Poster art for Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe (1995) at Shibuya Humax Cinema. Photo by Brett Homenick.
Today, I went to Shibuya Humax Cinema to catch an evening screening of Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe (1995). I haven't been back to a movie theater since they closed back in April, and it's always fun to take in a kaiju movie, so I decided to check it out.
The only downside is that it wasn't a 35mm print. Instead, a 2K digital print (from a 4K remaster) was shown, and it looked great on the big screen.
The skyline around Shibuya Station has changed quite a bit in recent months. Photo by Brett Homenick.
I can't remember the last time I saw the film in its entirety, but it might have been the late 1990s. While the Heisei Gamera trilogy has long been a fan favorite, with many fans declaring the it some of the best (if not the best) Japanese monster movies of all time, I never felt the same. That said, despite not having seen it for years, I'd always considered G:GOTU my favorite of the three, so I was curious to see if my opinion of the film would change.
A familiar location from the Godzilla and Gamera series. Photo by Brett Homenick.
Overall, I would say that it didn't. I still consider it my favorite of the three. It was well made by director Shusuke Kaneko, and while the SFX are quite ambitious for their time, a lot of them just don't hold up very well at all. While I'm offering some criticism, I should add that none of the principal characters was all that interesting or compelling. I also started to get a little bored in the second half of the film when the monsters weren't onscreen.
Those points aside, I still enjoyed the movie. (I just don't rate it as highly as most others.) Anyway, I'm glad to have had the chance to see it on the big screen, which is really the only way to see these flicks.
Shibuya Humax Cinema is also screening Shin Godzilla (2016), but that was an easy pass for me. Haven't seen it since it opened and don't plan to change that any time soon.
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