Shin Godzilla

Shin Godzilla (2016) is a monster film that spends most of its running time in meeting rooms, and that is not a flaw. It is the entire idea. The water in Tokyo Bay starts boiling strangely. Officials do not take it seriously. A committee convenes, then a subcommittee, then a commission. Everyone asks about jurisdiction, nobody can decide anything, and while this goes on the creature comes ashore. The film was made after the 2011 earthquake, the tsunami and Fukushima, and what it attacks is obvious: a state tripping over its own procedure in a crisis. Godzilla here is not a metaphor. It is an examination. The writer and co-director is Hideaki Anno, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anyone who knows Evangelion will recognise the habits: text filling the screen, the aesthetic of official documents, abrupt and cold cuts. The creature design is the most unpleasant in the series. It changes in stages and its first form is deliberately ugly. It won Best Picture at the Japan Academy Awards. It runs 120 minutes. Good for: kaiju films, political satire, and Japanese cinema. Less good for: there is no character depth to find, names and job titles come at you in volume, and anyone opening it for action will be bored.