GODZILLA (2014) (4K UltraHD Review)

GODZILLA (2014)

Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Region Code: Region-Free/A

Duration: 123 Minutes

Rating: Rated PG-13

Audio: English Dolby Atmos, English Dolby TrueHD, English DTS-HD MA 7.1 with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 2160p UHD, 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1) 

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston

I remember watching director Gareth Edward's sci-fi alien creature-feature Monsters (2010) and thinking to myself, "now this is the sort of guy that should be making Godzilla movies", and sure enough I was not alone in that thinking, and his next film turned out to be the relaunch of Godzilla (2014)!

The movie opens with Dr. Ishirō Serizawa (Ken Watanabe, Batman Begins), a scientist for the secretive government agency Project Monarch, who discovers the giant fossilized skeleton of a kaiju creature that resebles Godzilla in the collapsed cavern of a uranium mine, alongside two enormous egg sacs, one hatched, one still dormant. A short time later Joe (Bryan Cranston, Malcolm in the Middle), the lead engineer at the Janjira nuclear plant in Japan is investigating strange seismic activity, his wife Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche, The English Patient) is a nuclear safety  consultant at the same facility. Mrs. Brody finds herself deep in the bowels of the plant investigating the structural integrity of the reactor during the tremors, and as the seismic activity increases the nuclear reactor containment wall is breached,  resulting in Joe having to close the reactor containment doors before his wife can escape, saving untold numbers but dooming her. 

Fifteen years later Joe is still living in Janjira where he lives the live of a conspiracy hermit, now estranged from his  adult son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kick-Ass), who is a a member of the US Navy as a  Lieutenant of Explosive Ordnance Disposal. He is now living in San Francisco,  married to Elle (Elizabeth Olsen, WandaVision), with whom he has a five year old son. When he gets a call from the authorities in Japan that his father has been arrested for trespassing into the Janjira's quarantine zone around the former reactor he reluctantly flies to Japan to bail his father out.

Reunited with his dad Ford grows tired of his father's conspiracies, convinced that the meltdown at the reactor fifteen year earlier was cover-up, that the government is hiding something, and hiding something big, and of course he is right! Joe convinces his son to accompany him into the forbidden zone, to revisit their former home to recover some files he needs for his research, where they discover that zone is uncontaminated, and end up at a MONARCH headquarter, where the truth is revealed.  

I like the set-up of the film, how they slowly introduce 

Godzilla with vintage 8mm footage of him being nuked at Bikini Atoll, it's a cool teaser. His kaiju foe in this first entry is dubbed a M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism), a winged Lovecraftian-looking red-eyed, winged creature, that to be honest the first time I saw it in theaters I did not care for. Now I like quite a bit, but I found the unnatural angular design a bit off-putting. I thought the non-revolutionary update of Godzilla perfect, a bit of the new, a lot of the old Toho design, and thankfully not over-redesigned as Godzilla (1998). For the record I do not loathe that '98 film as some do, it's a cool popcorn muncher, but it did not look and/or feel like a Godzilla flick, and that's okay, it's still silly, overstuffed, big-monster flick escapism.  

The kaiju battles we see on screen here are awesome, the action set pieces are epic and breathtaking, with the stomp-Toyko type action in San Francisco pleasing me quite a bit. The movie looks great, and the ratio of big monster action to on-the-ground human drama is well balanced, though I was a bit disappointed that both Cranston and Binoche exit stage left rather early. 

Audio/Video: Godzilla (2014) arrives on 4K UHD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in 2160p UHD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. Shot on digital and sourced from a 2K D.I. the image is upsampled in 4K  with HDR10 color-grading, the result are terrific. The previous Blu-ray was overly dark in spots that obscured the big-screen kaiju action, and while this is still a dark movie the HDR10 greatly improves contrast and the richness and subtlety of the black levels. There's also a slight uptick in detail over the Blu-ray, the textures of the MUTOS and Godzilla looks superior, as do clothing textures. The colors, while inherently muted by design does get a proper primary-pop due to the HDR10 color-grading. 

Audio comes way of English Dolby Atmos or Dolby True HD with optional English subtitles. Not surprisingly the Atmos upgrade is a real shack-shaker, the soundstage is absolutely immersive with some terrific use of the surrounds and height channels to create a bombastic, muscular and bass-filled experience befitting of kaiju creature-feature. The clicking noise of the Mutos, Godzilla's deafening roar, and the ringing of artillery and gunfire are ear-piercing, and the score from composer Alexandre Desplat (Moonrise Kingdom) sounds terrific. 

Onto the extras we get nothing new, which is not unexpected, but still a bit disappointing. All the extras are exclusive to the Blu-ray, which is actually the excat same disc as the 2014 Blu-ray release from WBHE. These include an hours worth of in-character extras that look as if they are classified videos produced by MONARCH itself, which I do love quite a bit. We also get some cool behind-the-scenes featurettes, animatics, conceptual designs, and some solid interviews with the cast and crew that gets into the herculean task of relaunching the franchise and the massive amount of work that went into it. There is also a digital code for a Movies Anywhere/VUDU 4K copy of the film, that includes the extras.

The 2-disc Blu-ray/UHD combo arrives in a black Viva Elite eco-keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork that look to be a new illustration. To my eyes it looks to be taking a cue from the original Godzilla mixed with elements of Katsushika Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa painting. It has a cool retro vibe, the same artwork is mirrored on the metallic finish slipcover. The Blu-ray disc inside is the same 2014 Blu-ray with lettering on a black background, the UHD disc has a cool silver and grey image that's sort of translucent, nothing too special. 

Special Features:
- MONARCH: Declassified - Discover explosive new evidence not contained in the film that unravels the massive cover-up to keep Godzilla’s existence a secret. (7 min) HD 
- Operation: Lucky Dragon (3 min) HD 
- MONARCH: The M.U.T.O. File (4 min) 
- The Godzilla Revelation (7 min) 
- Godzilla: Force of Nature (19 min) HD 
- A Whole New Level Of Destruction (8 min) HD 
- Into The Void: The H.A.L.O. Jump (5 min) 
- Ancient Enemy: The M.U.T.O.s (7 min) HD 

Godzilla (2014) on UHD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is a solid upgrade over the previous Blu-ray, there are no new extras and I wish the accompanying Blu-ray was a new scan and color-grade, but the UHD looks and sounds terrific, and if you're looking to revisit it before the release of Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) there is no better way to watch it at home. 

Screenshots from the 2014 Blu-ray (WBHE):

Extras:

MOTHRA (1961) (Mill Creek Steelbook Blu-ray Review)

MOTHRA (1961)

Label: Mill Creek Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 101 Minutes
Audio: English & Japanese DTS-HD MA Mono  2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Ishirō Honda
Cast: Frankie Sakai, Hiroshi Koizumi, Kyōko Kagawa, Emi Itō, Yumi Itō

During a severe tropical storm a tanker ship sinks off the coast of Beiru Island off of mainland Japan, which had previously been the site of atomic weapons testing. Rescuers are surprised to find the sailors alive a few days later, appearing to have suffered no ill effects from their radiation exposure, which they later attribute to the natives living on the island, who gave them an elixir with restorative properties. 

The island is supposed to have been uninhabited so the Japanese government sends an expedition to the island to explore these claims, and sure enough they find a heretofore unknown indigenous people, as well as strange vegetation, including a man-eating plant. The strangest find however is a pair of otherworldly twins (Emi and Yumi Itō) who thought adults are doll-sized, who implore the scientist to leave the island and to please stop their atomic testing. The scientist agree and leave the island, agreeing to keep the secret of the pint-sized twins to themselves.

However, an unscrupulous businessman named Nelson (Jerry Ito) returns to the island and kidnaps the twins, making them the star attraction in his "Secret Fairies Show" in Tokyo, featuring the diminutive beauties singing ethereal songs to large crowds,which sort of brought to mind King Kong on exhibition in the '33 film. 

The kidnapping of the twins angers the natives of the island who hold a ceremony, awakening their ancient god, a giant caterpillar called Mothra who emerges from an enormous egg they worship. The deity-creature immediately begins swimming across the Pacific towards Tokyo to recover the twins, which it seems he is linked to telepathically. Along the way the creature destroys a cruise ship that crosses it's path, and manages to survive an attack from military jets dropping bombs and napalm.

Arriving in Tokyo the crawling menace lays waste to the city, bringing down a damn and causing catastrophic damage, before building a cocoon at Tokyo Tower, emerging as the the now winged kaiju Mothra we all know and love. 

The best parts of Mothra, as with most kaiju movies, are the scenes of miniature cities and vehicles being destroyed by the giant-creatures of legend, and we get plenty of that here with some nifty looking miniatures, though some of the effect are a little ropey looking in HD. 

The worst parts of it have to do with an ongoing legal battle to determine if the unscrupulous businessman should relinquish his claim to the twins, all that stuff was a bit of a bore. The twins themselves are absolutely a highlight of the film, delivering charismatic performances and regaling us with mesmerizing songs, but overall the film feels a bit slower than I remembered as a kid, but it has loads of charm and plenty of destructive kaiju-action and vintage Toho miniature work. 

Audio/Video: Kaiji classic Mothra (1961) arrives on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment framed in 2.35:1 widescreen and presented in 1080p HD. The source looks slightly flawed by way of vertical lines, speckling and some minor imperfections, including some optical shots marred by dirt and debris inherent to the source, but on the whole the presentation looks quite good. There's some inherent softness, and the grain is not as finely resolved as a new scan would have offered, but colors generally look good, there's a fair amount of fine detail and texturing throughout. I watched the shorter U.S.version of the film but did take in a few minutes of the longer Japanese cut, and they look identical to my eyes with one not really surpassing the other.

Audio comes by way of English and Japanese DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 with Optional English subtitles. I chose to watch the English-dubbed version, like my Italian giallo films I prefer my Kaiju with some English-dub, the way I remember watching them as a kid on TV. It's not the most subtle or fidelic audio option but it serviceable and does the job just fine. 

Extras are of the archival variety, we get an entertaining and well-informed audio commentary from Japanese sci-fi historians Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski, a pair of trailers and an extensive image gallery of poster artwork, promotional stills and lobby cards.

The single-disc release comes housed in a handsome looking Steelbook with a striking illustration on the front and a montage of Mothra in it's various forms as seen in the film on the backside. Inside there's an illustration representing a scene from the film spread across both halves of the interior, with the disc itself featuring another scene from the film. This Steelbook also includes a transparent plastic slipcover that adds to the overall shelf appeal, with white lettering declaring "Mightiest Monster In All Creation", also superimposing images of the twins at the bottom right and jets attacking from the top! The backside of the slip features a synopsis, cast credits, and technical specs for the film plus a few images from the film. This is a very attractive package, easily the best I've seen from Mill Creek Entertainment, I hope they keep up the Steelbooks with transparent slips, which they've also done for western Lonesome Dove, anime Metropolis and the 90's supernatural thriller Flatliners. 

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary with Authors and Japanese sci-fi historians Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski
- Teaser (1 min)
- Trailer (2 min)

- Photo Gallery (50 images) 

Mothra (1961) gets a solid Blu-ray from Mill Cree Entertainment, it's coming from an older HD master and the extras are archival, but it still packs a punch, and that gorgeous Steelbook packaging is first-rate.