The Great Yokai War

Wow! So much fun! Probably a bit much for normal American kids, and really it's a stretch to call this a kid's film, this movie reminded me a quite a bit of Time Bandits - very Terry Gilliam all the way through. While the overall narrative is pretty much straight forward, Miike still throws in A LOT of surreal and Bunuel-esquire moments. The whole first act violently juxtaposes from scene to scene the normal family life of the main kid/hero, with the spirit world and the evil than is ensuing therein. And while the ending does have a bit of an ambiguous aspect that are common of Miike's work, the layers of meaning and metaphor, particularly the anti-war / anti-revenge message of human folly, is pretty damn poignant. As manic and imaginatively fun as other great Miike films, only instead of over the top torture and gore, he gives us an endless amount of monsters and yokai from Japanese folk-lore creatively conceived via CG and puppetry wrapped into an imaginative multi-faceted adventure. F'n rad, and one of Miike's best!