Hayao Miyazaki

Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Rating: ★★★★½
Dec 12, 2005Anime/Post-Holocaust Environmentalism
Hayao Miyazaki’s second film, a visually stunning work set in the aftermath of a holocaust. Miyazai’s frequent themes of pacifism and respect for the environment and run through building to a emotionally wrenching climax
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Rating: ★★★★★
Oct 18, 2004Anime/Children Befriend Mysterious Creature
Possibly the most perfect of all Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, a work about childhood featuring an array of charmingly eccentric creatures. It is a film of absolutely magical charms beneath which lies a swim of adult emotions that children’s films rarely touch upon
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Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
Rating: ★★★★★
Feb 23, 2008Anime/Young Witch's Adventures
One of the loveliest of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, the story of a young witch who creates a parcel delivery service using her broomstick. As always, Miyazaki gives the film a simple beauty and an adult emotional complexity
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Porco Rosso (1992)

Porco Rosso (1992)
Rating: ★★★★
Sep 14, 2004Anime/Talking Pig Aviator
Hayao Miyazaki in a more whimsical comedic mood with this story of the adventures of a talking pig aviator. Even when in a lighter vein, Miyazaki cannot help but fill the film with images of charm and considerable beauty
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Spirited Away (2001)

Spirited Away (2001)
Rating: ★★★★★
Apr 12, 2002Anime/Afterlife Bathhouse
One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki's range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near
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Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
Rating: ★★★★
Jan 7, 2006Anime/Epic Fantasy
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
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Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea (2008)

Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea (2008)
Rating: ★★★
Aug 13, 2009Anime/Fish Girl Becomes Human
Probably the least great of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. The plot feels recycled from The Little Mermaid while Miyazaki’s recurrent themes seem more perfunctory and the film lacks many of the beautiful contrasts of epic and fragile he specialises in
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The Boy and the Heron (2023)

The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Rating: ★★★
Jul 5, 2024Anime/Boy Enters Otherworld
The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld
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