Godzilla: Suspenseful and Mostly Excellent

Score: 4/5

***CONTAINS A SPOILER***

Before even going in to see Godzilla, I have heard plenty of complaints that the movie's titular kaiju is not in it enough. Even a few professional critics like Alonso Duralde of The Wrap have complained, Alfonso in particular saying: "if Americans are going to build big-budget movies around him, they could at least give this legend more screen time." Honestly, I can see where the critics are coming from, but I still enjoyed it.

The movie starts off very strong, with a tense scene involving the character Joe Brody (played by Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston) losing his wife in a kaiju-inflicted nuclear meltdown. This very effectively sets up his character and Cranston gives a superb performance.

15 years later, Joe's son Ford (played by Aaron Taylor Johnson of Kick-Ass and the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron) works for the military and has settled down with a family to forget the fateful day his mother died. His past soon comes back to haunt him when he gets involved in his father's obsession for avenging his wife. Unfortunately, Johnson's performance isn't nearly up to par with Cranston's. In fact, it seemed downright wooden at times. This is especially a problem when...

***(SPOILER ALERT)***

Joe dies in the first 20 minutes, leaving the audience with a less interesting main character to root for. On the bright side, there isn't an overload of dialogue with his character, and Johnson's performance at least isn't cringe-worthy (like Shia LaBeouf in Transformers 3). Plus, the pleasant performances of Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, and Ken Wantanabe make Johnson's performance less of a problem than it could have been.

However, in spite of this flaw, I still enjoyed watching Godzilla. I'm sure a lot of people will go in expecting a giddy showcase of special effects like Pacific Rim and Transformers. However, I could tell that director Gareth Edwards wanted to take a different approach. By showing bits and pieces of Godzilla and how destructive he can be, the filmmakers implement the Jaws strategy of building suspense to lead to an amazing final showdown (which I won't spoil, but I will say it's worth the wait for Godzilla).

To be fair, the teasing can be a bit frustrating at times, especially when the film cuts to another plot point just when a battle between Godzilla and the enemy monsters (a male and female species called MUDO). On the other hand, I can see why this decision was made. Considering that there is only one type of monster in the film, seeing Godzilla fight the same monster over and over again would seem stale and repetitive, especially since the off screen battles result in a stalemate.

In spite of these flaws, I can honestly say I still walked out of Godzilla in a good mood. Perhaps the main reason I enjoyed it was the pure scope and thrill of the directing, editing and sound editing/mixing.

Every time a monster destroys a building or structure, you can practically hear every wall crumble and every wire snap. I really got a sense of immersion with all of the destruction going on, and found myself cringing and laughing like in a good disaster movie.

Speaking of which, almost every scene of destruction is shown from the point of view of the onlookers. Whether its from the inside of a skyscraper, the front of a boat, or from a bridge, the decision to show the monsters from the humans' perspective was absolutely genius. It truly put the audience in the film's atmosphere and made the already brilliantly executed CGI effects even more effective.

Something else that should be pointed out is that even when Godzilla isn't on screen, the movie almost always throws an interesting situation to keep you on the edge of your seat. I actually found most of the scenes to be well-made enough to compensate for the weak lead performance. One scene in particular involves Ford and another soldier hiding on a railway bridge from the female MUDO. Watching the monster creep under the bridge while the two tried to stay hidden kept the entire audience on their toes in anticipation.

Those expecting another Pacific Rim may be disappointed with the grittier and more suspenseful tone that Godzilla takes on. However, if you like creature features and disaster movies, you should definitely give this movie a shot.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (PG-13): A Sloppy Letdown

Score: 1.5/5

*****(CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS)*****

            The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the greatest disappointment I have ever seen since Iron Man 2. Like Iron Man 2, it meshes all sorts of plot threads together with barely any connection in an attempt to set up a bigger film (in this case, the Sinister Six) and fails miserably.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 starts off with promise, as Peter Parker (played excellently by Anderew Garfield) takes on the Rhino (played by Paul Giamatti). It’s a thrilling chase that is an absolute pleasure to watch, and it all ends in a light-hearted meeting between Peter and Gwen (played also superbly by Emma Stone). This is all enjoyably good, but all of a sudden, the movie takes a Tyler-Perry-style u-turn into dismal melodrama.

Somehow, despite his vow to be with Gwen in spite of her father in the last film, he suddenly realizes he’s putting her in danger. Then all of a sudden, he states that he can’t be with her and Gwen breaks up with him…in the first ten minutes. It’s not like he put her in danger or anything; she was just minding her own business at the graduation ceremony and all of a sudden, he realizes he can’t be with her. What’s even worse is that they make up with each other ten minutes later…before Gwen announces out of the blue that she’s moving to England. The movie tries to set up a conflict between the two, but it just comes across as so rushed and so lazy that I didn’t even care about it.

Then we have the villain, Electro (played by Jamie Foxx). Instead of giving him an honest introduction and really fleshing out his character, he is introduced as awkward comedic fodder. All he is basically is a guy who was saved by Spider-Man and develops a creepy obsession for him…oh, and he also has no friends at work. After gaining his electric powers, he decides to take his anger of being lonely out on the world and suddenly decides he hates Spider-Man after a brief failed negotiation. That’s it; we get no backstory on the guy, no interesting character traits, just a lazy mess of character development. You’d think with Electro being plastered all over the trailers and marketing that they’d have a deep, interesting story for him. But no, his story is pretty much put on the backburner to tell the story of Harry Osbourne (played by Dane Dehaan). However, even his backstory is underdeveloped.

We are introduced to Harry with no background and are suddenly expected to care about him after Peter simply shows up at his office and has an emotional reunion with him. “Show, don’t tell” obviously doesn’t apply here; the movie tells us that Peter and Harry used to be friends but we are given no true insight on that. He’s such a shallow villain, that it feels like the writer dropped the script and lost a couple of pages in the wind.

So just to review, among the films conflicts are: Peter’s rocky relationship with Gwen, Electro’s backstory, and Harry’s relationship with Peter. That’s not all though, there’s also the conflict of Peter trying to find out why his father disappeared, the only issue that was truly carried over from the last film. Oh, and there’s a plot point involving Peter’s relationship with his Aunt May and how being a superhero puts a rift between them. So in total, that’s five story elements all crammed into one film. All it adds up to is a trainwreck of massive proportions. Even when the movie tries to tie all of these elements together, it just fails. This is especially a problem when all of these plot elements lend themselves to big, soap-opera-like scenes of dismal, moping melodrama. This movie mopes so much, it makes Man of Steel look like The Fantastic Four.  

   All of the impressive special effects and fine acting in the world couldn’t save this movie from its shoddy, sloppy script. Half of it is practically unwritten and the other half is just a rushed setup for the Sinister Six film. Look Sony, I know that you only own the rights to Spider-Man, and I know you want a big epic film to compete with The Avengers. On the contrary, trying to create your own Avengers franchise isn’t taking you over The Avengers, it’s just turning the Spider-Man franchise into total garbage. That’s what this movie is: garbage.

I didn’t want to hate this; I wanted the critics to be wrong. At the very least, I was hoping I could get some enjoyment out of it like Man of Steel. It may have been full of holes and shoddily assembled, but at least Man of Steel focused on one villain and one story. I seriously hope that the next Spider-Man film will blow this one out of the water, because my standards for this franchise have been set to an all-time low.

Final Grade: D+