Trakt for iOS
Works on iPhone and iPad.
There are ratings before the release? Damn the time travelers are busy.
What an incredible, incredible movie.
I'll need some time to properly digest it and I think it deserves at least a 2nd vision to notice other details, words, glances and gestures because so much is said without using spoken words.
It is a stunning journey through grief and growth, with a very peculiar (for us Westerners at least, I feel) pace: slow, for sure, but also contemplative. It felt like being able to embark on the journey with the characters, thanks to their willingness to listen; I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but in a U.S. movie I would have expected rage, emotions bursting, maybe crying - which for me if not done properly, disrupt the rhythm of the tale and sort of wake you up from your identifying with the people on screen. Here I felt characters internalized, reflected on the moments that shaked their core, allowing us to reflect with them.
Furthermore, the fact that little actually happens, allows to take the proper time to hear the characters, let them explain themselves slowly and not always with words - which I found a superb way to depict a human in a multifaceted way.
There are at least a couple of scenes I found remarkable: the dinner, the 3 people journey in the car and the (almost) final scene where sign language conveys emotion and the meaning of the moment in a better way than any speech.
Beautiful hand-drawn animations, British and Irish accents, a story of two young girls' friendship with a dash of folklore and magic. What's not to like?
Wolflwalkers tells a story of a young wannabe hunter willing to take on her father's occupation as passion to eradicate the wolves from the jungle. But little does she know that the tales of people who can take a wolf form by night are true and she is going to cross paths with one such girl.
Young kids have an amazing ability to correct their worldview in light of new evidence and compassion. God knows by what time we lose that ability and become rigid adults. With the same passion as she wanted to hunt the wolves, she wants to save them later and that transformation of her character is a journey worth watching.
It is a story of Robyn, who updates her worldview, but that is true about Mebh too. The younger, and also more feral among to two, Mebh takes time to trust Robyn, but even then her affinity towards her pack is beyond everything else.
The story comes from Irish folklore and the voice actors keep the story rooted in the soil. This is actually a third and final installment of Irish folklore stories by director Tomm Moore. Moore's previous films include The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). I will check out the other two some time.
The hand-drawn animations reminded me of Spirited Away (2001), a Studio Ghibli classic, and even the childhood classics like Samurai Jack. It is different from a Hollywood animations and brings in a mood well suited for a children's art book.
Recommended.
Will be really interesting to see how this is gonna be received here in the west. It's a weird one. Couldn't help myself to actually feel disappointed after the credits rolled, and a lot of people in the audience felt the same way. It's super vague, the story jumps constantly, new ideas and (seemingly) new plotlines are constantly opened but never resolved. It's confusing. And because of this, I just never really cared about any of the characters. Which is something that usually never happens to me in a Ghibli film...no emotional attachement whatsoever. After sleeping over it and reading some reviews and interepretations from Japan, I can accept and respect the film much more now. It's a supposedly final goodbye from Miyazaki, a potpourrie of his ideas and visions, a micro-history of Ghibli itself. It's fine. But it's not for me and probably a lot of other people. But that's okay.
