What Did You Watch Today?

[Josh]

Yeah, what's that all aboot?

[Skummy]

Godzilla

Beautifully shot, beautifully directed, and Ken Watanabe was amazing. I can't really think of much else I liked about it, though.

Cranston's character was one of the most interesting in the film, and to have him killed off and pretty much forgotten about just to add more backstory to a bland protagonist felt like a waste of time. It's not like the fact that he was one of the only people to know about what was going on even played that much into the overall story - he just

happened to be there when the MUTO came to life and started wrecking shit. The story would have functioned just as well with Watanabe as the token expert, considering he already knew absolutely everything there was to know about the monsters anyway. What was he a "doctor" of anyway? Top Secret Monster Studies?

Cranston's guy was the only interesting character. He had a backstory and a motivation beyond "save my family", and you had a reason to be emotionally invested in his redemption - and that's done away with almost immediately, in favour of a younger, duller character, because I guess that's more relatable to the movie-going public?

They didn't seem able to decide whether the main character was a bad-ass super-soldier who was going to be able to take on monsters and survive a hundred different things that should have killed him, or if he was an everyday ordinary Joe just trying to do what's right for his family. So they did a little bit of both, and both felt unbelievable and fell flat.

As with most consciously "blockbuster" movies these days, it could have been half an hour shorter and lost nothing, and threw in a bunch of extra "threats" for no good reason. The movie didn't need a nuclear bomb with a ticking timer - it's probably my least favourite clumsy writing cliché; there's enough peril without putting a literal countdown clock on it all. It didn't need constant variations on the "will he get home in time?!" theme pushing it beyond parody, it didn't need a nameless Asian kid separated from his family - it had giant monsters attacking a city. I understand the reason to include a human narrative on top of that, but it was overdone, you don't need to add additional perilous situations on top of the giant monster premise.

Like Zero said, the scene where people are working in their office during a monster attack and evacuation was ridiculous. It was like they had a monster movie cliché handbook and realised they'd missed that scene, and stuck it in no matter how little sense it made. Hell, even if the place wasn't being evacuated, I wouldn't have turned up to work that day. Speaking of monster movie clichés, I had a bet with a friend over whether the General or Watanabe would be the character to say "...then God help us all", or some variant thereof, and was genuinely surprised that it never happened.

Speaking of Watanabe and his motivations...I understand that he had developed a respect for Godzilla, and that he believed Godzilla was, vaguely, on the side of good. That he was nature's way of "restoring balance". Ignoring how ludicrous that is, and avoiding pointing out that the MUTOs and their motivation was no more or less natural than Godzilla's was, we'll run with that as an understandable belief from a guy who I guess has spent most of his life studying Godzilla, somehow.

What bothered me was that, after Godzilla killed the MUTOs, the media were hailing him as the monster that saved their city. Well...no. He also wrecked the place. And then people were just fine with him going back into the ocean like that was that. No...how do you know he's not coming back tomorrow to finish the job? Why are you not all terrified at the hundreds of questions this whole thing has raised? It feels like there was an entire section of narrative missing of people being terrified of Godzilla, and then coming to see him as the lesser of two evils - it was just kind of taken at face value that, of the giant monsters you've never seen before, you're on the side of this one. Which is a bit of a stretch of logic. I mean, we, the viewers, know who Godzilla is, that he's the title character of the movie, and that he's the one we're rooting for against new monsters we've never seen before. But the public in the film don't know that at all. I know my reaction when my city is being attacked by a giant monster wouldn't be "I'd be happy if another, bigger monster came along to fight this one".

There's probably already a thesis been written on how awful it was that a nuclear explosion - allegedly bigger than any tested in the '50s - went off a few minutes away from a major population centre with no ill effects, let alone the guy leaning out of a helicopter while the blast went off without his face melting off his skull. But there's also the fact that the people who wrote this clearly had no clue what an EMP actually is, or how it works, and that annoyed me. If they'd just said that the monster somehow shut off electrics, that would be fine. But specifically calling it an EMP meant that the inconsistency surrounding it was annoying. Especially the bit where all the power came back on as soon as it died. An EMP doesn't just turn everything off!

Also on the EMP front...they really pushed the "these creatures evolved to survive on radiation, and then to move further underground" and so on and so forth. When you bring in the concept of evolution, and how these creatures from billions of years in the past have adapted...what then is the justification for one of them being able to create an electro-magnetic pulse? What evolutionary purpose does that serve? It's absurd. And it was completely avoidable in writing the thing. If you just settle for "they're monsters", then nobody is going to say "well, a monster can't do that!", are they? But if you try and use pseudo-science to justify these things, then you'd better make sure your pseudo-science is at least consistent.

Still, the way he killed the second MUTO was awesome, and the opening credits was sequence was absolutely superb. Probably my favourite part of the whole movie - and that's not a sassy, sarcastic slight on the movie as a whole, just those credits were that good.

[Benjamin]

So basically, with Godzilla, the issue is that the human characters aren't written well but Godzilla himself is awesome and great. Is that close? I read another review comparing this to the director's last film, where they said pretty much the same thing - "the monsters in it were great, the humans not so much".

Haven't seen Godzilla, but I thought Monsters was great in terms of both character and monster.

Yeah, I don't know what review you read, but Monsters is pretty fucking good. It's really worth a watch. If you watch Monsters before you watch Godzilla, you can definitely see Gareth Edwards' prints all over it.

I loved this Godzilla. Really action-packed, but with some neat storytelling in it as well.

I really hope they make that Godzilla / Pacific Rim team-up that del Toro wants to do.

[LL!]

Nah. Monsters is pretty shitty. It's amazing to me that the two main characters are/were together in real life (as I recall) and yet share no on-screen chemistry in the least.

What's impressive about Monsters, however, is that it was basically made completely by Gareth Edwards.

With that said, I really enjoyed Godzilla and look forward to what he does with the first Star Wards spin-off.

[Skummy]

Went to see The Wind Rises the other day.

For once, I'm not going to complain that a long film was too long, even though it meant I was late for something. It was long, but I wouldn't have cut a minute of it. Absolutely gorgeous, beautifully made film, and genuinely moving and heartbreaking in places.

The subject matter is something I couldn't care less about, but Miyazaki manages to make it feel like the most important thing in the world. It's so different from any of his other films, while still being unmistakeably him. Having recently read a collection of his essays/notes/etc., and seeing how little he tends to plan long-term, it's amazing that there are ideas he came up with 20-30 years ago that pop up pretty much exact in this movie. It feels like a labour of love, and it's wonderful.

Also, the English language version has Werner Herzog in it.

[TKz]

Nah. Monsters is pretty shitty. It's amazing to me that the two main characters are/were together in real life (as I recall) and yet share no on-screen chemistry in the least.

What's impressive about Monsters, however, is that it was basically made completely by Gareth Edwards.

With that said, I really enjoyed Godzilla and look forward to what he does with the first Star Wards spin-off.

It's going to be weird to watch a Gareth Edwards film that doesn't feature a giant monster of some kind in the main role.

But then maybe it does.

I'd watch a Rancor origin film.

[SRN]

So I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me yesterday. Fuck me, everything about Twin Peaks is a lot more creepy and scary now.

[Thrilla]

Just watched Battle Los Angeles and really enjoyed it, better than Independence Day but behind Pacific Rim and Michelle Rodriguez didn't die, what the hell?

[Benjamin]

Hold on a minute there. Better than Independence Day? Really?

[Benjamin]

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

It was actually a lot of fun! Felt like a third-person shooter, Cruise and Blunt were pretty good together IMO.

[stokeriño]

So Maleficent is a pretty typical paint-by-numbers affair:

1) Character whom you know as a villian starts off as really lovely.

2) She is WRONGED by some bastard.

3) She becomes angry/vengeful and therefore evil (and at this stage, is briefly entertaining).

4) She does evil thing that you know her for from the original story.

5) She regrets her actions and does her best to right them (aka the second half of the film).

6) She ends up saving the day. Yay.

Decent enough for 90 minutes' distraction but not a lot to miss otherwise.

(Stokerina insisted we see this yesterday... That is, a 6:30pm showing of a new Disney film on its opening day, on Orange Wednesdays, in the middle of half-term. Inevitably, the queues were ridiculous.)

[TKz]

Awh man, Maleficent was going to be my annual "go see a film with mum" film. Was hoping it'd be a pleasent surprise, but sounds pretty average.

[Benjamin]

Princess Mononoke (1997)

I fucking love this one. Undoubtedly my favorite Studio Ghibli movie. Still feeling the awesomeness of it.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Benkid

[GA!]

Re: Maleficent, I love how now:

'The legend of Sleeping Beauty' is about a girl who was cursed to take an afternoon nap.

[Jimmy]

Can't even start to justify it, but I really loved The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Really got a lot out of it. To contrast it, Ken Loach's new film, Jimmy's Hall, is decent, but it feels like he's retreading old territory and it doesn't even come close to The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Maybe an unfair comparison, but yeah.

[DMN in the House]

There's no need to justify loving The Perks of Being a Wallflower, that movie is fucking great.

Watched Double Indemnity (1944, I think), Harakiri (1962) and Last King of Scotland (2005) recently. All were excellent, if you like film noir, I couldn't reccomend Double Indemnity more, and Harakiri was like a Japanese period piece noir. Both were amazing. Last King of Scotland rests on the performance by Forest Whitaker, but it was great as well.

[Jimmy]

Edge of Tomorrow is really, really fun. It's a pleasant surprise in every way; from being well directed, to genuinely funny as well as quite scary and emotive. Well worth the two hours.

[TKz]

Without spoiling it, how does the time travel aspect play out? I got pretty bored in Source Code, for example, with the setting basically never changing.

[Jimmy]

It's pretty good. It evolves, plus it's used for comedy and doesn't take itself too seriously while kind of keeping up the drama. It sounds like I'm giving it a lot of big praise, but I went in with low expectations, and for a blockbuster, it delivered a lot.

[Benjamin]

It's really good, Tkz! Honestly, at times it gives you that feeling of playing an arcade shooter, which I thought was pretty fun. You guys would watch, it's a total EWB film.