For those parents who find Wonka a touch gaudy, the other big festive family treat is (probably) the last film by master Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki - the director of My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away.
Or maybe not, the BBFC has decided to slap a child unfriendly 12A certificate for "moderate threat, bloody images, brief self-harm."
Crazy. The brief self-harm is the young protagonist hitting himself in the head with a stone, and the blood is what it produces. I don't know but I suspect your under-12s will be able to take it.
The octogenarian Miyazaki is a contradictory figure; a fuddy-duddy progressive, a cantankerous pacifist and a man stuck in his ways. For older readers who can remember How and Out of Town on ITV in the 70s, he's a kind of Jack Hargreaves figure, a believer in traditional values and craftsmanship.
He started out in the 60s doing hand-drawn animation and that's how he'll go out. Though the quality of animation has improved, for over four decades at Studio Ghibli, which he co-founded in 1985, his visual style has remained constant. Each scene looks like the work of a really talented amateur watercolourist. Everything billows: the clouds, the forests, the tree-covered hills.
The Japanese title “How Do I Live” is taken from a 1937 coming-of-age novel but apart from a single reference, Miyazaki's script ignores its plot.
Set during the Second World War, it spins out a familiar Ghibli fantasy about a child moved out into the countryside, who discovers a hidden, secret world in a derelict building. The story includes many autobiographical elements, as well as aspects of Ghibli's classics Grave Of The Fireflies, My Neighbour Totoro and, especially Spirited Away.
After the death of his mother in a firebombing of the hospital where she works, a young boy is sent to live with his aunt far from the city. This aunt looks exactly like his mother and the father is planning to marry her having already knocked her up.
The kid feels alienated in his new surroundings and is hassled by a heron. Exploring a derelict building in the countryside he stumbles into a strange magical kingdom stuck between the living and the dead.
There's certainly magic contained within its 124 minutes, but might I dare venture that the plot is just a series of events slung together with little narrative or thematic cohesion?
It's one of those rare times when you feel let down that it isn’t all a dream.
Certificate 12A Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Starring Soma Santomi, Masaki Suda, Aimyon. Japanese subtitled version/ Robert Pattinson, Christian Bale and Gemma Chan. Dubbed English version. In cinemas Boxing Day. 124 mins.
Go to www.half-man-half-critic.weebly.com for a review of Godzilla Minus One.
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