Movie Review: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

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Despite having Godzilla prominently in the title and the film heavily marketing a team-up between him and Kong, this film is more “Kong: Planet of the Apes featuring a guest appearance by Godzilla.” The Kong stuff mostly works. He’s given more of a personality here than ever before and his story is worth getting invested in. It seems odd how Kong (and the other apes) alternate between moving like great apes and having more human-like mannerisms. This is where the film starts to feel like a super-sized version of “Planet of the Apes.” Unfortunately, this part of the story feels a bit rushed and falls flat. Meanwhile, thanks to a small cast, the human characters don’t take too much time away from the monsters and mostly fill us in with all the exposition. (Even if they always seem to accomplish some strangely specific things purely because the plot calls for it.) Oddly enough, it’s Godzilla that feels like he doesn’t belong here as he’s mostly off doing his own thing and when he does finally get involved in the plot, he doesn’t really feel like he’s needed. The action is so-so, but it’s just CG-monster vs. CG-monster knocking over CG-buildings as background extras occasionally run away.

** out of *****

Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

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A fairly dull comedy with minimal laughs, that is also sorely lacking in the franchise’s trademark supernatural excitement. The plot moves pretty slowly as it sporadically drop pieces to the puzzle, only for things to move a warp speed once it gets to the third act. (It doesn’t help that most of the clips in the trailer are from the final act, making it feel like all the best stuff is crammed into the final 10 minutes.) The character arcs are kind of weak and cliche. On top of that, characters do some somewhat random, and even downright stupid, stuff to move the story along. While bringing in the classic Ghostbusters team in the previous film felt like a nice pass the torch moment, here they just feel tacked on. The film flirts with deeper topics like the afterlife, and it also hints at some deeper character beats, but ultimately it just breezes past all of that. There’s a brief mid-credit scene that cute but skippable.

** out of *****