I'll be honest: I'm not entirely sure I understood everything about The Boy and the Heron, famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's latest—and likely last—film. But I am quite certain it's the best movie I've ever seen about giant talking murder parrots.
Like so many of his previous films, especially Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron plays like a strange dream faithfully depicted on screen. It's whimsical and magical and mysterious and personal, with a classic child's fantasy story structure that nods to both Alice and Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia without coming across as in debt to either. Which is to say that it's an animated children's movie, though it doesn't play quite like any kid's movie made in America in the last 30 years.
