"Colossal": A Monster Movie Hiding Ugly Romantic Passions

The fantasy of "Colossal," Nacho Vigalondo's new genre mashup, starring Anne Hathaway, does two things well at the same time: it embodies a strong idea and it delivers aesthetic pleasure. At its best, it achieves a rare synthesis of virtues that is a primal value of the cinema: it revels in the power of cinematic artifice to tell a story that confronts big questions about real life.