Category: animation
REVIEW: Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2017)
Mary is staying with her Great Aunt Charlotte while waiting for her parents to return home and her school holidays to end. When she finds a strange blue flower in the woods, she finds herself whisked away on an adventure to a magical academy for witches and warlocks hidden among the clouds. Wonder turns to ...
REVIEW: Your Name (2016)
High schooler Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) lives in the mountainous Japanese town of Itomori, but yearns for the city life of Tokyo. One day she wakes up in the body of a Tokyo teenager named Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and he in turn wakes up in hers. Back and forth they swap, gradually growing to know each ...
REVIEW: My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
Ikar is a young boy living with his alcoholic mother. When she threatens him in a drunken rage, he accidentally pushes her down a ladder to her death. When taken to a rural orphanage, Ikar insists that he be called 'Zucchini' - his mother's nickname for him. While living in the orphanage, Zucchini starts to ...
REVIEW: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
One thousand years after a global catastrophe, small pockets of humanity live on the fringes of a massive toxic jungle. Nausicaä (Sumi Shimamoto) is a princess of the Valley of the Wind. Her lands are invaded by the warlike Tolmekians, who aim to revive an ancient giant warrior to ensure victory over neighbouring kingdoms. After escaping ...
“The greatest show time” | Perfect Blue (1997) and Paprika (2006)
‘It’s the greatest show time!’ announces a clown as he impossibly squeezes out of a tiny automobile. A circus ring seems like an incongruous place to begin a science fiction film, but before long we are following a middle-aged police officer from circus to corridor to train and beyond, without explanation or logical sense. We ...
REVIEW: Spirited Away (2001)
En route to her new home, Chihiro reluctantly follows her parents through a decrepit tunnel and to an abandoned amusement park. When her parents begin eating a mysterious buffet of food left out at a restaurant, they are magically transformed into pigs - and Chihiro finds herself contracted to work inside a magical bathhouse that ...
REVIEW: King of Thorn (2009)
A viral contagion known as the 'medusa virus' sweeps across the globe, causing its victims bodies to spontaneously fossilise and shatter. A select number of the infected are cryogenically frozen inside a special facility on the Scottish coast, to be revived when a cure has been found for the disease. When the infected wake, they ...
