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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

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Movies Features Live Action

Eileen

Eileen

Director – William Oldroyd – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 97 m

***** Most of the film

* The last five minutes

NSFW

In the 1960s, the life of a young woman working in a Boston boys’ correctional facility is turned on its head by the arrival of a radical, young woman prison psychologist from New York – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 1st.

I don’t usually start with the ending of the film – and I’m not about to deliver a spoiler – but the ending of Oldroyd’s otherwise enthralling drama (if that’s the right term – I’m not sure it is) takes everything that has gone before which appeared to be building up to something and unceremoniously dumps it, as if there were another twenty minutes that had been written but not shot and an unsatisfactory ending had been tacked on.

There’s always that feeling with a truly extraordinary movie when you watch it for the first time that you don’t want the filmmakers to screw up and let go of whatever it is that’s working. Well, this one is extraordinary right up to the last five minutes, when it completely loses it. Prior to that, it starts out as one thing, turns into something else then swerves and moves about all over the place, taking the viewer with it on a strange, unpredictable journey.… Read the rest