DaViD´82

The rumours of the worst story in the series are not to be believed. It's the height of sophistication; time travel (without any rules or logic, just as it needs to be), dinosaurs being rescued, monsters mutating, fighting in the Pacific, a cringeworthy aliens, a "T-1000 would be a ragdoll against it" android, a cyborg three-headed golden dragon, and a Godslayer on a warpath. Okay, it's somewhat bloated, but it's not unintentionally ridiculous. It's charmingly stupid in all its guilelessness. The kaiju action is very good though, it's nicely swashbuckling and there is not shortage of destruction. A B-movie with one goal: to entertain. And it succeeds brilliantly.

The Polish Norsemen meet What We Do in the Shadows, or a proud, and above all accomplished addition to the mockumentary genre. | S1: 4/5 |

A little girl from a village where beauty is a curse that reveals the true nature of individuals and society. A film that goes to the very core of the characters, traditions, times, and the village. The visuals are breathtaking, and for the entire running time they (surprisingly to me) don't overindulge. Especially when paired with Rostkowski's mesmerizing "folk-horror" underscore. Add to that the riveting performances and the flow of traditional drama. This is how to adapt an over hundred-year-old literary classic for a contemporary audience. The goal is not to be a literal transcription, but to capture the spirit and message in cinematic language. Few in recent years have managed to do this in such a compelling and engaging way.

A classic “previously in…” from the 1990s. Only it's not a minute or two, but endless dozens of minutes, because there's an attempt to fit eleven hours of footage into a feature-length form. It just doesn't have a coherent form. And so there's some recapitulation of characters, some battles, some main themes, jumping from episode to episode, from theme to theme, text interludes... No sense, no concept.

"Man isn´t a god, after all." A timeless classic and one of the flagships of anime even in/for the West. As much as it may seem at first glance to be a Japanese kaiju variation on the book “Ender's Game”, only about kids piloting giant bio-robots bouncing malevolent crap out of space, it's not. Oedipus complex, moral grey areas, coming of age, biblical themes, individual/human roles/responsibilities, playing God, metaphysics, depression studies... And many other big themes, but handled through symbolism, sophisticatedly and, like many other aspects, timelessly and loosely enough to be interpreted that even more than a quarter century after its release, the conclusion still evokes emotion and "what, how, who, why" conjecture. Moreover, it's a series that gets better and more fateful the closer it gets to the finish line. And the beginning is not bad; quite the opposite. It's not a repetitive shonen where the protagonists' and antagonists' abilities grow exponentially and the finale is in sight after hundreds of episodes. Here, the end is inevitable and the series evolves; it doesn't feature one monster in every episode. This results in the fact that not all episodes will suit everyone equally. I'm no exception to this; specially around the middle I have a few unpopular episodes. However, these are not filler episodes, beating up empty straws or bloating the running time. It's purely a clash of the approach taken and my taste. After all, genre-wise it's unanchored; from teen comedy to post-apocalyptic sci-fi to existential horror. That's why I rate the series (or actually the series and the final feature-length special, as they are inseparable) as a whole. There are still a few issues, for example, the typically 90's Japanese over-sexualization of 14 year old girls is downright cringe and definitely not timeless. It was already cringeworthy at the time of its release, much less today. And the penguin, who was probably supposed to be a cute mascot for the show, but is completely out of number and out of power. On the other hand, the (semi-)angelic EVA colossi have become the symbol of the series and of an entire era. After all, it is the representation of (not only their) scale that the series has not the slightest problem with. More than one scene is worthy of framing.

For the vast majority of the film's running time I was excitedly thinking that I must be dreaming, it can't be that good. And "I can't believe it" was also what I said during the epilogue, but in a completely different sense. After all, it's not possible that one and the same person is able to write a concept like Kaufman, direct it like Gondry, and then send the whole thing down the drain because he figured he'd get away with it (when he didn't need to) with a final 15-minute epilogue from a different cupboard, one with unused ideas from a dozen Black Mirror episodes, and he just pulled out the worst possible option on a whim. That the same creator thought “yeah, this is a good ending” still boggles my mind. A satirical mirror-setting, a family drama about the breakup of a family, a more-than-successful Freddy origin story, a pint-sized comedy working brilliantly with the awkwardness of the moment, the Jung in us and you. It works on all levels. The plot, however fanciful, unfolds on a believable ground level of "yeah, this is how it could be if it were happening". One of the films of the year diluted (read shattered) by an eye-rolling conclusion.

A thoroughbred B-move and a resignation to serious Gojira. There's something of everything (as in, really everything), which is the biggest weakness. Had it focused more on certain aspects, it would have only been to its advantage. As it is, it's about unintentionally ridiculous shootouts and secret organization chases for a while, starring a malnourished howler to whom even cool sunglasses are too big. Then it's back to the dilemmas of mad scientists, then it's like a variation on Frankenstein, then it's monsters fighting, then it's about Godzilla throwing everything it has. And then there's some Stephen King-like kids. And a lot more. Yet only Godzilla vs an overgrown flowerpot, vs military hardware, vs a backwater are the passages where it goes off without reservation.

This film (the 16th) was made to celebrate the 30th anniversary (and nine years since the previous film) and received due respect. From budget to concept. They ignored all the sequels and revisited the 1954 original. No kaiju battles, no "buddy Gojira as protector of mankind". All serious Gojira films have always been, are, and hopefully will be about humanity's mistakes, their correction, and some sort of transcendence (in the original the aftermath and fear of nuclear bombs, in Shin Godzilla the bureaucratic and dysfunctional governmental procedures and the mishandling of Fukushima, etc.). This one is no different. It works with the atmosphere of the Cold War, nuclear armament, and Japan in the grip of the conflicting interests of the Soviet Union and the Americans. Yes, despite the seriousness and the budget, the monster scenes are still about a guy in a rubber suit stomping on a model of a city. But how nice and detailed. As much as the catastrophe scenes take longer than they should, there's not a shortage of them, and they're impressive. Mainly because there's a respect coming from Gojiraka. The problem, however, is the pacing. The running time is too swollen giving too much space to the fates of uninteresting characters. The scientist sensei and the prime minister are alright, the scientist padawan okay, but the space given to his sister and the journalist is too much. Instead of giving human scale and heart to all this monster destruction, it just dilutes the pace.

Proof that 4DX technology can work and be immersive... But only as a tailor-made short intended purely as a rollercoaster. Otherwise, this is a standard outlandish escapist short, where one is constantly falling or flying somewhere (let's not forget that it is an attraction) in an attempt to deliver a present to Gru.

It feels like a feature-length cut of a five-star miniseries. Fortunately, a very successful cut that flies the world through the rise and fall of the BlackBerry and the people around it. Lately, there's been a rash of these types of dramas, but this is among the best.