Tag: Setsuro Wakamatsu

Godzilla Minus One
/ Minus Color
(Gojira-1.0 / C,
ゴジラ -1.0 / C)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 31 October 2024
No Comments on Godzilla Minus One
/ Minus Color
(Gojira-1.0 / C,
ゴジラ -1.0 / C)
Sticky post

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – now in black & white – out in UK cinemas from Friday, November 1st

Something happens when you watch this / Minus Color version of Gozilla Minus One, which director Yamazaki has gone through cut by cut and personally overseen. You are watching a 2023 movie, yet you feel as if you’re watching a 1954 one. Because the film is about Japan, World War Two and its immediate aftermath, the film seems to play better in black and white.

Tags 1940s, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, action, aircraft, battleship, belief, black and white, blowing up, cowardice, death, decommissioning, destitution, devastatation, explosion, Godzilla, Gojira, guilt, Hidetaki Yoshioka, Japan, Kaiju, Kamikaze, Kamikaze pilot, Kuranosuke Sasaki, mayhem, mines, minus color, minus colour, mistaken belief, monster, mother and baby, Munetaka Aoki, nuclear, nuclear bomb, ocean, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, Pacific, parents and children, pilot, post-war, post-war Japan, post-war Tokyo, poverty, pull the trigger, pyrotechnics, sacrifice, Sakura Ando, self-sacrifice, Setsuro Wakamatsu, ship, shoot-to-kill, stop thief, survival, survivor, Takashi Yamazaki, Toho, war guilt, World War 2, World War Two, World War Two II, WW2, Yuki Yamada

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla Minus One
(Gojira -1.0,
ゴジラ -1.0)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 December 2023
No Comments on Godzilla Minus One
(Gojira -1.0,
ゴジラ -1.0)
Sticky post

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – Godzilla Minus One is back out and Godzilla Minus One / Minus Color out for the first time in UK cinemas from Friday, November 1st

World War Two, Pacific theatre. Unwilling Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) feigns engine trouble and lands on an island for aircraft maintenance, where he is grounded. While there, he notices deep sea fish curiously floating on the surface of the surrounding ocean: they presage the arrival of a huge monster, named Godzilla by the locals. With Koichi failing to fire his 20mm aircraft guns at the creature to kill it, almost everyone else on the small island is killed. (Whether his guns would have had any effect in halting the creature’s advance is debatable. They probably wouldn’t have had any effect whatsoever.) The only other survivor, who had previously congratulated Koichi for a near impossible landing on a tiny runway, blames him for the multiple deaths because he didn’t pull the trigger.

In 1945, in the ruins of post-war Tokyo, Shikishima is accused by a survivor – a woman whose children have died – of being a disgrace.… Read the rest

Tags 1940s, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, action, aircraft, battleship, belief, blowing up, cowardice, death, decommissioning, destitution, devastatation, explosion, Godzilla, Gojira, guilt, Hidetaki Yoshioka, Japan, Kaiju, Kamikaze, Kamikaze pilot, Kuranosuke Sasaki, mayhem, mines, mistaken belief, monster, mother and baby, Munetaka Aoki, nuclear, nuclear bomb, ocean, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, Pacific, parents and children, pilot, post-war, post-war Japan, post-war Tokyo, poverty, pull the trigger, pyrotechnics, sacrifice, Sakura Ando, self-sacrifice, Setsuro Wakamatsu, ship, shoot-to-kill, stop thief, survival, survivor, Takashi Yamazaki, Toho, war guilt, World War 2, World War Two, World War Two II, WW2, Yuki Yamada

Features Live Action Movies

Fukushima 50
(フクシマ50)

Director – Setsuro Wakamatsu – 2020 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 122m

****

Historically-based, disaster movie cum drama in which workers struggle to limit the considerable damage to a nuclear power plant hit by an earthquake then a tsunami – on VoD from Monday, March 8th

March 11th, 2011. A powerful earthquake followed by a tsunami hit Japan. Situated near the epicentre of the earthquake on the coast where the tsunami hits is a nuclear power plant. The resultant nuclear disaster threatens to decimate Japan. Coming in at slightly over 9.0, it remains the most powerful earthquake the country has ever experienced.

The above is history. The title Fukushima 50 is the name given to from the crew of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant who at considerable cost to their own health stayed at the plant to limit the damage as much as they could and prevent an undoubtedly appalling situation becoming far worse.

To anyone not well-versed in the specific technical minutiae of how a nuclear power plant works (i.e. most of us) much of what happens in the film is bewildering. Not that it really matters, frankly, because if someone looks at a gauge, reads off a number in units of which you’ve never heard and exclaims that they’ve got to get the number down, you have a pretty good idea what’s going on.… Read the rest