sacrifices himself by delivering the Oxygen Destroyer (that he made) to the sleeping Godzilla so he could kill him. In this movie Dr. Serizawa sacrifices himself to deliver a nuke to the sleeping Godzilla (who is resting after being wounded by an Oxygen Destroyer not made by Serizawa) so that Godzilla will regenerate.
- Rodan as King Ghidorah's lackey was unexpected, but pretty neat!
- Mothra defeating Rodan was very satisfying. I was really rooting for her!
- The mom being behind the "wake-up the monsters" plot and only pretending to be kidnapped was a fun twist.
- King Ghidorah has never felt more like a villain (generating hurricanes, forcing other monsters into subservience, regenerating in truly alien fashion, etc), and his sometimes bickering heads gave him a good bit of personality.
- I was spoiled on the fact that Burning Godzilla was in the movie, but seeing him in action (with everything around him melting/catching fire) was awe-inspiring.
- Godzilla's breath weapon went from a blue flamethrower in G2014 to a glorious concussive beam!
- Speaking of the atomic ray, GODZILLA SHOT IT UP THROUGH GHIDORAH'S SEVERED BUT STILL LIVING HEAD HOLY FUCK
- Hmmm, Kong didn't show up to bend the knee to Big G...
*skreeonk*
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
And what the fuck was up with the rabbits?
I'm going to go off a limb and say US is a bad movie. Someone explain to me how I'm wrong so I can feel different. I'm just shocked at how bad I thought it was. The first half was solid, then, I don't even fucking know.
I feel like I watched a shamalayn movie.
It has its own thread, with lots of commentary and analysis
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
They have made both Son of Godzilla and Godzilla's Revenge.
Yes, but no Revenge of the Son of Godzilla
Not only did she almost believe me, I really want to see that version.
Only if he gets in a Kaiju fight in the peacock outfit.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Also there's Godzilla Jr who takes over as Godzilla after the second Godzilla dies... There's been a lot of Godzillas...
Is the spoiler that obvious villain is villain?
I mean I don’t know if it’s old but
That was in the last major US trailer, I believe. And then a different bit reiterating the point popped up in a very short clip that was going around as well.
Ahh well my bad. I really need to catch up on it. But still either massive red herring or pretty silly blunder to have.
I mean, it didn't shock me at all when I saw it in that trailer.
This one's part of one of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project box sets, which are some of the best releases in the collection as they actively aim to preserve and bring attention to national cinemas that aren't always foregrounded on the world's stage (Criterion releases American, Western European, and Japanese films at a nearly unhealthy ratio), so it's always nice to dip into these releases and get acquainted with stuff I'm not too familiar with.
This is a Turkish film from 1966 starring Yilmaz Guney (who would become one of the country's most important directors; saw one of his films, liked it less than this), about a group of men with great facial hair who smuggle sheep across the Turkish-Syrian border. They are men with potential in a financial bind that has them turning to crime, and they are the object of suspicion for a lieutenant investigating the crimes on the border. The relationship between the lieutenant and Hidir, Guney's character, is the film's most interesting dramatic strand, as the respect they have for one another is clear, and yet the poor economic conditions of the border community has made them enemies.
This is a short feature, a kind of neorealist western that is slap-dash in spots and features some amateur performers, but I felt it was totally worth seeing due to its energy and considered writing. The print (apparently the only one to survive the 1980 coup) isn't in the best shape, and the lack of fidelity weakens some of the visual impact, but if there's something I like a lot about the Turkish films I've seen, it's the heavy visual emphasis on geography: the dusty roads, the sand and brush hills, the old stone masonry; it creates such an interesting and specific sense of place, and that isn't lost due to the state of the print.
Although I'm still perplexed why Godzilla 2014 was more widely praised than this one is.
On rotten tomatoes any time I see a low critic score and a high viewer score I figure the movie has to be great.
G14 has a critic/viewer score split of 75/66, whereas the new one is 40/89 (as of now).
Personally I felt really let down by G14 and don't know what critics saw in it.
Movie critic Bob "Moviebob" Chipman said there is a reason most people either become fans of Godzilla as kids or don't. That reason is Godzilla movies tend to be, when viewed objectively, not good movies. That does not mean they are all bad, some of them are actually OK movies in and other themselves. Ultimately, when judging a giant monster movie, I find the best way to figure if it's any good is to find critics that have similar taste to yours and see what they say about it. Going by that strategy, Kind of the Monsters is apparently fucking epic.
It's no wonder it's not being reviewed well (except by MovieBob who had the most accurate review) because it doesn't give the slightest of fucks about trying to be anything other than Godzilla complete with kinda hammy human stories and visible from space messaging and it was FUCKING GREAT. This is a movie clearly made by people who love Godzilla and wanted to put out just two hours of pure "HAIL TO THE KING." See this shit in IMAX so when the music fucking swells and Godzilla makes one of this badass entrances you just sit there going "oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
Speaking of the critics, I have no fucking clue what they were talking about with not being able to make things out. The action is perfectly followable and half of the shots look like the cover art to a kaiju themed heavy metal album.
Just, yeah, go see it go see it go see it go see it. Legendary is going full balls to the wall with this. This is an old school monster punch up movie with a fresh coat of paint and they killed it. I can't wait for Godzilla versus King Kong next year cause the crazy is only going to escalate.
Man, if I was a kid seeing this movie I think my brain would fucking melt. Even then, as an adult who's only seen Tokyo SOS (because of COURSE I watched the one with Mechagodzilla versus Godzilla) and has passing familiarity with Godzilla lore, I just wanted to get some Godzilla toys and make like Movie Bob going "WITH THE TAIL WITH THE TAIL WITH THE TAIL" afterwards.
After credit spoiler:
It's not perfect, it's flawed, it has some iffy bits but it's everything I ever want out of a Godzilla movie. I genuinely hope Toho continues this universe in some fashion cause Legendary has really turned it around and now I cannot wait for Godzilla vs King Kong next year.
Booksmart, on the other hand, is fantastic, and is one of those films that I think everyone should watch. It's funny in a very specific way, but it's definitely not the gender-swapped version of Superbad (even though it looks like it on the tin). All of the characters are nuanced and great and the film casts an empathetic eye on all of them, even as you start to identify High School Movie stereotypes (which, I feel, will be subverted by the end of the film*). I love that Molly isn't conventionally attractive, but at the same time, it's never played up that people dislike her for her weight or appearance... they instead talk about her stand-offishness and feelings of superiority that put them off.
The casting director for Booksmart was Allison Jones, and it really shows in this film.
* EDIT: I also love that you come to this realization around the same time as the main characters in the movie do. Which is a great piece of pacing and direction.
It is either, depending on whether their venture ultimately succeeds: a. an extremely pleasant and heartwarming film that is essentially Stardew Valley: The Movie, or b. a depressing look at a couple's dreams crumbling before their eyes. You can go find out which!
Either way it's a well done movie. As it happens, before starting the farm, the husband was a professional nature photographer, so the film's very nice to look at. It's also made with a good amount of storytelling acumen. It does a good job hooking you right off the bat to a flash-forward to a giant wildfire that threatens the farm, which you don't know the result of until towards the end of the movie.
One thing I really liked about the movie was the puzzle-solving aspect. I mentioned Stardew Valley, but the movie also reminded me of point-and-click adventure games. There's a lot of USE ITEM A on ITEM B. For example, one problem they face is a massive infestation of snails which are eating up their fruit trees. You see them distraught over it, you see them picking off huge amounts of snails off the trees by hand, etc. And then, in what is probably the most satisfying moment of the movie, they have a lightbulb realization:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rANQ_3bBKEs
Godzilla 2014 had lots of flaws, and was arguably a shitty Godzilla movie by virtue of not actually containing any Godfuckingzilla, but it was really well crafted. A little slow, but the acting was solid, the special effects amazing, and the 8 minutes that actually had Godzilla were fantastic.
KotM sounds like it's a shitty movie, but has a lot of kaiju doing kaiju shit, so it's forgivable. I hope to see it this weekend, so we'll see.
Honestly I lost interest after Bryan Cranston's character died. The rest of the characters other than Serizawa were completely forgettable and I'm glad they didn't return in the new film.
Yeah, Godzilla 2014 had some great Godzilla-ing, especially at the end. But it's basically a dull and pointless last 1/2 to 2/3rds because they kill their only compelling and motivated character.
I actually kinda liked the "Godzilla from the perspective of the people on the ground" thing it had going in several parts.
The movie is just kind of a mess with a bad script.
I keep seeing shit on my Facebook feed about how this movie is "important."
As a poor Black man in hipster/redneck Oregon, I couldn't possibly give less of a damn if Bheckee and Aidan succeed at being butterfly testicle farmers.
Sry, not shitting on YOU, just... bitter.
My wife was curious about Harlem Nights (1989) so we streamed it on a whim. The movie feels like a damn shame, because when it was funny, I thought it was hilarious. It's not often funny, though. It's just shy of two hours long, and the vast bulk of the runtime is dedicated to this muddy, slow moving plot about a nightclub that's being muscled out of town by a major crime boss. The tone varies weirdly, there are a lot of naturalistic, slow conversations about what's happening in the story... it almost feels like at one point it was just going to be a slice of life of these various characters, but it got reshaped into a more directed plot, but not enough that it actually feels like it's moving or has an idea of where to go. It would just be a forgettable, bad movie, but some of the comedy bits are absolute gold.
Our old movie night for this week was my choice, so I went with The Black Scorpion (1957) in my ongoing search for actually worthwhile giant bug movies. While this is probably the third best I've seen from the era, after Them! and Tarantula, it's a really distant third. It's a mostly by the numbers, mediocre 50s creature feature, enthusiastically aping its two better predecessors. What it does have going for it, though, are truly, truly wonderful stop motion action scenes created by King Kong's Willis O'Brien near the end of his career. The long shots of the giant scorpions as they derail and attack a train, fight amongst themselves, and eventually do battle with the military, are fucking great. It's really sad to me that they're nestled in a film so middling. The filmmakers I guess also couldn't just let the monster bits show up the rest of the film, so they had to drag those down by cutting in closeup shots of the scorpions' faces, which were clearly made by a completely different effects person and also don't match the greater design of the creatures very well at all. So what happens is you have this long distance shot of these dynamic monster scorpions skittering around and tearing up cars and leaping about, and before you can settle in for the show, the movie cuts to a closeup of this leering, drooly-lipped monster with cartoon eyes that moves sluggishly towards the camera.
Booooo! Boo I say!
Cloverfield was a much better Godzilla movie than Godzilla 2014, if you want the perspective of the folks on the ground.
On the other hand this is a movie where an old pig becomes best friends with a rooster
It does have a post credit scene, which: