finally got the chance to see the OG Godzilla, and im pretty content with it! Of course, from a technical standpoint, the film is a marvel, and im always a sucker for some heavy handed anti-war commentary. I think that the way in which Honda chose to characterize Godzilla is really unique as far as horror-laced action films go, and i really enjoyed the characterization of Takashi Shimura's zoologist ideals alongside his muted but powerful performance. I also was pleasantly surprised at how feminist this film managed to be for coming out during such a conservative time, not super typical for high budget movies to feature. Momoko Kochi absolutely kills it. The dark shadows and contrasts in the cinematography never make this film unineristing to look at, the sound effects of zilla are rad as fuck (the first melodic noise track on an electric guitar for his screeches? fuck yeah!) and the pseudoscience behind the whole thing is campy but doesnt stand out among the rest of the film for suspension of disbelief. overall just a really solid flick that has earned its place in the canon.

im not gonna rave and rave on about this one cause its of course a classic and youve all likely seen it and everything that can be said about this film has been said by someone else better already but it fuckin slapped. genuinely a few scary sequences, absolutely absurd that this is 100 years old, orlock is THE best looking classic monster flick monster, this thing is chilling and creepy but still a little campy and melodramatic. a fantastically complete film by the master that has totally stood the test of time.

watched this one with a friend where we were genuinely looking for something engaging and quality to connect with. Unfortunately, this film was a bad pick. From the very beginning, this thing has no idea what it wants to be. it tries to be spielberg, then it tries to be kubrick, then it tries to be tarkovsky, then it tries to be garland, and it somehow fails at all of the above abysmally. From plotpoints that get completely swept under the rug, weird inconsistent character implied knowledgebases, a script trying waaaaay too hard to be *deep* coming from a dude that genuinely doesnt understand what hes even going for, its just a mess. Nearly impossible to follow, boring as sin with horrendous expositiondrop dialouge throughout being parroted by the most bored nad disconnected looking talent ive seen in a while. its really clear that nobody on this film except gina rodriguez gave a fuck about what they were filming. Every single character has a problem, whether it be terrible writing (Josie (Tessa Thompson) and Cass (Tuva Novotny) are both acted well, but given fuck all script to work with beyond being charactatures of real people (Josie is the *smart* one and Cass is the *reliable* one) and thats about all we get.), terrible underutilization of good talent (Oscar Isaac gets to suffer in a bed and act depraved with terrible cinematography for a scene and a half and thats it, Jennifer Jason Leigh is playing, on paper, the most interesting character here, but Garland disallows her from ever showing any emotion, despite details we know about the character implying she should be much more emotive, and Benedict Wong straight up just power stances in a hazmat suit and asks 1 sentence questions to Portman for the entire runtime), or just simply a mixture of bad writing AND bad acting (Natalie Portman gives the worst performance of her life in this film, just totally lifeless and disconnected from what should be a very emotive time for her character, who is a military veteran who doesnt know how to hold a rifle, while Gina Rodriguez gets "the volatile" one treatment while doing a fucking horrendous job of it. her performance feels like middle school theater and not in a good way. its some of the most performative and least believable acting ive seen in years), its just hard to find anything in that regard worth praising. The cinematography, 95% of the time, looks like dogshit with the DP choosing to constantly film directly into light sources that shoot lens flares over all the intricate detail of the set designers. i know we're supposed to be in the *shimmer* but theres shots where you still get the light effect without sticking a lamp directly in the middle of frame making it impossible to even see fucking anything. aside from 1 specific sequence (NOT PICTURED) the cgi looks worse than 80s films ive seen with CGI. the movements are clunky, the design is undertextured and gross looking, just all bad. theres also a thousand plotholes like the cancer of JJL not even being part of the story until they need it for a mulligan, the fact that Gina's character witnessed the death of Cass yet still blames JJL and NP later on, like its insane to me that this even passed screen testing its so impossible to follow due to how disjointed and incomplete it is.

theres like, a sequence near the end that is truly gorgeous and more often than not the music is working well, but thats about all the priase i can give this thing. it pisses me off how bad this is because every negative aspect about this ive listed could have been better. Alex Garland has directed and written MUCH better before (Ex Machina, 28 Days), Natalie Portman and Gina Rodriguez can act better than this, its just really fucking dissapointingly bad. this is one i really wanted to like. Stalker but modern and women? sign me up! unfortunately it missed just about every mark and by the end i was more ready to turn it off than ive been in a while. dogshit film.