the audience applauded

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Wow. That's all, just wow. This is one of Toho's best Godzilla films. GMK is action-packed, exhilarating, and their are a few cheesy moments to give you a chuckle. Godzilla looks awesome in this film. His white eyes give you one of the more menacing looks of the monster. The action scenes are great as G-Man faces Mothra, King Ghidorah, and another monster that for some reason wasn't used in the title, but I don't really want to spoil anything if you haven't seen the movie. The effects are fairly spectacular, and the actors really do do a good job...I think, I mean I really can't tell because I'm not from Asia.Anyway, this is one of my favorite Godzilla films. You won't be disappointed seeing this film. I LOVE IT!

Godzilla movies are a lot of things. As someone that grew up on the franchise, I can admit that character development, special effects, and cohesive plots aren't naturally among the list. But this Godzilla movie is very watchable, even if you're with a pal that isn't much into giant monster movies (and certainly isn't into something like the Showa series of Godzilla flicks). Toho didn't get the Millennium series of G films off to a good start. Godzilla 2000 had some annoying pacing issues and a dry basic plot. The second movie, Godzilla vs Megaguirus, was again a bit slowly paced. But they really must've gone to work with GMK, because this one came out much better.First, the standard movie business. We see some great special effects work here, with few flaws. The characters still don't connect that much to the audience, but they are more than tolerable; I found myself more into the military characters' scenes rather than the main character and her BS Digital colleagues interestingly enough. But again, you won't leave the movie thinking the characters were bad. The music is awesome and sounds both menacing and mythical, which is important for the film's premise. The film is overall devoid of pacing issues.So what about the monsters? Godzilla looks fantastic, especially with those dead white eyes. His atomic heat ray also looks appropriately special. Some viewers have commented that it looks like he has a bit of a pot belly, but I don't think it detracts from any of his scenes. Baragon looks good, and he is only presented to be a tooth-and-claw kaiju (a monster without any special powers like Godzilla's atomic ray); back in the Showa this was not the case. Mothra looks better here than any other appearance I've seen her in. Even the following appearances in Godzilla: Tokyo SOS and Godzilla: Final Wars don't have a Mothra that looks this good and moves around this well. Her character as a guardian monster hero also is very fitting. King Ghidorah, though, is probably the weak point among the monsters. In terms of quality and detail, make no mistake, KG looks great. But to someone who's seen King Ghidorah (or other Ghidorahs) before, this one seems a little small and weak. He constantly needed this boosts, first to fly and then to fire his electric bolts. The biggest problem I have is the fact that he's portrayed as a hero monster here. King Ghidorah? Hero? What? That was a mistake in my opinion, but I've grown to care less as the years pile on.A great giant monster movie, I give this a very solid 8/10, beaten in raw numbers by only one other Godzilla movie (because nothing with be as iconic, serious, or game changing as the 1954 original).

This is the first Godzilla movie directed by Shusuke Kaneko, and special effects director Shinji Higuchi (uncredited) of the '90s Gamera fame. All I can say after seeing this movie is "What happened ?". None of the greatness of Gamera movies are seen in this one, especially the special effects. Is this what company politics does to a movie ? If so, Toho management should all resign at once. The late president of Daiei, Yasuyoshi Tokuma who produced the Gamera series, and has been producing Hayao Miyazaki's animation movies for 30 years showed steady improvements in the movies he's produced. Toho's movies are off again on again affairs with qualities varying by quite a margin between each production. Doesn't this say volumes about the management of each company ? I've heard that in Kaneko's original plot, the monsters were Baran, and Angilas. Not Mothra and King Gidorah. Director Shusuke Kaneko was then asked to change the monsters to these more popular ones. I think with Baran and Angilas, the movie would have had a more sober feel to it and would have enhanced the story.I'd like to see Kaneko - Higuchi combination make another stab at making movies perhaps with Hollywood backing. Any Hollywood producers be interested in such a project ?

The "Gozilla" movie series has gotten a bad reputation over the years as overlong toy commercials for undiscriminating children and nerds with no standards. Well, the next time someone knocks the Godzilla movies, you should show them this entry.This is the way Godzilla himself was meant to be. Not a giant superhero like in the movies from the sixties and seventies. Not some big animal just trying to make it in the world like in the nineties series. The Godzilla depicted here is all powerful, pure evil, and nigh-unstoppable, the just way he was in 1954.The thing most people don't realize is that the more serious a giant monster movie is, the better. And Shusuke Kaneko takes his monsters seriously, as anyone who's seen the 90s "Gamera" movies will tell you.Unlike most of the series where cities were destroyed yet casualties were barely (if ever) mentioned or shown (you'd see people running away or standing around watching, but hardly ever killed), when a city gets destroyed in this movie, a lot people die and we see it. We see the people in the buildings just before they topple or are crushed. We see the people running and screaming just before they're vaporized by Godzilla's beam. We see the soldiers fighting Godzilla die instead of him just frying seemingly unmanned toy jets and tanks. In an early scene where, a woman gets pounded when all the pots and pans in her kitchen fall from the walls and shelf just because of Godzilla's footsteps.The "Godzilla verses other monster(s)" action is at some of it's all time best here. No Saturday morning style, over the top, highly unbelievable fights here. Baragon, Mothra, and King Ghidorah fight Godzilla with their claws, jaws, and a few simple abilities (Baragon's burrowing, Mothra's stingers, Ghidorah's electric bite) instead of everyone firing beams at each other with little or no effect and using silly wrestling moves.The monsters themselves come off particularly effective this time around. Godzilla is very fearsome and looks the more like a dinosaur than ever, using his mouth ray as the ultimate weapon. Mothra gets new hornet-like look that makes her(?) much more intimidating. Baragon gets some great moments, mainly because he was barely used in the older movies. He makes surprisingly good use of his meager burrowing ability and puts up a good fight for a little guy. One wishes that Kaneko had been allowed to use Angilas and Varan like he wanted to before Toho made him use Mothra and Ghidorah just because they're more popular and would attract a bigger audience.Ghidorah, sadly, doesn't fare so well. While the idea of Godzilla's mortal enemy playing the hero is kind of fitting, there's something about his new look that doesn't stick. He's much shorter, has somewhat dog like faces, his wings are droopy and almost useless until he powers up near the end, with his mouth beams are sadly absent until said power up.The humans characters are the best here since the first Godzilla movie. For once you actually care about these people instead of wishing they'd hurry up and go away. The humans here act like actual people with actual concerns instead of the usual gang of annoying, unlikable idiots and whiners with lame personalities and motivations.The plot has a lot to do with spiritual energy and mysticism, but Kaneko makes it work surprisingly well, which is a nice change of pace from all that junk about aliens, weird mutations and high tech science mumbo jumbo that doesn't make much sense that the Toho writers like to fall back on.A lot of people were initially disappointed with it for some reason. Something about "hurried pace and not enough development". But in future years, when compared to lesser entries of the Godzilla series, this will probably be considered the second best Godzilla movie, after the first one of course.