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78Is it classic cinema? Perhaps not, but then again, American shores and citizens have never been lacerated by atomic weapons. What do we know?
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88A definitive, low-tech stomping of every sci-fi clone that has sprung up in the original's wake.
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80It's a fascinating cultural artifact and a stomping good time.
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38Regaled for 50 years by the stupendous idiocy of the American version of Godzilla, audiences can now see the original Japanese version, which is equally idiotic.
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100Not that Honda's original Godzilla is a message movie first and foremost. It's a horror flick, and an ingenious one at that, with visual effects so vivid that gimmicky spin-offs became an enduring staple of popular film.
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90The original retains its dark tone and deadly serious anti-war message. For today's moviegoing audiences, this may not be your daddy's Godzilla movie, but chances are your granddaddy could teach you a thing or two about the context.
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91Godzilla is still the most awesome of tacky movie monsters.
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50While the Raymond Burr sequences and the subsequent clumsy English dubbing of the remaining Japanese footage made the U.S. version an unintentionally funny movie, the complete Japanese version is an unfunny bore.
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90Can now be appreciated not just as a minor classic of tragic destruction, but also as a somber exploration of conflicted postwar emotions.
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75The monster's mashing of Tokyo looks as Ed Wood-like as ever, but the film's humanity gives it depth.
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75Half a century after its release, Godzilla couldn't be more current.
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91In the annals of monster movies, one name stands above all the rest, way above: Godzilla.
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63The arrival of the uncut Godzilla is a great boon to monster movie fans, but will have limited appeal to others.
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75A new restoration takes a flawed bit of monster camp and turns it back into a strong, serious-minded and occasionally moving science-fiction film.
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75The new black-and-white print is gorgeous, the film plays well in this broader key and it sets the historical record straight.
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80Gojira is no masterpiece, but it has the power of a masterpiece: It's the most emotionally authentic fake monster movie ever made.
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80Why it works is anyone's guess. It's fair to argue--and the film makes this argument itself, with no great subtlety--that Godzilla embodies Japan's nuclear anxieties in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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80As crass as it is visionary, Godzilla belongs with--and might well trump--the art films "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Dr. Strangelove" as a daring attempt to fashion a terrible poetry from the mind-melting horror of atomic warfare.
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80The images are crisp. The story is restored. And there's no sign of Raymond Burr.
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80Its images of the destruction of the cities is far more powerful than in American films, where the cities are trashed for the pure pleasure of destruction, without any real sense of human loss.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 9
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Mixed: 0 out of 9
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Negative: 0 out of 9
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ChadeW.10
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Sam10