Shin Godzilla

Following the 2014 American reboot of Godzilla, Toho—the Japanese film studio that produced the original 1954 Godzilla and dozens of sequels—revived the series after a 12-year hiatus. Shin Godzilla (roughly New Godzilla) was Japan's top live-action film in 2016 and their highest-grossing Godzilla film ever. Where previous revivals have offered sequels, this one presents the rise of the giant lizard as an origin story. Godzilla evolves from a massive wormlike sea creature crawling through Tokyo into the more dinosaur-like lizard king, sprouting legs and arms and spiny dorsal fins that will eventually shoot laser beams powered by an organic atomic-fusion heart. Where the 1954 film was a metaphor for the atomic bomb, this one evokes the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Director Hideaki Anno's rapid cutting creates urgency while the stumbling government response humanizes the ordeal in unexpected ways as maverick scientists collide with a slow-moving bureaucracy (that is fending off international threats of unilateral action)—all while the giant monster unleashes chaos and epic destruction (this is also the first Japanese Godzilla film to use motion capture and CGI instead of a man in a suit stomping through elaborate miniature cityscapes). A solid reinvention of a sci-fi horror classic, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)