Godzilla: King of the Monsters

As Joe Bob Briggs would have said back in the day, there's a whole lot of plot getting in the way of this movie. They tried really hard to make it make sense--but it's a movie about monsters destroying the world. It's not about making sense, it's about spectacle. They got that part down OK; everything looks good, both in terms of scale and visual character. But none of the players really breaks out of their stock roles. Special recognition (?) must go to Kyle Chandler, who seems convinced--vocally, at least--that he's playing Batman despite the lack of a cape. More troubling, his character goes through a fairly unconvincing 180 turnaround. Other characters die, as likely as not because the actors wanted out of the further sequels more than because the story demands it. Yet, there's still enough appeal here to make it something more than bottom of the barrel. The 12-year-old boy in all of us is bound to get a charge out of watching a bunch of kaiju battle it out, and there's even a nice little piece of the world-building that ties the monsters in with our myths in a way that an "Ancient Aliens" fan, if not a classical scholar, will appreciate. As dopey entertainment, it's fine. It will take someone more adept than these filmmakers to turn this bit of pop culture into high art. For now, just watch shit blow up.

The Commuter

See, this is why I work from home. Most people already think their commute is hell, so it's a perfectly plausible premise that Liam Neeson's ride would get a little bumpy. Fortunately, he's just the guy you want for a trip like this, and as he has through a slew of similar movies over the last X number of years, he pulls off the task nicely, with a good balance of heroism and everyman stature that makes it impossible not to root for the guy. There may be some holes in the plot--the film indulges the typical trope of an all-too-omniscient villain--but you don't mind that so much with the movie's good pacing, well-portrayed characters, and solid action sequences. Neeson will eventually get too old for this shit--really, he's already there--but as long as he feels up to making this kind of flick, he'll probably keep pulling off just this sort of role. His career may be one track at the moment, but for now it's a pretty good track.

The Departed

The good news: Scorsese put together a hell of a cast for this film. The bad news: it was Scorsese directing them. This movie neatly exposes and sums up the Scorsese problem: a technically fine film that lacks something, or is off-putting in some crucial way. That aforementioned cast is a case in point: as in all this director's movies, everyone throws himself too forcefully into his role; you can practically see the actors look at the camera and say, "Check out how intense I make this scene." The effect is not one of intensity, but of actors trying too hard (at best) or chewing the scenery (at worst). And it's up to the director to reel that in and hit just the right note. As usual, Scorsese doesn't do that here. And the movie is consequently less than it should be.

15 Minutes

Hard to know what to say about this movie. It's not bad, but it never really catches that spark (ironic, given the prominence of Edward Burns's arson inspector character). The story's satirical slant seems obvious, and perhaps even a little out of touch. (Why are the media-obsessed villains foreigners? Given the targets of the cultural critique, you'd more likely get home-growns playing such a debased game.) One positive note: in the "credit where it's due" department, big props to Director of Photography Jean Yves Escoffier--this is a beautifully shot film.