Inspired by my recent screening of Cloverfield, I decided to check out the Big One—not the terribly recut U.S. version known as Godzilla: King of the Monsters, mind you, but the original Japanese version without all those awkwardly inserted scenes with Raymond Burr. While it’s not the rubbery campfest often described and derided in pop culture, neither is it an intense meditation on fears in the atomic age as its most ardent admirers contend. It’s somewhere in the middle, which I think is infinitely more intriguing and entertaining than either of the two poles. (DVD)