Gotta give it to the 40-meter silver-shiny superhero Ultraman: He sure as hell doesn’t look 55! It helps that Shin Ultraman is a spit-polished reboot, following the similar sober treatment director Shinji Higuchi gave another kaiju legend in 2016’s Shin Godzilla.

A government agency, the S-Class Species Suppression Protocol (SSSP) works to protect the country against giant monsters, which have a habit of popping up everywhere. Through the eyes of new transfer Hiroko (Masami Nagasawa, Godzilla: Final Wars), we witness how SSSP reacts to the sudden appearance of a mystery metallic man (“Ultraman” to you and me) who emerges from the sky to kick the asses of such destructive creatures as an invisible horned thing that feeds off electricity and a lizardy whatsit with a whirring drill bit for a head.

Under the sneaky pretense of an alliance, an evil electromagnetic extraterrestrial named Zarab (voiced by Kenjirô Tsuda) warns officials against our hero and drafts an Ultraman Elimination Plan. Take a look and let’s circle back to see if we’re aligned, okay?

As fun as Shin Ultraman’s battle sequences are, what sucked me in was the oil-and-vinegar working relationship of go-getter Hiroko and her solitary-minded, no-nonsense partner (Takumi Saitoh, Japan’s Cube remake). They’re essentially the Mulder and Scully of this world — accurate, given the original Ultraman spun off from the Ultra Q sci-fi mystery TV series, a single-season wonder. Their problem-solving and office politics make for the sort of things to which Hollywood would give short shrift.

Almost inconceivable in this Marvel age, Higuchi brings his baby in at under two hours — partly because it’s not awash in mythology requiring viewers to have seen some untold number of movies and series to follow. Whether you have fond memories of running across reruns on your local UHF station (as I do) or you struggle to ID your Ultraman from your Infra-Man (also me, once upon a time), Shin Ultraman is constructed as intelligent, often rousing entertainment for all. It goes without saying the effects are first-rate, as the Toho studio has this style of flick down to a science. —Rod Lott

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Although Tales from the Apocalypse is a collection of shorts versus a proper anthology, its five stories share a factor: indifference. At least all but one look fantastic, and that odd man out serves up rust-colored desolation on purpose.

In William Hellmuth’s Gravity-esque Alone, the bunch’s best, the sole survivor of an exploded ship is marooned in a lifepod, sucked closed into a black hole by the second. As she nears certain doom, she converses with a cartographer who picks up her mayday signal. Coming to grips with possible death post-devastation also carries Damon Duncan’s Cradle, so stacking it atop Alone was not the wisest choice, even if it does have a cool robot spider.

Sporting the aforementioned layer of grime is Gabriel Kalim Mucci’s Lunatique, free of dialogue as an armored woman hunts a creature on a windy planet the color of dirt. From Susie Jones, the YA-influenced New Mars posits a future of forced marriages upon teens. Finally, Lin Sun’s Earth 2035 considers the difference between AI and humans: “Humanity,” says a doctor in a moment intended as Deep and Important, but lands as a pretentious punchline with the impact of a greeting card.

Nothing wrong with sci-fi being serious, but the contents of Tales from the Apocalypse (aka Episodes from Apocalypse, despite “apocalypse” being debatable) hold little wonder or imagination. On a purely technical level, they succeed with effects often superb. However, I can’t shake the feeling I was watching calling cards and demo reels rather than shorts where scripting merited as much attention. —Rod Lott

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Everyone from Gary Cooper to Gandhi guests in the eighth of luchador Santo’s escapades. So what if they’re basically sculpted candles in a Mexico waxworks? They help make Santo in the Wax Museum a field trip worth taking. Get those permission slips signed early, kids.

Said museum is owned by Dr. Karol (Claudio Brook, Cronos), who’s particularly proud of the horror figures in the basement: Mr. Hyde, Quasimodo, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman, the Phantom of the Opera. Despite all being fictional characters, Karol deems them “faithful reproductions.” Some stand noticeably more still than others.

When a foxy magazine photographer (Roxana Bellini, The Brainiac) doing a story on the place becomes the third visitor to vanish of late, Dr. K falls under the authorities’ glare of suspicion. They call upon El Santo and his sparkle cape to help find the kidnappers — well, between matches in the ring, naturally.

Is it possible that Karol’s time in a Nazi concentration camp infused him with mad-scientist leanings? You already knew the answer by paragraph 2. You wanna watch anyway. I get it. I feel the same, although — heresy alert! — I have no patience for its long wrestling sequences, even as I recognize the Santo series wouldn’t exist otherwise. One of Santo in the Wax Museum’s bouts pits our hero against El Tigre del Ring.

Taking inspiration from the then-decade-old House of Wax, director Alfonso Corona Blake follows up his first Santo pic, 1962’s Santo vs. the Vampire Women, but never made another. Both in black and white, the Blake joints were among the quartet dubbed for Yanks by K. Gordon Murray. —Rod Lott

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Your basic Saturday-matinee movie of rear projection and rubber suits, Destination Inner Space takes place at an underwater research lab. Inside, scientists express concern over a blooping blip on the ol’ sonar. As the skipper up top (Radar Men from the Moon’s Roy Barcroft) puts it to hero Cmdr. Wayne (Scott Brady, Strange Behavior), “There’s something odd going on down there.”

And how! The blip leads the crew to an alien spaceship on the ocean floor. Automated to push a glowing triangle ice-cube thing from its wall, the craft contains a capsule shaped like a tablet of cold medicine. When they take the mystery container back to base and dare open it, they let loose a finned monster who could be the Creature of the Black Lagoon after years of eating exclusively at Steak ’n Shake. From there, the movie is reminiscent of It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but with establishing shots filmed in someone’s living room aquarium.

Also aboard Destination are Wende Wagner (TV’s The Green Hornet) as Wayne’s love interest, Mike Road (the voice of Race Bannon on TV’s Jonny Quest) as Wayne’s rival, Sheree North (Telefon) as a marine biologist who mostly tends to the men, and the legendary James Hong (Everything Everywhere All at Once) as the world’s preeminent mechanical engineer and deep-sea diver. Just kidding; ’60s sci-fi being the domain of Caucasian squares who all look ready to sip G&Ts by the hi-fi, the Asian Hong plays the SEALAB chef, complete with bird on his shoulder.

Although merely serviceable, Destination Inner Space excels in the department of subaquatic footage. Clearly, director Francis D. Lyon (Cult of the Cobra) is aware, repeating scuba-dooba scenes (like a two-man submarine in action) as often as possible to steer this ship to 83 minutes. —Rod Lott

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Maybe it’s just me, but if I had escaped the clutches of a serial killer named El Diablo, then fled to a new locale for safety, the last house I would move into would be the one with a security system from a company named Diablo Controls. That would go double if said company used a devil’s head for its logo. And triple if the place’s previous tenants disappeared without a trace.

Yet that’s exactly what the remarkably dumb spouses at the center of Motion Detected do, which instantly puts the movie on terra not-so-firma. So dunderheaded are they throughout, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next-door neighbor turned out to be the guy from The Break-In. Hey, there’s suspension of disbelief; then there’s something called a second draft.

Emma (Natasha Esca, TV’s Narcos: Mexico) and Miguel (Carlo Mendez, Bitch Slap) constitute the aforementioned couple. Their new abode spots the Diablo system — one so advanced, it can sense residents’ heart rate and analyze their dreams. Quoth Emma, “I can’t figure out if this thing’s going to protect me or if it’s going to kill me.” Famous last words …

… except many more have yet to come. Motion Detected makes for a long 80 minutes, especially after Miguel bolts for a biz trip, leaving Emma stuck at home — and often in the home, like a rape-free Demon Seed scenario. Viewers are abandoned, too, on an idle path of circuitousness events: Miguel calls “mi amor” to say he has to stay an extra day or two; the Diablo alarm goes off; Emma investigates and talks to herself; repeat. This might jolt some juice if the movie’s prologue didn’t literally give up the ghost.

Culminating in a laughable scene even the most misguided Twilight Zone imitator wouldn’t settle for, Motion Detected barely moves. In their first feature, co-directors Justin Gallaher and Sam Roseme at least can deflect a chunk of blame to their screenwriters: Justin Gallaher and Sam Roseme. —Rod Lott

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