Yesterday at 3:30pm the longtime Kung-Fu night club of mine took a rare field trip to the movies and witnessed the greatness of the Big G, Godzilla at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas. This is Godzilla's latest flick. In fact this is Godzilla Part 28 for those of you keeping tabs at home. On Big G's 50th anniversary the producers decided to mix things up a bit and go for broke. They hired action director Ryuhei Kitamura who direced, Versus, Alive, and my fave thus far of his, Azumi. Ryuhei Kitamura is nuts. His films are like Michael Bay mixed with Oliver Stone on crack making Natural Born Killers 2 with Terry Gilliam shooting 2nd unit with Yuen Woo Ping at Craft Services. I know that last sentence didn't make any sense and neither does Ryuhei Kitamura's style. He is everywhere at once here as always. But now he has giant monsters to throw into his usual kinetic stew.
Many people know I'm a hugh G fan. So I went into this knowing what I like out of a Godzilla flick and what I like out of a Ryuhei Kitamura flick. I was not real sure I would like the combo plate this time. Well I was kinda right but also kinda wrong. After about an hour of kinda thinking about where this was going, I gave up to the madness of it all. This is Ryuhei Kitamura directing a Godzilla movie. That't the best way of describing it! Its fast, its too long, its insane, and I have not even talked about the movie's plot yet. I'll spare you the details and just say that its a cross between "Monster Zero" and "Destroy All Monsters" with a little Power Rangers and Star Blazers mixed in. I'm still kind of dazed by it really. I think I liked it. Because this morning I really wanted to see it again, to take all that in again.
In a nutshell Godzilla is frozen at the begining, these dudes called Xilens show up on Earth and bring out all of Godzilla's old nemesis' to help them dispose of us. So we have to travel across the earth to the South Pole and unfreeze the Big G and have a battle royale with kung-fu aliens and monsters. There are nice homages to previous films in the series and even a nod to Starblazers, the classic cartoon series. My final word on this is that if you like Godzilla movies then go see it. If you liked Versus or Azumi, then go see it. Then write me back and tell me what the hell is going on!
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