Omohide poro poro/Only Yesterday (1991)

A few days ago, I read that director Isao Takahata died.  Takahata co-founded Studio Ghibli along with Hayao Miyazaki.  The article pointed out something that I hadn’t considered before: Miyazaki tended to direct more fantastical movies whereas Takahata tended to direct more realistic ones.

In fact, Only Yesterday seems like something The Hallmark Channel might air, even if only on a superficial level.  The movie is about a woman living in a big city with a comfortable job.  She goes on vacation to a small town, where she finds that small-city life isn’t so bad.  The events of the movie force her to confront who she really is.  She even meets a potential love interest that she spends most of the movie not being overtly interested in romantically.

Taeko is actually visiting her brother-in-law’s family.  She wants to get away for a while, but has no real plans of staying there permanently.  She’s just trying to get away from city life by helping out with a safflower harvest.  While there, a lot of memories from her childhood resurface.  She has no idea why.

The movie is a little unusual in that it doesn’t seem to be aimed at children.  Taeko seems like a normal young girl.  She has trouble with fractions.  She’s maybe a little awkward around boys.  She even stresses out at being one of the few children not going on vacation for the summer.

The unusual part comes in that the movie deals with puberty and the onset of menstruation.  It’s mentioned as something that a young girl would be concerned about.  It’s not really explained in graphic detail, but it is something for parents to be aware of.  From what I’ve read, that’s what kept Disney from releasing it in America.  (GKIDS had to be the one to distribute it here.)

I didn’t really feel uncomfortable with the references.  The story focused on Taeko and her trip, for the most part.  It seems to be about her coming to terms with her life choices.  She’s used to big-city life, but is it really what she wants?  She’s single, but doesn’t seem set against a relationship.  (She does resist a little when people bring up dating.)

I would say that the movie is more for adults.  It should be safe for those 13 and above, but there might be some uncomfortable questions due to talk of puberty and dating.  It’s nothing that would scar a child, but you might want to be prepared to answer questions on basic reproduction.


IMDb page

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

A few months ago, my mother found out about a program called Moviepass.  It allows you to watch movies, in a theater, for $9.95 per month.  It’s somewhat complicated and the details really aren’t important right now.  What’s important was that my parents and I all signed up last week.  Our first movie?  Murder on the Orient Express.  We needed something that we’d all agree on, which basically meant this or The Man Who Invented Christmas.

The movie is based on the Agatha Christie novel, as you might expect.  It starts with Hercule Poirot in Jerusalem solving a crime by proving it wasn’t any of the three main suspects.  He ends up on the Orient Express through a friend that works on the train.  It isn’t long before the train finds itself snowed in…and with a murder victim.

You’d think it would be easy.  The train is trapped between towns, making escape difficult.  It should just be a matter of figuring out who’s connected to the victim.  Well, it turns out that most of the other passengers had some connection to him.  You see, Edward Ratchett kidnapped a child who subsequently died.  If a suspect didn’t know the child, they at least knew someone who knew the child or the family.  What we get is a moderate procedural.  Poirot asks questions of the suspects and gathers clues.  At the end of the movie, he’s able to gather everyone together and work out the solution.

Having the movie on a train does make for cramped quarters.  Everyone has a room and a narrow hallway to pass each other.  This makes for the use of a few overhead shots.  There were also a few times where I noticed the use of a wide-angle lens.  (It tended to be evident as much with motion as it did with people sitting on the edge of the frame.)

The pacing seemed a little slow to me.  It’s not to say that it dragged at all, but there were times that I was wondering when the next bit of action was coming.  I don’t know that anything could have been cut.  It just seemed drawn out.  I think this has more to do with what I’m used to than anything else.  The accents tended to be more of a problem for me.  There were one or two scenes where subtitles might have helped, but it didn’t really stop me from following the movie.

I think this is one of those movies that most people will be able to judge for themselves whether or not they’ll like it.  Agatha Christie is well known, as are many of the actors.  There didn’t seem to be many surprises.  From what I’ve read, the movie follows the novel pretty closely with one or two exceptions.  I would say that if you do go to see the movie, it’s probably going to be either because you like Christie or you’re going to see it with a group, like I did.  Not being someone who’s read her work, I’d say that it’s middle of the road.  It’s enjoyable, but had it not been for Moviepass, I probably would have waited for this movie to become available on Netflix.

IMDb page