Godzilla

Although strapped with an exponentially larger budget, director Gareth Edwards gives his Godzilla recharge the same lo-fi Spielbergian treatment as his debut feature film Monsters. In that low-budget 2010 business card, Edwards kept the creatures and their destruction largely out of frame, instead focusing on a squabbling couple wandering through the aftermath. It's an admirable strategy, and a potentially profound one, but it only works if the characters are well-rounded and the story is worth a damn. Unfortunately, Edwards lacks Spielberg's storytelling zest and deep reservoir of humanity, and the execution in both films is humorless and dull. There are moments of spectacle and mystery in Godzilla, and the San Francisco-set “big finish” is impressive, but it takes 90-plus minutes of one-dimensional characters, ancient clichés, and idiotically awestruck gazes (there are more here than in Spielberg's entire oeuvre) to get there. Giant, radioactive lizards deserve better.