The Expansive Musical Range of Ryuichi Sakamoto

As it happens, the great new crowd-pleaser of the moment is also a disaster story, albeit one set firmly in the past. “Godzilla Minus One” follows a kamikaze pilot who shirks his duty in the final days of the Second World War—a decision that puts him in the path of the eponymous monster and, years later, leaves him uniquely motivated to stop its rampage through postwar Tokyo. Elevated by emotional and historical specificity as well as set pieces that belie its modest fifteen-million-dollar budget, Takashi Yamazaki’s contribution to the Godzilla canon is simultaneously a study in survivor’s guilt and a “Jaws”-style blockbuster, complete with the revelation that our protagonists are going to need a bigger boat. The movie, which opened in the U.S. in December, became a word-of-mouth phenomenon whose twists had audiences shouting at the screen; it’s now one of the highest-grossing foreign-language films of all time. A little catharsis, it seems, goes a long way.SpotlightMusic