Tokyo Abandonment Order Garateia (2016)
directed by Okuno Kengo/students and alumni of Osaka University of Arts, Film Department
Japan
17 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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So this was made for no other reason than sheer excitement over Shin Godzilla coming out in 2016, and it really shows. I was absolutely into Garateia from minute one because the love for the genre is so obvious. It doesn't try to distance itself from Godzilla; it is its own thing with its own newly-invented creature, but it features the Godzilla hotel, and basically instead of being a direct homage to Godzilla it's something more like a statement of "we wouldn't be here if not for this". It specifically references Shin Godzilla in the way most of the human characters are government or military officials convening to try to figure out what to do in the impossible scenario of a kaiju invasion, but it does get a little weird with it too, especially at the end.
For a 17-minute short I was very impressed with how Garateia manages to pretty much re-invent itself every other minute, constantly throwing in new ideas and going in directions you couldn't foresee even as it gets towards the finale. There's a moment that I absolutely love, where Garateia confronts the model Godzilla on the Gracery Hotel. That idea is so incredibly interesting to me: The real, live kaiju looking at a fictional version of itself. And there's not many memorable individual human characters in this, as is par for the course in kaiju film, but one line from a single defense force member is kind of sticking with me. It ends up being not a coordinated squadron, as the military would prefer, but instead a single woman who lures Garateia into the only area where it can be "safely" bombed with minimal risk to the human populace, and as she stares the creature down, she says "After this, what do I do?" Again, that is so interesting to me; the acknowledgement that life after you risk losing it is going to look different from the way it was before.
Another thing I appreciate is that the weapon of choice against Garateia is the good old "Rods from God", one of my favorite (hell, probably my favorite, I'm not much for real-world weaponry) scrapped bonkers U.S. military ideas. God, would I love to see an actual Godzilla film where they try to do that to him. For what it's worth, it does nothing to Garateia - I'm not going to spoil the ending, because it's another of this film's many exciting moments, but it takes more than some puny metal rods launched from orbit to confront this creature.
I'll just end this review by saying that the Garateia suit is also absolutely gorgeous. The miniatures are surprisingly good as well, especially the Gracery. My only complaint is one that I have about a lot of indie kaiju films, which is that it's just a wee bit too dark for my liking, something that I suspect was done on purpose to hide some of the rougher edges (as if I don't adore those rough edges) on the suit. All in all this could easily be a full-length film project.
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Gwanggong vs. Alien (2011), directed by Chung Man Leung
Hong Kong
16 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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This is a very loose remake of the movie War God, which I've seen and enjoyed quite a bit. Despite its short running time, not only does it do some really interesting things with the concept of the original film, but it also becomes solidly its own, original creation. It is definitely a send-up of the Chinese Communist government: The People's Liberation Army's idea for fighting off a sudden alien invasion is to send three pilots from Hong Kong, mainland China, and Macau out inside a giant mecha Lei Feng (by complete coincidence I watched this on Learn From Lei Feng Day) to fight it. But at the same time, they publicly maintain that there is nooooo alien invasion, the government has everything under control. Party higher-ups broadcast as such even while the alien is clearly visible behind them.
In addition to being a political satire and a tribute to a classic film, this is also a tribute to Ultraman. The opening credits make this fairly clear as well as the fact that Guan Yu is essentially Ultraman in everything but name and appearance: He comes to Earth and merges with a human who has died while protecting others, but is only able to maintain their bond for a short length of time (in this case the time it takes to burn one incense stick). I really have to appreciate a film that takes a group of different ideas ranging from political commentary to film appreciation to figures out of folklore, looks at them, and says, you know what could unite all of these topics? Ultraman.
The effects are surprisingly good for a short film from 2011. There are no kaiju but instead two different mechas (I'm counting the alien as a mecha because it just looks like one) and both are very good suits. The alien especially is, I would argue, easily of the quality of anything from a recent mainstream toku series, albeit maybe a bit more bare-bones. I love its design, though. I couldn't think of any reason or symbolism behind it looking like a bird until just a little while ago I realized that it might be in reference to China's attempted eradication of sparrows as part of the Four Pests Campaign that led to famine and an incredible death toll - but I could be making that up.
And the last thing this packed short manages to incorporate into its plot is the idea that Guan Yu survives only because the people believe in him, that he alone isn't anything, is just an idea, a deification of an ordinary man, but he's given weight by the continued proliferation of his image and legend. This is such a creative, fully-fleshed-out short - the director only has one credit on imdb, but I'm not sure how accurate that is because imdb is not the greatest for primarily non-English-language projects and people. If anybody knows of anything else this director has done, please let me know so I can see it.
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The Specter (2005), directed by Junya Okabe
Japan
41 minutes
2.5 stars out of 5
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Of the three films in today's roundup, this is definitely the one I felt the least enthused about. It is good, but never felt involved in it in the way a good short film can get you to feel even in just a couple of minutes - and this one runs for 41 minutes. This was produced by Konami, that Konami, Silent Hill Konami, and boy, does it show.
The fairly simple plot of this short is that, prior to it, during a period of increasing attacks on Earth from hostile aliens, a defense organization was formed from countries on Earth as well as allied aliens. The short itself focuses on an agent of this organization, nicknamed SPECTER (and played by a Timeranger), as he does Men in Black-type stuff while attempting to stop an invading alien from stealing important plans from a scientist (said scientist is totally fine to throw his assistant under the bus about it). You don't need to worry about that too much, because this is mostly something to be watched for the special effects.
In the opening couple of minutes, this is far more of a CGI showcase than one for practical effects, and it does continue that way throughout the rest of the film, but I feel like The Specter's good point is that it's a great example of how CGI and practical effects can work alongside each other. There's something that I love so much about this specific point in computer-animation history - maybe it's because this is the way video games looked when I was growing up, so I have some nostalgia for it. But I think I like it because the technology was not quite there to make things look basically photorealistic the way it is today, so any time CGI was used, you were going to be able to see that it was CGI, and instead of trying to hide it, a really good filmmaker - like the ones who made this - can use CGI as art. I think of all the older films where the effects were achieved by drawing directly onto the film strip. Good CGI should feel like that, not like it's horning in on everything or being used for cheap entertainment.
Most of the practical effects are concentrated around the invading aliens' makeup and facial prosthetics and I really liked this. There's a crowd of aliens shown at one point and from what I could tell (watching this in trash quality on YouTube did nothing to help it, by the way), even though they were all members of the same species, the makeup crew put in the effort to make their faces all slightly different - like humans. The leader of them uses this wacky device to turn itself into a gigantic rage-beast, which was a high point of the film effects-wise, and he pilots a mecha in this state, another nice blend of CGI and prosthetics.
But then this short just ends. Or, really, it doesn't "end" so much as it just kind of stops happening. Factors like rough subtitles auto-translated from Chinese and bad picture quality kept me from getting fully engaged with the plot, but I felt like I was left hanging when I had just started to want to see more. This director seems to have also made a short film where Zatoichi fights a bunch of cyborg ninjas, which I need to watch immediately.
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