408 - Godzilla Minus One

A new, low-budget, Japanese-produced Godzilla movie takes us by surprise. Toho, with whom the series began in 1954 and who have produced over 30 Godzilla films since, have given Godzilla Minus One a wider release than usual, and we're glad of it. Unburdened by the lore and worldbuilding of the Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse films, writer-director Takashi Yamazaki tells a story of Japan's post-World War II depression, a spiritual and blood debt a pilot feels for shirking his wartime duty, and a community brought together in defiance of both a culture that treated their lives as expendable, and of course, a monster attacking their city. Godzilla Minus One looks sensational for a film of its budget - reported to be under $15 million - and while hitting all the beats you'd expect of a blockbuster, arguably exhibits a subtly different pace and style of storytelling than Western audiences are used to, Mike suggesting that it gives an audience tired of having relentlessly convoluted cinematic universes foisted upon them a change in cinematic attitude for which they're hungry. It's not a perfect film - some of the performances let its emotional moments down, and there's little you can't see coming - but Godzilla Minus One is thoughtful entertainment that's really worth seeing at a cinema. Recorded on 17th December 2023.

Om Podcasten

"I have this romantic idea of the movies as a conjunction of place, people and experiences, all different for each of us, a context in which individual and separate beings try to commune, where the individual experience overlaps with the communal and where that overlapping is demarcated by how we measure the differing responses between ourselves and the rest of the audience: do they laugh when we don’t (and what does that mean?); are they moved when we feel like laughing (and what does that say about me or the others) etc. The idea behind this podcast is to satiate the urge I sometimes have when I see a movie alone – to eavesdrop on what others say. What do they think? How does their experience compare to mine? Snippets are overhead as one leaves the cinema and are often food for thought. A longer snippet of such an experience is what I hope to provide: it’s two friends chatting immediately after a movie. It’s unrehearsed, meandering, slightly convoluted, certainly enthusiastic, and well informed, if not necessarily on all aspects a particular work gives rise to, certainly in terms of knowledge of cinema in general and considerable experience of watching different types of movies and watching movies in different types of ways. It’s not a review. It’s a conversation." - José Arroyo. "I just like the sound of my own voice." - Michael Glass.