“Godzilla” review

Godzilla is back! Does his latest film return him to the top of the movie monster universe or is this another misstep in the legendary creature’s history?

The Good: Let’s get this out of the way. The money shots in “Godzilla” are amazing. It’s everything you expected and with some especially brutal fight moves, Godzilla has his moments to shine. Also, after “Pacific Rim”, which took a much more light-hearted summer approach to its tone, it was nice to see “Godzilla” take a more serious, darker approach. Bryan Cranston is solid in a limited role.

The Bad: Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to love this film, it falls flat in a lot of areas. First, while Godzilla does shine in moments, he barely gets more than those moments on screen. If you thought it was odd to only see Batman for a fraction of the runtime of “The Dark Knight Rises”, it’s far worse here. In fact, Godzilla barely makes an appearance for the first half of this film. It’s a cardinal sin to have the the character a movie is named after be reduced to what feels like an extended cameo in my book.

The human characters are the film’s real weak points. With actors like Cranston, Aaron Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, and David Strathairn anchoring the cast, you have great talent here. But frankly, we’re given very little character development, some cliche movie tropes and even less reason to care about these characters. That wouldn’t be a huge problem for me in a summer blockbuster, but once the decision was made to put these characters front and center, the movie suffers greatly.

There’s also quite a lot of … questionable logic used by numerous characters. And I mean questionable by summer movie standards.

Frankly, I was bored by this movie. Being forced to watch characters we care nothing about all the while talking about Godzilla without actually showing him makes this movie a chore to get through in parts.

The Final Word: What looked like the breakout hit of the summer after its marketing campaign is a dull summer misfire. While Godzilla does have his moments to shine they are so few and far between it can’t compensate for weakly written characters making silly decisions.

Lukas Eggen can be reached at eggen.lukas@gmail.com.

Spider-Man joins “Silence”

Martin Scorsese is one of those directors who could do almost anything and I’d go see it. His passion project “Silence”, an adaptation that he completed a script for in the 90s, has its leading man in Andrew Garfield .Garfield was the new Peter Parker in “The Amazing Spider-Man”. There are also reports that Ken Watanabe will join the cast as well. Scorsese’s latest film “The Wolf of Wall Street” starring Leonardo DiCaprio hits theaters later this year.

Lukas Eggen can be reached at eggen.lukas@gmail.com.

“Godzilla” adds more Oscar nominated talent

Yeah, this is surprising. “Godzilla” is gathering quite the cast. There’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathairn and Juliette Binoche. Now you can add Ken Watanabe, who audiences will likely know from “Inception”, “Batman Begins” and “The Last Samurai”. No word on what the official plot is yet, but all of a sudden, I’m getting excited for the film.

Lukas Eggen can be reached at eggen.lukas@gmail.com.

Box office battle: Why an “Unforgiven” remake as a samurai film isn’t a bad thing

With recent news that Clint Eastwood’s classic “Unforgiven” is being remade into a samurai film starring the super talented Ken Watanabe (“Inception”, “The Last Samurai”), there’s been some reaction that this is borderline heresy. How could someone remake that film, let alone change it to a samurai film? Chill out folks.

First, let’s not forget Hollywood’s been remaking foreign films for years. Anyone remember all the horror films like “The Grudge”, “The Ring”, etc.? Right, all the good horror films from the early 2000s? Remakes of superior Japanese films. Oh yeah, and Eastwood’s career really took off after “A Fistful of Dollars”…a remake of a Japanese film. Look, we all know “Unforgiven” is a classic. But, changing the location and the genre is perfect. Look at “True Grit”. It was a great film but all I heard was people comparing John Wayne to Jeff Bridges. Watanabe and Eastwood will have such different takes they can both coexist. I didn’t hear too many people complaining when Hollywood basically made the same adaptation of “Let the Right One In” with “Let Me In” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” barely after the foreign versions were made and became successful. Yet, we get what will be a remake of a film made decades ago and offer a different take on it and people flip out? Come on guys. These two versions can co exist just fine. In fact, it might help introduce the original to a whole new generation.

Lukas Eggen can be reached at eggen.lukas@gmail.com.