Sit Down With Sam

Hi readers.

This week, I’m going to share my thoughts on a movie. It’s been an age since I last wrote a movie review. I had a shitty high school blog with a mate on which we would write little reviews of movies and music, so I’ve had plenty of practise, but I’d like to think my tastes have evolved since giving Transformers 7/10.

Earlier in the week, I went to BCC Mount Pleasant and saw Suzume, a Japanese animated adventure film written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, known for Your Name and Weathering with You. It was a pretty spontaneous decision to head to the cinema inspired by a sponsored Facebook post. I love the experience of going to the movies alone and should do it more often – you should too.

Suzume follows the titular character, a 17-year-old high school student, as she encounters and befriends a young man and, together, they travel around Japan, preventing disaster after disaster as two of few people who can see it coming. It’s obviously a lot more nuanced than that, and I won’t pretend I understood the plot 100% of the time, but being a fantastical adventure through abandoned Japan, there was a lot going on.

My biggest takeaway from Suzume was how much of a treat it was on the eyes and the ears. It’s a visually dazzling movie, with colours and actions exploding out of the screen. Movements from grass blowing in the wind to an animate chair running through the streets of Tokyo are so perfectly created. And the soundtrack, by Japanese rock band and frequent Shinkai collaborator Radwimps, is an epic accompaniment. I’m excited to explore their repertoire.

It's an action-packed adventure with shades of coming-of-age, packaging heavy themes of loss and grief into an exciting, positive, and hopeful PG-rated kids flick. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, why not head to the movies?

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