Review - Godzilla

Run for your lives! After over a decade of dormancy, one of the most literally gigantic figures in cinema history has reemerged from the depths of the development ocean to wreak havoc in movie houses the world over! That said, Godzilla is far more likely to draw people in than to send them screaming from the theatre, delivering as it does on the promise of an immediately enjoyable summer blockbuster... albeit one that, unlike the atomic beastie on the marquee, has a fairly short radioactive half-life.

Anyone who's even vaguely familiar with the films of Toho (the Japanese studio that spawned the daikaiju subgenre) should already understand why Godzilla really is the great great granddaddy of movie monsters. It's survived everything from nuclear bombs to Roland Emmerich bombs, and has persevered through decades of incarnations in its native Japan to become an unmistakable cross-cultural icon. Indeed, so distinctive is the look and sound of this 50-story killer lizard, that it's the most internationally recognizable star in the film's impressive cast, which includes the likes of Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Elizabeth Olsen, and David Strathairn.

My Award nominations: Supporting Actor

No clear frontrunner for me in this category this year. I'm not yet sure which of these five Supporting Actors I'll choose as the year's best:

Review - Lincoln

In a fashion uncharacteristic of his famously dazzling aesthetic, Steven Spielberg has produced one of the finest films of his career in Lincoln; a densely worded but deftly handled political drama that illuminates the man behind the myth as he fought to enact the 13^th amendment.

In the waning days the American Civil War, the two-term president (Daniel Day-Lewis) stares down the horns of a dilemma as put to him by his Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn): Either he can entertain negotiations from Confederate delegates to bring about an end to the conflict now in its fourth year, or he can push for the abolition of slavery, dangling it as a carrot before the divided House of Representatives as a quicker alternative to peace. Opting for the latter, “Honest” Abe is forced into some decidedly manipulative politicking. As behind-the-scenes history plays out, we see how freedom for the slaves was not so much won on the floors of Congress as it was craftily massaged into being from the smoky drawing rooms of Washington.