My shortest movie review ever!

Pictures really are worth a thousand words.

Godzilla

Have you ever been having sex or just playing with yourself, and you can feel the orgasm building. It's getting close. The intensity is right there, right at the threshold of all its incredible glory- and then it just fizzles. You don't fully get why or where the really awesome sensation you were about to have went but it's gone and now suddenly you're working a little harder to get it back. And after a little bit you can feel it building again. You can feel the threshold. The payoff is- oh god its- it's- gone again. So you keep going but now you're getting tired and a little bored but you've already put all this effort in so there's no way you're stopping until you've gotten what you've come for. But then when it finally happens it's fine but not all that great and you're left with a general feeling of, "Well, I guess... that occurred..."

This is more or less what it's like to watch Gareth Edwards' Godzilla.

The movie starts strong enough. We have Bryan Cranston living in Japan and mostly speaking English with the rest of the world conforming to his language in case an American audience happens to be watching. But that gripe aside, we're quick in getting to a disaster, a tragedy, the mystery, some cool special effects, and a sense of real danger. It sets Cranston up as a family man who's lost everything and gone a little insane in the process.

Then the movie goes through the motions of establishing the aftermath and the impact on Cranston and his son played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Not so much Japan and all those Japanese people who were effected, just in case an American audience is watching, but instead this father and son who happened to be in Japan at the time of disaster. And as part of the American audience that happens to be watching, we're sympathetic, we understand their plight, but we also know what's coming and we're Americans so can we just skip over the government cover up bullshit and get to the giant fucking monsters doing giant fucking monster things? Or could you at least play Pacific Rim in the lower left corner of the screen so we have some fun and explosions while Edwards takes us through the standard motions of every other giant monster flick?

I actually don't mean to be snide at the first half of the movie, mostly because it's by far the better half of the movie. The build up, the tension, and Cranston's performance are all excellent. Personally, I get a little bored with government cover up stories. In part because they've been done a billion times but mostly because they've been done a billion other times. At least in the original Godzilla they had a scene where some officials and other people were debating on whether or not to hide the fact that there's a giant monster. And what sucks is that this entire cover up sequence could've easily been replaced with a much more interesting story where the giant MUTO cocoon is discussed internationally and there's a huge amount of debate about it over fifteen years. A rare, endangered species absorbing nuclear radiation for food is going to hatch one day and half the world is screaming, "We must save and protect this beautiful creature!" while the other half of the world is screaming, "Crack that bitch egg open before it replaces us as the dominant species. Fuck world hunger! Omelettes for everybody!" Or alternatively "That thing is absorbing tons of energy and will remain in a cocooned state until it has enough. How can we tap that as an alternative energy source and completely abuse this rare creature?" Which also would've tied much better into the movie's underplayed theme of man vs nature and just how powerless we are against these greater forces.

But instead we were given another god damn government cover up movie where the heroes are just sort of trotting through everything around them while trying to find excuses for them to be there. The result is that a bulk of the movie feels like Aaron Taylor-Johnson's own misadventures in a military remake of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And it spends all its time finding excuses for him to go through one situation after another while keeping him more or less at ground zero, which wouldn't be bad if they didn't feel like excuses and lame justifications for him to be there. After the first MUTO attack when Ken Watanabe is asked if there's any critical staff he requires to help investigate the situation he points to Johnson and Cranston, who he's never actually talked to in person and Cranston is in a stretcher at death's door. And nobody bats an eye despite that Cranston very clearly needs to be taken to the nearest hospital immediately. "I need that horribly injured guy who's about to die and his son who we never even questioned. In fact, I've never officially met either of them but we should bring them along. Just in case an American audience is watching."

And then Cranston dies and pretty much every last ounce of humanity is sucked dry from screen. The one character we developed an attachment to is dead, succeeded by his son who is far less dynamic, doesn't seem to care all that much about his father's death and the truth of his mother's death finally revealed. He just has to get back to his family. He's along for the ride and now the audience is along for his ride, not Godzilla's.

What sucks here is that Ken Watanabe easily could've carried this entire movie on his own. He's a Japanese scientist who understands the creatures and their behavior. He's the closest thing anybody has to an expert in the field. The incident from fifteen years ago had a huge impact on his life. Also, as somebody who's been studying the MUTO egg for over a decade, he has every reason to always be at ground zero. We don't need excuses for him to be there because it's entirely organic with the story and it allows for more time to really sink our teeth into giant fucking monsters fighting.

But Godzilla doesn't really want to show us monsters fighting. It wants us to know that monsters can easily be hidden by a fog or cover of night or both. It wants us to know there's all sorts of destruction going on. But it pulls a very interesting and unique punch about midway through the movie. The MUTO is causing all hell to break loose at an airport, and we see a line of jumbo jets exploding in the background, and finally finally finally Godzilla's giant awesome foot of badassery stomps on the screen. I got goosebumps as the camera slowly scaled up Godzilla's body until we're finally face to face with him. And then he roars. Oh my god, he roars! It's massive. It's jaw dropping. It's everything we've been building up to and finally finally finally we're going to see- a boy watching TV on the sofa.

Huh? So Johnson's son is at home in San Francisco being told to go to bed but is instead watching a live broadcast of Godzilla and MUTO fighting on the news. And as an audience we're all sitting there, waiting for the movie to take us back to the airport where we'll get to see the big badass monster rumble. I mean, the little boy on the sofa gets to see it. Why not us?

But we don't see it. Instead the movie cuts to the next day and we only get to see the aftermath of all the destruction. Granted, the aftermath is glorious. Everything is destroyed. People are dead and injured. The spectacle of that battle that took place feels epic. But... really? We've been waiting an hour to watch Godzilla destroy stuff and... really?

Now, the only way the movie could make up for that is by having the fight at the end be massive. It should be epic and awesome in the truest sense of the word. After spending yet another hour of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, knowing this big epic battle is coming, we finally finally finally get to the big fight and- we mostly watch more of Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Don't get me wrong. Godzilla is in there for the last twenty minutes. Mostly off screen or in the background while the movie continues to focus on the people. He does fight two giant MUTOs at once, but the movie still does everything it can to avoid actually watching the giant monsters fight. We see skydiving. We see streets in ruins. We see the MUTO nest explode in a giant fireball. We see soldiers trot around with a giant nuclear bomb, trying to get it a safe distance away from the city (so I guess the writers really enjoyed the ending of The Dark Knight Rises). And we see Aaron Taylor-Johnson running around a whole bunch. And in between we get brief glimpses of Godzilla about to do really cool stuff. But we seldom actually see him do those cool things we were so excited about when we walked into theater. It's almost as though the animators visual effects wizards who rendered Godzilla knew how to make a giant monster, but nobody on the staff had any clue as to how to choreograph a big ass fight. So they instead of showing us the monsters battle, the movie kept cutting away. And cutting away. And cutting away.

Godzilla roars and they cut away.

The flying MUTO jumps on Godzilla's back while the other one charges and they cut away.

Godzilla grabs other MUTO and they cut away.

The flying MUTO jumps on his back while the other one charges and they cut away- Wait, we just saw that happen. Is that they only thing they know how to do?

Twice in this little fight -not once. Twice- Godzilla is knocked down at presumed dead. And as much as that might work in wrestling matches, there's usually a lot of jumping off ladders and chair to back hits in between. But for what little time we actually get to spend watching Godzilla, he really doesn't get to do all that much. Yes, there's the atomic breath and it's glorious. Yes his tail smashes through some stuff and it's sweet. But it's only glimpses and quick moments in between all the boring nuclear bomb stuff.

The end result is that probably the greatest Godzilla fight of all time happened mostly off screen or in the distant background of yet another run of the mill "stop the bomb from exploding before the timer runs out" movie.

And I can see the intention here. I get what Edwards was going for in sticking to the humans, and keeping the human perspective, and really fleshing out the human experience of a giant monster attack. Did he do it as well as Cloverfield? Not by a long shot. Did he do it as well as the original Godzilla? Ha! And that's the main problem with the movie. The whole thing was created with a mentality that less is more. The more they keep Godzilla off screen the more the audience wants him, and the more we want him, the better it's going to be every time we see him. To this effect, it works. It's great. When Godzilla does something awesome, if feels AWESOME. And that would've been good and fine if everything in between had been just as incredible. But the human characters, their stories, and their actions mostly terrible. Brian Crantson and Ken Wantanabe are both superb and it's a shame the script wasn't tailored around both of them. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a poor substitute. A fine actor but seriously they could've given him more than "The soldier who happens to have the exact skill set required to diffuse a nuclear bomb who just wants to get home to his family." We've seen it all before and we've seen it done better. The result is that the constant build of waiting to see Godzilla again becomes more frustrating than exciting.

Something Edwards didn't consider was the second viewing. Yes, I would absolutely love to see both minutes of Godzilla doing amazing things over and over again. But I really, really don't want to have to sit through two hours of the millionth movie about a soldier trying to get home to his family just to see those two minutes. Thankfully we live in the YouTube Age and by the time I post this review there are undoubtedly hundreds of compilations and auto-tuned remixes of my favorite scenes so I never have to bother with the rest of the movie. And that's the real tragedy here. Edwards made a movie meant to be the first time. But there's little point in a second or third viewing because it was designed to anticipate and play with people's craving to see Godzilla himself. That anticipation only works for a first viewing. Once that's gone and you know what's coming, it kills the payoff and reward. I'd much rather they'd honed all their energy into making a twenty minute monster fight worth seeing again and again. Either that or have a more unique human story around monster awesomeness. As is, I guess I can recommend watching Godzilla once. But you'd be better off watching the original.

And just one final thought, if you're going to remake Godzilla, why not make it a movie that takes place entirely in Japan in the 1940s? Update the original story for a modern audience, sure. But we all know what Godzilla is about, what he represents, and why the movie exists in the first place. Stop Americanizing him for American audience when you can show real respect for the source material. And for two reasons, don't worry about whether or not Americans will spend their money on a movie if nobody in it speaks English. First, if there are giant fucking monsters doing giant fucking monster things, trust us, we'll watch it. They could be speaking in The Sims nonsense language and we'll watch it. Second, if your audience is too petty for subtitles and respecting other cultures, they're probably not the sort of people you want your movie to be associated with anyway. Godzilla was heavy in its tailoring for Americans, and I don't know if that was a decision from the studio execs or Edwards himself, but I'd really have rather seen something about the monster than the people watching it.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Pre-Movie

This being my first entry on the site, I like to point out that, yes, I will spoil everything. It's kind of a given with the URL, but for those of you who didn't catch that, you've been warned.

That said, I like to give you guys a little pre-movie info, just so you know where I'm coming from in my discussion. Every critic brings with them certain biases and ideals when they watch a film and I'm no different. As a general rule, I'll try to write a bit about the movie before I watch it. Am I hyped. What am I hoping to see? What don't I want out of this movie? And then I'll get into the whole post-movie discussion. And yes, that will be full of spoilers and ruin everything. This is a site for people who've seen the movie already or just can't help themselves and want to know everything.

And what better movie to kick the site off with than Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Marvel's... ninth(?)... flick in their cohesive cinematic universe. I should say this pre-movie section is a bit unfair, as I watched the movie a week ago, but I can give you a little summation of what I was thinking when I walked into the theater.

Honestly, I'm not a huge Captain America fan. It could just be that I grew up with punk music and was in a liberal arts program during the George W. Bush administration, but I was never into the comics and as a character I never quite got why he even mattered for comic book fans. The shield was probably a sweet weapon for little kids in World War II era USA, but even in the first Captain America movie it wasn't all that exciting. Chris Evans in the first movie and The Avengers did an awesome job giving the character heart, but of all the characters in these movies, he's a few steps below Iron Man and Thor.

Honestly, I was kind of hoping a certain somebody would randomly show up in the third act and hulk out a bit.

What? Mark Ruffulo was signed on for six Marvel movies and there's no Hulk sequel planned.

An interesting thing about Marvel setting up this universe is that now, despite the disaster that was Iron Man 2, we're all kind of looking forward to those little cameos and guest appearances. Not just Nick Fury and Agent Coulson. At some point, Marvel is going to have to bring out the big guns. Maybe not a full on Avengers affair, but in Iron Man 3, surely Hulk could've helped fight The Mandarin as long as they were working in tons and tons of CGI anyway. A team up of two of the major heroes for these lesser world shattering threats only makes sense.

Anyway, walking into the theater, I wasn't a huge Captain America fan. But Marvel movies have come to be known for a certain level of quality. Big directors. Big stars. Awesome action. Great special effects. For example: I've never read an Ant-Man comic. I think the concept of the character sounds dumb. But it's a Marvel movie directed by Edgar Wright, starring Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas. Hell yeah, I'll go see that.

Guardians of the Galaxy? You had me at James Gunn, Lee Pace, Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel. Okay, okay.

Actually, I started reading the comics of GOTG and all of you should too. Turns out, pretty awesome.

So maybe Captain America himself isn't all that exciting, but I could pretty sure that I'd be in for a good time. So that said, here's the trailer and your final spoiler warning. Everything below this paragraph is going to completely ruin the movie for you.

Post-Movie

I was thrilled during the ending credits to confirm, yes, Gary Sinise was the voice of the narrator at the Smithsonian Air & Space museum.

So the most interesting thing here is that in a lot of ways this felt like a sequel to Iron Man 2 just as much as the first Captain America and The Avengers. I don't know if it was just Black Widow, Nick Fury, and Gary Shandling's return as Senator Stern. But I kept thinking back to Iron Man 2.

That said, out of the three movies that feature Steve Rogers, this is the first one where he was truly an interesting character.

Again, Chris Evans gave him a lot of heart in the first movie and The Avengers. But in both of those he was just the straight laced good guy with a heart of gold. He was a symbol of American idealism and better times, and it didn't quite mesh well with my NOFX.

Let's be honest. The first Captain America was so-so. A movie that felt throughout as though it was being made because somebody at Marvel said, "Well, we HAVE to have a Captain America movie before we do The Avengers." A by-the-numbers comic book flick that really didn't have anything too special about it. The action was fine. The shield combat... had its moments. The character didn't so much grow as he did... have costume changes. And that may have been by design. "I'm just a kid from the Bronx." Something like that.

In The Avengers, Captain America was cool. They did enough that he was able to be established as an acceptable comic character in the modern world. They justified his costume just as much as him. But he didn't really have any screen time to develop. We were given enough to say, "Okay. He's the man out of time. We get it. When is Thor going to show up? Will somebody please have a god damn hulk out?"

Captain America: The Winter Soldier fixed this, and fixed it well. It wasn't a man getting used Google and iPhones (although those gags were certainly thrown in for good measure). It was a man getting used to a world that no longer held onto his values.

This movie justified the lack of character development from the first movie. I'd actually argue this was the movie Marvel wanted to make for Steve Rogers all along. They just had to get through all of their phase one crap so they could finally make something really cool.

And, yes, it was damn cool.

Not just the waaaaaay better choreographed action. Or the relevant politic drama. The way Rogers fit and didn't fit into the world around him was what made the movie.

Also the explosions.

Over the weekend I heard somebody refer to it as "The Dark Knight of Marvel movies." As difficult as it is to place any other comic book movie in a league with the first two Christopher Nolan Batman flicks, for a Marvel movie, yes. This is the closest they've come.

It's still the Marvel universe. It's a certain level of quality and entertainment. Is it as say... as close to Oscar worthy as the first two Batman flicks? No. But it's damn good popcorn entertainment.

I'd say the worst part of the movie was the trailer for an upcoming Luc Besson flick prior to the movie. 

That's not to say The Winter Soldier wasn't without its flaws.

The character, The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes, could've been done better. Yes, he was totally and completely badass in all of his action scenes. With the exception of the bit where he first catches Captain America's shield. Something about the special effect just doesn't look right. He should've had more of a reaction. But over all... holy shit! That dude can kick some ass.

The problem comes in for people like me who've never read the comic. The Winter Soldier is discussed by Black Widow and given a couple of scenes to show his brain washing and simple mindedness. But it wasn't enough. Maybe comic fans are joyous or furious with his on-screen portrayal. As somebody new to the character, sure. He's badass. But it's a comic book movie, so there really isn't much to make his badass-ness stand out against any other character.

He actually goes through the same problem Steve Rogers had in the first movie. No development and his entire role felt like a setup to later, better things. The problem is that we're going to be waiting a few years for those better things. If he even appears in part three.

For this movie, he was just a henchman. That's it. Which I honestly wouldn't have thought twice about had he not shared half the title of the movie. An equivalent would've been if Goldfinger had instead been called James Bond: Odd Job.

When The Winter Soldier is on screen, you say, "Hell yeah!" When he's off screen you really don't care. When Captain America is going through his "I'll have to fight my best friend" drama, there's not a lot of feeling to it. Not that Evans doesn't sell it. It's just, as an audience, we're already there to watch Captain American fight his best friend. We've known it's his best friend since the first trailer hit last year and we all asked Yahoo, "Who is the winter soldier?" Any chance of that being a surprise for 99% of the audience was dead. And we know it's going to be an awesome, epic fight. But no matter who the character was in the last movie, there's no real weight for the audience if The Winter Soldier is somebody we don't have any attachment toward.

The movie itself never gave us an attachment, good or bad, toward the character. He was just a badass. Just an evil henchman. The one moment where we really felt something for him was after the credits.

But it was damn cool to watch them fight.

How did you guys feel about Hydra's return?

I thought it was kind of wonky until I started thinking about The Avengers. The fact that SHIELD still has all of those weapons and such from the first Captain America is what brought it home for me. It really was an excellent way of tying everything together. I was a little slow buying into it, and my final feeling during the third act battle was more of a, "Sure. Why not?" than anything else.

The one part that made me giggle was when Gary Shandling whispered, "Hail Hydra."

Yes! Great twist and this is a dick character who we've all enjoyed hating for a few years now so it made sense to push him in that direction. But it was such an awkward and clumsy thing to do. I kind of wanted the other guy to take a step back and say, "Whoa! Calm down there, guy. I know you've been waiting for the big day for a while but let's not get all 'club house handshake' in the middle of the street." 

Maybe it was just me. For a deep cover, secret organization that manipulated American ideals to rise in their ranks and infiltrate every part of a covert agency's infrastructure while more or less giving the message, "Look Americans! The stuff we're doing isn't too far off from Nazism!" I would think their members would be able to hold it in a little better. It was just one of those little "Cool for the audience, not so great Hydra" kinda moments.

I guess even Hydra would have its over zealous members. The guy who can easily be placed in a powerful position during a coup, but probably doesn't get invited to all the meetings and Hydra balls.

He's the kind of guy who would blow everything by saying, "The first rule is I'm not supposed to talk about it. And the second rule is I'm not supposed to talk about it." To anybody with an octopus on their shirt.

"What are you talking about, guy? I'm a Red Wings fan too and we're more than welcome to discuss it. In fact, that's how we relate as fans. We even have multiple television networks where people are paid to talk about it."

That was actually my biggest complaint. Apart from some of the trailers. And, yes, there was the fact that Iron Man was referred to but didn't show up.

Marvel is going to have to do this at some point. They've taken all the time in the world to establish these characters as existing in the same universe. Early in the movie, Nick Fury mentions that Tony Stark had a hand in designing the turbines on the new heli-carriers. Falcon's winged jet pack has Stark Industries written on the side of it. And at no point does Tony Stark show up.

I'm actually more forgiving of this than I am not having Hulk show up at the end of Iron Man 3.

But let's be honest. Nick Fury is dead. Shield is in turmoil. They're launching three ships that Tony Stark had a hand in designing. Surely at some point Pepper Potts would roll over in bed and say, "You should probably be there for the final bit of construction and unveiling of heli-carriers to the world, Tony."

I realize, for a film studio, to suddenly include Tony Stark in the movie is to pay Robert Downey Jr. however many millions of dollars and it uses up one of the movies he's contracted to make with them. It's cheaper to have him not show up. But when it makes so much sense to include him in the story, you might as well make him have an appearance.

Steve Rogers could've just called Tony Stark and said, "Hey, guy. There's all sorts of madness going down and you're Iron Man. With or without the thing in your chest. I know you might be recovering from surgery  and/or you just detonated all your awesome suits, so you probably have to sit this fight out, but say, I've got this guy here who needs a jet pack and he says the only way to get one is to steal it. Any chance you could give us a hook up?"

Or alternatively, somebody from Hydra who infiltrated SHIELD, and was planning on killing Tony Stark anyway could've just made a phone call and said, "Hey, guy. These new heli-carriers are about to take flight and we sure would appreciate it if you could stand directly beneath them and make sure everything is looking okay. Could you do that for us? Buddy?"

Even better, Tony Stark could've flown in immediately after the battle was over in a shoddy Iron Man suit, panting heavily, saying, "I flew in- I saw it on the news *heavy breathing* I just built this suit in like- twenty minutes. Am I too late? Did I miss it? What's a Hydra anyway?"

At some point, Marvel is going to have to include a team-up movie. Maybe not a full blown Avengers affair, but Hulk could sure use Thor's help in a sticky situation and Bruce Banner is clever enough to communicate with Asgard. Something. For this movie, it made sense not to include Hulk. And Thor was across the galaxy. But Tony Stark was heavily referenced and could've easily been utilized without stealing the show.

"Okay. There are three enemy ships taking flight and we need to replace chips in all of them. Falcon, you are capable of flight, so you take one. I will handle the other two."

"You mean you don't know anybody else who could just fly up real quick and replace the chip on the third ship while you handle the other one?"

"...Nope. Nobody comes to mind."

Or maybe Hawkeye could've shown up at some point. I guess. He used to work for SHIELD, right? Somewhere in there. Given that the movie was just as much as SHIELD movie as a Captain America movie, it might've made sense to include him. At least in that Mexican stand off scene. Of course he would have to be the first person to get shot. Let's face it, SHIELD or Hydra, everybody wants to put a bullet in the asshole who brought a compound bow to a gun fight.

"An entire army of aliens is approaching. Better pack the big quiver."

On another note, why exactly was Nick Fury telling his car to hold on deploying its defenses? He wanted the glass weak enough to shoot through with his first bullet? Over all, great scene. I just didn't see his reasoning there beyond, "It's not dramatic enough if I don't wait until the last second to start firing!"

It also would've been funny if he went to use the retinal scan with his bad eye and it didn't work. And Robert Redford could've explained, "No. We removed your security clearance and everything. Left eye or right eye, it's all stored in the same file. Fury, Nick dot pdf." Of course Nick Fury would've responded by plucking Redford's other eye and using it for his scanner.

Anyway, sweet movie. Honestly, I don't know why you guys are even reading this. You'd be better off just going and watching it again.