Rhapsody Of Childhood Tugs Heartstrings | My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Sisters connect with elusive woodland spirits

Dir. Hayao Miyazaki 

A classic, hand-drawn animation from Studio Ghibli about a family pulling through trying times, Totoro looks at the challenges faced by a young, growing family, as seen through the eyes of sisters Satsaki and Mei, while progressively layering elements of magical realism from the woodlands outside Tokyo, including a fair number of kawaii spirits and fantastical creatures, all which conspire to tug at the heart with nostalgia (for a childhood memory? a more innocent time?) seemingly out of reach, yet occasionally grasped in unexpected flashes of inspiration.   

Fervent Confession Of Faith | Silence (2016)

 Jesuit priest Sebastiao Rodrigues' beliefs are tried, but to what end? 

Dir. Martin Scorsese

Basing himself on the homonymous 1966 Shusaku Endo novel, Scorsese, with the intimate tone of a confession, takes the persecution of Portuguese Christian missionaries (and Japanese converts) in Edo-period Japan as his focus, delivering a cinematic tour de force that wrestles with the seeming silence of a higher power in the face of rampant atrocities, but, by eschewing answers in favor of fervent self-questioning to explore issues of faith, leaves open whether or not protagonist padre Sebastiao Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) truly apostatized at tales' end.

Real-Life Remake Shines | Ghost In The Shell (2017)

Will humanity be lost post-singularity?

Dir. Rupert Sanders

This true-to-the-original live-action remake reveals how ahead of its time the anime it was based on was in dealing with the theme of man's inevitable merging with machine.