Movie Blog: 'Princess Kaguya' & 'Point And Shoot' Reviewed

To call The Tale of Princess Kaguya pretty wouldn't do it justice. The watercolor animation from Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro) is at once airy and abundant, simple and sublime. For those depressed by winter's early arrival this year, Kaguya is a spring breeze, a breath of life.

Beyond the extraordinary visuals, the story is a take on a Japanese folk tale. In this telling, a bamboo cutter finds a tiny princess -- in a cute, little kimono and everything -- growing out of a bamboo shoot. The old forest worker takes the little miracle home, where the princess transforms into a baby girl, which the bamboo cutter and his wife raise as their own daughter. The little one grows at supernatural speed, so the village children dub her "little bamboo."

In no time, the little shoot is ushered off to a castle, so that she might become a real princess. Her father believes this is her destiny, but the girl born of bamboo is pretty thorny when it comes to the politics of castle life. Blackening out her teeth, never smiling or saying anything doesn't sit well with her. She longs for the country, with its bugs and rocks and grassy hills, even when the highest born men try desperately to win her hand.

Then there are the twists. They're not ones of plot, so much as imagination. Studio Ghibli is just so good at catching you off guard. And when these dream sequences or flights of fancy arise, it's impossible not to get swept up in them. They're a rush, a sort of pure visual poetry that feels just as much like sustenance as it does entertainment. There's probably no higher praise I can give Princess Kaguya, and this is coming from someone who doesn't really like anime.

Princess Kaguya is playing at the St. Anthony Main Theatre.

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A "crash course in manhood" is what Matthew VanDyke embarked on after realizing that if he was ever going to have an adventure, he needed to make it happen. But what started as a motorcycle journey through Africa and the Middle East ended with him as a soldier in the Libyan war against Muammar Gaddafi. And he captured nearly all of his journey on film.

This first-hand footage is what allowed documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry make Point and Shoot, which splices VanDyke's travel video with interviews of the adventurer and his girlfriend, who wasn't along for the trip but approved of it. What's fascinating about the project is that it candidly shows VanDyke's development from a lonesome college grad with OCD to a man trying to craft an alter-ego as a fearless daredevil filmmaker.

The self-shot footage of VanDyke setting up his camera, doing action shots and wheelies in the desert reminds one of Timothy Treadwell from Grizzly Man. There's such an awareness of image, of branding oneself as badass. And this transfers even to the images of war, where soldiers in Libya, according to VanDyke, constantly wanted to have their pictures taken "with the big guns." Even VanDyke is sure to have himself captured laying down heavy fire on enemy positions, as well as shoot at a man whose face the camera can make out.

The stories of VanDyke's adventures, including those of months spent in a Libyan prison, are incredible. He comes across as an outstanding subject, but one wonders whether or not his effort to fight in the war is truly one to help his Libyan friends, or more an extension of his quest to become a manly man. Of course, the answer could be both. But the documentary focuses so much on the latter that the suffering of the people appears to come in second.

Point and Shoot is playing at the Lagoon Cinema.