“Godzilla” (2014) Movie Review

    The second American remake of “Godzilla” was released during a time when I rarely went to the movie theaters.  (I know, super weird to hear such things).  I have to admit though, the film caught my curiosity and I liked the trailer.  At the worst, I figured it would be at least on par with the first American made “Godzilla” film which I oddly didn’t hate like many other people did (though it has many problems).  This film turned out to be very different than that film unsurprisingly.

    The film follows a Navy Lieutenant named Ford Brody who accompanies his father Joe to Japan to investigate what caused the meltdown that killed Ford’s mother at the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant.  Upon their investigation, a creature emerges and ends up killing Joe.  Ford, being a Navy Lieutenant and witnessing this creature, is informed about Project Monarch which studies monsters and he is told about Godzilla.  Project Monarch hopes that Godzilla might be able to fight these new creatures, dubbed MUTOs, along with the United States Armed Forces.  Ford finds himself caught in the middle of the rampage caused by the monsters fighting.  Will Godzilla end up being a savior to humanity or an unstoppable monster?

    To be completely honest with you, I was actually pretty excited to see this movie when I finally got it on video.  A large reason I had so much faith in this movie was because of Bryan Cranston.  Cranston was still doing an incredible job on “Breaking Bad” at this time and he could only elevate a project like this.  To his credit, he does add a sense of realism and does an amazing job...SPOILER WARNING...for the few minutes he is in the movie.  Unfortunately, Cranston is the only actor who manages to ground the film with his presence with the exception of Ken Watanabe who is also hardly used.  Instead the film focuses primarily on the couple of Ford and Elle Brody who are a bit of blank slates in this movie.  Now, I don’t blame the actors for this because their characters had almost no development.  Once Godzilla shows up, the focus on human emotion takes a backseat.  Aaron Johnson-Taylor and Elizabeth Olsen play the Ford and Elle Brody and both actors have done fantastic work in the past, it is just a shame they weren’t given more to work with.

    A lot of the problem I had with this film was with a lot of the narrative decisions.  As stated above, you don’t hire Bryan Cranston for your film and then kill him off in the first act.  Even Cranston himself called his character’s death a “narrative mistake”.  Then there was the somewhat confusing way Godzilla was viewed by Project Monarch in this movie.  It seemed like the organization was a bit all over the place with what they believed Godzilla’s motivation to be.  Then there was Ford and Elle Brody who ALWAYS seemed to travel right in the path of destruction.  No matter where Godzilla and the MUTOs happened to end up, so did the Brody family.  Lastly, while the action was well done, it took awhile to finally see Godzilla in all his glory.  This isn’t a horrible creative decision, but I just personally wanted to see more of Godzilla early on.  While I didn’t love the design of the MUTOs, I thought the design on Godzilla was top notch and deserved more screen time.

    This film marked the beginning of Legendary Studios’ MonsterVerse which now includes “Kong: Skull Island”, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”, and the upcoming “Godzilla vs. Kong”.  In some ways, this film felt a little more like “Cloverfield” (minus the shaky cam) than a traditional Godzilla film from Toho.  While I think there was more quality that went into this movie and definitely more care, I don’t know if I enjoyed it more than the first American “Godzilla” movie.  Sure, the first one was dumb and had a lot of flaws too, but it also knew it was a dumb popcorn flick.  I enjoy when movies take themselves seriously, but sometimes there is a middle ground as well.  Essentially what hurt this movie the most was it’s structure.  It just needed some tweaks and it could have been mind blowing, instead we ended up with a respectable popcorn flick, which is nothing to be ashamed of either.

Grade: C

“The Cloverfield Paradox” Movie Review

    The Super Bowl last year offered audiences the first trailer for the secretive next chapter in the “Cloverfield” franchise.  I remember I was excited to watch the trailer on YouTube because I had been waiting awhile to hear anything new about the film.  Then the real surprise happened hit at the end of the trailer.  The movie wasn’t going to hit theaters, instead it was going to premiere on Netflix.  Not only that, but the film was premiering that night.
    It is hard to convey how insane this whole thing seemed at the time.  Never has such a big property bypassed theaters and dropped exclusively on Netflix especially without any indication it was coming.  It turned out to be a win for both Paramount and Netflix because the film had one of the biggest premieres on Netflix and was talked about for weeks after.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t positive talk.  “The Cloverfield Paradox” ended up receiving mostly negative reviews with critics believing the film went to Netflix instead of theaters due to it’s quality.  Perhaps this was the case, but I for one enjoyed the movie.
    “The Cloverfield Paradox” is the third film in the Cloverfield franchise.  Like “10 Cloverfield Lane”, this film started life as a film separate from the “Cloverfield” universe.  It was based on a spec script entitled “The God Particle” before being rewritten.  One interesting note about this film is that it ties the previous unrelated “Cloverfield” films together.  The film’s genre is more of a science fiction film than a monster movie or thriller.

    The film focuses on the crew of the Cloverfield Space Station.  The crew activates a particle accelerator to help provide power to the Earth but something goes terribly wrong.  The accelerator sends the station into an alternate dimension.  The crew must try to find a way back to their dimension while facing the horrors the accelerator may have unleashed.
    The cast consists of Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O’Dowd, Daniel Brühl, Elizabeth Debicki, and Zhang Ziyi.  Mbatha-Raw gives a strong performance as a conflicted astronaut torn between figuring out her place in the world.  The supporting cast is also solid.
    Critics hated this movie and while everyone is entitled to their opinion, I never got why they hated the film so much.  While there are definitely better science fiction films, there aren’t a lot that are as ambitious anymore.  We live in an era where even a thinking man’s franchise like “Star Trek” has been turned into simplistic action fare, so it’s refreshing to see a science fiction film that has some thought put into it.  I really liked this chapter personally.

Grade: B+

“10 Cloverfield Lane” Movie Review

    Once upon a time, there was a movie being developed entitled “The Cellar”.  The movie started life as a popular spec script before being developed at Paramount Pictures.  Somewhere along in the production of the film, the decision was made to link the film to their popular “Cloverfield” franchise since both movies shared some similarities.  Thus “10 Cloverfield Lane” was born.
    So “10 Cloverfield Lane” became somewhat of a curiosity to me.  Very few movies label themselves as “spiritual sequels”.  The film was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who opted to abandon Matt Reeves’ jarring found footage style and shot his film a more traditional way.  The film is not directly tied to “Cloverfield” so you don’t have to watch the first film to understand what is going on in this film.
    Besides the way the movie was shot, another interesting choice was to shift the focus to another genre.  While it’s predecessor was a horror movie, this film is more of a suspense thriller.  I think it served the film overall well.
    The film tells a simple story, after Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) gets into a car accident, she wakes up in an underground bunker with two men who inform her that the Earth is now uninhabitable.  Naturally, she has her doubts.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead does an incredible job dealing with her impossible situation in the film.  The two men she shares a bunker with are Emmett and Howard.  Emmett is played by John Gallagher Jr who had a nice vibe with Winstead.  Lastly, in the most impressive performance in the film, John Goodman plays the ambiguous Howard.  We as an audience don’t know if we can trust him or not and the whole movie hinges on Goodman selling this ambiguity.  John Goodman more than delivers and should have received more recognition for his work.
    The film then comes to an alarming end as we find out if Howard was telling the truth or not.  I won’t ruin the ending for anyone, but it is a divisive way to end a thriller.  I personally enjoyed it but a lot of people were left disappointed with the twist.  So while “10 Cloverfield Lane” may not be as original as “Cloverfield”, it’s also a nice change of pace as well.

Grade: B

"Cloverfield" Movie Review

    When the first trailer hit for the mysterious project that was later to be revealed as "Cloverfield", the internet went wild with speculation and theories.  Was it a secret "Godzilla" remake?  Was it a "Voltron" movie?  J.J. Abrams was producing it, so was it connected to "Lost"?  So many people were sure they knew what "Cloverfield" was going to be.  I mean, the trailer didn't even reveal a title, so it had to be connected to something, right?  Almost all of them were wrong.

    "Cloverfield" turned out to be something original and not connected to any other franchise.  It was it's own beast, so to speak.  "Cloverfield" is basically just a found footage style movie about a large monster who decides to destroy New York.  We aren't given much detail about what the monster is doing here or how it got here, but we just know it is causing havoc.  So basically, if you throw "Godzilla" and "The Blair Witch Project" together in a blender, you end up with something like "Cloverfield".

    The cast was made up of largely up and coming actors like T.J. Miller, Jessica Lucas, and Mike Vogel.  Out of the cast, Miller is the notable standout.  Of course, the real star of the movie isn't the human cast, it's Clovie!  The movie waits until the end to give us the final reveal of what the monster looks like and it appears as if it could have stepped right out of a H.P. Lovecraft book.

    This movie's biggest fault is what also makes it original ironically.  The found footage camera work is effective to almost a fault.  The shaky cam vibe makes you feel like you might just get sick watching it.  This was a common complaint among audiences of the film.  It's not easy enjoying a film that makes you want to throw up.

    The movie is original and definitely worth watching assuming you can stomach the experience.  “Cloverfield” is on par with the modern day monster movies like the Gareth Edwards directed “Godzilla” and it’s connected sister movie “Kong: Skull Island”.

Grade: B-