[h2]2. Pacific Rim[/h2]
A true cinematic miracle, Pacific Rim sees beloved director Guillermo del Toro writing an impossibly exuberant love letter not only to monster movies, of both the Japanese daikaiju and Western varieties, but to cinema’s most basic capacities for imagination and spectacle. Del Toro is nothing if not one of the most passionate filmmakers working today, and Pacific Rim, a work devoid of cynicism and bursting at the seams with earnest exuberance, is as clear and celebratory an expression of that passion as he – or most directors, for that matter – has yet to create.
While I fear the film may be arriving at the wrong moment in cinematic history for viewers conditioned to the Christopher Nolan style of ‘real-world’ angst, Pacific Rim is both a deliriously earnest throwback to a simpler but no less emotionally poignant form of archetypal character building and storytelling, and a jaw-dropping example of what modern special effects can achieve at their very best. To say the film is exhilarating would be an understatement – this is cinematic creativity and imagination at its best, a film that will make lifelong movie lovers out of children, and has the capacity to return adults to a mindset of real, meaningful innocence. That is a rare trick indeed – unprecedented in recent times, in fact – and one I shall always treasure the film for delivering. Pacific Rim is tremendous, in both scale and impact, and deserves to find as big an audience as possible when it arrives this weekend.
Read my full review here.
Pacific Rim opens in theatres everywhere July 12th.
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