"82"

“Godzilla” is lumbering back out of the deep, spoiling for a fight and hungry for various delicious looking landmarks. Be warned, this relic of Japan’s atomic age nightmares has grown grumpier (and apparently more pot-bellied) in his fifteen years away from the big screen. And he’s definitely still growling from his treatment in Roland Emmerich’s 1998 big-budget disaster starring Matthew Broderick. In this newest iteration of cinema’s favorite Kaiju (Japanese for “monster” - something made exhaustively clear if you watched any of Guillermo del Toro’s plodding, nonsensical “Pacific Rim”) you’ll see the requisite shots of anonymous roving citizens gazing upward in horror, running full tilt, and glancing over their shoulders as cars tumble over the Golden Gate Bridge, sewer gasses explode, and your favorite bodega is demolished with a sweep of Godzilla’s powerful hind parts. But will you get your money’s worth? Should you spend the extra couple of bucks for 3-D?

Though the solstice is not for a few weeks, Memorial Day weekend was a call to your corner lookout, warning you to hit the bricks ‘cause the heat is just around the corner. Yes, summer is coming for every good movie-loving, grill-stoking, sparkler-waving, processed cheese covered totcho-eating American (totchos are like nachos, with tater-tots instead of chips… yes, these exist, and they’re good for you!). This also means that blockbuster Hollywood hits explode into theaters like sling-shot water balloons, and this year is no exception with “Spiderman 2”, “Godzilla”, and the new “X-Men” movie having already jumped the summer gun.