2 Best Movies to Watch From Tsuburaya Productions

Although this adaptation of the 1960s TV show feels like four episodes of material crammed into a feature runtime, Shin Ultraman really does squeeze as much as it can out of every scene, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Not only are the action scenes as ridiculous as they should be—still imitating the clunkiness and the theatricality of classic Japanese tokusatsu—but even sequences of exposition are made to feel urgent and breathless by breakneck comedic editing and by placing the camera in the weirdest positions for the quickest shots. And somehow, Shin Ultraman still doesn't feel like it's making fun of its source material. It's an honest-to-goodness sci-fi superhero movie that's much more insightful about the nature of international crises than Hollywood tends to be.

Genre: Action, Science Fiction

Actor: Akari Hayami, Bin Furuya, Daiki Arioka, Hajime Yamazaki, Hideaki Anno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Issey Takahashi, Keishi Nagatsuka, Kenjiro Tsuda, Koichi Yamadera, Kōji Yamamoto, Kyūsaku Shimada, Masami Nagasawa, Ryo Iwamatsu, Soko Wada, Takumi Saitoh, Tetsushi Tanaka, Toru Masuoka, Yutaka Takenouchi

Director: Shinji Higuchi

Rating: NR

There is some dissonance here. A heavy coming of age backstory serves as the foundation to an otherwise straightforward, even feel-good plot involving fighting and protecting kaiju. The film doesn’t do the best job merging the shiny animations and cute story beats with the threat of the kaiju and the weight of the atmosphere set early on. Individually, however, each side is enjoyable, with the strained father-son relationship in particular being a worthwhile endeavor and full of honesty. But all things considered, there isn’t a whole lot of tension here, even for a film intended for younger audiences, making its 2-hour runtime unnecessarily long given everything it lacks.

Genre: Action, Animation, Family, Science Fiction

Actor: Artt Butler, Bret Marnell, Brittany Ishibashi, Christopher Sean, François Chau, Frank Buckley, Gedde Watanabe, Jonathan Groff, Julia Harriman, Julia Kato, Keone Young, Lee Shorten, Mayumi Yoshida, Paul Nakauchi, Rob Fukuzaki, Tamlyn Tomita, Vic Chao

Director: Shannon Tindle

Rating: PG