Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

I have been a fan of the Monsterverse movies since ‘Godzilla’ in 2014. I thought ‘Kong: Skull Island’ was an enjoyable departure for normal monster movies. ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ was a bit of a mis-step but had some good visuals and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ was a highly enjoyable movie. This is the second time in just a few months that I have seen Godzilla in a cinema and that's a great line to write.

The characters that feature in this film are all from the previous film although there is no Millie Bobby Brown  which is actually a good thing as I didn’t think she worked as a character and did some irritating things in ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’. I wasn't keen on Brian Tyree Henry’s performance in ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ as it felt like a caricature and not a real person. Thankfully the character seems a lot more tolerable and it allows Henry to show him comedy skills which were drowned out by his character. I also thought that Dan Stevens’ Trapper was a good character. He could so easily have been annoying but whilst he did seem like he was going to be irritating he reigns it into just the right level of quirky. I do think that Kaylee Hottle deserves a lot of praise because her character has been central to this and ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ and yet she has hogged the story to make herself look good. She has has show empathy with Kong and to have a lovely relationship with what is essentially a CGI character shows that Hottle is far better than she is given credit for and hopefully she has a long career ahead of her. Rebecca Hall i think does her best with what she is given which is fine and serves a purpose for the film but I would be lying if I said that it was spectacular. 

If I had issues then there are really nitpicks. Firstly I think that Godzilla is a side character for large chunks of this movie. I’m more of a Godzilla fan than Kong so this is perhaps not such a surprising nitpick but i would have liked to see more of Godzilla. Also the film suffers from coming just a few months after the brilliant ‘Godzilla Minus One’ which perhaps a lot of people didn’t see which is a shame as its brilliant. 

Godzilla x Kong shows that there is plenty of life left in both monsters and I would be surprised if we didn’t get more in the future but with a bit more Godzilla than Kong.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters is an interesting franchise. The 1984 original is a classic and always fun to watch and the second one has some charm to it but didn’t quite hit the heights of the first. Then there is the 2016 version which isn’t as bad as most people make out although it suffers from just not being funny. Then we had the 2021 Afterlife film which was good as a soft reboot of the franchise and tried perhaps a little too hard to try and wipe the 2016 version from our memories.  I enjoyed the last one and because most people seemed to like it as well we get a sequel which is directed by the same guy who did the ‘Poltergeist’ remake in 2015. 

The action has moved to the firehouse and a large portion of the film takes place here which might seem like a good idea in theory but sadly in practise it make the film feel a bit cheap. I know the action does move out of the firehouse from time to time but the firehouse did feel like a bit of overused nostalgia.  The new characters introduced in ‘Afterlife’ were fleshed out a bit more and some worked better than others. I thought that Mckenna Grace wasn't as much fun to watch in this as she was in the first. She did seem somewhat more teenagery (if that’s a word) than she didn't in the last one. The subplot with Melody (played well by Emily Alyn Lind) didn’t really add anything to the overall story and could easily have been cut out. The negative thing it did was reduce Phoebe’s IQ by about half because she does stupid things that her character wouldn’t have done in the last film. Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon did seem to be enjoying the married couple quite well and Rudd is always dependable. Finn Wolfhard continues to struggle to break away from the Stranger Things image and like Afterlife doesn't really contribute anything. Celeste O’Connor does seem to have had a bit more added to her character so she does seem a bit more of an action type. Podcast did seem to have taken a bit out of his character but that helped because there was a bit more to him and I thought Logan Kim did a good job. 

There is one thing that i like about this film and it might feel like a back handed compliment and that is the special effects are really impressive. Normally it's quite hard to make a frozen world look effective but they managed to make it work in this film. 

There are two notable comedians in this film. James Acaster and Kumail Nanjiani. One is good and one isn’t. Sadly a Brit, James Acaster is the weaker one. It does feel like his casting is a bit of stunt casting because they think having a familiar British comedian/actor in a big Hollywood film would pull in the audience but I think that as funny as can be, he doesn't feel like a believable character in this. Patton Oswalt is in this film, give him the Lars Pinfield character and give Acaster the Wartzki role as that is only a few minutes of screen time. Kumail Nanjiani is someone that I usually don’t like. I don’t think he’s particularly funny and not very likeable. He wasn't the worst part of ‘The Eternals’ but he didn’t help the cause.  In this he was one of the best parts of the film. The almost deadpan tone that he adopts worked perfectly for his character and this film would really have suffered had he not been cast in the film.

The ultimate problem with Frozen Empire is that it got the nostalgia balance wrong. In Afterlife, it got it right by having new characters but supported by established characters that didn’t take the spotlight from the newbies. This time the newbies get swamped by the original ghostbusters. By the time the plot kicks in we are about two thirds into the movie by which point the whole thing feels a bit underwhelming because we are supposed to root for our heroes against a villain that hasn’t been properly established.  I don’t want to make it sound like Frozen Empire is a bad film because it isn’t and I would rank it above ‘Ghostbusters 2016’.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Having not read the book, I wasn't sure how this film was going to end. I was also not aware that there were more books in the series so whilst I went in thinking this was film two of two, by the end of the 167 minutes it was clear this was part two of ???. This part immediately follows the first one and in between seeing part one and part two I saw the 1984 David Lynch version and so had a rough idea where the plot was heading. 

The response to what I am about to write might be ‘well that’s in the book’ but I thought that Paul because a bit more unlikable as the film progressed and Chani got a bit more sulky as the film reached its conclusion. Admittedly point b was caused by point a but I thought that neither character finished stronger or better than they did at the end of the first one. I still think that Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya absolutely carry this film but their character’s development wasn't as good as it could have been. 

Austin Butler is very good as Feyd-Rautha and I liked the fact that his character was borderline psychotic (or maybe not quite so borderline to someone). His ferociousness was exactly what this second film needed because it didn’t seem like we were going to get it from the Baron or Beast. I thought that Butler did well as Elvis but that was a flawed film and this film showed what he can do and its a lot more than look like the king. I think that Florence Pugh is a really good actor and there is something menacing about the Princess that makes her another effective villain for the film. She works well with Christopher Walken’s Emperor proving that all Emperors in movies are on another level of craziness. 

It would be wrong of me to not mention how beautiful the film looks. I didn’t think it was possible to make a desert look stunning and yet this film manages it over and over again. Denis Villeneuve has always had a way of making things look pretty and normally most people would say that this type of film is style over substance but I think that there is plenty of substance and despite not always understanding what is going on with the different characters. I was never confused or bored and went along with what was happening and that is what makes a great storyteller.

I thought that this was as good as the first one. I will admit I was disappointed not to get the ending that I thought I was going to get but the fact that there are going to be more is not something that I am going to moan about. I like this world that Denis Villeneuve has created and I hope to spend more time in it.