Month: December 2016

OK, these anime movies are a good way to show us why this journey of watching all these movies is a good idea. I really didn’t have any desire to see any of them, but one after the other they are proving to be great movies and definitely worth the watch.  Spirited Away is about a young girl who crosses over into a spirit/magical world, so to speak. She ends up working at a bath house where she meets a witch, strange spirits, a huge baby (that is so much better when turned into a mouse) and a dragon. The animation is beautiful and the story is so unique and even though may be hard to follow or understand sometimes, that is actually part of the appeal. It’s fun that it causes us to discuss and interpret what is happening and what we think it means. This movie is directed by the same director that did Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo so please excuse me while I find out what else Hayao Miyazaki has directed so I can check them out.

Yay for the mountains and snow of Utah! Yes, filmed in Utah, Cloud 9 is about a rich snowboarder girl who finds out she is not as good as she thinks, and is kicked off her team. She decides to train with a once great, but had an epic fail, snowboarder boy. The story is predictable but the scenery is gorgeous to look at. It is entertaining enough.

Mowgli has now been living in the man’s village for a little bit now and is getting homesick for the jungle. Mowgli runs away into the jungle and the first movie happens all over again. Why not do a new story? I can understand that Mowgli would miss the jungle but once he was there, the same battle, of should he stay or go, happened all over again with the extra struggle of Shere Khan after him. The movie overall wasn’t too bad though and kids will like it, but feel free to skip over it.

Return to Neverland takes place during WWII when Wendy’s daughter, Jane, starts to believe that it’s time to grow up and no longer believes her mother’s stories of Peter Pan. When Captain Hook kidnaps Jane and takes her to Neverland, she has the adventure of a lifetime. While this movie is kinda fun and interesting to see where Wendy ended up in her adult life, overall it doesn’t even come close to the magic of the original story. But we think kids will like it and could be worth the watch if you are curious about it.