my review posted for my friends on FB:

so. . "Godzilla vs Kong"
no real spoilers, but I will give it two grades:
if you want a "turn your brain off and enjoy film". . solid B+
but if you want, you know, a GOOD film? sorry, it's a C

oh, the special effects are spectacular - A
the fight scenes? amazing - A+
I even liked the major redesign of one character (B)
*but*

the story? D (or possibly D-). Just a mess.
I know, I know, one doesn't really watch an American (or early Japanese) Kaiju film for the storyline, but this one is just eye-rolling bad:
- Too much/many comic relief characters.
- At least one too many annoying "special" kid characters (that's Gamera who's a friend to all children, not Godzilla or Kong).
- Huge military decisions that can apparently be made by a civilian?
- GIGANTIC loss of life, yet really none of it acknowledged or really shown on screen - certainly no human blood.
-- oh, let's not even talk about the evil bad guys. . because they are EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL
I kept waiting for one of them to twirl his mustache. sheesh.


there IS a clear winner, so that made me happy.
and it's a fun popcorn movie with great design and fights - similar to the Independece Day or the 1998 Godzilla film.
and yes, I did enjoy the film.

but is it a "good" film? no.

Agreed. Great fights, and the parts with Kong and the kid were good. But the writing and story were so, so stupid. It's the definition of a guilty pleasure movie because it works as entertainment but fails as a story.

Also agree that the soundtrack sucked. King of the Monsters had such an amazing soundtrack with modern reimaginings of classic songs, but GvK had not a single memorable tune. Why couldn't they reuse any of the music from the previous movie?

I'm always one movie late with these things, but I watched Godzilla: King of the monsters yesterday. 

I liked it! It had a lot of neat stuff, despite the innate incoherence of the genre, the wishy-washy new age messages and the frequent one-two combos delivered to common sense! Who cares about that stuff? We have big monsters duking it out!!!

The ruins of that lost civilization found at the bottom of the ocean looked really good, especially since they were kept in the dark, mostly. They brought me back to a few Lovecraft stories (especially the one in which a submarine or batyscaphe finds itself at the bottom of the ocean, right next to such ruins).

What I really, really want in a Godzilla movie, though, is the classic roar and the original theme, both of which were triumphantly featured when the big guy woke from his nap to kick some Monster Zero a$$. To me, that's always like the final scene of Casino Royale, when Daniel Craig goes "my name is Bond -James Bond" and the 007 theme breaks out for the first time. Fannish Happiness!!!

Back when my kids were little, we'd watch things like Destroy all monsters on VHS and then play act our own big monster battles. I could imagine modern parents doing the same today with this one.

I decided to go to the movies last week if I got off early enough from work one day. I was going to see Napoleon, but over the weekend I heard about Godzilla Minus One. And I decided to go to that.

On Tuesday, things went pretty smooth and I thought I would make it to the movies pretty easy. I was trying to get to a 3:25 show. I was transporting dogs and cats for the rescue. I was a third of the way to the adoption center in Claremont when I got an apologetic text asking if I could come back to the clinic to get a cat that had been added at the last minute and nobody told me.

So I went back and got the cat, drove to Claremont, unloaded the cat and four or five dogs, cleaned the van, and then rushed to the theater. There was construction on Holt in Pomona. It seemed to take forever just to go two blocks. There was a short line for the ticket. There was a short line for the popcorn. (I wasn’t going to watch Godzilla Minus One without popcorn.) And then I went and sat down in the theater and watched about 20 seconds of the last trailer and then the movie started. Whew!

I got a really good feeling just from seeing the Toho logo. And then the actual movie started. I was totally in love with it within about 30 seconds just from the way it looked.

Godzilla X Kong was stupid but fun. The best way I can describe it is like if Final Wars was less stupid, had better special effects, and Don Frye was replaced by Kong.