Godzilla (2014)

[sikmansam]

I saw this at Ilford on Tuesday and left feeling quite disappointed. Some aspects of the film worked very well, for example Bryan Cranston's performance, the opening, the aesthetics, and Godzilla himself. But because it relies so much on its human drama, it ends up being very dull in parts, especially with Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who I usually enjoy) turning in a very dull lead performance.

6/10

My review:

[RAZORBACK]

I did have high hopes for this but ultimately ended up feeling a little bit disappointed when I left the cinema.

The first thirty or so minutes were great but after that the film seemed to adopt an 'Independence Day' type vibe & I really thought that they'd aim a little bit higher than that quality wise.

In terms of performances, Watanabe & Cranston (despite the distracting hair) were solid but Taylor-Johnson was quite frankly terrible and Olsen deserved far better than the two dimensional character she was given.

As for the monsters well I wasn't quite as impressed as others, the MUTO design seemed quite abstract & as for Godzilla, I wasn't expecting him/her to be a cgi version of the man in a suit design.

The fight sequences at the end were good but I wasn't blown away by them...however I must admit to being quite impressed by Godzilla's final finishing move .

Overall, & despite my complaints, this was still a reasonably entertaining monster movie so anything less than 7/10 seems a bit harsh...

[D-Fens]

I enjoyed it until the Golden Gate Bridge, where this shining beacon of movie cliche caused the movie to finally abandon all the rules it had set up in favour of a confused climax.

Should have just made a bigger budget version of Monsters where actual characters followed a path of destruction piecing the story together before an epic showdown.