Movie Review: Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

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If any moviegoer of the latest Godzilla movie, “Movie Review: Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire”, after seeing this giant mess were to be asked about the story, or his/her understanding of what they saw during these two hours; to a person, they would have no clue. This disaster of a film is nothing more than pre-canned computer-generated action scenes involving King Kong, and Godzilla, that were thrown together making a total of 2 hours of another forgettable and bad action movie. Unfortunately, this process of making bad action films seems to be the latest trend in the movie industry, including the latest and also bad Ghostbuster sequel.

There are several CGI movie companies that every year, spend millions of dollars to create monster movie graphics and to make back the money they spend on development, all of these scenes are thrown together into ridiculous disconnected scenes in action movies. Then some screenwriter has to try and assemble all of these scenes into a story that has no chance of making any sense. This latest Godzilla movie is one of the best examples of this ongoing stupid method of movie production.

One of the best reviews on Rotten Tomatoes I have seen about this film is from Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe: The problem with “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is the same as so many of these franchise-based films: They’re all soulless special-effects extravaganzas where CGI takes the place of character development, good writing, and emotional connection. This one sentence describes the entire problem with movies like this perfectly.

The main character in this latest bad action movie is Rebecca Hall, who plays scientist Ilene Andrews whose entire purpose is to try and narrate this impossible series of monster events. Brian Tyree Henry plays a podcaster, who for some reason goes along for the ride and like the rest of us is trying to understand what is going on. Kaylee Hottle plays Jia, a young girl who is the standard young child who has some kind of a mental connection to King Kong. Considering how bad this story is, who cares about this?

When you consider movie franchises like “Toy Story” and others like it, so much money is spent on outstanding CGI technology that a great screenplay has to be created first, to honor how much hard work is required for the CGI. This continuing trend of CGI first, nobody cares about the screenplay, disrespects the movie-going audience – the most unfortunate aspect of having to waste 2 hours sitting through these horrendous movies.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film is too high 54%, with my rating only 10%, only for some of the CGI scenes, and a big miss this mess recommendation.

Movie Review: One Life

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The new movie “One Life” starring Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton is another World War II story that I am surprised has not been a major film in the past. Nicholas Winton was a young London broker who visited Prague Czechoslovakia in December 1938 right before the Nazis were about to invade and take over the country.

Winton took it upon himself to rescue hundreds of child refugees in Czechoslovakia from the extreme cold and the oncoming Nazi occupation. His plan was to send all of the children to safety in England, providing them shelter and whenever possible, foster homes. The logistical issues with trying to save the lives of so many Jewish children were overwhelming for Winton and his entire staff and very well depicted in this movie. Despite Winton’s efforts that saved hundreds of lives, he was still haunted by the children he could not save for most of his life.

Some 50 years later, A BBC show, “That’s Life” rescued Winton from his guilt and grief making him a national hero, later knighted by the Queen of England. The “That’s Life” TV show provided an impressive climax to this movie, where Winton stands up and sees an audience filled with the now adults that he saved as children. By saving so many children from the Nazis in 1938, hundreds of thousands of people and their descendants are alive today, only because of what Winton did in 1938. This film will remind everyone of the 1993 movie “Shindler’s List”, directed by Steven Speilberg.

Overall I thought this was a well-done historical movie about an important event during World War II. The acting was outstanding, including Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Helena Bonham Carter, and Matilda Thorpe. My only issue with this movie is that on too many occasions, the film was too slow and boring in telling one of the most important stories of the beginning of World War II.

The second video below is the 60 Minutes story about Winton’s life and also shows the BBC television show, which is the climax of this excellent film.

This time around, I do agree with the high 89% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and do recommend this important historical film

Amazon Prime Movie Review: Road House

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In the entire history of Cable TV, the 1989 movie “Road House” has probably been telecast more than any other movie, despite the fact that the entire movie is not only bad, but ridiciulous. The ending included several scenes of murder by main character James Dalton, played by the late Patrick Swayze, one witnessed by his girlfriend Dr. Elizabeth Clay, played by Kelly Lynch. Then the abrupt ending included Dalton and his doctor girlfriend hugging in a lake. All is forgiven? No police or an arrest? This entire movie, while still bad, has become a major cult film and because of this ongoing popularity, now 35 years later, the remake with the new “Road House” on Amazon Prime has been released.

The good news is that unlike many other remakes of popular movies over the years, this one is probably more different than the original than any other remake I have ever seen. There are only a few scenes that are copied from the original with the main idea, a rich local man trying to take over the Road House bar mostly intact and Dalton has a girlfriend who is also a doctor.

Anyone has to admire the hard work and physical dedication of Jake Gyllenhaal who plays Dalton for getting into such extreme shape for this role along with the many fight scenes, that include several with MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who plays Max. From recent interviews, Gyllenhaal admitted that he and McGregor made full contact during several of the scenes, risking serious injury.

Due to the different and far more involved story of this new version, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are correctly much higher than the original, 65% to 41%. Like the original version, the entire reason for watching a movie like this is for the fighting action with several fight scenes in this version more impressive than the first movie. As far as the acting, it was good for a movie of this quality with an ending that I thought was too convoluted for an overall movie idea this simple. The best scene in this movie was when Dalton beat up four men easily in the parking lot in front of the Road House bar and then, drove them to the hospital. This was a new and funny idea inside of an action movie like this one.

For fans of the original Road House, this new one is good enough to watch, once again, mostly for the action scenes. I agree with the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 65% and recommend this film, for the die hard fans of the original.