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by Jaime Rebanal

‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ Review: Kaiju Ridiculousness Cranked Up a Notch

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If you’ve left Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla feeling like there wasn’t enough monster action to eat up, Michael Dougherty provides so much more of that in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (fittingly enough, whose name is taken from Terry Morse’s American bastardization of Ishirô Honda’s film). But decidedly, you’re also left wondering how much of this feels exciting especially when you’re in the face of nonstop monster action from beginning to end and in that same sense, Godzilla: King of the Monster can be equal parts exhilarating or just overall exhausting. But for longtime fans of the series who were eagerly awaiting to see Mothra or King Ghidorah coming to the screen in an Americanized format, there’s a whole lot that one can eat up at in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Putting it lightly, it’s a film that took notes from the fan reaction to Gareth Edwards’s take but everything that Michael Dougherty does worse in King of the Monsters might also give you a lot more to appreciate about how Edwards approached the start of the MonsterVerse.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Godzilla (2014) – Review

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Was hoping to enjoy it more on this go after having been disappointed from a theatrical viewing, but on a revisit my opinion nevertheless remained the same. Gareth Edwards, a director only known at the time for a small scale science fiction film, Monsters, started off Legendary Pictures’s MonsterVerse on a more middling note than anything. Being the first American Godzilla film after the atrocity that is Roland Emmerich’s film, Edwards seems to have a grasp on what made a great monster film as a whole at least by remaining within the spirit of the original Japanese films – and yet it’s still somewhat lacking. As a star for the MonsterVerse it was intriguing to see what would have come out as a result from Godzilla but the most it evokes is that it’s just desperate to start up an entire series of films rather than standing out on its own: which I suppose I can get behind with what more it teases.

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by Jaime Rebanal

L.A. Confidential – Review

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Another time capsule in a sense it goes through the glory of classic Hollywood film-noir, but if something else had come about in order to allow Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential to stand apart not merely as a tribute, it takes one through an exhibit but understands its display at heart, lives in its glory – emulates a mood like the artifacts up for show it could merely have been one in itself. At its heart there is a great police procedural drama but its background is something that carries something all the more mesmerizing. It’s delightfully classical Hollywood in a 90’s manner, for a distinct blend of eras only gave away a timely feeling.

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