Andrew Osmond– Author –

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Final Destination 5 opens with a set-piece spectacular around a high road bridge, and anyone with a passing acquaintance with the series won’t need telling what happens. Oh, all right. The bridge falls d...

My review of Mamoru Hosoda's film Mirai for Sight & Sound is available on the BFI website. [amazon_link asins='B07LD4P4BN,B07K8ZSKVT' template='ProductGrid' store='anime04c-21' marketplace='UK' link_id='bb3bb72c-4dd0-4ac8-97f0-260016...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Berlin, the 1940s. Eight year-old Bruno is the son of a German officer. Bruno’s father is promoted and takes his family to a forbidding country house staffed by soldiers. Bruno, a dreamer who loves adventure book...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Following a hostile response to The Golden Compass (2007), the last big fantasy film, the fleet-footed The Spiderwick Chronicles has enjoyed a much warmer reception in America. The film is produced by the Nickelo...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Up is a 3D CGI Pixar animation by Pete Docter, who previously helmed the studio’s Monsters Inc. (2001). There’s an obvious analogy between Docter’s two films, in that they both have an adult-child odd co...

Mamoru Hosoda's new film Mirai, about the strange adventures of a four year-old boy, is opening today in UK and Ireland cinemas. Hosoda himself has said it's the most experimental feature film that he's made to date. I'd agree, and sugge...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) 1973 and Mushi Production, the studio that propelled postwar anime with Astro Boy, is bankrupt, collapsing and dying. Its founder Osamu Tezuka has jumped ship. Just before the end, the studio releases a movie… Bella...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Sherlock Holmes, like Dracula and Tarzan, is a pop-culture universe unto himself, but he may not last forever. The last Holmes films I remember in cinemas were Disney’s cartoon Basil the Great Mouse Dete...

(Features video of Halloween 2018.) The neon-lit Shibuya is one of the most famous districts in central Tokyo. Carlos and Andrew talk about what it means to each of them.  

My review of the film for Neo magazine (Uncooked Media) is below. I also wrote several online pieces related to the film; the links are at the bottom of the review.   In Japan, Your Name is the success story of the year. Makoto Shin...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also add further observations in an article on the AllTheAnime website.) How many anime fans are fans of animation – animation as a medium, whether it’s anime or not? There are some (just google “sakuga”), but pe...

Andrew, from England, still isn’t used to experiencing earthquakes in Tokyo. He and Carlos talk about how earthquakes are part of Japanese life.

(Sight & Sound, BFI) A parent choosing a cartoon film for his or her children may view Japanese titles with understandable suspicion. Although anime has a far family-friendlier reputation than it once did, anime films which look like...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) When Hosoda Mamoru’s The Boy and the Beast was released in Japan in summer 2015, it was at the commercial forefront of the country’s animation, even as Studio Ghibli went on hiatus. The film’s starting point – a ...

Carlos and Andrew reflect on one of anime’s most famous monsters, the God Warrior in Miyazaki’s classic film Nausicaa, and what it says about the young animator who drew it, Hideaki Anno. Plus a surprise guest appearance at the end of th...

Our first video blog. Following the recent announcement of the long-awaited Evangelion 4.0, Carlos and Andrew chat about the Evangelion franchise, as well as Hideaki Anno’s lesser-known work, and ask if he can possibly bring this decades...

The following images are taken from "Volume 3" of the 50th Anniversary Shonen Jump exhibition, the last third of an extensive multi-part exhibition devoted to the manga magazine. "Volume 3" ran from July to September 2018 in the Mori Art...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) There’s much primary material about Miyazaki Hayao in English, from behind-the-scenes documentaries on home releases of his films, to two large books of his writings (Starting Point and Turning Point). It’s impre...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Amid the confusing array of computer cartoons, the Illumination studio stands out through its mascots – the yellow-skinned “Minions” from Despicable Me (2010), Despicable Me 2 (2013) and Minions (2014). Apart fro...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) Naoko Yamada is in London, and not for the first time. The director who’s one of the most prominent women in anime swung by a few years ago, when she was prepping K-ON! The Movie, in which a band of perky girl music...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also wrote a review of the first live-action Parasyte film for the MangaUK website.) (Volume 1) Parasyte starts with its money shot. A middle-aged husband and wife face each other in a dimmed room; then the man’s...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) The Last Airbender's title Dalai Lama-like hero automatically reincarnates each time he or she dies. Many critics would agree that Shyalaman’s career needed a similar renewal after Lady in the Water and ...

Author Andrew Osmond gives a brief introduction to his book '100 Animated Feature Films', which covers animation ranging from Akira to Toy Story via Wallace and Gromit.

(Neo magazine, Uncooked Media) If you know the history of comics, you’ll know Little Nemo. It was a legendary New York newspaper strip, published a hundred years ago, where a little boy has strange and scary dreams. Drawn by Winsor McCay...