The Boy and the Heron Review: Another Miyazaki Great.

It is undeniable that Hayao Miyazaki is the most celebrated anime director of all time.
Over the decades, he has delivered beloved film after beloved film, most notably Spirited Away.
My personal favourites of his are Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises.
So, when I got the chance to see a Miyazaki film in theaters for the first time, I took it.
The Boy and the Heron is set in World War Two Japan and follows Mahito Maki, a young boy who loses his mother in a fire.
His father later remarries Natsuko, the sister of Mahito’s mother, and the two travel to her estate.
It is there that Mahito encounters a sinister talking Heron, who eventually convinces him to travel into a supernatural world where his mother supposedly awaits him.
And so begins another fantastical Miyazaki journey.

Much like *Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron* sees our main character transported into a supernatural realm.

The film looks excellent, with the hand-drawn style of Studio Ghibli being very striking on the big screen.
Along with this, the voice acting is solid, at least for the English dub version.
Yes, I saw the dub over the sub, though this was mostly because all of the sub showings were late at night.
That being said, the English voice actors all did a good job, with Luca Padovan, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Florence Pugh, and Dave Bautista all giving life to their characters.
This is especially true for Robert Pattinson who voices the heron.
I was genuinely shocked when I heard he played the character because I did not recognize his voice at all.

The Heron starts the movie quite creepy and untrustworthy.

Along with the animation and voice acting, the music also does a great job of bringing you into the world, with all of this being tied together by the story.
Mahito’s personal journey throughout the film is quite relatable, doubly so because we can see how Miyazaki put much of himself into the character.
One of the central themes of the movie is legacy, which shines a light on how Miyazaki is thinking of his own legacy, especially since this is supposedly his final film.
If it is then he chose a good one to send himself off on.

The film takes on an entirely new meaning when you look at it in the context of Miyazaki’s career.

The Boy and the Heron is another Miyazaki great, with expectedly stellar animation, music, and voice acting, along with a story that has relatable themes.
I would rank this film highly among Miyazaki’s catalogue, maybe even in my top five favorites of his.
And, if this is truly the last Hayao Miyazaki film we ever get, then I am glad that I saw it in theaters.

The Creator Review: A Familiar Sci-Fi Spectacle.

Gareth Edwards is a director who I was wondering what happened to for a while.
Growing up I was a big Godzilla fan, so I enjoyed his 2014 movie.
Edwards also directed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which is probably my favourite Star Wars movie Disney has put out since they started making them.
However, after Rogue One, Edwards did not direct another film for a number of years.
So, when I was amazed by the spectacle of the trailer for The Creator, and saw that it was written and directed by Edwards, I knew I had to see it.
The Creator is a movie that is by no means original, but it still handles its familiar tropes well and with impressive effects.

The special effects of *The Creator* are quite impressive when you compare it to other big budget movies.

The film follows Joshua Taylor (John David Washington), a soldier who lost an arm and a leg during a nuclear attack on Los Angeles directed by AI.
After going undercover in New Asia to find and eliminate Nirmata, the one behind AI advancements, Taylor falls in love with and marries Maya (Gemma Chan), a pro-AI fighter, only to tragically lose both her and their unborn child when the mission ends.
Years later, Taylor is recruited by the army again upon learning that Maya is alive and that Nirmata is about to release their ultimate weapon, which is capable of winning the war for the AI.
And so Taylor goes back to New Asia with the goal of finding Maya and eliminating the weapon, only to find that said weapon is a young child, who he names Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).
Disobeying orders to destroy her, Taylor takes the girl with him to try and find Maya, with a growing bond quickly emerging between the two.

Taylor’s role in this story is a familiar one but still well-written and acted.

As I have said, the story of The Creator is nothing new.
Humanity fighting AI and that AI supposedly using our weapons against us has been a concept since The Terminator.
Along with this, a man protecting a little girl in a dystopian world, with a father-daughter bond slowly emerging between the two, has been a big trend in all kinds of media ever since The Last of Us.

Taylor’s bond with Alphie grows over the movie.

Despite The Creator’s familiarity, the story is still solid with a few twists on the trends to keep things interesting, like that the AI is supported by an entire country, which the United States is fighting against.
As for the growing bond between Taylor and Alphie, it is very well done with both Washington and Voyles giving great performances.
Where this movie truly shines, though, is in its visuals.
The Creator was made with only a budget of eighty million dollars and that is incredibly impressive when you compare it to many hundred million plus movies, which have much weaker effects.
While watching The Creator, there was only point where I consciously thought, yeah, that’s CGI.
Otherwise, ever single effect in this movie looked real to me, especially the AI’s.

The AI honestly reminded me of the motion capture for the *Planet of the Apes* trilogy because of how realistic they looked

These spectacular visuals alone make the film worth seeing, even if the storyline is nothing original.
Overall, The Creator is a solid film backed by spectacular sci-fi visuals.
I look forward to seeing what Gareth Edwards does next.

Eternals Review: This Should Have Been a Series.

A common criticism I have heard of the latest film in the MCU, Eternals, is that it would have worked better as a series.
Well, after watching the film, I can wholeheartedly say that I agree with this sentiment.
Directed by Chloé Zhao, the film follows the titular Eternals, immortal superpowered beings, created by the Celestial Arishem to defend earth from monsters known as the Deviants.
They consist of Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Thena (Angelena Jolie), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Makarri (Lauren Ridloff), and Ajak (Salma Hayak).
Yes, that is 10 Eternals you have to keep track of.

*Eternals* has way too many characters for a single movie where they are all introduced.

This would not be a problem if Eternals was like an Avengers movie, with each of the Eternals having their own solo film, so you knew who they were when they came together for this film.
It would also not be a problem if, as much of the criticism has stated, Eternals was a show instead.
But Eternals is neither of these things.
This is a two and half hour movie that introduces ten super heroes in quick succession and expects us to care about all of them, even when some of them have zero character development.
The worst example of this is Ridloff’s Makkari.
We know exactly three things about her character, she’s deaf, she has super speed, and sort of has a thing going on with Druig.
That’s it.
There is nothing else to her as a character because the film just does not focus on her because it spends time trying to make you care about the other Eternals, most of which do not have the proper screen time to make us care about them either.

Many characters in the *Eternals* suffer from a lack of development but Makkari suffers the most by far.

To be fair, there are a few of the Eternals I did come to care about, like Phastos, Druig and Thena.
However, even though I did like them, this was nowhere near the amount of care that it could have been because, again, there were too many characters to focus on.
If they were so deadset on Eternals being a movie then they should have cut back on the characters, so they could get enough development that we as the audience would care about all of them.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the characters that suffer in this movie but also the plot, with numerous side stories just not fitting in.
The biggest of these is the Deviant storyline, which starts off important but, by the end, I wondered why it was still even a part of the narrative.
Then there’s Kit Harrington’s role, which is more of a teaser for future MCU films than anything else.
My final criticism is that there’s parts of this movie that were unintentionally funny.
I remember one point in the film when a background character said something so deadpan, only to die immediately after saying it, and this made me burst into laughter, which was certainly not the reaction Zhao wanted.
Although, I will say that while there are some bits that are unintentionally funny, there’s also some bits of good intentional humor as well, mostly with Kugo and his valet, Karun (Harish Patel).
Along with this, I did like some of the twists and turns the story took.
The acting across the board was also pretty good.

I did like where the story took Ikaris’ character.

There was a lot of potential with Eternals.
It’s just that this potential was crushed under the weight of what felt like a street performer juggling too many characters and plot points.
Eternals would have been better as a series.
If it had been one, it would have given enough time for all of the characters to be properly developed, side stories could be fleshed out without feeling pointless, and it might have just worked out into a cohesive narrative.
Instead, what we got was easily one of the MCU’s weakest films.
Hopefully, future Eternals films will improve on this.