Godzilla (2014)

Title: Godzilla (2014)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Aaron Taylor Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Ken Watanabe

There’s a bit of resurgence in giant monster movies as of late, a renaissance if you will. It all started with Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013), which was a huge winner in my book, it showed that Kaiju movies could be cool and bombastic and just plain awesome. My big worry after seeing Pacific Rim was how Gareth Edward’s Godzilla could top it. As far as I’m concerned, Pacific Rim set the bar pretty in the land of giant monster movies, so Godzilla would have to be a pretty freaking cool monster movie in order to beat Pacific Rim. So…did it? But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Getting back to Godzilla, just who the hell is this Gareth Edwards guy? Well, a while back Edwards directed a straight to dvd monster movie called Monsters (2010); a cool little alien invasion flick that showed that Mr. Edwards knew his way around a monster movie, he ‘got’ them, he understood them; to top things off, Monsters showed that Edwards could do a lot on a small budget. So, Hollywood decided to give Edwards his big break to show what he’s made of, the result is the Hollywood’s second attempt at getting Godzilla right. Did it work? Was it a good Godzilla movie?

In Godzilla a mining operation discovers a giant egg, which just so happens to be a Kaiju egg. The creatures inside are these moth like (actually more like roach like) creatures who fly around the city sucking up anything that’s radioactive, including nuclear power plants! This of course spells certain doom for many nuclear plants around the world. Fortunately, Godzilla has also awakened and has emerged from the ocean! Will Godzilla protect or destroy the world from these giant radioactive cockroaches?

First things first, the filmmakers behind this movie got Godzilla absolutely freaking perfect! Unlike Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla (1998), which tried it’s very hardest to get away from the cheesier elements from the Japanese Godzilla films, Gareth Edward’s Godzilla actually embraced Godzilla exactly how he is depicted in the Japanese films, but with an added element of reality to it. This isn’t just a guy in a suit; nope, this is a gigantic, walking, stomping, atomic breathing King of All Monsters! So thanks go out to Gareth Edwards for giving us the Godzilla we always wanted, a Godzilla that I’m sure even the Japanese people can feel proud of and enjoy. On this film you will see everything you want to see in a Godzilla film, you will see Godzilla emerge from the ocean and go back into it, you will see him brawling with other giant monsters and he most certainly fires his atomic breath! So feel assured, if you’re a Godzilla fan, you will be pleased.

Aside from the awesomeness of Godzilla itself, the film has an amazing asset going for it, which I felt they could have exploited a bit more and that is actor Bryan Cranston, a solid actor if there ever was any. While he is in the movie, the movie flows perfectly well; the performances where believable and intense; unfortunately when he disappears half way through the film as does Juliette Binoche, things loose believability. You have two great actors and then you have them do a vanishing act to leave us with Aaron Taylor Johnson for the rest of the film? Not that I have anything against Aaron Taylor Johnson, but damn, Bryan Cranston could eat him for breakfast when it comes to acting! Why this cheap ass exchange? I would have found a way to keep Bryan Cranston on for the entire film!

The only real problem with this new Godzilla is the human side which felt clichéd and unconvincing. A good actor can make or break a film, and in this sense, this new Godzilla satisfied me only half way. Had they found a way to keep Bryan Cranston throughout the whole film, this movie would have gotten a perfect score from this reviewer, alas, we get clichéd characters and forced situations instead. For example, there’s this whole sequence in which Aaron Taylor Johnson has to save a little kid and you get the feeling that they did this simply to turn him into a hero; this sequence, while exciting, felt soooo forced and fake. Worse yet is that the kid disappears in a few seconds after he is saved, without a word or a thanks. It’s like you served your purpose in the plot kid, now scram! What the--? Characters weren’t well developed because one, you take away the good actors and leave us with the less experienced ones, and two, you have characters doing things simply to fulfill a character type or a purpose in the plot. It’s like, you’re hero, you’re the wife, you’re the soldier, you’re the scientist and you will do exactly what is expected of your archetype and that’s it. Ugh. My advice is next time, work on better human characters and the film should be better. Not that it’s an awful film acting wise, but characters felt like archetypes, not real people. I should add that this is a problem that many Japanese Godzilla films suffer from as well, a weak human side.

But aside from that, this movie rocked the house. Trust me when I say that whenever Godzilla is on, he is most certainly ON! Godzilla commands that screen whenever it appears! So much so that when he disappears you are left wanting more; which reminds me that what this movie needed more of was Godzilla! There’s this thing that Edward’s does in the film, he shows us Godzilla, teases us with this cool beast and then bam, the camera turns away! And you’re left wanting more Godzilla! Which is cool in my book, he kind of wets your appetite and the tortures ya by taking away what you want the most. I guess this technique was done on purpose, to keep us wanting more, to make us want a sequel; which by the way has just been approved! You will see Godzilla stomp the world again! You see, this Godzilla film made close to 100 million in one weekend alone! It’s a raging success! It is poised to make even more money than Pacific Rim did, but that’s to be expected because Godzilla is a brand name, and Pacific Rim was an original product. Still, if you ask me, if I had to compare this new Godzilla to Pacific Rim, I say Pacific Rim is still the superior of the two. It’s just more bombastic, bigger, more epic. But Godzilla is a damn fine Kaiju film, not a disappointment in the least and a cinematic experience not to be missed; go see Godzilla roar! It’s an experience!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Kick Ass 2 (2013)

Title: Kick Ass 2 (2013)

Director: Jeff Wadlow

Cast: Aaron Taylor Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey, Donald Faison, Clark Duke,  Morris Chestnut

The thing I enjoyed about Kick Ass (2010) is that it presented us with characters who don’t have super powers, they aren’t mutants, they aren’t aliens from another planet. These masked vigilantes are essentially pissed off citizen’s that dress up in costumes to do what the police doesn’t do, they take preventive action towards crime, they don’t sit around eating donuts in a coffee shop waiting for their walky talkies to tell them some disaster has just gone down, they don’t arrive at a scene to pick up the pieces, or fill out paper work, nope these vigilantes are patrolling the streets trying to nip crime in the butt, before the bad guys do their thing! They are colorful versions of Charles Bronson in Death Wish (1974) only difference is that Bronson simply walked around in a trench coat, while the heroes in Kick Ass dress up in silly costumes and hide their faces behind masks. Oh, and Bronson never walked around with a Samurai sword in his trench coat!

The premise for this sequel is that Kick Ass has kind of forgotten how to be a super hero, so he wants Hit Girl to train him, to help him get back into the ass kicking business, after all, Kick Ass is credited in the media with having started the whole masked vigilante movement, he can’t just walk out of this thing he started. Hit Girl helps him and she’s thankfully still very much in the ass kicking business, the only problem is that her new step dad wants her to lead a normal life. So in order to please him (and her dads dying wishes) she attempts to leave her vigilante days behind and takes a stab at being a regular teenage girl, which means joining the cheerleading team, going out on dates, attending sleep over’s and dressing more girly. But is that what she’s really all about? Is Mindy Macready Hit Girl or not? Meanwhile, the former hero known as “Red Mist” decides he wants to get revenge for his father’s death, so he has only one thing in his mind: killing Kick Ass. In order to do so, he leaves his hero name behind and now calls himself ‘The Motherfucker’ and calls upon anyone who is willing to join his vengeful crusade. Will Kick Ass be ready to go up against ‘The Motherfucker’ and his gang?

Some controversy was stirred concerning Jim Carrey and his character ‘Coronel Stars and Stripes’. You see, at one point Jim Carrey was all gung-ho and happy to be in Kick Ass 2. But then, the tragic events that happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton Connecticut made him change his mind. In case you’ve forgotten, the Sandy Hook Massacre was all about this 20 year old man who one day killed his own mother, then, went to Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot twenty kids and six staff members, then to put the icing on the cake, shot himself. According to Carrey, after these events took place he had a change of heart and suddenly didn’t want to promote Kick Ass 2 because of its levels of violence? Truth be told, Kick Ass 2 is not more violent than the first Kick Ass film, in fact I found that the levels of graphic violence were considerably brought down for this sequel. Yeah there’s blood and decapitations…but it’s still less graphic then anything that happened in the first film.

"Yeah! There's a dog on your balls!"

But that’s not even the point; the point is that Kick Ass 2 isn’t going to augment the levels of violence in the world. Jim Carrey not promoting the film isn’t going to stop more mass murders. True, the events that occurred in Sandy Hook were tragic, but they are not related to movies, they are related to way bigger problems in society, in reality, films though violent and profane always try to bring out the best in all of us. Even a violent film like Kick Ass has in the end a positive message to it. I just hate it when people blame movies for the crazy things that happen in the real world? Chole Moretz put it nicely in an interview when she said that if we we’re all that gullible we’d all dress up like princesses after seeing a Disney movie. It’s not like I would pick up a chainsaw and chop off my own hand after seeing Evil Dead II (1987) you know what I mean? And I don’t want to say that the cinematic medium isn’t a powerful one, because it is. Movies are powerful medium, quite possibly the fastest way to transmit ideas and concepts to the masses, still, this doesn’t mean we can’t see a violent movie and see what it’s trying to convey without getting violent. I mean, I can see a graphic and violent film like A Clockwork Orange (1971) and understand it’s really a film about learning to give something back to society as opposed to abusing our power. We all know movies are fake, most of us know how to differentiate between fiction and reality, we know how to grasp a concept that a film is trying to convey even though it’s a violent film. If you don’t then my friends it’s something to work on okay! So don’t give me that bull. My big question for Carrey is, dude, didn’t you read the script? Now on the other hand if Carrey’s comments were just a publicity prank to grab some headlines and give the movie some media coverage, that I understand; that I can get!

Chloe Grace Moretz, goofing around behind the scenes

So; on to the movie itself. How was it? Well, I’d say that though it isn’t the same director (Matthew Vaughn stepped out for whatever the reason) the film managed to retain the same feel of the original. We still got the goofy situations with the vigilantes trying to be all that they can be even though they are all just regular people. Loved all the inside jokes at superheroes and comic books; comic book fans will giggle on a constant basis. I will make an observation though; the film is named Kick Ass, not Hit Girl, so why does the film feel that it’s more about Hit Girl then Kick Ass himself? As it is, Hit-Girl has the more interesting story arc here, Kick Ass, as a character, is always playing catch up. I get it, Hit Girl was such a hit with the fan boys across the world that they gave her more screen time. If they ever make a third one, and I hope they do, well, I hope they focus a bit more on Kick Ass himself and his journey towards becoming a hero, because as it is, on this sequel Kick Ass feels like the sidekick, which has always been the case from the very first film. The assortment of villains was pretty nifty. ‘The Motherfucker’ gathers a group of villains to achieve his goals, and so we end up with this crazy group of villains. My favorite was this crazy Russian lady called ‘Mother Russia’, wow, crazy character! She’s the one responsible for most of the graphic violence in the film.

By far the best thing about the movie is how the vigilantes all decide to form a group called ‘Justice Forever’ which feels like the low budget version of ‘The Avengers’ or ‘The Justice League’. I loved those scenes where they get together to patrol the streets and kick ass together. There’s this really cool scene where they fight some villains, and everyone does their part to kick some ass. I love the mantra they shout before going out into the streets. The comic book related jokes fly when these guys get together, funny stuff. So, in the end I think this movie is getting a bad rap unnecessarily, everything is so freaking ‘politically correct’ that if a film has even an inkling of graphic violence or profanity (which Kick Ass 2 has a lot of) the media boycotts it and the masses tune out. I guess it’s all part of the dumbing down of the masses, can’t have them getting violent or emotional, we can’t have the masses, god forbid, exposed to the idea of taking matters into their own hands and trying to make a difference on their own like the vigilantes on this film now do we? But whatever my peoples, I’m always for the waking up of the consciousness, the not playing it so freaking safe, the idea of living your life more or less on the edge, without so much predictability. I’m always pro-action, pro go out there and do stuff. Not necessarily putting on a mask and kicking ass out on the streets, but maybe fighting our own personal motherfuckers and taking control of our destinies, becoming who we really are or should be; as this film, even through its violence, implies. Let’s read between the lines people!  

Rating: 4 out of 5 

Savages (2012)

Title: Savages (2012)

Director: Oliver Stone

Cast: Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek, John Travolta, Aaron Johnson, Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch

I enjoyed Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday (1999), it had a lot of his kinetic energy, a lot of his love for Americana, and I loved how he filmed football like it was a war, but I'm not a huge fan of football, so that film wasn't really big on my Oliver Stone-o-meter; yes I have one of those. In reality, the last Oliver Stone movie that I really enjoyed was U-Turn (1997), I believe that was Stone's last truly edgy film. It wasn't based on any real life events, it wasn't making any political statements or trying to uncover some age old conspiracy like a lot of Oliver Stone's films do, no, U-Turn was Oliver Stone simply having some fun telling a story about this shitty day Sean Penn has when he falls, like a fly into a fly trap, into this hell hole of a town, straight out of a Twilight Zone episode. It was kinetic, it was weird, it was offbeat, it was dark and funny...and it had that great Billy Bob Thornton performance. Sadly, every other film Stone has made after that one has missed that Oliver Stone kineticness we all came to love. Actually, the title U-Turn was so symbolic because from there on in, Stone's films just haven't been the same. 

Oliver Stone, working out a scene with Travolta and Kitsch

Take World Trade Center (2006) for example. What a boring film! Had that been a true Oliver Stone film it would have focused on the terrorists on the plane or on the conspiracy theory that maybe it was the Americans who blew themselves up to have an excuse to invade Iraq or something like that. But no, since World Trade Center was made by the "neutured by Hollywood" Oliver Stone, well, it was about these heroic firemen; a noble and sentimental approach to the whole World Trade Center tragedy, but not in my opinion the kind of story that the old Oliver Stone would have told. Same goes for W (2008), a film that was "soft" when compared to similar Stone films like the mindblowingly good JFK (1991) or NIXON (1995). So now, here comes Savages, and judging by the looks of the previews, it seemed like this is Stone's attempt to grow some balls back and have some fun while doing it. Not a bad combination in my book. It seemed to me like Savages was going to show us Stone's still got it in him to make a film with an edge to it. It looked like he was ready to give us another jolt of shock to the system. Did Stone deliver the goods?

On Savages we meet two California weed dealers, Ben and Chon; two friends who have decided to use their capabilities to produced and sell some of the finest weed ever smoked by man. One graduated from college and has extensive knowledge on botany and chemistry, the other is an ex military who offers his military know-how and is the muscles of the operation. The two of them are in love with the same woman, Opehelia, and they all live in beach side mansion in California. Their lives are like a dream, selling and smoking weed, making tons of dough, they are  living the life so to speak. But Ben wants a normal life and wants out of the weed selling business, he convinces Chon and Ophelia to do  the same. In their minds they can effectively run off to Indonesia and live a luxurious life over there, far away from all the drug dealing. But what happens when the bigger drug dealers don't want them to go? 

First the good news: this isn't a completely unwatchable Oliver Stone film; it has many of the things we've come to expect from the legendary filmmaker, albeit with less intensity. It's got violence, drugs, sex and controversial ideas, but it just doesn't  get too intense, not like old Stone films would. One of the most controversial ideas the film puts across is that marijuana should be legalized; that it's only a matter of time before this happens. And herein lies the surprise for me with this movie: I wasn't expecting for the film to be a Stoner Flick. This movie is really, really about weed; actually it borders on glorifying or even glamorizing it. There are these scenes where the main characters are just smoking away, 'chillaxing'; that's chilling and relaxing all roled up into one in case you're wondering. It really captures what it means to smoke weed, to be in that totally chilled, spaced out moment, we even get one of these scenes that we saw before in Stones own The Doors (1991), where characters are high, looking out at the stars, loosing themselves in the vastness of space. The names of the main characters in the film: 'Ben and Chon' are enough of an indication to tell us that this film will be all about weed, the names of course remind us of those perennial pot heads from the 70's Cheech and Chong. So a big theme here is marijuana, and how if it was legalized, a lot of unnecesary crap could be avoided. 

The glamorizing aspect of the film comes when we see the kind of life that these two guys and their girlfriend  live. They make the finest pot ever, they are drug dealers yet they live in these beautiful homes, have these cool cars, and share the hottest girlfriend, which by the way is another controversial aspect of the film, the depiction of a threesome. It doesn't really go too deeply into the whole threesome thing like the way Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) did, but it does make a point to tell us that this kind of thing just doesn't work out. Bottom line though is that these guys are drug dealers, but they are depicted as the nicest drug dealers ever. They dress like surfers, and drive these expensive sports cars and what have you, but come on, these guys are supposed to be drug dealers! To me they just didn't look the part, they didn't convince me they were dealers. They came off as too nice for drug dealers. They looked more like surfer dudes who would be smoking the pot rather then making it and sell it. And here for me is where the film has a few faults. 

Stone's cinematic characters were never beatuftiful people, they were always caricatures of what humans are like. With  emotions augmented and personafied. I'm thinking of James Wood's in Salvador (1986), Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers (1994), not the best looking peole, but boy could they act the hell out of their characters. They had such intensity to them.  His characters were always rough looking, ugly in a way, disturbed, and sometimes even cartoonish somehow.  Take Tom Cruise for example -the sex symbol of his day- he starred in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), but even then, Stone turned Cruise into a demented freak in a wheel chair, with long hair and a mustachio, trying to screw Mexican whores with a limp dick. Point is, only recently did he start this thing about putting beautiful people in his films, this probably is at the request of Hollywood producers. Stone seems to be aware of this himself, because even though he's got young, good looking protagonists on his film, he places them in juxtaposition to,Benicio del Toro as the villain called 'Lado'. Now Benicio is the kind of character you'd expect to see in an Oliver Stone film, he fits the bill perfectly. Benicio is a fantastic actor, and in this film he even comes off as frightening and scary in his violent ways. The character of Lado gives us a small glimmer of what Stone's characters used to be like. Scary, ugly, dangerous, edgy kind of characters. I loved  how Stone addresses the issue of beautiful protagonists by having 'Lado' make fun of  Ben by telling him that he's "cute"; in this scene, Stone is making fun of the fact that he has these two Calvin Klein models as protagonists on his film.

Other than that, this is pretty much an Oliver Stone film, but light. He still uses the change in film stock, sometimes the film goes to black and white, sometimes we see over saturated images...but at the same times the camera stays still a lot. It's missing that frenetic pacing we used to have in Stone's films, where we felt as if a coked up dude was telling us the story. I guess Stone is getting old, and it doesn't surprise me that his films keep getting softer the older he gets; this happens to many filmmakers as they start getting older, they kind of loose what made them cool when they were young. Kind of like aging rock stars, some don't loose it, but most do. I don't think Stone has totally lost his cool yet, he might have an awesomely dark film up his sleeve yet, but this one just ain't it. I'm not saying it's a bad film, because it has a lot of cool stuff going for it. It's fun, it's fast paced. But for an Oliver Stone film, it's just too bright, too colorful, too beautiful..too perfect in a way. I liked the chaotic nature of previous Stone films. But then again, the way this film was made was  probably done intentionally. It looks to me like Stone was going for a film with beautiful people, lots of colors  and a happy kind of vibe going for it, this is a film about smoking weed after all. Savages is a film where even the villains where kind of likable, as is the case with Salma Hayek's 'Elena'; a villain who comes off as a mother figure of sorts. Even though the film does have decaptations and bloodshed, it felt like a milder kind of film from and old marketer of 'Gloom and Doom'; which of course is why it feels so strange. Not bad, just different, definetly not what you'd expect from Stone. Savages is the kind of film where everything goes smoothly for the pot heads; but in the end, it left me longing for the old war horse that Stone was. 

Rating 3 1/2 out of 5