GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023) **** Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Sakura Ando, Yuki Yamada, Kuranosuke Sasake, Hidetaka Yaoshioka, Yuya Endo, Saki Nakatani. Director Takashi Yamazaki's Herculean efforts of reviving the Kaiju franchise is effortlessly awesome and absolutely top-tier filmmaking with the origin story of the gigantic monster showing up off the shores of post WWII Japan as it engages a full-tilt invasion of Tokyo and its environs with atypical destruction and death. Key to the film's strength is the plot involving ex-kamikaze pilot Kamiki (suffering arguably cinema's most poignant PTSD) and love interest Hamabe as a make-shift family attempting to survive with the thread of a palpable redemption narrative laced with surprisingly heartfelt emotion. The clean visual f/x propel the radioactive creature is jaw-droppingly astounding with some neat extras (his spiny back igniting as it re-charges its nuclear energies is eye-poppingly epic). One of the year's best films.

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