In the Kevin Smith film, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob talk about “… the internet movie site, Poop Shoot dot com”. It is where everyone can post an opinion about a film, regardless if they are qualified or not. That website is a bit like this post. I hope to write a short think-piece about a film I just saw; I saw Shin Godzilla.
I will stipulate I am no movie buff – I would like to find the time to enjoy more movies and maybe writing about them here will spur me on to watch more? I certainly am not qualified to review movies – this is, after all, just a think piece on a personal blog. I will be tagging these movie reviews with poopshoot.com so that you can keep up to date with them.
What made me watch Shin Godzilla? Well it was Jack Sincalir’s & Claire Adam’s show ‘I Watched A Movie’ on HCR. The couple went through the film and spent an hour talking about in such a lucid manner that it made me want to seek out the film and see it for myself.
Shin Godzilla is an open letter to the Japanese Government over the mishandling and the bureaucracy surrounding Fukushima, disguised as a monster film. It was bloody brilliant.
A lot of the reviews I have seen, the reviews I saw on my Plex Server, said that it was a dialogue heavy film without too much monster action. But, I saw it as a film the human response to a: the disaster being Fukushima/Godzilla. And, the level of red tape needing to be cut in times of humanitarian crisis gave scope to the plot twists.
The direction was unnervingly psychological – most of the intense dialogue was headshots, emphasising the characters were in their own space, their own bubble.
The special effects were good. I have heard (on the radio) that Godzilla was CGI made to look, in parts like a man wearing a suit. I admit I have never seen a radio active monster destroy downtown Tokyo but the damage to the buildings looked credible; there was a lot of though going in to the destruction of suburban Toyo.
And then the reveal of Godzilla for the first time made him comically look like a googly eyed rubber chicken. However, by the end of the film, there was some terrifying images as Godzilla attempted to asexually spawn humanoid creatures.
There was a metaphor that to become a true destroyer of the planet the creature would need to be human.
A very enjoyable film – some annoying, over the top portrayals that pander to xenophobic national depictions but a great metaphor for the ineffective deployment of governmental bureaucracy to stem the harm done my humanity and corporate greed.
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