My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

rating: ****

the story: Sisters attempting to handle the illness of their mother find unexpected solace in a magical creature.

review: So, my niece has become positively obsessed with My Neighbor Totoro in recent months.  My relationship with the works of Hayao Miyazaki is not perfect by any means, but thanks to repeated viewings of Totoro, I think I've finally found the movie that at last helps me see the magic that has helped him become the Japanese version of Disney.

It's perhaps worth noting that the version of Totoro I've been watching is a Disney product, the 2005 English translation with Tim Daly as the dad and sisters Elle and Dakota Fanning as Mei and Satsuki, respectively.  Mei's the younger of the two and responsible for all the best moments in the movie, including and most importantly discovering Tororo in the first place.  Totoro, unlike virtually everything else I've discovered in Miyazaki movies, is a harmless, lovable giant ball of fur.  Miyazaki appears to my untrained eye an animated disciple of the peculiar, post-WWII, Godzilla-fueled purveyor of monster imagery in modern Japanese pop culture.  The wider anime and manga material around him doesn't really match his depth or ambition, which is probably half the reason Miyazaki began to stand out in the first place, but curiously Totoro is more like that stuff than his typical work.

Besides Totoro is the Catbus, which is also entirely innocuous and unquestioningly helpful in Mei's adventures.  Mei and her sister get to be typical little girls for most of the movie.  They move into a new home at the beginning, and their first discovery is the presence of soot sprites (or gremlins), which Mei eventually tries to capture with an enthusiastic handclap (no luck, alas, just soot).  They moved to be closer to the hospital where their mother has been recovering when an undisclosed illness.  My only real criticism of Totoro is the ill-defined nature of the mother's predicament.  It's tough to compare with something like A Monster Calls, which tackles a similar story with far more gusto. 

But clearly there's whimsy and fanciful spirit in Totoro that A Monster Calls can't match, either, a perfect encapsulation, in some ways, of childhood, of its inherent magic, that even Disney and Pixar have never been able to capture.

So maybe in time I'll forget my quibble.  My Neighbor Totoro might be an unqualified classic.  Hail Miyazaki!

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

rating: ***

the story: A young woman inadvertently stumbles into a great conflict.

what it's all about: The films of Hayao Miyazaki are routinely rated as some of the best of the modern era.  Miyazaki is a Japanese animation director.  Whether or not you consider his work part of the overall Japanese anime scene may affect whether or not you've seen his work.  I've long known about his reputation, but until recently catching Howl's Moving Castle my practical experience with Miyazaki was limited to Princess Mononoke, which to my mind is easily associated with the overall Japanese anime scene, which I've determined after a number of movies is not really my thing.  As it turns out, Howl's Moving Castle isn't much like the overall Japanese anime scene.  But I'm still not convinced about Miyazaki.

Like Pixar, Miyazaki seems to get a free pass from critics.  If he's got something new, chances are more than good that critics will love it.  I can appreciate general admiration.  I've got actors and directors I'll always be interested in.  The problem becomes if you like a specific movie regardless of its own merits.  I don't think Pixar is a perfect movie engine, and I now have two experiences with Miyazaki that have failed to overly impress me. 

Don't get me wrong; Howl's Moving Castle earns a lot of points from me for being a clear break from the anime scene.  Its instincts are almost completely different, and generally they are quite charming, too.  In fact, charm is Howl's greatest advantage.  It's clearly an inventive work, even if it's based on a book.  (Can we please retire the nonsense of adaptation somehow not equating with creativity?)  It's got some truly fun characters in it, too. 

A lot of its appeal for me is that Howl's is basically an Oz story.  No, not Oz as in Judy Garland, or even as in the horribly unappreciated Return to Oz.  Oz as in the L. Frank Baum books.  I finally read through all of them a few years back, and I was thoroughly enchanted.  If you've seen Howl's then you already have an idea about what Baum's Oz was like.  That's what I mean.  But where Baum was always light on his feet, Howl's is leaden. 

As example I'll spend the remainder of my review talking about Howl himself.  Maybe this is really a criticism of the Hollywood dubbing of the movie, but even the appearance of Howl himself is a criticism of Miyazaki's vision.  Howl is one of the few characters in the movie who looks like he was ripped directly from a manga, a Japanese comic.  Manga and anime are virtually indistinguishable in their instincts.  In the Hollywood dubbing, Howl is voiced by Christian Bale.  In 2004, Bale had yet to reach the height of his fame.  He was one year away from playing Batman.  He was best known for American Psycho, four years earlier.  I have yet to see that one.  I wonder if he uses a voice similar to the one he employs for Howl.  If so...

The problem most people have with Bale's Batman is his voice.  If Bale had used that voice as Bruce Wayne, too, there would have been a real problem.  He doesn't.  As Howl, it's basically as if Bale had used his Batman voice the whole film.  It's not appealing.  As an entire performance, it's distracting.  By way of contrast, Billy Crystal as the fire demon is terrific.  I couldn't even place the voice until I saw Crystal's name in the credits.  I was convinced it was Kevin Spacey.  In 2004, Crystal was already ebbing in popularity.  Actually, the fire demon is Crystal's last notable role, not counting the Monsters, Inc. sequel.  In contrast, Bale's career grew considerably following Howl's. 

Bale's Howl is not only a bad performance, it's bad casting.  He doesn't sound anything like you'd expect Howl to sound like, based on his design.  With this one element, it becomes harder to see why Howl's is seen as anything other than an imaginative experience.  There's certainly nothing wrong with imaginative films experiences.  As an animated film, though, vocal performances are crucial.  Even if it's not a celebrity, it can't be distracting in a bad way.  Crystal is an example of a vocal performance being distracting in a good way; Emily Mortimer and Lauren Bacall are examples of vocal performances that don't draw attention to themselves so much as exist as elements of the movie.  They work, they're functional, and that's all you need to know. 

In sum?  Interesting.  Could have been better.