#32 GODZILLA

#32 GODZILLA

Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe and Juliette Bionche

Directed by Gareth Edwards

123 minutes short.

Still find it hard to talk, still unbelievably emotional, still quite dazzled.

I love Godzilla, have always loved Godzilla, even the name seemed to evoke something mighty, something powerful. For many years, all I knew about him was pictures I'd seen in books, then I saw my first Godzilla film one afternoon and was hooked. Later, Channel Four ran a season and finally in 1985 when i was 21 I saw Godzilla 1985 and my love affair with the giant scaly beast was sealed forever. Since then, I've watched and collected all the films, brought comics and books about him and even drawn comic strips about him, infact, my most recent cartoon character was based on him, Gordon-Zilla it's about a stunt-man stuck in a Godzilla suit.

Back in the 90's I suffered as did so many of us through the dreadful Hollywood film Godzilla and a little part of me died, how was it, I thought, that Toho could get it so right so often, but Hollywood couldn't? I resigned myself to the fact I'd never see another US version of the Big G and just continued to enjoy Toho's fantastic series. Then last year, I heard a horrible rumour that the man who made the frankly boring and plodding Monsters, Gareth Edwards was going to direct a new Hollywood version and I was sorely vexed and alarmed. The sad thing is that in this day and age, so many summer blockbusters disappoint, hugely. For every Captain America: The Winter Solider we get a Amazing Spider Man 2, and that was at least better than the likes of Battleshits, Trannie-formers, Star Bleck into Shit, Oz, Man of Steel, etc, etc and I knew that once again all we'd get was a huge empty spectacle filled with cgi monsters destroying cities and nothing else.

Not so Godzilla 2014.

Quite simply, this is the best Godzilla film ever made and i mean even better than the likes of Godzilla 1985, Godzilla vs Space Destroyah and even Destroy all Monsters, or any one of the supremely glorious other Godzilla films to which this owes a huge debt, because without those seminal, ground-breaking films of the great Japanese studio Toho, we wouldn't have, quite simply the best summer film of the year so far.

This is a film of true scope and impact, a film that builds slowly developing a story and ratching up the tension, not revealing the hero of this film until well beyond the 40 minute point.

From then on it's a fantastic battle that is always seen from the POV of the tiny human survivors of these walking natural disasters.

For once the CGI works superbly and despite the fact it's not a man in a rubber suit (sadly) this Godzilla still lumbers as if he is. The effects are perfect and the whole film was a fantastic and exhausting experience, one that not only I but the whole family loved.

I thought last year's Pacific Rim was pretty spectacular but this just took it to a whole new level.

I absolutely loved every single second of this wonderful, wonderful film and never felt even remotely cheated, in fact I left wanting more but at the same time utterly satisfied.

I cannot wait to see this film again and again, it's a film that deserves, nay screams to be seen on the biggest screen possible and the IMAX was perfection personified.

Sorry, cannot fault this film.

10/10.