The Similarities Between Several Movies by Hayao Miyazaki

At different times throughout the semester, Ms. Chiang showed us movies by a man named Hayao Miyazaki. Mr. M's name takes such a long time to type that from this point forward he will be refered to as Mr. M. The movies we have watched included Spirited Away, My Neighbor, Totoro, and Princess Mononoke. They are all animated, anime-style movies directed by Mr. M.

I was no present at school at the time of the showing of My Neighbor, Totoro, so the movie descriptions below will only include Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke.

These movies are strangely similar to each other in more ways than one. As Ms. Chiang noted in class, both of the ones I've seen have had large blobs in them. In one movie there were very large and roundish tears. In another there were many blobs of black ooze. All of these blobs looked similar to each other. I wonder if they are related. Then again, I'm not used to trying to determine the facial features of blobs of liquid.

The animals, in both movies, were very detailed. They were so detailed that you could see the warts and hairs on the pigs' snouts. Now that I think about it, pigs played a large part in both of the movies I saw. That could be another similarity. The music in both movies was also similar. I would not be surprised if the same composer wrote the music for both of them.

These movies had many similarities, some well disguised. When watching them back-to-back, it would be easy for one to recognize that they were made by the same man.

Movie Review

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As the title suggests, this is about two movies we watched in Ms. Chiang's class. If you are a person who's presentation will be discussed below, and you are weak of heart and would not like to hear things that could potentially be criticism (no guarantees), then I advise you to click here to skip this and read a very interesting story about four people who have an odd craving to kill one of their own.

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Watching these movies effected me in more ways than one. Waking Life informed me about many different theories and ideas that have been formed over the years. I now know more of what people think of life, death, and everything in between. For example, there was one theory about a "mental pool" in which everyone in the world can access everyone else's thoughts, subconsciously of course. I have heard about this theory before and this movie explained it to me in greater detail.

I like how the director put everything together in the way he did, even though it made it hard to understand when watching it for the first time. The animation was a bit confusing, but it was an interesting style. It contributed to the idea of the entire movie being a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream .

Conversely, after watching Eternal Sunshine, I realized that I had not gotten much out of it. It was entertaining and had its funny moments, but that seemed to be all it could offer. However, the moral of the story is something worth examining. I think that the lesson is to "treasure what you have". I came to this conclusion because when the man was in the process of giving up his memories he changed his mind. However, his decision came too late to save his memories of the woman he loved.

Another moral could be "do not act impulsively". The woman said that she was probably being impulsive when she erased the man from her memory. The story could also have the moral of "if once you don't succeed, try, try again." Even though both the man and woman had forgotten everything about each other, they fell in love again. In the end of the movie they both found out about their previous relationship and how it had gone sour. Even with this knowledge they still decided to stay together and try again.

Both of these movies have been good entertainment for me. I am not exactly sure how they will tie into the rest of the presentation. If the movies had been introduced better and their significance to the Research Project explained, I am sure that I could have gotten more out of watching the movie. I hope to see a relationship between the movies and the rest of the presentations when presenting time actually comes.