31 Witches | Kiki

"We can fly with our spirit." -- Kiki, Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

34 Movies I Missed Seeing from 2014

It's time again to run through and rank all the movies from last year that I saw. I'll be doing that over the next couple of weeks, but first: here's the traditional post of movies that I wanted to see from last year, but haven't yet. That's partly to explain why some movies didn't make it into the rankings, but it's also to build a watch list for myself.

This year, work was crazy during the fall and leading up to the holidays, so I didn't get out to the theater as much as I usually do. The Missed List typically has around 20-30 movies on it, but this time there are 34 that I need to catch up on in 2015. I still saw more than I missed though, so I'm happy about that. We'll start on those in the next day or two.

For now, here's the Missed List, more or less in the order that the movies were released:

1. The Wind Rises



Hayao Miyazaki's last film. I'm a fan of Miyazaki and have seen all his feature films since Castle in the Sky, but I'm not a superfan and The Wind Rises is different enough from his fantastical stuff that I didn't rush to see it. Going to correct that soon though.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel



I experience mixed results from Wes Anderson, but I very much enjoyed Moonrise Kingdom and what I hear about Grand Budapest Hotel makes me think it's even more in my wheelhouse from its cast and setting to its themes and the way it's shot. I love hotels and stories set in them, but there's also that whole Upstairs Downstairs/Downton Abbey angle of telling stories of both the servants and the served.

3. Joe



I would love to like Nicolas Cage in a movie again and if I can't get National Treasure 3, this seems like the way to do it.

4. Locke



A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have been the least bit interested in a movie that's set entirely in a car with a dude on the phone. But I do dig Tom Hardy and I'm curious about the mystery of where he's driving to.

5. Chef



This is mostly about the cast and Favreau as a director, but I also love some nicely shot food porn.

Dobutsu Takarajima, aka Animal Treasure Island (1971)

Who's In It: Nobody you know, but one of the animators is Hayao Miyazaki in pre-Ghibli days.

What's It About: A boy and his best friend, a mouse, team up with the granddaughter of Captain Flint to find the dead pirate's treasure before the anthropomorphic pig Silver and his gang of bumbling animal pirates do.

How Is It: Frankly, I wasn't expecting much, but sometimes I like watching old, crappy animated versions of classic stories and if I can't hack it, I just turn it off. But even though Miyazaki was only one of the many animators who worked on it, Dobutsu Takarajima has a lot to appeal to fans of the legendary director.

It's a very loose adaptation of Stevenson's book. It takes Jim (no last name in this version) and gets him the map in much the same way as he does in the novel, but then has him strike off on his treasure hunt alone except for his friend Gran and his stowaway baby brother. There's no Dr. Livesy, no Squire Trelawney, no Captain Smollet or Mr. Arrow. Jim and Company run into Silver at sea, get taken to Pirate Island where they're enslaved with Kathy, the granddaughter of Captain Flint, and the race is on to see who can control the map and find the treasure first.

Most of the animal designs are simple and not terribly inventive, but the three humans (Jim, Kathy, and Jim's brother) are strong. And whatever the movie lacks in character design, it makes up in backgrounds and sheer animation. There's a lot of imagination in the look of the world.

The jokes are all over the place from ridiculously slapsticky to legitimately inspired, but I chuckled a lot and my 12-year-old son couldn't stop laughing. Dobutsu Takarajima isn't classic animation, but it's much more than the cheap kids cartoon I anticipated and very recommended for Miyazaki fans.

Rating: Three out of five piratical pigs.