Godzilla (2014)

Let 1998’s “Godzilla” stay dead. Jump 16 years and add director Gareth Edwards (“Monsters”) and the King of the Monsters is back in “A” shape. From the conspiracy-churning opening credits, this “Godzilla” sets a dark path while looking back to the Japanese original and riffing strong on Spielberg: Watch for “Jaws” and “Close Encounters” homages. Edwards proves he’s not joking with an upfront scene that left me awed with anticipation. Bryan Cranston is a scientist convinced a disaster years prior was not natural, yet no one believes him, least of all his soldier son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). A visit to a fallen nuclear plant proves Cranston right as a beast -- not Godzilla -- emerges. The lizard king soon surfaces. And he’s a rare CGI thrill. Yes, we get the ordinary, plucky staple of disaster-movie heroes, and some great actors get lost (sorry, Sally Hawkins), but the city-crushing monster fights and ways Edwards keeps us trapped just out of view of his beasts is a marvel. The serious tone recalls those so-called “B”-grade originals were grimly paranoid, despite the models and zippers. In a superhero top-heavy summer, it’s cool to see a classic wisely reborn, breathing fire and roaring loud. A-

The Blob (1958)

Steve McQueen is the world’s oldest teenager in “The Blob,” the corny, campy horror classic that opens with the funniest, catchiest theme song that I can recall. “Beware of The Blob, it creeps/ And leaps and glides and slides/ Across the floor/ Right through the door.” It’s a laugh riot. The movie is too, right from the start with McQueen playing 17 (!) calling a first-date gal named Jane (Aneta Corsaut) as “Jenny,” and getting away with it because he’s Steve Freakin’ McQueen. Anyway, meteor hits, a blob pops out, eats an old guy’s arm, and it’s on  -- laughs, goofy special effects, and punk teen kids saving the world when the cops won’t listen. Classic scene: The cinema! What’s hard as hell to take is the sexism: Every woman and girl is a helpless twit prone to hysterics and less brave than the 7-year-old brat in PJs prone to carrying around his teddy. Actually that’s the gist of the film: Those nightmare fantasies kids have about monsters coming true and no adult will believe them real. So honk the horns, and hold those ladies’ hands tight. B

Sharknado and Pacific Rim (both 2013)

“Sharknado” and “Pacific Rim.” Two films, two end-of-world disasters. One winner, but not who you or I expect.

There’s a scene at the end of craptastic cheap-o SyFy Channel flick “Sharknado” that drops the mike on “Pacific Rim,” a $200 million summer CGI flick from writer/director Guillermo del Toro. Facing raining sharks, heroic bar owner Ian Ziering (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) grabs a chainsaw (!) and leaps into the mouth (!!!) of a shark as it jumps him (!!!!). He then slices his way out of the beast, dragging with him his blood-soaked barmistresses, who was swallowed hole and mid-air by the same shark moments before. Brilliant! 

That gem of Fuck It! lunacy comes after a god-awful film that’s a high mark of guilty-pleasure joy. (Alternating between pain and hilarity: Watching Tara Reid “act,” girl cannot stand still without appearing as if the act is taxing her I.Q.) 

Shot and edited seemingly on the fly by director Anthony Ferrante, “Sharknado” makes you think, “Why hasn’t anyone done this before?” No wonder this $2 million flick jumped to theaters. This is a film to watch with an audience, preferably drunk. Take a shot every time the light mismatches. (You'll be under the table before 10 minutes are done.)

“Rim” has been dubbed “original” by critics, an odd gesture as the entire premise of giant robots fighting giant dino-monsters has been the fodder of afternoon playtime by millions of 10-year-old boys. Roar!  Punch! Crash! Is there more? No. Every character is “one-note,” from Grieving Action Hero to Angry Australian and Tough Boss. Dull. Among the cast is Idris Elba,a great Brit actor who cannot decide on an accent, his native Brit, or some bad put-on American accent. Mind you, I would never complain to his face.

But this is not about people, only the spectacle of massive Iron Men trash beating Jurassic Park monsters from another dimension. The kick in the face, though: Every battle takes places at night in the rain, or under water in the dark, rendering details blurry. The heart of the 10-year-old inside me sunk. 

Still, a few scenes rule: A baby monster goes after a character in a jump, pause, jump scene that is an absolute howl. Buildings get knocked around, whole ships get used as bats, and -- in a scene that plays like a bunch of kids making up the rules as they go along -- a hero robot pulls out a magic sword to render an opponent asunder. That is not a hidden message, I mean a magic sword is pulled out of no where. The laughter is intended, yes? I hope.

It’s not all a loss. Del Toro, who made child-horror classic “Pan’s Labyrinth,” one of the best films of young century, has great fun with a plot involving two mad scientists –- one a mathematician (Burn Gorman) with the voice of Ludwig Von Drake, and the other a fan boy biologist (Charlie Day) with the personality of Louis Tully from “Ghostbusters.” The duo is joined by Ron “Hellboy” Perlman as a trader of monster flesh who meets a fate crazily similar to that of Ziering in “Sharknado.” But, post credits, he only has a wussy switchblade to freedom. Against a chainsaw, that will not do. Not for del Toro.

Sharknado:  B+ / Pacific Rim: B-

Hotel Transylvania (2012)

Sony Animation’s CGI farce “Hotel Transylvania” is light on plot and heavily features crap Auto-Tune music at the end that ought to make any sane person’s soul flinch, but its love for all tall tales of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Wolfman are infectious. It also helps that the film is marvelous looking, with every corner of the screen filled with fantastical, horrifying, and hilarious pop-art bright creatures. 

The story: Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) tries all in his power to keep his 118-year-old (teen years for a vampire) daughter safe in his castle, away from harm. The castle doubles as a hotel, a monster’s reprieve from the outside world of scary humans. Shocker, then, when a college-aged kid on a backpack adventure stumbles into the place and catches the daughter’s (Selena Gomez) eye. What’s a count to do? This is PG, so killing is moot. 

The alternatives fill up the story, which runs dry. But I was busy eyeing how characters move, bounce off each other, and fall apart in the case of Frankenstein. B

Prometheus (2012)

The must re-watch shocking, amazing, perplexing, fascinating film of the summer, maybe the year. “Prometheus” is not exactly an “Alien” prequel, but a smarter, darker great-grandparent to such a prequel, fueled with curiosity of beginnings and origins, but not just of the classic 1979 sci-fi horror film that set off a new genre and exploded my young mind, but where all life began. The questions and the answers here, as in life, vex more than soothe and settle, and I’d settle for nothing less. Weeks out, I still obsess about this entry.

“Alien” – for all its glorious cinematic blood and guts, big hidden ideas and woman as warrior hero/savior of a kitty, was sort of like “Jaws in Space,” a monster film. A  brilliant one, no less. With exploding-from-the-inside chests and a real Paranoid Android, thank you, Thom Yorke. I love that film, endlessly. This is far deeper, and comes from not just the mind of original director Ridley Scott, but co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof, the man behind the question-baiting, answer-withholding enigma-within-a-puzzle “Lost,” an absolute favorite TV show, and I don’t watch much TV shows.

All this in a summer flick, I love it. I digress. 

To the film: Despite the million bitch-and-moan reviews you see everywhere, those pointing out scenes don’t match up, we’re not even on the same planet -- LV-426 -- that Ripley et al landed on in our 1979, the movie’s 2122. Instead, here, much of the action takes place in the year 2093, on a moon dubbed LV-223, and believed to be the exact spot of the creation of humankind, all the universe, or so a series of ancient cave paintings tell two scientists, one a Christian named Shaw (Noomi Rapace of the European “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy) and the other an agnostic hard-ass named Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green of “Devil”). The two brains become the center of a $1 trillion, multi-year mission to find the planet, and meet our makers, God, or –- so dubbed here –- The Engineers. (Go engineers!)

Yes, things go bad soon after touchdown and a non-human, but definitely hand-built massive structure, is explored, and bodies are ripped apart, stomachs opened, and -– in one nasty scene -– a worm crawls out of a person’s eyeball. (I refuse to give any spoilers, so I’m being as vague as possible here, but think this: Worst science class field trip ever.) But this isn’t a B-horror movie, it’s Scott’s bid to give us a pre-telling of not just “Alien,” but possibly “2001: A Space Odyssey,” every great science fiction film ever made, including “Blade Runner,” and our own lives. Connections to the 1979 flick are ... on your own to figure out, off screen, before or after this action.

“Alien” is just one child of this movie, this story, this Father. So many more films are wide open to explore, even those closer to home than anything in the films we all know and love, save Parts 3 and 4, and anything with “Predator” in the title. To wit: Dig the opening scene in which a massive, ivory-colored being drinks a strange, harsh potion atop a massive waterfall, and immediately starts to literally crumble. From the inside out. A disc, flat then tall, hovers above. He falls, splashes dead into the water, and his decaying cells are reborn in the water into new live, and we can flash guess from the next jump to Scotland, we just saw the birth of humans on Earth. All us.

In a summer flick. (Have I mentioned that before? Call me smitten.)

It’s not a perfect film, too many of the scientists, engineers, doctors and brainiacs aboard the ship must act foolish in order to meet their end, and a late-in-the-game self-surgery procedure (the film’s biggest talk-about-it scene that will live on infamy and YouTube clips for decades) would lay a person flat for a week, but the wildly resilient character bounces back far too quickly. (Note: The person ingests and injects enough drugs to kill every member of Guns N’ Roses, so the script leaves wiggle room on that point. Almost.) 

But damn the nitpicks, I loved it all, from the sound design, the vast sets of the human space craft (the ironic title of the film is its name) to the caverns of the alien temples and spacecraft, and Michael Fassbender’s David, an android with no outward feelings or emotion, but all too aware that as his creators -– mankind -- are all capable of being flawed, hopeless, hopeful, beautiful, addictive, messy, psychotic, murderous, and kind, why cannot man’s Creator also be that. Scott even plays off of Fassbender’s godly good-looks and stranger-among-strangers post as David obsessively watches and mimics Peter O’Toole’s performance in “Lawrence of Arabia.” Even the 3D version rocks, including the surgery scene, and the eyeball, quite effective. Also, will someone please nominate Fassbender for an Oscar already, the man from “Shame" near owns this epic tale.

This “prequel’ is no “Thing 2011” rehash -– that’s the worst this film could be –- Scott is shooting for the heavens, the stars, and beyond, and that’s something to celebrate during a summer of caped hero movies and Adam Sandler comedies. Let the uncut, full, master version of Scott’s vision come quick. God may be in the details. Imperfections and all, this is my kind of summer flick. Bravo to all. A  

Monsters (2010)

A man and woman are trekking through a massive swath of Mexican jungle, dodging ungodly large alien creatures that have killed scores of other people. Their destination: The fortress wall that divides Mexico and the United States. This is the premise of “Monsters, ” a stellar film made for less than $500,000 that again proves in sci-fi that less can mean more, especially when you have compelling characters, a strong plot and moody editing that reveals the scares bit-by-bit. Independent filmmaker Gareth Edwards directed, wrote, filmed and produced this great, smart flick with shoot-and-run photography and a desktop PC. For that feat alone, I love this film. Throw $150 million at this film’s premise and we’d have lots of fleshy CGI. No bone. This has bone, and character. The split-second Mobius strip ending is a kick to the head that almost demands an instant re-watch. Scoot McNairy and Whitney Ableare are the leads. Tense. Brilliant. Paced out as is the best of true sci-fi treats. A-