Hayao Miyazaki Swoops In Out of Retirement to Deliver ‘The Boy and the Heron’

December 5, 2023

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Boy? Or Heron? (CREDIT: GKIDS)

Starring: Japanese Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon, Yoshina Kimura, Takuya Kimura, Shōhei Hino, Ko Shibasaki, Kaoru Kobayashi, Jun Kunimura
English Dubbed Cast: Luca Padovan, Robert Pattinson, Karen Fukuhara, Gemma Chan, Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe, Dave Bautista

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Running Time: 124 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Lethal Flames and Freaky-Looking Talking Animals

Release Date: December 8, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: During the middle of World War II, 12-year-old Mahito’s mother Hisako dies in a hospital fire. One year later, his widowed father Shoichi remarries Hisako’s younger sister, Natsuko, and they all move from Tokyo to the countryside. Everyone at the estate is eager to lavish attention on Mahito, including the gaggle of maids, as well as a strange, persistent grey heron. Soon enough, that bird leads Mahiko into an alternate world where parakeets are the size of humans and Mahito’s missing granduncle is a wizard keeping existence in perfect balance. As the boy and the heron make their way through this parallel plane, the entire fate of his family might just rest upon the success of their journey.

What Made an Impression?: A Thin Line Between Reality and Fantasy: If you had no idea before reading this review that The Boy and the Heron was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, chances are you would’ve figured it out immediately upon reading that synopsis. In his decades-long career of helming animated classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo, Miyazsaki has tapped into eternal childlike wonder by having fantastical realms spring up within the confines of real world settings. Mahito’s trip into the alternate reality is so gradual that it almost feels like this sort of thing could happen to anybody who’s watching. It certainly helps that his situation always remains tethered to his starting point. That’s the sort of magic that Miyazaki is famous for, and it’s just as potent as it’s always been.
Seeking Harmony: Mahito’s world is in flux in pretty much every imaginable way on both grand and intimate scales. He’s been displaced by war, he’s lost a parent, and now animals are talking to him! No wonder the ultimate message of The Boy and the Heron is about putting everything back in balance. Mahito’s granduncle faces a mighty foe in this struggle in the form of the king of the parakeets, which feels a bit like avian slander, but in the context of the story, it works appropriately enough. Anyway, by the end of the movie, it’s kind of questionable whether or not full balance has actually been maintained. But perhaps that’s because the story is not really over. Mahito will be an adult soon enough, and this is exactly the sort of formative experience he could use to make sure that he grows up to be a valuable citizen of the world.
Subs vs. Dubs: And finally, I’ll offer a note about whether you should seek out the subtitled or dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron. I saw the former, which I generally prefer when it comes to foreign-language films, because I like to hear the native tongue, and I usually have the captions on anyway even when I’m watching something in English. But in this case I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see the dubbed version, because the English voice cast looks so promising. I’ll probably have to check it out eventually just so that I can hear Dave Bautista as the Parakeet King. If you have a choice between one or the other, I think you’ll be fine either way. And if you have the time and the inclination, then go ahead and give both versions a whirl!

The Boy and the Heron is Recommended If You Like: Miyazaki in general, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Aflac Duck

Grade: 4 out of 5 Parakeets

‘Bullet Train’ Zooms Past Sensible Storytelling But Manages to Have Some Fun Along the Way

August 2, 2022

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Bullet Train (CREDIT: Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benito A Martínez Ocasio, Michael Shannon, Sandra Bullock, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Karen Fukuhara, Masi Oka

Director: David Leitch

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Rating: R for Blood from Guns, Swords, Knives, and Poison

Release Date: August 5, 2022 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: If a movie takes place on a speeding train, you can bet on non-stop action! Or can you? Well, you can at least rely on a captive set of characters. As the titular transport in Bullet Train charges ahead from Tokyo to Kyoto, our main fellow to follow is Ladybug (Brad Pitt), who appears to be some sort of assassin, except that he doesn’t seem very violent, at least not on this mission. Then there’s the brotherly pair of Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), who are much more comfortable whipping out their firearms. And there’s no way to miss Prince (Joey King) in her short skirt and tight bubblegum pink sweater; it’s obvious right away that underneath her schoolgirl facade lurks the heart of a killer. Is the fellow known as The Elder (Hiroyuki Sanada) the one pulling all the strings? Maybe! Or maybe it could be that one of the other famous faces that pops up along the way will clear up the confusion. Also, there’s a very poisonous snake wriggling around.

What Made an Impression?: For most of Bullet Train‘s path of destruction, I was never really sure what anybody’s mission was. And quite frankly, none of them seemed to either. Sure, there’s a briefcase with plenty of cash that certainly is worth keeping an eye on. But if anything, that’s the reward and not the job itself. Flashbacks pop up to provide backstory, but they don’t fully answer how everyone ended up on the same departure. MINOR SPOILER ALERT: The conclusion spells it all out eventually. But before then, screenwriter Zak Olkewicz and director David Leitch ask for a lot of patience from the audience. Or they request that we just embrace the ambiguity and enjoy Bullet Train as an exercise in frenetic style and a freaky parade of accents.

I at least appreciated how the casting was in part an inversion of this year’s The Lost City, with Pitt and Sandra Bullock switching the roles of bewildered lead and glorified slightly-more-than-a-cameo. And it’s also fun to behold King subsuming herself into the kinda-sorta Big Bad villain role. But in the meantime, questions abound, such as: is that accent real? And also: is that other accent real? And furthermore: why don’t any of the non-criminal passengers seem to notice the gore and bullet holes all over the place? The ending had me going, “Oh wow, that’s what that was all about?” But beforehand, I was somehow against all odds comforted by the steady hand of a cast willing to do everything that was asked of them without any winks to the camera. Vengeance really never turns out how you expect it to go, especially when all the plot twists feel like they were determined by whacking a piñata and throwing what spilled out into a blender.

Bullet Train is Recommended If You Like: The magnetic charm of Brad Pitt, The reveals on The Masked Singer, Derailments

Grade: 3 out of 5 Boomslangs