The Boy and the Heron

The Director and Writer Hayao Miyazaki (Greatest of All Time) shows with this movie that he is the modern Shakespeare. To me, the Wizard is a metaphor for Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the tower the Wizard has created is the Director Hayao Miyazaki life's work as an artist creating fantastical worlds. The boy Mahito Maki is still processing the grief of losing his mother during world war two and reluctantly sets out into the wizard's world with the aid of a mystical heron to save his step mother. In the process he learns through many trials that the malice he has allowed to grow within himself is the threat to the wizard's world inside the tower and his own world consumed by war. He learns that he must make peace within himself and return to his world and make his own tower with blocks free of malice.

A movie that truly was beautiful and outstanding but not an Oscar worthy one...

I really wanted to like my first review of 2024, but ''The Boy And The Heron'' felt messy and actually quite slow. For some reason I couldn't connect with the story and any of the characters, but I do think it will satify true Studio Ghibli fans!

Deserves all the praise it’s received, another masterpiece! Bravo!!

You know when someone gives you a really long boring retelling of a deam that they had, that went nowehere and made zero sense, and you wish they would just stfu but you cant say anything? Yeah thats this movie...

Yes, indeed, it is "utterly transporting" if you allow yourself to just ride it like a wave; however, it lacks the cohesion and depth of all but the two main characters, and this makes it inferior to, for instance, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Up on Poppy Hills or the masterpiece, Graveyard of The Fireflies and Kiki's Delivery Service. These other movies you can watch with your brain fully in gear. They not only present us with a lush and heartwarming landscape, but progress through a plot that stays always connected to itself and is, if not always easy to follow, at least can be. The story in this movie is, however, quite fractured. Without spoilers, all I will say is that the story follows a reasonably "Alice in Wonderland" sort of progression to a point... but, once the Mad Hatter shows up, things just go completely off the rails and we were left with far to many moments asking each other "do you know what just happened" or "what is going on" or similar. Again, the overall beauty of the art, it's use of color and motion, is so pleasing to the eye that ignoring plot inconsistencies is fairly easy and the overall movie something that, by its rambunctious climax, left me with a feeling of a sort of wistful joy that overpowered the feelings of confusion.

Another animation masterpiece from Gibli studios. Story is pretty trippy but the animation is pure gold. Story follows a young boy that loses his mother and goes to a village to live with his dad and step mother. When the step mother is taken away , the boy takes it up to himself to rescue her from an enchanted tower 🍿🍿🍿🍿/5 on Max

The animation is well done, although the imagery can sometimes be weird and disturbing. However, it doesn't have a well-defined plot or structure. Did not keep my attention very well. It feels like a movie we should love but just don't.

In my opinion Miyazaki hasn't made any bad films. And this might not be his best, but it is still a very good solid film. Imagine if you take all of Miyazaki's films and mix them together... then this is what you get. It is fantastical, it is inventive, it is original and yet so very familiar and full "cousins" of beings, spirits, characters, oddities, locations of Miyazaki's previous films. It is what you expect from his films. It is a bit messy and maybe a little to many things happening. And the pace is towards the end a lot higher than we seen in Miyazaki's other films. But still, a highly recommendable film.

The animation is beautiful with many lines and structure, but the script is weak.