Category: Rapid Response

Rapid Response: Now, Voyager

“Now, Voyager” has all the drama and bizarre plot twists of a modern soap opera. It’s a story about coming out of your shell, but the scenario it places this trapped character in is absurd, and her ultimate transformation seems to flatly suggest that all you need to blossom is a beautified makeover.

Irving Rapper’s film stars Bette Davis in her sixth of 11 Oscar nominated roles, and she’s accurate casting because she probably has the saddest, heaviest eyes in all of Old Hollywood. But she starts the film dressed in a frumpy gown and haircut with giant glasses and a beyond timid personality. She looks like she’s wearing the outfit “Psycho’s” Mrs. Bates died in, and the overall performance is based on her transformation into looking the way Bette Davis is supposed to. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Now, Voyager”

Rapid Response: McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Robert Altman’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” is one of the few and first great films that can sum up the style and feel of American movies in the early ’70s, and yet Altman’s style is so distinct in this film and all his others that no one made films quite like him.

“McCabe” is a Western, just one of Altman’s many journeys between genres, and it bucks so many tropes right out of the gate in the way Altman’s camera purveys the surroundings and effortlessly colors the tone of the room. Instead of watching McCabe (Warren Beatty) parade into a saloon as the doors swing open and the room goes silent, Altman gives us the murmurings and mumbling about this fancy, suspicious newcomer, all mixed in with the innocent details that show just how rich this community is.

One man wonders aloud whether he should shave his beard and leave only his mustache. Another asks what’s on the dinner menu, and a third finally starts quietly spreading the news that McCabe is the violent gunslinger who shot Bill Roundtree. Who’s Bill Roundtree? The movie doesn’t say, and the characters don’t seem to know him personally, but in a society this close-knit and colorful, the urban legend is enough.

McCabe rides into town to the tune of some Leonard Cohen songs, a wistfully pastoral sound that colors Altman’s film with eerily beautiful melancholy. His goal is to open a saloon, brothel and bathhouse and get rich quick, but his hard-nosed attitude quickly reveals he’s in over his head, specifically when Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) shows up. She sits down to breakfast with McCabe, scarfs down four fried eggs and gets down to brass tax to explain they should be business partners because McCabe doesn’t know the first thing about managing women in a whore house.

Altman’s film is a movie about loss and death, but it also is about survival, loneliness and the act of just trying to make it in this world. Roger Ebert points out in his Great Movies piece that it’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” not “and.” They’re a business, not a romantic couple, and each one needs the other to survive, but neither can fully relinquish their control or positions of authority. As the two have sex for money but fall back in and out of love, they establish a figurative impasse in their relationship. “I guess if a man’s fool enough to get into business with a woman, she’s not going to think much of him,” McCabe says. Something here is not going to end well.

But soon the movie establishes a literal impasse. A wealthy company offers to buy out McCabe’s business and property, which he flatly declines in the act of negotiation. Before long, the killer Butler (Hugh Milais) is in town to settle McCabe’s transaction. “We can make a deal,” McCabe coolly pleads while chomping on a cigar. “Not with me,” Butler says as though belonging to a different movie entirely. His posse ends up brutally killing a hapless teenager just passing through town, blocking his path on a narrow bridge and then convincing him to take out his gun. “I’ll fix it for you,” one of the guys says before shooting him dead.

In Altman films, the dialogue is always so free-form and the plot seems to be just the happenings of a daily routine. Less so than hard wired stories with beginnings and ends, you can live inside an Altman movie. There are no “character actors” to provide comic relief or establish a set piece. There are just people, and everything feels natural.

Its leads Julie Christie and Warren Beatty were two of the biggest stars of their era, Christie displaying a lived-in, adult performance different from her young days of beauty in “Doctor Zhivago,” and Beatty by this point had completely shed his boyish typecasting he unwillingly harbored in the early ’60s, ready to become an institutional actor and director. Their performances helped give Altman’s film the defining mood that colored ’70s cinema in America.

And yet most people rediscovering “MASH” or “Nashville” are a bit perplexed. Altman, for this generation, is not one of the directors young people become attached to anymore. A difficult or interesting art film today feels not as open, congenial and naturalistic, and something with an open story is more minimalistic than Altman’s brand of rich community building.

“McCabe and Mrs. Miller” may just be the film to start with in the Altman oeuvre. It may not look or feel like most classic Westerns, but it takes you on a wonderful journey.

 

Rapid Response: School of Rock

I’ve got a cousin who is about 15 right now. I don’t really know what kind of music he’s into, but he’s probably at the stage I was at his age, maybe still in a mostly Beatles phase and liking other good music but not quite there yet as someone who lives and breathes it. I always wondered what kind of person I’d be if I was listening to Arcade Fire in 2004 when I was 14, so I had hoped to get him started on the right foot. Maybe I didn’t need to try and turn him into a misanthrope by giving him as much Cure, Smiths and Joy Division as I did, but the question remains: How do you get someone, either a kid or someone who is behind the curve, into loving music?

Well for one, you could show them “School of Rock.” This was a movie I had watched a lot from about the ages of 12 to 15, and I wondered if it would hold up as well now that I’m 22 and like music a little more complex than the ACDC the movie salutes. Jack Black’s Dewey Finn still lives in that “Golden Age” of meat and potatoes ’70s rock that would soon transform itself into ’80s hair metal and Spinal Tap self parody, and you could probably learn more about good music from the likes of “Almost Famous” or “High Fidelity,” which also stars Jack Black.

But the reason this is still a great movie to have on a parent’s DVD shelf for their kids is that it instills in them these exciting values of rebellion and thrashing out to epic rock without dipping into any of the cynical territory that usually goes along with it. Of course it mildly alludes to drinking, sex, drugs and violence, but those things are mostly frowned upon and afterthoughts to the idea of changing the world with a face-melting guitar solo by a 10-year-old. It maintains a sense of innocent rebellion by telling “The Man” to “step-off” by singing in very blunt terms, “I had to do my chores today/so I am really ticked off!”

Jack Black is really at the core of the movie’s good-hearted vibes, not the kids. He puts on that air of “don’t give a crap” when he first walks into the children’s classroom, but he quickly drops that act and is otherwise brimming enthusiasm and sincerity at every moment he gets to listen to these kids perform. Take that first scene where he discovers if they all can play. The scene works way too well in getting these kids up and rocking at once, but the movie doesn’t jam obvious references down your throat, and Black puts so much energy into cartoonish hand gestures and memorable one-liners (“you turn it on its side and ‘cello’ you got a bass!”) that you, nor your kids, will mind.

Black is his own vocal instrument, and he can give the idea of exciting rock while being funny doing it. Most kids today have heard shredding guitar solos on their dad’s Zeppelin albums, but they maybe shrug in ways previous generations didn’t. Black does one better by performing every bit of his own ridiculous song. Kids will remember his goofing around, not the music itself, but they’ll get the idea.

And by the movie’s end, both in the live performance on stage and in the post-credits sequence, “School of Rock” delivers everything as promised. Each of the kids, who all have their individual moments of token problems and growth, get to strut their stuff in one epic finale. It’s simple, ’70s rock, but it has the style and the attitude just right.

Rapid Response: Stranger Than Fiction

Usually I write full reviews for movies that came out in the 2000s, but I had seen “Stranger Than Fiction” a lot, just not in probably seven years. I was reminded of it by this year’s “Ruby Sparks,” which is also a fantasy in which a writer can control the actions of a girl he has written and materialized in real life.

But I would argue “Stranger Than Fiction” is a much better film, one that gets at how authors and literature works without falling into the traps of most “writerly” movies, such as rapid fire dialogue, characters who are overly eloquent or extended passages of people sitting at typewriters.

It tells the story of Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an office drone with the IRS who fastidiously counts strokes while brushing his teeth, lives a rigorously scheduled life and is a math whiz, who suddenly hears a voice in his head that appears to be narrating his life. This gimmick works beautifully because it comes so immediately. There’s a quick intro, and then Harold is instantly aware. There’s also little question as to what is happening to Harold, and it enables the screenplay with endless possibilities.

What makes it even more fun is that the voice is the salty and cynical work of Emma Thompson as acclaimed tragedy writer Karen Eiffel. She hasn’t published a novel in a decade and is plagued with severe writer’s block. She doesn’t know how to kill Harold Crick. But she knows it must happen, and she says as much in his internal narration: “Little did he know he would soon be met with his imminent death.”

The film was somewhat underrated upon its release because it struck critics as Charlie Kuafman lite (he fresh of “Eternal Sunshine” at this point), a clever fantasy idea of metaphors and morals but without as much of the cinematic whimsy. But the beauty of “Stranger Than Fiction” is its simplicity. Kaufman never wrote a conceit this tidy: man hears voices in his head and realizes he’s part of a story he cannot control. Even “The Truman Show” has more rules and fantastical gimmicks than this does.

I guess the bigger problem is not the premise but the payoff, which is admittedly not golden but is far from terrible. A small part of me wanted Harold to die at the end based on what he reads in Eiffel’s book, but that would never happen in a Hollywood movie. The argument is that his relationship with Maggie Gyllenhaal is never fully developed, but I’m here for the premise, and the excitement of Harold meeting Karen for the first time and hearing that his fate is already sealed can’t be matched.

This is also the only movie that convinces me Will Ferrell can act. He’s so perfect as Harold Crick partly because of his range in being funny and subdued and partly because he’s one of the few comedians who can shout to the heavens at a bus stop full of people without hesitation and not feel embarrassed. Harold becomes a delicious mix of a comedic and tragic figure that befits great literature, and he has a hilarious scene with Dustin Hoffman by simply parroting him saying “King of the Trolls.”

Hoffman too is a treasure of intellect, unpredictable quips and droll, ironic humor before switching to dramatic prowess in an instant. His out of body moment is in asking Harold if he counted all the tiles in the bathroom, a task that previously belonged to himself as the Rain Man. This is probably his best role of the last decade. Even Queen Latifah hasn’t been this good since.

The director is Marc Forster, who has arguably and sadly gotten worse since this film. His resume used to consist of “Monster’s Ball” and “Finding Neverland” and now includes a lame adaptation of “The Kite Runner,” “Quantum of Solace” and “Machine Gun Preacher.”

I believe that a film as simple and clever as “Stranger Than Fiction” can be made again, I just don’t think it’ll include Ferrell, Hoffman or Forster.

Rapid Response: Kiki's Delivery Service

For all the praise given to Hayao Miyazaki for his fantastical imagination, the man is also a master at portraying the beauty of the real world. He shows us the simple themes that teach our children to grow and the thrill of an adventure. “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is Miyazaki’s most modest production, free of most fantasy and anime trappings, and yet it is no less magical.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” was the follow-up to Miyazaki’s masterpiece “My Neighbor Totoro,” a simple but delightful film about a child who discovers a hidden realm of the forest and a magical creature with loveable qualities. What it shares with “Kiki’s,” as well as several of his other films, is that it is a kids movie free of any bad guys. It populates the world with characters who are only polite, caring, heartwarming, plucky and fun, and yet it creates a story with emotional poignancy and drama.

Its title heroine is a 13-year-old witch in training. Her responsibility at this age is to find a city free of other witches to call home for one year and make it on her own. It’s a simple story of a girl growing up and leaving home, with the only magical difference being that she can fly. It takes a lot of growth for Kiki to find the thing she does best and make a living out of it, and her problem is not finding business for her delivery service but sticking to it, putting up with the hardships of the job and learning to bounce back when she’s unable to fly the way she used to. Miyazaki finds a way to illustrate the excitement, struggle and tedium of Kiki’s job, and he does so without manic action or mean-spirited characters.

There’s a scene in the movie that sums up just how adorable this film is. Kiki goes to a little old grandmother’s house to make a delivery. It’s a pie that she wants delivered to her granddaughter’s birthday party, but it isn’t prepared, so Kiki is about to be sent on her way with her agreed upon pay when Kiki decides to stick around and help fix the granny’s oven so she can still make the delivery. She does all of this work with pluck, not magic, and it pays off in spades when she visits the granny again later. The harsh twist is that after frantically delivering the pie through the pouring rain, the recipient is ungrateful and announces to the party, “Grandma sent us one of her disgusting pies again.” It exposes the hardships of life without making a classical villain.

Miyazaki has a wonderful visual imagination, but there’s nothing fantastical to see in “Kiki’s.” Rather, the real world beauty and pastoral landscapes are the most impressive and truly emphasize Miyazaki’s gift for sharp cinematography. Take a look at the striking low angles during the opening shots that paint Kiki as someone deep and in thought, not a spoiled, excitable brat but someone with room for growth. Notice how he creates the illusion of motion within his films and generates suspense. When Tombo’s bike is careening down the highway, there are lines approaching the bottom of the frame that quickly vanish and reappear whereas another director wouldn’t be so diligent. Even when Kiki prepares to fly on her broom, she doesn’t just take off in a whoosh. We see her hair and dress billow in front of her intense focus. In fact “Kiki’s” flight sequences are not nearly as graceful as those seen in “Nausicaa,” “Castle in the Sky” or otherwise, but they have invigorating and joyous moments of action, especially in the film’s climactic rescue.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” may not be the best place to start in exploring Miyazaki’s catalog, but it’s a cute, funny and exciting film that is one of his best.

Rapid Response: Hamlet (1948)

Let’s face it; you don’t come to me for an analysis of Shakespeare, so I won’t bother. What I can say is how terrific Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” is, not because it’s a faithful adaptation (it’s not) of the most enduring play ever written, or even because Olivier is the 20th Century’s best figure head of the classical actor, but because it set the stage for how to adapt the Bard to the screen. It values sumptuous visuals and symbolic set dressing to establish moods and themes over a strict retelling of the play, acknowledging full well it can’t get all of Shakespeare’s prose into the screenplay.

The result is a film that borrows a haunting aesthetic from both “Citizen Kane” and Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Desmond Dickinson’s deep focus cinematography coupled with the foggy set dressing in front of black infinity backdrops gives “Hamlet” a ghastly effect that emboldens the story’s more fantastical and spiritual themes. I love the labyrinth of a castle Hamlet and Horatio stand atop during the film’s first act. It’s a surreal set that doesn’t make spatial sense, and it makes the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father all the creepier. When he appears, he’s framed in between two spears that make it look like he’s entering through Heaven’s Gate. Olivier uses the fog and backdrop to isolate Hamlet (see: him carrying his sword downward approaching the phantom) in truly iconic ways.

“Hamlet” has minimal editing and a surplus of wide shots, but the film never looks “stagy.” The camera acts as its own character on stage, approaching others and backing away as a part of the conversation and providing Olivier with room to breathe when his voice is really booming. It’s an active surveyor, often providing more context than the actors themselves. Look at one shot where Ophelia has just finished talking to Polonious. Out of the corner of her eye, she spies Hamlet sitting forlornly in a chair at the far end of the corridor, and we get his reaction shot in return. Both perspectives indicate visually what is going through these characters’ heads in a way that theatrical staging could not.

But the film won Best Picture where Olivier’s previous “Henry IV” did not because Olivier himself provides such fire in the role of Hamlet. They say playing is the ultimate actor’s challenge because it requires so much complexity and range, and Olivier is quiet and forlorn without losing his thunderous tone, most of all during the scene where he kills Polonious. Olivier was already a gigantic stage legend well before he attempted “Hamlet” or “Henry IV” on film, and he even had a lucrative career in Hollywood, both in “Wuthering Heights” and “Rebecca.” But this is the role that defines him as an actor. He’s the only actor to win an Oscar for a Shakespearean role, and he deserves it.

Future filmmakers like Kenneth Branagh would eventually tackle “Hamlet” in full, and others would adapt the story to modernity in ways that are so much more daring, but Olivier’s “Hamlet” set the stage for them all.

Rapid Response: Taste of Cherry

Just about every Abbas Kiarostami movie is to an extent about people driving around. The people in the cars drive and they talk, and sooner or later they get somewhere, maybe not geographically, but existentially at least, or so you would think. His movie “Ten” was all about conversations people had in cars. In “Certified Copy,” the images reflected on the windshield were more interesting than the discussion. I know Kiarostami is a gifted filmmaker, because I can see the absolute fire in some of his scenes. When he wants to, he’s capable of arresting filmmaking. But there is a very fine line between extremely careful and slow plotting and just filling time.

“Taste of Cherry” walks this line ever so studiously. It waits a full 25 minutes before revealing its main character’s intentions, and even then it doesn’t seem to amp up the suspense. I admit I looked at the plot description ahead of time, so I knew Mr. Badii’s (Homayoun Ershadi) trepidation and dilemma from the start, which is maybe beside the point. He is contemplating suicide, so he drives around seeking a laborer, a loner or someone naive who will help him without question.

His request is simple. There is a hole in the ground on the side of a secluded hill. Come by at dawn, and Mr. Badii will be in it with a heavy dose of sleeping pills. If he is alive, wake him and help him out. If not, bury him. Either way, Badii will pay well.

My thought is that if this were an easy thing to ask, it wouldn’t take the movie so long to ask it. Kiarostami shows great trepidation for a reason. His purpose is not to approach a fate for this man. He asks, how do you get someone you’ve just met to have faith in you, to take your life in their hands?

Badii’s first potential servant is a teenager in the military. After some uncomfortable, one-sided small talk, this kid quickly regrets his decision to accept this ride. Badii invokes God, logic, pity, monetary incentives and even his country loyalty as a Kurd, to get him to agree to this impossible assignment. But it’s no use. All the small talk in the world could not change his mind.

Kiarostami elevates this material somewhat by denying us the typical melodrama reaction shots, often showing us long, unbroken stretches of the car traveling instead. It’s a symbolic representation of what Badii says early on in the film to explain why he’s committing suicide. We can comprehend his pain, but cannot feel it, so the specifics are unimportant.

“Taste of Cherry” ultimately asks us to change our perspective on life. When this film was made, it was daring for an Iranian to make a movie about suicide. It still is. Here is a film that is arguably boring, polarizing, and if not all together maddening in its perplexing ending, and yet it requires a new outlook to appreciate fully.

Rapid Response: The Green Mile

I was wondering why I had waited so long to see “The Green Mile,” possibly because it has become TNT fodder, possibly because the critical through-line on it has been that it’s “The Shawshank Redemption” with magic, and possibly because it’s on that list of potentially overhyped IMDB Top 250 movies. But none of those reasons really justify how much I loved it.

Now granted, it has its flaws, but whereas “Shawshank” is a much more hopeful movie about survival and perseverance, “The Green Mile” has a wholesome spirituality that wins you over with its inherent goodness. Ultimately, its characters are flawed and even cruel and sadistic, but only one of whom do we really dislike and feel is in the wrong. Director Frank Darabont’s gift is in making a film that embraces its fantasy head-on to make for a wonderfully moving tearjerker.

I myself did not know about the film’s fantasy element, so I will not spoil it here, but it involves the miracles surrounding a massive death row inmate named John Coffey (the late Michael Clarke Duncan) and the prison’s head guard, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks). The movie approaches the giant that is Coffey with the same trepidation that a person would walk the Green Mile before being executed, so it’s a patient film that takes its time over its three hours and allows us to savor every moment. Coffey’s story is one of deep anguish, and in a way, he’s the real emotional center of the film, not Paul.

Paul’s problem involves dealing with one of his prison guard colleagues, the pestilent and cowardly Percy (Doug Hutchison), who is the mayor’s spoiled nephew and feels entitled to be an arrogant little shit. He just wants to see one of these guys cook up close, and he even wants to know what it is to torture someone in one gruesome death sequence. What I like about Percy’s character, if anything, is that as vicious and awful as he is, he reveals himself as ultimately human, pissing his pants out of terror in one scene and revealing that he’s not entirely one-dimensional. We get a sense that he doesn’t entirely deserve the cruel, ironic fate he receives in the end.

Part of me believes that because Paul and his fellow guards are no saints either. They put Percy and their most difficult inmate, Wild Bill Wharton (Sam Rockwell), through both mental and physical brutality. But these characters’ flawed depth allows Hanks to exhibit deep, everyman pain and guilt as only Hanks can. His final conversation with John puts an insurmountable amount of emotional pressure on him that I hadn’t previously imagined.

Some of the scenes, such as the flashback to John’s murder, the execution scene of Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter), and the present day tags with Paul as an old man, are a bit heavy-handed and even unnecessarily long, but I’ll remember “The Green Mile” for its more serene moments, not its twists. The use of “Cheek to Cheek” in “Top Hat” is an absolutely beautiful capper. Seeing the mouse Mr. Jingles fetch the thread spool is one of those all time great movie moments. And the rest of the movie is not short of miracles, big or small, either.

Rapid Response: Saturday Night Fever

It’s not a coincidence that within minutes of watching “Saturday Night Fever” with my family the conversation turned into just when disco died. “It came and went so quickly,” my Dad recalled. “The early adopters were around for a while before it became really cool, but by the time you bought all the ridiculous shirts and all the records, it was already gone.”

Something like “Saturday Night Fever” then belongs to that black hole of movies that, regardless of their quality, became dated as soon as the fad they depicted vanishes completely. Its soundtrack is a collection of all the disco songs that have actually survived (and are tolerable) through the decades, and the fashions and attitudes, be they the big cars, bug hair or big collars, are a relic of a time that today just seems so alien.

And yet the reason above all why “Saturday Night Fever” succeeded and still somewhat succeeds today is in its title sequence. The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” plays as John Travolta struts down the street, and it seems to explain effortlessly that part of the ’70s cool was just the swagger in your step, the swivel of your hips and living moving as if the music was always playing.

Today the film represents the tentpole model for teenage stardom stories in the vein of something like “Flashdance.” A troubled and poor young teenager who happens to be a talented dancer/singer/artist enters a contest to win an arbitrary prize, and along the way they juggle relationships, a distant family that doesn’t understand him/her, an older sibling who is admirable but now seems lost and some sort of tragedy separate from all the montages and performance numbers.

This is precisely the format of “Saturday Night Fever,” but its improved by just the style with which it glamorizes these icons of ’70s culture. Director John Badham loves the low angle shot to show off hair, clothes and bodies during dance scenes and otherwise. The dance numbers are all handled minimally with full-bodied wide shots and long takes to show just how Travolta can really move. It also splashes obscene amounts of color in the frame and gets down and dirty itself in swift tracking shot close-ups as Travolta shimmies about the dance floor.

His moves in the King of the Floor scene are so absurd they must all have a corny name (the punching bag, the hair dryer, the Russian soldier, to make up a few), but I like the scene because disco is one of those rare dance styles, like the classical forms of tap, where the individual is often more impressive than the group, and these numbers feel almost like updates on the Fred Astaire favorites. Travolta makes these moves look simple, elegant and effortless.

It’s also fun in the sense that the dialogue is absurd. There are throw away lines that a modern audience must gawk at in their extreme racism, sexism and vulgarity. “Women have to choose to be either a nice girl or a cunt.” “Dream good, jerk off better.” “You make it with some girls, they think you gotta dance with them too.”

Travolta was already famous for his role as Vinnie Barbarino in “Welcome Back Kotter,” and he even had a part in Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” but “Saturday Night Fever” made him a temporary superstar, landing him a dumbfounding Oscar nomination in the process. And it’s shocking, because Tony Manero is absolutely repellent, regardless of how many girls are hypnotically drawn to him. Did the New York guido attitude grow out of the disco ’70s or did the disco ’70s grow out of it? He shows absolute disdain for all of his lady callers, he oafishly eats with his mouth open, he nearly rapes his dance partner, allows another girl to be raped and ultimately watches his friend die in a hammy “Rebel Without a Cause” ending that just plain doesn’t work.

“Saturday Night Fever” belongs to the ages. It is a bad, cliche movie but arguably an essential one in understanding the full scope of American pop culture history.

Rapid Response: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

There are a lot of people who enjoy Studio Ghibli films, but a surprising number of them would probably say they don’t much care for Anime, if they can even claim to have really seen it, and I would likely be one of them.

Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” treads that line between Japanese Disney masterpiece and “Dragonball Z” territory more than any of his other films, mainly because it’s based on Miyazaki’s own seven volume manga of the same name. It’s Miyazaki’s second film and his first under the Studio Ghibli name, and although it has the hand-drawn visual splendor and establishes most of the dominant environmental themes that would carry through the rest of his films, it’s an action heavy movie most closely comparable to “Princess Mononoke” or “Howl’s Moving Castle,” lacking the sense of humor and whimsy that made me and so many others love him.

The story is a bit of an apocalyptic mess. For a thousand years since modern day, the human race has been threatened by toxins from the Sea of Decay, an ever growing ecology of monstrous bugs and poisonous pollens that threatens to engulf the whole planet. Nausicaa is the princess of a peaceful safe haven powered by windmills, and her gifts with animals teach of patience and resolve but also a love for nature. She moves about magically on a rocket glider, clinging to it in a pommel horse pose and emerging in and out of mountains and seas of clouds. She realizes that nature itself is not toxic, humans are, and the obvious metaphor that pops up is that when you attack one insect, a swarm of others become enraged and nature destroys you.

These naturalistic ideas are years ahead of their time for an ’80s film, as are of course the visuals. Some of the early images in one destroyed village or all those in the depths of the planet are so foreign from anything on Earth that to have come from one man’s pen and paper is astounding. Miyazaki makes images of towering scope and depth that would be virtually impossible in a live-action film, like the ravenous ohmus with golden feelers, glowing red eyeballs and enormous layers that make it look like a steampunk beetle.

Nausicaa herself is a wonderful heroine. She’s the one youthful, likeable and multi-dimensional figure in the movie, whereas most of the other humans are destructive forces driven to violence by ignorance. They’re not completely villainous in the way you see with most kids movies, but they’re part of an elaborate war of cataclysmic explosions and firefights. The film can get tiring, and you long for “Nausicaa’s” quieter moments that, although they would be beyond the kids, offer some adult magic.