My final round-up of this year’s New York Film Festival includes three films that seem to have very little in common: a thrilling kaiju spectacular, a World War II drama that won Best Screenplay at Cannes, and a new restoration of a landmark in New German Cinema. But that’s part of what’s so great about the New York Film Festival: there’s something for everyone, no matter if you prefer prestige dramas or genre flicks, Hollywood movies or international films, new releases or rediscovered classics.
Godzilla Minus Zero (Takashi Yamazaki)
Godzilla Minus One was a revelation when it smashed into theaters in 2023. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who also helped create the film’s Academy Award-winning special effects, the film was set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, with Japan still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of the atomic bomb. The title signifies the country’s postwar recovery being pushed into the negative by Godzilla, who levels cities that are still in ruins and reawakens trauma that had barely been put to bed. It was the perfect combination of midcentury melodrama and monster mayhem, a film where you cared enough about the human characters that you stayed engaged in their struggles even when Godzilla was off screen—something that Hollywood’s kaiju movies rarely manage to do.
Godzilla Minus One was such a success, both critically and financially, that a sequel was pretty much guaranteed; the only question is whether it would live up to such lofty expectations. Having now seen Godzilla Minus Zero, I feel the same way about it that I did about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga; I love it, but not nearly as much as its predecessor. Yet that is because, like Mad Max: Fury Road, I love Godzilla Minus One so much that it would be high-impossible to top it. And, like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Godzilla Minus Zero comes pretty damn close to doing so anyway.
Godzilla Minus Zero—the title signifies that the main characters are still in the process of approaching neutral, and something like a normal life—doesn’t waste any time in introducing a new kaiju to wreak havoc on Japan. And while Godzilla aficionados will be all too familiar with the iconic character of Ghidorah, this film does something new with him that should pleasantly surprise you. Engineer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), now head of the government’s Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau, teams up with meteorologist Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa) to devise a risky method of defeating Ghidorah, one that involves getting former kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) back in the air. But Kōichi—now married to Noriko (Minami Hamabe), with whom he’s raising their adopted daughter, Akiko (Sae Nagatani)—is torn between his obligation to protect his family and his duty to serve his country.
A lot goes awry in Godzilla Minus Zero, including the meteorological method of subduing Ghidorah. And if that wasn’t enough, Godzilla—whose head was seemingly blown clear off in Godzilla Minus One—suddenly pops out of the ocean and makes his way back towards Japan. However, this development is seen by some, including scientist Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka) to be a good thing; if Godzilla is still alive, why not pit him against Ghidorah, and let them fight it out to the death? (Murakami has other, more personal reasons for wanting to bring Godzilla back, but those will remain unspoiled by me.)
In pitting Godzilla against Ghidorah, Godzilla Minus Zero harkens back to Showa-era classics like Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro-Monster, the former of which has been cited by Takashi Yamazaki as a particular influence on this new film. But Godzilla Minus Zero manages to earn its own place in kaiju movie history in a variety of ways: particularly its incredible special-effects and sound design, both of which deserve Academy Award nominations this time around. The film is the first-ever Godzilla film to be rated R; the violence on screen is visceral and realistic in a way that vastly exceeds every Godzilla movie that came before it, while the sound is so all-encompassing that you’ll swear the monsters are in the theater with you. Naoki Satō’s original score is wonderful and atmospheric, but as in Godzilla Minus One, it’s the moments when Akira Ikufube’s original theme kicks in that really punch you in the gut. And the monster fights? I don’t want to give anything away, but you won’t be disappointed. Needless to say, it should be seen on the biggest screen with the best speakers possible.
Takashi Yamazaki and company may not have topped Godzilla Minus One, but they’ve surely created a worthy successor. The only question that remains is: do they have a third one in them? I sure hope so.
A Man of His Time (Emmanuel Marre)
Sandra Hüller isn’t the only Anatomy of a Fall alum shining at this year’s New York Film Festival. Swann Arlaud stars in A Man of His Time, a darkly comic yet also deeply disturbing drama about one man’s dogged attempts to make something of himself in Vichy France. It’s a personal film for writer and director Emmanuel Marre; the main character is inspired by his great-grandfather, and the award-winning script draws on excerpts, taken verbatim, from letters between him and Marre’s great-grandmother. The film avoids telling the story of any of the infamous world leaders of the period, instead focusing on the seemingly insignificant people in the background who helped them execute their dark vision for humanity. The result is an incisive portrait of how everyday people enable fascism with little thought for anything but their own advancement.
After some failed business dealings, Henri Marre (Arlaud) decides that the way to rebuild his reputation is to be part of the rebuilding of France. He authors a political pamphlet in support of Marshal Pétain, titled Notre Salut (also the French title of the film, which translates to Our Salvation) and, armed with stacks of copies, heads to Vichy in the hope of getting a role in the new collaborationist regime. After some painfully awkward attempts at promoting himself, he gets hired as a provincial inspector in the Commission for the Fight Against Unemployment; his duties include implementing forced labor in camps for political prisoners, including Jews.
Eventually, Henri’s wife, Paulette (Sandrine Blancke), and their children join him at his post in Limoges, though he neglects to tell them that the beautiful furnished home they are moving into was requisitioned from a Jewish family. He approaches his work with dry, administrative distance; he’s concerned with the best and most efficient ways to accomplish the tasks given him, not whether or not they are morally sound. His devoted loyalty to Pétain and belief that he is helping build a better France blind him to what Nazi Germany’s real intentions for the country are, yet being more ignorant and misguided than evil doesn’t make him any less complicit in their crimes against humanity.
Henri and his peers epitomize the old Nazi excuse of “just following orders.” When the Germans demand fuel and trucks from Henri, he sets about finding the best way to get them what they need; it’s only afterward that he learns the fuel and trucks were used to deport Jewish workers to Germany, where a fate far worse than even the French labor camps awaits them. When Henri confronts a colleague about a budget discrepancy, he is told that the money was used to buy straw and chamber pots; after seeing how horrible the conditions on the trucks were, he felt it was the least he could do. Among the midlevel bureaucrats that populate A Man of His Time, there is distaste for what the Nazis are doing, but little in the way of real resistance, which makes the few moments in which people do what is right all the more gratifying.
The character of Henri Marre is the worst kind of opportunist, someone who is so desperate to be part of the club that his enthusiasm rubs even his fellow collaborators the wrong way. His lame attempts at networking and bootlicking make you simultaneously laugh and cringe; the film’s modern, almost-documentary style roving camera, courtesy of cinematographer Olivier Boonjing, gives you the impression you’re watching the Michael Scott of Vichy France. Arlaud’s performance is magnificent; few people could so adeptly walk the tightrope between comical and despicable. Blancke is also excellent as his wife, Paulette, who is starved for love and affection that Henri is no longer capable of providing. For the first part of A Man of His Time, she doesn’t appear on screen; she’s only heard in voiceover, narrating her letters to Henri—letters that are so eloquent and emotional that it’s all the more remarkable that they are real.
In addition to eschewing stereotypical period cinematography, A Man of His Time also uses anachronistic music in key scenes, including scoring a montage of newsreel footage to the electropop song “Live is Life” and having its main characters dance to “Pop Corn” at a dinner party. The overall feeling created is an eerie one of timelessness, reminding us that people like this—people who voluntarily serve as cogs in the wheel of fascism that threatens to crush us all underneath it—are not confined to any one period of history; they don’t exist merely in black-and-white photographs, but in vivid, living color all around us.
Yesterday Girl (Alexander Kluge)
Legendary German author and filmmaker Alexander Kluge passed away earlier this year at the age of 94. However, before his death, he supervised a new restoration of his 1966 debut feature, Yesterday Girl. Adapted from Kluge’s short story “Anita G.” and starring his sister, Alexandra Kluge, the film tells the story of a young woman from East Germany whose attempts to adjust to a new life in West Germany only result in alienation. It also reckons with the refusal of Germans in both countries to properly engage with the horrific deeds of their recent past, deeds whose shadows hover ominously over every frame of Yesterday Girl. As one of the film’s title cards notes, “What separates us from yesterday is not a rift but a changed position.”
We’re introduced to Anita G., a twenty-two year old woman from Leipzig, as she sits in a West German courtroom, charged with theft. She is described as unemployed, with no fixed abode; she’s also Jewish. Anita originally came to West Germany for a better life but has ended up drifting her way through jobs, homes, and cities, relegated to the margins of society. When she tries to depend on anyone else, such as the married bureaucrat with whom she has an affair, they discard her as soon as she becomes an inconvenience, leaving her to once again fend for herself the only way she knows how: theft. Her nomadic life is made necessary by her inability to stop stealing things, but if she didn’t steal things, she wouldn’t be able to live at all.
Like his French compatriots of the Nouvelle Vague, Alexander Kluge wanted to break free from what German cinema had done previously and invent a new style of cinematic storytelling. Yesterday Girl is edited chaotically, a collage of sounds and images smashed together that utterly rejects established narrative conventions; in fact, it’s so all over the place that it can be a bit overwhelming. At the center of this whirling dervish is Alexandra Kluge, who resembles a German Anna Karina with her dark bangs, wide eyes, and natural ability to remain likable even when she does unlikable things. She had a short acting career, appearing in only a handful of her brother’s films before focusing on a career as a medical doctor, but she’s wonderful here.
The new restoration of Yesterday Girl looks great, but the real beneficiary is the film’s famously overlapping dialogue. Whenever Anita tries to have a serious conversation with anyone, such as asking a professor for advice about her kleptomania, she’s rewarded with bewildering and empty answers unrelated to her initial questions. The characters, like Germany itself, prefer escapism to reality; this cacophony of noise drowns out any attempts to broach serious topics like the war. After all, “Truth, when serious, is killed.” Sixty years later, that statement still rings true.
Godzilla Minus Zero is screening in the Spotlight section, A Man of His Time is screening in the Main Slate, and Yesterday Girl is screening in the Revivals section of the 64th New York Film Festival, which runs from September 25 to October 12, 2026.
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