QX Faves: Godzilla

If you haven’t seen our QX faves section before, it focuses on films that aren’t necessarily new releases, but ones that we’ve seen, and we think you should see!
 


And, as the paragons of cultural zeitgeist that we are, we’re totally qualified to recommend films *uncorks wine*.
So, a bit of an unprecedented one this week! Usually they’re gay-related, but this one isn’t particularly. Not EVERYTHING has to be gay though! It’s healthy to dip a toe into hetero culture every so often.

Now, here at QX we’re an easy crowd when it comes to monster movies. Give us some scales and screaming, and we’re anyone’s. Anaconda starring Jennifer Lopez! Now THAT was pretty gay, as monster movies go. It was also total nonsense.


Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla remake however, is not your usual popstar-casting, cliché-spitting, jungle-humping fare. It’s actually very visceral. It takes its time a bit. There’s some real identifiable human drama, and some real gut-wrenching suspense. All these qualities are far too rare in action movies and, more specifically, monster movies of the 21st century. These days, monster movies just lumber up to you, regurgitate a steaming, meaningless pile of special effects on your head, then lumber off again.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Godzilla IS special effects-laden. There is not one, not two, but THREE monsters, and they snap and screech and lurch their way through jungles, oceans and several major landmarks. But Edwards injects some unexpected imagination into it all. There are some truly beautiful sequences, most notably a breathless plane-drop over San Francisco, and an inconceivably destructive scene in Hawaii.
You’ll see what we mean when you watch it, but there are a lot of tiny little attentions to detail, meticulous usage of tools like light, colour and texture. The effect is magical, and at times quite terrifying.

It’s understandable that some cinemagoers found the film disconcerting at the time of its release. It is NOT what it says on the tin. It’s not so much a monster movie, as a drama, with monsters thrown in. It bears a striking resemblence to Gareth Edwards’ egregiously overlooked 2010 masterwork, Monsters. The humans have the same introspective, shell-shocked look about them, and the creatures have the same flickeringly beautiful aesthetic. It also has a distinct whiff of the Cloverfield about it at times.

The cast holds up very well too. Elizabeth Olsen shines in one of her first serious roles as a woman torn between her child and her husband. Bryan Cranston, always brilliant, makes a wonderful mad professor figure. And Aaron Taylor-Johnson is sexy and current as a soldier who unwittingly stumbles into the role of the main protagonist.

Basically, if you like your action movies with a dash of intelligence, a lingering sense of beauty, and some half-decent acting, this one’s for you! If not, go watch Anaconda starring Jennifer Lopez.

 

• Godzilla is available now on DVD, or for free on Sky Cinema.

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