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Your Name 「君の名は」　was a big hit in Japan last year. It was close to dethroning Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, as the most successful anime in the land of anime. The writer/director, Makoto Shinkai, is well regarded as an anime director himself. He’s done some very notable anime particularly 5 Centimeters Per Second, so the success of this film isn’t surprising. If you watch it you’ll know why you’ll be surprised.

The film starts off as a body-switching tale. The male protagonist, Taki, wakes up in the body of Mitsuha. He’s out of place not only in body but in setting. He’s a city boy of Tokyo. She lives in the country. Little does he know that she wakes up in his body. Slowly they get to know that these things are happening and they begin to work around their limitations. She gets him a date with the hot senpai at work. He makes a mess of her hair. Eventually, affection develops between the two such that he wants to see her live.

Then there comes a twist, which I don’t want to spoil, but needless to say the film changes direction. It goes into some action mode and some sadness that had me thinking that I don’t want it to end that way.

I really dug this kind of movie. I did like 5 cm/s, but this is on a whole another level. It does rival Spirited Away with its themes and all. I like that Shinkai is romantic. I like that in my anime. I wish you should see this classic. It didn’t get an Oscar nomination, because Funamation, the distributor, really botched this roll out. The film has been out there since last fall, but they didn’t show it except for a small showing to qualify for the Oscars. It should’ve been a bigger movie in the US. I hope you get to see it sometime.

4 of 5 stars.

Sometimes you want to watch a movie as brainless as a big, giant, hairy ape. Kong: Skull Island is just the sort of movie, and it is literally a big, giant, hairy ape. Brainless, though? The film was, but Kong not so much.

Kong: Skull Island situates itself in the early 70s after the US withdraws from the debacle in Vietnam. Yet, not all are happy about it. Samuel L. Jackson’s Lt. Col. Packard is disgusted with the ending of the only thing he knows to do — fight an enemy. When he is given a chance of escorting a scientific mission with his air cavalry corps, he relishes the opportunity. He’s not ready to go back to America where his sense of worth would be questioned and the duty and honor of being a military man is left in the rice paddies of Vietnam to die.

So, Monarch, a name familiar to latest US Godzilla fans, recruits Jackson and they fly off to a mist shrouded island in the middle of the pacific to conduct “scientific experiments” mapping the last unmappable place on the planet. They do so by dropping bombs which scare up all kinds of denizens of the island least of which is King Kong. Kong is not alone. There’s a bunch of lizard-esque creatures. And like the latest Godzilla, Kong is force of nature meant to balance the evil of it all.

Yet, it is Jackson’s crew that take a pounding. By scaring up Kong, he kicks their asses. And in losing, Jackson becomes Ahab and Kong Moby Dick. Jackson will suffer nothing to destroy the beast that destroyed his men even though said men just want to get home. “Dear Billy, we be battling’ a tall ape!” Everyone wants home, but not Jackson.

In the end, it’s man versus the beast versus the lizard-esque creatures versus nature. It is such a mess that you should go along for the ride. But realize, it’s one hodgepodge of a film with many things going on. I didn’t even get to Charles C. Reilly’s cool stranded pilot or whatever it was Oscar winner, Brie Larson, was doing. Just behold Samuel L. Jackson chewing scenery.

3 of 5 stars.