Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Creator, Tales from Earthsea, The Secret World of Arrietty, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

- Ponyo [2008] - 78

Continuing with my trek through Miyazaki’s filmography, we began this week with the fantastically whimsical Ponyo. This magical little film is really only held back by its conclusion and the insistent theme of romantic love between two children. While it isn’t exactly thrown in your face [until the final frames], the intention of the story is very clear. That aside, this is an excellent little journey with incredible visuals that really drive the potential of the medium home. I think a lot of animated film doesn’t fully utilize the strengths of the artform, and Ponyo is a great example of how best to do that. Really had an excellent time with this one and it’s sure to make it high on the final list.

- Howl’s Moving Castle [2004] - 81

There are only two films I’ve ever fallen asleep to as an adult: Blade Runner and Howl’s Moving Castle. Turns out, they’re both films I actually like quite a lot… I just have to overcome that Pavlovian conditioning from my initial exposure to them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Howl’s start to finish… and it’s pretty great. While I do think it has a few too many plot elements and one character wraps up in a horrifically lazy fashion, the journey itself is striking to look at, features excellent creativity in visual design, and has one of the best soundtracks of any of the Ghibli features. Backed up by a truly fantastic voice cast, Howl’s Moving Castle is one I’m likely to revisit.

- The Creator [2023] - 58

Talking about films I’m likely to revisit… The Creator is not one of them. This movie felt like it really wanted to be something interesting and say something meaningful, but forgot to do either thing in the face of just looking really pretty instead. This movie felt like long strings of silence mixed with nonsense dialogue, then punctuated by horrifically phony and trite philosophy that was more jammed into the script than sardines in the proverbial can. Similar to 2013’s Elysium, there was a clear vision for The Creator, but that vision never really made it past the storyboard. I’d also be willing to bet fans of one will like the other. It’ll be interesting to see if this gets a visual effects nod at the Oscars, because it really was mostly great looking… but that’s literally all it had going for it.

- Tales from Earthsea [2006] - 62

Tales from Earthsea is equally as cool as it is lacking in context or clarity. Nearly every element of this film is absolutely awesome and entirely intriguing… the problem is that nearly every element of this film is also absolutely never explained and entirely forgotten about as soon as the next scene starts. From an opening with dragons that never gets even vaguely explained, to the death of a king we never hear about again, to a multi-minute song with awkward pauses accompanied by static and meaningless images of oceanside prairie; Tales from Earthsea is two commas worth of scenes away from animated perfection. Had this been a miniseries, it would have been absoltuely and truly excellent. As a film though… it feels like a movie made of highlights from the book, rather than one interested in telling the narrative therein.

- The Secret World of Arrietty [2010] - 50

If I had to describe The Secret World of Arrietty in a single word, it would be “boring”. Maybe “empty”, both would suffice. Adapted from The Borrowers, Arrietty follows a family of tiny people who live under the floor of full sized human home. As you can imagine, all of our little things are just the right size for them, making much of the scenery and art direction visually enticing and entirely adorable. The issue at hand is not its concept though, it’s that nothing ever happens. We’re introduced to a handful of interesting plot concepts throughout the film, but never really develop or contextualize any of them… so none of it ever matters. The most interesting narrative element of one human character [“beans” to the borrowers] seeming to know or suspect they exist is never given history, context, or purpose…🙃…and that can be said of each plot point within the film. This is made all the more annoying because there’s several miniature scenes during the credits sequence that are far more interesting and meaningful than anything that happens during the film. It’s difficult to say I liked this less than The Wind Rises only because that movie was full of aggressively weird character choices… but it’s an extremely close call.

- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [1984] - 75

Nausicaä is the only film on this list that I’ve seen before, didn’t like, rewatched for this purpose, and am confused at what I found lacking the first time. I’ll probably revisit this one again soon because I was only paying 2/3rds attention this time around… but I found it to be very enjoyable. Cool world, cool worldbuilding, and interesting concepts. Granted, if one wanted to [which we know I always do], this film does have several narrative moments where the viewer could stop everything and say “hold on now, make that make sense,” and be entirely justified. Depending on my mood, these moments could definitely make or break this one for me, but I think it’s wonderful animation and very cool concepts keep it afloat for the most part.

- Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro [1979] - 83

I am still shocked at how much I liked this movie. Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro is an entirely irreverent, nonsensical, and ridiculous adventure movie that I would most closely related to Indiana Jones meets James Bond. It’s silly, it’s goofy, it never makes any logistical sense… but it’s also a raucously good time… and one I’ll likely recommend and revisit in the future. Going into this, I knew it would be the most different of the list, as Lupin III is a well established manga series and far outside of Miyazaki’s usual affair of high fantasy storytelling. I fully expected to not like it and be turned off but how goofy I knew it would be… which was true of the opening minutes. However, once this film gets going it just never stops and is entirely too much fun. It even manages to fly very close to the sun with some extremely yuck and cringe anime tropes… but then turn its back on them in the most satisfying way possible. An easy contender for the top sections of Miyazaki’s work.