Just settling down to watch Godzilla...
Discussion
I fully expect it to be a sack o' shíte, but sadly (IMHO) there simply aren't enough quality dinosaur nor monster films being made these days. Jurassic park springs to mind as being the only dino type flick I can remember watching which sounded as good as it looked with surround sound, being fresh, innovative and captivating in it's day.
Why aren't film makers capitalising on our primeval fear of large carnivorous beasts and making more dino films?
Suggestions for films to check out most welcome
Why aren't film makers capitalising on our primeval fear of large carnivorous beasts and making more dino films?
Suggestions for films to check out most welcome
ajprice said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
T84 said:
Cloverfield was ace.
since when it was s
te 
I also enjoyed Host (mentioned above).
Try Godzilla: Final Wars.
It is excellent and insane. I did a write up of it for Rotten Tomatoes once, but I can't figure out how to link directly to it.
So I've spoilered the whole text of it here. Spoiler tagged because it's pretty long, and you don't want that bunging up the thread.
Friday night is a good night to watch a stupid film.
It feels like an appropriate night. When you can sit with friends and drink beer and eat crisps and allow the crucial areas of your brain to slightly dissolve from the intake of high-sugar stupid that can only come from ridiculous films.
Of course, I've got no friends, so I have to watch my idiotic films on my own. I suppose I could watch them with my wife, but I don't want her to leave me.
So I like to sit, friendless, unsharingly enjoying my beer and my crisps and my two hours of a visual rubber mallet to the head.
This Friday was no exception. My wife went out and left me to my own devices, which involved me taking the top dvd from the unwatched pile, turning up the bass on the surround and allowing all my intelligence to dribble out through my eyeballs.
The film I chose is one that I have loved from afar for many years. The pathetic, unrequited love of a moony-eyed child who's suddenly realised the girl in his maths class has grown some astounding breasts. Any summary of this film that you could write would simply inflame my desire to see it. Any review would goad me further down the shameful path.
I bought the dvd from some far-flung foreign land. Japan maybe, or America. Who knows?
What I do know is that it has been hiding next to my telly for months and months. Almost daring me to test it. To see if the promise of those astounding breasts can possibly lead to a magical moment of enjoyment.
Basically, I was suddenly terrified that it was going to be st. And that this film that I had spent so long pining to see and being certain I would love to bits, would be simply useless rubbery toss that smelled of bins.
Here are my thoughts, in descending order. Starting with the thought I thought the most -
- (thought 1) This is singularly the most action-packed film I have ever watched.
It is essentially non-stop. And not in the way that non-stop action! films promise non-stop action. Like Bad Boys 2 perhaps. This is actually non-stop - no dialogue scene lasts more than a few seconds before erupting into nonsense with machine guns or motorbikes or city-levelling explosions.
- (thought 2) It is utterly insane. Utter insanity combined with (thought 3) making only tenuous sense. I could just about hold on to the plot, precariously clinging on with the fingernails of my brain - all the while knowing that it was st nuts. But in spite of that allowing myself to be swept along, borne aloft by an endless torrent of ridiculousness. However, no matter how hard I screwed up my poor eyes with concentration, no matter how desperately I made mental notes to myself about what was occurring, I lost control. I fell off the story. I floundered as events seemingly appeared randomly. Fighting turned to shouting, which turned to impossible devastation.
Samurai swords were menacingly flailed about. Some men had an extensive martial arts battle while both riding on the back of the same motorbike. Aliens were revealed in their true form on live television, and the UN Secretary General was exposed as an impostor by a small ugly dog called Candy.
On Friday night, I watched Godzilla: Final Wars.
At this point, 94% of people reading will lose all interest. Another 4% weren't even interested initially, but were just reading out of sheer boredom. 1.8% are hospitalised in a persistent vegetative state and are having this read to them by hopeful loved ones desperate to provoke a flicker of reaction.
That leaves 0.2%. These official statistics come from my inventive head, so I can only conclude that many many of you are going to miss out on a stupendously exciting and exhilarating film.
Only 0.2% of you even care!
Here is a synopsis of the film -
A protracted battle with a flying submarine at the heart of Antarctica leaves Godzilla entombed beneath millions of tons of ice. This is the pre-credits sequence.
The credits themselves summarise the entire history of Godzilla films over the preceding 50 years, in a way that terrifyingly combines explosive text, film clips, CGI fire and explosions to produce a credit sequence as difficult to watch and as emotionally draining as the climactic scenes of Scarface.
My eyeballs boiled in their sockets as I endured what would have been, on any ordinary film, a couple of minutes of writing on a screen.
Then the film started.
Historic monsters from Godzilla history appear dotted about the globe and wreak monumental havoc. Earth is helpless. Nothing can be done. Doomed.
Wait.
Let's backtrack slightly. A new Earth defence force has been created, formed of super-powerful mutants gathered from across the globe. These superhumans have defeated the terrible monsters borne of man's continual pollution and desecration of the environment. Godzilla is the only monster they cannot destroy, but he is now entombed beneath the ice cap.
The mummified remains of a previously-unseen monster are discovered and scientifically investigated. This monster (let's call him Gigan, because it's Gigan) is a 12,000 year old alien cyborg in which is discovered the genetic M-Base material. In spite of sounding frighteningly like a disco jazz pop combo, M-Base is the same mutant gene rendering our superpowerful Earth mutants as excellent as they are. There is an ominous genetic link between our own mutant soldiers and this alien robo-beast.
Suddenly the scientists enter a dream-like state and share a vision of tiny fairies in a magical cave. These little fairies are the mystical representatives of Mothra - Earth's friendly guardian-monster. In the shape of a giant moth. Obviously.
The fairies explain that the mummified monster is Gigan (because it's Gigan), and somehow pass on a magical pendant of some significance to a beautiful young girl biologist.
Then all the historic monsters appear and smash cities across the planet into bits.
Stupendous scenes of Shanghai levelled at the hands of a gigantic ankylosaurus, a supersize pteranodon flattening New York, and a huge preying mantis stomping Paris. Amongst others.
Devastation ensues. Earth is helpless. Nothing can be done. Doomed.
But wait, a massive alien mothership fills the sky and instantly beams all the monsters away, and ...
I'll stop there.
It really doesn't matter. Who cares what the story is?
Godzilla: Final Wars is unashamed nonsense. It is silly and tongue in cheek, but jam-packed with insanely choreographed martial arts sequences - either human vs human, human vs giant lobster monster, human vs human-looking alien with mad eyes, or (of course) giant monster vs giant monster.
Everything gets smashed and destroyed.
Any description of any scene simply fails utterly to convey the overwhelming madness of what actually happens. The special effects are ludicrous. The fighting endlessly redefines your top ten of favourite fight scenes in films.
Captain Douglas Gordon is the English-speaking, samurai-sword waving, coptashed muscle mountain commander of the hapless fugitives surviving the onslaught of destruction. He talks in a voice so cavernously deep that it shook photos of my children off the walls of my living room.
The rubbish American version of Godzilla from the Roland Emmerich film appears for seconds before being flattened by proper Godzilla.
I just cannot list the extent to which my mind was boggled.
Ryuhei Kitamura directed this film. I had previously seen two of his films - Versus, in which he managed to show how zombies can do kung fu and shoot each other with machine guns. And Azumi, which reveals that the world's greatest assassin is a teenage Japanese girl in a miniskirt. Both of these films are exactly as brilliant as you would expect.
Final Wars is somehow so much more brilliant than I even expected, that I've had to readjust my sliding scale of film scores.
Kitamura probably had to go for a long lie down in a darkened room after completing this film. I know I was reduced to a shivering wreck, rubbing my eyes in astonishment and feeling my pulse pounding at a terrifying rate.
I stood up and my head span. Giddy with the sheer excess of it I stumbled to the kitchen to splash water on my sweating face. As I stood there, bewildered, a pool of adrenaline formed around my feet where it had simply poured wastefully out of my body. I reeled in the realisation that until this moment, like Neo in The Matrix, I had never really used my eyes properly. I had just never experienced the sheer wondrous scope of imagery that eyes were designed to convey. I could pluck them clean out now, perhaps with a spoon, safe in the knowledge that nothing will surpass the experience they have delivered.
Ten out of ten.
My new favourite film.
It is excellent and insane. I did a write up of it for Rotten Tomatoes once, but I can't figure out how to link directly to it.
So I've spoilered the whole text of it here. Spoiler tagged because it's pretty long, and you don't want that bunging up the thread.
Friday night is a good night to watch a stupid film.
It feels like an appropriate night. When you can sit with friends and drink beer and eat crisps and allow the crucial areas of your brain to slightly dissolve from the intake of high-sugar stupid that can only come from ridiculous films.
Of course, I've got no friends, so I have to watch my idiotic films on my own. I suppose I could watch them with my wife, but I don't want her to leave me.
So I like to sit, friendless, unsharingly enjoying my beer and my crisps and my two hours of a visual rubber mallet to the head.
This Friday was no exception. My wife went out and left me to my own devices, which involved me taking the top dvd from the unwatched pile, turning up the bass on the surround and allowing all my intelligence to dribble out through my eyeballs.
The film I chose is one that I have loved from afar for many years. The pathetic, unrequited love of a moony-eyed child who's suddenly realised the girl in his maths class has grown some astounding breasts. Any summary of this film that you could write would simply inflame my desire to see it. Any review would goad me further down the shameful path.
I bought the dvd from some far-flung foreign land. Japan maybe, or America. Who knows?
What I do know is that it has been hiding next to my telly for months and months. Almost daring me to test it. To see if the promise of those astounding breasts can possibly lead to a magical moment of enjoyment.
Basically, I was suddenly terrified that it was going to be s
t. And that this film that I had spent so long pining to see and being certain I would love to bits, would be simply useless rubbery toss that smelled of bins.Here are my thoughts, in descending order. Starting with the thought I thought the most -
- (thought 1) This is singularly the most action-packed film I have ever watched.
It is essentially non-stop. And not in the way that non-stop action! films promise non-stop action. Like Bad Boys 2 perhaps. This is actually non-stop - no dialogue scene lasts more than a few seconds before erupting into nonsense with machine guns or motorbikes or city-levelling explosions.
- (thought 2) It is utterly insane. Utter insanity combined with (thought 3) making only tenuous sense. I could just about hold on to the plot, precariously clinging on with the fingernails of my brain - all the while knowing that it was s
t nuts. But in spite of that allowing myself to be swept along, borne aloft by an endless torrent of ridiculousness. However, no matter how hard I screwed up my poor eyes with concentration, no matter how desperately I made mental notes to myself about what was occurring, I lost control. I fell off the story. I floundered as events seemingly appeared randomly. Fighting turned to shouting, which turned to impossible devastation.Samurai swords were menacingly flailed about. Some men had an extensive martial arts battle while both riding on the back of the same motorbike. Aliens were revealed in their true form on live television, and the UN Secretary General was exposed as an impostor by a small ugly dog called Candy.
On Friday night, I watched Godzilla: Final Wars.
At this point, 94% of people reading will lose all interest. Another 4% weren't even interested initially, but were just reading out of sheer boredom. 1.8% are hospitalised in a persistent vegetative state and are having this read to them by hopeful loved ones desperate to provoke a flicker of reaction.
That leaves 0.2%. These official statistics come from my inventive head, so I can only conclude that many many of you are going to miss out on a stupendously exciting and exhilarating film.
Only 0.2% of you even care!
Here is a synopsis of the film -
A protracted battle with a flying submarine at the heart of Antarctica leaves Godzilla entombed beneath millions of tons of ice. This is the pre-credits sequence.
The credits themselves summarise the entire history of Godzilla films over the preceding 50 years, in a way that terrifyingly combines explosive text, film clips, CGI fire and explosions to produce a credit sequence as difficult to watch and as emotionally draining as the climactic scenes of Scarface.
My eyeballs boiled in their sockets as I endured what would have been, on any ordinary film, a couple of minutes of writing on a screen.
Then the film started.
Historic monsters from Godzilla history appear dotted about the globe and wreak monumental havoc. Earth is helpless. Nothing can be done. Doomed.
Wait.
Let's backtrack slightly. A new Earth defence force has been created, formed of super-powerful mutants gathered from across the globe. These superhumans have defeated the terrible monsters borne of man's continual pollution and desecration of the environment. Godzilla is the only monster they cannot destroy, but he is now entombed beneath the ice cap.
The mummified remains of a previously-unseen monster are discovered and scientifically investigated. This monster (let's call him Gigan, because it's Gigan) is a 12,000 year old alien cyborg in which is discovered the genetic M-Base material. In spite of sounding frighteningly like a disco jazz pop combo, M-Base is the same mutant gene rendering our superpowerful Earth mutants as excellent as they are. There is an ominous genetic link between our own mutant soldiers and this alien robo-beast.
Suddenly the scientists enter a dream-like state and share a vision of tiny fairies in a magical cave. These little fairies are the mystical representatives of Mothra - Earth's friendly guardian-monster. In the shape of a giant moth. Obviously.
The fairies explain that the mummified monster is Gigan (because it's Gigan), and somehow pass on a magical pendant of some significance to a beautiful young girl biologist.
Then all the historic monsters appear and smash cities across the planet into bits.
Stupendous scenes of Shanghai levelled at the hands of a gigantic ankylosaurus, a supersize pteranodon flattening New York, and a huge preying mantis stomping Paris. Amongst others.
Devastation ensues. Earth is helpless. Nothing can be done. Doomed.
But wait, a massive alien mothership fills the sky and instantly beams all the monsters away, and ...
I'll stop there.
It really doesn't matter. Who cares what the story is?
Godzilla: Final Wars is unashamed nonsense. It is silly and tongue in cheek, but jam-packed with insanely choreographed martial arts sequences - either human vs human, human vs giant lobster monster, human vs human-looking alien with mad eyes, or (of course) giant monster vs giant monster.
Everything gets smashed and destroyed.
Any description of any scene simply fails utterly to convey the overwhelming madness of what actually happens. The special effects are ludicrous. The fighting endlessly redefines your top ten of favourite fight scenes in films.
Captain Douglas Gordon is the English-speaking, samurai-sword waving, coptashed muscle mountain commander of the hapless fugitives surviving the onslaught of destruction. He talks in a voice so cavernously deep that it shook photos of my children off the walls of my living room.
The rubbish American version of Godzilla from the Roland Emmerich film appears for seconds before being flattened by proper Godzilla.
I just cannot list the extent to which my mind was boggled.
Ryuhei Kitamura directed this film. I had previously seen two of his films - Versus, in which he managed to show how zombies can do kung fu and shoot each other with machine guns. And Azumi, which reveals that the world's greatest assassin is a teenage Japanese girl in a miniskirt. Both of these films are exactly as brilliant as you would expect.
Final Wars is somehow so much more brilliant than I even expected, that I've had to readjust my sliding scale of film scores.
Kitamura probably had to go for a long lie down in a darkened room after completing this film. I know I was reduced to a shivering wreck, rubbing my eyes in astonishment and feeling my pulse pounding at a terrifying rate.
I stood up and my head span. Giddy with the sheer excess of it I stumbled to the kitchen to splash water on my sweating face. As I stood there, bewildered, a pool of adrenaline formed around my feet where it had simply poured wastefully out of my body. I reeled in the realisation that until this moment, like Neo in The Matrix, I had never really used my eyes properly. I had just never experienced the sheer wondrous scope of imagery that eyes were designed to convey. I could pluck them clean out now, perhaps with a spoon, safe in the knowledge that nothing will surpass the experience they have delivered.
Ten out of ten.
My new favourite film.
Enjoyed both The Host, and Cloverfield. Barney the dinosaur was rubbish. Godzilla was a bit crap, and could have been a lot better. I much prefer the original Japanese films, which never took themselves seriously. Can't really think of any other monster films, discounting King Kong and Jurassic park films, of late that we're any good. The syfy channel do loads, but they tend to be the most abysmal crap.
I haven't seen it but Troll Hunter is supposed to be a good one.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
ajprice said:
I haven't seen it but Troll Hunter is supposed to be a good one.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
Oh yeah, forgot that one. That was a decently entertaining flick! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
TheHeretic said:
ajprice said:
I haven't seen it but Troll Hunter is supposed to be a good one.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
Oh yeah, forgot that one. That was a decently entertaining flick! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/
will possibly finish it tonight...TheHeretic said:
Any other recommendations?
As already mentioned, king kong was good. I buy films but don't always watch them twice, kong was well worth revisiting.Journey to the centre of the earth I watched recently, as it featured a t-Rex. I wouldn't rate it though, plus it's not much of a monster film.
Bought a Sherlock Holmes flick which was a) cheap and b) featured 2 T-Rex's, 2 dragons and giant squid on the cover... Bit of a punch to the ghoulies as I do like to judge films by their covers, and star ratings, preferring to k ow nothing whatsoever about the film I'm about to watch.
This is possibly why I enjoyed (Blair witch, and) cloverfield so much, I wasn't really sure what I was watching until events had unfolded.
thebluebus said:
Try Godzilla: Final Wars.
It is excellent and insane. I did a write up of it for Rotten Tomatoes once, but I can't figure out how to link directly to it.
So I've spoilered the whole text of it here. Spoiler tagged because it's pretty long, and you don't want that bunging up the thread.
....
My new favourite film.
It is excellent and insane. I did a write up of it for Rotten Tomatoes once, but I can't figure out how to link directly to it.
So I've spoilered the whole text of it here. Spoiler tagged because it's pretty long, and you don't want that bunging up the thread.
....
My new favourite film.
I am definitely looking that film out 
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