Hayao Miyazaki’s best film unfolds like a dream. A young girl, Chihiro, is on a road trip with her family. Her parents stop to investigate an abandoned theme park styled like a traditional Japanese bath house and are soon transformed into pigs by a strange spell, thrusting the girl into a supernatural world of wandering spirits, talking animals, and hungry ghosts. While the structure echoes Alice in Wonderland, the film draws about creatures, cultural traditions, and folklore totally foreign to me, an American, and I never tire of following Chihiro on her quest to get back to her normal life—because just like waking from a dream, I find I can never quite hold all of it in my mind, and I discover new things each time I watch it. —Joel Cunningham, managing editor
Find it on: HBO Max