Mirai

This movie has some nice and heartfelt moments, especially those that take place, shall we say, "outside the real world". However, it also has some moments when the main male protagonist, with his spoiled shrillness, literally made my blood boil. I thought to myself that watching such a child is probably the best form of contraception. The best character is clearly the great-grandfather who was in the war, although the stay-at-home dad also gained a lot of sympathy from me. Still, I did not have as strong an experience as I would have expected for a production by Mamoru Hosoda. Also, the visuals were not nearly as breathtaking (except perhaps for the black train near the end) as I would have liked. 6,8/10 (10/02/2019)

A delicately, sensitively, and empathetically-told story from the point of view of a four-year-old boy, whose parents have another child. The parents are forced to pay plenty of attention to the new child, which the former boy dislikes and therefore falls into various time and fantasy levels, where various members of his family from the ancient past and the near future help him cope with this new situation. This is a beautifully made film with emphasis on the poetics of familiar events from family life, originally spiced with children's imagination and presented nostalgically, touchingly and amusingly. The protagonist sometimes unnecessarily screams too much and is annoying to the point of being unsympathetic, but this is also the only fundamental compliant I have about the film. (13/10/2018)