Godzilla Minus One (2023)

My husband is a big fan of Godzilla. Whenever a new film hits the theaters, we are there to see it. We first saw Godzilla Minus One when it came out in theaters in early December. We saw it a second time when they released the black and white version earlier this month. But this time we got to see it in 4DX.

Near the end of World War II, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) diverts his plan to an outpost on Odo Island, pretending that there is a mechanical failure. That night, the island is attacked by a giant sea monster the locals call Godzilla. Everyone except lead mechanic Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) and Shikishima are killed. Ashamed of his cowardice, Shikishima returns home to Tokyo, only to find his parents died in an air raid. He meets Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), a young woman who is caring for an orphaned baby named Akiko. Knowing that they need money to keep Akiko alive, he takes a job detonating mines in the ocean around Japan. When he finds a much larger and more powerful Godzilla is on the way to attack Japan, he teams up with other veterans from the war to defeat the monster.

There are quite a few Godzilla movies that mostly focus on the monster. (I’m pretty sure most of those are American-produced versions.) Minus One is an extremely emotional story about the effects of war and survivor’s guilt and doing what is necessary in order to survive. While I know these are somewhat common themes in the Japanese-produced Godzilla movies, I have never seen one this emotional. We really get to see Shikishima break down over his perceived failures as a man. And Noriko’s anguish at not being able to help someone she loves overcome what the war has done to him. Seeing all of this in color was already amazing and beautiful. Seeing it in black and white was very different. Somehow it made everything feel more important or more heartbreaking. I didn’t think I could enjoy this movie more, but the black and white version proved me wrong.

Rating: A

Why I think the new Godzilla movie is BS

Spoilers ahead! It has almost been 2 weeks since the latest American Godzilla was released. A lot of people loved the movie. My husband, who is a huge Godzilla fan, is one of those people. I, on the other hand, thought the movie was total bullshit. Since I seem to be the only person who thinks this, I am going to put my reasons in a nice, easy to digest list. As I have already said, there will be a lot of spoilers ahead. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading right now.

OK?

1. Cutting away from the fights

So, this is a Godzilla movie, right? I get that the movie can't be 100% Godzilla. You need some characters that can actually speak. However, except for the final battle, none of the other battles are shown on-screen. Godzilla starts fighting with one of the creatures (stupidly called MUTO) and the director just cuts away to one of the humans.

"Godzilla's gonna fight....Godzilla's gonna fight...." *a door slides shut and we cut to the Olsen sister that isn't a twin*

Annoying.

2. The Brian Cranston connection.

In the trailers, it looked like Brian Cranston, who is currently a hot commodity in Hollywood, would be the human star of the movie. Nope. He dies in the first act, before any of the monsters are actually shown. (Well, I think we might have seen a foot of the MUTO...that doesn't count.)

I get that his name is hot right now. There are people that went to see this movie for him. Won't they be disappointed when he dies a third of the way into the 2-hour film.

3. The "bad" monsters should have real names.

Godzilla gets a name. There's a Mothra cameo. Yet the two big bad monsters of the movie are both called MUTO, which stands for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism. What? Give Ken Watanabe a use. Let him give those baddies some names.

4. They made Ken Watanabe useless.

His entire purpose in this movie was to stand around and watch other people do things. He is supposed to be a scientist. What scientist just stands by and lets everyone else do the work? Even the Japanese scientists in the old Godzilla movies were all "Screw this! I'm going to help Godzilla myself!"

5. Kick-Ass specialized in everything.

Brian Cranston's son, Kick-Ass, is an explosives specialist in the Navy. Yet he manages to get himself hitched onto an Army Special Force team, which gets him from Hawaii to California. Then he talks his way onto a Navy squad that is setting up an explosive to kill the MUTO. Then he parachutes into the scene of the Godzilla battle to disarm the explosive the MUTO stole from them.

Something tells me that his ass would still be stuck on Hawaii. The military isn't in the business of giving people, even other military people, rides home.

This movie was bullshit. For serious. I won't say it wasn't any fun. The end of that big battle was awesome. But I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that one awesome scene from one fight scene is going to redeem the entire film. If even half of these issues were fixed, I wouldn't be so hard on the movie. If they made the Godzilla movie about Godzilla instead of about The Other Olsen and Kick-Ass, I might have liked it more. As it stands, it is just plain bullshit.

Movie review: Cloverfield

No, I didn't see Cloverfield in the theater. It was probably a good thing considering the shakiness of the hand-held camera work. I felt nauseous just watching it at home. I can't imagine how people made it through the movie on the big screen. There will be spoilers in this so if you haven't seen it and you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

OK. Let's talk about this thing. I've been looking forward to Cloverfield since the teasers started coming out last year. Unfortunately, my husband and I just didn't get the chance to see it on the big screen. However, friends of ours saw it and said the graphics were really nauseating. I completely agree. I understand why they used a hand-cam for the movie but I really think it detracted more than it added anything to the film as a whole. Sure, you got the "in the midst of the battle" feeling...but you couldn't SEE anything half the time. It was just a jumble of pictures while the main characters were running. The only time the camera was still enough to see anything was when the characters were standing or sitting still, which wasn't very often. I think it might have been a bit better if they had mixed steady-cam shots with the hand-cam shots. Show an outside view while the characters were running but then switch back to the home video when they are sitting around talking. Not only would it have made the movie easier to watch but we would have been able to keep track of the characters better.

My next problem with it was how the monster was handled. In the DVD extras as well as in many interviews, J.J. Abrams kept talking about Godzilla and how he wanted to make an iconic monster for America. I don't think he's ever seen a Godzilla movie. Those movies focused on the monster as well as the humans. Not to mention that, since Godzilla was created thanks to some hydrogen bomb testing, there are quite a very environmental messages in there too. In Cloverfield, we learn nothing about the monster. We don't even know where it came from! According to the interview with Abrams, the monster is a newborn. There isn't anything in the movie to indicate this nor is there any explanation for the parasite-type creatures that the monster drops. So that negates classifying this as a "monster movie." The monster is only there to act as a catalyst to move the human characters into motion.

Ah, the humans. There's Rob (the guy going to Japan), Hud (Rob's best friend and the cameraman for the movie), Beth (Rob's sorta-girlfriend), Jason (Rob's brother), Lily (Rob's girlfriend) and Marlena (Lily's friend). At no point in time are we compelled to feel anything about most of these characters. Rob is a douche and he tries to make up for it by trying to save Beth after treating her like crap. We don't learn a whole lot about Hud, beyond the fact that he hits on women a lot, because he's generally behind the camera. Jason kicks the bucket early on, leaving Lily to hold the group of friends together. Poor Marlena got the short end of the stick since she wasn't even supposed to be at the farewell party for Rob in the first place. Not only did I not care about these characters, I was actually rooting for their death by the middle of the movie. There was no real emotion behind any of their actions. The only reason Rob wanted to save Beth was because after having sex with her then not contacting her for two weeks, she decided to move onto another relationship when *BAM!* Rob realized he loves Beth. Yeah, Rob, you didn't love her until she found a new man. Douche.

And that is the entire plot of the movie. Rob and his friends try to rescue a girl that he realizes, in the middle of a monster attack, that he loves. I don't even believe that he loved her. I believe that he felt badly about the way he treated her. I believe that he cared for her a bit. However, I mostly believe that the only reason he wanted to save her was to save himself from being the big dickwad of the movie. Too late, Rob.

After all of this, I can't say that it was a bad movie. It just wasn't a good movie. It definitely wasn't a good monster movie. If Abrams was aiming to give the American audience an iconic monster to identify with, he failed miserably. Yes, the monster was cool looking but there was nothing about it for us to identify with. There was nothing to make the monster endearing to us. Nothing to make us want to buy a big plushie Cloverfield monster for our bedroom. There are rumors that there will be a sequel. I can only pray that they do a better job than they did with the original.