Tag: animation

Categories
Animation Features Movies

When Marnie
Was There
(Omoide
No Mani,
思い出
のマーニー)

Director – Hiromasa Yonebayashi – 2014 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

****

This second animated work by Ghibli / Arrietty director Yonebayashi is another adaptation of an English children’s author – now showing on Netflix (subtitled / dubbed) and can also be seen in the Anime season April / May 2022 at BFI Southbank (dubbed)

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The following review originally appeared in Funimation UK.

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Jeremy Clarke on Studio Ghibli’s latest and possibly last theatrical movie. Now showing on Netflix

Studio Ghibli’s star director Hayao Miyazaki has suggested When Marnie Was There may be its final production. That would be a great shame since the film confirms its director Hiromasa Yonebayashi as a rising talent.

Twelve year old Anna has low self-esteem, rarely interacts with others and is prone to asthma attacks. So Anna’s foster mother sends her to stay with Aunt and Uncle Oiwa in the country. Her uncle warns her to stay away from the supposedly haunted grain storage silo on the hill. The Oiwas put her up in their daughter’s long vacated bedroom.

When she opens the window an improvement is immediately visible in Anna as if the view of trees and a lake which greets her is making her aware she is breathing pure, fresh country air for the first time.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Camp 14:
Total Control Zone

Director – Marc Weise – Cert. 12 – 2012 – Germany, South Korea – 106m

*****

Utterly devastating documentary built around interviews with (mainly) a man who was born into and as an adult escaped from a North Korean Death Camp and (with less material) a former guard at one such camp. It being impossible to film inside such camps, the film makers brilliantly deploy bleak, grey toned animation to put images of camp life (classrooms, public executions) on the screen. Be horrified as humans grow and develop in an environment devoid of moral goodness. One of the most unsettling films you’ll ever see.

Here’s the trailer:

This review originally appeared in Film Review Annual.

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Castle
Of Cagliostro
(Rupan Sansei:
Kariosutoro
No Shiro,
ルパン三世
カリオストロの城)

DVD review originally published in Starlog, UK edition.

TO CATCH A THIEF

ANIME OF THE MONTH

THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO

(REG 2 DVD: ENGLISH / JAPANESE DUBBED, OPTIONAL ENGLISH SUBTITLES)

£19.99, Widescreen (1.85:1), Dolby Digital 2.0 (Manga)

One of Manga Video’s best kept secrets arrives on UK DVD. Arsene Lupin III is manga artist Monkey Punch’s descendant to Frenchman Maurice LeBlanc’s noted thief Arsene Lupin and the subject of copyright controversy in the US where the character had to be renamed Wolf or Rupan. Strong though the character may be, the factor that raises this particular film above much anime is the pedigree of writer-director Hayao Miyazaki.

A superb piece of genre film-making, Cagliostro allows Miyazaki to try out lots of ideas he’d rework later. Monkey Punch’s quasi‑European trappings, evidenced both here and in other Lupin III movies, are perfectly in tune with Miyazaki’s sensibilities. Fairytale plot elements concern a princess (a dead ringer for one of Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind’s characters) trapped in a tower by the evil Count Cagliostro and a castle with a 500-year-old secret (shades of Laputa‘s decaying castle in the sky). Then, for a film about a thief, there’s a surprising nod towards goodness; yet the film never becomes too lofty for its own good, being filled with such detours as banknote forgery, lethal security systems, unexpected trap doors and an impressive autogyro (Miyazaki has a reputation for strikingly designed aircraft and other flying objects).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Lord
of the Rings:
The Return
of the King

Director – Peter Jackson – 2003 – New Zealand – Cert. 12a – 201m

*****

(NB Extended Edition, in cinemas July 2020, 252m version released on DVD 2004)

This review was originally published in What’s On In London.

A much longer review appeared in Third Way.

A pre-screening article on The Lord Of The Rings appeared in Sussed in 2001.

Peter Jackson and co-screenwriters Boyens and Walsh rise admirably to the considerable challenges posed by The Lord of the Rings’ third and last volume. Gandalf comments early on that Saruman no longer has any real power, jettisoning that evil wizard (and Christopher Lee) plus related Scouring Of The Shire plot strand to make Tolkien’s lengthy section following the Mount Doom climax more manageable

However all the book’s requisite material is here, brilliantly condensed. The Mount Doom scene itself – far too quick in Tolkien after the incredible build up preceding it – is expanded and so given the necessary dramatic weight. Liberties taken with The Paths Of The Dead likewise serve the narrative well. Jackson’s opening is as unexpected and stunning as that of The Two Towers, while his finale effectively pictures Tolkien’s closing metaphor for life after death.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Volere Volare
(I Want To Fly)

Directors – Guido Manuli, Maurizio Nichetti – 1991 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A sexually insecure man turns into an animated cartoon character as he tries to start a relationship with the woman of his dreams.

PLOT

The shy Maurizio (Maurizio Nichetti) works dubbing old black and white cartoons while his more outgoing brother (Patrizio Roversi) dubs porno movies. Martina (Angela Finocchiaro) is a freelance fulfiller of her clients’ bizarre psychosexual fantasies. Upon meeting, the two are attracted to one another, but Maurizio’s inhibitions in the face of romance cause him to be transformed – slowly – into an animated cartoon character. Martina, meanwhile, is highly dissatisfied with her hitherto love life and is searching for a man somehow different from all others she’s known…

OPINION

Easily saleable by the epithet “adult Roger Rabbit“, this gentle and greatly likeable Italian sex comedy makes cinema history with a final bedroom scene in which live action woman disappears under the sheets with a cartoon lover! Early animation buffs will spot interesting works by the Fleischer and Terry Studios, with hilarious sequences where Maurizio adds a cacophony of real time sound effects as a one man band. Later, little animated black and white ducks crawl into his coat; later still, his hands turn into animated gloves to grope Martina (against Maurizio’s will) at a restaurant.… Read the rest