Stubs - Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color

Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color (aka G-1.0/C) (2024) Starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki. Directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Screenplay by Takashi Yamazaki Produced by Minami Ichikawa, Shūji Abe, Kenji Yamada, Kazuaki Kishida, Gō Abe, Keiichirō Moriya Run time: 125 minutes. Black and White. Japan. Epic, Kaiju, Monster.

Godzilla is one of the most shopworn monster characters, having appeared in 39 films in 70 years since its first appearance, Gojira (1954). Usually, the films are cheap numbers with similar plots with Godzilla, obviously a man in a suit. More often that not, Godzilla has had to share the bill with a litany of other monsters, Mothra, Hedora, Biolantte and/or King Kong. Godzilla has become big budget in recent years with Hollywood productions and once again teaming the dinosaur-like monster with the giant ape. The emphasis is almost always on the monsters and not the people it terrorizes.

That changed, and for the better, with the November 3, 2023 release in Japan of Takashi Yamazaki's Gojira Mainasu Wan. A film with a relatively low budget, $10-15 million, it would come to the US on December 1, 2023 and win rave reviews, becoming the first Godzilla film to be nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Visual Effects, also supervised by Yamazaki. Eventually, the film would cross $100 million in worldwide boxoffice.

A black-and-white version, Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, premiered in Japan on January 12, 2024, and was distributed in the United States by Toho International on January 26 and that is the film we're reviewing here. We regrettably missed out on seeing the original color version of the film. Both are Japanese with English subtitltes.

The Boy and the Heron

I don’t think I need to explain who Hayao Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli are. For decades, Miyazaki has built up a reputation as one of Japan’s greatest anime film directors, starting all the way back in 1979 with The Castle of Cagliostro and continuing through Studio Ghibli with such classics as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away (also the highest-grossing Japanese film ever made until Mugen Train), to name a few. Following The Wind Rises in 2013, Miyazaki would announce his retirement from producing feature films due to his age, though this would be short-lived, as only three years later, after creating the short Boro the Caterpillar, he started work on his twelfth film, The Boy and the Heron (JP: Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, lit. How Do You Live?). Notably, the film took seven years to produce and didn’t have a robust marketing campaign ahead of its Japanese premiere, opting instead for a single poster image.

The poster in question.

While I wouldn’t consider myself a hardcore Miyazaki fan, as I haven’t seen all of his films yet, I have seen enough that I understand his talent as a director and why his works are so beloved to this day. In fact, what grabbed our attention with seeing The Boy and the Heron while we could still catch it in a theater was that it received animation awards despite competing against the boundary-pushing Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like The Boy and the Heron, considering the director’s track record, I found it lacking where it mattered most: the story.

The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom (PS4)

Note: This review contains spoilers for The Last Kids on Earth.

Over the last year or so, I’ve become a big fan of The Last Kids on Earth (TLKOE), a Middle Grade series by Max Brallier that provides a lighthearted take on the zombie apocalypse and elements of cosmic horror. Thanks to my local library, I got hooked on the book series, which gave me a greater interest in watching the animated Netflix adaptation (through the DVDs, since I don’t have a Netflix account). During my journey through TLKOE, I also learned that the animated series, which Netflix sadly canceled after three seasons and a special, received a tie-in video game, The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom (Staff of Doom), developed by Stage Clear Studios and published by Outright Games in 2021.

While I would love to give more meta information about the game here, I unfortunately cannot. There are no articles about it apart from press releases, a handful of reviews or whatever is available on the publisher’s website. All I know for sure is that the developer’s games have received positive reviews on Steam, though I can’t personally vouch for the quality, that Outright Games has a track record of publishing at least somewhat decent licensed games and that Staff of Doom has a rather mixed reception from what few user reviews I saw before diving in. The only other thing I can say for sure is that I sure am glad I only paid $9 for a used copy instead of the full $30 for a new one.

The Last Kids on Earth - Book One (Film)

It’s not often that we discuss television series on this blog, although we usually justify doing so when part of it is presented as a feature film. Such is the case with “Book One” of The Last Kids on Earth, an animated Netflix series based on Max Brallier’s book series of the same name, of which I have recently become a fan (to the point I signed up for the official fan club). While Book One is technically the first season, it’s only an hour-long feature, as opposed to the two ten-episode seasons that followed. As such, since I’ve enjoyed the books, I felt like I could weigh in on how well it works not only as an adaptation, but as a film on its own merits. Fortunately, I can say that Book One succeeds on both fronts.

Stubs - Illicit

Illicit (1931) Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, James Rennie, Ricardo Cortez, Natalie Moorhead. Directed by Archie Mayo. Screenplay by Harvey Thew. Based on a play by Edith Fitzgerald and Robert Riskin (copyrighted 1 Jul 1930). Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck Run time: 82 minutes. USA Black and White Pre-Code, Drama.

So much has changed since the day that Illicit was originally released on February 14, 1931. Back then, the film was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency and enraged women’s groups. What had once been scandalous is now rated TV-G when it recently aired on TCM.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

For the longest time, I had never read any literature aimed at girls, as I had grown up towards the end of an era where boys rigidly consumed media aimed at their demographic, at least out in the open (before the “Brony” phenomenon challenged this idea in the 2010s). As an adult, I would finally do so as part of an exploration of middle grade material, which would include Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., Judy Blume’s 1970 novel famous for its frank discussion of female puberty and religious topics, after learning of its 2023 film adaptation of the same name. Despite reading it as a grown man, I found the novel engaging and understood its cultural significance, which made me more curious about the film, although I sadly didn’t get the opportunity to see it during its original theatrical run. Nevertheless, I did finally get the chance near the end of the year and found that on top of its high quality, it did the source material proper justice and it’s a shame that not enough people saw it.