Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
BY TYLER HENSON
Don’t let his age fool you, Godzilla still has some fight left in him. Godzilla Minus Zero topped the big family movie release The Cat in the Hat over this weekend, an impressive feat for an R-rated monster movie and a 70+ year old franchise. This critic found the film lacking, but that opinion seems to be in the minority. Read more below.
This weekend will feature some diverse releases, including Ebenezer, a retelling of A Christmas Carol and the first major release starring Johnny Depp in quite some time, How to Rob a Bank, a stylized heist movie for the social media generation, and Wild Horse Nine, the latest from Academy Award-winning writer/director Martin McDonagh. Look forward to our coverage next week.
Godzilla Minus Zero (135mins)
That unstoppable giant atomic lizard Godzilla is back once again in this sequel to the enormously successful, acclaimed, and Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One (2023). Set a few years after the end of World War II, in a Japan still recovering from physical devastation and emotional trauma, a new monster arises, dubbed Ghidorah, and begins wreaking havoc. A few characters from the previous film return to battle this latest foe, including former Kamikaze pilot Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and leading giant monster expert Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka). Their efforts this time are aided by a brilliant meteorologist, Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), and a certain titular beastie who may decide to side with the humans this time around.
After dozens of films, Japanese and American, Godzilla has just about seen it all. He’s battled robots, aliens, King Kong, Matthew Broderick, and even Frankenstein! It’s unbelievable that this series still has such mileage after so long. Minus One brought the idea back to its roots, returning the setting to the aftermath of the Second World War and resurrecting the somber commentary on wartime destruction that distinguished the original Godzilla (1954). Minus Zero continues on that same track. The excitement of rampaging monsters is tinged with greater tragedy and horror by being grounded in the years of slow recovery following the war. Resources are at a minimum, the population is exhausted, and the fight back against the monsters is mounted on little more than a wing and a prayer. There’s real pathos when these characters wonder to each other, “How much more can we survive?”
Unfortunately, the dramatic weight is a little more than this story can bear. Director Takashi Yamazaki, who also made Minus One, has an extensive background in visual effects and is able to design each set piece with an eyewitness immediacy that is always thrilling. But his ability to create compelling characters doesn’t match his skill at creating monster battles. There is an exhausting amount of time spent with some rather flat human characters. Godzilla remains hardly more than a background character until the final showdown with Ghidorah. And some ridiculous plot devices, such as mutations involving human and Godzilla DNA, undermine the seriousness of the thematic presentation. Minus Zero has met with widespread critical acclaim and popular success, leaving this critic slightly confused as to what he missed. Perhaps the impact of seeing giant monsters go mano a mano as the thundering Godzilla theme plays should not be undersold.
Wildwood (132mins)
Oregon-based stop motion animation company Laika has outdone itself. Their latest film, the fantasy adventure Wildwood, is not only their most ambitious production to date, it’s also one of their best. Set in Portland (and brilliantly recreating the city’s most famous landmarks and geography), the story follows young Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), who loses her baby brother after disobeying her overprotective parents. The child is swept up by a murder of crows and taken to a magical kingdom in the woods. Prue follows and finds herself caught up in the political intrigue of this divided world, which is teetering on the brink of war.
Laika’s sensibility has always tended towards the dark and grotesque. Their most famous creation, Coraline (2009), is one of the creepiest of kids’ films, and even their lighter fare, such as The Boxtrolls (2014), happily indulges in gross outs you wouldn’t find in Disney. Wildwood sees them pushing into higher levels of thematic maturity and storytelling complexity. Prue is not a Disney princess. She is flawed, a bit dour and sad, and she struggles with her choices and their consequences. The world she enters may be filled with talking animals and magical creatures, but it is not overly cutesy, nor is it at all innocent. It is a place where violence, death, grief, loss, and tragedy are present and real.
Director Travis Knight and writer Chris Butler, working from an illustrated novel by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, have obviously taken influence from Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1997). As in Miyazaki’s masterpiece, every character in Wildwood is treated with humanity. The central conflict has multiple sides, each inspiring sympathy. There is a villain, Alexandra (Carey Mulligan), but she is motivated by causes far more complicated than evil. And if the film sounds like nonstop, oppressive doom and gloom, potential viewers should know it also contains a great deal of humor. An extensive variety of supporting characters keep the story lively, and the visuals – painstakingly hand-crafted and lovingly animated frame by frame by arguably the most talented team of stop motion animators in the world – are absolutely breathtaking. This is the crowning achievement of Laika’s dedicated artisans, and one of the best films of the year.
You Can See Everything (174mins)
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything has already become something of a phenomenon. It’s one of the most seen, most discussed, most successful documentaries of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must. Ostensibly a portrait of Elizabeth Holmes, the now infamous tech wunderkind who was convicted of fraud in 2022, the film begins as a document of Holmes’ life in the weeks prior to the start of her 11-year prison sentence, and over the course of a nearly three-hour runtime evolves into something much deeper and more elusive.
Fielder, co-director and onscreen interviewer, is best known as a comedian from shows like Nathan For You (2013-2017). He is not the first person one might expect to tackle a subject like this. Incredibly, he has turned out to be something of a perfect match. Fielder’s comic persona, a combination of slow-witted awkwardness and disarming, open ingenuousness, makes for endlessly fascinating interactions with Holmes and her husband Billy Evans. They are an odd, intense, somewhat frightening pair, insisting fully on their own truth and reality, which is that Holmes is an innocent victim who has never once told a lie. Fielder seems like an easy mark. But as he dodges obvious manipulations, questions them in a simple and straightforward way, and plays the fool, it results in hilarious moments of contradiction, frozen panic, and an almost pleading insistence on claims that are plainly untrue.
Then a more disturbing implication begins to surface… do these people even realize the difference between a truth and a lie? Can a person lie, but actually believe in the lie so completely that, for them, it actually becomes the truth? There are numerous developments over the course of this movie that must not be discussed here, because the experience of seeing them happen and being utterly surprised by them is just too good to spoil. Fielder does not to try to condemn his subjects or make any judgments on them. He only wishes to know the truth of who they are as people, beyond public perception, beyond the versions of themselves they try to present. It is vastly illuminating and also profoundly ambiguous, as Fielder’s investigation into these baffling inner lives leads him towards some horrifying insights on the malleable nature of human perception itself. This critic came out of the film in something like an altered state, contemplating my own limited, subjective experience of reality. You Can See Everything is an astonishing achievement, perhaps the best film of the year, and certainly one of the greatest documentaries ever made.
Clayface (109mins)
The DC Universe continues a shaky track record with Clayface. Set in Gotham City, official stomping ground of Batman, this villain origin story follows an actor named Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) who turns to an experimental nanotech scientist, Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), for treatment following a disfiguring attack on his face. As his body mutates from the treatment, he finds he can morph his appearance, heal from any wound, and transform his appendages into deadly weapons. Swearing vengeance on those who wronged him, Hagen’s sanity begins to deteriorate as he picks off the people responsible for the destruction of his life.
Following Superman (2025) and Supergirl (2026), Clayface marks the third entry in what is planned as a new long-form cinematic narrative arc, similar to the MCU. Apparently, the current lineup is separate from previous DC films like Wonder Woman (2017) and The Suicide Squad (2021), and even distinct from ongoing concurrent franchises like The Batman (2022). Huh ? Clayface is also distinguished by its grimmer tone and more violent content, which stands in extreme contrast to the bright and optimistic Superman. This is a revenge thriller, a crime film, a bloody and grotesque horror film, and a tragic romance all rolled into one.
The film deserves credit for doing something different. Hagen’s fall from grace and his star-crossed love affair with Caitlyn inspire sympathy, and his bodily mutations are often creatively nauseating. The most effective scene features his eyelids sealing shut, prompting an excruciatingly ghastly effort to reopen them with a small pair of scissors. This critic found himself shielding his own eyes from the screen as this moment unfolded. But such highs are, disappointingly, few and far between. There is an excessive amount of care put into the plot, with a lot of time spent on character development and motivation. Normally, this would be laudable, but here all it means is that it takes a long time before we get to the point. The whole concept is… well, kind of silly. The film just doesn’t provide enough reason to take it that seriously. As an establishing entry in a nascent franchise, it is refreshingly free of the homogenized feel of a Marvel movie, but Clayface never quite rises to the level of its own ambition.
All of the above movies are currently playing at the Contra Costa Cinema. You can visit https://contracostacinema.com for both current and upcoming showtimes.
