‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Has Some Monsters, Some Monster Battles, and Even Some Humans. Does It Amount to Much of Anything?

March 28, 2024

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Godzilla, King Kong [Not Pictured: The New Empire] (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot)

Starring: Rebecca Hall, Kaylee Hottle, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen, Rachel House

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Monster Fights and Giant Ape Dentistry

Release Date: March 29, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: A massive ape, a giant lizard, and various other monsters aren’t just myths anymore. They’re full-blown citizens of Earth. So what do human beings think about that? For the most part, they don’t seem to really care. Sure, there are a few stuffy government types who are concerned about the possibility of apocalyptic destruction, but generally in the world of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, people are just going about their days. And so are Godzilla and King Kong, in fact, as the most they’re worried about is an infected tooth. But there are other monsters out there who aren’t so satisfied with this relative peace.

What Made an Impression?: The Humans Are (Metaphorically) Dead: The MonsterVerse kicked off with 2014’s Godzilla, which I (and a lot of other viewers) dinged for featuring too little of its titular kaiju and mostly boring human characters. Then years later, this franchise actually does care enough about its homo sapiens to give them motivations and interior lives and even have a few of them return from 2019’s Godzilla Vs. Kong. But the necessity of their presence in The New Empire is rather tenuous. Their storylines are ostensibly connected to each other, but they register as if they’re taking place on completely different planes of reality.
Destroy All Cities: Subpar human storylines need not be a death knell for Godzilla x Kong, as the monster battle royale is the main attraction after all. And on that front, the climactic scrapes reminded me of the most laborious sections of the Transformers movies. Which is to say: they’re an exhausting medley of cacophony. Instead of being thrilled by this orgy, I was mostly left wondering who was going to clean up all the urban destruction. Godzilla, Kong, and their cohorts naturally don’t really care much about that, but it feels like there should be at least a joking acknowledgement of that disinterest, instead of just plodding along to knock over whatever buildings lie in their way. In general, the moments of visual wit are few and far between. There are a few clever needle drops and some psychedelic editing experiments here and there, but that’s all just window dressing on a spectacle that’s pretty impenetrable unless you’re an expert in MonsterVerse lore.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is Recommended If You: always wanted to see Brazilian beachgoers have their days ruined by giant monsters

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Portals

Godzilla vs. Kong vs. My Internal Composure: A Movie Review

April 19, 2021

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Godzilla vs. Kong (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Godzilla, King Kong, Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Mechagodzilla

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 31, 2021

What if it were Godzilla vs. Kong vs. … jmunney? Does the latest no-holds cinematic brawl between these two iconic behemoths make me want to join the fight? Hey man, I’m a pacifist! But entering their domain in some capacity might be fun. They seem like good company.  Kong is certainly a clown. And sensitive, to boot! Godzilla’s harder to peg, but I’d be willing to put in the emotional groundwork to make the connection. What’s Mechagodzilla’s deal, though? He sure comes out of nowhere. Does he even have a soul?!

Grade: 5 Podcasts of 10 ASLs

This Is a Movie Review: Blair Witch

September 17, 2016

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blair-witch

Alas, Blair Witch does not reinvent the found-footage wheel. But perhaps it was unfair for me to ever expect it to. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett’s previous genre-bending work on You’re Next and The Guest primed me to think it would, as did the hot buzz from early screenings. But nothing about the film itself ever made such a promise. The lack of that particular ambition may hold it back from being a masterpiece, but I cannot fairly call it a failing. What Blair Witch actually cares to do, it mostly does well. It has a fine grip on temporal and spatial disorientation, plus a killer sequence involving claustrophobia. But ultimately, the arrangement of scares is too haphazard for a film that really could have benefited from an overarching through line. It flirts with a summary thesis on terror, but it does not quite get there.

I give Blair Witch 3 Witchy Pranks out of 5 Circular Walks.

You’re Next Review

August 25, 2013

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , 5 Comments

YOURE-NEXT-Image-01

You’re Next starts off slow, almost to the point that I worried it was going to lose its target audience entirely. Luckily, there is something going on, just not what is to be expected based on the gore-heavy (nearly gore-exclusive) trailers. An upper-middle-class family reunites in a Mansion in the Woods, and the barely hidden tension comes out in supremely bitchy fashion. It’s basically (and here’s your pull quote right here) a comedy of manners interrupted by a horror movie.

Erin (played by Step Up 3D‘s Sharni Vinson), a girlfriend meeting the family, turns out to be unexpectedly equipped to respond to the home invasion. The explanation for this characterization is both logical and timely. As the buzz indicates, You’re Next is heavily subversive of the home invasion genre. Whenever a trope is subverted, a logical explanation is provided for why it is subverted, and whenever a trope is played straight, a logical explanation is provided for why it is played straight.

(GENERALLY SPOILER-ISH INFORMATION IN THIS PARAGRAPH. I’m not giving anything completely away, but this is information I’m glad I didn’t know beforehand.)  In the last 30 minutes or so, as Erin really doubles down in her fighting back, You’re Next decides to travel back to the 80’s with an awesome John Carpenter-style synth score. Interestingly enough, You’re Next may owe less to something like The Strangers than it does to a certain crime movie from the 40’s (quite possibly the best crime movie of all time – or at least the best noir crime movie of all time). You know how I said it’s a comedy of manners interrupted by a horror movie? Well, it’s really more of a crime movie disguised as horror. And the twists keep on coming right through to the end. There’s almost a final twist that would have been a little too bleak for most audiences’ tastes, but that is quickly averted by a different, not quite as bleak, twist. And all these final twists are punctuated by perfect pitch-black humor, particularly Erin’s recapping of the details of her fighting back. (END SPOILERS)

The cast is mostly made up of your favorite indie filmmakers (Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Amy Seimetz in a role quite different than Upstream Color), several of whom my brother knows, and the aforementioned Sharni Vinson. Now, I unabashedly love Step Up 3D, but that’s because of the dancing and the 3D, and in spite of the acting. The acting in Step Up 3D could have been worse, but it was unimpressive enough to make me worry that Sharni might be a liability to You’re Next. Well, I owe her an apology, because she rightfully deserves a place among Heather Langenkamp and Sigourney Weaver as one of the best horror heroines who fight back of all time. A