DVD OF THE WEEK
In a movie full of horribly realistic FX – a tsunami tossing people around like salad leaves, a stream of electric-blue atomic vomit issuing from the anti-hero’s mouth – there’s no doubt about Godzilla’s most terrifying sight. That’d be the beige bird’s nest standing in for Breaking Bad baldy Bryan Cranston’s barnet.
Cranston plays a boffin working with his wife (Juliette Binoche) at a Japanese nuclear plant that is attacked and trashed by who knows what? All right, we know full well who’s done the deed, but director Gareth Edwards is to be congratulated for not entirely setting out his stall upfront.
What little suspense his picture has resides in its teasing us about quite how gruesome Godzilla looks. Otherwise, this is a standardissue movie – all rumbles and thuds and judders – whose only claim to uniqueness is contriving to waste quite so many A-grade stars.
As well as Cranston and Binoche, actors as fine as Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn and Elizabeth Olsen are obliged to stand there and mouth such boiler-plate phrases as ‘bioacoustics’, ‘radiation levels catalysing’ and ‘Hey guys, you gotta see this.’ No you don’t.
For a genuine FX treat try Filmed In Supermarionation, an overlong but fond tribute to Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and other TV masterpieces created by Gerry Anderson.
Fascinating facts abound; my favourites being that Nicholas Parsons was the voice of Tex Tucker in the early series Four Feather Falls and that, yes, that air-convector on the wall of Thunderbird 1’s launch-pad really is a lemon-squeezer.
Dumb thriller of the week is Grand Piano, in which keyboard ace Elijah Wood is midway through a recital when a sniper draws a bead on him and threatens instant death should he play a wrong note.
If that sounds a bit like Hitchcock’s The Man Who
Knew Too Much, then don’t be fooled. Eugenio Mira’s movie is slower than a Bruckner symphony. Only John Cusack, who literally dials in his performance as the gun-toting crazy, escapes with something like his reputation.