Godzilla

Sixty years after his debut screen appearance, Godzilla is back on our screens in his second American guise. For anyone who remembers the 1998 Roland Emmerich version, this news may legitimately cause trepidation. My interest in the picture came about when I heard that the new film was to be directed by second time director Gareth Edwards. For nearly half a decade since Edwards’ first film, I’ve been telling anyone I can get my hands on to watch his film Monsters. That movie was outstanding; an ultra low budget monster-thinker which Edwards wrote, directed, shot and edited himself besides doing all of the FX work in his bedroom. In comparison to that movie, Godzilla is a let down.

Things start well with an interesting and attractive titles sequence which gives a slight spin on the traditional Godzilla back story. The film postulates that the atomic tests of the 1950s were in fact not tests at all but an elaborate attempt to destroy the gigantic titular beast. Fast forward several decades and we find Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) hard at work as the supervisor of a Japanese Nuclear Power Plant. Brody is concerned by strange seismic patterns which are unlike any earthquake he’s seen before. In fact he’s convinced there are no earthquakes at all.

Anna Karenina

Director Joe Wright’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 novel Anna Karenina is one of the most visually stunning and artistically bold films I’ve seen in quite some time. Wright places most of his plot within the confines of a dilapidated theatre and has his actors make use of the stage, stalls and behind the scenes areas when forming the sets of late Tsarist Saint Petersburg. Actors will walk from one part of the theatre to another with sets and costumes changing around them, all with the hustle and bustle of both a real theatre and lively city. It’s a stylistic decision which was probably met with scepticism by studio bosses and the like but works incredibly well to bring to life the characters which themselves are so wonderfully written by Tolstoy.

Anna Karenina (Keira Knightly) is married with a son to senior statesman and a man who is greatly admired and respected in society, Count Alexei Karenin (Jude Law). Their marriage is typical of the society in which they live in that it was not for love and he is much older than she is. On a trip to visit her brother Prince Stepan (Matthew Macfadyen) in Moscow she attracts the attention of a young, rich and handsome cavalry officer called Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). After an infatuation the two fall madly in love but in a closely nit society in which infidelity is ‘against the rules’, Anna must decide which is more important? Her standing, child and image or true love.