The Ghibli Novice: Only Yesterday

Unfortunately, the next Ghibli movie, Grave of the Fireflies, isn't on HBO Max, so I'll have to skip that one for now. The next one was unusual for what we've seen from Ghibli so far.

Released in 1991, Only Yesterday follows a young woman named Taeko who's taking a vacation from her life in the city for some time in the country, where she works on an organic farm. Throughout the film, Taeko remembers episodes from her childhood, these episodes being depicted in full animation. They reveal a lifetime of someone wanting to find her own way, but is constantly reeled in by her family. Now she's out on her own, so does she return to the stable life she's known, or go for something new she wants to try?

Only Yesterday could justifiably be called "an animated chick flick," but hey, it's a good animated chick flick with some beautiful animation and a good story. It's just a major change from the other Ghibli films I've checked out so far. It's not sci-fi or fantasy. There's no nice little adventure.

It's also the first Ghibli film I watched not directed by Hayao Miyazaki, but by Isao Takahata, who also directed Grave of the Fireflies. It's based on a manga by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone. A final bit of trivia is that it took twenty-five years for it to get an English dub, most likely due to English distributors being unsure of how to handle such a different Ghibli movie.

The Ghibli Novice: Castle in the Sky

Well, now for the first proper Studio Ghibli film, again from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.

Castle in the Sky is set in a steampunk late eighteenth century with airships being quite common.

In fact, the film opens on just such an airship as an orphan girl named Sheeta falls from it when it's attacked by pirates. However, her fall slows and she lands in a mining town where she's befriended by a boy named Pazu who helps her hide from pirates and government agents.

It turns out Sheeta is actually descended from people who used to live in a kingdom on an island floating in the sky called Laputa, held aloft by a special ore that is part of a pendant Sheeta wears, which allowed her safe descent to earth.

When Sheeta is ultimately captured by the agents, Pazu joins with the pirates to rescue her and discover the secrets of Laputa.

Castle in the Sky is a rollicking good time. It's an adventure story with some good action, great pacing and a lot of humor. Plus there's robots, some sci-fi and a little bit of magic as well at heart. This was a good one to check out.

The Ghibli Novice: My Neighbor Totoro

1988 brought one of Studio Ghibli's classic titles: My Neighbor Totoro. This was their second film after the studio was founded.

The film opens with a small family moving into a new country home. It's near to a hospital where the mother is currently staying, recovering from a severe illness.

Almost immediately, they spot some strange and wonderful things happening at their home with soot spirits appearing to the two daughters, Satsuki and Mei.

Mei explores the forest near their home and finds a large furry creature who makes a roar that sounds like "Totoro," and she takes this to be his name. However, she's unable to show her family Totoro or his home later.

Later, Satsuki meets Totoro while she and Mei are waiting for a bus and after she offers him an umbrella to shield him from the rain, he smiles and dances and boards the "catbus," which is an animal that appears to be a giant cat with twelve legs that operates as a bus.

Later, Mei decides to take some vegetables to her mother and gets lost, making Satsuki and the neighbors worry about her. Perhaps it's a job for Totoro, but can Satsuki find him?

My Neighbor Totoro is one of those movies that demands to be visually appreciated. While there's a good bit of dialogue, the parts that are its best are the ones that don't need any. It's a very sweet film about finding the magic in nature and two sisters growing together.

Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby

One Beverly Cleary decided to take an aim at a complaint she heard from children that there were no books "about us." Thus, 1950 brought Henry Huggins, her first book.

The book opens with a boy of about nine or ten finding a stray dog he takes home... on the city bus. Well, he tries to. The book tells many more stories of Henry and his dog Ribsy that—setting and characters aside—had little or no overarching plot.

However, what did work about Henry Huggins was Cleary's uncanny ability to tell stories from the point of view of a child. Henry doesn't want to play a little boy in the school Christmas play not because he doesn't want to be in the play, but because he doesn't want to get teased for the role. He loses his friend's football and collects worms to get money to buy a new one.

Henry's adventures continued for five more books and began to have overarching plot lines. In Henry and Beezus, Henry is trying to save his money and find moneymaking schemes to buy a bicycle. Beezus—Henry's friend Beatrice Quimby, nicknamed from how her little sister would try to say her name—tries to help Henry, even winning him a used bike in a police auction, except that it's a girl's bike. In Henry and Ribsy, Henry is tasked with keeping Ribsy out of trouble in return for joining his father on a fishing trip, where he intends to catch a ten pound salmon. In Henry and the Paper Route, Henry decides to try and get a paper route. Next in Henry and the Clubhouse, Henry learns to balance his responsibilities.

Cleary was running out of ideas for Henry stories and the last book, Ribsy, follows Ribsy as he gets lost across town and tries to find his way home. She doesn't try to anthropomorphize Ribsy, describing what seem like reasonable thoughts for a dog. He recognizes certain words and tone of voice, but he doesn't turn into a magical dog who understands English.

However, while she maintained the format of writing episodic chapters that could be excerpted and tell a complete story, over arching narratives became more important as she went on. Over time, plot points introduced in one chapter would be resolved in a later one.

Cleary wrote a spinoff book from the Henry Huggins series in 1955: Beezus and Ramona. Beezus becomes the star of this book, dealing with her exasperating preschool age sister Ramona, who insists on having Beezus read her favorite book about steam shovels over and over. Ramona can't seem but not get in trouble and Beezus begins to feel bad that she sometimes doesn't like her sister.

Thirteen years later, the Ramona series properly began with Ramona the Pest (the previous book is considered the first one, but is very different from the rest) as Cleary writes the adventures of Ramona as she goes to kindergarten. The very young Quimby sister has trouble adjusting and understanding how she should behave. It's almost too funny when she thinks "The Star Spangled Banner" is about "The dawnzer lee light," making Ramona assume the song is about a lamp. And when Miss Binney tells Ramona to "sit here for the present," Ramona expects to remain seated until she gets a gift. Finally at the end, things get to be too much for our heroine when she's suspended from school.

Ramona moves on to first grade in Ramona the Brave as she gets her own bedroom for the first time when the Quimbys add on to their house. She also has to deal with a fellow classmate copying from her and getting embarrassed in front of the whole class.

Ramona begins second grade in Ramona and her Father, which sees the Quimby family tighten their belts when Mr. Quimby is laid off and has to find other work. What makes it work is that there's a lot that adults relate to as well. In addition, Beezus and Ramona confront their father's smoking habit, convincing him to quit. It climaxes with a happy Christmas in which Ramona volunteers to be a sheep in a pageant.

The story continues in Ramona and her Mother in which Ramona's mischievous streak returns as Ramona wishes her mother would like her as much as Beezus and consider her "her girl." The family has a lot of tension and Ramona reaches her breaking point.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 sends Ramona to third grade with new friends at a new school as the Quimbys financial tightrope walking continues. Now if only Ramona can just not crack raw eggs on her head, or avoid getting sick at school. There's also a humorous episode in which Beezus and Ramona are disgusted at being served tongue for dinner and are tasked with cooking dinner themselves.

Ramona Forever served as a decent series finale when it was first published. When Ramona has a horrible time after school while being babysat at her friend Howie's house, Beezus agrees to stay at home. But the girls discover their mother is pregnant with another child, and then their beloved Aunt Beatrice is getting married while the Quimbys consider moving away from their home.

Fifteen years later in 1999, Ramona's World was published, nearly fifty years after she'd debuted in Henry Huggins. In this book, Ramona moves on to fourth grade and makes a new friend in Daisy, a girl whose family recently moved to the area. Ramona also begins picking up more responsibility in the family as for the first time, she's a big sister.

Beverly Cleary's series of stories of these kids who live on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon is like a nice warming bowl of chicken soup. They're a little nostalgic, but some of the earlier entries get dated when they refer to exact prices that are far outdated and a number of them were written during times when children were allowed to roam around town without adult supervision. They're about kids facing issues real children face, and the characters talk to their parents about their problems and often get good advice, likely encouraging young readers to do the same.

Still, it might be noted that there isn't a lot of representation of people of color. None of the human characters are written to sound like anything other than Caucasian people, but I'm sure there could be new interpretations of certain characters. Some of this came with the genre at the time as well as the fact that Cleary herself is a white woman. I won't say that this makes them bad, but I do wonder if children of color might have trouble relating to the characters.

The books are available in print, ebook and through audiobook where they're capably narrated by (mostly) Neil Patrick Harris for the Henry Huggins series and Stockard Channing for the Ramona series. The Ramona series became the basis of a 10 episode television series in the late 1980s starring Sarah Polley (the plots are closely based on the books, mixing episodes from Ramona and her Mother, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Ramona Forever and charmingly adapted, even if the lower budget shows), and more recently the film Ramona and Beezus starring Selena Gomez and Joey King as the sisters.

I used to listen to several of the books on audio cassettes borrowed from the library, but recently discovered the books were available as collections on Audible. (The Henry Huggins Audio Collection and Ramona Quimby Audio Collection are available for just one credit each, quite a bargain.) I decided to revisit them and really enjoyed them. (Though I know the Henry Huggins series wasn't read by Neil Patrick Harris back in my day, though he did a great job.)

The series could potentially continue, and while Cleary has retired (she is currently 104 years old), I could easily see some up and coming writer deciding to explore Cleary's Klickitat Street on their own terms.

The Ghibli Novice: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind isn't exactly a Studio Ghibli film. It was actually produced and released before the studio was founded, but many of the same artists and creative talent worked on it. It's sort of a proto-Ghibli film and is distributed alongside the others.

The film is based on director Hayao Miyazaki's manga of the same name, which had begun two years before the film debuted in 1984 and continued to run for ten more years, telling a different story. Rather a smart move as this gives readers and viewers different experiences.

This post-apocalyptic piece begins a thousand years after the Seven Days of Fire, a war that destroyed human civilization. Three human communities are touched on in the film: the Valley of the Wind, a small kingdom that receives clean air from the ocean; Pejite, an ally; and the warlike Tolmekia.

Nausicaä, princess of the Valley, is exploring and studying the nearby Toxic Jungle, so named for its poisonous plants. She eventually discovers that the poison comes from the soil, not the plants themselves.

Meanwhile, a Pejite aircraft crashes near the Valley with a warning of danger from the Toxic Jungle's gigantic insects. Meanwhile, Tolmekia plans to burn the jungle.

With an epic story of battle, Nausicaä has a pro-environment conservation and anti-pollution message that asks viewers to think twice and look deeper into what they think they know. It was pulled off very well with gorgeous animation.

The Ghibli Novice: Kiki's Delivery Service

Sometime back, I asked friends to ask me about movies and I'd tell you if I had seen them or not. Among the list of things I hadn't seen was the catalog of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation studio specializing in traditional animation. The films are noted for good design and fluid motion.

With the launch of HBO Max, who offer the catalog, I decided it was time to check it out. Kiki's Delivery Service was not their first film, but I watched it first as I'd been curious about it, plus a number of friends highlighted it as a favorite.

Kiki is a young witch. For her, magic exists in a matter of fact fashion: she can fly on a broom and talk to her cat Jiji. This is really the extent of her magic powers we see in the film.

The film begins as Kiki leaves her family at age thirteen to begin a life in a city. While the people are surprised to see a witch flying around, they don't seem to be afraid of her. When a woman leaves a pacifier for her baby at a bakery, Kiki delivers it to return it. The owner of the bakery suggests Kiki begin a delivery service on her broom and offers her room and board if she minds the bakery every now and then.

During Kiki's time in the city, she makes several friends, including a boy named Tombo who she develops feelings for. One day, she finds herself unable to speak to Jiji and unable to fly her broom. What is blocking Kiki's magic?

The story is about Kiki maturing. In the beginning, she is very reactive. It is not her idea to begin the delivery service, it's suggested to her. Her service of course is a reaction to what people want. Towards the end of the film, we see her acting proactively. It's a deceptively simple story that actually has a lot of character development going on.

Anyway, yeah, I found it a good movie. It does a lot of things you don't expect to see in other animated films like taking longer on visual scenes, which are wonderfully designed and animated.

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Once upon a time, a filmmaker named George Lucas had an idea to bring back the space adventures seen in old movie serials like Flash Gordon. In fact, he tried to make a movie adaptation of Flash Gordon, but was unable to get the rights, so he made his own story about planets full of fantastic peoples and creatures.

Star Wars debuted in 1977 and became a smash hit, and this risky little venture from 20th Century Fox was soon extended into a trilogy of films following the adventures of Luke Skywalker and his friends. And of course, there was merchandise, tie-in novels, comic books, TV shows and movies and video games.

Over the next sixteen years, the movies became beloved on television broadcasts, theatrical reissues and home video. People who'd seen them as kids on their original release were having their own kids and sharing it with them.

Well, that is, except me. My family just wasn't a Star Wars family. Most likely it was because my parents were over twenty when the first film was released so it wasn't part of their childhoods.

So here comes 1999, I was thirteen and everyone was going crazy over The Phantom Menace, a new Star Wars film that would start a prequel trilogy to the original series. It was, in fact, the first Star Wars film I watched. Not willingly. They were having a movie night at church for the youth group and lo and behold, that's what it was. It was not a good entry point.

This isn't to say that I was unaware of anything in Star Wars. It permeated pop culture enough to know lines like "Luke, I am your father" (even though that's not the actual line), most of the principal character's names, even some other reveals. (Thanks, The O.C.)

Anyway, I didn't watch the original trilogy until about 2008. There's a thing I didn't say about the movies until now: they have often been re-edited. About 1997, George Lucas added in new computer-generated special effects and other alterations and made these versions the only ones available going forward. In fact, going forward, when the movies would see a new release on DVD and eventually Blu-Ray and 4K UHD, there were new alterations to watch for. These changes have been criticized as many believe the films that audiences fell in love with should be available untouched. One little change, though, was that the first Star Wars film became A New Hope so Star Wars could be the series name with little confusion (unless you remembered when it was just named Star Wars).

Eventually, the "original theatrical versions" were made available on DVD and it was this version I watched in 2008, thanks to Netflix's DVD rental program.

Honestly, I really liked A New Hope. It's a good introduction to this universe, following young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as he's thrust into a battle of good and evil that arrives on his doorstep. We're not given explanations for everything, we get to see how this universe works. It's a theme other theatrical films in the franchise would come back to: common people coming together and stepping up to fight evil, even when it feels overwhelming. In the original trilogy, it's in the form of the Empire and its emissary Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones).

The two other films I found myself getting a little bored with. The stuff about the Force and the Jedi, I didn't really care about. But still, I thought they were solid films.

So, it took me some time to buy my own copies of the films. By that time, Disney had acquired Lucasfilm and had begun a sequel trilogy as well as a series of films set in the same universe. I decided to give the new movies a shot because I hadn't seen Star Wars on the big screen, though I actually started with buying a Blu-Ray of The Force Awakens. Shortly, I picked up "The Complete Saga" collection on Blu-Ray (the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy), and later found a set of the DVD releases with the "original theatrical versions" at a pawn shop for $5. I simply kept up with the new films.

So, about two months ago, I decided to finally sit down and watch the entire film series. I know, there are various TV series (most animated) and some TV movies, but I watched just the live action films released in theaters.

The Phantom Menace—as I expected—works better as a "sequel prequel," a prequel that is best enjoyed after you've experienced the original work. That said, while there's some experienced talent at work (particularly Ewan MacGregor and Liam Neeson), a lot of the acting (particularly the child actors) was just wooden. Jar-Jar Binks was even more bearable than some of that acting.

The story follows a young Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor) and his Jedi mentor Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson) as they assist Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) weeding out treachery in the Senate as they meet young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), a boy with a strong connection to The Force.

Attack of the Clones picks up some years later, Anakin (Hayden Christensen) has been training with Obi Wan and attends directly to the Queen. Meanwhile, Obi Wan discovers an army of clones has been created and he tries to discover what it's for. This one is markedly better than Phantom Menace.

Revenge of the Sith is easily the best of the prequel trilogy, showing how Anakin turns against the Jedi and becomes Darth Vader. However, the prequels largely exist to set up the original trilogy, which was enjoyed for years without them. While they have some good moments, they're largely skippable.

Two films Disney greenlit for Lucasfilm fit in here. Chronologically first is Solo, a prequel about Han Solo (played in the original trilogy by Harrison Ford, played here by Alden Ehrenreich), a rogue pilot who teams up with a shaggy humanoid creature called Chewbacca. Frankly, I often say that this is my favorite Star Wars movie as it's a rollicking good adventure that is largely unaffected by the other films.

Next is Rogue One, which is very much a prequel to A New Hope, with its ending being exactly where that film starts. A patchwork group of rebels find the plans for the Empire's new weapon, the planet-destroying Death Star, so the Rebel Alliance can find how to destroy it. With a colorful cast of characters, this prequel hits all the right points.

So that takes us to the Original Trilogy. A New Hope sees Luke join the Rebel Alliance with Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo and Chewbacca, as well as the droids R2D2 and C3PO (Anthony Daniels) as they seek to destroy the Death Star.

The Empire Strikes Back sees the Rebel Alliance evading the Empire as Luke meets Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz), the last surviving Jedi Master. Luke also winds up face to face with Darth Vader, who reveals an incredible secret. (Which you already know.)

Return of the Jedi wraps up the original trilogy as the Rebels come together united on the planet moon of Endor to take down an Empire base as Luke has to face both Vader and Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).

This takes us to The Force Awakens. The First Order, led by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is set on conquering the galaxy. A new generation of rebels joins the new Resistance, led by Leia as they seek the location of the missing Luke Skywalker.

The Force Awakens is a nice way to bring back the series with a new generation of heroes, though a lot of its DNA is clearly lifted from A New Hope, even down to taking down a new planet-destroying weapon.

The Last Jedi sees Rey (Daisy Ridley) train with Luke while Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) struggles with working under the leadership above him in the Rebel Alliance, who are dwindling fast under assault from the First Order.

That brings us to The Rise of Skywalker, the latest film and the finale of the sequel trilogy. Emperor Palpatine is revealed to be the mastermind behind the First Order as the Rebels try to find his base and Rey discovers her true lineage.

The last two movies of the sequel trilogy split fans. Frankly, I like that The Last Jedi tried to toss new twists into the mix. The Rise of Skywalker was less so ambitious and tries to have a big emotional conclusion it didn't really earn. Still, there's some sort of story there, setting up future adventures in this universe.

So, there's probably the least strongly opinionated review of the Star Wars franchise you'll ever read.