Trevor Writes

Takashi Miike has been a reliable go-to director for Japanese blockbuster cinema since 2010, releasing between two and three films every year of this current decade, equally achieving creative success as well as commercial. He rocked the foreign arthouse world with his samurai epic 13 Assassins (2010), and followed it up with a respectable remake of Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 masterpiece in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011). Likely to be dismissed for remaking one of the all-time greats, Hara-Kiri is a dazzlingly colourful palette of heightened melodrama. Zebraman 2: Attack of Zebra City (2010), a meta-sequel to his 2004 family film, is a Joe Dante-style mockery of superhero and science fiction cinema, set with a black and white striped totalitarian metropolitan wherein a Lady Gaga-like figure rules everything. Ninja Kids!!! (2011) is an energetic children's movie with an onslaught of humourous slapstick and visual gags. Lowbrow humour and family-friendly entertainment

As if sensing the series was growing stale with Invasion of Astro-Monster , Toho hired a new director to helm the Godzilla series, Jun Fukuda. 12 years Ishiro Honda's junior, Fukuda had been directing modest sized comedy and mystery films since 1959, but nothing of note to Western audiences. After making four Godzilla films in four years, Honda's entries were growing less exciting. He would still have great 'Zilla films up his sleeve, but a little distance was necessary for him to recharge. Fukuda gave the series a much needed change in direction, his films brighter, friendlier, and a more guilt-free version of family entertainment that Toho likely appreciated. Fukuda makes his presence known early in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966), also known as Godzilla vs The Sea Monster , in a lengthy dance competition sequence. In a wide shot, dozens of men and women are shown in brightly coloured shirts dancing their hearts out, the winner of the endurance contest recei

Everyone is looking to the stars in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), even before the titular planet devouring space monster swoops down and wrecks Earth. An astronomically bizarre heatwave strikes Japan in the dead of winter, with many more natural anomalies occurring the world over. Given the global hysteria the last several years saw in the wake of atomic bomb-created creatures of destruction, a fantasy which has become reality, astronomers have opened their minds to the possibilities of even more groundbreaking discoveries - such as life on other planets. It's a logical move for the Godzilla franchise to delve into science fiction, after its prior success in horror, action, and fantasy. There can only be so many human-made monsters before the concept runs dry, so it's a refreshing change to throw space aliens of mysterious origin into the mix. The fifth and sixth films, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), both directed by