Watched: The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2014).
So much about this is beautiful - it departs from the usual style of Studio Ghibli by emphasising the hand-drawn elements, and at times the art style is borders on impressionist. It’s a haunting, beautiful story taken from Japanese folklore, about a young girl’s desperate attempts to preserve her own happiness against insurmountable odds. The score, by Ghibli mainstay Joe Hisaishi, is fantastic.
Everything about this film is wonderful, save for the English dub, which is downright awful. Chloë Grace Moretz is serviceable as the titular Princess Kaguya, but James Caan and Mary Steenburgen both sound like they’re reading their lines for the first time. My assumption is that this comes from the fact that Universal Pictures organised and produced the dub for the film; in the past, it’s been a coproduction with Disney, who have a larger stable of voice talent to choose from and a proven track record when it comes to animation. I ended up watching the Japanese version, and it improves the film in every way and cements it as an excellent film, rather than a painfully awkward one.