Studio Ghibli

The Secret World of Arrietty

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Secret World of Arrietty
  • IMDb: link

Back in theaters as part of Studio Ghibli Fest, the 2010 Japanese animated film explores the world of tiny people known as Borrowers who live secret lives hidden away by borrowing small amounts from the human world and carefully hiding their existence. Our main character is Arrietty (Mirai Shida | Bridgit Mendler) who comes of age in the course of the film taking part in her first borrowing with her father (Tomokazu Miura | Will Arnett) and also, against her peoples’ custom and her mother’s (Shinobu Otake | Amy Poehler) warnings, beginning a friendship with a sickly human child name Sho (Ryunosuke Kamiki | David Henrie).

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The Boy and the Heron

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  • Title: The Boy and the Heron
  • IMDb: link

The Boy and the Heron

The latest from writer/director Hayao Miyazaki follows a familiar formula of a child dragged into an unusual and magical world. Based on experiences Miyazaki had as a child with loss, the film is a personal one for him with a message of striving to overcome grief and loss and the growth from childhood into adulthood by learning to unselfishly care for others.

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The Red Turtle

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  • Title: La tortue rouge
  • IMDb: link

“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
—Zhuangzi

The Red Turtle movie reviewIt begins with a man lost at sea in a storm. Shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island, for eighty-minutes without a single word of dialogue being spoken (other than a guttural grunt or two) our nameless protagonist attempts to survive but finds his attempts to escape the island thwarted by a giant red turtle. Initially believing the turtle to be and adversary to be overcome, the increasingly-confused sailor struggles to deal with what his eyes show him and the consequences of his actions as he lives out a life he never thought possible.

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The Wind Rises

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Kaze tachinu
  • IMDB: link

“All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.”

The Wind RisesOver a lifetime in animation Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki has made a name for himself as one of the premiere filmmakers of his generation. Although I haven’t always loved his films, I found Princess Mononoke too bizarre for my tastes and a bit unwieldy with its 133-minute running time, it’s impossible to come out of any Miyazaki film without a profound respect for the talented man who brought them to the screen.

For his final film Miyazaki delivers a love story to aviation in the fictionalized biography of Japanese aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno), a young man with dreams of building beautiful flying machines who would design the Mitsubishi A5M and Mitsubishi A6M Zero which Japan used during WWII. Adapted from the novel by Hori Tatsuo, The Wind Rises may not quite be the all-ages adventure some might be hoping for, but it beautifully captures the fire of imagination that drives Jiro in his designs and the lively but ill Naoko (Miori Takimoto) whom he falls desperately in love with. As he approaches his life’s ambition he feels the other great love of his life slowly fading away.

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