Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Article 5681 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-2-2019
Directed by Michael Dougherty
Featuring Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown
Country: USA / Japan
What it is: American kaiju

A group known as Monarch is tracking the locations of an assortment of giant monsters known as Titans, but the military wants to know the locations so they can destroy them as threats to humanity. But some of the Titans are being revived…

Given what I’ve been reviewing lately, it’s probably no surprise that I’d make a rare foray to a movie theater to catch this one. Or course, there are a few things I don’t like; the hyped-up action-scene-every-thirty-seconds style of the modern American summer popcorn movie tends to exhaust rather than entertain me, and the giant monsters here pay a little too much attention to some of their human planet cohabitors; when they do that, it somewhat reduces them in my eyes. But I rather like the way the monsterverse here is set up, and I especially like the references to the earlier movies in the Godzilla canon and the use of Ikufube’s magnificent musical themes at key moments; I felt the movie sought to satisfy a long-time Godzilla fan like me. Yes, the ending of the movie proper may take its title a little too literally, but it made me smile and feel good, and I emerged from the movie quite satisfied. Nice to have these old friends back on the screen.