Toho

Godzilla (1954)

Godzilla (1954)
Rating: ★★★★
Dec 16, 2001Giant Atomic Monster
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite the primitiveness of the effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
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The Mysterians (1957)

The Mysterians (1957)
Rating: ★★½
Dec 14, 2002Japanese Alien Invader Film
Ishiro Honda and Toho, the creators of Godzila, turn their attentions to the alien invasion film - the first Japanese entry in the great 1950s SF alien invader fad - and deliver all the same colourful mass destruction we expect
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Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

Varan the Unbelievable (1958)
Rating: ★
Aug 2, 2013Japanese Monster Movie
Japanese monster movie from the same team that created the original Godzilla. The English-language version has simply kept the effects scenes and cut everything else, replacing it with scenes of the US military ordering the Japanese about
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Secret of the Telegian (1960)

Secret of the Telegian (1960)
Rating: ★★½
Apr 10, 2018Teleporting Super-Villain
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
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Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (1964)

Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Rating: ★★★
Feb 23, 2008Japanese Monster Bash
The fifth Godzilla film, the point where Godzilla becomes a good guy joining Mothra and Rodan to battle Ghidrah. The best Godzilla film from this period with the effects team operating at the peak of their game
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War of the Gargantuas (1966)

War of the Gargantuas (1966)
Rating: ★★
May 20, 2015Japanese Monster Bash
From Ishiro Honda, the creator of Godzilla, this bizarrely features two giant Frankenstein monsters battling it out. A fairly typical Japanese monster movie of its era featuring cheesily ridiculous rubber monsters, copious mass destruction and a largely irrelevant human element
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Destroy All Monsters (1968)

Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Rating: ★★
Nov 16, 2000Japanese Monster Bash
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
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Son of Godzilla (1968)

Son of Godzilla (1968)
Rating: ★★★
Nov 12, 2002Japanese Monster Bash
The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period
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Godzilla vs the Cosmic Monster (1974)

Godzilla vs the Cosmic Monster (1974)
Rating: ★
Apr 16, 1999Japanese Monster Bash
The fourteenth Godzilla film, noted for the introduction of Mecha-Godzilla, a robot copy of Godzilla that became a recurring nemesis. By this point in the series, the effects and quality of production had become very shabby
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Terror of Mechagodzilla (1976)

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1976)
Rating: ★★★
Dec 16, 2000Japanese Monster Bash
The fifteenth Godzilla film, the last of the classic series, featuring a return of Mechagodzilla from the previous film. Original director Ishiro Honda returns to the series and reclaims it from the juvenile focus it had taken over the last few films to make the best entry of the 1970s
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House (1977)

House (1977)
Rating: ★★★
May 18, 2010Gonzo Japanese Haunted House Film
Very strange Japanese ghost story that has been rediscovered as a cult classic. It resembles a film like Willy Wonka turned into a haunted house film where the intention seems to have been to be a bizarre and wacky as possible
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Godzilla 1985 (1984)

Godzilla 1985 (1984)
Rating: ★★★½
Dec 13, 2002Giant Atomic Monster
Reboot of the Godzilla series that forgets about all the sequels and acts as a direct follow-up to the original film. This uses top drawer effects technology of the era to create Godzilla as the fearsome creation he originally was
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Peacock King (1988)

Peacock King (1988)
Rating: ★★
Dec 29, 2016Wu Xia Film
Hong Kong-made Wu Xia based on a Japanese manga about warrior monks fighting to stop the opening of portals to Hell. This seems uninspired when it comes to the flights of fantasy the genre specialises in, although picks up when it comes to the vigour of its cheap makeup effects scenes
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Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
Rating: ★★
Sep 18, 2013Japanese Monster Bash
The 17th Godzilla film and the second of the modern era where Toho started to employ top drawer effects. Toho created a new nemesis, the plant monster Biollante, although this was not popular with the public
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Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992)

Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992)
Rating: ★★★
Jul 6, 2021Japanese Monster Bash
The 19th Godzilla film, part of the 1990s revival where the series started to employ modern animatronics. This revives Mothra in quite beautiful ways and mounts to a rousing monster battle
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Ninja Scroll (1993)

Ninja Scroll (1993)
Rating: ★★★★
Jul 7, 2020Anime/Ninja vs Demonic Forces
One of the most extraordinary of all anime films - apparently a favourite of The Wachowskis (you can see they've borrowed moves from it), concerning ninja facing supernaturally empowered assassins demonic forces, directed with an extraordinary visual stylism
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Godzilla vs Space Godzilla (1994)

Godzilla vs Space Godzilla (1994)
Rating: ★★
Sep 14, 2015Japanese Monster Bash
Space Godzilla is one the strangest nemeses to turn up in these kaiju films – a blue counterpart of the Big G with a giant glowing mass of crystal on its shoulders. One of the more routine entries in the modern Godzilla series
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Rebirth of Mothra (1996)

Rebirth of Mothra (1996)
Rating: ★★
Sep 19, 2012Japanese Monster Bash
One of the worst among the usually worthwhile Japanese monster movie revivals of the 1990s. Much of the film is played down at an inanely silly children's movie level, with there only being the requisite mass destruction effects to enliven the show
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Rebirth of Mothra II (1997)

Rebirth of Mothra II (1997)
Rating: ★★½
Oct 2, 2025Japanese Monster Bash
After their successful revival of Godzilla in the 1990s, Toho revived Mothra for a series of standalone battles, albeit with a very juvenile focus made for children. This was the second and better of the three films
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Ring (1998)

Ring (1998)
Rating: ★★★
Aug 31, 1999Cursed Video Broadcast/Japanese Ghost Story
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, plus a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude, nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
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Spriggan (1998)

Spriggan (1998)
Rating: ★★★
Oct 14, 2001Anime/Alien Artefact/Psychic Kid Amok
Katsuhiro Otomo overseen anime about the discovery of Noah's Ark, an alien artifact that gives a child vast psychic powers in a swathe of destruction not dissimilar to Akira
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Godzilla Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)

Godzilla Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
Rating: ★★★
Nov 14, 2009Japanese Monster Bash
The 25th Godzilla film which employs director Shusuke Kaneko who had done amazing things reviving the Gamera franchise. Kaneko doesn't quite deliver the epic expected of him but does produce an amazing effects spectacle
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Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)

Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
Rating: ★
Nov 21, 2003Videogame Adaptation
The first Tomb Raider film was empty-headed but a hit but the series was then killed off by this sequel. Angelina Jolie's performance is detached from human emotion and the action sequences ludicrous
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Appleseed (2004)

Appleseed (2004)
Rating: ★★★★
Dec 14, 2008Anime/Future Anti-Terrorist Squad
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
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Sinking of Japan (2006)

Sinking of Japan (2006)
Rating: ★★
Aug 26, 2014Japanese Disaster Movie
Big-budget modern Japanese remake of a 1970s disaster movie in which Japan starts to catastrophically sink into the ocean. Despite revisiting the original with CGI spectacle, this is a film in which hardly anything interesting happens
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Wolf Children (2012)

Wolf Children (2012)
Rating: ★★★★
Oct 19, 2013Anime/Werewolf Children
Mamoru Hosoda proves himself as one of the major directors in anime with this tender, lovely and enormously affecting work about a mother raising two werewolf children.
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Real (2013)

Real (2013)
Rating: ★★
Aug 19, 2014Dreamscape Film
A Japanese-made variant on the dream incursion theme of Inception. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is noted for his bafflingly surrealistic horror films but in working in a genre like science-fiction that requires an implied explainability, he makes a far less interesting film
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The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
Rating: ★★★
Oct 3, 2014Anime/Japanese Fairytale
Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki's mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki's, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki's films do but not without its charms
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Parasyte Part 1 (2014)

Parasyte Part 1 (2014)
Rating: ★★★
Feb 14, 2017Body-Snatching Shapeshifting Parasites
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host's bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
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Attack on Titan (2015)

Attack on Titan (2015)
Rating: ★★★
Nov 29, 2015Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Invasion by Giants
The live-action adaptation of a popular manga series, this comes with a completely WTF premise about humanity defending itself from an invasion by a horde of misshapen giants that like to bite people's heads off
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Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015)

Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015)
Rating: ★★
Jan 9, 2017Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Invasion by Giants
Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later
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Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla (2016)
Rating: ★★★½
Apr 29, 2017Giant Atomic Monster
The 29th of the Japanese Godzilla films. Coming after the longest gap in the series to date, this functions as a complete reboot of the original. Godzilla is reconceived as a fearsome creation amid epic mass destruction and what are hands down the best effects of any film in the series
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Your Name. (2016)

Your Name. (2016)
Rating: ★★★
Apr 17, 2017Anime/Cross-Time Bodyswap
Makoto Shinkai anime that starts as a light and fluffy piece about a boy and a girl who keep waking up in each other's bodies but expands out into a wholly different story, gaining unexpected emotional depths
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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable – Chapter 1 (2017)

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable – Chapter 1 (2017)
Rating: ★★
Jul 25, 2023Manga Adaptation
The cinematic madman Takashi Miike takes on a live-action adaptation of one of Japan’s longest running mangas concerning high-school teenagers with powers and unique hairstyles
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Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)
Rating: ★★
Aug 24, 2019Giant Monster Bash
Follow-up to the 2014 US-made Godzilla. This introduces other monsters from the Japanese series and tries to create a shared universe. But when the film is all massively-scaled mass destruction, it seems hard to root for the monsters
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Weathering With You (2019)

Weathering With You (2019)
Rating: ★★★
Jan 13, 2025Anime/Girl Who Can Control Weather
From Makoto Shinkai who made Your Name., a lovely anime about a girl who can control the weather. An odd premise about orphans that soon develops unusual and unexpected depths
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Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021)

Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021)
Rating: ★★
May 27, 2026Anime/Invasion by Vast Alien Machines
This was the fourth film in the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot film series and concludes the saga. Rather than offering any answers or solution to the cryptic world we are in, this opts for a major letdown of a wrap-up
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