American Psycho - 7.8/10

I understand this was satire, but the tone and pacing was just a tad inconsistent for me to ever get too invested into it. Appreciate it for its boldness and originality though.

 

Godzilla II: King of the Monsters

8.5/10

Spoiler: Text

Okay… I heard many people say this is geared towards the fans, but I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, it’s aimed at monster fans, but to say it’s aimed specifically at Godzilla fans is a bit inaccurate as it’s not filled with endless Godzilla references and an average viewer can watch this movie fine without being lost in continuity issues as some people put it out to be.

The music. My God, I never expected to hear the classic themes in the American Godzilla movies. Some scenes I would hum Godzilla’s classic theme only to hear the movie using that theme!

The action is without question is one of the best parts about this movie. It doesn’t deprave the viewer from monster fights of all kind, but it kind of made the human side of the story a bit weaker.

Monster designs are great. Excluding Godzilla’s minor tweaks, King Ghidorah was amazing. When I saw it in toy form I thought the wings were unnecessarily too huge (you know it’s too huge when you need stands to for the wings alone, and NECA who made ¼ scale Hulk thinks it’s too huge to make) but I liked how they were used like limbs to walk on them like some dragon designs or a pterosaur.

I liked the fights, but sadly it went with the same mistake as the first movie where it’s in the dark which made me worried about the home releases repeating the same mistake of using crappy masters and giving us a release too dark to see anything. On the plus side we have colorful displays so it’s not just black and red as the MUTO battle.

Overall, I give this movie 8.5/10. It’s an entertaining Godzilla movie and an entertaining monster movie for the fans. Go check it out. You won’t regret it.

Spoiler: spoilers

Okay, now let’s talk about spoilers

I mentioned that the human side of the movie was a bit weak, and it’s for two reasons. The first being due to the movie jumping all over locations introducing the monsters as quickly as possible, it didn’t give us enough time to establish the humans properly and it’s only done throughout the movie where more things about them are introduced bits by bits from their backstories to personalities.

The other reason is the undeveloped villains of the movie. You have Alan Jonah played by Charlie Dance who was made to be the real human villain of the movie being an MI-6 defector and an Eco-terrorist but his presence is barely in the movie you can write him outside it and you won’t lose anything.

Then you have Emma Russel played by Vera Farmiga who in my opinion the real villain of the movie. I laughed at how the movie tries to paint her as a sympathetic character who we should feel sorry for her because she lost her son, but no. She has a sympathetic backstory, but she’s not sympathetic. She a delusional who willingly released the monsters and openly declared humanity’s death is a good thing. She’s not a hero, she’s a crazy mad lady and I didn’t feel sorry for her.

Now her ex-husband on the other hand, Mark Russel, played by Kyle Chandler, is a character I was interested in his story and the most developed of the cast. Unlike a certain Titan hater, I felt his growth in the movie from hating Godzilla and wanting him dead as revenge, to him learning and experiencing firsthand that Godzilla wasn’t as evil as he thought he was, and his existence was for the best of everyone.

Some human dialogue can come a bit cringy, but it’s not as awful as many people put it. But then again, I have a terrible sense of humor so maybe it’s me who can’t tell terrible humor from the good one.

Serizawa’s death… well, it was much better than Joe Brody’s death in the first movie, but it sucks that they killed him and not lived until Godzilla vs Kong. But it doesn’t feel forced if you paid attention to his arc and dialogue in the two movies. Also, Dr. Serizawa sacrificing himself to activate a machine next to Godzilla? But instead of killing him it’s to revive him? Clever.

Regarding the Easter eggs, they were fine, but the Oxygen Destroyer felt the most forced out of everything. And the most pointless reference since it didn’t kill anything and knowing the Monsterverse is ending after Godzilla vs Kong, we are not getting Destoroyah. They could’ve named it anything else, but they went with this reference just because.

Also, yeah. Killing Godzilla in the middle of the movie. As if anyone would buy that.

On the monster side, I think Rodan was the most wasted of them all, which is ironic when you have Mothra who’s job in most of the movies is to die before anyone else. Now being Ghidorah’s lackey is something I did like at first, but after his pathetic defeat by Mothra he went out of the picture only to come back at the end just to bow to his new king, and we didn’t get the 3-on-1 brawl we all hoped in seeing from this movie.

There were other titans in the movie, like a creature that looks like a gorilla with mammoth tusks that I believe is called the Behemoth as per the credits scene, and a spider creature that obviously should’ve been Komunga and some others out there including another MUTO. The movie said there were at least 17 titans, but sadly beyond the main four, none of them were any of the classic Toho kaiju. No Anguirus, no Kumonga, no Baragon, no Manda, instead they were new substitutes we barely know anything about them and I’m pretty sure TOHO’s licensing is behind this. But I shouldn’t be surprised because every Godzilla fans knows TOHO are a bunch of assholes who like to have dick measuring contest by making every new Godzilla bigger than the American one until they topped it off by having a planet sized Godzilla.

Overall, there are great things about it and some improvement over the 2014 movies, but the human story had its weaknesses and some of the pacing was a bit all over the place, but Godzilla fans will enjoy it.

 

Yeah, I spent many years disliking TOHO for the way they handled ‘98 Godzilla. The dismissive, vindictive attitude towards ‘98 Godzilla always annoyed me because I enjoyed that movie for what it was & really liked that take on Godzilla. They also encouraged fans to hate it by way of their little jabs in their movies. When they took shots at ‘98 Godzilla it was intentional and mean spirited. When Dean Devlin made his movie, he may have gotten Godzilla wrong, but he didn’t do it out of malice. It’s corny, but I’ll defend it any day.

Seeing that fan opinion has softened more recently towards ‘98 Godzilla & that audiences are seemingly enjoying Legendary’s Godzilla has quelled my dislike of TOHO. I think I’m finally past the days of hating on them.

Plus... it’ll be a long time before they top the spectacle of KOTM.  

 

X-Men Dark Phoenix - 6/10

A middle ground X-Men movie for me. The action was top notch and every actor brought their A game to this one as once again Fassbender & McAvoy kill it in their rolls. Though I can see where people have issues with where they took Professor X, I thought it was fine. Hell even Sophie Turner killed it as Jean Grey in this, much better then in Apocalypse and, if you allow me a moment, I couldn't help but take note at how beautiful she was in this. There were two moments in this that had me choking up as well and there was a surprise cameo of a certain mutant I was not expect! Honestly my biggest issues with this is the lack of certain characters which is a personal issue of mine and the bigger issue is the fact that this is the finale of an era of X-Men. It certainly didn't feel like it and that lessened the ending. Overall though as a huge X-Men fan I enjoyed it and was satisfied with this outing.

My current ranking from first to last...
Deadpool 2
Deadpool
Logan
Days of Futures Past
First Class
Dark Phoenix
Apocalypse
X-Men
The Wolverine
X-Men 2
The Last Stand
Origins Wolverine

 

The feeling is mutual. I hated -- and continue to hate today -- the stupid ID4 people who made an absolutely garbage movie in 1998 that had nothing to do with Godzilla whatsoever because they were smug and dismissive of the source material and only wanted to take advantage of the name recognition.

I do not blame TOHO one bit for trying to distance themselves from that piece of trash any and every chance they get. Like you point out, they don't distance themselves from the Legendary movies. Whatever the Legendary movies' faults, TOHO accept those as an alternate, American-style take on the franchise. The '98 movie isn't much more than an insulting name-slap. It's the kaiju equivalent of the Halle Berry Catwoman movie.

 

Dark Phoenix - 4.5/10

 

Give this a read:

The writer of the '98 Godzilla reboot looks back on the monster flop 20 years later

 

Dark Phoenix 6.8/10

Jesus its not even close to being bad, it is a solid entry. The reception is ridiculous.

I just wish they had a different vision, it was too close to Last Stand. Putting aliens in it doesnt make it different enough. But there were many breathtaking moments and phoenix force with a Hans Zimmer score is a sight to behold. I just wish it wasnt grounded so much.

 

That was an interesting read, thanks.

It's funny that his regrets with what he thinks were the biggest problems in his own story boil down to the "plot, structure, and soul of the movie," because that's pretty much everything. And he gets points for admitting and agreeing it wasn't enough of a Godzilla movie, but that doesn't really fix anything now.

 

Godzilla king of 7 of 17 mentioned monsters. 8/10 loved it! loved seeing Boston trashed(sorry new englanders) would have preferred all Toho monsters but the legendary pictures ones were okay or had little screen time. humans weren’t annoying. great flick

 

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2 - 9/10

 

Godzilla Marathon 1
Gojira (1954) - Chuck Norris/10
The Return of Godzilla (1984) - Chuck Norris/10
Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) - 8/10
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) - 6/10
Godzilla vs. Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992) - 7/10
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993) - 9/10
Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994) - 5/10
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) - Chuck Norris/10
Zilla (1998) - 2/10
Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999) - 6/10
Godzilla (2014) - 7/10
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) - 8/10

 

Godzilla KOTM - 6/10

One of the dumbest blockbusters ive seen in recent time but its not too bad. Got pretty boring towards the end tho.

 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters
God tier trailers. Absolutely insufferable movie. For all the things it does right it negates 1000 times for how incredibly stupid it is. It blows my mind that people, grown adults who presumably have functioning brains, were paid to write this. I felt so embarrassed for the acttress who had to play the villain when she had to give her stupid and incoherent villain powerpoint presentation, what an embarrassing script.

And despite all the claims to having more action, it's still human centered. You still barely get to see anything without the camera focusing on and panning around american family man on his ground mission. This is still one of the least characterized and least likeable Godzillas in the franchise. No one watches this movie and is on the edge of their seat fully invested in seeing dad man save his daughter while the monsters just act as an obstacle to that.

The main kaiju other than big G were cool and the music was neat. The movie at times is visually beautiful but if you've seen the trailers the movie has nothing new to add. There's a lot of references to the older films but a lot of them are just stupid, like the complete waste of the oxygen bomb which has no meaning in this film.

A nice thing about the original Godzilla and Shin was that they didn't really have elaborate storylines, they just had a premise and people reacting to it. This movie sold itself as "What if Ghidorah woke up and started wrecking shit?" That's all that was needed! But instead they paid a bunch of monkeys to scribble on some paper.

All the other Godzilla movies
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus > Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla > King Kong vs. Godzilla > Shin Godzilla > Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster > the rest

 

No, but it shows there was no malicious intent or disrespect when they made the changes. Just some serious misguidance. He said they were trying to make Godzilla more like a real animal, and that explains most every change they made.

I always figured that if it were common knowledge in 1954, that therapods like T-Rex used their tails for a counter-balance & didn’t walk upright, then that’s how Godzilla would’ve always walked.

Radiation is invisible, so when Godzilla roars & an entire street of cars blows up, his fire breath is invisible. Visually it’s not interesting to look at & has only led to confusion about whether or not he was even breathing “fire” at all (he was- the cartoon sequel confirms it with unmistakable visuals).

They made him tough but not invincible. No living creature could’ve survived the amount of artillery, torpedoes & missiles that this guy absorbed, but even so, they still made him too weak. I get what they were thinking, trying to make him a flesh & blood animal instead of a godlike icon. But yeah, that was just disappointing.

Anyway, I think that’s all. They started with good intentions, trying to make Godzilla semi-realistic, but lost something along the way. I still like the movie and this version of Godzilla though.

 

All I can read from that is the old adage “Never explain with malice that which is more sensibly explained by stupidity”. An accidental fuck up is still a fuck up.

But the cartoon series was cool so I feel the whole thing evens out.

 

Rosanne Barr F'ing up the national anthem was stupidity, not malice... She started too high, realized she couldn't carry it and so tried to save it by turning it into a joke. And personally, I don't give two craps about the national anthem, but I understand why baseball fans might be angry or why MLB wouldn't include it if they made some 'Best Of' album and why they'd try to distance themselves from it.

I thought so, too, at the time it came out. But I tried to rewatch it maybe three years back and it does not hold up at all.

 

Aladdin 10/10, it was awesome!

 

Dark Phoenix. It was riding a 6/10, but when credits rolled and there was very little Quicksilver (and no slo mo scene), 2/10

 

Dracula (1974) The Dan Curtis version. 7/10.