The only time that an animated movie will ever be made with the raw emotional potency of Takahata Isao’s Grave of the Fireflies, for Studio Ghibli, it will be at the very end of the universe, since two such profound motion pictures could not co-exist. Still, Katabuchi Sunao’s In this Corner of the World comes […]
A second review requested by John Grimes, with thanks for donating twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. So as I sit here preparing to confront Giant Robo: The Animation – The Day the Earth Stood Still (and that’s the last time we’ll be typing that all out, thank you very much), […]
A review requested by Andy P, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. “It’s like a dream turned into imagery” is a sentiment that I confess to relying on much too lazily and much too often, but after seeing Horrors of Malformed Men, I might have to retire it. […]
A review requested by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. The first time I sat down to watch Ozu Yasujiro’s 1959 Floating Weeds (this would have been in 2005), I couldn’t get past the second shot (not including the opening credits, […]
A review requested by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. 23 August, 1951, is one of the key dates in the history of world cinema. That was the day (almost exactly a year after it opened in its native Japan) that […]
I’ll say this about Your Name.: as much as I love it (and I do, a lot), I really cannot begin to understand why this was the film struck such a huge chord, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film in the history of the Japanese box office (the second-highest Japanese production on that list) and the highest-grossing […]
A second review requested by Chris D, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. First, shame on me. I’ve known for years that seeing Battle Royale was a thing I certainly ought to do, and I’ve had access to it for a number of those years, even during […]
Over the 62 years of its existence, Godzilla has been anything and everything: metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dangerous animal, force of nature, warrior for the environment, psychic hangover from of WWII, friend to all children, giant hermaphroditic iguana. There’s no such thing, really as a “normal” Godzilla or a normal Godzilla picture, and that’s […]
A review requested by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Ugetsu is everything. I don’t think it’s the best movie ever made – I don’t, in fact, think it’s even the best Japanese movie of 1953, what with Tokyo Story sitting […]
A second review requested by Sara L, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Spend any time at all perusing the responses of both critics and anime fans to Princess Arete, a semi-obscure 2001 feature made by the semi-obscure Studio 4°C, and one word will keep cropping up. […]
One of the few brand-name directors of animated features in the 21st Century, Hosoda Mamoru got that way through a most curious combination of radicalism and comforting familiarity. His 2006 international breakthrough, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, is a perfect example: it’s a nervy time-travel sci-fi tale of a sort that seemed positively revolutionary […]
A review series requested by a donor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for multiple contributions to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. In October, 2013, just a smidgen more than one year after the two-part recap movie hit Japanese theaters, along came the first new material in the movie trilogy: Puella […]
