The mighty Godzilla emerges from the sea in a scene from "Godzilla Minus Zero." (Photo courtesy of GKIDS and Toho)
Sometimes the noise of the world is simply overwhelming. You might find yourself yearning to flee the information overload online, only to encounter contempt, apathy or open hostility in real spaces.
The movies used to be the answer for many, especially those wishing to tune out the current political cycle. Now that a number of hits, expected and unexpected, are luring crowds back into the darkened auditoriums of their local multiplex, this escape valve of sight and sound is regaining popularity, way too long after the deep freeze of the coronavirus pandemic.
But to us critics, the desire to run away from our obligations, especially at this time of the year, takes a different form. We're already waist deep in the throes of award season. There are so many prestige titles angling for our attention that the visceral urge to turn our back on all of it builds to a crescendo.
So before we return to our regularly scheduled programming of starry biopics, international festival darlings and high-profile holiday tentpoles, it's time to turn the key and enter worlds of imagination. Two new releases, each with their own year-end bona fides, aim to immerse viewers in their own heightened realities.
One of them imagines a post-World War II Japan where gigantic creatures wreak havoc on highly populated areas and, oh yes, the Yanks are still not to be trusted. The other makes a persuasive argument for the existence of a hidden magical realm on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, with its own laws, dangers and political turmoil. Time's a-wasting, so let's dive right in.
“Godzilla Minus Zero”: In 2023, Japan's Toho Studios caused a cultural earthquake on both sides of the Atlantic by releasing a new breed of Godzilla movie that, paradoxically, felt thoroughly old school. It had the city-leveling mayhem we've come to expect from the aging franchise, but it unfolded alongside a somber, dare I say intimate, period story rendered on a disarmingly human scale. In “Godzilla Minus One,” writer-director Takashi Yamazaki pulled off the fearsome feat of creating a wartime melodrama disguised as a monster movie, a winning hybrid that melded spectacle and pathos.
Godzilla's multi-headed foe (spoiler: it's King Ghidorah!) in a scene from "Godzilla Minus Zero." (Photo courtesy of GKIDS and Toho)
Three years later, Yamazaki is at it again. The 62-year-old, who won an Oscar for “Minus One's” visual effects, applies the same formula in this direct sequel, the current king at the box office. One would think the mix of costume drama and kaiju rumbles would go together like milk and orange juice, but what's striking about both films is how seamlessly their disparate parts come together. This is classy popcorn entertainment that resists the urge to put on prestige airs. You are warned, though: It assumes you've seen the previous film.
The year is 1949, two years after we last saw the Shikishima household: former kamikaze pilot Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and Akiko (Sae Nagatani), the orphaned girl Noriko rescued after the end of the war. They're a nuclear family forged from the ashes of World War II and linked, not by blood, but by their psychological scars. The three of them and the rest of Japan continue to struggle to keep their heads above water, but at least they take some solace in knowing Godzilla is dead and buried. Or is it?
Hold that thought. A new threat looms on the horizon: a creature apparently linked to a meteorite, perhaps even more destructive than the jumbo lizard. Once it becomes clear the creature can grow back body parts, coupled with the film's references to Greek mythology, it won't take long for fans to figure out which Godzilla foe we're dealing with. (I'm not telling.)
Min Tanaka as Kanji Murakami, Magasi Nagasawa as Makoto Aoyama, Hidetaka Yoshioka as Kenji Noda and Ryunosuke Kamiki as Koichi Nikishima in a scene from "Godzilla Minus Zero." (Photo courtesy of GKIDS and Toho)
But Yamazaki is in no hurry to get to the monster action. Even more so than its predecessor, “Minus Zero” is essentially comprised of scenes of people standing in rooms, talking strategy, whether it's life changes or life-or-death decisions with the future of Japan at stake, complemented by cinematographer Kôzô Shibasaki's muted palette.
The poky pacing and reined-in spectacle have sparked a small but vocal backlash among some fans who wish “Minus Zero” would get a move on and get to the action already. They do have a point. While Yamazaki's devotion to the characters is admirable, it ends up making the film more sluggish than it ought to be. It's only 11 minutes longer than “Minus One,” but it feels considerably puffier.
That is one of a number of reasons why the new film is a notch below its predecessor. Koichi's arc, in which he agrees to serve as adviser to a perilous mission to neutralize this new menace from another star, isn't quite as compelling as the way he grappled with guilt and PTSD in “Minus One.” While Yamazaki concocts a clever explanation as to why Noriko was able to survive Godzilla's attack in Tokyo's Ginza district in “Minus One,” it's not quite as powerful as her selfless sacrifice in that film.
Sae Nagatani as Akiko Nikishima, Ryunosuke Kamiki as Koichi Nikishima and Minami Hamabe as Noriko Shikishima in a scene from "Godzilla Minus Zero." (Photo courtesy of GKIDS and Toho)
Still, the formula holds steady. Yamazaki splices together angst and carnage, this time with an R rating that allows the mano-a-manos to be a tad more graphic and detailed. Lasers of doom emanate from the creatures' mouths, and Godzilla's dorsal plates, with the ability to light up a silvery shade of blue before unleashing hell, are shot from more noticeably phallic angles, the better to underscore the creature as a manifestation of the human subconscious.
Because the key to the crossover appeal of these period Godzilla movies is the way Yamazaki leans into the titular creature as a metaphor for the atomic bomb, more so than the recent American films, like the underrated “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” He returns this iconic monster to its roots, all while embracing the crisis that the Shikishima family confronts. The filmmaker gets carried away with the histrionics, but even when “Minus Zero” becomes too much, it's clear the safekeeping of this scaly loner and the humans in its path has been handed over to someone with their best interests at heart.
Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue McKeel and Jacob Tremblay voices Curtis Mehlberg in a scene from "Wildwood." (Picture courtesy of Fathom Entertainment/Laika Studios)
“Wildwood”: Yamazaki's fiercely felt sequel isn't the only tale of a family in crisis dealing with a daunting make-believe menace. This long-gestating fantasy adventure by director Travis Knight and screenwriter Chris Butler is the most elaborate animated feature to come from Oregon's Laika Studios. For fans of the Pacific Northwest, it's a heartfelt valentine to the region in general and the city of Portland in particular.
Although it features computer generated shots, the bulk of Laika's sixth feature, adapted from the three novels that comprise “The Wildwood Chronicles,” was animated by hand over 16 years, a stop motion endeavor that raises the ante on the format. It is an impressive feat of animation by any metric.
If only the film's lengthy narrative measured up to the craft on display.
“Wildwood” kicks into gear when Prue McKeel (the voice of Peyton Elizabeth Lee), 13 and in that rebellious, standoffish phase, takes Mac, her 1-year-old brother, out for a spin around Portland in defiance of her overprotective, unnamed dad (Jake Johnson). Moments after arriving at a park that, I can attest, exists is the real world, a murder of crows (yes, that's what a flock of them is called) whisk the tot away, much to the dismay of Prue and Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), her nerdy scaredy-cat classmate who nevertheless nurses a crush on Prue that is not reciprocated.
Arthur Knight voices Mac McKeel and Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue McKeel in a scene from "Wildwood." (Picture courtesy of Fathom Entertainment/Laika Studios)
Prue refuses to come home empty-handed, and the children's search brings them to a forbidding woodland, called the Impassable Wilderness by Prue's dad. But blood from a scrape Prue suffered makes it into the ivy, and abracadabra, the ivy parts to conceal an entrance to the titular realm.
If “Wildwood's” early scenes give you déjà vu, you're not alone. I couldn't stop thinking about “Labyrinth,” Jim Henson's exhilarating magic maze musical from 1986, starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie. Mac, who is voiced by the director's youngest son Arthur, even looks like Toby, the toddler who is kidnapped by Bowie's Goblin King, who is the baby brother of Connelly's Sarah.
Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue McKeel and Angela Bassettnvoices The General in a scene from "Wildwood." (Picture courtesy of Fathom Entertainment/Laika Studios)
But that's just the first of many, many references to other works Knight and Butler make throughout their film's hefty running time (132 minutes and you feel it). The films of Japanese auteur Hayao Miyazaki and “The Lord of the Rings,” for instance, are heavily invoked. And the problem isn't that “Wildwood” uses so many wondrous books and films as sources of inspiration; it's that the references are so obvious and on the nose that, despite the film's distinctive animation format, it forgets to develop a personality of its own.
As Prue and Curtis grapple with the pervasive hostility in this realm that's in the middle of political upheaval and on the verge of war, the film remains maddeningly earthbound. There's little effort to give the story's boilerplate elements any flavor. Among Wildwood's residents, for example, are anthropomorphic animals, but they amount to little more than window dressing.
That's because Knight and Butler chose to jam all three novels penned by Colin Meloy and illustrated by Carson Ellis (Meloy's partner in art and in life) into its overstuffed narrative, so they never let you forget that there is a lot of ground to cover. Thus, instead of allowing viewers to lose themselves in its otherworldly setting, “Wildwood” constantly reminds you of where you've already been.
Even more frustrating is how it flattens Prue, a character with so much potential, as well as the film's ostensible anchor, into a nondescript grouch with a scrunchy face that makes her look like an old woman. There is precious little inner life to her, so she never feels like a three-dimensional human. Even the Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan), the film's Nordic-coded antagonist, comes across as a warmed-over facsimile of a Disney villain, a more cruel variation on “Sleeping Beauty's” Maleficent and “Cinderella's” Lady Tremaine.
Carey Mulligan voices Alexandra Svik, the Dowager Governess, in a scene from "Wildwood." (Picture courtesy of Fathom Entertainment/Laika Studios)
But here's something interesting that the film does pull off: It subverts the fairy tale trope of a disobedient child learning their lesson the hard way. This “there will be serious consequences” story beat has always rubbed me the wrong way, even in otherwise sterling films like Disney's 1940 “Pinocchio.” “Wildwood” appears to be heading in the same direction, but Knight and Butler throw an tantalizing curveball our way that forces us to reevaluate the story up to that point.
Alas, the intriguing revelation, which gives the film the shot in the arm it needs, is drowned out by a prolonged climax that becomes increasingly more violent. The bloodshed tests the limits of its PG-13 rating while adding little of value. Instead, the violence calls attention to itself, going beyond the notion that no character is safe to become a not-so-humblebrag about the dark tone it aims to sustain.
And what gets lost in the process is any real magic, the one quality that “Wildwood” works overtime to try to attain. Despite its sizable technical achievement, a sense of awe and wonder hovers like morning mist in pockets of this middling flight of fancy that rarely takes flight. Just out of reach.
“Godzilla Minus Zero” is now showing across South Florida in wide release, including IMAX engagements at AMC Aventura, AMC Sunset Place, CMX Dolphin 19, AMC Pembroke Lakes and the AutoNation IMAX at the Museum of Discovery and Science in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
“Wildwood” continues its theatrical run, including at AMC Aventura, Silverspot Cinema Metsquare in downtown Miami, Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas in Coconut Grove and Regal Dania Pointe.
