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Japanese monster movies are mostly about the effects, anyway, so it's ridiculous to criticize for that. There's a place for such movies. My real beef is that Hollywood in general has fallen too far in love with visual spectacle, much in the way it was in love with body counts in the thousands for much of the 80s and 90s. It's interesting to watch a movie like Casablanca, which has maybe six or seven gunshots and no special effects unless you count process-screen shots making Bogart and Bergman look like they're in Paris when they're in Hollywood. You have to wonder how Hollywood would massacre it now.

It's also interesting to look at a true visual spectacle picture, The Four Feathers of 1939, and compare it to a recent Hollywood remake. The original is still stunning with its color photography of North Africa and its huge armies of extras. Some politically incorrect Kipling-esque dervishes and fuzzy-wuzzies, white-man's burden attitude is detectable, but this is more toned down than you might expect. A story is told faithful in its broadest outlines to history although the mainline plot is bunk.

Hollywood's recent remake substitutes a lot of computer wizardry for spectacle where none is needed, then unaccountably writes the very-much-needed climactic battle of Omdurman completely out of the picture.

They still make feel-good human-interest or comic movies on trivial stuff. Will Jack Nicholson find love with Diane Keaton or will she go for Keanu Reeves? But they've lost their way on everything else.

... no special effects unless you count process-screen shots making Bogart and Bergman look like they're in Paris when they're in Hollywood.

Location filming in Paris was out of the question at any budget unless you were a German filmmaker. "I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."