Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell blasts onto the screen with haunting, Melanesian-esque choral music, post-human spinal tubing and lots and lots of arching breasts. We were kind of terrified in the first few minutes, but eventually settled down to really enjoy this innovative, brilliant, bizarre cyberpunk anime.

They say there are no new stories to tell, but surely all that 1980s early Internet sci-fi and Singularity stuff was new! Designing our own evolution for a transhuman future, etc. Because while Ghost in the Shell is talking about ancient Descartesian problems of defining consciousness in a world of epistemological doubt, it's also approaching those 17th-century questions with very 21st-century post-human answers. In particular, in a world of networked computers and biological augmentations, the division between meatspace and cyberspace is blurred. And this redefines everything - as Battlestar Galactica's philosophizing Cylon, Caprica Six, put it: "Are you alive? Prove it." Because, for all you know, you're a machine brain living in a virtual reality. Everyone thinks they're human.

Major Motoko Kusanagi (voiced by Atsuko Tanaka), she of the arching breasts which we will be seeing a lot of throughout the film, is a fully cyborg, detective-type badass killing machine (literally). She works for the Japanese government's Section 9, a sort of cyberpunk police squad. Their current target is the criminal hacker, the Puppet Master, who hacks into people's "ghosts" - that is, their consciousnesses, which these days are often embedded in brains permanently connected to the Internet. The Puppet Master's motives are nebulous, and some havoc is wreaked on the garrish, dilapidated, rainy downtown streets. That is, until a rogue cyborg claiming to be housing its own ghost appears. And then everything - especially the definition of life - is thrown into question.

But not before we squeeze in some evocative, meditative sequences. Even in moments of crisis, such as during a high-tech/high-speed car chase across nighttime Tokyo, director Mamoru Oshii slows the emotional pace down with somber, spacey music and lingering shots on the details of this very strange, brave new world. Though there are some grisly moments of violence (is this rated R? it should be!), the tone of the film is more cerebral than action-oriented. Characters often spend their time expositing the themes and ideas. This is excusable as they are running an investigation, and so explaining things to each other makes sense. It's also excusable because those ideas - do you grant human rights to a thinking machine? how did that ghost appear? - are so clever.

We really enjoyed it. We liked that, while there is the token human male character (sporting some very 1980s hair and shoulder pads indeed!), the film is brave enough to keep our focus on the non-human female protagonist, Motoko. Motoko's existential angst is resonant. It feels real (point of the movie, maybe?). When she talks about how being some biomachine superlady with access to infinite bits of data only makes her realize her limitations, we were moved. Oh, Pinocchio! Or as Rudyard Kipling once said, in a quote which has already been pilfered by sci-fi people for post-human themes, "Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears."

Is this THE cyberpunk movie of all time? Can it be topped?! We don't think so. It's more cyberpunky and smart than the oft-cited Father of the genre, Blade Runner! Highly recommended.

Kaze no tani no Naushika (1984)

We kind of can't accept that Battlestar Galactica is over for us, and so we're desperately clawing at any possible debris which could have a BSG-related smell to it. Firefly? Hmm, kind of like BSG - only without the war and weird mythological stuff. But it'll do! Bob Dylan? Hmm, All Along the Watchtower is an important part of the BSG mythos. Very well! Hayao Miyazaki? Hayao Miyazaki?!

Yes, the transcendental visions of Hayao Miyazaki have a vague BSG connection in that:

1. Edward James Olmos AKA Old Man Adama voiced one of the characters in one of the films. 2. When we were still watching BSG, we visited a part of Uttarakhand that reminded us of Hayao Miyazaki vistas. Okay, sort of unrelated, but whatevs. (By the way, the Uttarakhand Tourism Board wants you to visit too!)

So, here we are, at the shores of Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds. Before we begin: did you know that Nausicaa is the young princess who finds Odysseus washed up on her island and asks that fine naked man (played by Sean Bean in our head, always) to explain both his nudity and his lack of ship? And so begins his telling of... the Odyssey! Great.

But this Nausicaa is different, and much more Miyazaki-fied: the princess of a small, agricultural kingdom, the Valley of the Wind, she is one of the rare humans who can make peace with the oversized insects which crawl from the Toxic Jungle and threaten to override the little human settlements struggling to survive. One thousand years ago, giant soldiers laid waste to all the cities and took civilization down with it - after these "seven days of fire", a sort of un-Genesis, the Earth's environment was shot to pieces, and the remaining humans made a life clinging to the tiny pockets of land that didn't totally suck or poison them. Now two of the larger kingdoms - Tolmekia and Pejite - are warring over a powerful new weapon, and the Valley of the Wind is caught in between. It's up to Nausicaa, with her badass glider and Pikachu-type thing, to fix everything before Earth is ruined (again).


Some spectacular vistas.


Cannibalized WW2 bombers in an un-subtle but still powerful visual statement about Japan's post-war perspective.

Now, we haven't watched or reviewed a Miyazaki film in a long time, but the fact remains: you've seen one, you've seen them all. But that only means he's an anime auteur - every single film, while resembling the others in its environmentalism, feminism, ambiguity, mysticism and obsession with flight, is an enchanting, mesmerizing variation. The fantastic imagery is so palpably strange and beautiful! Here, we get glimpses into bizarre underworlds of petrified forests crumbling into sand, or rolling hills of undulating grasses. It's absolutely gorgeous!

Apart from being a visual treat, the music is similarly evocative (and sometimes even amusing). Heavy on 1980s synthesizer, it often sounds like a Ray Manzarek solo, though there are moments of such gut-wrenching, operatic emotion - when we arrive at the ruined kingdom of Pegite, for example - that you feel your heart beating in your throat. Yay!


That's Adama on the left, Captain Picard on the right.


Nausicaa: when not rescuing attractive, stranded Greeks, she's rescuing THE PLANET.

We enjoyed this movie very much and are considering it one of our favorites from Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli. The narrative storms forward with a compelling urgency that is sometimes lacking in Spirited Away or Castle in the Sky; yet we still find time to maintain that air of reflective meditation that characterizes all of his films. The voice acting is fine - Shia LeBeouf's being particularly distracting, but also heartbreakingly earnest - and there was a special pleasure in hearing Adama's voice complain about those crappy Tolmekian ships. Nothin' like the Bucket, eh!? Another enjoyable character was the smug, cartoonish Kurotowa (voiced by Chris Sarandon), who described himself as an "old, lazy soldier" and resembled an aging Lupin (the thief, not the sensitive werewolf) and provided some of the few genuine moments of comic relief.

The film's urgency also extends to the meta level - apart from the obvious environmentalism, the film is a plea for nuclear disarmament. The giant warriors resemble Godzilla in their vibe of post-nuclear mutant beasts, and Nausicaa makes constant demands for the Tolmekian and Pejite communities to lay down their weapons, once and for all. It shows how war ultimately scars the Earth, perhaps irredeemably, and the message is particularly harrowing in a post-Trinity world with very few Nausicaas indeed.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

A disclaimer: a long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, the PPCC became an emotional slave of the cultural empire that is Star Wars. We saw the movies (and bought them several times in several formats, Mr. Lucas!), we bought the books, the comic books, the merchandise. We wrote the fanfiction. We rode the MGM Studios ride, again and again. So deeply enmeshed is Star Wars into our brain chemistry that anything, anything that comes out remotely Star Wars-ish gets an immediate A+ in our books.

So how does the most recent animated Star Wars film, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, rate? A+?

Well, not really. It's more of a C- effort. It's also an easy target for critics of the franchise, as it looks like little more than an effort to milk that tired Star Wars cow one... last... time. (And as Mr. Lucas has had his way, this is not actually the last time.)

A computer-animated film, The Clone Wars offers a standalone snapshot of life between episodes II (Attack of the Clones) and III (Revenge of the Sith). Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (voiced by Matt Lanter) are called on to save Jabba the Hutt's baby son, "Stinky" (*sigh*), from a dastardly kidnapping attempt. As with all things in the prequel trilogy, this kidnapping attempt is really a far more sinister plot orchestrated by Emperor Palpatine as yet another move in his labyrinthine game of political chess with himself. Honestly, we have never understood anything that that man says or does in the prequels. Couldn't he have just taken over as Palpatine, Sith Lord of Evil and Your Overlord, without that whole Kiwi clones versus cheeky, junky robots thing?


Anakin and Ahsoka. Ahsoka: a subtle commentary on Buddhist politics? Well, probably not.

Anakin unexpectedly gets a fresh, young Padawan to train - Ahsoka (?!) (voiced by Ashley Eckstein). Yes, Ahsoka. No, not Ashoka or Asoka. Ah-soka. So is Ahsoka an NRI? Discuss.

Anyway, this is paint-by-numbers Star Wars. It features all the usual Star Warsy things - elaborate land battles, elaborate space battles, elaborate lightsaber duels and snarky "American cowboy"-style one-liners - except without any punch, without any soul. Alas. Gone is the mystically weird popcorn Zen of the old trilogy. Gone is the admirably confounding political science 101 of the new trilogy. Gone is the edgy fun of the other, much superior animated Clone Wars series by Genndy "genius" Tartakovsky.

Instead, all we have is a lazy rehashing of everything we've already seen before. No insight is given. No interesting plot thing. And not only is it lazy, but it's annoying and, well, stupid as well - the banter is tired, with women* and gays** mocked, and goodness, gracious but Obi-Wan is a condescending prat in this one. Argh. Arrghhh.


OMG, Obi-Wan, OMG.

* Watch out, ladies. If you're a character in this film, you get to: be flung around in all manner of skin-tight and skimpy outfits (with visible butt cracks!), and have not only prat Obi-Wan mock you ("You'll have to do much better than that, my darling.") but the droids as well ("Yes, sir - er, ma'am - er, sir!").

** Jabba the Hutt's uncle, Ziro, is a trance club-owning queen?!

What's honestly most disappointing about this film is that it amply demonstrates how all the life, soul, fun and energy has long ago been sucked out of Star Wars. We're sorry, Mr. Lucas, but it's time to pass the torch. The way in which Star Wars has seeped into American culture is epic, and often the fan-made/non-Lucas-made products are much, much superior to the sterile, mainstream output. Just consider: a Twitter Death Star attack, irreverent comic books and the darker, more dystopian comic books, the Japanese print-style Death Star attack, Admiral "it's a TRAP!" Ackbar cereal, and heck, even just all those funny references on 30 Rock.

Sigh.

Anyway - the PPCC doesn't just stand for "Post-Punk Cinema Club", it also stands for "Positive and Powerful Constructive Criticism"! So how can we fix Star Wars?

Well!

How to fix Star Wars
by the PPCC

Okay. So the coolest parts in the entire Star Wars history, according to us, are:

1. The clone wars.
2. The fugitive Jedi, interregnum period.

After watching the old trilogy, with Obi-Wan's wistful nostalgia about "the clone wars" and fighting with Luke's father and da-di-da, a proto-PPCC's imagination was positively aglow. Unfortunately, all those childhood fantasies about what the clone wars must have been like - majestic! sprawling! epic! - turned into a tinny and bizarre film. And all our hopes were dashed.

But - ! There's still hope - a NEW HOPE - for the fugitive Jedi stuff. Come on, people, come oooon! This is the most fertile ground for new stories! For adventure! For pathos! For new territories! Don't ruin it, Lucas empire!


"I shot the sherrifffff, but I didn't shoot no deputeeeee."

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

Have you ever had an afternoon snack and then taken a little nap afterwards? And did that biscuit and glass of milk came back to you in psychadelic dream form, filling your head with colorful visions of how you never really graduated from primary school but need to do it all again, naked? Have you ever marvelled at how vivid and imaginative those dreams can be? How internally consistent they are, but how difficult they are to describe in waking life? Well, we could say the same thing about Hayao Miyazaki movies. Except for the naked bit.


Transcendental anime. Shades of Madeleine L'Engle, too.

Like your dream, Howl's Moving Castle is hard to describe. But if you've seen any of Miyazaki's other films (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke), it's all the same style of complex characterizations, blurry motives, meandering storylines, and the complete absence of the usual black-white movie moral dichotomy. This might make it sound like a bore, but trust us, it's really, really good. We highly recommend any of Miyazaki's movies, as they are so phemonenally imaginative. (Hence also why we went overboard on the screenshots.)


Deep into Plato's cave!

Howl's Moving Castle takes place in some sort of alternative universe Europe from the late 19th, early 20th century. The surrounding countryside could be the south of France, or Monaco, or Switzerland; the buildings could be from the London of H.G. Wells. Our heroine is Sophie Hatter, a self-described "plain" girl who makes hats (ha ha) and sort of hangs around. Her country is at war, and one day, when the soldiers go marching off to trumpets and parade banners, she wanders down an alley, is waylaid by some leery soldiers, and is saved by the anime version of David Bowie. This turns out to be the titular Howl, owner of the castle and wizard extraordinare. Howl's got some Blobbies of Doom (relatives of the Squigglies of Hate, no doubt) on his tail, and so he promptly escorts Sophie up into the clouds. This is a lovely scene.


A very steampunk setting.


Howl, played by the anime version of David Bowie.


Blobbies!

Anyway, Sophie's all like, "Wow! Cool!" and Howl's like, "OK, seeya later." and Sophie's like, "Oh." A few days later, the fascinatingly fat Witch of the Waste shows up in Sophie's hat shop and promptly casts a spell on Sophie, reducing her to a shrivelled old lady who looks about 200 years old. The ever-plucky Sophie decides the only way she can get rid of this spell is to find that Howl guy, and off she goes, into the Sound of Music mountains to find his castle (which moves, inconveniently). Along the way she befriends a scarecrow who, yes, has a brain but cannot speak nor walk but only hop. She finds the castle, we are introduced to new characters - the adorable little boy, Markl, and the very cute fire demon, Calcifer - and Sophie meshes well, even though Howl is an idiot and has no idea that the Old Sophie he hired as a maid is actually also the Young Sophie he flirted with earlier. Or maybe he does know, and we're the idiots.


WHOA. Witch of the Waste.


To war!

That's about as linear as we can make it, and that's only the first 20 minutes of the film. Just watch the rest of it, it's very worth it. Onto our thoughts now!


Old Sophie, and Howl sporting his Black Raven look.

Well, we always like Miyazaki. And by "like" we actually mean "are blown away by". The man is a genius. He must have a circus in his head; a circus of GENIUS. You can see the genius in those moments when these little drawings stop to wipe their skirt or check their shoe to see what they stepped in; never have we seen such realism in animation. And such wonder! Every scene was an explosion of vividness and color, every little whir and wheeze of the moving castle itself was so meticulously there. In terms of imagery, it was fascinating and fun, and we were reduced to children with slack jaws going, "Wooo-ooow."

Despite the ending, which seemed somewhat too pat compared to Miyazaki's other works, the narrative was generous but never straightforward, and certainly never anything we could have expected. Goodbye, grounded and familiar land of cliché! Just as we sat entranced and morally confused in Princess Mononoke ("Who's the villain? Where the hell is Scar when you need him!"), so too did Howl's Moving Castle make us completely reevaluate characters. These are cartoon characters. We were reevaluating the morality of cartoon characters. THAT'S WHY HE IS SO GOOD.


The war hits close to home!

Then there are the ever-present themes of pacifism, flight, and personal evolution. We highly recommend reading Wikipedia's article on Hayao Miyazaki, which talks about his recurrent visual motifs and influences. And we highly recommend indoctrinating your children in Miyazaki, as his films will provide some welcome relief and freshness from the overly manipulative, overly morally-bland (Simba good, Scar bad) Disney standard.