I love Godzilla, I always have, and while there are some Godzilla films are a bit different from others (which is a good thing), this one just seemed too out of the park for me. Godzilla is simply put, Godzilla. He is a living, breathing creature. This film made it more like this was some kind of Zombie Godzilla and I just wasn't a huge fan. I mean the first time you see him, he looks like a goofy Moray Eel that is walking down, or rather dragging himself through Tokyo. Even when Godzilla finally replenishes and is back to full health, he still does not look like Godzilla. This film doesn't seem to be very serious in the fact that its more of a parody, but it won't be clear right away to the viewer. It's kind of a let down for me, but I can see where people like spicing it up a bit.

I won't do much to describe the plot, but this movie does the monster genre justice.A creepy monster, unexpected turns and a wonderful soundtrack all compliment this movie. So many talented individuals went to work on this movie and it shows. Any monster fan should get a kick from the new real installment from Toho.

SHIN GODZILLA, we're told, (now) translates as "god incarnate." Uh-huh. Too bad we don't get to see enough of this new (shin) "god incarnate" in action to judge for ourselves... Like the lousy ameriKan version of just a couple of years ago, this entry boasts some great but all too brief scenes of destruction; this version also unfortunately bogs down like said ameriKan version in the minutia of government and military behind-the-scenes "readiness." There are at least five minutes of good action in this two-hour debacle. The rest, as they say, is for the f---ing birds...

A sign of the times, there is no longer a man in a rubber suit . This iteration of everyone's favorite kaiju is all CGI. In the past, Godzilla has been a metaphor American militarism, environmental catastrophism, GM-Oblivion, Japanese war-guilt, etc., and now, in a very political "Shin Godzilla", he appears to have been recruited as an endlessly adapting existential threat designed to deride a stultified, stratified, inefficient, and timid bureaucracy. The movie is long on governmental procrastinating, hand-wringing, and buck-passing, and short on monster mayhem, but all-in-all, it's an interesting addition to the canon. Briefly, a somewhat embryonic (but still immense) bug-eyed, proto-Godzilla drags itself out of the water and levels part of Tokyo before metamorphosing into a bipedal form that flattens more of the city before returning to the bay. Eventually a colossal 'mature' morph emerges from the bay and returns to continue obliterating Tokyo. Not-surprisingly, man-kind's puny weapons have little effect on the monster, who has now 'evolved' highly efficient defense mechanisms that make short work of the sacrificial planes and tanks sent to torment it. After much pseudo-scientific discussion, freezing him with anti-coagulants (?!) is proposed and the race against the clock begins: if the locals can't stop the monster, the Americans intend, for a third time, to rain nuclear fire down upon Japan. The movie pays homage to the original: - the CGI monster still 'could' have a man inside (unlike Emmerich's much maligned 1998 version), the classic roar is heard, and effective use is made of Akira Ifukube's iconic score from the 1954 original. Not a film for everyone - probably not even for all Godzilla fans - but (IMO) a worthy addition to the long running and constantly evolving series (this is film number 31 not counting Merv Newland's 1969 "Bambi Meets Godzilla"). note: watched in Japanese with English sub-titles