Princess Mononoke

Tonight we had a double feature, and The Younger Son picked this movie to watch next. We have seen Princess Mononoke (a 1997 Hayao Miyazaki film) as part of our desire to become more familiar with anime, but it's been a while. We like this one; so do other people apparently, since I've seen it on several lists of favorite anime films and top-10 lists. This time we started off using Japanese language with English subtitles for fun but switched back to English when the subtitles were too hard to read against the picture.

Here's the trailer:


Roger Ebert calls it a "great film" and says it "is a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year." Salon.com praises it. BBC calls it "A mythic epic" "Unusual in its subtlety". Moria says it's "utterly dazzling". Moria gives it high praise. Anime Critic calls it "a wondrous work". StompTokyo:

the technical virtuosity of Mononoke is beyond anything he's ever done before, and the scope of the story is beyond that of all but a few films ever made, animated or live-action, Japanese or American

6/19/2009: The Younger Son and I watched this again tonight, this time sharing it with The Husband and The Daughter seeing it for the first time. Everybody likes this one.