[EXPRESSO] Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) | Les dents du singe

Honestly, Godzilla fans have been eating good lately, because we both have great serious Godzilla movies like Minus One and then we have the Monsterverse delivering the funny cheesy , super silly Showa-era style kaiju clashes, crossovers and “monster royal rumble collabs”.

And i’m supposed to stand there and tell you i don’t love the high quality of monster movie silliness of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, as if i can’t love both.

Following up after the events of Godzilla VS Kong, the two Titans have reached an equibrilium of sorts, with Kong ruling over Hollow Earth and Godzilla serving as a “protector” against other kaijus on the surface of the planet. But when quakes inside Hollow Hearth make way for a new menace, the Monarch foundation will have to make two rival Titans work together to confront it…

Sadly, Godzilla kinda plays second fiddle in terms of relevance to the story, which is mostly about Kong’s loneliness and longing to meet other apes of his kind, the human characters are still pretty much stereotypes deep as a puddle, but here they’re more fun and-or tolerable than they were in Godzilla VS Kong, we do get to learn more about the lore of the world and the creatures as expected/promised (there’s a lot packed into a 2 hours runtime), there are some cool new monsters, with the kaiju’s personalities coming through perfectly, all culminating into one of the more expensive tag team kaiju wrestling matches ever seen on films.

Silly as shit, and deliberately so, with Godzilla taking a knack to sleeping in the Coliseum you know what the tone is gonna be, and i can’t deny it’s a blast.

A silly, hugely entertaining blast.

Can’t wait for the next one, come on Legendary, work Gamera into this Monsteverse thing!

Godzilla GB [REVIEW] | Chibizilla Made A Maze

the lesser known but far funnier PAL cover of the game.

Yep, the one you might remember as part of the AVGN Godzilla episode, with the Godzilla chibi sprites, Puzzle Bubble-esque music, we’re doing this Godzilla game this Giant Monster March, because why not after downing shitty licensed affair such as – but not limited to – the PS3-PS4 Godzilla game?

Curiously, this isn’t an entirely random game, per sé, as this Game Boy title is actually a port of the MSX title Godzilla-kun by Compile (yes, the same company that would become Compile Heart and crank out Neptunia titles by the dozens), done by Compile themselves, and the game in turn was based on Godzilland’s merchandise line that had chibi versions of Big G and the various kaijus.

The only differences between the original japanese GB release and the localized American & European ones is the rescue target, as in the original japanese version various monsters kidnap Godzilla’s girlfriend, Bijira (which was apparently a thing), and the western one they kidnapped his son, Minilla, and trapped him in a maze.

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[EXPRESSO] Godzilla Battle Line iOS | Army Mon’

So, you may or may not remember i tried to review this one alongside the other two mobile smartphone free-to-play Godzilla games Toho put out in 2021, the now (thankfully, as it was ugly and very, very shite) defunct Godzilla Destruction and the weird Uma Musume-ish training sim Run Godzilla.

Problem is that Battle Line didn’t work on my smarthphone, try as i might it would just crash after it booted, every single time. Almost 3 years later, with the prospect of the new Monsterverse film that will have Godzilla and Kong “collab” (and 2024 marking Godzilla’s 70^th anniversary), i went to see if it was still available to download… and yes, for some fuckin reason now it works, despite my smarthphone being fairly outdated, better late than never.

Godzilla Battle Line is actually a decent little RTS-thingie where you battle other human players by placing down what are basically toy-sized monsters, vehicles and weapons from the Godzilla franchise, all to overwhelm the other leader monster on the opposite side of the battle grid while defending yours.

Despite the cheapish production values, i do like the “playing with Godzilla toys on a diorama” aesthetic, there is some depth to it, over time it has had many updates (the latest adding Godzilla Minus One content), and despite the focus on versus matches, there’s also a single player mission-based mode.

Sure, its a gacha with a “battle pass”, some obnoxious in-game ads, i’ve heard cheaters are a thing…. hard to tell because right now the game it’s nearly unplayable, is THAT unstable, prone to crashes and costant disconnections at any time.

When it works, it’s actually a fun lil’ game, the free to play elements aren’t the worst, so if you’re into Godzilla it’s worth a punt at the very least.

The Cyclops (1957) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Really scraping the bottom of the Bert I. Gordon barrell with this one, but i did mention it twice before, and – as i said when reviewing 2008’s Cyclops – it’s not like we’re drowning in cyclops movies, at all, and this one has some of that “so bad it’s good” qualities, so for this year’s Giant Monster March’s finale it’s time to end as we begun, meaning to fall face first into a vat of Gouda, groan like a fuzzy giant toddler and “do the cyclops”.

At least it has Lon Chaney Jr. past his prime as a Universal horror star but not yet being reduced to a pathetic, drunken parody of himself (the epitome of that would be him in 1971’s Dracula VS Frankenstein, which nowadays is kind of a cursed movie as it was the undignified end of many actors careers and lives), not yet, here we have him in his post-glory phase were he did a lot of work pretty much any support roles in any kind of movie, mostly westerns, exotic adventure flicks, and horror films once in a while, mostly cheap, low budget, often indipendent productions.

The Cyclops definitely fits the bill, being a Bert I. Gordon film and what that entails, and here a plays a villanous mining expert in search of uranium, part of a posse led by the wife of a pilot that disappeared 3 years ago in the jungles of Mexico, as she still believes he’s alive despite all odds, but guess what, it’s a 50s b-movie, so the mining for radioactive material results in mutated everything, from spiders, lizards, eagles, mice and whatever animal stock footage Bert could superglue together.

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Gargantua (1998) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

The very – and this case literal – enbodiment of “we have Godzilla at home”, though it’s american-flavoured Godzilla given the production and the year it came out, one year that lives in infamy for the Godzilla faithful, but wait, there’s actually more as this is also kinda E.T., guess the echoes of Nukie and Mac & Me made the idea survive till the very end of the millennium itself.

And speaking of rip-offs it’s not totally incorrect since this TV movie premiered the very same day early screening for 1998 Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla were held, so yeah, it is not a victim of circumstances or a project in production before that was hurried to “compete” (by trying to come out first in hope of fooling the less informed, as usual) with an upcoming big budget Hollywood film that happened to have a similar plot or subject matter.

Still, i think “rip-off” might be too strong a word, since it doesn’t even really tries to do emulate the Roland Emmerich movie, and it’s actually closer to Gorgo or Gappa (as there are more of the monster siblings and parents), because it does involve the “momma monster” coming of the seabed to retrieve “da baby” from an enclosure of sorts, in this case though it because underwater quakes made possible for some amphibious giant reptilian creatures to show up on the beaches of Malau, Hawaii, where a marine biologist has brought along his son for work and to hopefully process the recent loss of the mother.

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Giant Monster March is approaching the generators + Early April hiatus

It’s that time of year again where we let the MONSTERS FIGHT, even more as we have a new entry in Legendary’s Monsterverse with the collab episode of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire hitting theathers internationally by the end of this month.

Also, i will be taking a break in April from the 1st up to the 14th of the month due to uni obligations and scholarly stuff, will be back from the 15th of April, though EXPRESSO review might still come out regardless.

Vlad Love (2021) [REVIEW] | Oshii No Ko

You know an anime it’s gonna be special when Mamoru Oshii is directing and his own sales pitch fo r it is “you’ll see what an old man who doesn’t give any fucks can do” XD

Even more when he partners up with FLCL’s creator, for his first TV anime since his early days on working on Urutsei Yatsura and directing the series’ two feature films, meant to come out in 2020, but the project had some delays, and was eventually released during February of 2021 on Crunchyroll… well, half of it was released at once, in order to make a “broken heart” joke.

Actually, it’s more absurd i didn’t actually manage to review it at launch, but now the occasion-climate seem appropriate again, so let’s remedy to this and try to squeeze some “synergy juice” (or what’s left of it, since i was sick and had to delay this review).

I mean, he was clearly willing to get crazy and embrace its legacy in the most absurd – and memey – ways, like deciding to open the episodes with a mock version of the MGM logo sequence, of course replacing the lion with his beloved bassethound. XD He knows, but doesn’t care, love it.

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[EXPRESSO] Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (2023) | Wrath Of Black Manta

I quite enjoyed the first Aquaman film, a phrase i’d never expect to write down ever, so yeah, why not a sequel, which thankfully ignores all the DCEU reboot kerfluffle.

No need to known any of that, just having watched the first film, and in this direction continuation we see Arthur Curry having trouble living his double life as a father taking care of his son on the surface, and having to deal with the taxing diplomatic duties of Aquaman, king of Atlantis.

While trying to fix his suit and continue his quest for revenge against Aquaman, David Kane (aka Black Manta) discovers an underwater set of ruins in Antarctica, finding a mystical trident and a material known as Orichalcum, which he uses to power his newfound stash of Atlantean technology also lying in the ruins…

This leads to climate change-based disasters, forcing Aquaman to secretly free its previously imprisoned half-brother Orm in order to find Black Manta and stop his plans…

James Wan it’s back on the director’s chair, and he does manage to expand on the worldbuilding, with many varied locations (including the titular lost kingdom), squeezing a lot of story, action scenes, while also making Black Manta more the proper villain than the “accidental” one it was in the first movie, though that’s kinda undermined by the revelations about the Black Trident.

Which i don’t mind too much since it lets Wan infuse some horror elements in the mix, i’m always up for that, and the movie does manage to fit a lot in 2 hours while feeling just long enough.

Maybe it’s not better than the first, but it’s still a lot of fun, dumb fun, if you must, with a hearthy attitude about action fantasy superhero shenanigans that aims to give the viewers its all.

[EXPRESSO] Godzilla Minus One (2023) | WW Zilla

I was kinda apprehensive going into the new Godzilla movie (which is getting limited weeklong screenings everywhere outside of Japan), weirdly enough, due to some disappointed early feedback, so i decided to ignore most coverage after that and just go see it.

And i will address that indeed, after Shin Godzilla, going back to a period piece story set during WW II feels like a convenient move to avoid tackling modern political issues… but i will say that Godzilla Minus One does earn your attention and investment, thanks to one of the closest attempts at recapturing the spirit of the original Godzilla, to the point it’s almost a remake-prequel, and a great damn one that focuses on the human characters with great drama, punctuated by action scenes involving Godzilla (not the other way around), while also making Big G itself menacing again.

The premise follows Koichi, a man designed as a kamikaze pilot that, during the final years of WW II, fakes a malfunction of his airplane, and lands on the small island of Odo . There he is one of the few that survives the encounter with a giant dinosaur the locals call “Godzilla”, and with great shame, he comes back to the bombed ruins of his parent house, takes in a homeless woman and her foster daughter. In time the reconstruction begins, Koichi is on the verge of finally putting his nightmares of war to rest, but then Godzilla shows up again….

Honestly, even if not trying to push new boundaries, at all, Godzilla Minus One it’s a greatly compelling story with good characters, a solid period war drama at its core, and while the monster is CG, they pulled off a miracle with the effects looking so good for the tiny budget of 15 millions.

Highly recommended.

[EXPRESSO] The Marvels (2023) | Three Of A Perfect Pair

Once again i have to preface i do not follow the Disney + Marvel series, i simply do not, i do get a laugh at reading how the fuck Marvel has issues with the Blade reboot (it is absurd), but i do watch the theathrical releases, with this later one being pretty much a Captain Marvel sequel, with the twist of having Danvers form an unlikely trio with Kamala Khan AKA Ms Marvel, and her believed to be lost niece, Monica Rambeau, whom also received energy powers after an accident.

As to why, it’s because a new villain, a Kree survivor and rebel, has acquired a powerful artifact, which has the side effect of making the three heroines do a switcharoo every time they use their powers, and they’ll have to find a way to work together in order – as “The Marvels” – to avoid the universe is further teared apart by wormholes and space-time completely breaks down…

I wasn’t a fan of the first film, or Captain Marvel herself, but this feels like a step-up, as there’s more going on, Kamala Khan being….. herself is very cute, the premise is more fun, there’s definitely more energy to the characters and plot, and thankfully Nia DaCosta’s (Little Woods, Candyman 2021) direction embraces the fact this is a very simple and silly tale, and boy do i appreciate when these movies can actually play it simple.

Shame the villain, while making sense for this type of story, it’s kind of a forgettable tragic kind of foe, and the resolution seems kinda underwhelming, but i did enjoy it a lot more than the first one, also because it’s under 2 hours for a change, though once again the “cat-like creature” is arguably the best damn thing in this franchise.

Decent fun.