The racking sobs rise in a plangent chorus outside the nation's multiplexes, as young girls cry, "How can we survive a summer without Leo?" In the past the season has survived pretty well without Leonardo DiCaprio. But in the wake of Titanic, studios wish they could clone the blond bambino as easily and guiltlessly as they steal story ideas. What works at the movies? What else? What worked before!
So, opening just before Memorial Day, exactly a year after The Lost World: Jurassic Park, is another really big lizard movie, Godzilla. This updating of the old Japanese monster series, by the...