Ponyo

Ponyo is the most recent film by celebrated Japanese director/illustrator/writer Hayao Miyazaki. Like many people, I love Miyazaki films for their lavish imagery, attention to detail, and sense of wonderment. And Ponyo doesn't disappoint. Based roughly on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Little Mermaid," Ponyo tells the story of a magical fish who is rescued by a little boy and turns into a girl so she can be with him. This is a great movie for people new to Miyazaki as well as long-time fans. It is both accessible and magical. I think Ponyo comes the closes to capturing the feel of My Neighbor Totoro, which is my favorite Miyazaki film. The love of Ponyo and the little boy is rare, innocent, and precious.

Miyazaki films have become more popular in the U.S., ever since Spirited Away won and Oscar. Disney/Pixar's John Lasseter is a huge fan, and thanks in part to him, the U.S. release doesn't suffer from bizarre marketing or sub-par voice-overs like some of the previous releases. I prefer subtitles to dubbing, but with a voice cast including Liam Neeson, Betty White, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, and Matt Damon, you can't go wrong either way. Ponyo is a movie I would recommend to young and old alike.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

In 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote an unusual short story about Benjamin Button, who was born and old man and grew backwards, becoming younger every year. This unusual foray into science fantasy is whimsical and often humorous, but it has a melancholy aspect to it because Benjamen feels out of sync with the rest of the world. In this adaptation to the silver screen, the filmakers seized on that melancholy, and emphasized a line of romance that was almost nonexistent in the story.

Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born a full-grown man in the original story, which Fitzgerald never bothered to explain, but he is a miniature old man in the movie. His mother dies shortly after childbirth and his father abandons him outside an old folks home, leaving him to be raised by a young black woman who could not have children herself. The choice to set Benjamin's growing-up years in an old folks home works well for the movie, and we get to watch Benjamin learn about life from people about to depart it. While at the home he meets a little girl who will become the love of his life (Cate Blanchett). Their friendship and later romance are touching at times, but also turbulent as they struggle with the fact that he grows younger as she grows older.

The filmakers essentially gave the short story the Forrest Gump treatment, following Benjamin's life through two World Wars, multiple continents, and changing eras of American history. None of this is in the short story, of course, but it works well in the film. The make-up used on Brad Pit as an old man is quite good, and there are some very fine performances by Pitt, Blanchett, and Tilda Swinton.

My biggest complaint about the movie is that the story is largely told through the memories of his aged sweetheart as she dies of cancer in a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. This attempt at connecting the story to a recent and sensational event is unnecessary and distracting.There is also an attempt to explain why Benjamin grows backwards (something about a magic clock) but that's distracting too. F. Scott Fitzgerald never bothered to try to explain why Benjamin Button was the way he was; Fitzgerald was satisfied with taking his audience along with Benjamin's backward life.

The film's best moments are ones that capture that fantastical melancholy of the story. The most bittersweet of these is when Benjamin dies as an infant in the arms of the old woman who once was his lover. I sat thinking about the movie for a long time after the credits started to roll.

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Seirei no Moribito (Guardian of the Sacred Spirit)

We started watching Seirei no Moribito on the recommendation from my cousin. I'm not a big anime person, but this series is simply a good story. Seirei no Moribito is an epic fantasy that takes place in a far-away land. The main character, Balsa, is a female body-guard who is entrusted to protect a prince. The animation is excellent, but it never takes precedent over the storytelling. Even the impressive action sequences are important to the plot and not just for show. The series is full of vivid, interesting characters that develop through the story line. Chief among these, however, is Balsa, the coolest female character I have seen in a long time.

This animated series is based on a the first book in the Moribito series, by Nahoko Uehashi. The anime version expands on the story somewhat, and I actually liked it a little better than the book, but they were both good. And since the book is just the first of ten novels, I need to read the other ones to properly judge them. I would recommend Seirei no Moribito to anyone, even if (like me) you don't speak Japanese and you don't really watch anime. The DVD's are really expensive, but it's also available online if you know where to look.
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Prince Caspian

Never let it be said that Disney didn't know how to capitalize ona trend. In the wake of highly successful fantasy films such as The Lord of the Rings, Disney weighed in with another classic fantasy series, The Chornicles of Narnia. The second installment of this series, Prince Caspian, is probably one of the best-suited books of the series for movie adaptation. Which is why I was puzzled when the screenwriters took some fairly significant liberties with the plot, mostly in order to include more epic battle sequences and special effects. The Narnia books have their share of fighting, but here it somewhat subordinates the plot. The first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was pretty decent. Prince Caspian is a weaker movie in general, but it is still okay. The title character is certainly good-looking enough to have plenty of young fans anxiously wait for his appearance in the next movie in the series.

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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

I can't quite imagine who thought this movie was a good idea. Logically, some movie executive must have okayed the project, and presumably someone actually looked at the script. I just don't know what they were thinking when they gave it the green light. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is nominally connected with the extremely successful Final Fantasy role-playing video game franchise. However, despite the video games' reputation for complex characters and intricate plots, we have none of that here.

The movie follows the quest of Dr. Aki Ross, the attractive young female scientist (you know the plot is going to be bad just from that phrase) who is searching for the seven "spirits" that will rid the earth of an alien infestation. The usual compliment of stock characters is along for the ride, including the wise old mentor, the attractive male lead, the arrogant and foolish military leader, and a few wise-cracking sidekicks.

The Spirits Within really only has one thing going for it: special effects. At the time it was released, the movie represented an advancement in realistic computer animated characters. For the most part, the people are fairly realistic. You know they aren't real people, but they look and act enough like real people so that it isn't distracting. As is always the case, the effects don't look as good now as they did when the movie came out, but it's still not too bad. However, a little eye candy was never enough to sell a movie with a plot this bad.
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Stardust

Stardust is a novel by noted fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, whose witty and off-beat books and stories have developed quite a following. Although many of Gaiman's works have been picked up as options for movies, Stardust is the first movie to actually attempt to translate Gaiman's tales to the silver screen. It tells the tale of a young man named Tristan who ventures into a magical kingdom in order to bring back a fallen star to the girl he thinks he loves. Of course, it's not as simple as it seems -- the fallen star isn't just a lump of rock, it's a girl (Claire Daines) who is being hunted by several malevolent princes and an evil witch (Michelle Pfeiffer). There are plenty of adventures that would normally be tired clichés, were it not for Gaiman's habit of fracturing fairytales and doing the unexpected. I don't mean to say that there isn't a happy ending (there is), but how they get there is often unexpected and convoluted. Stardust isn't a perfect film; sometimes it is a little too weird or moves too slowly. But it definitely has its moments, including a hilarious performance by Robert DeNiro as the cross-dressing captain of a flying ship. Fans of Gaiman's work and the fantasy genre will enjoy Stardust, but it has plenty of appeal for people who thought they would never like a fantasy movie.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The fifth installment of the Harry Potter movie series is the best one yet in many respects. The screenwriting for Order of the Phoenix is very good, carrying over all the important elements from 870-page book while leaving out all the excess. As a consequence, this film deviates from the storyline more than previous films by combining scenes and expediting the story, but it maintains the important dialogue. The result is a film that doesn't feel rushed but still manages to cover a whirlwind of events and character development. My major complaints about Order of the Phoenix are stylistic (I thought the art direction, especially for the Department of Mysteries, left much to be desired.) This movie has perhaps the best climax of the entire series, with an actual confrontation of good and evil and a duel between the wizards Dumbledore and Voldemort. Frankly, I wanted to be wowed by this scene, but it was pretty mediocre. Still, the movie in general is quite good, continuing in the tradition set by the previous two Harry Potter films.
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The Golden Compass

Ever since Hollywood started to make money on fantasy films like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, there has been a glut of such films based on young adult fantasy series. The Golden Compass is the most recent offering, with some big-name stars (Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Sir Ian McKellan) bolster its appeal. The movie got a lot of last year for supposedly being anti-religious. Indeed, the author of the trilogy is fairly hostile to religion, and the books (especially the third) reflect that sentiment. However, it mostly comes off as anti-establishment in the movie. The Golden Compass paints a picture of a world in which all people have animal companions (quixotically named "demons") and where animals talk and magic is commonplace. Like most movies of its genre, there are plenty of adventures, perils, and quests. There are also, however, some mild themes of corruption, pain, and masochism. The ending of the movie is particularly weak because the book ended with the sacrifice of a child, so the movie just ends before that happens. If the film series is successful, the movie makers will face increasingly challenging themes to portray in a children's movie. I doubt that it will make it to a full trilogy, but The Golden Compass is fairly decent by itself.
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