Andrew Osmond

Twenty years ago, animated features were widely perceived as cartoons for children. Today they encompass an astonishing range of films, styles, and techniques. There is the powerful adult drama of Waltz with Bashir; the Gallic sophistication of Belleville Rendez-Vous; the eye-popping violence of Japan's Akira; and the stop-motion whimsy of Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Andrew...

Pacific Rim: The Black burst onto TV screens in March 2021, marking a bold new chapter in the Pacific Rim franchise. Its captivating story of young siblings Taylor and Hayley and their epic trek across the desolate Australian landscape to track down their parents was captured in dynamic anime style, complete with earth-shaking Kaiju-Jaeger battles and a cast of unforgettable...

My Neighbour Totoro (1988) is one of the best-loved films created by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Nearly forty years after its first release, Totoro remains beloved in Japan and abroad, a child’s-eye vision of the sublime and a celebration of the magical richness of the Japanese countryside. Everything feels placed at a child’s level, from the implicit spiritual environmentalism...

Spirited Away, directed by the veteran anime film-maker Hayao Miyazaki, is Japan's most successful film, and one of the top-grossing 'foreign language' films ever released. Set in modern Japan, the film is a wildly imaginative fantasy, at once personal and universal. It tells the story of a listless little girl, Chihiro, who stumbles into a magical world where gods relax...