To watch the image of a young girl burbling with laughter as she runs atop cresting waves in “Ponyo” is to be reminded of how infrequently the movies seem to express joy now, how rarely they sweep us ...

I like Japanese anime movies. Most of the time the productions of Studio Ghibli look stunning, have charming stories and characters and make me feel all warm and happy inside. (With the exception of ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... In “Ponyo,” boy meets goldfish. Yes, it’s a love story. From the first moments in which undulating jellyfish make their way across the screen and the score ...

For everyone else, though, “Ponyo” will seem beautiful but surprisingly boring: a children’s film that’s at once overly simplistic and needlessly nonsensical. The hand-drawn images can be wondrous and ...

Writer, author of The Awei Series, and cat foster parent. Her favorite games include Dragon Age, Pokémon, Final Fantasy XIV, Team Ico games, Ōkami, and RPG maker horror games. She also loves pasta and ...

Within the first ten minutes of watching Hayao Miyazaki’s newest film, ”Ponyo,” audiences can already predict what the story will be about. Fish meets boy, fish turns into girl and reunites with boy.

I just saw the most surreal film released under the Walt Disney banner since… I dunno, The Three Caballeros? Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo is strictly a kids film (4-9 years old) and I think they’ll dig it.

While Hurricane Gustav was chewing up Cuba and storming toward Louisiana, the screen of the Venice Film Festival’s Sala Grande was showing a very sweet tsunami. In the animated movie Ponyo on the ...