Popular reviews

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  Review by k(arst)en ★★★★½

  feels weirdly satisfying to watch fireflies, a thesis statement for what ghibli as a studio aimed to tell stories about, and then follow it up with the wind rises, which feels like a conclusion/reflection on those themes. obviously done by two different filmmakers, but they share a lot. hard to summarize all of what i’m feeling about this at the crisp hour of 1am, minutes after finishing this. but i’m initially just very over the moon about how real the love, both for the people and for the craft, comes through. really proves how much more effective animation can be at doing realism than live-action. the hand holding…get out of town

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  Review by brat pacino ★★★★½ 6

  suggests that dreaming is pragmatic because it’s the only way forward, that finding the beauty in the everyday rebuffs the hideousness of war and disaster, and that sometimes all a guy needs are his planes and his girl 😃

  most likely would’ve cried if watched alone in theaters and not in friend’s living room 😃

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★★½

  "Humanity dreams of flight, but the dream is cursed. Aircraft are destined to become tools for slaughter and destruction."

  I'm not a Miyazai expert. I still haven't seen several of his early films, and I've been pretty mixed on most of his recent stuff. But I thought this was an absolute masterpiece about how the perfection we seek to achieve in life is only really attainable in dreams -- or, on rare occasions, in art.

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  Review by Jim Cummings ★★★★★ 7

  The strongest and most impressively complex animation craftsmanship I’ve seen.
  The movement and physics are so realistic.
  I want to crawl into this film and live.

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  Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★★★ 53

  God bless him, Hayao really loves his planes. I wish I did too.

  Reminds me a lot of First Man, in the sense that it's an extremely well-made and well-directed biopic with a subject matter I couldn't care less about and couldn't get emotionally invested in no matter how hard I tried. The story picks up in the second half and the ending is good but this isn't something I intend on ever revisiting.

  Did it deserve the Oscar over Frozen? Fucking obviously.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★★ 4

  "Planes are dreams. Cursed dreams, waiting for the sky to swallow them up."

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★★ 11

  (or "Jiro Dreams of Mitsubishi")... unspeakably beautiful & bittersweet. Miyazaki may have saved the best for last.

  major looooolz to any critic who thinks the film brushes over the destructive ends to which the planes Jiro created are used.

  full review tk.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 16

  89/100

  Like Kubrick, Welles, Ford, Malick, and many other capital-G Great directors, you'd be hard pressed to come to an agreement on Miyazaki's finest film. They're all so aching with feeling - a universal past laced with eventual adulthood and the unbearable beauty of fantasy - but each singular in voice and tone. Everyone has a favorite, and in the case of The Wind Rises, the highest compliment that I could give it is that, one day, it could be MY Miyazaki; a film swept up by elemental pleasures and a haunting depiction of the passage of time that borders on the ethereal. It dances with the wind, building an evocative and gentle romance, which is almost Sirkian, around a complex study of the dreams we have and where they lead. Its lyrical pleasures climb towards a final scene, a piece engrained in the panethon of whispered love, to which we should bow to.

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  Review by iana ★★★★★ 13

  wait fuck this might be my film of the decade

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  Review by lauren ★★★ 1

  can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?

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  Review by Erik 🎼 ★★★★

  very serious, heavy themes going on that i wasn’t expecting. the wig rises.

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★½

  hayao miyazaki. that's my emotional support director right there