Smilers (スマイル聖夜の奇跡, 2007)

On my flight back to Frankfurt from Toronto last week, I was surprised to find a fairly recent Japanese film among the in-flight movie offerings. Smilers (Sumairu seiya no kiseki, 2007) is a Christmas movie released in Japan mid-December last year and it just came out on DVD in June. It’s a remake of The Mighty Ducks (Stephen Herek, 1992) in which a guy who knows nothing about ice hockey coaches a...

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (ルパン三世 カリオストロの城,1979)

I finally got around to watching the only Hayao Miyazaki feature film that I had not seen while on holiday visiting my family in Canada. Based on a manga series by Kazuhiko Kato under the pseudonym ‘Monkey Punch’, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (ルパン三世 カリオストロの城,1979) followed the Lupin III television anime (some episodes of which were animated by Miyazaki and Isao Takahata) and was the second...