Movies
Destruction and mayhem, but sadly not from start to finish. The film has a lot of ground to cover and that gets in the way of the fun parts. The first hour is really too slow for a film like this, it's only when Chicago is getting leveled that it becomes a worthy Kaiju flick. Less talk, more action please.
I haven't seen the first one, but I read this sequel was only tangentially connected. And sure enough, this is easy enough to watch as a stand-alone blockbuster. It's a fairly typical Johnson flick, mixing comedy and adventure with questionable CG. The result isn't anything special, but it's still quite entertaining. Dwayne Johnson is made for films like this, the film is quite self-aware, with the comedy making good use of that and the short runtime turned out to be a blessing. The CG is quite horrendous though and Peyton's suitable-for-all-ages directing sensibilities aren't that great, but other than that, this was decent entertainment.Read all
A cheap and pointless sci-fi vehicle that inexplicably (from a creative point of view at least) puts Jennifer Lopez in the lead. It's a tired old AI-goes-bad tale sporting bland aesthetics and sub-blockbuster CGI and makes things worse by saddling up the audience with a whiney old woman. Lopez' character is annoying (because she hates AI and ends up teaming up with an AI machine), the story doesn't have much interesting to say (except for the semi-hopeful ending maybe) and the sci-fi aesthetic isn't very interesting. A lot more could've been done with this film.Read all
