Daily Archives: September 21, 2014

Quick hits!

Movies, TV

Movies and TV, a bit of a catch up post.

Sons of Anarchy- The final season is off to a great start. Gemma’s decisions continue to ruin lives. Jax is furious and has done a 180 from last season, the body count is already high and it’s only been 2 episodes.

Batman: Assault on Arkham- Much better than Son of Batman. Better animation and story. Getting to see the Suicide Squad in action was  a lot of fun (Harley and Deadshot hook up!), this title has it all. Great characters, great action and a surprisingly funny (great use/writing of Joker).

We’re The Millers- Better than I thought it would be. Fun and inventive comedy with a great cast, I recommend it.

The Purge- Surprised this did well enough to get a sequel. Not too good.

Oldboy (2013)- There is no reason to watch this over the Korean original from 2003. It does nothing better and all the best bits are lifted directly from the original and are often shot worse. Don’t touch this pointless remake.

Trollhunter- A fun Norwegian monster movie. A group of college students are investigating weird bear killings where they stumble upon a guy who says he’s a troll hunter. The offer to follow and document his work and they find a world they never new existed. Creative, well made, a nice surprise treat.

True Detective- I don’t think it’s as good as many people say it is, but it’s still a hell of a show. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are phenomenal.

Community- I should have watched this show from the start. I watched season 4 and 5 as they aired on TV (avoid 4, 5 is great) and I’m almost done catching up, One of my favorites, often hysterical.

Adventure Time- Love it! Short episodes with the craziest cast and scenarios. Such a great idea for a show lets them do just about anything. The creativity is off the charts with this one, I can’t wait to watch more (I’m up to season 3).

Hemlock Grove- The first season wasn’t very good, but for some reason I had to continue. Much better, the switch to more prosthetic make up effects was a great movie. I enjoyed it all (it’s a really weird show so your mileage may vary) until the end where they took a flying leap into a pile of CG garbage that almost ruins everything. There’s a twist for one of the characters and the reveal is one of the ugliest and horribly designed special effect I have seen in years. I can’t believe they put that mess into the final cut of the show, it’s so embarrassing.

Happy Valley- Loved this bit of British telly. Catherine is a police sergeant in a rural Yorkshire town. A kidnapping plot spirals out of control and intertwines with Catherine’s past making it very personal. Awesome cast and acting, I loved nearly the whole thing. Episode 5 had a big problem though. Lazy writing to get 2 characters back together. One partner in crime asks the other for help and he gets it. There is no way he would have helped him. After what they went through, the guy who got the call would have thrown the phone out of the window before the guy finished talking. They could have come up with something much better. As much as it bugged me, the pay off and conclusion was great. I hope they make more.

My Review: Godzilla (2014)

Movies

godzilla

Godzilla starts really strong, but some puzzling decisions later on mare the monster movie experience

The beginning and set up are far and away the best part of this 2 hour movie. Bryan Cranston is great, as usual, it’s exciting and suspenseful half hour or so. They tease each of the active monsters really well and the reveals are terrific. The monster designs are really cool and the sense of scale is perfect. Godzilla looks and sounds awesome, his blue fire breath a sight to behold!

The problem is the constant cutting away from Godzilla when it really matters. What starts as effective teasing and foreshadowing turns into annoying and confusing edits. For example, when Godzilla first confronts the winged monster, they growl at each other, Godzilla starts to approach and…they cut away to what some humans are doing. We miss the entire confrontation and have to figure out what happened between them. It doesn’t make any sense. At that point we have a good impression that Godzilla is a protector, his goal is to throw down and the other monster knows that. They have a biological history, the animal kingdom with beasts bigger than skyscrapers. Why didn’t they show Wings quickly fend off Godzilla and get away (at this point Wings is on a mission, but we don’t know what it is. He avoids a direct Godzilla confrontation for a reason). This happens more than once where we are robbed of what we want to see and get “aftermath” shots of the path the monster took to get away instead.

Then, we get the final fight which is great, but it was super dark at times so it’s hard to see and again we get these long cuts away from the fight to see what the “hero” humans are doing. The whole megaton bomb angle was completely mishandled (stick with the diffusing, the boat to sea is implausible nonsense) which upped to the stupid factor to an unnecessary level. There is a lot of stupid things going on actually. The “monsters checking out the hero” thing was really awkward too. Sorry, I don’t think these things are going to notice and pick out a person who is the size of an ant and eyeball him like it’s something out of The Lion King (and he’s everywhere! He reaches the most important places at the exact right time and survives multiple war zones that kill hundreds). Then there is a scene where a group goes to check on a object that’s in nuclear waste storage near Las Vegas. They go door to door and come to a vault with light pouring out of it. They open it up and the entire back of this buried facility has been obliterated. A gigantic crater with tracks leading away from it. No one noticed that happening? It went down before the group showed up (no hint of the destruction in progress) so they went into a half building without even thinking, “that’s weird”. It’s stupid.

For everything Godzilla get’s right, there’s a dumb decision that pulls it back. I have to put Pacific Rim head and shoulders above this one. Disappointing.