MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (2001)
This unusual Japanese film is arguably the most original and affecting movie yet from the Japanese director Satoshi Kon, whose other credits include Tokyo Godfathers and the wigged-out TV series Paranoia Agent. The title character here is Chiyoko Fujiwara, an ancient and reclusive film actress who consents to a rare filmed interview with her biggest fan, Genya Tachibana, a documentarian who once saved her life on a film set when he was a boy. As the actress, guided by the heavy-set, worshipful Tachibana, goes over the events of her life and career, they become inextricably mixed with scenes from her films and with Tachibana's own memories. (He sees himself as her devoted protector.) The film has some similarities to Kon's first feature, Perfect Blue, but without the murder-thriller plotting, and the violence and sexual nastiness that have stuck Kon with a reputation as Mister Kink. What's left is a dream about the movies and how they shape the memories and lives of those who make them, and those who watch them.
TOY STORY 2 (1999)
The third film from Pixar, which credits Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich as co-directors alongside the busy John Lasseter, is one of those rare sequels that actually deepens and enriches the original. Partly this is just because the technology had already made great strides in the four years since the first Toy Story changed the face of animation. The visages of the human characters were no longer a freakishly hideous roadblock to enjoying what the computer animators were always able to accomplish when creating characters (toys, insects) with the appearance of hard plastic surfaces. By the time of Toy Story 2, their ability to play with the human form had improved to the point that they were able to cariacture it: the movie's villain, the fat, infantile collector (voice, inevitably, by Wayne Knight) who thinks that toys are for "appreciating" and profiteering (as opposed to being played with) is the nastiest, funniest potshot ever taken at geekdom from within the confines of a movie that might have been expected to kiss geekdom's ass a little. More importantly, the collector character paves the way for the humanoid triumphs of The Incredibles and the second half of Wall-E.
NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (1984)
Technically, this epic sci-fi adventure predates the creation of Studio Ghibli, where its writer-director, Hayao Miyazaki, would go on to hatch such triumphs as Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky. But it definitely laid the groundwork for what was to come. It was the first feature on which Miyazaki worked as both director and writer (adapting the screenplay from the manga series of the same name that he was working on, which was begun a couple of years before the movie went into production but wasn't completed until after its release) and it served as his introduction to several major collaborators. It also established key elements of his work, ranging from its plucky young heroine to its creator's aircraft fetish, that would become very familiar to Miyazaki fans in the coming years. And in its environmental message and apocalyptic imagery, it's an especially close cousin to one film where he really kicked out the jams, Princess Mononoke. An overseas sensation, Nausicaa was first seen in America in a badly dubbed, incoherently re-edited, much shorter version (called Warriors of the Wind) that was put out by some people who we should pity for the torments they will eventually endure in Hell. In 2005, the real movie was finally made readily available on our shores thanks to DVD.
YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968)
The animated feature as sixties pop banquet, and if it's one of the many contenders for the title of First Full-Length Music Video, that wouldn't be an insult if more music videos had employed a spirit half as playful to go with their eye-popping visuals. With its happy mix of styles from all over and a script that delights in punning wordplay, it has the feel of a commercial job that turned into a labor of love for the many different talents involved, ranging from the director, George Dunning, a Canadian who never worked on anything as high-profile again, to Love Story author Erich Segal, one of several fellows credited with the screenplay. Amusingly, the list of people who worked closely on it does not include the Beatles, who were required to cough up a few new songs for the soundtrack but otherwise were too busy working on that deathless masterpiece Magical Mystery Tour to do anything but drop by the studio long enough to film the live-action epilogue, without question the worst and most easily dispensable thing in the movie. Most of the songs were already well-established hits from earlier albums, and their speaking voices were provided by various actors. At one point in the middle of the production, the cops showed up and hauled off the free-spirited dude who was providing the voice of Ringo; it turned out that he was a deserter from the British Army. After his departure, the rest of Ringo's lines were done by Paul Angelis, who was already playing both George Harrison and the head of the Blue Meanies. Although they appeared to love it as much as everyone else after they saw it, the Beatles' attitude about the movie while it was being made can perhaps be gauged by the title of George Harrison's contribution to the soundtrack, "Only a Northern Song"--a reference to the publishing company that had been formed to handle Lennon/McCartney compositions. (At the time, the title and such lyrics as "It doesn't really matter what chords I play/ What words I say or time of day it is/ As it's only a Northern song" might have been taken as a hint that Harrison was getting fed up with having his own songwriting career treated by his bandmates as an afterthought.)
Click here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, & Part Five.