Only Yesterday (GKids / Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD), the Studio Ghibli animated feature directed and scripted by Isao Takahata (of Grave of the Fireflies and the Oscar-nominated The Tale of the Princess Kaguya), received its American premiere this year but is in fact a 1991 production released stateside in time for its 25th anniversary.
Adapted from the manga by Hotaru Okamoto, this is not a fantasy film but something more like an animated memoir, a reflective memory film about 27-year-old Taeko (voiced by Daisy Ridley in the American soundtrack) who spends her summer in the country to visit her grown sister Yeako (Ashley Eckstein) and pick safflowers on the farm of her brother-in-law’s family. The textures and sights send her mind rolling back to the fifth grade when, as the youngest of three daughters, she recalls her younger self as an adolescent with two teenage sisters who put on airs of being adult. “I didn’t expect to bring my fifth-grade self along for the trip,” she muses in voice over, but her younger self (who is also echoed in a friendship with a young girl who looks up to the grown Taeko) offers some perspective on who she has become, and hasn’t become. Single and working an office job she has no passion for, working the fields gives Taeko a satisfaction her life is missing, and her friendship with a fellow fieldworker, Toshio (Dev Patel), gives her sounding board to work out the sudden flood of dreams and memories. He may also offer the possibility of romance, though as family pushes the idea, she becomes (predictably) resistant to it.
Originally released in 1991 and set a decade earlier, with flashbacks reaching back to the 1960s, the film is both remarkably contemporary and beautifully timeless. Forget the absence of cell phones and references to The Beatles (as well as Japanese pop groups who modeled their sound on the Fab Four, cultural touchstones lost on us but resonant to the film’s original audience) and it could be, as the title suggests, only yesterday.
Unlike the films of fellow filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, with whom Takahata founded Studio Ghibli, Only Yesterday meanders through its story. Takahata takes his time wandering through the experiences of the grown Taeko and the memories of her younger self (who periodically runs through her present day scenes). But it’s no time travel fantasy. Rather, these images remind us of how the past is a part of our present. There’s a serenity to images even in moments of anxiety and despair, and the young Taeko has her share of both. A struggling student and a headstrong girl out of step with family expectations, she “isn’t normal,” insists her mother. As we spend time with her, we find otherwise: she is absolutely normal. That is, she is unique and creative and obstinate and needy, a girl anxious to please her parents, follow her heart, and find herself while navigating the complicated culture of childhood in a family that seems to have forgotten that she’s still a child. The details are specific to her life but the thoughts and feelings and impulses reverberate across eras and cultures.
This is as unconventional an animated film you’ll find, an introspective, nuanced drama attuned to the most delicate moments of experience and memory and a complex narrative that appears simple due to the mastery of Takahata’s storytelling. It’s a gift to finally have this film available to American audiences.
On Blu-ray and DVD, with both original Japanese and English dub soundtracks, the latter newly produced for this release, and beautifully so. The English language version is appropriately nuanced and rich. Also includes the 45-minute “The Making of Only Yesterday,” a Japanese production from 1991, and the new featurettes “Behind the Scenes with the Voice Cast” (8 minutes, with American voice cast Daisy Ridley, Dev Patel, and Ashley Eckstein) and “Interview with the English Dub Team,” a 17-minute featurette that explores the challenges of an English language translation such an unconventional Japanese animated feature. Exclusive to the Blu-ray is a feature-length presentation of the storyboards set to the soundtrack (option of Japanese or English language version), something unique to Studio Ghibli productions, plus a bonus DVD copy of the film.
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (Sony, DVD, VOD) is technically a feature-length revival / spoof of the superhero team that was a joke to begin with, a Saturday morning live-action series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft and shot on video on the cheap in a manner that suggests the original Batman series without the self-awareness. The 2016 reboot, starring YouTube stars and comediennes Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart, is nothing if not self-aware. In fact, it doesn’t care to take the premise seriously at all.
Grace Helbig is Electra Woman and Hannah Hart is Dyna Girl, aka Lori and Judi, best friends since grade school and heroes without powers busy keeping their hometown of Akron, Ohio safe between trips to the convenience store. When YouTube footage of their takedown of a couple of scuzzbucket robbers goes viral, the top agent of Creative Masked Management invites them out to Los Angeles. In a world where the supervillains have all been vanquished (in the mysterious “Shadow War,” referred to only in awed tones), it’s all about the endorsement deals for this generation of superheroes, who only have mortal enemies to deal with. Their agent (Andy Buckley of the American The Office) plans to promote their brand into millions via endorsement deals. It’s a classic story of success breaking up the band: Electra Woman gets promoted to star status and addicted to the celebrity while Dyna Girl resists the lure to sell out.
It was originally released digitally and is (as of this writing) listed on the IMDb as a web series rather than a feature. And it plays that way. The mix of camp situations and dry, deadpan delivery and direction (by Chris Marrs Piliero, also a co-writer) probably works better in shorter segments. Apart from a couple of splashy action scenes, this is meta-hero stuff, with a conventional story serving as nothing more than a framework on which to hang commentary on hero’s journey tropes, comic book superhero clichés, and web celebrity. It’s not enough to sustain the lack of story or narrative momentum. Helbig and Hart have a natural rapport and their byplay is clever but never energetic, which is the basis of the comedy. It’s all about askew comments, inappropriate responses, and self-aware quips. Vancouver stands in for Los Angeles and is serviceable as the generic metropolis (and fodder for a throwaway joke in the closing seconds) and the whole thing looks like a glorified YouTube skit with a bigger (though certainly far short of a big) budget and a longer running time.
On DVD with commentary by stars Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart, the featurette “The Making of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl” (a brief five minutes), the 12-minute interview featurette “Grace and Hannah at San Diego Comic-Con,” a faux promotional video for CMM, and seven additional featurettes, none longer than three minutes and some under 30 seconds.
Also new and notable:
Blood and Black Lace (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD) – Mario Bava gave birth to the “giallo,” a distinctly Italian twist on horror that combines a poetic, haunting beauty with grand guignol gore and a bent of sexual perversity, with his elegant 1964 slasher film. If The Wild Bunch turns violence into a ballet, then Blood and Black Lace is murder as ballroom dance. It’s newly restored from the original camera negative and features commentary, new and archival featurettes, and more. Review to come.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray), an ingenious crime caper / hostage drama starring Walter Matthau as a transit police officer and Robert Shaw as a criminal mastermind who takes a subway car hostage, is one of the great New York crime films of the 1970s and a cult classic. It gets a new special edition Blu-ray from Kino. Review to come.
Also debuting this week: I Saw the Light (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD), starring Tom Hiddleston as country-western legend Hank Williams in the story of his rise to fame and spiral of self-destruction, and By the Sea (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD), a contemplative drama written and directed by Angelina Jolie Pitt and starring Brad Pitt and Angelina as a married couple in crisis.
Classics and Cult:
The In-Laws (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD)
Suture (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD)
The Swinging Cheerleaders (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD)
Absolution (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
TV on disc:
House of Cards: The Complete Fourth Season (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD)
More new releases:
The Family Fang (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Adderall Diaries (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD)
Term Life (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD)
Search Party (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD)
End Game (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, DVD)
Mothers and Daughters (Cinedigm, DVD)
Cabin Fever (2016) (Shout! Factory/IFC, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Pack (Shout! Factory/IFC, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Mermaid (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD)
Boy and the World (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD)
Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe (Well Go, Blu-ray, DVD)