week 1: a studio ghibli double feature + first cow
It’s the first week of movies! Going forward, I plan to post these newsletters on Sundays. Usually the Sunday newsletter will be 2/3 recap/review of the previous week’s movies and then 1/3 preview of the coming week of what is to be watched. Since this is the first week and I haven’t watched the films discussed below yet, this newsletter is basically just a preview and to get the ball rolling. So, without further ado, the movies for July 19-July 25 are: Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Spirited Away (2001), and First Cow (2020)
Most of us know Studio Ghibli. The Japanese animation film studio was co-founded by director Hayao Miyazaki in the mid 80s and has been releasing films more or less every other year since. I feel like a lot of Ghibli films are childhood classics for millennials. I know a bunch of people with fond memories of My Neighbor Totoro (1988), one of the studio’s earliest films. I’m not sure what was my first encounter with a Ghibli movie, but I do have a memories of watching Castle in the Sky (1986) and Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) on DVD in the early 2000s and even seeing Spirited Away (2001) in theaters!
Back in mid May, I decided I needed a movie that would function like comfort food so I put on Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and it was PERFECT. It’s sweet, funny, romantic, charming, serious, at times gritty and a bit scary, a searing indictment of war and violence and what we lose along the way, and lastly it just has a lot of heart. Plus super great music! According to wikipedia, ten years after making it Miyazaki considered the movie his favorite and he said, "I wanted to convey the message that life is worth living, and I don't think that's changed," which honestly really moved me back in May. The movie is about a war and the challenges of life, but there is a nice message of hope in it. I hadn’t seen it in a while, but I remembered enough of the story to know everything would turn out okay in the end. Which is why I thought it would be nice to also revisit other Ghibli classics like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Spirited Away and get the movie equivalent of a little comfort food.
Related:
All the Studio Ghibli movies are streaming on the new HBO Max website where you can choose which language you want to watch movies in, Japanese or English. Also an article from Vulture helped me understand what HBO Max actually is and if I had it, lol.
So when I was making thematic groups from my list of movies, it made sense that the two Studio Ghibli movies would go together, but what about a third movie? I chose First Cow (2020) which I have not seen yet, but am excited about. I grouped it with these two movies because it seems like a quiet film about life and friendship and it centers on food and Ghibli movies, in addition to working like cinematic comfort food, always feature a hell of a lot of delicious food! First Cow is very new and its distribution was disrupted by Covid but its available via most VOD platforms (try to avoid Amazon pls). I’m going to watch it on Wednesday (7/22) through the Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Cinema to support them a little bit. A24, the film’s distributor, has put out a lot of good movies in the past couple years so I have high hopes for First Cow!
Also. I’m really hoping that A24 will do the right thing and give the people (me) what they want which is: the ability to watch Dev Patel (and his beautiful hair) play Sir Gawain in The Green Knight from the comfort (and safety!) of their homes. Currently A24 is dragging their feet on releasing most of their movies that had their in-theater releases delayed by Covid. But here’s hoping they get their act together and take pity on us and give the people one of the TWO promised Dev Patel movies this summer. The other being Armando Iannucci’s Personal History of David Copperfield. Summer 2020 was, among other things, meant to be the summer of Dev Patel in period dramas!!! While we wait, I’ll just be endlessly thinking about this semi-related tweet:
Anyway, Dev Patel tangent over. Here is the full list of movies for the rest of the summer: https://boxd.it/5RiWa Letterboxd tells you where things are streaming/available for rental, you just need to click on the film and go to their individual page. Also please enjoy this amazing tweet featuring images from the BEACH PARTY (!!!) premiere of one of the most amazing classics I included in the list to watch later in the summer: Clueless (1995).
Excited to know what you think of the movies! You can comment on this post or comment to my actual review/response next Sunday. Happy watching friends!
xoxo,
Emma
PS: There are 5 miscellaneous movies that don’t fit into any of the thematic groupings that are just extras to be watched whenever: Knives Out, Booksmart, Miss Juneteenth, Big Night, Phantom Thread