My Neighbor Totoro – Miyazaki, 1988

Rating: 10/10 (29 September 2012)

My Neighbor Totoro is in my honest opinion one of the best movies I ever had the chance to see. It's absolutely perfect in every respect: the soundtrack is simple and beautiful, the animation is of excellent quality, with beautiful painting landscapes, the characters are amazingly realistic and is perhaps the ultimate children's movie. It's a flawless diamond of cinema and was rightly included among the 250 greatest movies ever made list by Sign and Sound.
One day I watched this movie together with Citizen Kane and Akira and it easily "overpowered" both of these films (in terms of engaging my emotions). It's much more humane and engaging than 99.9% of all other films, animated or otherwise. The film also flows seamlessly and makes you pay attention without any effort, something that most movies have difficulty in attaining (a particularly extreme example would be Citizen Kane).
This movie is considered to be Miyzaki's most personal film, as it reflects his childhood in Japan of the 1950′s. Though I don't really care that much about how personal a film is to a director besides it's effect on the emotions produced by the film. Other Miyazaki films also had a very strong emotional effect without any personal connection with the director, for instance, Kiki's Delivery Service takes place in an alternate history European city and it is about equal to Totoro in my book.
I have argued previously that Miyazaki films (as other Studio Ghibli films) are extremely aggressive. Indeed, this film is like being hit in the head repeatedly by a 10-ton stone made of pure cuteness over a period of 90 minutes: every minute of the film consists of scenes evoking these strong emotions, structured around a simple basic story to minimize noise and we can really fell like the protagonists during the course of the film, it reveals the inner child of anyone. A masterpiece of simplicity and yes, cinematic aggressiveness.