Haku's unwarranted shifts of personality reflect what distinguishes Mr.

Her grating voice alone could probably peel the filth from the Stink God. Keep in mind that much of the contradictory truth comes from Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), the witchy bathhouse owner whose greed is surpassed in size only by her head.

‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.

‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.

‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.

‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.

Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. No one else conjures the phantasmagoric and shifting morality of dreams - that fascinating and frightening aspect of having something that seems to represent good become evil - in the way this master Japanese animator does. Miyazaki's specialty is taking a primal wish of kids, transporting them to a fantasyland and then marooning them there. But when she runs back to alert her mother and father, they've been turned into hogs, bursting out of their casual Friday garb and gobbling up everything before them. She encounters an apparition who warns her that she and her family have to leave before the sun goes down. Her father's attempt to take a shortcut to their new town leads the family to a settlement that looks like what he calls an abandoned theme park: acres of beautifully designed kiosks, buildings and statues.Įasily frightened and quick to voice her unhappiness, Chihiro wanders off while her parents gorge on a lunch from an unattended food stand. Chihiro (voice of Daveigh Chase), moving with her parents to a new neighborhood, is pouty about leaving her old friends and school behind. Miyazaki's ''Through the Looking Glass.'' Actually, rather than Disney's ''Spirited Away, the movie could better be considered Mr. The towering, lost dreaminess at the heart of the film is an unmistakable obsession of this director. The picture is being promoted as Disney's ''Spirited Away,'' although seeing just 10 minutes of this English version of a hugely popular Japanese film will quickly disabuse any discerning viewer of the notion that it is a Disney creation. The title ''Spirited Away'' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy.

Spirited away english imdb