Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant film for young as old...
Review: A young girl, Chihiro, is sad over leaving her old home and friends when her parents move to a new town. On their way to their new house Chihiro and her parents get lost and by accident find a temple of some sort. They enter the temple, which has a tunnel that leads to a huge pasture and as the family walks around on the field to find a small town. Their noses also find a restaurant with tons of food waiting on the counters. Chihiro is very hesitant to everything that her parents do, and she does not eat the food, which her parents gobble up. It seems like there is something wrong which is confirmed when a mysterious young boy insists that she must leave in order to save herself. Spirited Away is a wonderful film that deals with multiple issues that Chihiro faces through her adventure in the town. These issues are left for the audience to ponder while traveling with Chihiro through this amazing journey. The audience is left with a simply brilliant cinematic experience that offers high repeated viewing value.
Rating:
Summary: DVD Review
Review: Spirited Away is another great Miyazaki film and has brought his name and his art to attention of the world. Disney's DVD release of the picture is an all around excellent DVD with some insightful extras.
Personally I don't find Spirited Away to be the top of Miyazaki's game. I found Laputa, Nausicaa, Mononoke, and Kiki to be better works. Had Spirited Away been created by another artist I would have hailed higher, but Miyazaki has such a stunning catalogue that comparisons have to be made. The reason for my lower opinion of Spirited Away is the way Miyazaki's absolutely breathtaking and stunning imagination tends to overwhelm the narrative. Spirited Away is a masterpiece in visual design and is a truly one of a kind fantasy world, but the story didn't captivate me as much as other Miyazaki pictures. The grand narratives of Mononoke, Laputa, and Nausicaa dwarf Spirited Away while still thriving in the visual department. The simpler films: Kiki and Totoro captivated me more sucessfully on an emotional level then Spirited Away. Still the film is amazing, a wonder of animation, although I was a little bothered with a few uses of digital work for motion. Integration is still sketchy at this stage, but not as bad as in live action films. The movie is a marvel, but younger children might find some scenes a little disturbing. The dragon bleds alot leaving some heavy blood smears and the No Face eats some people and grossly vomits out brown liquid. When I saw it in the theater several young children started to cry and even as a college student found the scenes pretty intense for real young ones.
Picture quality is excellent. A great tranfer that highlights Miyazaki's amazing animation. Colors didn't seem as bright as the Kiki DVD, but still a flawless print with stunning sharpness and color. Image is nn 2:0:1 to perserve aspect ratio and good for small tvs. Sound is excellent, the Japanese and English tracks are in 5.1. I only have stereo speakers so I can't say much on that. The English track is fine, but always go for the Japanese, although the ending song is in Japanese on both tracks. Making up for the problems on Kiki and Castle is an on the fly audio/subtitle change option. There is French too. Subtitles are yellow and in frame, good for 16x9 tvs, bad for small tvs because it covers up more of the image.
Extras have the standard Lasseter intro, which starts if you change to Japanese and "resume film" even if you don't want it to play. The English production is documented in "Art of Spirited Away". It is a good documentary on the English production, shades of Disney specials. Worth watching for the explanation of the finger chop that Chihiro is given. The behind the microphone section is not interesting. The Japanese Trailers run back to back and give away most of the story. The highlight of the extras is the fabulous Nippon Special on the film. This Japanese documentary gives Miyazaki fans a dream come true, an indepth look at Miyazaki's creative process. We are actually taken into the studio for over half and hour to watch step by step how Miyazaki's team created Spirited Away. From planning to intensive drawing sessions, to recording voices and sound, to the story behind the stunning closing song, the documentary is a wonder. Anyone interested in the process of animation will be amazed at the limited resources Miyazaki has in comparison to American animators. The recording room is a converted movie theater without a soundproof window, so a laugh from a crew member will spoil a take. Miyazaki own dedication and involvement with every detail is made extremely clear with his late night working binges and supervision of everything. We even see him cook dinner for the team. The most fascinating aspect comes in the planning stage where Miyazaki can on the drop of a hat explain the every detail of a single real life movement or action that he wants in the film. Miyazaki is shocked when he discovers his team hasn't seen lizards fall from trees and haven't held open the jaws of a dog. He sighed and laments on the end of Japanese culture. The documentary is a true wonder and an absolute must for any Miyazaki fan. The second disc is the storyboard of the film with complete language tracks. It has what Castle in the Sky and Kiki didn't, an angle switch option with the animated film making it worth something.
Spirited Away is a great animated film a stunning work of imagination and fantasy, but by my taste not Miyazaki's best. Disney's DVD release has the stunning picture and sound of all its Miyazaki release and fixes the angle switch and on the fly audio/subtitle problems in previous the dvds. The extras are amazing with a good English documentary and a fascinating and one of a kind Japanese documentary that takes you into Studio Ghibli to showcase Miyazaki's production process.
The film I'd give 4 out of 5.
The DVD 5 out of 5.
Rating:
Summary: Instant classic in animation
Review: More than a good animation movie, "Spirited away" is a good movie, period. It's the fantastic story about Chihiro, a little girl that discovers a wonderful and fabled, yet dangerous, world, and her quest to go back unharmed to her own world. It seems to me unappropriate to try to tell something of the plot of the story here, because it would be inaccurate and, most of all, this movie is to be watched, not explained. It has to be watched because it's one of the most sensitive and immaginative works of fiction in recent years. My only complaint (a complaint to myself, of course) is that, while watching the movie, I felt I couldn't absorb (or fully understand) most of what I was seeing simply because I'm not that much acquainted with japanese culture. Every scene, every character, every situation, every color, every setting has an specific and aproppriate meaning, both within the story and within japanese culture, and that misterious aura was, to me, one of the best features of the film. Great entertainment, and well-deserved praises. Grade 9.3/10
Rating:
Summary: wonderfully animated
Review: The worst part of this animation is the length and even that is hardly noticeable. The story and characters are unique and riveting. From the very first minute, I was hooked and watched it many, many times thereafter.
Rating: 
Summary: An epic only because needless segments weren't cut
Review: This movie drags on with very few moments to keep you interested. I think it is cultural differences, though Japanese animation is truely inferior to Disney classics. However I give it three stars because the director seemed to put his heart into it and tried to be as original as possible. The sad thing is, with all its originality it hardly entertained me or moved me.
Rating:
Summary: A very psychedelic experience, this movie is.
Review: "Spirited Away" is a masterpiece, yet it seems the DVD was priced at the "Antique Road Show".
Rating: 
Summary: Clever yet no Princess Mononoke
Review: It is my assumption that this movie has sold so much because so many people have seen Princess Mononoke on video and expected alot. The movie is alright by my standards, but is more of a kid film. The animation is better than Princess Mononoke, but I think it falls short in terms of action. You can read the plot synopsis anywhere. A girl gets trapped in a magical land after moving and such. For those of you who haven't seen it... Don't expect an action movie like Princess Mononoke. This movie barely has any action(mabye a dragon scene for 2 seconds), and it is more of a kid film. Still, if you don't particularly care about action and just want to watch something, have fun.
Rating: 
Summary: Miyazaki oughta be spirited away to a funnyfarm.
Review: A foul miserable mess from Miyazaki, Japan's greatest animator. What was he thinking? What were Japanese who turned this into a megaboxoffice hit thinking? Cluttered, messy, disgusting, a sort of an surrealist anime, Felliniesque phantasmagoria, Ken Russellian theme park, Kurosawa on LSD, Animal House fraboy barf humor, etc. all piling up into yucky heap of junk that purports to share a very deep message about need for Earth Day.
I can do without such message, thank you.
Rating:
Summary: A journey into the magic world whose name I can't remember
Review: Well, I'd like to start this review by making a parallel beetwen this movie and traditional chinese legends, but I don't know any chinese legends, so I can't really do that. So let's just talk about the film itself.
Spirited Away is sort of an oriental version of Alice in Wonderland (with the major difference that Alice's tears where generally smaller than her face). But at it's core it is about the dreams and courage of children. Most of my friends wouldn't be able to survive a whole day at the strange magic hotel where Chihiro, the protagonist, finds herself after the sun sets and her parents become enourmous, fat pigs. However, not only does she manage to survive she also ends up helping a bunch of people and eventually freeing her parents.
All children are brave, much more so than adults. Maybe that's becouse they have a more optimistic view of the world, or it could just be that they are really stupid.
Rating:
Summary: Wicked cool Anime!
Review: The first Anime movie I ever saw was Princess Mononoke, when my friend forced me to watch it at her tenth b-day sleepover. I loved that so much, that when SPirited Away came out, I made my mom see it at the first show that wasn't sold out-9:30 PM at the Pavilion in Prospect PArk. I was completely blown away.
This movie tells the story of an whiny, slightly spoiled girl named Chihiro (Daveigh Chase, Lilo and Stitch) who is extremely unhappy about moving to a new place. On the way there, her father gets the family lost on a detour. The family finds themself at the entrance to a tunnel. Upon walking through, the come out in a train station. But when Chihiro's father follows his nose to an apparently abandoned but full concession stand at an abandoned amusement park, he and Chihiro's mother start stuffing their faces. When Chihiro, apparently not hungry, goes to explore she meets a young man who warns her to go go back through the tunnel before it gets dark. Then, when Chihiro returns to get her parents, she finds they have been horrifically transformed-into pigs! Chihiro then goes to the same young man-Master Haku, for help. She gets a job working in a bathhouse in the spirit world! While there, Chihiro must use her own brilliance to outwit the wonderfully nasty witch, Yubaba who owns the bath house, defeat the clever, lonely monster, No-Face, and think back to her childhood to help haku find his name, all in a brilliantly crafty, beautifully drawn and voiced, and expertly told.
Susan Egan does a remarkable job as Lin, Chihiro's (Sen)caretaker and advisor, while Jason Marsden ultimately brings life into Haku. Suzanne Pleshette makes the devilish Yubaba and the motherly Zeniba seem real, while David Ogsen Stiers, voices the spider-like boiler man Kamaji. But by far, the best voice in this film was that of Chihiro (Daveigh Chase) her adorable, high pitched tone fits Chihiro perfectly.
If you like anime, this film is a must-see. Better by far than Princess Mononoke (even though that was really good) By the way, if you think that Haku's voice sounds familiar, he sounds like Riku from Kingdom Hearts
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