Your Name 2016

     the title in Japanese is Kimi no na wa.  Mitsuha is the daughter of the mayor of a small mountain town called Itomori in Japan.  She’s in high school and she lives with her father, her sister and her grandmother.  Shinto rituals are of no interest to her and she doesn’t want to help her father with his electoral campaign.  She has dreams of leaving this boring town and going to Tokyo.  Taki is a high school boy in Tokyo and he works part-time in an Italian restaurant.  He aspires to become an architect or an artist.  Taki has a dream every night where he becomes a high school girl in a small mountain town. 

     There is also a novel and soundtrack album based on this film.  Mitsuha and Taki cannot figure out how or why they change places and switch bodies in their dreams.  They communicate with each other by writing in Mitsuha’s notebook and on Taki’s phone.  Sometimes they write on each other’s skin.  They begin to change each other too.  Taki begins a relationship with his coworker Miki.  Mitsuha to becomes more popular in school.  The reason for their switching places is so Taki can warn Mitsha that a comet will strike her town.  There is three years separation between their timelines.  A comet split in two, a piece fell to earth and destroyed Itomori.  Taki found Mitshuha’s name in the records of fatalities and he discovers the date of the disaster.  If he doesn't warn her Mitsha and many other people will die.  I thought this was an interesting concept teens changing places in their sleep.  3 1/2* (I liked this film)  

   

106 min, Animation directed by Makoto Shinkai with the voices of Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita, Aoi Yuki, Nobunaga Shimazaki, Kaito Ishikawa, Kanon Tani, Masaki Terasoma, Sayaka Ohara, Kazuhiko Inoue, Chafurin, Kana Hanazawa, Yuka Terasaki.

Note:  Imdb 8.4, 97% critic 94% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon 4.8* out of 5* with 762 reviews, Metacritic 79 out of 100 with 25 critics 9.1 out of 10 with 494 reviews, The Guardian 5* Brian Tallerico, Roger Ebert 3.5*.

Special Note:  The teacher of Classical Japanese at Mitsuha’s school is Ms. Yuki and she is Yukari Yukino the heroine from Makotot Shinkai’s previous film The Garden of Words from 2013.