There are few things that I love more than giant monster movies, so when I first saw that Godzilla Minus One trailer several months ago, I knew it was “Go Time.” Let me tell you right here and right now that it did not disappoint. I had an absolute blast watching it.

The film is centered around Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who is a kamikaze pilot dealing with the aftermath of World War II and his relationship with Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe).

There’s also that Godzilla fella who was pretty rad.

I knew going into the movie that I would love everything dealing with Godzilla, because who doesn’t love fights involving giant kaiju. What I didn’t expect was how good the story would be between our human characters. They did such a good job telling the story around PTSD and grief that it brought me into tears at the end of the movie. The story about patriotism throughout the film was also well done, and you should go rest Jordan Maison at Cinelinx go into that further.

My local theater has a screen where they “stretch” certain scenes and project them into the side walls as well. For Godzilla Minus One, the scenes at sea were used quite often in this feature. It made the isolation of being at sea feel more real. Also, every time Godzilla was on the screen it was pretty dope.

Obviously, this film is a no-brainer if you like Godzilla or Kaiju movies; however, this is definitely one of the best movies that I’ve seen in 2023. I highly recommend it.