Movie Review: Your Name

Visually scrumptious and powerful once the full bloom of emotions encompasses you, director Makoto Shinkai of Voices of a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters Per Second fame has delivered yet another stunner in body swap film, Your Name. However, be wary of synopsis because beyond…

Netflix Releases First Trailer For Live-Action ‘Death Note’ Movie

Hollywood wants anime and they want it now, dammit! Today, Netflix released a teaser trailer for Death Note, their live-action American remake of the beloved Japanese anime and manga series. The film follows Light Turner (Nat Wolff), a high schooler who…

Ghost in the Shell: Official Trailer

This morning the official trailer for the American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell was released after a few months of idiosyncratic trailers in 10 second bursts and a whitewashing controversy that caught more attention of viewers than the marketing…

Movie Review: Miss Hokusai

Miss Hokusai doesn’t explore an artist’s plight so much as it explores a certain plight that effects every living person. O-Ei Hokusai, a great painter, lives in the shadow of her father’s accomplishments, resigned—as his daughter—to play second fiddle. The anime opens introducing not…

Movie Review: ‘The Boy and the Beast’

Mamoru Hosoda is one of the few anime directors making films that connect widely with an international audience; this is especially true since Studio Ghibli’s departure. How else can I describe The Boy and the Beast other than anime reclaiming…

The Film Canon: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

I was a late bloomer in the school of Hayao Miyazaki. All things Studio Ghibli evaded me until my second year of college, which was when I finally settled in to watch everything that I’d been missing and was instantly…

Trailer for Official U.S. Release of Only Yesterday

With The Tale of the Princess Kaguya being my favorite film of 2014 (one that continues to stun upon reflection) and the masterful production company Studio Ghibli having created some of the best, most emotionally stirring films of their medium, any news that…