An appreciation of Spirited Away from SF Gate columnist Mark Morford. I couldn't have said it better than this had I tried:

After all, this is not dumbed-down feel-good "My Little Pony" smarm. This ain't Britney giggling in a bad tube top in "Crossroads." This is not a simplistic reductive self-righteous politically correct stiffly moral universe with wacky celebrity voices and lots of goofy spastic talking animals.

This is "Monsters, Inc." as blasted through a wry kaleidoscope and blessedly stripped of Billy Crystal and then shot through a Robert Anton Wilson novel. This is "Alice in Wonderland" with better acid, scary and strange and beautiful and warped and deliciously non-Christian, with witches and spirits and dragons and all sorts of wondrous sacrilegious magic the likes of which makes the Kansas state school board shudder and faint.

And oh dear God, how necessary and invaluable this kind of movie is right now. [read all]