 What does the film reviewer respect the most about the director of "The Limey"?
The images have none of the comin'-at-ya pop-surrealism of American cartoons, many of which have characters that spring out of the frame like jack-in-the-boxes. The Japanese director, Hayao Miyazaki, who spent three years on Princess Mononoke and is reported to have done 70 percent of its paintings himself, seems to work from the outside in: to begin with the curve of the earth, then the mossy hills, the watercolor foliage, the nubby stones, the whorls on the wood, the meticulous carvings on a teacup. A view of nature that some would call "tree-hugging" doesn't feel softheaded when the trees are rendered in such brilliant and robust detail. The film, which is rated PG-13, is full of splattery carnage. If Miyazaki in long shot is contemplative, in close-up he's ferocious. He's both inside and outside the action: He knows when to rock your world and when to induce a state of sorrowful detachment. According to the New York Times , Toy Story animators screened reels of his work when their imaginations flagged, and writers for Star Trek named an alien species after one of his features. It isn't that Miyazaki's work is technically so dazzling in this age of digitized miracles; it's that everything is sublimely in proportion. The movie has a scope that makes Hollywood's homiletic, follow-your-dream fables look even more solipsistic. It's the beginning of what Bill McKibben called "the end of nature"--that is, when nature became no longer an autonomous, self-regulating force but one touched (and, in Miyazaki's view, poisoned) by human industry. On one hand, she's a benevolent industrialist who presides over a warmly matriarchal society; on the other, she wants to destroy the forest, harness its resources, and exterminate its animal deities--chiefly the Spirit of the Forest, a magnificent deer god whose touch brings instant life or death, and who transforms at dusk into the towering Night Walker. P rincess Mononoke builds to a full-scale war between humans and the animal kingdom--which does not, by the way, consist of your father's cartoon critters. In fact, the boars and apes have little patience with Ashitaka's call for nature and mankind to live together in harmony; they'd like to eat him. San is first seen sucking a wound of her huge wolf mother, then, as the gore drips from her mouth, training her dark eyes on Ashitaka with feral hatred.
 His ability to evolve as a filmmaker
 His use of flashback and dialogue  His simultaneous implication and omission of violence  His ability to pack a lot of action into a short film  His ability to evolve as a filmmaker