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Movies Features Live Action

Godzilla Minus Zero
(Gojira – 0.0,
ゴジラ – 0.0)

Godzilla Minus Zero (Gojira – 0.0, ゴジラ – 0.0)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2026 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 135m

IMAX version *****

Regular version *****

Japan, slowly recovering from World War Two, must again deal with the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises again from the depths of the ocean – out in UK and Ireland IMAX cinemas on Tuesday, November 3rd then in regular cinemas on Friday, November 6th

*** Please note: Godzilla Minus One spoiler alert in opening paragraph. ***

“Is your war finally over?”, redeemed Kamikazi pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is asked by Noriko Oishi (Minami Hanabe), the woman who he has taken in to his home along with a baby only for her to be subsequently blasted away when pushing him into a building recess to save him from Godzilla during its attack on Ginza, at the end of Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023). Miraculously, she survived that incident, which scarcely seems possible. Although perhaps writer-director Yamazaki shrewdly included the conundrum to enable him to kick around some ideas as to why she might have survived beyond mere luck.

One such idea makes it into this new film, and a fascinating idea it is too, one of a number of script elements for which Toho have asked journalists to keep the specifics under wraps so as not to spoil the film for audiences – which seems reasonable enough given that critics had the privilege of seeing the film before any reviews had given anything away.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Animation Features

Moana 2

Moana 2

Directors – David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller – 2024 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

*** 1/2

The desire to connect with the people who must surely live beyond the known horizons of her world drives Moana on a new seafaring adventure – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Set three years after Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), this features the eponymous Polynesian heroine (voiced once again by Auli’i Cravalho) not as a 16-year-old but as a 19-year-old. She has now become a wayfinder and the leader of her island people. Weirdly, perhaps, for a leader, she likes nothing better than going off into the middle of the island, accompanied by her two Disney-obligatory small animal friends Pua the pig and HeiHei the dim-witted cockerel (voice, or at least cockerel noises: Alan Tudyk), climbing to its highest point and blowing a shell in the hope that someone out in the world beyond the one she knows might respond. She wants to reach out and connect with other islander populations. Alas, she gets little more than Heihei blowing a shell a few yards away.

Following a vision in which she is visited by Tautai Vasa (voice: Gerald Faitala Ramsey), a wayfinder from a distant generation who sent out to sea and never came back, Moana and her small crew set sail for the lost island of Motufetu.… Read the rest