A few weeks ago, I started to hear about Godzilla Minus One, and it was good things. This was the first I was even hearing of the movie, so this intrigued me. This was not a Warner Brothers Monstreverse film, this was going back to the Japanese creators, and it was much different than the recent American versions. This created an emotionally potent story, and it was centered around the people involved rather than the massive destruction causing monster. Also their budget was just a small fraction of the recent Warner Brothers movies, and it looked even better than they do for the most part.
The movie opens with a kamikaze pilot landing on one of Japan’s islands in the Pacific, and he told them that he was having trouble with his plane, but they found nothing wrong with it. Then that night, the mythic Godzilla came and attacked, and that same pilot, had the chance to potentially save the others, but he could not pull the trigger, and most of the mechanics on the island were killed.
When he returned home to mainland Japan, he found total wreckage, and his parents had been killed in the bombing of the city. His neighbor called him a coward for returning, because as a kamikaze pilot, it would have been more honorable for him to die fighting for his country, and she said it was due to people like him that they lost the war. While in the city, he found a young lady, who had a child, and he invited them to stay at his house, so they had a little found family. The man found a job blowing up mines off the coast leftover from the war, but then word of Godzilla started to spread again, and Godzilla attacked the city where the young lady worked, and the man found her when he arrived after rushing there from home, but it was right as Godzilla was unleashing an atomic blast, and she was blown away. At this point, Godzilla had caused so much death and destruction that all the people decided to band together and fight to save their country.
The most important message that this movie presented is the value of a single human life. The kamikaze pilot did not want to be a sacrifice, he was too scared to sacrifice his life and crash his plane. If thought about, this was the better choice, and he was considered to be a great pilot, so his skills would have been better used in actual fighting rather than a quick sacrifice. The story made this about face towards the end, when everyone decided to fight back against Godzilla. They were all choosing to fight to survive, and to allow others to survive. It was not a reckless attempt, and even the pilot, who decided he was going to sacrifice himself to fly into Godzilla with a bomb, was able to eject before doing so. Every life counts.
To me, one of the most important parts of a movie is a great opening scene. It can totally cloud the view of the rest of the movie, because the euphoria of the opening scene is so great. I feel this way about the original Scream. It is one of the most gripping opening scenes ever. This movie also puts up an incredible opening scene. When night falls, and Godzilla attacks for the first time, it is so gripping. I have never felt that tense in a monster movie. It was legitimately terrifying, and I loved every second of it! I had not seen a trailer for this movie, so it was also the first time I was seeing this iteration of Godzilla, and he looked so lifelike! There were sometimes during the day scenes, where he did not look as good, but at nighttime, he looked incredible. Also this movie was so much more than just a great opening scene.
Godzilla had some incredible power, and the way he went about using it was also an intricate process. The spikes in his back slowly pop out and turn blue, and then an atomic explosion comes vomiting out of his gaping mouth causing wreckage akin to an atomic bomb, and it always came at the worst time for our main man. Godzilla continually kicked him when he was down, and it made this man’s life a living Hell. He was scared to live and embrace the people he was around, because he did not want to go through the pain of loss again, but even though he tried his best to stay closed off, he still ended up having his heart broken repeatedly. Truly an incredible movie, where Godzilla is a part of it, but the real draw is the human emotion that this is drenched in.
Another movie that I watched this weekend was Leave the World Behind. It is an apocalyptic story that continually gave me goosebumps because it all felt so real and tense, plus it was filmed exquisitely. It was also funny that Netflix made a movie about the importance of having physical media, because in an apocalypse, people will not be able to flip on a streaming service.
One day a family decides on a whim to go on a vacation, and they rent a slightly secluded house in Long Island. Shortly after arriving, weird occurances start to happen. First an oil tanker is beached right in front of them. Then their technology starts to malfunction, they lose cell service, and the TV and Wi-Fi also go down, and in the middle of the night, two strangers, a father and his daughter, knock at the door claiming that this is their house, and that they rented it to the family that is there, but they left the city due to the blackout. After a long discussion, the family decides that the father and daughter can stay in the basement. The next day, they temporarily get enough news to read that the blackout was potentially caused by a hacking attack from terrorists. The stakes continued to be raised, as the two families slowly share more information with each other, and the panic starts to rise as they realize that this is not going to be a short-term problem.
The shots in this movie were incredible, and it was greatly helped by the fact that this was filmed in a beautiful mansion. There were so many tracking shots, that would follow the people as they moved, and the shots would go through the walls or through the roof, and it was all seamless. There were also many aerial shots, and these almost feel surreal, especially when they start to slowly rotate them sometimes. The shots change from being landscape to being in portrait, and it can be disorienting, but I was also turning my head as the camera did to try and keep view. They picked this specific house to film, because it was able to create these camera angles.
This version of the apocalypse feels so real, and it feels terrifying. In an event like this, society would devolve into a riotous fight so quickly. People would not know what to do without technology and the lack of information on what was happening would be maddening. People could barely handle wearing masks, imagine if there was no guidance coming out about the problem. The story telling in this was so tense. It is so hard to tell if they should trust the people coming into the house, and then the few other times that people pop up, it is such a hard choice on whether to help them or not. There most horrifying scene is the one that involves the son pulling out his own teeth, and it is all done with prosthetics, so it looks so real, and it is so disgusting.
It also has some big names that give some incredible performances, so when all of this is meshed into a two-hour film, it leads to a top ten movie of the year, and you do not even have to leave your house to see it, although it would have been incredible to see on the big screen. My only gripe with the film was the terrible CGI animals, there were deer and flamingos, and they took me out of it temporarily, but it quickly pulled me back in every time. I gave this film 4 Stars, and I seriously suggest giving it a watch. Like the movie points out these characters give us a sense of escape, so escape into this gripping story.
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