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What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 28122
The Boy and The Beast
So I'm at this point pretty confident that Mamoru Hosoda is cinema's best kept secret. And I don't mean the best kept secret in the way experimental or arthouse auteurs are well kept secrets, destined to only ever be of interest to niche audiences. No, Hosoda is making these beautiful, lively, intelligent and - most importantly - totally accessible films and yet remains barely known outside Japan. Imagine Pixar's best films were relegated to one-off festival screenings and small DVD/Blu-Ray releases. That's basically what's happening with Hosoda's films - if they were English language, I'd imagine they'd be celebrated far more vocally by critics and audiences alike.
The Boy and The Beast doesn't quite match the heights of Hosoda's previous two masterpieces, Wolf Children and Summer Wars - it suffers a little from an overbusy script. But it is still on a totally different level to pretty much all mainstream animation these days. Visually, it is astounding - some of the most beautiful and articulate images you'll come across in modern animation (it helps that it looks gloriously expensive in a way much modern anime simply does not).
Thematically, it's rich - playing like a sort of companion piece to Wolf Children. That was an exploration of the joys and challenges of motherhood - this moves to fatherhood but, perhaps more interestingly, non-traditional parents and guardians as well. It features some familiar tropes and ideas, but has a tendency to explore them in depth and pushes them beyond the expected 'end point' (what one would imagine would serve as the climax actually proves a segue into the real final act).
Hosoda probes the emotions and themes with genuine conviction, even if the plot sometimes gets muddled due to the layers of lore and 'dual world' conceit at the film's centre. But it is also brilliantly funny, with wonderfully imaginative and directed set pieces dotted throughout. For everything that's generally familiar (and the core story can be reasonably formulaic), it's countered by a fresh or imaginative take on the material. Mostly, however, this is a whipsmart, artfully crafted film that, if there was any justice, would enjoy a much wider audience than it will.
Special mention for Hosoda's second collaboration with composer Masakatsu Takagi after the stunning Wolf Children. The soundtrack manages to perfectly capture the film's action thrills and emotional beats, but at the very same time boasts surprisingly tricky, dense compositions that helps make them much more interesting:
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Join Date:Posts: 30475
johnny_ultimate wrote: »The Boy and The Beast
So I'm at this point pretty confident that Mamoru Hosoda is cinema's best kept secret. And I don't mean the best kept secret in the way experimental or arthouse auteurs are well kept secrets, destined to only ever be of interest to niche audiences. No, Hosoda is making these beautiful, lively, intelligent and - most importantly - totally accessible films and yet remains barely known outside Japan. Imagine Pixar's best films were relegated to one-off festival screenings and small DVD/Blu-Ray releases. That's basically what's happening with Hosoda's films - if they were English language, I'd imagine they'd be celebrated far more vocally by critics and audiences alike.
The Boy and The Beast doesn't quite match the heights of Hosoda's previous two masterpieces, Wolf Children and Summer Wars - it suffers a little from an overbusy script. But it is still on a totally different level to pretty much all mainstream animation these days. Visually, it is astounding - some of the most beautiful and articulate images you'll come across in modern animation (it helps that it looks gloriously expensive in a way much modern anime simply does not).
Thematically, it's rich - playing like a sort of companion piece to Wolf Children. That was an exploration of the joys and challenges of motherhood - this moves to fatherhood but, perhaps more interestingly, non-traditional parents and guardians as well. It features some familiar tropes and ideas, but has a tendency to explore them in depth and pushes them beyond the expected 'end point' (what one would imagine would serve as the climax actually proves a segue into the real final act).
Hosoda probes the emotions and themes with genuine conviction, even if the plot sometimes gets muddled due to the layers of lore and 'dual world' conceit at the film's centre. But it is also brilliantly funny, with wonderfully imaginative and directed set pieces dotted throughout. For everything that's generally familiar (and the core story can be reasonably formulaic), it's countered by a fresh or imaginative take on the material. Mostly, however, this is a whipsmart, artfully crafted film that, if there was any justice, would enjoy a much wider audience than it will.
Special mention for Hosoda's second collaboration with composer Masakatsu Takagi after the stunning Wolf Children. The soundtrack manages to perfectly capture the film's action thrills and emotional beats, but at the very same time boasts surprisingly tricky, dense compositions that helps make them much more interesting:
Gave that a watch this evening and it's really good, certainly goes in directions I wasn't expecting in the final third. Will keep an eye out for the blu ray release.0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1upC5fFZH20
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