Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire (2024)

While I may have been thinking about it a lot during the movie, I will not be reviewing Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in direct comparison to every other Godzilla movie that we've seen in recent years. That wouldn't be fair, especially in the wake of the superb Godzilla: Minus One, and it's fair to say that, whether you like or dislike this movie, it feels like an attempt to stay true to the featured big beasties while taking the movie series into even wilder and more fantastical territory.

Kong is lonely. That's pretty much what the movie starts with. He also has a toothache. So he moves from the Hollow Earth back to the surface of our planet, where he can receive some dentistry from a brave specialist vet, Trapper (Dan Stevens). Meanwhile, Godzilla is on the move, and there are signs that things are changing down in Hollow Earth. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) heads there, accompanied by her adopted daughter, Jia (Kaylee Hottle),  a returning Bernie Hayes (podcaster and social media ägitator", played by Brian Tyree Henry), Trapper, and Mikael (Alex Ferns). It doesn't take long to start figuring out what kind of new problem they have on their hands, but can they figure out a solution before Kong is badly affected by it. And will Godzilla be of any help to them?

With so many people returning to roles both behind and in front of the camera, this could have easily been an easy continuation of the storyline that proved to be so much fun in Godzilla Vs. Kong. Adam Wingard is back at the helm, having helped to develop the story for this with Terry Rossio and Simon Barrett, assisted by Jeremy Slater when moving from story to screenplay form. They do try to stick to the rules that were put in place in the last movie, but they also try to keep moving faster in between the set-pieces to avoid giving viewers enough time to pick apart the many plot holes.

The cast all seem to know that they're very much playing second fiddle to the headlining creatures, and that's fine. Both Hall and Henry try their best with some weak dialogue, Hottle remains as cute and vulnerable as she was in the previous film, and everyone watching can breathe a sigh of relief whenever Stevens is onscreen, because he actually knows how to lean into the silliness of everything and have fun with his role. 

A blockbuster movie doesn't need to make great use of the human cast, and nor does it need a script that would win any literary awards. Sometimes just being fun and spectacular is enough, and any film with both Godzilla and King Kong in it should deliver on that front. Welllllllll . . . I don't think this does. There a few great visual moments here and there, especially when Godzilla in being shown travelling around the planet, but most of this film is an ugly mess, with an overuse of CGI that varies wildly in quality, a lack of decent reference points to keep track of locations and scale, and a disappointing lack of weight (sometimes literally). There are also scenes of mass destruction that focus on buildings and cityscapes being reduced to rubble without maintaining any interest in the human cost. But that’s all meant to be ignored because there are occasional moments that make good use of neon.

I wanted to have fun with this, but it never once hooked me in. There is a nice extra “cameo” later in the movie that I enjoyed, but the film needed to do more elsewhere. A better script, a better main villain, better visual effects, and generally something that makes it easier to ignore the inherent silliness of it all and just enjoy the monster mash moments.

4/10

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Bullet Train (2022)

A comedy action movie, emphasis on the comedy, starring Brad Pitt as a professional criminal who wants nothing in his life but good vibes, Bullet Train has a lot going for it. On paper. Directed by David Leitch, starring Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Joey King, Michael Shannon, and Hiroyuki Sanada, and mixing action and comedy on the titular bullet train, what’s not to love?

Pitt is on a simple mission. He is given the codename “Ladybug” and tasked with retrieving a briefcase from the bullet train. Ideally, he should get on, grab the case, and then get off at the next stop. Meanwhile, Lemon (Henry) and Tangerine (Taylor-Johnson) are looking after someone they are supposed to keep safe, in exchange for a decent payday. Meanwhile, Prince (King) wants to get revenge on a number of people, as does Wolf (played by Bad Bunny. MEANWHILE, others start to board the train with their own deadly agendas. Ladybug shouldn’t even be there, as he is filling in for an agent named Carver, and it isn’t long until he wishes he hadn’t taken the job.

Based on a book by Kôtarô Isaka, turned into a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz, this is a bizarre throwback to a time when every other film was trying to rip off Tarantino or Guy Ritchie. I am not sure if the problem lies with the source material, having not read the book, but there’s a smugness throughout that isn’t matched by the dialogue or plotting. Everything feels far too much like a Rube Goldberg machine, an excessive amount of moving parts and complications leading to a very underwhelming final result, and the eclectic cast isn’t good enough, overall, to help it all along.

Leitch, who has spent the last five years directing films that mix action and comedy better than this one, fails to find the right way through the dense plotting. There aren’t enough moments of impressive action, the comedy always feels like a separate component, rather than an intertwining strand, and any sense of entertaining spectacle is undermined by the overuse of CGI. This is a busy movie in so many ways, often painfully so, and I only felt that working in its favour during an enjoyable finale that somehow managed to tie up every strand and provide a punchline for every running gag (so fair play to Olkewicz for saving his best work until the end of the movie).

Pitt is fine in the lead role, playing a character we have seen a version of in a number of different movies now. The main thing that allows him to stand out is what he views as a constant string of bad luck, something that allows the script to keep getting bigger and wilder, but there’s a moderately interesting idea tucked away here about perspective, and how bad luck in one way may be good luck in the long run. Taylor-Johnson is bad, I just didn’t like him in this role (and I can only imagine how much this movie could have been improved with someone else there), but Henry does a bit better, helping to make their scenes together more bearable. I don’t want to rate every single main player, especially when I can spend some time highlighting just how good both Shannon and Sanada are. Both get in on the action for the third act, and both take this movie up an entire notch or two. King is okay, Bad Bunny is . . . okay, Zazie Beetz is great, but sadly underused, and there are a few cameos that properly amused me.

It certainly tries to keep the momentum going for most of the 2+ hour runtime, I will give it that, and the soundtrack has some great choices, although I wanted even more. I MIGHT revisit and reappraise this at some point, to see if I enjoy it more while spending less time trying to unpick the various plot threads, but for now I have to tell people that it’s not recommended. It’s tonally very messy, it’s comedically very hit and miss (but one hit, a sequence showing two men tallying up the numbers killed in their most recent job, is superb), and it spends a lot of time going off the rails before sorting itself out just in time for that enjoyable finale.

4/10

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Eternals (2021)

If you want some wholesome and enjoyable content to make you smile then you should check out the many photos of Lia McHugh on her IMDb page. Most of them have clearly been out there by McHugh herself, complete with contextualising text descriptions that show how much she loves her acting career.

If you can spend two hours browsing that selection of photos then you will probably have a better time than you would if you actually watched Eternals, a Marvel movie that feels more redundant than any others we have seen so far.

Described as Earth’s first superheroes, Eternals are a group of people with different powers who work together to help care for the human race. They can only ever intervene when humans are being attacked by monsters called deviants, which conveniently explains why they never tried to help when “the snap” happened, and most of their time is spent just observing people and trying to act like one of them. There hasn’t been any deviant attack for a long, long time. And then there is one, one unlike the others. This deviant may be able to absorb powers while it takes lives. And it may reveal a truth about the Eternals that they will struggle to accept.

Although it’s not actually a bad movie, in many ways, I can feel my enthusiasm for this film ebbing away with every word I write. There is a mildly interesting development in the second half that takes things in a slightly unexpected direction, but the end result is still a group of people dealing with some giant CGI. What’s worse is that the more enjoyable characters seem to be too quickly dismissed from the action.

Director Chloé Zhao, who also helped write the screenplay (Patrick Burleigh and Ryan Firpo being the other writers on this), does what is expected of her, trying to liven things up enough with an action sequence here and there to distract from the fact that these are the dullest superheroes we have seen in a long time. Sadly, she cannot do enough to make up for the central problem.

At least the cast help, although the lead being played by Gemma Chan leads to the big problem of, well, the lead being played by Gemma Chan. Richard Madden does a bit better, as does the aforementioned McHugh, but the best cast members are Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kumail Nanjiani. Barry Keoghan plays an interesting character, but plays him as if he can barely be bothered to stay awake. I don’t blame him, it’s a tough job to stay energised with such a mix of deja vu and plodding mediocrity. Even Salma Hayek cannot help, although her relatively small amount of screentime was better than no Hayek at all.

There is a nice cross-section of characters here (Lauren Ridloff is a deaf Flash-like character who speaks in sign language), but the bad outweighs the good. By far. With the pacing issues, the inability to engage viewers properly, and the tired feeling the material has, I have to say that this is the weakest big MCU movie so far. I hope it is an anomaly.

4/10

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Superintelligence (2020)

A comedy vehicle for Melissa McCarthy that is once again directed by her husband, Ben Falcone, Superintelligence has a soft, sweet, centre to it that may gain it some goodwill from the right viewer. It's certainly not the usual mix of swearing and pratfalls that people assume is part of every Melissa McCarthy movie.

McCarthy plays Carol Peters, a woman deemed by a number of people to be one of the most average humans alive. Which is why an artificial intelligence system enters her life, erasing her debt and upgrading everything around her, in order to study Carol and learn about humanity. Over the course of a few days it will decide the best way to deal with the human race. Yes, that means that things could go very bad. Carol is also given a chance to make up with her ex-partner, George (Bobby Cannavale), a man about to leave the country in just a few days.

That's all you need to know about Superintelligence. Oh, and the AI is voiced by James Corden, because that was deemed the voice that Carol would respond to best, having been a massive fan of his for many years.

I've said many times that I like McCarthy, more than most people seem to, and I once again like her here, despite the fact that the comedy is often left to many of the supporting players (such as Brian Tyree Henry, a man who becomes flustered when in the same room of the President - Jean Smart - that he greatly admires, or the much smaller turns from the likes of Karan Soni, Usman Ally and Jenna Perusich, and Damon Jones). Carol Peters is supposed to be unremarkable, but she has a good heart, and hopes to one day be able to change the direction of the human race on to a better path.

Falcone directs well enough, and also gives himself a fun supporting role as an agent, alongside Sam Richardson, and he doesn’t seem to warp or strangle the light script from Steve Mallory. There are a number of fun pop culture references (WarGames being an excellent one), the tech side of things is kept simple, it’s easy to show how powerful the AI can be with so much gadgetry around, and the focus keeps returning to the potential rekindling of love at the heart of the story.

While McCarthy is very good in her role, she’s ably supported by everyone around her. I have already mentioned some of the highlights in the supporting cast, but Cannavale also deserves some praise, especially when his role could so easily be seen as the thankless love interest role that women usually get landed with. Kept largely offscreen, aside from one or two moments of visualisation, Corden has fun portraying a version of himself in audio form. And Henry, playing Carol’s friend, and a computer expert, provides a good number of laughs every time he appears.

It’s difficult to think who will enjoy this most though. Those who dislike McCarthy won’t be won over. Those who dislike Corden could be put off. Anyone after a rom-com might hate the tech thriller plot strand, and vice versa. That doesn’t make it a bad film though, not necessarily, but it easily stops it from being a very good one.

6/10

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Godzilla Vs. Kong (2021)

Adam Wingard gets his turn to direct a film featuring famous giant monsters and you may have already heard from a lot of people who are delighted with how Godzilla vs. Kong plays out. I enjoyed it, particularly the fun little moments that seemed to reference other movies (there's a particularly enjoyable Jaws reference during the first major encounter), but there are some things stopping it from being the film that finally gets everything right in this developed Monsterverse.

Let's get the plot out of the way first. A big corporation, Apex, want to find a way down and into the Hollow Earth, a space underneath us where the titans may have originated. They hope to find a powerful energy source down there, and the best way of making it there is to follow Kong, who has been kept in a containment unit near Skull Island that looks generally pretty similar to Skull Island. This leads to some Monarch staff (mainly Ilene Andrews, played by Rebecca Hall) journeying with a scientist (Nathan Lind, played by Alexander Skarsgård) and some Apex bods to a place where they can drop off Kong, and hopefully follow him down into the Hollow Earth. But transporting Kong may alert Godzilla to his presence, which could lead to a fight between the two of them. There's also a little deaf girl (Jia, played by Kaylee Hottle) who can communicate with Kong, and the return of Madison Russell (Mille Bobby Brown), who teams up with a friend (Josh, played by Julian Dennison) and a podcaster/Apex-insider (Bernie, played by Brian Tyree Henry) to find out what is behind the recent resurgence of Godzilla, and his attack on a specific Apex site.

What I've just summarised there is pretty much everything you need to know about the plot of Godzilla vs. Kong. In fact, if you were to miss large sections of the movie and only saw the fight scenes then you could thank me for keeping you up to date. It's understandable that this is a film that plots everything out as an excuse to give viewers scenes with the two titans battling one another. That's the selling point, and Wingard definitely delivers on that front.

The action is nicely shot, enough of the surrounding environment has some weight to it as it all gets demolished, and there is a smooth and clear approach that allows you to enjoy the loud noises and spectacle without getting a headache. No small feat.

The screenplay, by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, is nonsense, but it's nonsense that is generally perfectly acceptable for this kind of thing. The science seems vaguely plausible, the characters work together, or fight one another, for believable reasons, and everything kills time in between the moments of mass destruction. It's a shame, however, that the script feels the need to include the characters of Madison, Josh, and Brian. Their inclusion feels completely unnecessary, and moments featuring them could have easily been transferred to other characters. It would have also saved us from some of the worst of the acting, which I'll get to next.

In the Kong-centric narrative strand, the cast do well with what they're given. Skarsgård is likeable and has the right motives for his actions, Hall feels very much like a perfect fit for her character, and young Hottle shines in the moments that highlight her smallness against the giant figure of Kong. Eiza González also works well, the company figure along to make sure any decisions made protect the Apex investment. Elsewhere, sadly, the acting ranges from poor to downright abysmal. Demián Bichir is Walter Simmons, heading up Apex, and is basically asked to act as if he's wearing a monocle and twirling a moustache. Then you have that aforementioned trio. Henry is good fun, but Dennison is wasted (it's the only film I have seen him in so far where I didn't warm to his character), and Brown is so bad at times that I was waiting for her to "break character" onscreen and show that she was playing someone trying to emulate tough and determined from characters she'd seen in other movies. She doesn't, which means the moments with her over-acting to show she is tough and determined are actually choices made for the performance. She's never been that bad in anything else, which leaves me to wonder whether she'll struggle to transition into other non-Stranger Things roles, or whether Wingard was just not great at directing his cast.

But the action delivers, and that's what a lot of people wanted from this film. It's what a lot of people wanted from all of the films in this Monsterverse, but different approaches elsewhere have led to wildly varying results. Personally, I prefer the first two movies in this cinematic series, but this has a number of highlights that are undeniably pleasing for fans of the featured titans (including a third "fighter" that was obvious to anyone who looked more closely at some of the trailers).

Watch it, enjoy it, have a big bowl of popcorn with it, and don't overthink any of the plot details. I'll happily buy it when it becomes available, but I still much prefer the stranger pleasures of Shin Godzilla.

6/10

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Child's Play (2019)

Much like the killer doll at the centre of it all, there's something about Child's Play that is just a bit off from the very first scenes. I am never automatically against remakes, but this one just seemed like a pretty bad idea, and one that was being churned out for the wrong reasons. Whether you like them or not, the original movie series was still growing under the watchful eye of Don Mancini. All seems to be going ahead with the TV show idea, which I hope comes out soon enough for me to be able to forget all about this attempt to reboot a fresh money-maker.

As you may have already surmised, I didn't like Child's Play. It's a film that doesn't ever make the right decisions at any point, treating viewers as if they will all be situated perfectly within the teen age bracket that it is aiming for (and I know some teens who won't be impressed either).

It all starts with a disgruntled factory worker removing safety protocols from a toy doll before then committing suicide. One thing leads to another, and that doll (a Buddi who decides to name himself Chucky, voiced by Mark Hamill) ends up being owned by young Andy Barclay (Gabriel Bateman). Andy lives with his mother (Karen, played by Aubrey Plaza), it's a new home for them, there's a man on the scene, there's a police detective who is often in the building as he visits his mother, and a few other characters that are supposed to be worth watching. Chucky starts killing, all for the sake of his friendship with Andy, and his ability to be linked to various apps makes him a lot more dangerous.

I am not familiar with the previous film by director Lars Klevberg, or writer Tyler Burton Smith, but it seems, rightly or wrongly, that they were picked here as a couple of people who would toe the line and give the studio what was expected. I am assuming an awful lot here, and may be being very unfair, but it's hard to see anything here that represents a unique vision or talent. If that was the case, it would be easier to believe that Klevberg and/or Smith were chosen because someone had seen something prominent in their work that they thought could work well with the  Child's Play concept.

Here are the things that work in this movie. The music, another great bit of work by Bear McCreary (who has been on top form recently). The casting of Mark Hamill in the vital voice role of Chucky. The first major human murder scene.

Almost everything else fails. Take, for example, the fact that a character is slightly hearing-impaired. This is all well and good if it is for representation. It isn't though. It's mentioned once or twice in a way that makes us think it will be very important later in the movie, and then isn't used in any way that feels necessary. Take a scene in which Chucky uses an app to terrorise and kill someone. Except he doesn't. The big set-piece ends with our knife-wielding doll . . . wielding a knife. One death scene has a character jumping up to stand on a desk that has a bloody circular saw on it. The relationship between mother and son never feels real, unlike the original film, there aren't any actual scares (although, to be fair, the film does provide a couple of amusing moments, which prove that it occasionally works as the black comedy it is trying to be), and the third act staggers from one horribly ill-conceived moment to the next.

Bateman is okay as Andy, Plaza is as underused as she so often is in more mainstream fare, and Smith is the best character in the movie. Nobody stinks up the place, not even the other younger cast members who work alongside Bateman in the strand of the film that plays out a scenario building up the whole "the kids will save everyone" vibe, but there's also nobody good enough to help distract from the many shortcomings of the film.

Horror movies can be fun, they can be dumb, they can be sheer entertainment without having to be anything else. But there have to be certain things done right to allow film-makers to get away with that. It can be hard to put a finger on the things that have the opposite effect, sometimes it's just an overwhelming feeling of laziness, sometimes it's a lack of logic that breaks the rules set out within the movie universe, but this film has enough of them to spoil your enjoyment. Well, it has enough to spoil my enjoyment. Others have had fun with it.

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Mubi Monday: Widows (2018)

Based on the TV series by Lynda La Plante, Widows has been successfully transferred to America and updated to be quite a bit more than it originally was, a group of women who took on "jobs for the boys". Not that the original was bad, and I am not going to praise this movie while criticising the TV series (which I never actually watched, I just have vague memories of it being advertised when first screened), but director Steve McQueen, who worked with Gillian Flynn to adapt the material into this screenplay, uses the premise to explore issues of race, abuse, and the way wheels turn and keep society the way that many want it kept.

Viola Davis plays Veronica, a woman left in a very sticky position after her professional thief husband (Liam Neeson) and his crew die in a botched robbery that seems very unlike his usual modus operandi. When Veronica is threatened by the man that her husband stole from (Brian Tyree Henry), she sees no way to fix the situation. Until she finds a notebook left by her husband, a book with plans and details for one last job. Enlisting the help of some of the other widows (Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki), and eventually a fourth woman who can help them and help herself (Cynthia Erivo), Veronica masterminds a robbery that she hopes will allow her to settle the debt, and allow the women to start new lives.

When I first saw the trailer for Widows I wondered why McQueen, best known for his serious films looking at difficult subject matters, was drawn to the material. My curiosity dissipated within the first few scenes, intimacy between Davis and Neeson that underlines a major aspect of the screenplay. Despite not being, at least on the surface, a film as worthy as some of his other movies, Widows comes close to being McQueens best movie yet, thanks to the way it marries some important themes with visceral thrills. 12 Years A Slave may remain his most important directorial work, but this has a  sugar-coating makes the bitter pill easier to swallow.

Davis is a superb lead, given great support from Rodriguez, Debicki, and Erivo. All of them are doing excellent work, and all of them grow believably into their roles within the team. There's also a small, but characteristically brilliant, turn from Jacki Weaver, as a mother who wants her daughter to have a better life, no matter what it costs her in terms of her identity and integrity. There may not be many good men onscreen (excepting one played by Garret Dillahunt) but they're also all portrayed brilliantly. Neeson casts a large shadow over the proceedings, Henry is a quiet threat, as are the father and son political figures played by Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell, and Daniel Kaluuya almost walks away with the entire film, so brilliant is he as a merciless and violent individual being barely held in check by Henry.

In a way, the heist that everything is leading up to is the least important part of the film, which may explain why McQueen isn't at his best during that sequence. It's almost as if, with the resolution so close, he loses interest, knowing that he has already covered the plot points that he was most fired up about. The third act does have a peak, and a driving sequence to equal that of the opening scenes, but it starts to go downhill fast after that, leaving the viewer with a lot of unanswered questions and a feeling that something important is missing. Some extra details, some annoying loose ends. It's not enough to spoil the film, and most of it is deliberate on the part of McQueen and Flynn, who did so well with majority of the screenplay, but it's a shame that it ends with a whimper after the bang.

Despite my problems with the ending, and a few minor issues scattered throughout the main plot, Widows holds up as a cracking action thriller that mixes intelligence, tension, and a small amount of humour to great effect. And there's also one of the cutest dogs I've seen in a movie in years.

8/10

You can buy the original show here.