Archive
GODZILLA MINUS ONE – Naoki Sato
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Back in 1954 director Ishiro Honda and Toho Pictures introduced the world to Godzilla. While on the surface Godzilla was ostensibly about a giant monster lizard attacking and destroying Tokyo, and ranges from sensible to desperately silly in terms of tone and sophistication, the film was an enormous success, and the subsequent franchise became enormous – it now comprises 33 Japanese films, five American ones, and innumerable TV shows, comic books, and more. This latest one, Godzilla Minus One, is the first live-action Japanese Godzilla film in many years, and in many ways it is returning to its roots with its 1940s setting. It stars Ryunosuke Kamiki as Kōichi Shikishima, a former kamikaze pilot who encounters but fails to kill a large lizard on an isolated Pacific island, and who years later becomes part of the team charged with stopping the same lizard – which has since mutated to enormous size as a result of the United States’s nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll – when it emerges from the ocean and begins to attack Japan. Read more…
GODZILLA SINGULAR POINT – Kan Sawada
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Godzilla Singular Point is the 287th television series and/or film based on the popular Japanese kaiju lizard character to be released since he first appeared in 1955. Actually, that’s not true; it just feels like it sometimes. It’s actually an animated TV series directed by Atsushi Takahashi, produced in Japan for Netflix, which debuted on the streaming platform in April 2021. The setting is Nigashio City in the year 2030. Engineer Yun Arikawa (voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch in English) investigates happenings in a Western-style house, long thought abandoned. Meanwhile Mei Kamino (Erika Harlacher), a graduate student studying imaginary creatures, investigates a series of mysterious signals emanating from a different abandoned building. These two strangers, visiting completely different places as part of completely different investigations, eventually contact one other when they realize they are hearing the same song, and once they become united they are led into a battle against a new group of kaiju monsters – and one very old, very famous one. Read more…
GODZILLA VS. KONG – Tom Holkenborg
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Shared multiverses are such an important part of contemporary cinema these days. It feels like every new successful film, no matter what the genre, feels the need to expand its scope to encompass a range of endless spinoffs, sequels, and prequels, and this is certainly the case in the world of fantasy and science fiction. Godzilla vs. Kong is the culmination of a near decade-long project by Legendary Pictures, and sees the timelines of the films Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) coming together in a battle for kaiju supremacy. The film is set five years after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters and follows a complicated (but patently ridiculous) plot about evil corporations building giant robots, and the theory that the center of the earth is actually hollow, but it’s really just all an excuse for Godzilla and King Kong to have an enormous on-screen fight amid the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and using those basic prerequisites, it’s a success. The film is directed by Adam Wingard, stars Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Kyle Chandler, and Demián Bichir, and has a score by Dutch composer Tom Holkenborg. Read more…
GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS – Bear McCreary
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ever since he first appeared on film in 1954 in director Ishiro Honda’s classic film Gojira, the gigantic amphibious reptile known in the West as Godzilla has become something of an icon, an instantly recognizable element of Japanese pop culture. Godzilla has appeared in an astonishing 32 films in Japan, plus a number of associated video games, novels, comic books, and television shows, but did not make his American debut until the 1998 film directed by Roland Emmerich. When that film was a comparative financial flop, audiences would have to wait a further 16 years for director Gareth Edwards’s 2014 film of the same name. The success of that film solidified Warner Brother’s plans for a future franchise, and now we have the first sequel – Godzilla: King of the Monsters – directed by Michael Dougherty from a screenplay by Dougherty, Max Borenstein, and Zach Shields. Read more…
GODZILLA [GOJIRA] – Akira Ifukube
100 GREATEST SCORES OF ALL TIME
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Toho studio producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was greatly impressed by the film The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and resolved to create a Japanese version. He penned his own script and pitched it to Toho Studio executive Iwao Mori, who signed off on the project. Renowned special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya was hired and affirmed that it was financially and technologically feasible to create the monster, suggesting the use suitmation (an actor in a costume suit) over stop motion animation. Ishirō Honda was given the reigns to direct the film and he selected a fine cast which included Akira Takarada as Captain Hideto Ogata, Momoko Kochi as Emiko Yamane, Akihiko Hirata as Daisuke Serizawa and Takashi Shimura as Dr. Kyohei Yamane. The screenplay underwent several incarnations, evolving over time with contributions from many writers including Tsuburaya, science fiction writer Shigeru Kayama, Takeo Murata, and Honda. Read more…
GODZILLA – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
American film makers have been trying to do justice to Godzilla ever since he first appeared in director Ishiro Honda’s classic Japanese monster movie in 1954; although Godzilla is considered to be a significant icon of Japanese culture, Honda was himself inspired to create the King of the Monsters by watching Schoedsack and Cooper’s King Kong, and as such he has his roots in classic Hollywood. There have been 28 official Godzilla films released in Japan, the most recent coming in 2004, but only two American movies (three, if you count Cloverfield): the ill-fated Roland Emmerich directed disaster epic from 1998, which was scored by David Arnold, and this one, which is significantly superior to its predecessor, but still fails to capture the character’s essence according to the purists. Read more…
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