Month: August 2024

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Wind Rises
(Kaze Tachinu,
風立ちぬ)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi Et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi Et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Ponyo
(Gake no Ue no Ponyo,
崖の上のポニョ,
lit. Ponyo on the Cliff)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2008 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

*****

A girl fish spirit takes on human form to become a companion to a human boy – reviewed for Third Way, February 2010

Miyazaki’s animated filmography prior to international crossover item Spirited Away (2001) has scarcely graced UK screens, despite colossal success in his native Japan. Tragically, this includes much of his best work – such films as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) – all released, happily, on posthumous UK DVD – beside which the more recent works pale. Until now: his latest film Ponyo compares favourably to those earlier works, just when one had given up hope he’d ever make another truly great film.

Loosely speaking, it’s Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid as eponymous underwater girl fish spirit Ponyo, rescued after being beached by small boy Sosuke then recaptured by her zealous, over-protective Sorcerer’s Apprentice magician-like father, decides she wants to return to shore and become a human girl companion to the boy. Sosuke lives with his mother Lisa in an isolated, coastal house, while his ship’s captain father Koichi is frequently absent due to work commitments.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Princess Mononoke
(Mononoke-hime,
もののけ姫)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1997 – Japan – Cert. PG – 134m

*****

Reviewed for What’s On in London when the film appeared in the Barbican’s 2001 Studio Ghibli season. It never got a proper theatrical release in the UK. The review presents a fascinating snapshot of the cinema landscape in the UK from the time when, outside of anime fandom, film journalists, and industry insiders, Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki were largely unknown.

Film critics are occasionally privileged to see incredible films that, for one reason or another, never receive proper UK release. The Barbican is currently hosting a season of 11 films by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli (Jib-Lee), an animation company as familiar in Japan as Disney is here, that fall into exactly this category. They include Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and his imaginative fantasy epic Princess Mononoke (1997). Both took the Japanese box office by storm, the latter topping $150m putting it second only to Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Miyazaki’s latest Spirited Away (2001) has topped the Japanese box office for weeks. Ghibli signed a deal in 1996 to distribute their films worldwide through Disney – but it’s been a long wait.… Read the rest