Highly enjoyable genre mixture of contemporary anti-sprawl parable, supernatural whimsey and just a little 'epic samurai' for good measure. Two tribes of Raccoon-Dogs fight to stop a Tokyo Suburb from completely annexing their ancient forest. The movie is not as much as a screed as if this were made in the West, and adopts and interestingly balanced 'live and let live' approach to things. Laced with a lot of humour, covering the gamut from slapstick, to potty humour, to sly satire and to quite subtle irony. It's laced an equal balance of wonder (The spirit parade is magnificent) and melancholy; with all the death and destruction on display consider this a primer for Takahata's devastating Grave of the Fireflies, which…

Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko (1994)

9/10

First of all: why the FUCK is this listed as a 2005 release, sorry AMUHRICA, but you are not the king of the world. On the other hand, what a great movie! This was something I totally didn't expect from Ghibli: it's intelligent, exciting and informative at the same time, I hadn't seen so many Yokai creatures since the days I watched Ge Ge No Kitaro on television! It's beautifully animated, with a great sense of motion, and even if all the characters are raccoons they are so individualized in terms of what they say, how they look and the way they act, that you feel that you are watching a live action film…

Telling the story of shapeshifting raccoons who struggle to survive when their forest is threatened by urban development, Pom Poko is a film that is very clear about its message. It means to make an important issue accessible for young audiences and old, while making the desperate plight of the animals something that we can relate to.

Tonally, it’s a little uneven. Pom Poko switches between lighthearted whimsy and a more serious darkness rather frequently. This is a bit of an uncomfortable blend for much of the film and it’s difficult to really get a sense of the film’s attitude towards its characters. It introduces many racoons, perhaps too many to really get to know any of their personalities particularly…

There hasn't been a Studio Ghibli film yet that I've been actively disappointed by, and this 1994 film from Isao Takahata is no different. Most Ghibli films tend to contain some kind of environmental message, but usually it's presented mainly as subtext. This film moves that focus right up to the forefront, as the narrative follows a group of shape-shifting raccoons who decide to fight back against the humans' plans to destroy their forests. To use a shallow comparison, it's like a Japanese version of Over The Hedge, without the forced pop culture humor and celebrity voices. That 2006 DreamWorks film also didn't have anatomically-correct raccoons, who at various times throughout the story use their "raccoon pouches" as parachutes and…

If I could have given this 0 stars I would have, this is 1 of the worst films I've ever seen. The entire raccoon race is made to seem stupid, greedy, lazy and even violent right from the beginning, making rooting for them difficult. There are too many characters that look basically the same and most of them have no character development and could be eliminated easily without effecting the film too much.

The plot is woeful consisting of an initial problem followed by 90 minutes of bumblingly attempting random schemes to fix it. Most of the decisions made aren't given any real reason to have been and so many of the problems they encounter seem to just come from…