Godzilla

Rating:
Summary: This movie rocks!!
Review: This was a great movie, I found it realistic in that Godzila looks more the role. You won't be sorry buying this. It had a lot of action thru out the movie, a few parts raised the hair on the back of your neck. The acting was pretty good.

Rating:
Summary: Movie critics can kiss my ---
Review: i hate movie critics, i honestly hate them. what a job to sit, watch a movie, and bad mouth it. and to think roger ebert's getting paid to be a pessamist! GODZILLA was an awesome movie. good acting, great music score, record breaking special effects...this movie has everything a giant-lizard-attacking-NYC movie should have. Hank Azaria and Jean Reno delivered mind boggling performances and i enjoyed all of the historic landmarks getting destroyed. GODZILLA was much better than the original japanese films. nothing against them or anything, i'm just saying that in Emmerich and Devlin's GODZILLA, you can't see the zipper.

Rating:
Summary: Visual and sound effects make it mindless, but fun!
Review: "Godzilla" is in the vein of all those slam-bang monster-is-coming-to-get-you movies, in which an enormous creature unlike anything anyone has ever seen arrives, causes lots of damage and destruction, and is ultimately overpowered by the human race in a silly, predictable climax that takes them at least an hour of running time to think of. The movie follows this story structure quite well; in fact, it could be a spokesperson on the genre. The story aspect of this film is not what kept my interest; I knew even before watching the film that it would be a strictly juvenile plot. What held my utmost interest was the nicely rendered special effects and the absolutely magnificent sound design that serves as one of the best movie soundtracks to date.

The movie's opening titles are set against vintage footage of nuclear warhead testing in the months before the bombing of Hiroshima, and of course we see lots of lizards and reptiles crawling around so we don't forget that one of them is going to come back in a mutated form. And that's exactly what happens, but not before causing a silent ruckus before showing himself in New York City, where he brings down buildings, causing a mass evacuation, and brings together a group of government protection forces and intellectual scientists to come up with a solution to their problem. This, of course, gives the lizard a chance to rampage his way through the city, outwitting his adversaries and bringing down the house around everyone, literally.

The storyline is so basic and banal that trying to give it any real serious thought is like trying to ponder the creation of Golden Grahams. Not really much thought to it, is there? Everything that happens here is pretty basic: the monster comes, the monster destroys, the monster is destroyed, and room for a sequel is made. The predictability of the movie seems to hinder it some, particularly because of the dialogue given to the characters. Scenes of confrontation among the characters give away such surprises as the creature's laying of eggs, as well as what's going to happen in the big climax.

The characters of this movie are pretty much just there to keep the story in place, giving away details and turning intelligent terms and phrases to give the movie a scientific feel. The movie is hardly about science, but the producers seem to think so by giving us the character of Nick Titopoulis, played by Matthew Broderick, who serves as the information source for every action the monster is going to take. His long-lost love, Audrey, played by Maria Pitillo, is thrown into the mix to create a sort of love story, but that is never really focused on until the end. She does have her important moments, using her ability as a news reporter to save the group from being eaten by thousands of baby lizards. And what movie set in the Big Apple would be complete without two loud and obnoxious New Yorkers with accents straight out of the heart of the city?

The cast is pretty much at a loss with what to bring to the material, and it shows in their performances. Broderick is slightly forced in his lines and actions, and never quites makes it to the finish line of fully convincing us of the seriousness of the situations at hand. Maria Pitillo really has nothing to do but be pouty and whiny, which she does surprisingly well at, though she does have her shining moments. Jean Reno plays a French Secret Service agent who teams up with Broderick in order to gain inside information about the events. He is the best character yet, giving the tip-offs just in the nick of time and coming off as strong and believable.

While story and characterization fall short in this film, the visual and sound effects of this movie are astounding, and they are what make the movie fun and, at times, exciting. The computer-generated images of the lizard attacking New York city are virtually seamless, and truly provide the movie well in bringing Godzilla's size and stature to life immensely. There's also lots of excellent scenes of buildings being destroyed and things blowing up, all of which bring excitement and yes, intensity to the movie. The sound design for "Godzilla" ranks with such soundtracks as the remake version of "The Haunting," bringing to the scene high elements of deep bass and loud noises that keep us right in the middle of the action. Each step the lizard takes is impacting and booming, while the explosions and large objects impacting one another are superbly crafted in audio quality.

By movie's end, it is perfectly clear that the producers, who brought us "Independence Day," wanted so much to live up to that reptutation that they crafted this movie in the hopes that it would become something as big in scale as that film. It is big, yes. It has lots of action and some excitement to it, also. But unlike "ID4," this movie's story is contrived and by-the-numbers, while we are never able to care for the characters. Still, in terms of action and high-speed intensity, the movie does deliver, and if that's what you're looking for, then you've come to the right place.

Rating:
Summary: Well, this film DOES serve a purpose....
Review: Many obviously agree that this film sucked, but were they expecting too much out of it? Of course they were. Before this movie was released, people were still going through the notorious "Titanic" hype and comparisons which scarely crept up in nearly every review "Post-Titanic" in 1998. Not only were people expecting a better movie but at this time, many were still into the ID4 craze which of course was also directed by Roland Emmerich. Okay, ID4 created a very small cult following it's likely people were expecting the intelligent fun once again from Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin in "Godzilla".

I have to say that I myself, being an original "Godzilla" fan and an ID4 fan thought it was a blessing that our favourite duo would take the helm of directing and producing "Godzilla", but I was well prepared since that I know that film makers never make their next film any similar to the last, which is where my disapointment for this film was at a minimum. Yet I just cannot get over how badly this film was handled, Sony really must have underestimated their missed audience (the original Godzilla fans) who were the ones REALLY waiting for the film. Their target audience was surprisingly teens and young kids, the overhype and badly put together Promotional Compilation Soundtrack CD were one of numerous examples of failed expectations from those who thought they were seeing a re-hash of ID4. This film could have been promoted and put together much better than it actually was.

And finally the film itself, unfortunately it plays like an MTV rock video at various times in the film, and the advertisments throughout the film promoting Sony products just makes one want to bawl over how much money is spent desperately to sell products. Sony obviously thought this'd be bigger than "Star Wars" or "Titanic" but they had no REAL target audience to actually understand it. Okay, enough of the promotion blabber, onto the plot. It has a simple plot but somehow predictable during viewing for the first time. I'm not much on giving away plot details or spoilers. However this film has a weaker meaning and feel than the original, American film makers seem to believe that if it's not American, it has to be remade (or something like that). The original theme of the original "Godzilla" was about man's rape of the natural world and nature biting back with it's and man's ultimate unstoppable hybrid revenge and so on from the original Nueclear Bomb dropped on Japan (Americans, anyone?). These overtones are sadly missing from this version, Devlin claimed they were there but I saw no sign of it at all.

Of course this film seems to just ultimately represent how low Hollywood film making can get, even from a good film maker but it did have the potential to actually be a great film but all of that was sadly lost due to the studio's bad taste.

Hopefully another film maker can achieve with "Godzilla" what Emmerich and Devlin had failed to do.

Rating:
Summary: Banal characters, banal monster, kill them all
Review: Another big budget turkey from Roland Emmerich, who proves again that it always pays to underestimate the intelligence of your audience. Godzilla is ugly, the characters are boring, the romance is, well, uninspired, and frankly you hope the stupid monster destroys all of New York and then chokes to death. Don't watch this if you can possibly avoid it. Definitely don't buy it. It's a waste of money, time, and plastic. Think 2 hours you'll never get back.

Rating:
Summary: So much more could have been!
Review: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich passed on this film the first time they were offered. Why? Why didn't they keep passing?! Contrary to popular belief that the acting or story killed this movie (I've seen great popcorn movies with worse acting and even lamer story), it was the whole idea that this duo based the film around - Godzilla is a fast, hiding smart creature who must defend it's brood of babies and constantly run throughout Manhattan and yes, throughout the whole film. Devlin stated that they wanted to go back to Godzilla's roots...ha! Ha, ha, HA! Did they ever watch the original? Godzilla represents an unstoppable force of nature, a punishment to mankind for his aganizing and terrible rape of mother nature. Godzilla couldn't be stopped by any conventional weapon, couldn't feel pain, sorrow or remourse. He was a 55 meter tall Terminator! Until finally it took one brave, misunderstood mans sacrifice to end the rest of the world's horror (ironically, very similar to The Terminator...). This Godzilla is an allegory for absolutely nothing, just a CGI created wonder without dimension or provocation. And that's the problem, this Godzilla isn't Godzilla! You might as well call the movie a Superman remake because it makes just as much sense! Godzilla is supposed to stand for something, which is the reason for his popularity in Japan. True G-Fans see this as well, and that's why this...creature(!) is not our Big G. The whole thing would be solved if this film was a remake of Ray Harryhausen's classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Beast was a great film, and it stood for something too. Convienently, it stood for what this "Godzilla" stands for: Careful how you treat our planet, it might fight back... Truth be told, most of the movie resmbles scenes from Beast, so why on earth call it Godzilla? Patrick Tatapolous' design for the creature is wonderful! Reptilian, proud, sleek and striking, and if the rest of the movie had been treated so well, I think that fans at least would have been a little more forgiving towards the change. Not to poor salt on an open wound, but the original director was to be Jan De Bont, who had just come off Speed and Twister. Both of which have the force-of-nature, indestructable-unstoppable rush to them. When I die, I'll ask God to show me what that film would have been like...

Rating:
Summary: So bad it could be used for shark repellent
Review: I like monster movies, I like Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno and I love seeing things go "BOOM" but Godzilla was so dumb and derivative that all the fun was sucked out. It felt more like a really long preview than an actual movie. Some of the effects were very well executed but like "Independence Day" I just didn't get excited by the havoc. I guess my biggest complaint is the utterly shameless ripoff of the end of "King Kong" with poor Godzilla's final heartbeats pounding loudly for all to hear. Geez, couldn't they have ripped off stuff from a GOOD movie? ;) P.S. I know I shouldn't be looking for technical accuracy in a movie about a giant lizard rampaging through New York but... a Sidewinder missile blowing the top ten stories off of the Chrysler building?

Rating:
Summary: So bad it could be used for shark repellent
Review: I like monster movies, I like Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno and I love seeing things go "BOOM" but Godzilla was so dumb and derivative that all the fun was ....... out. It felt more like a really long preview than an actual movie. Some of the effects were very well executed but like "Independence Day" I just didn't get excited by the havoc. I guess my biggest complaint is the utterly shameless ripoff of the end of "King Kong" with poor Godzilla's final heartbeats pounding loudly for all to hear. Geez, couldn't they have ripped off stuff from a GOOD movie? ;) P.S. I know I shouldn't be looking for technical accuracy in a movie about a giant lizard rampaging through New York but... a Sidewinder missile blowing the top ten stories off of the Chrysler building?

Rating:
Summary: Decent soundtrack, big-name talents!
Review: The reason I got this CD is because of all the artists on here. The Wallflowers, one of my favorite bands, does a great cover of David Bowie's 'Heroes'. Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page pull off a great song, I think, with 'Come With Me'. Jamiroquai, who I've always liked for his disco-funk style, does a good job on 'Deeper Underground'. Rage Against The Machine does an okay job, although I think most of their songs all sound the same, with 'No Shelter'. Ben Folds Five is not a band i'm interested in, they're too boring. Days of the new isn't bad but I don't know too much from them so I couldn't really tell you. Same with Michael Penn. Fuel, another one of my favorite bands, does 'Walk The Sky', which is probably one of this albums strongest songs. Foo Fighters and Green Day also have good songs, and this makes this CD all together, a pretty darn good soundtrack!

Rating:
Summary: Kind of a stupid album
Review: I mean, this album is okay. But its got 7 songs made for the movie! I don't get it. 4 songs were music video songs. I mean these songs:

1. Heroes - The Wallflowers- A pretty good song. Fits the movie if you think about it.

2. Come With Me - Puff Daddy/Jimmy Page- Really, this must've been the worst track on the album. A rapper gets together with the leader of Led Zepplin to remake his song. Does anyone see anything wrong with that? Puff Daddy=Rap Led Zepplin=Classic Heavy Metal.

3. Deeper Underground - Jamiroquai- A great jazzy funk song, although the movie could've gone without it.

4. No Shelter - Rage Against The Machine-Great band, great song, fits the movie.

Then they got a stupid remix:

10. Brain Stew - Green Day (The Godzilla Remix)-They screwed up a perfectly good song. They should've remixed another song other than this.

Then, 2 songs that belong on a different album:

Opening Titles & Looking For Clues-They belong on the Godzilla score. I doubt that anyone who'll like RATM and Green Day will like these songs.