Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
SimilarBack to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Ghostbusters (1984), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Jaws: The Revenge (1987), King Kong (1933), King Kong (2005), Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Superman Returns (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999),
The most frustrating thing about Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire isn't that it's stupid. It knows it's stupid; it's banking on that. It's not even that its luster has been eclipsed by Japan's most recent entry in the terrible lizard's decades-long rampage on the cinematic landscape, the now-Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One. It's that somehow, director Adam Wingard and the team behind the MonsterVerse have forgotten how to be the right kind of stupid, fumbling the formula that 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong captured with surprising charm. (Then again, our assessments of 2021's COVID-era output are innately suspect, considering most of us were just glad to be back at the movies at all.)
But the more you settle into the latest entry in Warner Bros. and Legendary's "MonsterVerse" -- the Americanized shared universe of Japanese-sourced kaiju movies that started with 2014's Godzilla -- the more confounding this exercise becomes. The end of the previous film in the series teased a kind of detente between Japan's favorite reptile and Skull Island's favored son, the two working together to take down MechaGodzilla after a movie's worth of preening spats on cargo ships and among the skyline of Hong Kong (no relation). You'd think screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater would double down on the "what now?" of it all: how would these two reluctant allies share the Earth? That might be fun.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review (Warner Bros./Legendary)
Instead, The New Empire feels like a semi-retread of Godzilla vs. Kong -- actually, scratch that, more like a King Kong movie with a few bits of Godzilla peppered in here and there. Like so many sitcom roommates before them, the pair have drawn a chalk line halfway down the planet and decided to each keep to their own territory. Godzilla protects humanity from rogue Titans on the surface, and in between bouts, he curls up in the Roman Colosseum like a cat bed, one of the film's more charming images. Meanwhile, Kong searches for other giant apes like him down in the Hollow Earth. (Yeah, that exists now.) Continue Reading →
Dune: Part Two
Similar2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 2046 (2004), A Clockwork Orange (1971), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Ben-Hur (1959), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Blade Runner (1982), Dances with Wolves (1990), Dr. No (1962), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Jaws: The Revenge (1987), King Kong (2005),
Live and Let Die (1973) Mars Attacks! (1996), Metropolis (1927), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Predator (1987),
Shaft (2000) Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), Solaris (1972), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Stalker (1979), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Generations (1994), Superman Returns (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), War of the Worlds (2005), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Watch afterAmerican Fiction (2023), Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Inception (2010), Poor Things (2023),
StarringBabs Olusanmokun, Stellan Skarsgård,
Denis Villeneuve finishes his epic two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel with sprawling scope and thorny politics.
It's really a miracle that the first of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films penetrated the public consciousness as well as it did. It was released amid a worldwide pandemic; it was an IMAX-ready blockbuster that was simultaneously dropped onto people's streaming subscriptions same-day; it's based on a dense, impenetrable sci-fi novel Villeneuve patiently chose not to wholly adapt in one film. The results, blessedly, were commercial and critical success and a host of technical Oscars the following year.
That success was enough to secure Dune: Part Two, a chance for Villeneuve to complete his vision of Frank Herbert's seminal work of political science fiction. Where Part One worldbuilds, Part Two barrels down the road of its inevitable conclusion in satisfying style, even as it makes some noted changes from the novel or any previous adaptations -- some for the better, some for the worse. Continue Reading →
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Try as they may (as of today we’re up to the ninth film in the series), no other film in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has come close to the original. Oh, a few of them have been entertaining in their own bananas way, like part 2, but no sequel, remake, or origin story can recreate the bleak grittiness of the first film, no matter how many new members of the cannibalistic Sawyer family they add to it. Continue Reading →
Fresh
SimilarFargo (1996),
Rebecca (1940) Strange Days (1995), The Silence of the Lambs (1991),
Watch afterBarbarian (2022),
StarringSebastian Stan,
StudioHyperobject Industries,
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →
Dune
SimilarResident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Stalker (1979),
Watch afterDon't Look Up (2021), Eternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), The Batman (2022),
StarringBabs Olusanmokun, Stellan Skarsgård,
When I first heard the announcement of a new adaptation of Frank Herbert’s magnum opus Dune, I think I might have groaned and said, “God, not again.” Even with the cult followings that Lynch’s now-disowned 1984 version and SyFy’s plodding 2000 miniseries have amassed, there has yet to be a version that had the kind of mass appeal that gets butts in seats. Continue Reading →
Godzilla vs. Kong
SimilarGodzilla Raids Again (1955), Night at the Museum (2006),
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021), The Suicide Squad (2021),
One of the most fascinating things about Godzilla -- whether in his original Japanese provenance in his long-running series of films, or in the comparatively-recent "MonsterVerse" Westernization of the big lizard, courtesy of Warner Bros. and Legendary -- is that he's so malleable. On the one hand (as with the original 1954 Ishiro Honda film and Gareth Edwards' flawed but philosophically-intriguing 2014 reboot), he can be a poignant vehicle to explore the apocalyptic anxieties of nations ravaged by atomic bombs and climate change. Continue Reading →