Everything I want a movie to be

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2018)

I'll be honest with you, I'm not the biggest fan of anime. Not in the sense that I particularily dislike it but rather in the sense that I haven't seen that many anime shows or movies. Of course I've seen most of the Ghibli films but that's pretty standard even for a normie like me. In terms of Makoto Shinkai I hadn't seen a whiff before I saw Your Name (Kimi no na wa). However this one reached such an unsual amount of praise and attention compared to other anime films that even I got curious after some time. Could this movie be worth all the hype? Could it appeal even to someone relatively unversed in anime?
And the answer was a thousand times yes! Your Name contains everything you could ask for out of any movie, not just animated ones. Romance, heart, passion, visual splendor, suspense, humour and much more. Many of these things have been lacking in most recent Hollywood movies as they seem to be getting more and more transparent in how safe they're playing it and how unpassionate their films are. I never thought to look to a whole other culture to find all these things that I've wanted more of for so long, but here we are!
Your Name is beautiful in every sense of the word. Firstly from a visual standpoint. By now I've seen quite a few Shinkai movies and they all look really great, but man does he outdo himself here! Every movement looks fluent, every colour is expressive and vibrant, every expression on the faces of the characters looks natural. The whole movies is gorgeous because of all of these things, but the final act is where it really pops thanks to the grand epic scale of what is happening on screen. But perfect visuals are nothing without a good story, and thankfully Your Name has it. You've probably heard that the premise is that a boy named Taki and a girl named Mitsuha start switching bodies inexplicably. I think you should watch this movies with a clear mind, so I won't say anymore, just know that there's more to it than that, and the film takes many unexpected twists and turns.
Also I need to touch on the fantastic soundtrack by RADWIMPS. I wasn't sure if their music would work well together with this rather dramatic and lofty premise, but the music is such a perfect fit for the visuals and it always seems to exactly match the emotion that is being created by the scene. I have all the songs on my playlists now and I listen to them practically every day during my spare time, it's that good!
By the end of the film I felt like I had had such a complete experience. I had been laughing, I had been moved deeply by the dramatic scenes and I had been gasping at the visual spectacle. I really do not know how anybody could watch this film and end up finding nothing to like, it really does feel like there is something here for everyone. What I ask most of all out of any movie, is to entertain me and to move me, and Your Name did that better than most movies I have ever seen. It really did give me everything I could possibly want!