Rating: 
Summary: Philosophic Adventure
Review: This fast-moving, inspiring animation is really a new art form. Miyazaki takes animation to a new level by weaving philosophic debates about human excesses in uses of natural resources with fantastic battle scenes, romance and honor. The animism of Japanese religions comes to life in the form of great animal Gods as they compete with humans for space on the planet. But like other Japanese productions, no one is protrayed as truly evil and there are no "guys in white." The boar God is portrayed as stubborn and the would-be evil woman shows compassion to leppers. Overall, the movie makes not so sublte statements about a mulitude of social subtlies.
A great piece of work and a great way to learn Japanese.
Rating:
Summary: One of my top 10 all time favorites
Review: I've been getting a strange feeling lately that sometimes the obviously unreal world of animation can seem almost more real. Sure you won't find two tailed wolf-gods and giant talking pigs in this world, such as exist in Princess Mononoke's world, but seldom have I felt more emotion that ring as true as this in those real actors movies. This is a movie very much in the mindset of when we believed that animals were gods and everything had a mystery and spirit. Its a world of living breathing mythology. At first the story seems a little odd. But if you just free your mind and go with it...it really grows on you.
This is a bigger movie...this maybe is what the pioneers and visionaries of the early days of films, would have thought of were movies would go. This is not a Disney movie. It doesn't at first appear to be obsessed with Disneys detailed fluidness. But it is very detailed and leaps and bounds above most movies in maturity, drama and vision. This movie dreams its own dream. There just aren't many movies like this out there. The second time I watched this I got it...and I just can't let go of it. You must experience this movie.
Rating:
Summary: More of anime at its finest
Review: Princess Mononoke is one of the few anime films to receive much acclaim by the wider American public, and deservedly so. The plot tends to be somewhat less complex or "insider" than in many recent anime features but sacrifices neither its powerful emotional scenes nor its rivetting action sequences. Mononoke features absolutely stunning anime art and animation, from the tranquil views of the forest to the intense swordfighting scene. It reputation was enough, furthermore, to lure notable American actors and actresses to put their voices to the American translation of the movie, such as Gillian Anderson, Claire Danes, and Billy Bob Thorton. Princess Mononoke proves itself to be anime's finest recent performance and is not to be missed!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Movie, so-so DVD
Review: The movie itself can be summed up in one word...breathtaking.The story is incredible. It deals with concepts that we are related to everything on this planet, that everything has a spirit, and the ramifications of our actions. The story does not define one person as "the villain" of the movie. Though some characters are darker than others, there is no ruthless, cold-hearted villain that we have come to associate with movies. That single fact leads the movie to be a bit more impact than it would if it had one truly evil person defined as the bad guy. The animation is done well. The characters look rather realistic and that lends to the fact that these are supposed to be actual people instead of the cold cut hero and villain. The Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks sound excellent, you really get a sense of being there if you have the sound system. The voices are never covered up by the action and the fight scenes are something that you just have to see and hear to comprehend what I'm saying. The reason I give this DVD 4 stars instead of 5 is nothing against the movie. My only real complaint about this DVD is that it is begging for a full on, special edition DVD and what we get is an extremely short featurette and the trailer. The featurette does not go into any depth about the movie itself, it really only deals with the way the actors that created the English dub responded to the film. The trailer is just the standard trailer that you have probably seen before some other movie, if at all. All in all, this is an extremely good movie, with a rather bleak DVD. I don't regret buying this on DVD; I only hope that they will come out with a Collector's or a Special Edition that truly does this movie justice on the DVD format.
Rating: 
Summary: What was *THAT* all about?
Review: Given all the hype surrounding Princess M., I expected to like this film a good deal more than I did. I tried to like it. Truly. Unfortunately, the producers make it extremely difficult to do so, since their primary conceit seems to have been: "let's confuse our audience as much as we can." The primary way they accomplish this is by having every character vacillate back and forth from protagonist to antagonist every other scene. The wolves are good guys, no they're threatening to kill the hero, oh wait, they're trying to save the forest, nope, they're just small-minded bigots, etc. etc. Worse than the mythic figures were the humans: ah, the people of IronTown are attacked by wolves, goodie! Oh wait, they're destroying the environment, I hate those guys! But wait, they're not as bad as these soldiers, so we sympathize again, only now they're shooting at the Princess of the forest, darn they're bad, but wait...
And so on and so on. I recognize the desire to present complex characterizations and avoid the black-and-white mentality of so much fantasy work, but this quickly devolved into simple inconsistency. Eventually I just gave up and decided to hate everybody in the film, after which it became kind of bitter fun to watch them spill one another's blood across the screen (which they do in simply astonishing volumes).
As for the environmental sub-text of the movie, it was not only severely undercut by all the heavy-handed side-switching mentioned above, but almost entirely buried in the morass of annoying mythological background which plagued the movie. In the last fifteen minutes, it turns out that this mythological stuff has actually been the whole crux of the movie (surprise), providing the excuse for a boatload of visual effects but leaving the central plot, as it has been heretofore presented, in the dust.
Final words: confusing, inconsistent, turgid mythology punctuated by inadequately explained violence. Go read Harry Potter instead.
Rating:
Summary: Great story and effects. Nice simple adventure DVD.
Review: Although the DVD is lacking in lots of extra features, the movie more than makes up for what it lacks. The animation is incredible with sweeping vistas and awesome special effects. Very nice. The story is based a lot on man vs nature and has lots of hidden story lines. Great for the hardcore fan but probably too much for younger kids. There are some pretty graphic scenes which I love but may be inappropiate for the younger crowd. Nicely done and a great adventure.
Rating:
Summary: I'd give this more stars than there are in the universe!
Review: I have already written a review on this incredible movie, but I accidentally made it a private review. Over time, however, it made me furious to find 1-star reviews here, and so I decided I should write another review. The theme of this review is that "Princess Mononoke" is NOT an average Disney cartoon by any means. It's very different for a variety of reasons. 1) The storyline. No 5-year-old kid could ever understand the storyline to this film. It's about a young prince who was cursed by a demon that attacked his village. After he killed the demon, the prince discovered that the curse is a curse of hatred that comes from the west. He must go and stop the evil that is going on in the west, to "see with eyes unclouded by hate." Otherwise, the curse will kill him. The rest I leave to you, but the basic point is that the flim is about love and hate, joy and sorrow, and human life and death. 2) The dialogue. The script in this film is truly unforgettable, with quotes like: "You cannot alter your fate my prince, however you can rise to meet it if you choose", and "Now watch closely everyone, I'm going to show you how to kill a god. A god of life and death. The trick is not to fear him." 3) The violence. Yes, there is enough violence in this film to merit a PG-13 rating, and although an arrow doesn't NORMALLY chop arms off, it just goes to show that when hatred takes over someone, it can really make them crazy. 4) There's no real "good guy" or "bad guy". Although San wanted to protect her forest, she and her wolves also killed the husbands of many of the women in Irontown. And although Lady Eboshi wanted to destroy the forest for iron, she also cared for the lepers of Irontown and was very loving to her people. And the prince doesn't side with either one of them, he just wants to make peace so his curse will be removed. 5) The length of the film. It is 134 minutes long. 6) The animation. It is absolutely incredible. It took three years to create this film, and they were not wasted. The Nightwalker is absolutely an amazing sight to behold! And when the prince entered the magical forest, he said, "This place is magical." I said the exact same thing. I forgot I was watching a cartoon. I forgot I was watching a movie. I even forgot my own name. It was that breathtaking! (Oh, and by the way, the dubbing was done along with RE-ANIMATING the mouth movements to match the English language!) Bottom Line: If this STAGGERINGLY good movie ISN'T so good that it makes you forget everything as you watch it, then my name isn't....uh....uh....uh....
Rating:
Summary: What more can be said?
Review: This movies raises animation to a true art, certainly one of the best movies of all time - any style or subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Not my favourite, but not bad
Review: I like Anime, but part of the magic of anime is it being from Japan... the american voices bugged me, but I liked it overall. Ah well. I highly prefer subtitled flicks :)
Rating: 
Summary: I'm sorry, but I just don't see what everyone else sees
Review: I was an anime fan before I watched this, and this is the least favourite DVD out of my collection. Really the only thing I liked about it was the animation (especially the scenes with the Night Walker), but even then there were things I didn't like - in particular the way the faces were drawn, which I thought looked too "cartoony" for a movie so many people are trying to remove the label "cartoon" from (faces like that *belong* in Ranma 1/2, which has similar designs, but not in a movie like this). The scenes with heads and limbs being cut off also looked very silly, and in my opinion ruined the mood the movie was trying to create. My main problem with this film is with the characters. People sing the praises of the fact that none of them are strictly "good" or "evil", but that doesn't change the fact that really they're just hollow shells. We know their personalities and absolutely nothing else. I'm sure most people who love Mononoke would laugh if I said my favourite anime was Sailor Moon (subtitled, of course), but one of the reasons I like it so much is because of how well the characters are fleshed out. You really know them, really care about them, even the bad guys - and when they die, you really care about that too. If Princess Mononoke had condensed what's there already into a shorter space (IMO it's far too long for the little that actually happens) and added more exploration of the characters' histories, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Also I like romance, which the film has very little of, and maybe this would have been a good opportunity to add some in. On top of that, there's virtually no character development at all - everyone ends up pretty much the same as they started. Although I've seen people argue that realistically people wouldn't develop that much in such a short space of time, it doesn't exactly make for riveting viewing. Another one of my problems with Mononoke is the music. There is one word I can use to describe this movie's soundtrack: Boring. By the end of the movie, I could only remember one piece of music that played (the theme tune), and that's because throughout the movie it was played OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It could really have used some more variety. This especially bothered me because music is one of the most important things for me in anime. To sum up... this movie bored me, and I honestly don't get why it's so popular. All I can say is that I'm not someone who's only ever watched anime on TV, I'm not a violence-obsessed Fist of the North Star fan, and I'm not someone who automatically won't watch anime because it's animated - but none of the things I like about anime are present in this movie. Simple as that.
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