Godzilla (2014)

I saw this late, having read and heard some reviews, including a pretty comprehensive one my Mark Kermode on his radio show with Simon Mayo. The interview they had with Director Gareth Edwards was insightful without giving away some crucial plot points. I’ll endeavour to do the same.

As is well-known, the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla film starring Matthew Broderick and “who the hell cares who else” failed to impress. I’m sure it took good money (though I suspect the production costs were huge) and popcorn-guzzling audiences probably enjoyed the destruction and special effects. This film has a few things in common (necessarily) with the ’98 incarnation – city destruction, a huge lizard, heroic protagonists – but treads a different path in explaining ‘Zilla’s origins.

The opening credits are fantastic. I liked Gareth Edwards’ first feature film, “Monsters” a lot because of its subtlety, the way it pulled you in to the story from the start and then the careful pacing. It has these things in common with Godzilla, to its benefit. We see footage of the 1950s Pacific nuclear tests but not as we’ve seen them before. Yes, the armada of decommissioned military boats are still there in the blast radius, with Officers looking on from a safe distance, but the unmistakeable silhouette of something living is there. These nuclear blasts may not have been tests after all.

Cut to 20-something years ago and Bryan Cranston (most recently hugely famous in Breaking Bad) is Joe Brody, working at a nuclear power plant in Japan. Bringing up his son Ford with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche), tragedy strikes. Cut to the present day and Joe is trying to uncover the cause of the tragedy, convinced that the real cause is being covered up. Arrested, his son Ford (now grown up of course and played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I didn’t realise until now also played Kick-Ass in Kick Ass) flies to see him and then we’re waist-deep in monster action.

Firstly the special effects: they’re standard-setting. The creatures we see never look like they weren’t there. The mix of physical effects and CGI is well done too, with moments like San Francisco bay filled with the US Navy’s fleet looking for all the world like they’d actually amassed a flotilla of killing machines for real. A special mention for the sound effects – Godzilla sounds awesome (the film and the creature). The sound is subtle when it builds atmosphere and brutal when the moment comes. There’s just one little thing that irks (well, irks me). When things crash towards you from the sky (missiles, mortars, planes, whatever), the sound they make should increase in pitch (as they get closer) as per the Doppler effect (things moving away decrease in pitch). In Godzilla they decrease in pitch - a familiar sound, like when a mortar is "Incoming!!". In nearly every film I’ve seen this error is made. It wouldn’t have bothered you until you read this though, huh?

The performances from the humans are spot on. Nobody is going to win a Best Actor award for this, but Cranston is suitably stressed, Ken Watanabe is as reliable as ever (look at his history on IMDB – his CV is astonishing). No one character aside from Ford Brody gets a huge amount of screen time. This is a film about giant creatures, environmental responsibilities and the human response to the threat of destruction.

At a whisker over two hours, Godzilla romps along with few sagging points. There’s a strange little sub-plot lasting minutes in the middle involving a Japanese kid separated from his parents that I think is supposed to serve as an example of a character’s humility and heroism. It stuck out as a bit unnecessary and clunky but hardly hurts the pace or plot.

A film about giant monsters trashing cities (Look! Vegas! Kaboom!) isn’t really the place to look for depth but Godzilla is invested at least with some purpose. His “reason for being” is suggested but not explained fully as a balancing force, here to maintain the natural order. Whether GZ is conscious of his (her?) role as Giant Lizard Mediator is unclear. It’s enough though to justify the giant creature’s role in this story. The family story involving the Brodys seems superfluous at times and moments where someone waits in a dangerous place waiting for their hero to rescue them, journeying from another dangerous place when they could just get the heck out of there reminded me of “The Day After Tomorrow” a little, but as with the stranded Japanese kid sub-plot, it’s just no a big enough deal to distract from a brilliant monster movie. I’ll be very interested to see how well it translates to the home cinema experience. I’ll be getting it on Blu-Ray nonetheless.

See the trailer here: 

 

Written by Steve Fair - 2014

The Lego Movie (2014)

This was always going to do well, wasn’t it? Lego are one of the most effective brand-marketers in the world, combining incredible tie-ins with popular culture, clever viral marketing a product that kids love. AsI was writing this, I was thinking “why isn’t there a Lego/Minecraft tie in, but a quick search revealed that there is, enabling kids to build in real life what they’re already building virtually and for just £35 of their parents’ money (assuming the haven’t spent it all on the kid’s app-addiction).

I thought I’d seen all the funny jokes and good bits in the impressive trailer, but this is a funny, cleverly scripted film. The plot is simple: President Business (played by a coasting but still good Will Ferrell) wants to destroy the universe because people keep building things that aren’t part of his grand plan (I liked the repeated use of the phrase “President Business’ plan” for some reason). He’ll do this using the fabled “Kragle”, which can only be stopped using the “Piece Of Resistance”, a mysterious red block. Whoever finds the Piece Of Resistance is “The Special” – akin to Neo in The Matrix – and is able to build anything from the endless supply of Lego blocks that make up the world. The problem is that the population lives in a blissfully unaware state, dutifully repeating their daily routine, like a smiley subservient army of idiots. The musical number “Everything Is Awesome”, which is used to great comic effect later in the film too, is performed en masse, neatly illustrating the mass-hypnosis seemingly affecting everyone. Change the colour palette and the song and you nearly get a cheery cartoon-1984.

If you hadn’t realised yet, everyone and everything mentioned, other than The Kragle and the Piece Of Resistance are made from Lego. We follow our hero Emmett Brickowoski (the voice of Chris Pratt – Andy from Parks and Recreation) and Wyldstyle (or Lucy as we learn she’s called, played by the audibly lovely Elizabeth Banks) after they discover the Piece Of Resistance (Emmett finds it a fraction before Wyldstyle) and begin their quest to stop President Business unleashing The Kragle. Along the way, they meet Vitruvius (played by Morgan Freeman, essentially playing God (as only he can)), Batman (Arrested Development’s Will Arnett), Metal Beard (the brilliant Nick Offerman, also of Parks and Recreation fame) and others. Their entourage of helpers also involves some Star Wars favourites voicing their actual characters (though it seems Harrison Ford was unavailable/too expensive). President Business is aided by Bad Cop (who is also Good Cop) voiced by Liam Neeson sounding as menacing as he did in “Taken”.

The story rocks along, with the different Lego worlds providing varying characters and challenges for our band of blocky heroes. The look of the movie is fantastic – you’d be unsurprised if it was in stop-motion animation, but it’s entirely CGI. Only the long-shots are clearly not stop-motion, when for some reason the frame rate is a lot smoother. I only noticed because I knew I’d be writing this and I was looking for things. The supporting cast are effective, which is a characteristic of the best Pixar hits (where would Toy Story be without Mr Potato Head and his friends, Finding Nemo without Nemo’s tank-mates or Cars without the other talkative autos? Something like Wall-E is a rare and wonderful exception) and the casting is spot on. It seems pointless to talk about the special effects in a CGI film rendering Lego into countless buildings, vehicles and creatures but I’ll give special mention to the liquids. The surface of the sea looks astonishing. I’d love to see if it was something that could be replicated using stop-motion and real Lego because it looks just right.

I enjoyed The Lego Movie but I doubt I’ll watch it again. There’s lots to see on screen and the Directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller (credits include the very funny “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) seem to have found space for dozens of little sight gags that would be uncovered with a second look. I just didn’t care enough about the plot to go back and view it for a second time. It somehow lacked the warmth of “Toy Story”, the beauty of “Wall-E”, the emotion of “Up” and the wonder of “Finding Nemo”. It’s a remarkable technical achievement (I think) and it has the important duality of things that’ll make both kids and adults laugh. But overall it’s just a little safe. It seems to try, quite successfully, to please everyone but I’m not convinced that it will truly delight anyone.

See the trailer here:

Steve Fair - 2014

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

If you’ve seen the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow, then you know the premise of this sci-fi blockbuster. The word “blockbuster” comes from a description of the biggest bombs used around the time of World War 2 – the ones that could destroy a city block. The Mimics (which is the name given to the barely-defined bad guys in the film) certainly fit that description, both in their destructive capabilities and the quality of the special effects bringing them to life. Major William Cage relives the same day, the same fight against the Mimics over and over, seemingly until they are defeated. 

The show opens with some footage explaining the arrival and progress of a marauding invading force called “Mimics”. It’s hinted that they’re from space (something that is repeated later on in the film) and they look like the sentinel robots that attack the ships in The Matrix. There are other bad guys too - all Mimics, but more senior ones.

Tom Cruise, plays Cage, who has avoided military duty by producing morale-boosting propaganda clips encouraging people to join the fight against the Mimics. This is Tom Cruise in “default mode”, which in this case is no bad thing. I enjoyed his performance in “Minority Report” hugely and this is similarly enjoyable. Cage is a coward and when General Brigham (a brilliant Brendan Gleeson) asks him to go to the front line to shoot a film that will glorify Brigham’s strategies (but  probably see Cage killed), Cage ducks, dives and finally refuses to go. He’s arrested and sent to Heathrow, now an operating base for a huge deployment of soldiers wearing massive MechWarrior-style exo-skeletal fighting machines. Some great script-writing is evident – plenty of little waypoints we’ll become familiar with in the first reel of the film are interspersed with well-balanced plot-devices setting up subsequent events. 

As the trailer makes clear, Cruise’s character starts the day again, “Groundhog Day” style each time he dies. His role, for reasons which are made clear enough, is to get better and better at fighting the Mimics to help the Allied forces (yep, there are plenty of WWII parallels here, including a map with arrows that suggest a tipped hat to “Dad’s Army”). Along the way, he meets Rita Vrataski (played by a steely Emily Blunt) and teams up with her – harder than it sounds when he has to introduce himself to her (and everyone else) every time he dies.

The set-pieces that play out Cage’s daily rebirth are well-handled and I didn’t tire of the restarts at all. It could have been an arduous film if we’d seen too much, over and over. Or it could have been just confusing if we hadn’t seen enough. 

The entire supporting cast are great – everyone seems to ham it up a little, not least Bill Paxton as Sergeant Farrell. The mild overacting could be a curse, but it helps drive some minor characters forward in the face of spectacular special effects, A-list colleagues and a plot that calls on them to very deliberately repeat certain things in subtly different ways. 

Cage and Vrataski are helped in their quest to win the war by Dr Carter, played by Noah Taylor who is nearly great in the role. I don’t know if he was a good-but-not-great choice for the role or whether he was regrettably underused but there’s something excruciatingly minor missing from the Dr Carter character. Or maybe I was just expecting too much. Carter helps explain that there’s a central brain controlling the Mimics and it is this brain that must be destroyed. Of course Cage has to convince Carter of his “rebooting” each time. Trust me, it never gets tangled and you won’t get bored of it.

The resolution of the film is strange. Obviously I won’t give anything away, but I was surprised.

I watched this in 2D – it’s available in 3D too. I imagine some of the special effects would have looked cool in 3D, but since seeing “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” by Werner Herzog in 3D, I can’t imagine anything getting close. I enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow thoroughly in 2D.

See the trailer here:

Steve Fair - 2014