Godzilla Minus One / The Boy and the Heron | Movies of the Month 12/23
Well, now that we’re a few weeks into 2023, I figured it might be a good time to start following up on some New Year’s resolutions. That’s right, I’m happy to say that we’re finally doing Movie Friday, or some inbred, Pomeranian morlock wearing its likeness. Unlike Songs of the Week, which I find to be much more manageable, I can’t make any promises as to the frequency of Movies of the Month—mostly, I wrote this one because Japan is kind of popping off in the US box office, and I desperately want to seem worldly. What I will say is that (as I’ve imagined this segment) it won’t always be this long. If it wasn’t clear, I loved Godzilla Minus One, but it uncorked years of stifled Godzilla grievances that previously had no place to go (Godzilla vs. Kong was an unworthy vessel). My hope is that Movies of the Month doesn’t become an infodumping onslaught, but in the meantime, be sure to chew before you swallow…
GODZILLA MINUS ONE | Written & Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
Non-Spoiler Summary: Remember how Godzilla began as a metaphor for the inhuman cruelty of nuclear warfare? If not, Godzilla Minus One serves as a stark refresher, being a soft remake of the 1954 original from the same Japanese studio that started it all. While certainly not the most subtly acted or written, the pain behind Minus One is thoroughly felt in both its truly wrathful monster and its sharp criticism of a ruthless, wartime culture that still haunts Japan today. With a design that’s both scary and loyal to the original and a human cast that fans can finally care about, Godzilla Minus One might just be my second-favorite of the franchise, and that’s coming from a monster snob.
Spoiler Summary: Sometimes I forget a facet of myself that I’m sure is obvious from the outside: Godzilla fuckin’ rocks, dude, and I love him. My condolences to Tokyo, but when done right, watching this vengeful affront to nature annihilate a city with ease puts a primal awe and terror in me that other kaiju just can’t. Of course, I’d forgive anyone for reacting to Godzilla with just about the exact opposite of awe, given the majority of his long-standing stay in pop culture. So, before we talk Minus One, please indulge my multi-paragraph digression in defense of silliness. Or don’t. It’s my blog, I do what I want.
Whenever I go whole-hog literary analysis on an inherently goofy concept, I’m almost always met with a response along the lines of “oh, so you’re fine with [whimsical worldbuilding detail], but you draw the line at [crucial inconsistency]?” Like, okay, maybe I did just make a spooky, scary strawman, so to be crystal-clear: goofiness and camp are my bread and butter. When, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Strange projects himself into his alternate universe corpse and tames a maelstrom of cackling hell-spawn, wearing them as his new cloak while he rises from the grave, I said “hell yea.” When, in Kong: Skull Island, Tom “Stoic McMacho” Hiddleston dons a gas mask and a katana to do battle with a descending hoard of pterosaurs amidst green, poisonous fog and the bones of Kong’s brethren, I said “hell yea.” While we’re at it, though, let’s get one thing straight: a similarly-armed Jason Statham riding a jetski into the maw of man’s worst Megalodon reconstruction would not earn my “hell yea,” thank you kindly. That’s because just offscreen leers an executive boardroom saying “see, we’re in on the joke! Anyways, tickets are $10 a pop.” Call me picky, but I think there’s a formula for making a “hell yea” moment work. The secret ingredient? Surprise, Max Todd Dot Com, it’s sincerity. If you’re gonna go so unabashedly balls-to-the-wall, you’d better own it. While I’m certainly still a snob—I don’t think Multiverse of Madness or Skull Island amount to masterpieces—both films are a blast because of their unbridled imagination. Cameos and sequel-bait be damned, at the end of the day, both know they’d better bring a good time, and boy, do they shoot for the moon. Even better, in my book, is when an inherently goofy concept is played totally straight, so much so that we’re tricked into believing it—Batman is goofy as hell, but nobody’s out here questioning the dire seriousness of The Dark Knight. to make it work, one has to feel it. Unfortunately, for as much potential as it has, Godzilla hasn’t had that feeling for many years now.
Even without Godzilla’s suitmation reputation, “Skyscraper-Sized Dinosaur Destroys Tokyo” sounds like something kids came up with in the sandbox, and yet my God, I want to believe it—it’s an image with such potential for staying power, if not for an allegory then at least for inducing primal fear. Even after the abject horror of his first outing, audiences and executives alike seem to have assumed that Godzilla flat-out couldn’t go beyond his goofiness so long as he was played by a man in a rubber suit, hence the numerous silly sequel. To me, though, the suit’s not the problem—if the state of American Monsterverse films is anything to go by, no matter how good your graphics are, studios still fail to churn out substance. Don’t get me wrong, I love monster smashy-smash, but there has to be something behind the boom-boom for me to stick around—a something which many Godzilla filmmakers seem unwilling to engage with.
What I think is almost insulting about most Godzilla movies (and we’re fully in the realm of hyperbole here—if you’re going to be insulted about anything, how about the UK and USA vetoing a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine?) is the fact that they’ve essentially given up on their origin: a powerful denouncement of nuclear war written by those that narrowly survived it. To me, while Legendary’s depiction of Godzilla is fun on the surface, reframing the monster as a sort of superhero guardian of nature feels like such a sinister perversion coming from the country that nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki and inspired this unstoppable monster in the first place. We’ll talk more about redeeming Godzilla later, because you know I’m a sucker for that angle, but politically, that’s a huge no-no, even if Toho tried this angle first. To me, that’s why today’s Japanese-made Godzilla movies almost feel more “right”—they’re grown from the same soil that is still healing from the world’s first and (God willing) only nuclear attacks. Of course, I’m not advocating for another nation’s artists to start trauma-farming for my American benefit, but like… don’t tell me a glock belongs in a nerf war. This attitude is what makes 2016’s Shin Godzilla, Japan’s first live-action Godzilla movie after thirteen years in the doghouse, my favorite Godzilla movie to date. It modernized the monster with a sly political satire of the government’s feeble response to the Tōhoku earthquake and ensuing Fukishima disaster. Also, that Godzilla is terrifying. While I’m sad Toho didn’t take his story further, their newest reboot, Godzilla Minus One, takes a similar approach to honoring the monster’s legacy, sticking as close to the original’s history while also remaining a relevant warning. Unchain yourself from cynicism, go beyond the goofiness, and you might just find that Minus One has a lot to say.
Alright, there’s my digression. Four paragraphs into this Godzilla Minus One review and we haven’t even talked about Godzilla Minus One—what is this, a rough draft final paper? What can I say, it’s that time of year…
Set in the aftermath of World War II, Minus One takes audiences back to the source of the wound, only to find a much older pain has already been festering. The movie opens on a lone fighter jet flying over Odo island—an isolating shot that immediately sets up both the movie’s scale and its central conflict. Kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima has landed on the island’s airbase allegedly for repairs, though mechanic Sōsaku Tachibana is immediately suspicious that Shikishima isn’t ready to die for his country. In the night, the crew is awoken when a titanic creature comes ashore to feed—one the locals call “Godzilla.” Terrified, Tachibana urges Shikishima—the only gunner among them—to shoot down the creature, but when he reaches the cockpit, he can’t take the shot. When another mechanic breaks down and fires on Godzilla, the monster swiftly devastates their base in a whirlwind of merciless fury. When Shikishima awakens, he and a furious, crippled Tachibana are the last men standing—something Tachibana refuses to let Shikishima forget, giving him the family photos kept by every mechanic. As the movie continues in similar Godzilla fashion, Shikishima’s debilitating survivor’s guilt metastasizes, inhibiting him from not only stopping the monster, but also accepting the family he’s found in bombing of Tokyo survivors Noriko Oichi and orphan baby Akiko. In the end, Minus One doesn’t just portray the terror of war—it is a vehement rebuke of the disregard for individual lives that began with Japan’s imperial tactics and which still plagues many aspects of the country’s culture today. In the final rally to sink Godzilla once and for all, it is a fleet of civilian tugboats which turns the tide, declaring “the useless to the rescue.” Godzilla is brought down not by battleships, tanks, or military strategists, but the united will of the people—their ability to stand up and say “I matter, I am significant, I will not die for your futile cause” against seemingly insurmountable odds.
With a theme like that, there’s undoubtedly drama abound, but like everything Godzilla, the acting here is big—perhaps, in some places, too big. While I found characters like Noriko, neighbor Sumiko, and mechanic Tachibana to be well-played, I found that many of the prominent performances in Minus One collapse under their own weight. In saying this, I don’t mean to downplay the immensity of PTSD—probably the biggest drama that anyone could experience. All that said, I felt a bit bludgeoned by the Capital P Pain sometimes. Shikishima’s survivor’s guilt, while harrowing, was at times played with so much screaming that it felt more like a soap opera than a soul-bearing revelation. When things got emotional, everything was at an eleven—something that, from my understanding, strays pretty far from the emotional callous wartime encrusts on its victims. I don’t mean to pick on Shikishima here, who sometimes sticks the landing—his scene at dinner correcting Akiko when she calls him “daddy” was perfectly heartbreaking. He’s not the only one with a subtlety problem—Dr. Noda’s mad-scientist delivery of “we kill Godzilla with the power of the ocean” would have been delightfully hammy were the movie not so dedicatedly dour, and Akitsu’s redundant narration of the navy’s every move felt dumbed down. In fact, I think it was Akitsu repeatedly threatening “if you orphan Akiko, I’ll never forgive you” that made me realize that this movie is not confident we’re taking it seriously. To that I say: give yourself more credit, Minus One! The score is immaculately bleak, the story is compelling, the action is gripping, and most of all, I care about these characters—something I’m not sure I’ve heard from any other Godzilla movie, period! This movie deserves to ask a lot from its viewers, yet it instead chooses to signal everything that’s beneath the surface. Shikishima divulges the darkest corners of his soul, his crew voices every thought we’re supposed to be having as viewers, and worst of all, the twist that Tachibana has installed an ejector seat in Shikishima’s plane is telegraphed from a mile away (AND THEN is given an extended flashback). When a story leaves no room to think and starts telling instead, it risks losing the audience—when their brains aren’t picking over something subtle, there’s nothing left to connect with. To be fair, perhaps most people don’t watch Godzilla movies to connect—certainly not the guy in front of me who scoffed “I didn’t know Godzilla was a love story” in the movie’s final, tender moments. Something tells me I’m being too picky here, though, because hearing a little kid gasp “he’s alive?” when Shikishima’s parachute deployed means Godzilla Minus One knocked it out of the park.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Godzilla himself is a real stunner in this one. All of this song reviewing hasn’t scratched my creature design itch, and my fiction hasn’t done it justice, but oh baby, we’re finally going there. I’ve been a dragon kid, a dinosaur kid, and now that I have an evolutionary biology degree under my belt, it’s safe to say no one is safe from my creature design obsession. Raised on the likes of Guillermo Del Toro, Mike Mignola, Terryl Whitlatch, and Wayne Barlowe, my monster standards are insufferably high, and this iteration of Godzilla doesn’t disappoint. While it’s true that I’ll always prefer Shin Godzilla’s take for its cancerous, eldritch alienness, I’ve grown to appreciate how stylized and dragon-like Minus One’s Godzilla is.
When describing this Godzilla, the one word I keep returning to is “wrathful.” This isn’t some impartial leviathan too big to notice our metal anthills—this Godzilla will look you in the eye, see your humanity, and wreck you anyways. He’s a messy bitch in this movie—deeply angry in his every action, yet still hitting that mindless, lumbering sweet spot that makes Godzilla such a scary monster. Representing this versatility in a cohesive creature is no small feat, yet Minus One dishes out Jurassic Park, Jaws, and Kaiju-style scenes, and they all deliver. In the opening Odo Island attack, Godzilla is still young—still rivaling the largest dinosaurs, no doubt, but firmly within a human scale. Even at that size, when Godzilla notices you, individually, the threat feels so much more personal, and it’s perhaps the scariest I’ve seen him. Then again, once he’s beefed up by the Bikini Atoll nuclear testing, the ensuing boat chase is spectacularly ass-clenching in its own right—as my Dad pointed out, it was very Jaws, though Godzilla’s unblinking eyes and open maw felt more like a scaly tsunami. Finally, it’s a whole different brand of terrifying when Godzilla effortlessly levels Ginza—the sort of terrifying that almost stops being fun in historical context. Of course, Minus One’s lack of subtlety was the right choice when it came to Godzilla’s atomic breath—perhaps one of the most devastating scenes in the movie. We’re all here for the wanton destruction, but when a wave of debris indiscriminately blasts back survivors like ragdolls and Godzilla roars triumphantly over an actual mushroom cloud, I was left slack-jawed at the tragedy of it all. That’s what the psychological ripples of a nuclear strike looks like, still scarring a culture eighty years later.
As I’ve said, I still slightly prefer Shin Godzilla, but that comes down to taste—that movie is just genuinely weird, just for us weirdo freaks to lap up like wet food. As far as competency, both that and Minus One tell the same story with equal potency. Aside from the creature design and its thematic ramifications, the only thing I’d say Shin Godzilla does better is redeeming its monster—a herculean task, given how mechanical and unfeeling that iteration is. To me, their take also lays the groundwork for a more appropriate redemption, which starts with sympathy. Simply put, Shin Godzilla is constantly in pain. The monster itself isn’t the bomb—the monster is what results from it; nature’s forsaken cry for help after the affront of splitting the atom. As much as I ragged on the American Monsterverse’s superhero Godzilla, in truth, I really resonate with Godzilla as Earth’s retaliation, becoming our protector when mankind learns to achieve some symbiosis with the biosphere. The key to this, which I think Shin Godzilla nails, is still condemning nuclear weapons and war at large in the process, something Legendary never gave the weight it ought to have. While Minus One’s Godzilla was undoubtedly the villain, he, too, was a victim of deep-sea waste spillage and American nuclear testing, and if his regenerating remains are anything to go by, we haven’t heard the last of his woes. The question is, after the absolute annihilation he inflicted on Japan, how will any sequels portray Godzilla’s good side? If he returns an unquestioned hero like cold-war America, Japan’s subservience will continue what both Shin Godzilla and Minus One sought to criticize in the first place: Japan is not beholden to the whims of other countries, but to its own people, every one of whom deserves to live freely. Instead, when Godzilla washes up onshore again, I hope he can embody the strength of a nation who has reclaimed its agency—who, hopefully, now protects against the senseless violence from which a monster was born.
Pairs Well With: Godzilla (1954) (Written & Directed by Ishirō Honda), Shin Godzilla (Written & Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi), Pan’s Labyrinth (Written & Directed by Guillermo Del Toro)
THE BOY AND THE HERON | Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Non-Spoiler Summary: Though I’ve woefully under-viewed the Studio Ghibli catalogue, I can safely say that The Boy and the Heron lives up to Miyazaki’s mythic status (and standards). The animation alone should fill seats, with museum-worthy backgrounds, vivid characters, and a warm, inhabited world(s) worth exploring beyond the film’s confines. While English dubs are often the worst parts of foreign films, there’s no need to fret for this unexpectedly star-studded cast, defying the celebrity voice actor standard with standout performances across the board. Even if I’m left somewhat lost searching for its meaning, The Boy and the Heron is a sincere, moody, and imaginative adventure the likes of which I haven’t seen in years.
Spoiler Summary: After that appropriately monstrous Godzilla review, my thoughts on The Boy and the Heron might seem like a footnote, but don’t let that deter you from catching this in theaters—if you’re gonna read into the discrepancy, it’s less about this one’s quality and more about the cystic zit of Godzilla takes I apparently had to drain. There’s more where that came from, too, so we’d better move on before I get rolling again.
Though I’m a bit of a studio Ghibli novice, I always walk away from a Miyazaki film feeling the same way: dazzled but puzzled. While Princess Mononoke’s themes seem very clear (though I may be biased, as that was my first and favorite thus far), Spirited Away was a bizarre, winding, and seemingly meaningless quest. That’s not to say it isn’t a masterpiece or that the story has nothing to say about greed, but where themes are often intuitive for me, I was left feeling disoriented by what appeared to be mostly imagination for imagination’s sake—something I’m all for, even if I’m bound to read into it. The Boy and the Heron is much the same—the pacing meanders, the symbology seems mixed, and yet I’m still transfixed because the world is so cohesive and visionary. Granted, there is undoubtedly a lot of cultural significance I’m missing, but either way, it’s nice to scramble my western brain and just enjoy a movie without predicting its every move.
To be fair, The Boy and the Heron certainly set me up for a very different story, especially on the heels of Minus One. Also set during World War II, our protagonist Mahito wakes to his mother’s hospital going up in flames—a spontaneous twist of fate that he and his father are powerless to stop behind the military blockade. Far too soon, Mahito is thrust into a new family when his Dad knocks up his late wife’s sister, Natsuko, who bluntly tells Mahito that she’s “his new mother.” Coddled by Natsuko and her the flock of live-in mothers, rebellious Mahito explores beyond his mother’s manor to find a derelict tower in the forest—and a heron that taunts him with memories of his mother. Knowing he’s being baited, Mahito ignores the heron’s sneering requests, but when Natsuko disappears the day her son is due, Mahito must enter the tower and the worlds hidden within.
In a movie with so many twists and turns, Miyazaki is a master of taking his time. While The Boy and the Heron has unorthodox pacing, I never once felt left behind, nor was I bored, and the secret ingredient is almost certainly breathing room. The empty space in this movie is both organic and calculated—organic because I feel absorbed even in the mundane, but calculated because it’s deployed so precisely. As much as I adore the Spider-Verse movies—arguably the current peak of western animation—their detail-to-scene ratio is almost anxiety-inducing, and I don’t think I could ever ease into that multiverse like I can this one. Of course, that doesn’t make The Boy and the Heron any less detailed—in fact, from what I’ve seen, this movie might arguably be even richer than the rest. Hand-in-hand with the aforementioned breathing room are the vivid backgrounds, rendered warm and sparkling in what looks to be oil pastels. I’m not always the most perceptive with backgrounds, but multiple times, I found myself moved by just an establishing shot and the serene piano prudently padding alongside it. This gentle, hand-crafted grace appears even in some of the most chaotic scenes in the movie—a Mahito attempts to rush to his mother’s burning hospital, the heat wave renders passersby smudged in an effect I don’t think I’ve ever seen animated. I was almost too wowed by the mirage to worry with the flames, but Mahito’s plight was still conveyed—it’s baked into every frame.
Of course, I’d be remiss to skim the characters conveying this life in the first place, since The Boy and the Heron is brimming with delightful designs. My condolences to the human cast, but I’m partial to the creatures myself—the titular Heron gets past my preferences, though, for being a little of both. While I do love the awkward gait of his squat, waddling human form, I’m very partial to the Heron’s mid-transformation sneer, with nose and teeth disproportionately bursting from beneath his beak. In fact, I’d say all of the disturbing, grubby birds in this movie have my heart—the pelicans in particular were both eerie and pitiful when they needed to be. They’re half of what made the movie’s most beautiful scene (for me)—when the watawata, this movie’s obligatory plush-fodder, are revealed to be new souls, ascending in a mass migration to be born on Earth. Just as I felt some sand in my eyes, the scene turns harrowing as the graveyard pelicans pick off watawata by the dozen, like sea turtles on their first scramble for the waves. It’s such high drama that, at least in the land of the literal, has no bearing over the plot, and yet it’s the most I felt for the entirety of the movie. It was a beautiful story on its own, and the pelicans played perfect villains (only for Willem Dafoe of all people to make me sympathize with them). On the complete other end of the evil bird spectrum, I might actually take back my favorite scene in favor of the moment we meet these goose-stepping, thousand-yard-stare budgies—my God, the budgies. I’m not ashamed to say it was the hardest I’ve laughed in a while when this bumbling, huggable creature with nothing behind its eyes menacingly whispered with the voice of Dan Stevens while toting a meat cleaver. So dark. So good.
Unfortunately, these budgies lead me to one of my few criticisms of the movie, though it may ultimately be unfounded. In both the human and bird characters, there seems to be a pretty major discrepancy in design language that, in several moments, took my brain out of admiring the movie’s beauty. Mahito and his parents—cartoons, of course, but relatively realistic—blended perfectly with their oil paint environments, but when juxtaposed with Natsuko’s live-in mothers—proportioned like Yubaba from Spirited Away—the two look like different species. I considered that perhaps this was a stylization of age, but where the Heron’s human form conforms with this precedent, the ancient great-grandfather at the top of the tower—perhaps the oldest of them all—was built more like Mahito. The gap is even greater with non-human characters—where the Heron and Pelicans are animated with black, beady bird eyes and anatomically correct bodies, the budgies look all Regular Show noodley, with the eyes of Sesame Street martians. Honestly, I’d let these guys slide for being so funny if there wasn’t another inconsistency in their own ranks—the budgie king. While the rest of the birds are shaped like Easter-palette potatoes, the budgie king has this broad-shouldered, swashbuckling build featuring such inconsistencies as an actual neck and yellow, narrow eyes that look like neither his people’s, nor the Heron’s, nor the humans’. Ultimately, this might be a sacrifice made in favor of expressivity—once again, I’ll concede that the budgie king had me giggling from how absurd he looked, but I think more could have been done to blend him with their own kind. That might be the STEM brain talking—sometimes wildly differing anatomy can really break my immersion, but I think that’s a red flag for myself, not Studio Ghibli.
What really unified these characters despite their drastic differences was a unanimously fantastic performance from the cast. While I wish I could sing my praises for the original Japanese cast, I’ve only seen the english dub—a prospect I’d normally be skeptical of if it weren’t for a certain sparkly vampire. As it happens, a promo for Robert Pattinson’s voice is singlehandedly what sold me on this movie, simply because nothing could have prepared me for what unholy squawking came out of that Heron’s mouth. These days, I am so00 team Edward—between this, The Lighthouse, and Robat Battinbat, we are just so back. I’m so happy that Pattinson can do whatever weirdo freak roles he wants to because we’re all better for it. The only shame for me is that I don’t have the kind of bird voice box necessary to quote his delightfully skeevy Heron—I’m not the first to say it, but something happened to that man after spending so long in close proximity to Willem Dafoe. Speaking of Dafoe, let’s not forget he’s a backup bird—a pelican choking on its own blood. Did you know Florence Pugh is also in this as an old lady and her younger counterpart? Or what about Gemma Chan as the Natsuko? Mark Hamill as her space wizard great uncle? Dan Stevens as a murder budgie? Perhaps the best casting of them all, Dave mother fucking Bautista as king of the murder budgies? They even let Christian Bale come back after peopled dunked on his Howl’s Moving Castle performance, and he’s not half-bad either! There’s seriously too much talent to cover here—for once, the dub is well worth your time.
When the credits rolled, my family and girlfriend had all enjoyed The Boy and the Heron, but they were just as lost on the meaning as I was. My girlfriend nailed a broader theme as we were leaving—that we cannot control life, but instead embrace its unpredictability and choose to live in the now, much like Mahito refused to become the next tower master and instead move on with his new family. My Dad also likened this story to Alice in Wonderland, which also stars a child escaping the madness of a postwar world only to find they cannot escape madness itself. Now that I’ve had some time to sit with it, this movie’s message seems surprisingly similar to that of Godzilla Minus One—both are sharply critical of imperial doctrine and its echoes, which still haunt contemporary Japanese culture. I’m not the first to notice it, but it’s telling that the meteor that would become the tower landed during the 1868 Meiji restoration, Japan’s last transition from a feudal shogunate to an empire. Indeed, much of the tower master’s micromanaging has an imperial quality—borderline tyrannical, but justified with a mandate from some higher power. Mahito’s refusal of the throne may topple the tower and the world within it, but he has rescued his new mother and brother with the faith that he can start something new. Where I’m still lost is the details—you know, like, why murder budgies? Uh, I mean, I’m not questioning the action “murder,” but the adjective “murder.” Yea, don’t get it twisted. Certainly, there are smaller details that begin to make sense in this context—for example, while I found Mahito’s Mother’s budgie prison similar to Snow White’s glass coffin, my Mom noticed it was the same shape as the jet cockpits which Mahito’s father sold, suggesting that the war was holding back their family from moving forward. But like, what am I supposed to do with the literal shitstorm of bird poop in this movie? Since I’m too uncomfortable to plunge into that, I’ll let Vulture, an authority on that subject, take it from here with their great article. Ultimately, what I don’t understand, I’ll still appreciate—while there may be an overarching lesson to Ghibli movies, I’m willing to accept that it might not trickle into the minutia. In a way, that’s almost the purest storytelling—that which draws straight from the imagination.
Finally, some honorable mentions I had nowhere else to put:
I love the zappy, unhappy rocks.
The shot of Mahito’s mom melting into water is devastating.
I heard from a grey heron that they only tell lies. Is that the truth, or a lie?
Pairs Well With: Spirited Away (Written & Directed by Hayao Miyazaki), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Written by Lewis Caroll… just read it, at this point. I haven’t, but you should), Kubo and the Two Strings (Written by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler, Directed by Travis Knight)