Last weekend I went to see Godzilla Minus One with my teenage son. I’ve been a fan of this series since I was a kid and saw the original Godzilla (or maybe the US version of the original) on some late-night creature feature show with my own dad decades ago. Because I grew up with it, I have a nostalgic love of these films even when they aren’t terribly good movies. What can I say, I still like Godzilla vs. Megalon which some consider one of the worst in the long series.

My hopes were way too high when a US Godzilla film was produced in the late 90s. Given all the money in the world and a talented cast, that film was still truly awful and utterly lacking in any charm for me. But the more recent US Godzilla films have been better. I thought the 2014 film starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen was pretty good. Not a masterpiece but an enjoyable popcorn movie.

And I was a really big fan of the Japanese reboot known as Shin Godzilla (New Godzilla) which was released a couple years later. Shin Godzilla really tried to adapt the monster for the modern world and also grounded the spectacle with a fair amount of bureaucratic bungling. Plus the special effects were pretty amazing to look at.

Last week, Toho released its latest incarnation of the monster. This film is titled “Godzilla Minus One.” I honestly hadn’t been paying any attention to it until one of my good friends texted me last week that he was at the theater with his family for opening night. That made me wonder if it was any good and when I looked around at a few non-spoiler reviews they were all uniformly raving about how great it was.

Even now, the film has a 97% score from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. The accompanying score from audience members is 98%. Having seen it myself this weekend I can tell you these scores are right. This isn’t just a really good Godzilla movie, it’s genuinely just a great movie.

Minus One is set, like the original film, in the years after World War II. The main character is a kamikaze pilot who we learn in the first scene has refused to go through with his suicidal mission. Instead he lands at a Pacific island repair depot claiming something is wrong with his plane. It’s there he has his first encounter with a kind of living dinosaur which the natives call Godzilla. It kills nearly everyone on the island, in part because he didn’t have the nerve to stop it.

After the war, the pilot returns to a burned out Tokyo to find his parents are dead. He is riddled with guilt and winds up taking in a woman and child who have nowhere else to go. Over time he finds a job clearing mines and his situation improves slightly but he can never bring himself to commit to his domestic situation because deep down he feels he’s unworthy of it or any happiness at all.

Meanwhile, the US has been setting off atomic bombs in the Pacific and Godzilla has become a radioactive monster, much larger than before and much more powerful. There is a great sequence which is reminiscent of Jaws and later we get the obligatory scene of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. Like the original film, it’s terrifying. This Godzilla is a walking atomic bomb that seemingly nothing can stop.

I don’t want to spoil anything but the story builds to a 3rd act climax which manages to pay homage to the original 1954 film while also updating the story a bit. It’s exciting spectacle but you’re also genuinely rooting for the heroes against what feels like impossible odds.

And for those who know these films, there’s a specific piece of theme music that appears in many of them. In Godzilla Minus One, the director doesn’t wear it out but saves that music for the perfect moment in the 3rd act. It actually made me sit up in my seat a bit.

After it was over my son, who tolerates all the old monster movies I like to watch but who isn’t shy about saying they’re terrible when they are, turned to me and said something like “That was ridiculously good.” And it was. So good that the planned single-week run in US theaters has been extended. So you still have some time left to see it on the big screen.

Barging into U.S. cinemas on a wave of universal acclaim, Toho’s “Godzilla Minus One” has been a smash – landing an A CinemaScore and an impressive $11 million in its opening weekend box-office…

As a result of that success, Toho has changed its original plans for a single-week run to end on December 7th and will now extend the film’s run for at least another week through December 14th. New showtimes have already started to pop up on ticketing sites.

Again, Godzilla Minus One isn’t just a good giant monster movie for people who like such things. This is actually a really good movie which just happens to feature a giant monster and some incredible action sequences. Unless you hate good drama and fun, you will probably enjoy this.