BELLE (2021) [Blu-ray]

Great film from the creator of Summer Wars!

Belle is Mamoru Hosoda's finest movie yet in my opinion.The film overall is very powerful because it is trying to say something about who we really are as opposed to how we often carry ourselves with a persona in our every day life, and how much power we can have to influence others if we choose to be ourselves, as opposed to just wearing a mask.At the end, without giving away too much, it comes down to how we choose to help others; to someone you don't know, even not knowing what others are going through but choosing to be kind instead can make all the difference in the world to that person. I think it's an especially beautiful message in the context of Suzu, the main Character, who shows so much suffering and self-doubt in the beginning of the film, and I wanted to sympathize with her from the very beginning.At first, I thought some scenes were about Suzu finally finding love, and I realized later that it was more about her empathizing and wanting the best for others and trying to help them however she could. There is another flashback later that connects all of this together very well I thought during a final, memorable performance.The movie is a bit darker than I thought it would be originally before watching it, and I'm glad the story dealt with heavy themes such as loneliness, death, love, abuse, and ultimately choosing to be a kind and genuine person in a chaotic world where everyone is just trying to make it and be someone.I watched the movie 3 times in English and once in Japanese with subtitles and I will say that I personally felt the Japanese sub was superior, the subtitles gave better context and understanding to each of the scenes, whereas the English version felt like certain scenes did not translate as well in comparison or were missing context.I will give credit to the English version's Kylie McNeill, who played Suzu, who I felt had an absolutelymesmerizing and haunting voice in all of her songs in English.Kylie's voice and her singing absolutely carried the film in English, where I felt some of the other non singing, voice acting from other characters seemed fairly average in comparison. The ending song "A Million Miles Away" I admit left me with tears in my eyes, especially the grand finale and the implications it had for the plot.Kaho Nakamura gave a absolutely fantastic and stellar performance as well, and general I am very happy with the overall very high production values of this film. Belle will put modern day Disney to shame in the songs alone, with the lyrics and how the songs were delivered with such passion and emotional resonance.Another reason I really admire Belle is how the film consists of two different styles of animation. One, with a more Western style of animation with how "Belle" is drawn in the virtual world like something out of a Disney movie from the 90's and then the other half of the movie is the more traditional Japanese animation style "anime" of characters and presentation. It really is unique, and there is not anything else like it that I have seen before. If anything, watch Belle for the fantastic musical songs and overall production value alone, and the emotion behind each of the words that gave greater meaning to the songs themselves.I would highly recommend Belle to anyone who is a fan of Mamoru Hosoda's films or Anime in general. Or maybe even if you like musicals. LaLa Land, in particular comes to mind even. Belle is truly like no other Anime or movie you will have ever seen before and personally, for me, the Characters and message of the film stayed in my mind long after the credits ended. This is one you will want to watch multiple times.

I just love this movie so much! I actually first watched it in theaters back in January and I definitely knew I wanted to buy a copy for myself.I feel like it’s the kind of movie thats deeper than what it seems. I’ve been reading the comments of the people who didn’t like it, and I think that they went into it thinking that it’s just a normal and basic movie. But it’s not. It’s much deeper than that. You personally need to dig deeper while you watch. Find the deeper meaning behind things.For example (spoiler warning), when she stands up to the guy at the end and stares at him with no fear while he was violently screaming at her. The staring which then scared him off. I feel like a lot of people thought this was dumb, but like I said, it’s much deeper than that. This man probably had the mentality that “oh, if I scream I’ll get what I want”, and probably some sort of inferiority complex. So, when she didn’t back down, he was probably like “What?! Why isn’t it working? Aaaaaaaaa!!! Aaaa!!! I’m scary see! Aaaaa!!! Get scared! Do what I want!” She refused to give him what he wanted, which challenged his authority, leading to his fear.This last paragraph was my theory or me just looking waaay to deeply into things, so you can interpret the movie however you’d like 👍

I noticed two discs in the box that looked identical and figured maybe one was bonus content and special features.When I went to play the first one, the movie was really grainy and I thought, “what, is this a bootleg?”I looked at the box again and realized it’s a dvd and a Blu-ray dvd version in the same box, and the first one happened to be the dvd version.The icons for dvd and Blu-ray are absolutely tiny and are the only visual difference between the discs, so look for them. It’s a big difference on screen! 🤣

A gorgeous anime movie. A loose adaptation of beauty and the beast with a social media twist.When Suzu lost her mother, grief took away her ability to sing. However, after joining a virtual reality social media platform, Suzu rediscovers her voice as ‘Bell’, and quickly becomes a musical sensation as a virtual idol.However when one of her concerts is crashed by Beast, another infamous internet persona, Suzu becomes obsessed with discovering who this troubled person really is. But to soothe the Beast’s pain, Suzu may have to reveal her true identity to the entire internet.Well-paced with beautiful songs and creative imagery, there is nary a bit of the two hour run time that feels less than engrossing.