Review: 'Godzilla Minus Zero' packs a lot of serious stuff into a monster movie — but it's all entertaining, ear-splitting and exciting

The new “Godzilla Minus Zero” demonstrates that one of the down sides of modern special effects is that the creatures of filmmakers’ imagination look so realistic that we as viewers have to take them seriously. 

In “Godzilla Minus Zero,” a direct sequel to 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One” (whose visual effects won an Oscar), writer-director Takashi Yamazaki explores the aftermath of World War II in Japan, survivor’s guilt, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the morality of scientists faced with the unthinkable. It’s a lot more than big monsters breaking stuff — but because it is also about that, it’s ferociously entertaining.

The new movie starts in 1949, about two years after Godzilla attacked the Ginza neighborhood in Tokyo the last time. Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), the pilot who destroyed Godzilla at the end of the last movie, has married his girlfriend, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and they’ve adopted Akiko (She Nagatani), the orphan Noriko rescued. Dr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), the engineer who devised the way to kill Godzilla, now runs a disaster response unit, waiting for the next monster attack to hit Japan.

Noda’s team doesn’t have to wait long. Scientists have found a meteorite that left some kind of living material, which has apparently sucked up the available nearby animal life and fused the DNA into a new monster — a dragon-like creature with wings and a talent for shooting bolts of energy out of its mouth. Noda’s crew gives it a name: Ghidorah. 

Noda enlists Koichi to advise the volunteer pilots tasked with trying to destroy Ghidorah, a plan that doesn’t go well. Plan B is to use lightning storms to direct Ghidorah to go somewhere they might be able to rein it in — an idea devised by Noda’s very sharp meteorologist, Miss Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa). 

With Ghidorah taking up their efforts, Noda’s team almost doesn’t get the news that Godzilla isn’t as dead as we thought. Enter Professor Murakami (Min Tanaka), who has an invention that might lure Godzilla away from population centers. It’s risky, and also ethically suspect, since it involves using Noriko as bait, since she’s been infected with Godzilla’s DNA. Murakami has another ethical issue, because his family was killed in Hiroshima and he wants revenge against the Americans who dropped the A-bomb.

This isn’t your grandparents’ “Godzilla,” where a guy in a rubber suit could destroy cardboard recreations of Tokyo, and the acting that accompanies those scenes is allowed to be cheesy.

Yamazaki balances those high-minded themes with effective action sequences, and when Godzilla finally makes his entrance, it’s as exciting and terrifying as it should be. (The thundering sound design, particularly in an IMAX theater, will scare the bejeebers out of most moviegoers.) Yamazaki also gives his cast room to pull at the emotional threads here, and in particular Hamabe’s Noriko and Nagasawa’s Miss Aoyama shine out as women who carry on despite their fears.

“Godzilla Minus Zero” brings added depth to both the Godzilla lore and the human characters trying to survive a monster in their town. It’s a worthy successor to the 2023 movie, and shows the promise of continuing the franchise for as long as the big guy can roar.

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‘Gpdzilla Minus Zero’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some violent content/bloody images. Running time: 135 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.

Review: 'La Bola Negra' is a soulful story of the Spanish Civil War, and the tragic, resilient ways the past informs the present

The past seeps into the present, and the fictional bleeds into the real, in “La Bola Negra,” a soul-stirring epic that reaches back 80 years and finds that some things, like love as a persistent resistance to hate, are eternal and beautiful.

Directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who co-wrote the script with Alberto Conejero, tell three stories at once here. One is set in Granada in 1932, centering on a young man, Carlos (Milo Quifes), who has applied for membership in the city’s exclusive casino — but has been blackballed (which is where the movie’s title is derived) because the city fathers who decide on such things have heard the whispers that Carlos is a homosexual.

The second story follows Sebastián (played by the actor/musician known by the one name Guitarricadelafuente), who in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, barely survives a massacre in his village at the hands of the Italian military. Sebastián ends up joining the side that killed his family, the Nationalists, the fascist side led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco and backed by Benito Mussolini. At a military garrison, he ends up guarding Rafael Rodriguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau), a former footballer who’s fighting on the side of the Republic, and is likely to be executed as soon as he heals from his combat injuries. 

The third story is set in 2017, and centers on Alberto (Carlos González), a historian and former playwright who lives with his boyfriend, Juan Pablo (Julio Torres, from “Problemista”), and has an uneasy relationship with his cocaine-addicted mom (Lola Dueñas). Alberto gets a call and is surprised to learn that his mom’s father has just died — Alberto didn’t know he was alive — and that he is to receive an inheritance. 

It takes Calvo and Ambrossi about an hour to start to show us the connections among these three stories. Without divulging too much, one of the connections is the work of the Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, who left behind four pages of a manuscript before he was assassinated during the Spanish Civil War — killed for being a Republican, and therefore branded a Communist, and possibly also because he was gay. (The movie suggests that Spain, like Germany in the Weimar era, had a flourishing pansexual cultural scene that was brutally suppressed by the totalitarian regime that followed.) 

Calvo and Ambrossi pepper their story with lovely moments. There’s the “cupleista” Nené Romero (a sweet cameo by Penélope Cruz), a burlesque singer who entertains the troops and shows Sebastián the secret influence of drag. Or there’s the Lorca biographer (Glenn Close) whom Alberto shares the results of his inheritance, the importance of which she shows in three words in English: “Cancel my flight.”

Cruz and Close are the most recognizable faces in the cast, but some of the lesser-known performers won’t remain so for long. Most notable is Guitarricadelafuente, giving an electric performance in which he reveals Sebastián’s pent-up desire, confusion, shame and resolve as they unfold amid the bloodshed and cruelty of the war around him.

“La Bola Negra” is a movie that takes its time, but rewards the audience’s patience. By the end, we’ve experienced love and pain, loss and wisdom, regrets and victories — in short, we’ve lived the lives of these characters, something a playwright like Garcia Lorca would have loved.

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‘La Bola Negra’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 6, at several theaters. Rated R for violence/bloody images, graphic nudity, sexual content and language. Running time: 160 minutes; in Spanish and some English, with subtitles. 

Review: 'Wild Horse Nine' is a funny and deeply cynical take on '70s CIA agents, enlivened by John Malkovich's battered lead character

If there’s a sure indicator how flawed the Academy Awards are as an accurate measure of movie greatness, it’s not that John Malkovich doesn’t have one yet — it’s that he hasn’t been nominated for one in 32 years. According to all indications, Malkovich’s battered, acid-tongued performance in the pitch-dark comedy “Wild Horse Nine” may fix the second item, and potentially the first.

Malkovich and Sam Rockwell play Chris and Lee, two grizzled CIA agents visiting Chile in 1973 — right around the time the U.S. helped engineer the military coup that overthrew the elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, and installed the brutal dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Chris and Lee have worked together a long time, and talk like a bickering married couple about what each finds annoying about the other.

What annoys Chris about Lee is that he’s constantly eating, or nagging him. What Chris does that annoys Lee is a habit of talking out loud in public about classified information, like all the assassinations he’s performed or facilitated — including a big one, in Dallas in November 1963.

The two CIA guys are traveling to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as the Indigenous people there call it. (A lot of locals were hired to be the film crew for this movie, since the giant stone heads at Rapa Nui aren’t the sort of things you can fake in Vancouver.) It’s a place Chris has always wanted to see before he dies, and he knows that’s going to happen soon, either from the cancer or from Lee killing him. What Chris doesn’t know is whether Lee is doing it because Chris asked him to, or because their station chief in Santiago, M.J. (Steve Buscemi), told him to.

Chris finds himself reciting his memoir into a tape recorder, which makes M.J. nervous, and making time with a Chilean tourist, Monica (Mariana Di Girolama), who provides some human perspective about Chris’ lifetime of lies and murder. Meanwhile, Lee is dealing with calls from his frazzled wife, Margie (Parker Posey), and a feeling that M.J. is getting impatient.. 

Writer-director Martin McDonagh — whose “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” got Rockwell his Oscar — has a knack of pairing characters who get on each other’s nerves, and digging into their shared dislikes and how far they’ll push each other. The dynamic of Chris and Lee is reminiscent of the age-gapped gangsters on a forced road trip in McDonagh’s 2008 feature debut, “In Bruges.” 

Malkovich hasn’t really cooked at this level since he played himself, sorta, in the 1999 meta-comedy “Being John Malkovich.” He manages the neat trick of making a rat bastard like Chris into someone who’s approachable and even sympathetic, even as you realize you should never get in the back of a car with him.

McDonagh’s movies — like “Three Billboards” and “The Banshees of Inisherin” — are freighted with laconic cynicism, and here the filmmaker argues that there’s no one more cynical than a CIA assassination guy. They’re also dark, funny and occasionally a bit tender, which make “Wild Horse Nine” the pitch-dark comedy we need right now.

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‘Wild Horse Nine’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 6, at several theaters. Rated R for pervasive language, some strong violence, drug use and sexual references. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'Once Upon a Time in Harlem' goes to a cocktail party and captures the voices of the Harlem Renaissance, still vibrant decades after their heyday

Have you ever been to a party where everyone there was more interesting than you, and were telling stories you wanted to hear all night long? You will if you see “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” a documentary that took three generations half a century to make.

It starts with filmmaker William Greaves sending an invitation for a cocktail party in August 1972. The location is the Harlem apartment of the legendary composer Duke Ellington. The guest list includes as many of the surviving figures of the Harlem Renaissance — writers, artists, activists, agitators, and so on.

I am forced to admit that my knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance is limited. Blame a public school education in a predominantly white region of the country. I know a bit of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and I’ve heard of the Black nationalist movement started by Marcus Garvey more than a century ago. After spending 100 minutes with the folks at this party, I want to take a deep dive and learn more. 

As the movie unfolds, I learned I did know a bit more than I thought. I recognized the historian John Henrik Clarke and the composer Eubie Blake, who was 85 at the time of filming. (Blake most famously wrote the song “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” a tune so engrained in the American songbook that it’s difficult today to think that it didn’t just exist for all time.) 

But I found myself being drawn to the figures I didn’t know as well. For example, the poet and novelist Arna Bontemps, who died a year after this party took place. Or the actor Leigh Whipper, the first Black man in Actors Equity, and someone who performed through minstrels to vaudeville to legit theater. Or the society editor Gerri Major, who chronicled all the doings of the era and remembers all the names. Or my favorite, Ida Mae Cullen, who makes sure everyone remembers the contributions of her late husband, the poet Countee Cullen.

Duke Ellington never shows up to this party, even though it’s in his apartment. But with such fascinating people engaged in such rich conversations, you barely notice. 

Greaves had a long career, mostly making documentaries — most famously, the meta-doc “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” in 1969 (and a sequel that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005) — and died in 2014. His son, David Greaves, and granddaughter, Liani Greaves, have put together the footage from this 1972 party, gently adding bits of context without disrupting the flow of the afternoon. The result is a document of a time long past but still as alive as these urgent voices can make it.

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‘Once Upon a Time in Harlem’

★★★★

Opens Friday, November 6, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for some disturbing images, strong racial language, smoking, and brief partial nudity. Running time: 100 minutes.

Review: 'Fatherland' explores the aftermath of a war, and the fractures between a famous writer and his daughter.

In the drama “Fatherland,” Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski captures the emotional tensions of a particular father-daughter road trip, and the shared sense of legacy and the survivor’s guilt that comes with thoughts of the family member who’s not there.

The story takes place in 1949, shortly after World War II has left much of Germany a wreck, and the burgeoning Cold War has begun to divide the country into the Soviet-controlled eastern zone and the Allied-occupied west side. It’s a country that the author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) hasn’t visited since Hitler came to power in the ‘30s. 

Mann is back to accept an award, the Goethe Prize for literature. Actually, he’s receiving it twice, because both the West German East German governments want to honor him. This gets tricky for Mann and his daughter, Erika (played by Sandra Hüller), his assistant and driver. Mann and Erika live in America, where Mann has received U.S. citizenship but Erika’s application has been denied.

Arriving in Frankfurt, Erika intercepts letters sent to her father, accusing him of being a traitor to his “fatherland.” She also has to convince Mann that the argument he wants to make, that Goethe’s work predates the war and has no Communist influences, isn’t likely to dissuade red-baiting American politicians from pursuing him as a Red.

The ghosts of the war linger. One of the people Erika runs into at a Frankfurt cocktail party is her ex-husband, a German actor who famously palled around with Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring; the conversation ends with Erika slapping him. And Mann is buttonholed by young twin men who are the grandsons of Richard Wagner, who’s trying to rehabilitate their grandpa’s image, tarnished when Hitler declared himself a fan.

Erika’s also dealing with a phone call, which we see in the movie’s opening scene, from her brother, Klaus (August Diehl). Klaus is in Cannes, and disillusioned about his writing and the art world in general. Erika invites him on this trip, and checks with the hotel clerk to see if he’s called back. Then she gets the word that Klaus has died from an intentional drug overdose, and Erika and Mann have to decide whether to go on with the trip.

Pawlikowski filmed “Fatherland” in black-and-white, as he did with his movies “Ida” and “Cold War,” and again the monochrome cuts away distractions and leaves the core emotions Mann and Erika are trying to reconcile. Zischler and Hüller give beautifully paired performances, as both actors present characters who know after decades how much to expect from the other. “Fatherland” is about a father and daughter wanting to go home, and understanding that for them and millions displaced by the war, there may not be any such place.

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‘Fatherland’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 6, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for language, themes of suicide and drug use, and smoking. Running time: 82 minutes; in German, French and some English, with subtitles.

Review: 'Ramayana: Rise of a Legend' uses splashy special effects to tell the foundational saga of Hindu mythology — and only get halfway there.

As an American movie lover, watching the Indian epic “Ramayana: Rise of a Legend” feels like watching “The Ten Commandments” or “The Greatest Story Ever Told” without ever read the Bible — in that you get a sense of the massive scope of the story, but without the cultural touchpoints that one imagines people in India have engrained in them since a young age.

“Ramayana” begins with the Hindu triad: Brahma, the creator of all life; Shiva, the destroyer and transformer; and Vishnu, the preserver who brings balance to the chaos. The movie tells us that Vishnu frequently picks humans to be avatars, granting them powers to keep the forces of evil from overwhelming the Earth.

The movie introduces us to Dashanan (played by the one-named actor Yash), a mortal who asks Brahma for immortality. When Brahma declines, Dashanan asks for the next best thing: To have the ability to live through anything that the gods, magic, disease or supernatural creatures or forces can deliver. 

Dashanan leaves one loophole, by not asking for protection from humans — though it would take quite a human to defeat Dashanan, who takes the name Ravana, and the armies of demons and giants he amasses in his kingdom, Lanka.

Vishnu, though, has a human in mind who can eventually take on Ravana. That is Prince Rama (Ranbit Kapoor), the handsome and unfathomably virtuous son of King Dashrath (Arun Govil) in the kingdom of Ayodhya. Rama has three brothers — or half-brothers, since the king has three wives — and Rama is closest to Lakshman (Ravi Dubey), who becomes his guardian.

Rama falls in love with Sita (Sai Pallavi), and is being groomed by his father to become king. Then one of his stepmoms, Kaikeyi (Lara Dutta), maneuvers to get her son, Bharat (Addinath M. Kothare), to be king instead. Rama, so wholesome he makes Clark Kent look like a con artist, vows to go into exile to ensure the kingdom’s survival, and Sita and Lakshman opt to go with him.

In exile, though, the trio keep having adventures — which is where you’re reminded that this is the sort of foundational legends that probably inspired everything from “The Odyssey” to “The Lord of the Rings,” whether those stories’ creators knew it or not. At one spot in the forest, I expected Ram to run into the Rodents of Unusual Size, which just tells you how universal these kind of stories are.

Finally, near the three-hour mark, Ravana kidnaps Sita, setting up the long-awaited showdown with Rama. (It can’t be a spoiler if the story is 2,500 years old.) Then come for words that had me howling in laughter: “End of Part 1.” The movie promises that part 2 is coming “Diwali 2028,” which is October of that year. (Diwali is a big movie weekend in India, I learned, much like Thanksgiving is in the U.S.)

What writer-director Nitesh Tiwari delivers here is visually impressive, with freakish monsters, well-choreographed one-on-one fights and massively staged battle sequences that any Hollywood blockbuster would use. (In fact, some of the same Indian-based effects houses the studios employ are used here.) The bigger-than-life fantasy look is assisted by a regal score, by composers Hans Zimmer (“Dune,” “Gladiator” and A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”). 

I can’t say how much I’d recommend “Ramayana: Rise of a Legend” until I’ve seen the second installment. Three hours is a big time commitment for a story with a ton of characters to keep sorted, and if you’re not already versed in the mythology, only after Part 2 will we know for sure if it’s worth the investment.

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‘Ramayana: Rise of a Legend’

★★★

Opens Friday, November 6, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and action, and some bloody images. Running time: 195 minutes (in Hindi with subtitles) or 165 minutes (dubbed in English). 

Review: 'JImmy' recounts Jimmy Stewart's wartime exploits, with all the corniness of one of the actor's old movies.

The biographical drama “Jimmy” treats the life of the legendary actor Jimmy Stewart much the way Stewart-starring biopics like “The Glenn Miller Story” and “The Spirit of St. Louis” did — a mix of treacle and grandiosity that may have worked decades ago but feel as dated as the public-domain needle drops.

Director Aaron Burns focuses on Stewart’s life in the 1940s, as the callow young actor (played with aplomb by KJ Apa) has just won his Academy Award for “The Philadelphia Story” and is semi-seriously romancing one of Hollywood’s leading actresses, Ginger Rogers (Jemma Donovan). Back home in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Jimmy’s father (Neal McDonough), is less impressed with Jimmy’s Oscar than with the local boy who just signed up for the Army — a more noble pursuit than acting, in Dad’s mind.

When Stewart’s number gets called in the draft, the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer (Jason Alexander), offers to arrange for his actor to avoid service, until the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Sarah Drew) gets wind of it and prompts a publicity nightmare. Stewart enlists in the Army Air Corps, intent on seeing combat in Europe, even though his commander (Rob Riggle) would prefer a stateside assignment because “America can’t afford to lose Jimmy Stewart.”

Undaunted, Stewart heads to Tibenham Air Base in England, and Justin Strawhand’s script focuses largely on his military service — which culminated in 20 bombing missions over Nazi Germany, some of which are reenacted with gritty authenticity. Less realistic is a fabricated romance with a widowed English aristocrat, Lady Julia Tyndall (Kara Killmer) who sees the shell shock and imposter syndrome Jimmy is suffering, the guilt over using his acting talents to convince other young men to go into war.

Framing Jimmy’s World War II heroics and survivor’s guilt is the story of what happened when the war was over. Mayer tells him his fame has diminished, and it’s only a long shot script from his director pal Frank Capra (Max Casella) that might resurrect his career — a feel-bad holiday drama about a small-town banker coping with financial setbacks, a movie called “It’s a Wonderful Life!”

Burns and Strawhand serve up Stewart’s story with enough corn to make tortillas, and Apa’s earnest performance relies too heavily on nailing Stewart’s famously aw-shucks vocalisms and aping his onscreen mannerisms. The production is rich in period splendor, but it all feels like a big game of dress-up. “Jimmy” gets the surface details of Stewart’s story, but not the spirit he displayed in his films.

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‘Jimmy’

★★

Opens Friday, November 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some war violence/bloody images, thematic elements and smoking. Running time: 120 minutes.

Review: 'Fjord' is a harrowing drama about a Christian family at odds with Norwegian law, with great performances but mixed messages

I can’t think of a movie that was so good and yet aggravated me as much as “Fjord,” Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s Palme D’Or-winning drama that pits two opposite forces — liberal Norwegians and conservative Christians — and gives the audience reasons to dislike both of them.

The family details we get early here is that Mihai and Lisbet Gheorghiu — played by Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve — have moved from his home country of Romania to her birthplace, a small town in Norway. (As it happens, those are the birth countries of the two actors.)

Mihai and Lisbet have five children, including a year-old baby, and have raised them in an evangelical Christian faith. Even so, Mihai and Lisbet befriend their next-door neighbor, Mats Halberg (Markus Scarth Tønseth), the liberal headmaster at the town’s school, and his wife, Mia (Lisa Carlehed). The Gheorghius’ oldest daughter, Elia (Vanessa Ceban), quickly becomes close with the Halbergs’ rebellious daughter, Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen).

When a gym teacher notices bruises on Elia’s back and neck, it sets in motion what becomes a nightmare scenario for Mihai and Lisbet. Several teachers call in Child Protective Services, who act quickly to remove the children — even the baby, who Lisbet is still breastfeeding — from the Gheorghius’ house and to live with foster parents.

Mihai is convinced the CPS caseworker, Gunda (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), and her liaison at the school, Frida (Lisa Loven Kongsli), are prejudiced against hardcore Christians. Though even their church’s Norwegian members warn Mihai not to fight the CPS, whose power to trample on families’ civil rights is unquestioned in Norwegian law and society. Even the couple’s first lawyer (Anne E. Kokkinn) quits after one meeting, because she refuses to listen to Mihai’s side of things. 

Their neighbor, Mia, who’s a lawyer, starts to realize that the case isn’t so simple — because of a language barrier with the younger children, and Frida and Gunda’s biases — and offers to help the Gheorghius in civil court to get their children back. By then, Mihai is fed up and finds another way to fight the system.

What keeps us engaged with the Gheorghiu parents are the actors playing them. Stan, best known for his work in the Marvel universe, gives a breathtaking performance as the religiously rigid Mihai, and Reinsve counters heartbreakingly as Lisbet, who’s caught between the people she grew up with and her love for her husband and her children. (Stan and Reinsve have shown great chemistry before, in the 2024 dark comedy “A Different Man.”)

Mungiu’s “plague on both your houses” attitude about the two sides here — the Gheorghius’ strict Christianity and the Norwegians’ equally dogmatic governmental protectiveness — ends up being more infuriating than illuminating. Presenting both sides fairly isn’t the same as showing each as being wrong.

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‘Fjord’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 30, in theaters. Rated R for language, full nudity and self-injury. Running time: 146 minutes; in English and Norwegian and Romanian, with subtitles.