The Incredibles 2

While certainly one of the less outright iconic and emotionally affecting Pixar movies, I definitely think of the first Incredibles movie fondly. It's nice to see what happened next, even if after a frenetic opening with plenty of interesting character dynamics, we find out that not much has changed.

In an effort to get Supers legitimized again, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible team up with a telecommunications firm who essentially aim to improve their PR. Because Mr. Incredible is so destructive, they choose Mrs. Incredible - AKA Elastigirl - as their opening gambit, meaning Mr. Incredible is left to be a single dad for a while. That leads to some very funny and well-judged scenes of Mr. Incredible alternately struggling, seeking help and having genuinely sweet breakthroughs with his kids.

This is most likely the strongest portion of the movie. The rest of it suffers somewhat from not really seeming like anything special. Brad Bird's best movies are when there's really heavy emotional hits - The Iron Giant will likely always be his masterpiece - but there aren't really meaningful emotional stakes here. The bad guy was only ever going to be one of two possible new characters (or possibly both) so there's no weight to the reveal. Despite the fun set-up of Elastigirl getting the limelight and Mr. Incredible having to deal with his conceptions of his own superiority, that kind of gets left undeveloped when the battles kick off and everyone has to get involved. It also seems a bit weird that nobody reacts to the latest episode of the Supers causing massive damage because of a supervillain who basically exists only because Supers exist in the same way that they always did, too. Overall, the story felt too much like an episode of a spin-off TV show and honestly, it wasn't a whole lot different from Despicable Me 3. 

There were some great moments as usual. Edna has always been the best thing about The Incredibles and that remains true here. Baby Jack-Jack is adorable and a fun element of chaos in the mix. I loved the theme songs they made for the characters at the end, especially Frozone's funky one. And I liked Violet going from shrinking violet to stroppy teen. From the trailers I wasn't sure, but by the end I was won over by the new direction they took her, and her moment when her father apologises to her probably is the scene with the most heart. 

Obviously, the visuals and animation are top-notch as always, with elements like fire, ice, underwater scenes and midair battles all spectacular throughout. Wouldn't have minded a post-credits scene, though. 

メアリと魔女の花 / Meari to Majo no Hana / Mary and the Witch’s Flower

It’s entirely by design that everybody looked at publicity materials for Mary and the Witch’s Flower and thought, ‘Oh, Studio Ghibli have a new film coming out?’ It looks just like a Ghibli film. And so it should, with Arrietty and Marnie director Yonebayashi Hiromasa at the helm and a number of his collaborators from those films present and correct. It’s also drawn in the Ghibli house style of art that, let’s face it, is Miyazaki’s style as developed from the Toei Animation aesthetic – but was unambiguously adopted as a house style by all the other directors including Miyazaki’s great and sadly departed senior, Takahata. But Ghibli this is not. It seems like the great animation house has given up trying to create a new figurehead director and is winding up feature animation production. So the young man who got to direct two of the most recent Ghibli films and who seemed to be such a good fit because he was meek and malleable, has actually gone off to a new studio. Ghibli producer Nishimura Yoshiaki has founded Studio Ponoc, and despite having to start everything from scratch – including trying to procure funding – they have produced a film that is everything a Ghibli film ought to be. Call it derivative if you like, but I call it a logical progression. And it’s wonderful to know that a new generation will be continuing the lineage of the studio and just might live up to or even surpass the accomplishments of their forebears.

And for all its imitative qualities, this felt like freedom for Yonebayashi. For the third time, he’s adapting an old, somewhat quaint British novel for his animation – but this time it’s not so peaceful and introverted. This time it’s about witches, magic, cataclysmic spells and soaring magical flight. His light, deft touch in the previous two films was appreciated, but I get the feeling he enjoys a larger and more spectacular stage, while retaining a lot of the cute, small-scale feeling.

The source material, The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart, is not a book I’ve ever come across. I don’t think it’s been in print for many years. I’ve vaguely heard of her from her books The Crystal Cave, an Arthurian work beloved of hippies, and The Moon-Spinners, which Disney made into a live-action film, but I’ve never read anything she wrote. I don’t know how closely this adaptation matches the source material, but I suspect it’s pretty close. And it’s probably a good idea to use a decades-old book as your source when you’re expecting to battle accusations of unoriginality: not only did they have to get Mary well-separated from Kiki so that this wouldn’t seem overly slavish in its Ghibli imitations, but it would be all too easy for a story about a British kid going to a school for magic and proving to be a prodigy at magic and flying brooms thanks to something her family did in the past to be called imitative of Harry Potter. Instead it might just make a wider audience realise just how derivative – or, to put it more kindly, how connected with a rich legacy of similar British works – Rowling’s books really were.

While Mary and Kiki are very little alike, there are far more connections with the Ghibli tradition here than just the fact that Mary looks like Ponyo grew up to look a bit like Arrietty. Perhaps most obvious would be the echo of Miyazaki’s passion for flight. But there’s more than that. The matriarchal figure first seen formed from a huge gush of water is very Spirited Away, while the powerful, noble, unstable and dangerous force at the end bring Mononoke-hime to mind. Mary at times gets the determination of Nausicaa or the inner strength of Sheeta. The design of the school is a little bit Howl-ish in places, while the gardens have just a hint of the world of The Cat Returns. On that note, just like in Whisper of the Heart, the cats here totally steal the show. Tib the grumpy cat was hilarious.

As with the likes of Mahoutsukai no Yome, it’s fun to see England rendered through the fanciful lens of Japanese romanticism. Once again there’s a very odd take on British food, with what looked like breaded chicken, beans, dumplings and sliced tomatoes on a plate together. But at the same time they had very clearly come to England and used photos of real Shropshire houses for their backgrounds – you could even see that they had some Celebrations ready to eat! Having only ever adapted British children’s books centred on adolescent girls, I’ll be interested to see if Yonebayashi expands from there after this. Britain has always kind of been represented as an echo in Ghibli’s works, from the adaptations of British books that had their locales stripped away or changed to Japan to the scenery based on Welsh mining villages in Laputa. But it seems like Yonebayashi actually wants to set films based on British works in Britain. And that’s very entertaining for me to see.

I’ll be following his career and the developments of Studio Ponoc with interest. I hope they make many, many classic films and soon the world will say Yonebayashi in the same way they now say Miyazaki.

Coco

Just like the Studio Ghibli films, I’ve fallen behind with Pixar’s movies and can no longer say I’ve seen them all. Not only am I a year late seeing Coco, but there are the likes of Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur that I have to catch up on at some point. Though I can’t say either of those fill me with enthusiasm.

But Coco I definitely wanted to see. Day of the Dead imagery is always fun, and I like the idea of promoting and supporting Mexican culture at a time where there’s a tendency to look at border controversies and dehumanise people. Which is not to say I support illegal border crossings. Disney also made a pig’s ear of trying to seem culturally sensitive when they attempted to trademark “Día de los Muertos”, which you’d think somebody would have realised was a bad idea before it went public. But Mexican culture is one I have only very superficial knowledge of, so it was nice to see more – even if it took an American studio to lead me there.

The set-up is neat and tidy, the kind of plot you know went through numerous writing rooms and was tightened up until it squealed. Young Miguel is the youngest in a line of shoemakers in a family where music is banned, because his great-great-grandfather abandoned the family to pursue his dreams of being an entertainer. But music is in his blood and Miguel secretly worships Ernesto de la Cruz, seemingly the greatest star Mexico has ever produced.

After a mishap in a mausoleum on the Day of the Dead, young Miguel is cursed and his corporeal form enters the realm of spirits. Only his deceased family’s blessing can take him back to the land of the living, and there’s a problem – his family want him to renounce music. Instead he sets off looking for his great-great-grandfather, and might just uncover some skeletons in the family closet on the way – figuratively speaking.

It’s a really fun adventure that’s given extra scale by the fantastical imagery possible in the afterlife. There’s the brightly-coloured Alebrije creatures, giving a fantastical touch to the world. There’s all the usual animated movie gags with skeletons being able to take off their skulls, independently move detached limbs and suchlike. There’s the piled-up colourful houses and a spectacular party, as well as a very odd but very funny take on Frida Kahlo’s artistic output – pitched perfectly to get in references to the kind of imagery Kahlo put out while still being kid-friendly. Just the right amount of obvious.

I’ll freely admit that a lot of the subtle things went over my head. I know many of the dead guests at the big party were famous in Mexico, but I don’t know who they were. But what’s fun about a film about another culture is that you learn. Now I know what an ofrenda is and something about xolo dogs. I have a new affection for the grito, which is a little different from the kind of grito I know from capoeira songs. Though I do wonder how these beliefs sit alongside Christianity, which is almost wholly absent from this story. Not that I expected a Pxar film to go there.

There were some elements that could have been improved, in my opinion. Miguel himself could have had a bit more of an interesting design, even if he was going to have his face painted for much of the film. The way modern Disney and Pixar films (see Frozen and Moana) tend to push one song with many refrains is usually rewarded with an Oscar – as was this film’s ‘Remember Me’ – but I thought ‘Un Poco Loco’ was a much more interesting and well-performed song. I feel something of a lack of closure not knowing what happened at the end of either music competition (though we at least know who won one of them, though possibly only because Miguel ‘withdrew’), and while wrapping things up with brevity made sense, I thought there might be a little more on just how the family managed to convince the world of the truth Miguel uncovers. And honestly, compared with more iconic films in the Pixar oeuvre, I don’t think this will stand out much more than the likes of Ratatouille or Inside Out.

Nonetheless, this was an expertly-crafted, beautiful, well-written, satisfying and sometimes moving story that does a good job of introducing to kids that sometimes following a dream and staying with a family can be at odds with one another. Very much worth a watch, if not rewatching over and over.

Song of the Sea

I really do think that Cartoon Saloon’s feature films are the future. Or at least Tomm More’s films. They may not make much money right now – according to the internet, they don’t even crack $1m gross, on considerably higher budgets – but they are artistic, beautiful and hopefully after getting more and more established will eventually break through to the mainstream.

I really enjoyed The Secret of Kells, though it lacked a certain sense of scale and excitement. Song of the Sea is better in narrative and character terms, and the animation has also stepped up considerably. Underwater sequences in particular are very beautiful. This film also focuses on more well-known, though still esoteric, elements of Irish mythology, which is a great niche for this studio to have. At the same time, as has been noted elsewhere, there seem to be several nods to Ghibli here, especially in the old witch Macha. Her hair flares up like Yubaba’s and she struggles up the stairs like the Witch of the Waste. Some of the pacing choices also echo Spirited Away and its famous sudden slowdown for a train journey.

Song of the Sea is about an adorable 10-year-old boy called Ben, voiced in the sweetest lilting Irish accent by the kid from Moone Boy, and his discovery that his sister is a selkie. In Irish mythology, selkie are seals who transform into women in fur coats, and the way to keep them human is to take away that coat. Well, Ben’s mother was a selkie, and his sister is one too, but his father is deeply broken-hearted from being abandoned by the one he loves, and so keeps his daughter’s coat hidden away. Little Saoirse (‘Sheer-shuh’) doesn’t talk, only wants to be back in the ocean, making music with her seashell and regaining her voice. When they leave the isolated lighthouse they call home to stay with their granny, but attempt to return home on their own, an adventure into the world of faeries begins.

With Saoirse mute and the rest of the cast – mostly eccentric faeries like the Great Seanachaí who knows all the world’s stories, recorded in strands of his hair – appearing briefly, the whole movie rests on Ben’s shoulders. And young David Rawle gives a fantastic performance to carry it all, petulant at first and resentful because he believes his little sister is the reason his beloved mother is gone, but increasingly gentle, generous and brave. He has to convey stubbornness, fear, exhilaration and wonder, and it all works very nicely with the vocal performance and a funny little character model more basic than most you’ll see in animated feature films.

The ending is a little overly convenient. In particular, I’d like an explanation as to why Mac Lir’s sadness, which is the catalyst for all the action in the story, just vanished. And it could have been explained away in a line, but I felt that was necessary for a satisfying conclusion. Otherwise, though, the spectacle and happy resolution are both impressive and moving.

The art is beautiful, the music is lovely, the performances are all good and the sense of place is very strong. There’s not that much to hook the young kids who love action and explosions, and I suspect that critics and animation buffs will have greater connections with this than kids will, but it’s a wonderful movie that I hope will touch those who take the time to watch it, and look forward to more of More’s work. 

Kung-Fu Panda 3

I thought they didn't have this film on my flight, though it was on my outbound journey, but actually it was hidden away in the 'for kids' section. Not sure why it wasn't in 'family movies' this time. 

Anyway, I found it and watched it as a final relaxing film, and it fit the bill just fine. Light entertainment with some smiles, if not the big laughs of the first films, and impressive action. 

This time around, Po has to face an undead bull voiced by JK Simmons who was once the close comrade of the old turtle master Oogway. He uses Chi to enslave the various animal masters around China, turning them into chi zombies made of jade. Because Chinese-y, I guess.

Po goes on a quest to understand himself after meeting his birth father, intending to master Chi to fight this new threat. But he only learns to be a panda, obviously neglecting that being raised by a duck, that's not fully who he is. 

There's a nice big satisfying fight at the end, where for some reason the baddie doesn't use the instant-inslaving technique that worked on everyone else, There's some spectacular animation in the fights and in Po's clever idea for dealing with the baddie, and everything gets wrapped up neatly. 

The stakes just about work, though perhaps a larger scale would have been more moving. There's a very sweet gesture of help at the end, and overall the film ends as satisfying but not quite as grandiose as its predecessors - which were of course very silly in any case. 

It's obvious why this franchise worked out so well, able to encompass silliness and awesomeness together, And of course China likes it. A trilogy is neat and the idea might get tedious after too many more iterations, but I could stomach at least a couple more. 

The Boss Baby

This happens quite a lot with movies I only watch on a plane - they don't look good enough to see on release but actually end up being really good. I honestly thought this looked terrible from trailers, especially with such an ugly baby, and basically only watched it because the main character Tim was adorable.

In fact this was a clever, sweet and well-made animation that probably deserves more recognition than it got...though I did see quite a few reaction images of the triplets online. 

One of the best factors here is that the premise gives a strong message to kids with new siblings - the whole premise stems from how 7-year-old Tim reacts to the new baby of his family getting more love from his parents. That jealousy is a good thing for kids in that position to get to discuss. 

There's a lot that surprised me here. Funny jokes and pop culture references to everything from Indiana Jones (brilliantly combined with Mouse Trap) to Glengarry Glen Ross. Poignant moments mostly marked by 'Blackbird' by the Beatles. Strong performances and fast-paced animation. There's a few adult jokes that raise a smile, like references to the things that can go on at work retreats, though in light of the recent scandals from Hollywood, I'm not sure having Alec Baldwin and a child actor have an exchange along the lines of 'Suck it!' 'I'm not gonna suck that, I don't know where it's been.' 'You want to find out where babies come from, don't you?' was probably not the best idea. And they almost cast Kevin Spacey in the movie too… 

Tim is one of the most adorable kids in CG - being younger than most of the kids in these films, he's adorable, needing his hand held on the plane and not knowing how to ride a bike. Ralph Bakshi’s grandson Miles gives a pretty adorable performance, too, playing younger than his age during recording. Perhaps the best element having such a young protagonist is that being so concerned with the imagination of a child, there are lots of sequences that experiment with changes of animation style or weird character designs, which really take advantage of the medium. 

I doubt that many people will give this film a chance, but that's a shame because it's much better than I'd anticipated. 

Despicable Me 3

I enjoy watching the Despicable Me movies, though not enough to actually watch them anywhere but planes. 

This one was another enjoyable diversion, though lacked the big heart and emotional pay-offs of the other films. Quite a lot happens at once - Gru is reunited with his brother, who's a good businessman but terrible villain - while also having a vendetta against a new supervillain with an entertaining 80s theme and the voice of Randy Marsh. 

The kids have their own stories - little Agnes is adorable looking for a unicorn while Margo gets accidentally engaged. There's also a new agency boss who seems like a bit of an offensive stereotype to me. Oh, and the minions quit and go on various episodic adventures. Everything comes together for a fun big climax with lots of action and lasers and screaming, and it's definitely enjoyable, but the other films felt like the offered something a bit different and unusual. This one felt like an old direct-to-TV sequel or special extended pilot to kick of a TV series. Still fun, but without offering anything new. 

That said, it’s pretty astonishing to see the worldwide success of this franchise. The Minions seem to really appeal universally, and I see quite a lot of merchandise for them in Japan. This indifferent sequel became only the sixth animated movie to gross more than $1bn worldwide – with Minions being another. It’s in the top 25 highest-grossing films of all time. Pretty crazy, but testament to good marketing and the groundwork lain by a strong, well-made franchise. 

思い出のマーニー/ Memories’ Marnie / When Marnie Was There

I’ve been slipping lately as a Ghibli completest. There are a few movies I haven’t gotten around to seeing in the last few years, and one of them was this, When Marnie Was There – the second movie from Yonebashi ‘Maro’ Hiromasa, who seems to be carving out a niche for himself adapting whimsical, gentle-paced English children’s books from a generation ago. With Arrietty and this movie, I thought that was simply what he was instructed to do by Miyazaki, given that those books are on his favourites list, but since Yonebashi and various others from Ghibli have fractured off to found Studio Ponoc, he seems to be continuing the trend even outside Miyazaki’s influence with Mary and the Witch’s Flower.

Yes, When Marnie Was There is an adaptation of a 1967 novel by Joan G. Robinson set in Norfolk. Honestly, though it won some awards and was previously adapted for Jackanory, I’d never heard of it and it seems to have been out of print until interest was revived by this adaptation. The sample chapters I’ve read show a rather unlikeable protagonist and lots of patronising and overdone renderings of the Norfolk dialect, but presumably the protagonist gets more likeable and the story itself is a sweet and well-crafted one.

This adaptation, transplanted to Hokkaido and its comfortable-looking temperate summers (definitely considering spending a lot of time there next year), is remarkably well-done and tasteful. It doesn’t have the bombast of Miyazaki’s most prominent films and won’t make anything like their cultural impact, but it’s a wistful and sweet story in the vein of Omoide Poroporo and thus makes it into my top five Ghibli films. Yonebashi seems to have managed to capture that middle ground between the supernatural fantasies of Miyazaki and the everyday dramas of Takahata, and the film benefits greatly from that.

Twelve-year-old Anna doesn’t fit in. She’s adopted and feels distant from her family, doesn’t make friends easily, sometimes says very rude things when she feels cornered, and as a girl apparently with some foreign blood – visible mostly in her eye colour- feels like an outsider in her native land. She’s also asthmatic, and the doctor thinks the air of the Hokkaido countryside will do her good, so she goes to stay with relatives by the sea.

In the new town, she’s drawn to a strange mansion down on the marshes. She meets a girl called Marnie who is free-spirited, looks like a French doll and is virtually held as a captive in her own home by her household staff.  Anna and Marnie become fast friends, to the point they profess their love for one another and it borders on the adorably homoerotic. Anna is in some ways girlish but with her short hair, usual choice of shorts and rather headstrong attitude has very appealing androgynous characteristics. Marnie is more classically girlish, usually wearing pretty dresses and loving to dance and twirl, but also gets down to some serious rowing when she needs to. They’re lovely characters, suit one another very well and their intimate friendship is a joy to see unfolding, even after the twists are revealed and we come to understand everything.

The film is understated and beautifully-done. Movements and expressions are rendered in a lovely way and the setting is striking, even if but for a windmill changed for a grain silo, this could very easily have still been Norfolk. With a Japanese matsuri. The two lead characters reminded me strangely of Shinku and Souseiseki from Rozen Maiden, which was sweet.

I think this will mature not as one of Ghibli’s most iconic films, but one of their more mature and understated. Certainly one I’ll enjoy rewatching in the future. 

君の名は/ Kimi no Na Wa / Your Name

After a longer time than expected, I got around to watching Kimi no Na Wa, Shinkai Makoto’s breakout masterpiece. And I have to say, I see why it succeeded where his other films were restricted to fandom and, to an extent, arthouse crowds. I’ve never been a great fan of his work, which while often artful and in his early days a remarkable achievement for what was basically an individual, never connected with me emotionally.

Yes, what Kimi no Na Wa at last manages, finally launching Shinkai into the leagues of Miyazaki, Takahata and Hosoda, is to have heart. The story is a strange one and the gets bogged down in a rather artificial drama in the final act, but what really matters is that the characters are likeable and compelling – plus the setting has interesting things to say about very different lifestyles in a changing Japan.

I was a bit confused by the title of this film. Why na and not namae? I’ve heard a variety of explanations from Japanese people – ‘It’s more formal and sounds more like a real title’; ‘It has the nuance of your full name, because they only knew given names’; ‘It feels uncomfortable to say “Kimi no Namae Wa?”’ (even though that’s the climactic line of dialogue in the actual script’; and maybe most convincingly, Shinkai just used the title of an old radio drama from 1952, adapted into a movie trilogy in 1953-4 that was a huge hit back in the day.

But this is not an adaptation of an older work. It’s an original story that on the surface is about a boy and a girl who swap bodies and live in each other’s shoes for a day. Not just one day, but over and over again. At first they think they’re dreaming, but begin to communicate with one another through phone journals and other messages, and eventually try to meet one another – though there is a lot that stands in the way of their coming together.

A lot of the drama is rather superficial, with a whole lot of made-up rules for this magical circumstance that it’s implied is connected to the power of a local god. But that’s okay, because the overall narrative is really just a vehicle for two things – the exploration of two characters, and their very different circumstances. She is set to inherit the temple and trains as a shrine maiden in a somewhat stifling small town where everyone knows one another and the girls at school sometimes pick on her for having to do embarrassing things like make sake the traditional chew-rice-and-spit-it-out way. He is a busy city boy living in a small apartment and working as a waiter in a restaurant, and despite his pretty face very inexperienced with women. Judging from his reaction to an excursion, he’s also craving more spiritual experiences.

It’s oddly cute to see Taki, the boy, with Mitsuha’s feminine mannerisms, very well-observed by the animators. Interesting that we’re introduced to him like that, too. Observing gender differences is far less important, however, than observing the social differences between the very different lives these two lead.

The film is also very beautiful. There’s some slightly jarring cel-shaded CG, but mostly this is a real visual treat. Glorious panning shots, intensely detailed backgrounds, masterfully-captured natural phenomena and even some explosions make for a feast for the eyes.

And while it’s somewhat on-the-fly and arbitrary, the film’s narrative makes for some great emotional highs and lows and builds to a good strong climax. Combined with really likeable characters and meaningful stakes, the result was good.

I see that a live-action remake is in the works. Honestly, I don’t see what it would add. In fact, I suspect it will lose the beauty and the carefully-observed physical comedy. A great step forward in Shinkai’s career.  

The Lego Batman Movie

I was looking forward to this. The LegoMovie was an unexpected joy, there’s more potential to mix franchises here than anywhere else, and word of mouth was good. But honestly, I don't think this matched up to its predecessor. It lacked the exuberance and anything-goes freewheeling nature of that film, and had more one-note humour. Still, for casual and hardcore fans alike, there was a lot to enjoy here. 

Riffing on the Batman of the first movie, all self-referential boasting, claims of being awesome and deep emotional repression, there were a whole lot of great points here. Having a full roster of Batman villains - and then one-upping them with the big bads of numerous other franchises - was a whole lot of fun. A small scene with the Justice League gave some laughs too. The big action setpieces were great to look at and often very inventive. And the strange thing about comedy is that the more overt, exaggerated and silly you make a character's hang-ups, problems and angst, the more directly you can switch gears to actual pathos and touching character moments. Making the film essentially about how Batman's bravado is all a front for his yearning for family and companionship makes that very easy to do - especially when you pair him with a Joker longing for acceptance, where the joke is that the protagonist-antagonist relationship has a lot of parallels with a romantic relationship. 

So all in all I wanted to enjoy it. I got most of the jokes and references and it often raised a smile. Because it's a comedy it doesn't really matter that loose ends aren't really tied up, like why the Joker didn't have to go back with the rest of the baddies. I loved the little touches like Bane sounding like the movie version and Robin's costume origin. It was also nice to have Barbara Gordon written so strong and capable. 

But in all honesty, it wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. Everything was superficial by design, so I ended up not connecting with anyone on the cast - which wasn't the case with the Lego Movie. There was no way to prevent Gotham getting totally torn apart so it felt like there wasn't much more at stake after that, nor that the characters particularly cared about any of the carnage in any case. And while the Lego Batman character was great as a side-note to a wider story, he wasn't really that fun as a protagonist. 

Not bad by any measure, but just not that fun either. 

Kubo and the Two Strings

After doing well with the playful moods of movies like Paranorman and The Boxtrolls, this time Laika have aimed for epic. Though they don't eschew humour, they aim for a serious fantasy tone by telling the story of one-eyed Kubo, child of a great samurai and a celestial spirit, but enemy to the rest of his family.

I really respect this change of direction and Laika in a serious mode has long been something I've wanted to see. I was a bit dubious about the fantasy-Japan setting, a little overdone just now, but it allowed for some beautiful locations and mythologically-inspired setpieces.

Kubo succeeds with its characterisation and its action sequences. The characters have multiple layers and often memories they themselves have forgotten, so their development is interesting. Plus this is Laika's foremost triumph, visually. Outsize monsters, magical effects, fights with swords, bows and sickles and amazingly fluid paper-folding effects add up to a feast for the eyes.

A couple of negative points for me would be in character design. I understand the link between kabuto beetles and samurai kabuto, but Beetle could have looked a fair bit less goofy. And Kubo himself had a design that looked nice as a concept drawing and in the traditional animation during the credits, but in the actual movie looked rather unattractive - I'm quite sure the movie would have had wider appeal with a better design for the protagonist. 

Plus, incredible though the achievement is here, the more polished and smooth stop-motion looks, the closer it gets to looking like CG. If they are indistinguishable, one starts to wonder what the point of stop-motion is. 

Not that we're at that point yet, and this movie pushed more boundaries than ever. But for all that it had the right ingredients and an intriguing cast of characters, I wanted to love them and there was just not enough humanity in them for that. Still, I am very eager indeed that Laika continue down this path and make more serious epic animations with their own unique tone to them.

この世界の片隅に / Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni / In This Corner of the World

This beautiful, reverent, affectionate and historically accurate Japanese movie almost slipped me by – not as connected as I once was to news from the world of anime, I heard about it only because it was on the plane during my trip back to England. And I’m very glad I caught it, because it was superb.

Crowdfunded, helmed by a director I’ve never heard of (though I’ve seen other works he’s been affiliated with) and produced by Studio Mappa who thus far are mostly known for the far less serious Yuri on Ice, this is perhaps an unlikely hit, but it hits all the right notes. It treads similar ground to Grave of the Fireflies and will of course be compared with it in just about every review, but has a far less focused and relentless tone, instead giving a far lighter touch and a whimsical method of building up its characters that actually reminded me of French filmmaking.

Based on a manga, this film tells the story of Suzu, a simple and rather childlike young woman who comes from a small community on the outskirts of Hiroshima. In the years before the war, she gets married to a young man she met only once before and doesn’t remember, then goes to live in nearby Kure, a naval port.

There, she contends with being a bit hapless in a new community away from her family. Her new husband has a sick mother, a big house and a domineering older sister to contend with, and her attempts to please them and do her best are very endearing – though she’s scatterbrained and has a habit of tilting her head when she forgets things.

Of course, eventually the war comes and brings with it at first inconvenience, and later tragedy. Naive Suzu retains her gentle nature through personal injury, large-scale tragedy and the unfamiliar aspects of life in a military town, like when she’s tempted by an extramarital affair or when she first encounters prostitutes.

The things she must endure are pretty horrific, but her reaction is believable – neither breakdown nor numbness, but a mixture of sorrow, guilt at not being able to do more to help others, and of course retaining her underlying personality really give this piece a believable and deeply likeable centre. The things she has to endure are terrible, as one would expect from a wartime drama, but there’s a rare subtlety in how they affect her, here.

The film is also beautiful. Suzu’s talent is for art – one of the funniest moments in the film comes when the military police suspect her of espionage and her feelings are hurt when everyone else finds the very idea hilarious – and sometimes that gets reflected by the artistic choices of the movie. The images of rabbits in the surf and the silly stories of childhood coming to life provide beauty or levity that enhance the artistry of this film.

Of course, it’s a heavy movie, but the point is to focus on war’s affect on ordinary people. Suzu knows nothing of Hitler or Manchukuo, is a product of her society with next to nothing to gain from Japan’s military role in the war, and is far more concerned with living as well as she possibly can. This isn’t a grand political statement, it’s an effort to capture the reality of a time and place that was to be shattered by the Bomb.

Delicate, nuanced and well-researched, it’s a must-see for anyone looking for art-house anime.  

The Land Before Time 2: The Great Valley Adventure

Less worthy than Fievel Goes West is this, the first of many, many sequels to The Land Before Time. It suffers many of the same problems - less sense of importance, less at stake and less sense of danger - but also has a much weaker central premise. 

That said, it establishes a fairly neat formula that would hold strong over many sequels and essentially does the same things that The Lion Guard would retread - rather more expertly - decades later. 

The plot follows the gang trying to be all grown up by foiling nasty egg thieves, for some reason given British accents by the actors behind Johnny Bravo and Pinky from Pinky and the Brain. They not only manage to foil these inept antagonists but end up hatching an egg. Not one of Ducky's siblings, as expected, but a Sharptooth! A baby tyrannosaurus. So begins a middle act about learning not to act with prejudice, even against a creature that will grow up to eat you without hesitation, and an inevitable third act about returning the baby to its vicious, voiceless parents. 

Almost none of the original cast sticks around, with only Cera of the main gang reprising her performance. I think this is before the tragic death of Judith Barsi, who played Ducky in the first movie, but her replacement does a decent job with the character's odd grammar. Littlefoot sounds older, but that works for a sequel and I didn't find fault with the main group. 

But the rest of the film is just too insubstantial. The egg thieves are bumbling idiots who pose little threat even to juvenile dinosaurs, and there's never any question of little Chomper’s fate, though I assume he'll be seen again in further sequels. In the original, poor Littlefoot is put through such a wide range of emotions it's very easy to empathise with him. In this sequel, there's just not enough to tug at the heart-strings or make us care about the current predicament. 

And that's what really gives the feel of a TV series as opposed to a movie. It's the sense of scale and significance. This movie would have been fine as three episodes of a TV show, but making a feature film demands rather more. At least Fievel Goes West tries to shake things up with a huge change of setting. This movie just continues from the first film with very little sense of peril or excitement, and the result, perhaps inevitably, is a film that just isn't very exciting. 

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

An American Tail was one of Don Bluth's best, restrained by a simple but coherent narrative and centred on a very cute protagonist. So it makes sense that it got a sequel. 

However, as with other successful franchises he kicked off, the second theatrical American Tail movie - as with the TV series and direct-to-video follow-ups - had no involvement from Don Bluth. 

Fievel Goes West, while successful, has the feel of contemporary Disney sequels. Unlike Pixar's follow-ups, these tended to be rather cheaper and less impressive than their predecessors. So it is with Fievel Goes West - while it has elements on the premium side, like voice acting from John Cleese and the final performance from James Stewart, as well as some ambitious action sequences, overall everything is just shallower, less well-executed and less believable. 

The original has a simple set-up with plenty of grit and misery to balance the cuteness and light. The sequel is just a bit too silly to carry the torch. 

One significant positive is that Fievel's character developed in a believable way. He's grown up a little since the first movie, with more confidence and even headstrong selfishness. It works, and aligns well with his burgeoning interest in cowboys. 

Perhaps the most crucial problem is that the sequel lacks a sense of danger. A spider doesn't seem like it should be a threat to anyone, even a mouse. While Cleese's character is compelling and believable, his ultimate plan is too stupid for any situation beyond a Saturday morning cartoon. And in particular, Tiger's storyline is far-fetched, at times racially insensitive and ultimately doesn't bring enough gravitas to a final action scene - especially with little Fievel participating. 

Overall, Fievel Goes West is not a bad movie. It's perfectly watchable and better than other Bluth-movie sequels, especially the execrable Timmy to the Rescue. But it doesn't quite manage to escape that feeling that it's been thrown together by writers who don't care for the material and only want to retread familiar old story paths, takes the slapstick too far in a way the original didn't, and doesn't give enough reason to care about its characters. Not a worthy sequel, but not a dire one either. 

An American Tail

Don Bluth does well with mice. The Secret of NiMH was his breakthrough, and remains a very strong movie. But perhaps his biggest cultural hit was An American Tail – though I’d have to say there’s stiff competition from dinosaurs.

Another one I haven’t viewed for many years, as a child much of the significance of this movie went over my head. I didn’t have a clear idea of the imagery immigrants to the States expected in the late 19^th century, let alone understand a thing about Russian Jews. To a child, those nuances probably don’t matter so much. But they’re very interesting as an adult.

An American Tail does absolutely everything better than All Dogs Go to Heaven. The animation is much better, with Fievel (or Feivel, sometimes) actually being very cute, and rotoscoped/xerographed elements looking impressive without getting too jarring. The story is compelling and each episode adds to the story. The music is fantastic, especially ‘Somewhere Out There’, and whereas All Dogs Go to Heaven tries to incorporate different musical elements through patronising stereotypes, An American Tail actually pays tribute to different immigrant cultures (though some Irish people might see cause for complaint) and spices up musical numbers with traditional musical styles. It even has a message of not judging based on race despite the mice-versus-cats set-up, with Tiger being quite unlike the rest.

Where An American Tail succeeds is in its multiple narratives. There’s Fievel looking for his parents, the secret plan he sets in motion, a very simple love story on the side, and the tragicomic conceit of the family always missing seeing their son while Fievel’s sister Tanya never gives up hope. Indeed, perhaps the film’s greatest appeal is its contrasts between sadness and hope.

Bluth is also allowed to be playful. Monstrous waves are very much in his style, and he adds in many fun touches like distorting glasses and an inventive sequence with the water sloshing about in a boat.

Maybe I could have done without the final Statue of Liberty sequence, but this is in every way a strong family film and deserves to be remembered every bit as fondly as Disney’s classics.

I very much enjoyed going back to this little story – and even if Bluth is not involved, I’ll be sure to watch Fievel Goes West at some point. 

All Dogs Go to Heaven

I had very few memories of All Dogs Go to Heaven, even though I do remember it being very popular upon release – on the same day as The Little Mermaid. I’d seen it once before, but my memories of it were mixed up with Lady and the Tramp, another dog-centric animation I’ve not rewatched since childhood.

Well, I’m going through Don Bluth movies at the moment – slowly – and next on the list was All Dogs Go to Heaven, his follow-up to the smash hit The Land Before Time. Don Bluth’s weakness tends to be story execution, which is why it works so well when he’s teamed up with another director – like Spielberg. But he famously disliked having to give up control, and was clearly enjoying his freedom with this movie, introducing themes of gambling, decadence and seedy underworld dealings to a family flick. Unfortunately, a lack of strong theming or likeable characters drag the whole thing down.

The film centres on Charlie, a rakish German Shepherd voiced with aplomb by Burt Reynolds who sadly fails horribly as a central character on account of being incredibly hard to like. He’s got the typical character arc of being selfish, irresponsible and manipulative, only to find his heart of gold when push comes to shove, but that happens only in the very final act, leaving way too much of the film centred on his being an unlikeable boor. Fun interactions with Dom Deluise’s Itchy character and even an amusing first trip to the Pearly Gates don’t save the character, his design is bizarrely ugly and unmemorable, and Reynolds’ singing voice is atrocious.

So it falls to the little girl who can talk to animals, Anne-Marie, to be the emotional centre of the film. Adorable as her voice actress Judith Barsi was as Ducky in The Land Before Time and deeply saddening though the poor little girl’s story was in real life, unfortunately Anne-Marie just isn’t interesting. She’s like a pint-sized Snow White, but with even less personality. Her characterisation is bland and her animation is that weird, creepy coquettish-baby thing Disney used to do a long time ago but thankfully gave up well before the 80s.

On the other hand, the animation is the film’s saving grace. It’s often beautiful, inventive and much more experimental that what Disney were putting out at that point. There’s some very impressive work with cars, scenes of Hell and various races. It still looks impressive, though Bluth’s habit of rotoscoping humans often looks jarring here.

The story veers wildly here and there, and the performances, heavily ad-libbed, often confuse. Killer is particularly incomprehensible, and I’m fairly sure his laser gun was written as a regular gun but changed to appease censors.

The music is perhaps the worst of any animated movie I’ve seen, with most of the songs lacking any melody or hook and being delivered with way too many distractions from the on-screen action. ‘You Can’t Keep a Good Dog Down’ and ‘Let’s Make Music Together’ are the saving graces of the soundtrack, though the bubble effect put on Ken Page’s voice was a terrible addition, and his cameo role only made me want to go and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas instead.

Don Bluth was capable of great things, and this movie is well-remembered, but unfortunately it’s not even close to his best, and probably won’t hold up well in years to come. 

Moana

Disney squeezed two films into 2016. Zootopia was a satisfying twisty mystery with a broad and often hilarious animal cast, while Moana offered a very focused ocean quest story with a far smaller roster.

While I certainly liked Moana, admired the decision to explore a culture Disney hasn’t touched before, and had much to celebrate technically, I can’t call it a classic – and nor do I think it will endure. In fact, having just read that directors Clements and Musker (helmsmen of Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Hercules, amongst others) wanted to adapt Terry Pratchett’s Mort but came up against rights acquisition issues, I have to admit wishing they were able to do that instead.

The progressive nature of Moana has been trumpeted enough it almost feels like criticising the piece is tantamount to being racially insensitive, but in general it’s the Polynesian elements that really shine through here. Moana herself is a superb character, likeable, believable, shaped by her background but with plenty of her own personality, too – and not just because of her little pithy comments, either. I loved seeing the animated tattoos, the supernatural manifestations of natural forces and the mythological evils. The evocation of the wonders seen by seafaring tribes was great, and there was some superb music, too – even if my favourite was the rather Bowie-ish ‘Shiny’ number that was decidedly non-Polynesian.

For me, the problem was firmly with Maui, a figure central to Polynesian mythology and a secondary character with more screentime than many Disney protagonists. He absolutely needed to be strange, formidable, a little otherworldly but most importantly, extremely likeable. And for all The Rock’s best efforts and for all the tattoos helped, he just wasn’t likeable. He was slow-witted, self-absorbed, violent, reckless and didn’t really grow or learn even as he warmed to Moana. He was oafish and occasionally murderous, and for all the Moana herself was the real hero of the piece, he was the one with the superpowers, he was the one who drove the plot and he was the one who gained the most from the events of the story – if anything, he was a big patriarchal power symbol around which vaguely feminist themes had to twist themselves. And he was no Genie or even a Wreck-It Ralph, a character it’s fun to see through the whole movie even with their flaws. He was just not interesting or compelling at all.

So with only Moana herself and a very straightforward quest to carry the film, it felt very light in the plot department. Certainly not a bad film, but nowhere near the best of these directors’ output, or that of recent Disney releases. 

星を追う子ども/ Hoshi-o Ou Kodomo / Children who Chase Stars / Journey to Agartha

I mentioned in my thoughts about Bakemono no Ko that Shinkai Makoto has seemingly become the ‘New Miyazaki’ with his smash hit, Kimi no Na Wa. It also came as a surprise to me, given that his other films have been rather oblique, artsy and inaccessible. I didn’t get on with Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place, and Voices of Stars was more of a technical achievement than a truly impressive piece of filmmaking. I’ve still yet to watch 5cm Per Second, but given it’s a short film in three distinct parts, it’s hardly a mainstream movie, and nor is the 46-minute Garden of Words.

So really, it’s this film, Hoshi-o Ou Kodomo, which bridges the peculiar gap between Shinkai being a quirky outsider auteur in the same vein as Yuasa Masaaki and all of a sudden being the new mainstream darling after Kimi no Na Wa. And I have to say, it makes perfect sense. I don’t think this is a particularly good movie, nor is it essential anime viewing, but as a milestone in a director’s career it is highly significant. Essentially, this is Shinkai’s devotional tribute to Ghibli, especially classic Ghibli. It’s almost a flat derivation of the studio’s art style, tropes, callsigns and character types.

Like most imitative works, it’s a little soulless and insubstantial. I really doubt it will go down in history as well-loved. The characters never really fully develop and the world is not clearly-defined. But it certainly has its moments of beauty.

Young Asuna uses a crystal radio given to her by her late father to listen to strange music. Little does she know the crystal inside will link her to a new world. A boy from the mysterious land of Agartha saves her one day from a strange monster, and soon she is drawn into a hidden world of magic, otherworldly creatures and rumours of the resurrection of the dead.

The echoes of Ghibli movies are very clear and direct. The Quetzalcoatls are halfway between the robots of Laputa and the night walker of Mononoke-Hime. Shin slashes his hair like Ashitaka and clings to Asuna as they fall like Pazu. Morisaki-sensei has a good deal of Muska about him, while Shun smiles a lot like Howl. The Izoku share qualities with various creatures from Mononoke-Hime, while Mimi the cat-creature and Nausicaa’s Teto are far from dissimilar.

Shinkai aims for an epic feeling, and with Asuna seems to be going for the cute, spunky female lead of classic Ghibli. The problem is a lack of human feeling. We see Asuna is plucky, vulnerable and good-hearted, but very little unique or really identifiable about her. Shin is introduced late and has some heroic moments as well as looking cool, and has one brief but sweet moment of vulnerability, but we learn very little about him. Shun’s motives are a mystery right to the end. And Morisaki-sensei is basically two-dimensional. I’ll always remember how the climactic sword-fight Shin has to really get centre-stage is to some random goon who still manages to put the poor kid down completely.

There’s very little driving the quest beyond Morisaki’s determination, but the dilemma at the end happens without enough build-up and seems like a problem tacked on at the end to give a strong climax. Too much of the invented world is murky pools and sheer cliffs, so the movie rather lacks in wonder. And the tugging-at-the-heartstrings moment mostly feel too manufactured and obvious to actually affect the viewer.

Certainly, this is a beautiful, well-made and polished movie, but it’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster of ideas derived directly from the Ghibli storybook. But I earnestly think that Shinkai had to try his hand at this style of movie before turning to the more everyday and relatable – paving the way for Kimi no Na Wa. Undeniably, Shinkai has come a long way from She and Her Cat.

The Secret Life of Pets

There was quite a lot of marketing for The Secret Life of Pets in Japan, and I was tempted to go, but ultimately it wasn’t a must-see, so I let it pass me by. It wasn’t even a priority film to watch on the plane – it only made it to my return journey! Still, it was a fun, simple animated movie that followed a formula and had some entertaining moments.

The plot is more or less Toy Story with pets. When the owners are out, the pets will have fun gatherings and parties. Chubby-faced Jack Russell terrier Max loves his owner very much, though. When a big, tough, brash new dog arrives on the scene, he’s very jealous. That jealousy leads to the two getting lost together, having a lot of scrapes, meeting a lot of rejected pets and ultimately learning to love one another. Yes, the parallels to Toy Story are hard to miss.

Otherwise, it hangs on its characters. Silly fluffy pom Gidget comes close to carrying the movie, by turns adorable, insane and hilarious, but the central duo are mostly on the dull side, the comedy tough-guy rabbit is an overdone joke by this stage and the funny old Pops was an enjoyable character but very one-note.

The film stays entertaining but never tugs at the heartstrings or evokes more than a small chuckle. Bland, derivative and thoroughly mediocre, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a refreshing, inoffensive watch. 

バケモノの子 / Bakemono no Ko / The Monster’s Child / The Boy and the Beast

Kimi no Na Wa has changed a lot of things in the anime scene. Until it took Shinkai Makoto to his new elevated place as the perceived successor to Miyazaki Hayao, it was Mamoru Hosoda who looked to be able to take that title, and indeed remains in my view the more established and consistent of the two.

And while not the smash hit of Kimi no Na Wa, this movie made a big stir in Japan. It was well-marketed and well-received, with strong box office figures and positive critical response. It also seemed like my sort of movie, a coming-of-age tale about an acerbic young lad taken in by a monster to train in martial arts.

Yet it didn’t have the resonance that Kimi no Na Wa is enjoying, nor was it a breakthrough. Anime fans enjoyed it, but it didn’t go much beyond that. And having seen it now, I think that’s appropriate. There’s a lot here that works very well, a lot of heart and a lot of imagination, but it falls well short of Summer Wars and remains too distant and too by-the-numbers to inspire love from a wider audience.

The story is simple – little 9-year-old Ren runs away from home after his mother’s death. His father is missing and he dislikes his guardians, so becomes homeless. Fortunately for him, he’s spotted by Kumatetsu, a powerful but irresponsible beast creature, and taken in on a whim as a disciple. Taken in as a lonely human in a world of beasts, with a monkey and pig advising him and giving something of an echo of Journey to the West, Ren is given the new name Kyuuta and eventually becomes formidable. Unsurprisingly, he’s not the only one with a similar background, though, and might have to confront the darkness in the hearts of others.

The core of the movie, the squabbling, eventual respect and finally strong bond between Kumatetsu and Ren, works very well. They argue, come to understand one another, and finally rely on each other to be complete. Unfortunately, the rest of the story hung around this core doesn’t cohere nearly so well. The love story is tepid and slow, Kumatetsu’s rival doesn’t get the development he needs and the antagonist is much too remote and peripheral to carry a meaningful climax to the story. There’s also no big pay-off here: it essentially feels like Ren ends up turning his back on everything that makes him who he is, and there was way more scope for examining how he could find a unique place in the human world afterwards.

Ultimately, unlike Summer Wars or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and even more so than Wolf Children, the film doesn’t manage to clearly stamp its identity throughout its running time, and thus falls short of hitting hard and being truly memorable. If he wants his Studio Chizu to be a new powerhouse, Hosoda is going to have to up his game – especially with Shinkai now a few steps ahead.