snsh

The story in this is quite different from the 1980s Dune movie. On the plus side, it's much less cheesy. Gone are the "Chaaaka" toy guns. Also gone is the child actor playing the sister. However, the presented story is a reasonably coherent story, so it works.

There are two bad things about the film. First, the audio.

Much of the dialogue is spoken by actors wearing masks and scarves and is unintelligible. They had this problem with Bane in The Dark Knight and just redubbed all his lines. I don't know why they didn't do that for this film. Second, Zendaya's acting, or rather her lack of acting ruins quite a few scenes she's in.

As far as scifi blockbusters go, it's pretty good, but I don't think it's nearly as memorable or solid as the 2021 movie.

It's interesting how in the summer of 2023, people ironically watched "Barbieheimer". The pairing that actually makes the most sense for 2023 is a double feature of Oppenheimer followed by Godzilla Minus One. Both are epic stories about man versus nature, set on opposite sides of the atomic age, the second world war, and the line between history and historical fiction.

This Godzilla has a unique style and tone. The movie's theme is about the horror and aftermath of war, comparing the conflict between US-Japan against the conflict between Japan-Godzilla.

Most striking is the movie's understated style. As a Japanese film, the CGI is naturally more muted than what they produce in Hollywood. The movie is set in the late 1940s and they made the movie look like it was filmed in the 1950s. The score is riveting, combining the classic Godzilla themes with modern epic themes. The characters act like real people, not like caricatures typical of most superhero films.

I'm very pleased to have watched the movie at a theater. I only wish I had seen it earlier when it was shown in the larger auditoriums.

This documentary basically presents four sources:

1) Michael Johnson, hired by BSA around 2010 to head up Youth Protection. The documentary presents him as the hero of the story. He talks like he knows all the answers, reminds you several times how he is an expert on the topic, and you can imagine how just his personality would have made his job that much harder.

2) BSA's former general counsel, who seems to have a realistic grasp on the issues but comes across as smug.

3) Several adults who were abused as scouts.

4) Investigators and attorneys for those abuse victims.

Overall the film does dramatically present horrible stories of abuse which scouts suffered in the past, but the filmmakers imply that those same conditions still exist at BSA, implying that abuse is still prevalent. More frustrating is that they don't present any evidence at all that this is the case, and worse, they don't even offer any recommendations for what still needs to happen to prevent abuse.