Night Scream - 1997 *

I made a mistake of assuming that if I liked Candace Cameron Bure in her Lifetime films, then I would like her in something else. This was, pardon my French, bloody stupid. Bure plays Drew, a girl from San Francisco who inexplicably turns up at a small town that she has never been to in a trance and sees what appears to be a portrait of herself in the harbour. Apparently, one year ago, a girl named Laura, who is the splitting image of Drew, was murdered there, supposedly by her boyfriend and the townsfolk are all commemorating this. They are somewhat shocked therefore, to see 'Drew' appear in their midst.
It sounds like it might be good, but it's actually not.

Spirited Away - 2008 **** 1/2

I have never had the slightest interest in Japanese animation which is strange really because I love Disney and Pixar stuff.

However this was in my 1001 movies to see book, so I thought I would give it a go.

I have never seen anything so weird and wonderful in my life.

However I totally loved it and was gripped the whole way through except when my DVD skipped!

You can always count on Japanese movies to be totally bizarre. It was like watching a dream unfold before me and seeing all the strange make believe characters that you might imagine existed when you were younger.

The story is of a young girl who is in the process of moving to a new place with her parents, however after their car breaks down things start to go very weird and her parents, after gorging themselves on some food they find in an empty restaurant turn into pigs, leaving the girl to enter a strange world of spirits and monsters in an effort to save them. I cannot help but reiterate how amazingly weird it is, and I urge people to see it. It's a fable I guess, about living in the real world and escaping into a fantasy? Maybe Japanese people interpret it differently, but I certainly saw it that way, and it only added to my enjoyment. It's convinced me that I have to watch all the other Japanese anime movies I have noticed but never really taken much notice of.