“Godzilla Minus Zero”
Bostonians may remember that the kaiju stomped us to smithereens in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” (2019), where Godzilla and Ghidorah met up at Fenway for a CGI smackdown. Those titanic adversaries are back at it in “Godzilla Minus Zero,” but have taken their fight far away, to postwar Japan
The movie follows its prequel, 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One,” which was set in 1947. Two years later, former kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko (Minami Hamabe), now married and raising their adopted daughter, Akiko, have a hard-won domestic peace to protect. Naturally, something enormous has other plans.
That something is the aforementioned Ghidorah, the dragon-like menace whose mysterious arrival sends scientist Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), now heading the Disaster Response Bureau, scrambling to assemble a response after a few villages get trampled into oblivion. Other familiar faces from the prequel include boat captain Seiji Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki), young crewman Shiro Mizushima (Yuki Yamada) and neighbor Sumiko Ota (Sakura Ando). Joining the mix are meteorologist Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa) and biologist Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka), whose wartime scars extend well beyond scientific curiosity. Whether they can stop Ghidorah the way they stopped Godzilla before is another matter.
Noriko carries a more literal reminder of the last go-round. Her altered eye and the dark growth on her neck stem from exposure to Godzilla’s cells during an attack. The same regenerative properties that allowed her to survive have left her changed, making the monster’s legacy something intimate and bodily.
Efforts to stop Ghidorah’s rampage hang in Noda and Shikishima’s aeronautical derring-do, but ultimately require the intervention of the radioactive Godzilla. The franchise has come a long way from its man-in-a-rubber-suit beginnings. “Minus One” leveraged models and practical effects that earned writer-director Takashi Yamazaki and three fellows the 2024 Oscar for best visual effects. Yamazaki again oversees the effects here, but the human wreckage gives the towering spectacle its footing.
Filmmaking wise, “Minus Zero” is visually exceptional when you peel back what Yamazaki and crew are doing and compare it to the whole CGI Godzilla-verse in Hollywood — it’s the difference between skydiving for real and doing so virtually. Naoki Sato’s score bridges the franchise’s eras too, reaching back to the ominous, emphatic strains associated with those early Japanese creature features and Akira Ifukube’s indelible Godzilla music. Later in the film, an ethereal mix arises that’s hauntingly reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s work on Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (2014). It underscores sliding panes of plot reveals as time is rewound and reshuffled. That shift from impending doom to expansive wonder suits a series in which monsters can be both terrors and objects of awe. The buildings may come down in spectacular fashion, but it’s the lives being rebuilt beneath them that give the destruction weight. —Tom Meek
Playing at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond and AMC Assembly Row 12
“Being Heumann”
Cambridge native (and soon-to-be returner) Siân Heder follows her surprise Best Picture winner “CODA” (2021) with another inspiring story of triumph over adversity. Ruth Madeley stars as Judy Heumann, the real-life “mother of disability rights” and self-described “radical crip” who was instrumental in passing the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which extended a variety of protections and services to individuals with disabilities.
When we join Heumann four years after the passage of that act, however, progress has been frustratingly slow; Section 504, which would guarantee people with disabilities accessibility and civil rights, is stuck in limbo, bound in red tape on the desk of Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joe Califano (played with oily gusto by Mark Ruffalo). Fed up with baby steps, Heumann and a team of dozens of similarly inclined activists decamp to the San Francisco HEW office, storming the gates and setting up tents in the halls for what would be one of the longest sit-in strikes in American history.
One of the most striking things about “Heumann” is the frankness and honesty with which it portrays its characters. Where other filmmakers might gloss over the more uncomfortable aspects of the disabled experience, Heder shows us the warts and all, spending long, unbroken shots on the ordeal of simply using the restroom. Just as crucially, however, Heder makes room for humor and joy. These characters may have disabilities, but they are also young people in the 1970s, and every bit as rambunctious, volatile, and horny as their peers (one of their first acts upon commandeering the lobby is the construction of a “sex tent,” which is exactly what it sounds like). As we settle into closed quarters with these young idealists, we come to love them as people. This cast of charismatic, mostly unknown actors, nearly all of whom live with disability themselves, are one of the most remarkable ensembles of the year.
For better and for worse, “Being Heumann” is an unabashed crowd pleaser in the truest sense of the word. Some may view its big, soppy emotional beats as formulaic and manipulative. But formulas exist for a reason, and when they work, they work. “Being Heumann” tells an important and oft-overlooked story in American history, and does so with charm to spare. The next time you use an access ramp or step onto an inclined sidewalk, you just might think of Judy Heumann. — Oscar Goff
Streaming on AppleTV+ and screening at Somerville Theatre on Sunday, Nov. 22.
A stronger
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