2014 - GODZILLA - a fun Godzilla film.

Yeah it's kind of a mess of a film.  The script has some big plot holes and doesn't make sense at times.  A very good cast was hired for the film and wasn't really used to it's full potential.  The film is too long.  But, this is a very entertaining reworking of Toho's original Godzilla. 

If you use the Leonard Maltin "rate o meter"  this is definitely a 2 1/2 star film.  But a 2 1/2 star film can be just as entertaining as a 4 star film.  How many times can someone sit through 12 Years A Slave?

The director Gareth Edwards and the special effects team did a good job on the epic scale action scenes.  Edwards clearly decided to hold off on showing Godzilla until the last half of the film.  This has been somewhat criticized by the Godzilla movie nerds, a select group of individuals that have watched way too many of the Toho films.  But I think Edwards made the right choice, there is only so much suspension of disbelief you can bring to this kind of story. 

Produced by the same studio that tried out another big monster film last year Pacific Rim, for some reason this film worked as a crowd pleaser where that one didn't.

123 minutes

2010 - MONSTERS, low budget, low key science fiction love story

This is in the genre called "the road movie,"  2 people, frequently male and female are brought together by some contrived script situation and begin a trip to some destination.  At first they don't really know each other but slowly they start to fall in love.  Monsters is It Happened One  Night set in a science fiction setting of the southwestern United States and Mexico with the man and woman getting to know each other while big monsters lurk around in the background.

The film was made for under one million dollars with a crew of about seven people, the actors mostly improvised their dialog and probably some of the story situations as well.  The filmmakers very cleverly shot in locations that had been hit by hurricanes which made it look like the place had been devastated by monsters.

The monster effects were assembled from off the shelf computer software.  The film looks pretty good for under a million dollars.  Maybe this  is the future of film, digital technology giving a professional look on a small budget. 

How is Monsters as a film?  It's OK nothing special.  The fact that this review is a rehash of how they made the film is never a good sign.  Monsters can be purchased at the I Tunes store.

93 minutes.