From Up on Poppy Hill by Gorō Miyazaki (2011)
If I had to rank Studio Ghibli’s films, I’d probably put From Up on Poppy Hill somewhere near the upper-end of the middle — which is more a reflection on the studio’s surfeit of classic titles than anything truly bad about Gorō Miyazaki’s film. True, its storyline is a bit slight at times, its character designs are distractingly different from the classic Studio Ghibli mold, and the ending feels a bit truncated given all of the melodrama leading up to it. Nevertheless, this coming-of-age film about two high school students who discover a surprising connection while trying to save their school’s dilapidated clubhouse still contains plenty of flashes of the ol’ Ghibli magic, from the colorful characters to the beautifully rendered visions of everyday life. Also, I won’t deny getting choked up at times by its nostalgia-suffused depiction of 1960s-era Japan.
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